by Linda Turner
That sounded good, but Reilly wasn’t holding his breath. Women were the same all over, and as long as they thought he was free, they’d think they had a chance with him. He would have no peace. Resigned, he stepped inside the nursing home, where he would be making rounds twice a week, and braced for more questions as Dr. Michaels began to introduce him to the staff and patients.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“Oh, Dr. Reilly, it’s so good to finally meet you. I heard you were living out at Sheriff Kincaid’s cabin all by yourself. Don’t you have a wife and family?”
“We’ve heard so much about you, Dr. Reilly. Is it true that you had a house on the beach in Malibu and used to date Meg Ryan? Is she as sweet as she looks?”
“Are you married, Doctor? I was just telling my granddaughter she needed to meet you. Why don’t I give you her phone number and you can call her?”
Gritting his teeth as one patient after another quizzed him about his personal life, Reilly admitted that he wasn’t married and had never had the good fortune to meet Meg Ryan. The staff, thankfully, was more restrained, but he didn’t fool himself into thinking that the nurses weren’t listening to every word. More than a few of them had a gleam in their eye that he found all too familiar.
And he wasn’t the only one who noticed. Disapproval glinting in his eyes, Dan sent several of the younger girls back to work with just a frown. “C’mon,” he told Reilly. “There’s someone else I want you to meet. This time of day, she’s usually in the solarium with the Lester sisters.”
Leading the way through the east wing, Dan stepped into the solarium and grinned at the sight of the nurse overseeing a lively game of Parcheesi between two old women in wheelchairs who sat at a wrought-iron table that overlooked an outdoor patio. “Janey! I thought I’d find you here. Come and meet my new partner.”
In the process of rolling the dice for Margaret, who had lost partial use of her right hand due to a stroke four months ago, Janey turned at Dan’s call, a smile already starting to spread across her face. Then she spied the man at his side. He was scowling at her, just as he had when she’d stopped to help him the other day when his BMW broke down on the side of the road.
“Actually, we’ve already met,” she told Dan as she excused herself from the Lester sisters and stepped forward with a smile. “Well, sort of,” she amended wryly, offering Reilly her hand. “We ran into each other at the E.R. last night, but there wasn’t time for an introduction. It’s nice to finally meet you, Doctor. I’m Janey McBride.”
“Reilly Jones,” he said, giving her hand a matter-of-fact shake. “You’re Nick Kincaid’s sister-in-law.”
“Guilty as charged,” she replied, amusement glinting in her brown eyes. “Just for the record, he knows all about my shotgun.”
Chuckling, Dan grinned. “Everybody knows about that shotgun. As far as I know,” he told Reilly, “she’s never had to use it, but that doesn’t mean she can’t. She’s a crackerjack shot. And one of the most caring nurses you’ll ever have the good fortune to work with. You can always depend on her to see that your patients get the finest care.”
It was a glowing recommendation, one that brought a blush to Janey’s cheeks. “I just do what anyone else would do,” she said modestly, and immediately changed the subject. “Liberty Hill’s quite a change from L.A.,” she told Reilly with a smile. “But I guess you know that already. What do you miss the most so far?”
Privacy, Reilly wanted to answer, and just barely held his tongue. Dammit, what was wrong with everyone around here? Every time he turned around, someone was asking him a damn personal question. He wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt—they were just being friendly and trying to find something to talk about—but he felt as if he’d been prodded and poked all day for information that was none of their business, and he was heartily sick of it. Didn’t they understand? He just wanted to be left alone!
“Nothing,” he said coolly. “That’s why I left. Now if you’ll excuse me, Dr. Michaels introduced me to some patients who need my attention. It was nice meeting you.”
With a curt nod he turned and strode out of the solarium, leaving behind a stunned silence. Taken aback, Janey turned to Dan in confusion. “What was that all about? What did I say? I didn’t mean to offend him.”
“Of course you didn’t,” he assured her with a comforting pat on the shoulder. “It wasn’t you, dear. Reilly’s just had a difficult afternoon.” Making a snap decision, he motioned to her to take a seat at one of the nearby tables. “Sit down, Janey. I need to tell you a few things about Dr. Jones.”
The Lester sisters had turned their attention from their game to Oprah, who’d just come on the television in the corner, so Janey had time to talk. “If this is about his wife dying, I already know,” she said as she settled into a chair across the table from him. “Mom told me. Obviously he’s going through a rough time.”
Dan nodded grimly. “That isn’t something a man gets over in a hurry. Trust me—I know. Peggy’s been dead eighteen years, and there are still times when I go home at the end of the day and expect to find her in the kitchen. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world when you realize she’s not there.”
“Is that why he left L.A.?” she asked quietly. “He couldn’t stand to live there without her?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “He’s a private person and never really said. And I didn’t push. I do know, though, that he was looking for a change. But change isn’t always easy, especially when you’re in a strange town where you don’t know anyone. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. He could use a friend, Janey. I know the two of you didn’t get off to a good start, but I was hoping you would do what you can to make him feel welcome. I imagine he’s pretty lonely.”
An astute woman, Janey knew when she was being manipulated. But she was also a soft touch, and she could not only forgive Dan for tugging on her emotions, but Reilly, too, for his hostile attitude. If their situations had been reversed, and she’d not only lost a husband she’d loved with all her heart, but moved to L.A., where she knew no one, she would have been miserable, too.
Smiling fondly at Dan, she gave in gracefully. “Okay, you can stop twisting my arm. I’ll be nice to the guy. If he hands my head to me on a platter, I guess you can stitch it back on for me.”
Pleased, he rose to his feet with her and hugged her. “I knew I could count on you. You’re just like your mother.”
Janey couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather be like, but Dan had it wrong. Her mother was strikingly beautiful, and Merry was her spitting image. She, on the other hand, was more like her father and Joe. Quiet and plain as apple pie, she’d accepted long ago that she would never have her mother’s or Merry’s striking beauty or outgoing personality. That just wasn’t who she was. And that was okay. She would have never been comfortable being beautiful. Happily married to Nick and eight months pregnant, Merry still drew constant male looks wherever she went. Janey couldn’t imagine that. She would have hated it.
Convincing Dan of that, however, would have been impossible. An old family friend, he’d known her all her life and made no secret of the fact that he thought she was every bit as beautiful as the rest of the family. Returning his hug fondly, she promised, “I’ll do what I can.”
She told herself it would be easy. She would make a point of seeking him out when he came by the nursing home for rounds, and she was bound to run into him at the hospital when she was working rescue with the volunteer fire department. There wouldn’t, however, be much time to talk during work, so she had to find another way to make him feel welcome.
“I’ll make him a cake and take it over to the cabin,” she decided as she drove home after her shift. It was the neighborly thing to do, and her mother had an excellent chocolate cake recipe. She’d never made it before, personally, but how hard could it be? All she had to do was follow directions.
Wednesday night was the regular meeting of her mother’s bridge club at Myrtle’s,
so Janey wasn’t surprised to find the house deserted when she got home. Her mother loved bridge and seldom missed a night out with the girls. Thankfully, Janey knew where she kept her recipes. Taking time only to change out of her nurse’s uniform into jeans and a T-shirt, she hurried back downstairs and tied on an apron.
She should have known she was in trouble when she finally found the recipe in her mother’s recipe box and discovered that it was nothing more than a list of ingredients written down in Sara’s neat hand. There were no directions, no indication of what order the ingredients were mixed or even what temperature the cake should be baked at. Frowning, Janey considered calling Sara at Myrtle’s, but she really hated to disturb the game, especially for something so minor. She’d watched her mother make the cake dozens of times over the years. Surely she could figure it out by herself. Quickly gathering all the ingredients and setting them out on the counter, she began.
Her memory wasn’t the best, but if she remembered correctly, the sugar, chocolate, butter and vanilla were in the icing, so by process of elimination, she deduced the contents of the cake. Pleased with herself, she tossed everything into the mixing bowl and turned the mixture on high. Now all she had to do was grease and flour the sheet cake pan and she could start baking. Grinning, she could just see her mother’s face when she came in and discovered she’d actually baked a cake. She’d be shocked!
The scent of burning chocolate hit Sara in the face the second she stepped through the front door. Surprised, she frowned. What was going on? She was sure she hadn’t left anything in the oven, and Janey didn’t usually venture into the kitchen on her own unless it was to heat up something in the microwave. Scrambled eggs was about the extent of her culinary repertoire, and with good reason. The last time she’d tried to bake something, she’d been twelve, and she’d nearly set the house on fire.
Alarmed by the memory, Sara rushed into the kitchen to find Janey peering doubtfully into the oven. “Janey!” she sighed in relief when she saw there was no smoke filling the room as she’d half feared. “What’s going on? I smelled something burning and thought the house was on fire!”
“I was making a cake,” she replied in disgust as she looked around in vain for the pot holders, “but I think I burned it. Don’t you put the oven on five hundred when you bake a cake?”
“Good Lord, no, honey! Not if you want it to be edible.” Quickly grabbing the pot holders she kept on a hook next to the stove, Sara jerked open the oven door and rescued what was left of the cake. Not surprisingly, it was a pitiful sight. Shrunk to half the size of the sheet pan, it was nothing but a hard, charred glob.
When Janey groaned at the sight of it, it was all Sara could do not to laugh. Pressing her lips tightly together, it was several long moments before she could manage to turn to her with a straight face. Even then her voice had a tendency to wobble with laughter. “Is that my chocolate cake recipe?”
Janey nodded glumly. “Somehow it didn’t turn out like yours does. What’d I do wrong besides cook it to death?”
From the looks of it, everything, but Sara couldn’t bring herself to say that. Not when Janey had gone to so much trouble. Pulling out a chair at the kitchen table that had been in the family longer than anyone could remember, she patted the spot next to her. “We’ll get to that. First, sit down and tell me what brought this all about. The last time you wanted to cook, you still had braces on your teeth.”
Wincing, Janey remembered that occasion all too well. Her brothers still teased her about it. “Please,” she begged, “let’s don’t even go there. I was just trying to be nice to Reilly, like Dan asked me to, and I blew it.”
“Reilly?” her mother repeated, surprised. “All this was for Reilly Jones?”
Janey nodded and told her about her first meeting with Reilly several days ago, then her encounter with him earlier in the day at the nursing home. “He’s a very unhappy man. Dan thinks he needs a friend, so I thought I would make him a cake and take it over to the cabin. You know, sort of a welcome-to-the-neighborhood type thing.” Wrinkling her nose at the miserable excuse for a cake, she had to laugh. “So much for good intentions. I guess I should have just stopped at Ed’s on the way home from work and bought a pie. At least that would have been edible.”
So why hadn’t she? Sara wondered. What was it about Reilly Jones that had inspired her to make a cake for him? Janey had never done such a thing before for any man, let alone one she’d only just met. What in the world was going on?
Questions buzzing around in her head, Sara told herself not to be nosy. Janey was a grown woman and certainly didn’t have to answer to her mother. And Sara didn’t want to say anything that might make her feel self-conscious. Not when she appeared to be showing an interest in a man for the first time in her life. “Don’t give up hope,” she said, dumping the burned cake in the trash. “He’ll be able to eat yours, too. We’ll just make another one.”
Sara could have whipped up her famous hot fudge cake in record time, but this was Janey’s cake, not hers. So after helping her assemble fresh ingredients, she patiently gave her step by step instructions, then watched her every move to make sure she didn’t make any mistakes.
Pleased with herself when she finally pulled the finished product from the oven, Janey had to admit that the cake didn’t look anything like the one her mother usually made, but she couldn’t complain. It might not look pretty, but compared to her first effort, it was a virtual masterpiece.
“Thanks, Mom,” she said, hugging her. “I don’t know what I would have done without you. Do you think it’s too late to take it over to the cabin tonight?”
“No, it’s early yet, and I’m sure Reilly will appreciate the gesture,” she assured her. “While you’re there, why don’t you invite him to join the decorating committee for the Christmas festival? The festival’s just two weeks away, and the first committee meeting is Monday.”
It was a great idea, one Janey knew she should have thought of herself. Every year the town celebrated Christmas by turning the town square into a winter wonderland the second weekend in December. There were food and crafts booths, not to mention a complete village for Santa and his elves, and they were all constructed by the decorating committee, which was comprised of volunteers from all over the county. Because the committee meetings were as much fun as the festival itself, there was never any shortage of volunteers, but no one was ever turned away. The more, the merrier.
“It’ll give him a chance to meet people,” she said, pleased. “Thanks, Mom! I’ll do that.”
Made of logs that had been cut from the property itself, Nick’s cabin sat in the middle of a thick stand of pines and looked as though it had been there forever. With a deep front porch and paned windows that were designed to let in the light and bring the forest inside, it had a charm to it that Janey had always loved. Tonight, only a single lamp burned in the living room, but that was enough to cast an inviting glow across the porch.
Parking in the circular drive, she wasn’t surprised when the porch light came on as she started up the stairs to the porch. The cabin sat at the end of a long private drive, and in the dark of the night, Reilly would have seen her headlights the second she turned down the drive.
Janey didn’t consider herself a shy person. She liked people and enjoyed talking to them, but something happened to her on the way up the steps to his front door. Suddenly her heart was pounding, her knees weren’t quite steady, and the little welcoming speech she had all prepared flew right out of her head the second he opened the door to her. And for the life of her, she didn’t know why. Flustered, she forced a weak smile and couldn’t think of a thing to say except, “Hi.”
His face expressionless, he arched a brow at the sight of the cake pan in her hand. “What’s that?”
“What? Oh!” Suddenly remembering why she was there, she blushed to the roots of her hair and abruptly thrust the pan into his hands like it was a hot rock. “It’s a cake,” she said unnecessarily. “To welcome you
to the neighborhood.”
“I see.”
Janey wasn’t too sure of that. From his expression, he’d never seen a cake before, and Janey couldn’t say she blamed him. It was awful looking. Suddenly appreciating the humor of the situation, she grinned. “I know it looks terrible—I’m not much of a cook—but trust me, this is a real prize compared to the first one I made. That one ended up in the trash can.”
“You made two?”
“I didn’t want to poison you,” she said simply. “The whole point of this was to make you feel welcome.”
He should have laughed. She expected him to. When he didn’t, she reminded herself that he was going through a difficult time and probably didn’t mean to be rude. If she was going to be a friend to him, she had to remember that.
Shrugging off her hurt feelings, she forced a smile that didn’t come as easily as she would have liked. “Well, it’s getting late. I just stopped by to give you the cake. Oh, and to invite you to a meeting of the decorating committee for the Christmas festival,” she added. Quickly telling him about the festival and how much fun the committee meetings were, she said, “Our first meeting’s next Monday, and I thought you might like to come. It’ll give you a chance to meet people and have some fun at the same time. If you’re not busy, of course.”
There was nothing the least bit offensive about her little speech, but Reilly knew better than to be taken in by the apparent innocence of it. Did she really think he was so gullible? Ever since Victoria’s death, he had been hit on by just about every woman who crossed his path, and he was heartily sick of it. There were three casseroles in his refrigerator from three other women who’d had the same idea as Janey. And despite their claims to the contrary, he knew they weren’t just being neighborly. He’d played the game too many times with the women in L.A. after Victoria had died. By bringing him a covered dish, they were each ensuring that they could return in a few days with the excuse that they were there to pick up their cookware.