by Dianne Drake
She tried to twist away from him and go the other direction, but Eric stepped in front of her then stepped in front of her again when she turned yet another way. “Look, Eric. I’ll give you credit where it’s due. You’re a good doctor. But other than that, you do what you have to do, as long as it doesn’t involve me. OK? I don’t like men like you. No, let me restate that. I hate men like you, and I pity the women who keep falling for them because the result is always the same no matter how much they believe they’re the one who will finally change him, finally tame the beast in him. Men like you don’t tame. Once you’ve had a taste of what it’s like to step outside the bounds of normal decency, you don’t step back in. So, leave me alone. We’ve done what we had to do, and there’s no reason to continue…anything.”
Deep breath, Dinah, she kept telling herself. Calm down. This wasn’t Damien Corday, her husband, who’d had the decency to wait six months into their marriage before cheating on her. It wasn’t her father, a man who’d left his family because it hadn’t been the family he’d wanted. Wasn’t even Charles Lansing who’d turned on her in such a profound, hurtful way. This was Eric Ramsey, who was trying to cheat on Mrs. Eric Ramsey. Yes, pity the poor wife. But this time it was truly none of her business.
“Do I get to defend myself?”
“Against what?” Dinah snapped. She wouldn’t look up at him, wouldn’t take a long, slow journey into those gorgeous brown eyes because if she did she might do something stupid, like believe him. And the last thing she ever intended to do again was believe anything any man had to say. Sure, it was reactionary, but she had good cause to react the way she did.
“Against your accusations. You get to fling them at me, so I should have the opportunity to deflect them. To defend myself.”
“I don’t care what you have to say, Eric, because I’ve heard…everything. All the excuses, all the explanations. All the lies. There’s nothing new under the sun, you know.”
He opened his mouth to speak, to compound his lie, to make an even bigger fool of her, but at that very same moment a tiny figure in a pink rain slicker came running through the hall, directly to Eric, followed by an identical little figure in another pink rain slicker.
“Daddy!” Eric spun to see them, then braced himself against the inevitable as both little girls launched themselves into his arms at the very same time.
Galoshes halfway to their knees, rain slickers all the way down to the galoshes, rain hats covering up most of their faces, it was hard to see the little girls, but Dinah’s heart did pound a little harder as Eric went down on one knee and scooped them both up into his embrace. They were giggling and laughing and splashing him with water dripping from their slickers, almost knocking him flat on his back in their exuberance.
“OK, girls,” their mother said, coming up from behind. “I told you not to overwhelm your father. Remember he’s been doing a very difficult surgery, and he’s tired.”
“But we brought him cookies,” one of the girls cried.
“We’ve been baking,” the woman Dinah took to be Eric’s wife said. “And baking, and baking. They were bored, and they missed you.”
“Well, you know how I love your cookies!” Eric exclaimed, extricating himself from the girls and standing up. Once he was fully upright, both girls immediately latched on to him again, one girl holding on to each of his legs.
“Are you coming home now, Daddy?” one of the girls asked.
“Sorry, but I can’t leave here yet. We’re too busy. Too many people still coming in and you know Daddy has to stay here and take care of them.”
“Then can we stay here and help?” the girls cried in unison. “Please, Daddy, can we stay?”
He looked at the woman, who shrugged. “I’m going to sit with Gabby, and Debbie’s coming in shortly to look after the girls. So it’s fine with me if they stay for a while,” she said. “Maybe you can take a break with them later on?”
“How can I say no to taking a break with my two best girls?” Eric said. He took hold of the brims of both their rain hats and shoved them up. “But first I want you to say hello to Dinah Corday. She’s the nurse who helped me in surgery today. The surgery I did on Dr. Evans’s baby.”
Totally unaware of her presence there, in this cozy family scene, until they spun to face her, they both ran immediately to Dinah and grabbed her like she was their long-lost friend. “Hello,” she said tentatively.
“Hello,” they said in unison. “Do you want to eat some of Daddy’s cookies?” one of the girls continued.
“That’s Pippa,” Eric said. “Without the rain gear, you’ll be able to tell her from Paige because Pippa has brown eyes like me, and Paige has hazel eyes like her mother. Other than that, they’re identical.”
“And I’m taller,” the one Dinah believed was Paige said. “By half an inch.”
“Only when you’re standing on your tiptoes,” Pippa argued.
“Do not,” Paige protested.
“Do, too,” Pippa countered.
“And so goes the Ramsey family,” Eric said, laughing. “Oh, and, Dinah. I’d like you to meet my sister, Janice Laughlin. The girls and I live with her, and she watches them when I’m working.”
Eric lived with his sister? Suddenly the heat of embarrassment began its creep from her neck, up her throat, to her cheeks. “Hello,” she said, almost choking over the single word.
“But Daddy’s going to get us a great big house of our own soon, where we can have a dog and…” Paige started.
“A cat,” Pippa finished.
Dinah chanced a glance at Eric, whose expression was an odd one, caught between pain and amusement. He wanted to laugh, or cry. She couldn’t tell which. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Look, it’s nice to meet all of you…Janice, Paige, Pippa. But I’ve really got to go and find my sister.”
“Can we go see the baby?” Pippa cried. “Please?”
“Pretty please?” Paige joined in.
“Not right now,” Eric said, trying to take a firm hand. “He’s not feeling very well. But maybe in a few days.”
But Eric wasn’t very good at that firm hand, and it showed. Even to a casual observer such as herself, Dinah saw that he was just plain gooey when it came to his little girls. They had him wrapped around their little fingers, and he enjoyed every bit of it. He would be a very indulgent father, Dinah decided. And a very good one. Something also told her that Eric wasn’t a man cheating on his wife. He was a man getting over something painful, for which she felt very bad. So bad, in fact, that she turned away without saying another word, and practically ran into the room where Angela was sitting, waiting for Gabby to return from seeing her baby. “Tell me about Eric,” she whispered to Angela.
“What do you want to know?”
“Is he married?”
CHAPTER THREE
“WHY, I do believe you’re flustered, Dinah.” A smile crept to Angela’s face as Dinah paced back and forth in the tiny hospital waiting room. “He is handsome, though, isn’t he? Nice man. Smart. Good doctor, too.”
“But is he married?”
“Oh, my… I guess you wouldn’t know, would you?”
“Know what?”
“That he’s a widower. I don’t know the circumstances, except that it happened a long time ago, before he moved to White Elk.”
Horror heaped on humiliation. She’d kissed him then accused him of something terrible. “He wears a wedding ring.”
Her sister raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “I guess it’s hard for him to let go. Is there something you want to tell me, Dinah?”
She shook her head, too upset to speak. From the moment he’d run into her on the road until now, nothing had been right between them except, perhaps, the way they’d worked together. Admittedly, that had been brilliant. A perfect medical union. Rare, especially for two strangers.
The kiss had been perfect, too. More perfect than she’d known a kiss could be. But she couldn’t tell her sister because that kiss
had been a huge mistake. Had meant nothing. After all, she’d been kissed before, and no kiss in her life had ever meant a thing. So, why should this one?
“Well, for what it’s worth,” Angela said, breaking into Dinah’s thoughts, “I’ve hardly ever seen him come up to Pine Ridge, so once you’re settled in there, and working, you probably won’t run into him again. If that’s what you want. At least, until I have my baby and you have to come to the hospital and visit me. And maybe you can work that out so you won’t be here when he is.” She laughed, and a wide grin spread over her face. “Unless you want to be where he is.”
“I’m not interested,” Dinah insisted.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But that’s what you were thinking.”
“What I was thinking was that you’re a little too…” She faked a frown, pretended to think. “What’s the word I’m looking for? Is it…preoccupied? You’re a little too preoccupied by the man. Or obsessed.”
“Am not!” Dinah argued as yet another good, firm, and very telling blush spread over her cheeks on account of Eric.
“Whatever you say.”
“I say I’m not preoccupied. And I’m not obsessed, either.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I said I’m not!” Dinah protested again, yet the heat kept rising in her, along with the timbre of her voice. OK, so she’d never been a very good liar. As a child, that little trait had been the bane of her existence, like when she’d tried to explain away the missing candy from the bowl on her grandmother’s coffee table, or when she’d been late to school. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Even though, avoidance was a good plan. If she avoided Eric, there would be no more hostilities, no more humiliation. No more kisses. The problem was, she wanted to see him. Bad problem. Bad, bad problem. Because she didn’t know why. Which caused the heat in her cheeks to positively flame.
What the hell had that been about? Eric kicked the trash can next to his desk, knocking it over, spilling out the paper contents. It had been about a kiss, that’s what. And now he felt as guilty as hell. Sure, he was a red-blooded man. He hadn’t been without certain desires all this time. But desiring and acting on those desires were two different things, and he wasn’t ready to act on them. Had never come close to acting on them, and suddenly, that was the only thing on his mind.
Five years was a long time—a lifetime of feeling married yet not having his wife here. But that’s what his life had turned into. And he didn’t regret it, because he truly wasn’t ready to change things. The girls needed their mother’s memory kept alive, and he was the only one who could do that. They were so young, and all they knew were the things he told them, so how could it be time to move past that point?
Swallowing hard, Eric looked at Patricia’s picture on his desk. God, he missed her. His friends, even Janice kept telling him it was time to get on with his life, but he didn’t feel like it was time. He was waiting for…well, he wasn’t sure. Maybe a sign? Or, a push?
But not a kiss. That had been a mistake. Still, it had been a nice kiss, one that had reaffirmed the fact that he still had passions, albeit buried pretty deeply. Big mistake, though, because the feelings that had come immediately after… Then practically being accused of cheating on his wife when, in fact, that’s exactly what he felt like, pounded him hard. He hadn’t kissed a woman other than Patricia for ten years. Hadn’t ever wanted to. So what was it about Dinah that had caused that to happen? And make no mistake, he’d been the one to step up to her and pull her into his arms. His initiative, his kiss.
He felt like hell for it. Pure hell.
What’s more, he didn’t trust himself not to do it again.
Bending down, he righted the trash can, then stood back up and studied it for a moment. Then kicked it again.
“You’re stirring that sauce like a woman possessed.”
Dinah spun away from the stove and almost bumped into Eric. She’d thought about him a thousand times these past few days, thought about the kiss, too, and would have called him, ostensibly to check on Bryce, even though she’d been kept up to date with the baby’s progress via her sister. Which left her no reason to call Eric and stir things up between them again, except she did want to apologize for what she’d said. She’d even considered driving down to White Elk to set things straight with him. But how could she face him when she’d practically accused him of being a liar and a cheat?
Avoidance was easier, she decided. She and Eric didn’t have any kind of relationship going, they owed each other nothing, had no expectations. So, for her, this was the best thing to do. She was good at it, had had a lifetime of practice. “You’re not supposed to be in the kitchen. Didn’t you see the sign on the door?”
“I did.” He stepped a little closer, looking into the saucier on the stovetop. “Hollandaise sauce?”
“Bordelaise. And you can’t be in here, looking at my Bordelaise.”
“Actually, I can. I’m one of the on-call county health inspectors. It gets me into pretty much any place I want to go. Including your kitchen.”
His brown eyes twinkled so brightly she had to avert her eyes, stare at loaves of bread she’d pulled out of the oven just a while ago. “So this is an inspection?” Whirling back to the stove, she returned her wobbly attention to the thickening sauce, trying to ignore the fact that he was standing so close to her. “Aren’t you supposed to notify us when you’re going to do that?”
“No. That defeats the purpose of trying to find infractions. If you know I’m coming, you hide things.”
She picked up a long-handled spoon and began to stir, only to find that her sauce was already sticking to the bottom of the saucier. Curdled beyond repair and sticking to the pan. He had been there less than two minutes and she’d managed to ruin the Bordelaise, so what was it about Eric Ramsey that did that to her? The high humiliation factor? Because she certainly seemed to humiliate herself every time she was near him. “So, inspect. Help yourself. Check the pantry, the cold storage. And don’t forget the freezer. Or the grease traps.” She set aside the ruined sauce, and decided not to start over until he was gone. Bordelaise could be delicate and she didn’t want to mess up another one.
“You can’t use that, can you?” he asked pointing to the saucier. “Any way to resurrect it?”
“Is insulting my culinary skills part of your duty as inspector?” she snapped. Why didn’t he leave? Why did he make her hands shake?
She looked down at her trembling hands, and jammed them into to her pants pockets before he noticed.
“Your cooking skills looked pretty good. Not as good as your nursing skills, though.”
“Former nursing skills,” she insisted, feeling the bite of nostalgia already.
“Well, whatever you’re calling yourself these days, I wanted to tell you that Bryce was sent up to Salt Lake City, he’s had his second surgery, and he’s doing fine. Came through beautifully.”
“You could have phoned.”
“I could have, but then I wouldn’t have been able to give you these.”
He jiggled a bag. She heard the paper crinkle, but she wasn’t sensing what could be in the bag, and it was quite clear that he wasn’t about to tell her. In other words, it was her move. If she wanted to find out, she’d have to turn around and look…look at what was in the bag. Look at him. Look into his eyes. “What?” she asked, without giving in.
“These.” He jiggled the bag again, teasing her.
OK, so now her interest was piqued. She turned. Studied the brown bag for a moment. Thrust out her hand to take it. Inside were six cookies, chocolate chip. Misshapen, a little overdone. And quite obviously a gift from his daughters. “You’ve taken up baking?” she asked, trying to sound disinterested as she pulled out a cookie and headed straight to the fridge for milk.
“The only thing I bake is a frozen dinner, in the microwave, and technically I don’t think that’s even considered baking, is it?”
Dinah poured two
mugs of milk and handed one to Eric. “Chocolate-chip cookies always have to have milk.”
“Do you dunk?” he asked.
“Of course I dunk! Is there any other way to eat a chocolate-chip cookie?”
Eric pulled a cookie from the bag and was the first one to dunk. Dinah followed suit, took a bite, and swallowed. Politely. Trying not to make the face Eric was making. “They lack a little in refinement,” he said. “But they’re getting better.”
At five, she and Angela had been baking cookies like pros. With help from their mother, of course. But Pippa and Paige didn’t have a mother, and suddenly, she felt sad for them, sad for the things Eric’s little girls were missing. Dinah knew how it felt having a parent missing from her life, but her parent had left by choice. He hadn’t wanted daughters, or a woman capable of giving him only daughters. Pippa and Paige’s situation was so different, so tragic. “Maybe I could give them a lesson or two. If you don’t mind?” The offer was genuine, although she didn’t know where it had come from. Dinah instantly regretted it because helping the girls would keep her in closer contact with Eric. That was something she didn’t want, and could ill afford.
“You’d do that? Teach the girls to cook? Janice has been supervising them in the kitchen, but her skills are, well, not much better than theirs. But if you could spend a little time with the girls…” He dunked his cookie, and studied it for a moment. “They love cooking, and doing so many of the little-girl things I can’t do with them. So, if you really want to do this, I’d appreciate it, because I’ve got a lot of years ahead of me, eating these things.” He popped the last of his cookie into his mouth and washed it down with the milk. Big gulps of milk.
They agreed that the following afternoon would be good for the first cookie lesson then Dinah returned to her dinner preparation. But Eric didn’t leave right away. He simply stood back, watching her, which made her nervous. Finally, after she fumbled her way through adding too much vinegar to a vinaigrette then having to compensate for her mistake, she confronted him. “Look, Eric. You can’t stay here. If you’re going to inspect the kitchen, or any part of the restaurant, do it. If not, please leave. I’m not a very organized cook yet, as you can tell, and you’re distracting me. And I’ve got to get dinner service up and going within the next hour.”