by Linda Turner
“You really screwed up, Jones,” he said aloud, shattering the quiet of his lonely existence. “So what are you going to do about it?”
That was a good question, one he didn’t have an answer for. How could you apologize and make peace with someone if they wouldn’t even listen to you? He could write her a letter, but he doubted she’d even read it. Which left him back at square one. They had to work together, dammit! he thought in growing frustration. Didn’t she realize how much easier that would be—and better for their patients—if they could speak without growling at each other?
Stymied, he was still searching for a way to reach her without antagonizing her more than he already had when the phone rang. Groaning, he seriously considered not answering it. The only calls he’d gotten at that time of night since he’d moved to Liberty Hill were emergencies, and he wasn’t on call tonight. Someone else could take it.
But even as he considered that, he knew he couldn’t just ignore a call for help. Not in a town the size of Liberty Hill, where doctors were in short supply. If he was dead on his feet, that was just something he’d have to ignore.
Resigned, he snatched up the phone. “Hello?”
“Reilly? You okay?”
At the sound of his brother Tony’s voice, a slow smile transformed his face. “Hey, big brother, how’s it going? I haven’t heard from you in a few days.”
“I thought I’d give you time to settle in. The locals treating you okay?”
He shrugged, thinking of Janey. “That depends on what you call okay. Not that I can complain. I’m getting exactly what I deserve.”
“Uh-oh,” Tony said, a sudden frown in his voice. “What does that mean? What’s wrong?”
There’d been a time in his life when he would have shrugged off his brother’s concern and distracted him by asking how things were going in L.A. He’d never liked to talk about his problems. Instead he preferred to handle them in his own way and act as if he had everything under control. But he wasn’t that man anymore and never would be again. If he’d had things under control, he would have never had to leave L.A.
“Oh, I just acted like a jerk when one of the nurses at the nursing home baked me a cake to welcome me to town,” he said with a grimace. “I accused her of coming on to me.”
“And was she?”
If he hadn’t felt so rotten about his own behavior, he would have laughed. “Are you kidding? She’s just about the only woman in town who hasn’t come on to me! She’s not that kind.”
There was something in his tone that had Tony lifting a brow in surprise. The last time he’d seen his little brother, he would have sworn it would be years—if ever—before he showed an interest in another woman. But here he was, worrying about what one thought of him. It looked like there was a God, after all!
Encouraged, he said, “So what kind is she?”
In the few rare moments when he’d had time for reflection over the course of the day, Reilly had asked himself the same question and come up with few answers. “She’s different,” he said simply. “I can’t think of any other way to describe her. At times she seems quiet and reserved, but then she’ll turn around and chew out the son of a patient for not visiting his mother enough. She does volunteer EMT work with the local fire department and carries a shotgun in her car. The first time I met her was the day I arrived and the car broke down on the way into town. She stopped to help me. Then this morning she cut me dead at the nursing home because I offended her.”
He’d expected Tony to sympathize with him. He laughed instead. “I like this girl. What’s her name?”
“Janey McBride. Her family owns one of the largest ranches in the state.”
“It sounds like she has her feet on the ground. If you’ve got any sense, you’ll apologize for acting like a heel.”
“I’ve tried, but she won’t talk to me, dammit! And don’t go getting any ideas about her,” he warned, suddenly realizing that his brother was reading more into the situation than was there. “I’m not interested in her as a woman. But I did hurt her feelings and we have to work together. It’s awkward. This is a small town, and we can’t turn around without running into each other.”
“So send her some flowers!”
“And give her the wrong idea? I don’t think so.”
Personally Tony didn’t think that would be so bad—whoever this mystery woman was, she sounded as if she was just what Reilly needed to jump-start his heart again, but that was obviously something he wasn’t ready to hear. “Okay, so flowers are out. Then maybe you need to spend some time with her so she’ll see you’re not such a bad guy, after all.”
“Well, she did ask me to join some committee for a Christmas festival the city has every year,” he replied, only just then remembering it. “There’s a meeting Monday night, but I told her I was busy.”
“Why?”
“You know why. Let it go.”
If he’d loved his brother less, Tony might have done that. Reilly didn’t take kindly to interference in his personal life, and a wise man would have done just as he suggested and changed the subject. But Tony had been taking care of his baby brother all of his life, and he wasn’t going to stop now. Not when he obviously needed someone to talk some sense into him.
“Victoria wouldn’t want you to martyr yourself for her,” he said quietly. “You have to start living again, and that means having a life other than work. Go to this meeting. It’ll be good for you. You can meet people, get involved in a civic project and make some friends. It’ll also give you a chance to show Janey McBride you’re not such a bad guy. She might even let you apologize.”
Reilly knew he was right—Victoria would want him to go on with his life. But he wasn’t sure if he was ready to step into a social setting without her at his side. After all, it had only been eight months. He needed more time.
“I’ll think about it,” he promised.
And he did. Over the weekend he gave serious consideration to taking Tony’s suggestion and going to the meeting of the decorating committee. If Victoria had been there, she would have told him it was the right thing to do. It would take his mind off her and give him an opportunity to meet the local residents he hadn’t yet met. It would be good for him.
He knew that, accepted the wisdom of that and actually thought he’d made up his mind to go. But then Monday rolled around, and his mood changed. It was a cold, wet day, dark and dreary, the kind that reminded him too much of the day of Victoria’s funeral. He couldn’t stop thinking of her, and as the time for the meeting grew closer, he knew he couldn’t go. The committee would be working on Christmas decorations for the festival, and everything inside him froze at the thought of the coming holidays. This would be his first Christmas without Victoria, and the last thing he wanted to do was celebrate it.
And there was no question that the meeting would be festive. He’d been to this kind of thing before—he knew how they operated. There would be food and music and lots of kidding and laughter, and there’d been a time when he would have loved that. But not tonight. He would stay home and watch Monday Night Football on TV, he decided as he saw his last patient for the day. Better that than to go to the meeting and dampen everyone’s spirits.
The decision made, he spent the next twenty minutes catching up on paperwork in his office, then cleared off his desk and grabbed his jacket. Just as he stepped out into the hallway, Dan did the same.
“Hey,” the older man said with a broad grin, “you go ing to the meeting tonight? You did hear about it, didn’t you? The meeting of the decorating committee for the Christmas festival? Sara said Janey invited you.”
Wishing he’d slipped out five minutes earlier, Reilly was forced to admit that she had. “But I’m not going to be able to go,” he added. “I’d already made other plans.”
He spoke nothing less than the truth—he hadn’t watched a game all season and didn’t want to miss this one—but he still couldn’t bring himself to look Dan in the eye. If he had, he w
ould have seen the quick grin that he hurriedly suppressed.
“I see,” Dan said solemnly, his blue eyes twinkling knowingly. “That’s too bad. I was hoping that you were going so I could catch a ride with you.”
Surprised, Reilly arched a brow at him. “Is something wrong with your car?”
It had only just that moment developed carburetor problems, but that was something Dan kept to himself. He knew what Reilly was doing—he’d done the same thing the first Christmas after Peggy had died. He’d come up with any excuse he could to avoid facing the holidays without her. Consequently he’d spent most of that time holed up in his house, brooding. He’d never been more miserable in his life.
He was determined not to let Reilly make the same mistake. He needed to be around people. He needed friends. And with time, he would let go of the hurt from the past and find himself a good woman. Someone like Janey, Dan decided. But it was too soon for that now. At the moment Dan just wanted to get him back into the mainstream of life. And if he had to pretend to be afoot to accomplish that, then that’s what he’d do.
“It’s been hard to start lately, and this morning it gave up the ghost,” he fibbed without so much as blinking an eye. “I had to have it towed to that new garage that just opened over by the library, but it won’t be ready until sometime tomorrow. I can call Sara, though, if you don’t have time to give me a ride,” he added quickly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind stopping by to pick me up.”
When Reilly hesitated, Dan thought he was going to take him up on his suggestion and wanted to curse himself for bringing up Sara’s name. But then, Reilly only shrugged and said, “Sure, no problem.”
Relieved, Dan swallowed a sigh of relief. “Good,” he said, pleased. “I wasn’t looking forward to walking in the rain, and sometimes Sara runs late. I hate walking in on something after it’s already started.”
“Then we’d better get going,” Reilly replied. “It’s almost seven now.”
The night was cold and rainy and miserable, and anyone with any brains in their head would have been at home in front of a warm fire. The parking lot of the VFW hall was nearly full, however, as Reilly pulled up before the hall’s front door a few minutes later. Surprised—he’d thought the turnout would be poor because of the rain—he said, “It looks like you’ve got a full house. I didn’t think that many people would want to brave the weather.”
Far from surprised himself, Dan smiled. “This isn’t one of your regular civic-type committee meetings. The same people have been working on the decorating committee for years, and they take great pride in what they do. They wouldn’t let a little rain scare them away.”
Reaching for his door handle, Dan added casually, “They’re a good group, you know. I think you’d like them. Why don’t you come in for a few seconds and let me introduce you around? It’ll just take a few minutes.”
Not a slow-witted man, Reilly saw the glint in his eye and suddenly knew exactly what he was doing. Why, that conniving old goat! he thought in growing amusement. So his car was acting up, was it? Yeah, right! And he was Tom Selleck. He’d obviously conned him into giving him a ride so he could finagle him into coming inside, and Reilly hadn’t even seen it coming.
He was good, he acknowledged, fighting a smile. Damn good. And the only reason Reilly wasn’t mad was because he knew Dan’s heart was in the right place. He was a good man, and he understood what he was going through because he’d been there himself. Still, it would have served him right if he’d turned him down flat.
If he’d been a different kind of man, Reilly might have considered it. But he couldn’t do that to Dan, not when he was just trying to help him. “All right. But only for a few minutes,” he warned. “I’m not staying, Dan.”
All innocence, the older man said, wide-eyed, “Oh, no, of course not. I know you have other plans. I’m just going to introduce you to a few friends. It won’t take five minutes. I promise.”
Later Reilly knew he should have known better. Dan was one of the most popular doctors in town and knew just about everyone in the area. The second they walked inside the hall, he found one person after another to introduce him to. Five minutes stretched into ten, then twenty, and to his surprise Reilly didn’t even think about leaving as he shook hands with the movers and shakers of Liberty Hill.
He was still trying to get all the names and faces straight when Dan suddenly smiled widely. “Oh, there’s Sara! C’mon, I want you to meet her.”
Reilly had heard him talk about Sara enough to know that she was Janey’s mother, so as Dan wound his way through the crowd toward Sara McBride, he wasn’t sur prised to find Janey there, too. And from the look on her face as her eyes locked with his, she was none too happy to see him. As Dan introduced him to her mother and her two brothers, Joe and Zeke, Janey greeted him with nothing more than a stiff nod.
So she hadn’t forgiven him, Reilly thought, frustrated. Damn, she was stubborn!
Caught up in his thoughts, he didn’t realize that the others had noticed Janey’s cool reception until her brothers arched a brow in surprise. And just that quickly, he knew he had to apologize again, in front of the whole town, if necessary. Maybe then she would believe him when he said he was sorry.
Shaking hands with her brothers and mother, he said gruffly, “I deserved that. In fact, I wouldn’t blame her if she never spoke to me again. I was rude to her the other night when she brought me a cake to welcome me to town, and there was no excuse for that.
“I’m sorry, Janey,” he told her quietly. “I realized I’d made a mistake almost immediately, but it was too late. I’d already hurt your feelings. If you’ll accept my apology, I promise it won’t happen again.”
All but going down on his knee in abject apology, there was no doubting his sincerity. Hesitating when he held out his hand to her, Janey tried to harden her heart against him—she wouldn’t make it this easy for him, dammit!—but she was fighting a losing battle. She’d never been one to carry a grudge, especially when an apology was offered so contritely, and just that easily her anger melted. Damn the man, she thought when her lips twitched. How was she supposed to stay mad at him when he humbled himself in front of her entire family?
“That sounds fair enough,” she replied, and slipped her hand into his to shake on the deal.
Accepting his apology should have been just that simple, but the second his fingers closed around hers, she felt it again, that same spark that had set her pulse skipping when Dan had introduced them for the first time at the nursing home. She’d thought she imagined it.
Confused, her eyes searched his, but then Zeke distracted her when he grinned and told Reilly, “Janey doesn’t get mad very often, but when she does, watch out. The fur’s going to fly.”
“If I remember correctly, she came close to scalping you a time or two,” Joe said dryly, “and it was no more than you deserved.”
“Hey,” he said, pretending to be wounded. “So I put a frog in her bed once. I was only a kid. It was a joke.”
“Which I didn’t find particularly funny,” Janey retorted, her brown eyes twinkling. “Until I got revenge.”
“She painted his fingernails while he was sleeping,” her mother confided to Reilly with a grin. “He wasn’t amused when he woke up.”
“He screamed bloody murder,” Joe said, chuckling at the memory. “Talk about learning a lesson! He never so much as touched a frog again, let alone came near one of the girls with one.”
“That’s because I threatened to perm his hair if he ever tried anything like that again,” Janey said. “I wouldn’t have, but he didn’t know that.”
“Now you tell me!”
They all laughed at that, and Reilly couldn’t help but like the McBrides. Their affection for each other was obvious, and he liked that. They reminded him of his own family and the innocent jokes he and Tony had played on each other.
“Do you have brothers and sisters, Reilly?” Sara McBride asked.
“A brother,” he sai
d with a smile. “My mother used to say she’d be gray by the time she was forty because we were so wild.”
“And was she?”
His smile faded. “She died of breast cancer when she was thirty-eight. I was nine.”
“Oh, I’m sorry! That must have been very difficult for you and your brother, growing up without a mother.”
“It was,” he said simply, “but we had each other and our father, and that helped.”
With the ice broken and Janey’s acceptance of his apology, he should have found an excuse to leave then, but he’d waited too long. Some of the single women in the crowd spied him and started toward him, cutting off all exits. From the gleam in their eyes, it was obvious that they saw this as their opportunity to get to know him better. He had other ideas.
Turning his attention back to the McBrides, he cast an eye over the painting supplies and building materials that they’d been working with when he and Dan arrived. “What’s this?”
Joe grinned broadly. “What? You don’t recognize Santa’s workshop when you see it?”
“That’s a crack at me,” Zeke told Reilly, his blue eyes twinkling with devilment. “He’s just jealous because I came up with a better design than he did.”
Joe snorted humorously. “Yeah, it’s such a good design that the man had to ask what it was.”
“Now, boys,” Sara said, just as she must have when they were kids. “Let’s be nice.”
“Try to remember you weren’t raised in a barn,” Janey added, her own lips twitching. “In case you’ve forgotten, we’re here to do a little work.”
Dan, who’d silently been watching the exchange between Reilly and the McBrides said, “Reilly just came in for a few moments—”
“Oh, I can stay for a while,” he said after a quick look over his shoulder at the women who were hovering nearby, waiting for a chance to talk to him. “What do you want me to do?”