Noah made an instant decision. ‘And I’ll help.’
Carrie’s grin widened. ‘Really? Promise?’
‘I promise.’
Wearing a smile of victory, Carrie carefully cradled the ballerina as she skipped away. Jenny’s expression hardened. ‘We’ll manage by ourselves,’ she said stiffly.
‘I’m sure you can, but I’ve given my word so I will.’
She visibly bristled and her blue-gray eyes flashed with fire. ‘If you’re insinuating that you keep your promises and I don’t…’
He’d obviously touched a sore spot. ‘I’m not,’ he said honestly. ‘It never entered my mind. I offered because I want to. That’s all. No ulterior motive. Scout’s honor.’ He held up three fingers in the traditional salute.
She didn’t appear convinced and he thought it time to discuss something less volatile. ‘It’s nice of you to look after your friend’s daughter. Not many people would take on the responsibility.’
‘Susan’s helped me many times and I wanted to return the favor. She’s widowed and doesn’t have any close family.’
‘I assume Carrie is one of the commitments you mentioned having back in Grand Junction?’
‘Look,’ she said brusquely, clearly evading his question, ‘I thought you came by to sort out rumors, not to discuss my friends or my personal life.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, not feeling sorry at all. ‘I was just making conversation. But to get back on track, we were talking about you taking on a partner to ease your cash-flow problem.’
‘Thanks, but no, thanks. I shared that position with my aunt and I don’t care to repeat the experience. I’ll manage.’
‘Who said it would be the same with someone else?’
‘Who said it wouldn’t?’ she countered.
Her mind was obviously made up, her decision irrevocable, so he dropped the subject. ‘If you’re leaving in the fall, are you still planning to sell?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what happens if you don’t find a buyer?’
She straightened and hugged her arms to her chest. ‘I’ve talked to a fellow who’s interested in working here, but he’s committed elsewhere until September. So I’ll wait and see what develops.’
‘Good luck.’
Her gaze held the same confused wariness as a doe caught in the headlights of a car. ‘After last week I would have said that you would be the last person in Springwater to offer me luck. Why the change of heart?’
‘Jenny?’ Carrie called. ‘Are you about done visiting? I’m worried about Bugs.’
‘OK, squirt. Give me another minute.’ She faced him. ‘You were saying?’ she prompted.
He asked a question of his own. ‘Bugs as in insects or Bugs as in—’
Jennifer smiled. ‘Bunny. Carrie’s very protective of him, especially since he’s in new surroundings.’
‘I see.’ He didn’t have to stretch his imagination to visualize the little girl with a fluffy white rabbit in her arms.
‘You were about to tell me why you had a change of heart,’ she prompted.
‘Does it matter?’ he asked, relying on the same excuse she’d given him earlier. In actuality, he wasn’t sure of how to answer. She certainly had reason to maintain her distance because he’d done the same from the moment she’d arrived at Earl’s bedside. If he explained how Harriet’s hints and the conversation he’d overheard only moments ago had softened his attitude, she’d accuse him of showing pity.
Jennifer Ruscoe wasn’t a woman who would have appreciated being pitied. It was better not to say anything. For now.
‘I suppose it doesn’t,’ she said slowly.
‘It won’t help either of us if people think we can’t get along,’ he pointed out. ‘Wouldn’t it serve our best interests if we started over, so to speak?’
She met his gaze squarely. ‘Is it possible?’
‘We can try.’ If Earl hadn’t resented her absences, then he shouldn’t either, even if those events had brought back painful memories.
The breath she drew seemed to carry a resigned note. ‘I suppose.’
Noah bent down to pick up her sign. As he handed it to her, he said with a smile, ‘You’d better hang this so you can hurry home to Bugs and feed your assistant. Do you need any help?’
She shook her head. ‘I can do it.’
He hadn’t expected her to say otherwise, but he’d wanted to offer. ‘Have a nice evening.’
He left as quietly as he’d come, aware of Jenny’s mystified stare boring into his back. A hundred and one unanswered questions still burned inside him and he didn’t want to say goodbye. Yet he couldn’t press his luck, either. Pushing too hard, too soon, that would do more harm than good. She’d accepted a truce, and though the grounds were shaky at least it was a start.
He would have to train himself to call her ‘Jenny’ like everyone else, although for some strange reason it didn’t seem as difficult as he’d once thought.
Last week, his only concern had been in having the pharmacy open for his patients’ convenience. Now, that desire no longer seemed enough. He wanted something else, although he hadn’t quite defined what it was.
He disliked leaving things undone, so perhaps his lack of answers had triggered his sense of restlessness. He understood more than he had before he’d arrived, but his curiosity hadn’t been completely satisfied.
Show her you’re not the enemy.
He’d taken the first step toward following Harriet’s advice. Leaving Jenny to her own devices for the past month, that had been a mistake he wasn’t going to repeat. She had clearly made big plans in the last week, and he wanted to personally watch her achieve them. Being underfoot was one way to ensure that she didn’t say one thing and do another. He had a responsibility to his patients and he wouldn’t shirk his duty.
It would definitely be an interesting summer.
It was going to be a long summer, Jenny thought to herself as she taped her new poster in the store’s plate-glass window. She wasn’t used to living in the proverbial goldfish bowl, where every move she made was dissected and analyzed. After having Noah Kimball avoid her for the past month, the possibility of seeing him on a regular basis troubled her to a certain degree.
It wasn’t as if he had to say the right words or demonstrate a certain amount of friendliness to entice her to stay. She’d practically guaranteed that his precious pharmacy would be here, one way or another, just like he wanted. However, if he wanted to keep tabs on her, by generously offering his time and strong back, she wasn’t going to refuse. The sooner she whipped this place into shape, the sooner she could return to Grand Junction.
She stepped back, flexing the ache out of her shoulder blades. He was right in one respect—bickering wouldn’t be good for business. Although he’d implied it would hurt both of them, she would be the one to suffer. He also had more power to make her life miserable than vice versa.
In any case, her needs were too great to hold a grudge. Whether or not he actually would follow through on his word still remained to be seen.
‘That’s it,’ she told Carrie. ‘Let’s eat.’
‘My stomach’s hungry for pizza,’ Carrie said.
‘Mine, too.’ After shutting off all the lights except one in the rear of the building, Jenny turned the thermostat up a few degrees, then locked the door behind them.
Much later, after Bugs had eaten and they had dined on their take-out pizza from the local Pizza Hut, Carrie’s eyelids started to droop.
‘Are you tired, squirt?’ Jenny asked as she cleared away the remnants of their meal, certain Carrie would deny the slightest suggestion.
‘Oh, no.’ Carrie stifled a yawn. ‘My mom lets me stay up late during the summer. Want to play Monopoly? Or how about Life?’
Jenny smiled at Carrie’s choices as she ushered her upstairs to the tub. Each of those two games took hours to play before a winner could be declared. ‘I’m going to pass tonight. We had a busy day and tomorrow will be the sam
e. If I don’t go to sleep soon, I won’t be ready to start early in the morning. We open at eleven, so I want to get as much done as possible before customers start coming.’
‘Then I can’t stay up late and watch TV?’
Carrie’s usually bright brown eyes had dulled. She would probably fall asleep before the ten o’clock news came on, but Jenny decided not to argue. This wasn’t a battle worth fighting. ‘Sure you can. Just be sure you shut off all the lights when you go to bed.’
‘OK.’
Later, during Jenny’s turn for a soak in the claw-footed bathtub, she heard Carrie’s giggle drift up the stairs.
It reminded her of the times when she and her uncle had watched comedies together with the volume turned low in deference to Eunice sleeping across the hall. The antics of Jackie Gleason and Bob Hope had always made them laugh and they’d struggled at times not to wake her.
She sank lower in the water until the raspberry-scented bubbles tickled her chin. Leaning her head against the rim, she closed her eyes and waited for the water to soothe away the day’s tensions. Life had certainly become more complicated than the old television shows had portrayed. People weren’t as open and forthright either.
Noah Kimball was a perfect example. The man possessed more layers to his personality than a head of ice-berg lettuce. For someone who supposedly was only concerned about having an operational pharmacy, he’d taken a more active interest in her activities than she’d expected.
Did he suspect there was more to her vague excuse for changing professions?
She dismissed the idea before it took hold. Magazines were full of stories about people who’d changed their career direction because they grew tired of their stressful lifestyles. And while the stress hadn’t been the sole reason for her decision, it had played a role.
In the meantime, she’d do what had to be done in order to repay her emotional debt and make amends for her past mistakes. Once the summer ended, she would return to her teaching position and embrace her new career with a clear conscience.
Nothing would change her mind.
Over the next few days, however, she realized the monumental size of the goal she’d set for herself. The repairmen she’d hired turned the place upside down as they tackled their jobs with enthusiasm and skill. She spent hours on the phone with her suppliers, working out delivery schedules and fees. Carrie sorted through the general supplies as Jenny refilled prescriptions and studied her records to get a feel for the quantities she should stock.
Because her inventory of digoxin, a heart medication, was low, she jotted it on her list. Yet, after checking the past quarter’s invoices, their pharmacy had dispensed an excessive amount for a population this size. Springwater had a small nursing home, but even if she took the geriatric population into consideration the quantities seemed extreme.
On the other hand, her uncle—and Herb—had ordered the tablets consistently each month, indicating that this wasn’t a fluke. Out of curiosity, she skimmed through her prescription file, but found very few actual orders.
Where had all the tablets gone? Had Earl loaned them to another pharmacy? If so, why would he have done that on a regular basis?
Puzzled and unable to explain the discrepancy, she pushed the episode out of her mind until Wednesday’s discovery of a similar problem involving vials of insulin.
At first she blamed a clerical error. However, she knew of her uncle’s attention to detail and couldn’t imagine him misplacing any of his inventory. Earl had controlled every aspect of his pharmacy and he’d never have delegated anything remotely connected to his bookkeeping duties.
Again, she might have dismissed her findings, except for the fact that she now had two instances of misplaced medications.
Her uncle had always been healthy, but maybe he’d been taking the medication himself. Heart disease and diabetes weren’t rare conditions, although to her knowledge those diseases weren’t part of her family history. Even so, if those tablets had been for personal use, she’d find a prescription.
She thumbed through the file and came up empty-handed. On impulse, she checked for Herb’s name, but didn’t find any records for him either.
Her uncle couldn’t have taken those pills. For one thing, the amount lost exceeded any amount he might have used. For another, if he’d needed the drug, he wouldn’t have played aggressive basketball with Noah and his cronies.
Jenny glanced around the area where they’d stored the pharmaceuticals since the store had first opened. The security was far from perfect. Other than a barred window, one door and one lock stood between her and the outside. A person with the right tools could have walked in and helped themselves to literally anything.
She’d already inventoried the Schedule II drugs and could account for every tablet of Demerol, Ritalin and Percodan, to name a few. Why a thief would take legend drugs—those coming in bottles with the caption stating ‘Caution: Federal law prohibits dispensing without a prescription’—instead of addictive controlled substances didn’t make sense.
Instantly, she chided herself for not upgrading her security after Herb had left. She didn’t suspect him of wrongdoing, but replacing the locks was a prudent defense against an extra set of keys floating around in the community.
Her analytical nature wanted answers, but the time required to review every record was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Until she could manage an audit, she’d use the invoices as a guide, listen to her instincts, and stay alert for anything out of the ordinary. By next month she’d have her own facts and figures for comparison.
She could always ask Herb for an explanation, but he’d ground her pride into the dust when he’d resigned—she’d contact him only as a last resort.
Lost in her thoughts, the carpenters’ steady hammering and all else faded into the background. Her customer knocked on the window-ledge near her desk to grab her attention.
Embarrassed by her daydreaming, she rose at the sight of Terrell Hawver. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Don’t tell me,’ she joked to hide her sudden trepidation, ‘there’s a problem with my aunt.’
Terrell, a stocky man in his mid-thirties, smiled. He always wore a somewhat rumpled suit and tie, no matter what the weather. His light brown hair usually appeared as if he’d run his hands through it haphazardly and he gave the overall impression of being somewhat absentminded. Still, he’d been her uncle’s attorney, and if Terrell had satisfied Earl, Jenny wouldn’t complain.
‘Not to my knowledge,’ he said.
Watching him rub his breastbone, Jenny realized her error. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘My aunt is hard to deal with and, quite frankly, I’m still amazed by how smoothly everything went.’
‘Perfectly understandable. Eunice is the type of person who keeps lawyers on their toes. I’m here to ask you for advice.’
‘What can I help you with?’
Once again he rubbed his chest. ‘I need relief from my indigestion. Antacids help, but they don’t totally relieve the symptoms. What do you suggest I use?’
‘Do certain foods bother you more than others?’
‘The spicier the better, but the agony afterwards outweighs the pleasure. My wife and I entertain a lot at the country club, and now I can’t drink anything alcoholic without paying the price. Coffee bothers me, too.’
‘Have you had a recent physical?’ she asked.
‘A couple of years ago.’ He frowned. ‘Do you think I need another one?’
‘It might not hurt,’ she said, considering the possibility of a duodenal ulcer. ‘Have you had other problems?’
‘Like what?’
‘Vomiting blood, weight loss or weight gain—that sort of thing.’
He patted his pudgy stomach and grinned. ‘My wife’s pushing me to lose a few pounds. I guess I got in the habit of eating because it made the pain go away,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Between cutting the serving sizes and eating all this rabbit food, my stomach is constantly in an uproar.’
Jenny came throu
gh the half-door, skirted the saw-horses bearing pieces of plywood, and headed for her display of non-prescription stomach remedies. ‘I have a few suggestions, but serving sizes are out of my control, I’m afraid,’ she teased.
He grinned. ‘You can’t give me a note saying that I need more food with my meals? I’m shocked.’
She laughed with him at his joke. ‘Sorry. I can only help with the acid problem.’ Scanning the shelves, she pointed to several boxes. ‘I have three different products you might try.’
He eyed his choices. ‘Which one do you recommend?’
‘They’re all good. I’d suggest you start with this,’ she said, handing him a box of famotidine. ‘If it helps, then keep taking it. If not, change to one of the other brands.’
‘How soon will I notice a difference?’
‘It takes a while. About thirty to sixty minutes.’
He glanced at the shelf. ‘Do the others work faster?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘The trick is to find the one that works for you.’
‘OK. I’ll start with this.’
‘The directions are on the outside,’ she told him. ‘Chew one tablet as soon as your symptoms develop. If you’re going to eat something that you know irritates you—spicy food, for example—then chew a tablet and drink a glass of water an hour before your meal.’
‘Sounds simple. I hope it works.’
‘Don’t take more than two every twenty-four hours,’ she cautioned. ‘If you need more to control your symptoms, then we should look at other options.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Naturally, if you would happen to start vomiting blood, go to your doctor right away. Do you see Dr Kimball or Dr Ingram?’
‘Doc Ingram has looked after my family for years. I dread the day he retires. Which, considering he’s in his early sixties, probably won’t be too far down the road.’
‘I’m sure there’s enough work for two physicians.’
‘Absolutely. I hear Noah’s been talking to the medical schools, trying to find someone who’s interested in taking over, so I’m not worried about going without a doctor. Noah won’t rest until he brings someone on board. He’s done a lot for this town, you know.’
Prescriptions and Promises Page 6