“Did they actually catch fire?”
“No, but I’ll have to reimburse my landlady for the pan. It’s scorched.” He’d run water over the charred mess to cool it, and tossed it in the trash.
“I’m glad you’re all right.” She gazed at him with wide brown eyes.
Luke’s fingers itched to touch her—just on the shoulder, in a friendly manner. But that didn’t seem a wise way to start their new relationship as medical partners. Instead, sharply aware of his shirtless state, he pulled on a light jacket he’d thrown over the back of a chair last night.
“It wasn’t a big deal.” As he led her into the cheerfully decorated kitchen, Luke glanced at the clock. Eight-thirty on a Saturday morning really was early for a social call. “There’s coffee. I didn’t manage to burn that.”
“Thanks. I could use some.”
“It’s straight coffee—no fancy flavorings. Just the way you like it.” He grinned. “In fact, I seem to recall you once claimed to like coffee out of a vending machine.”
She ducked her head. “Did I really?”
“Maybe you were merely being polite.”
“To a vending machine?”
“To me. I bought you that cup of coffee,” he reminded her.
She blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t recall that.”
“First year. First study session.” They’d had anatomy and biochemistry classes together. “You were the one who suggested a group of us join forces, remember?”
“That’s because I was scared to death, the kid from Ohio brand-new in L.A.,” she admitted. “I figured the rest of you would save my bacon.”
“Instead, you kept us on track. You were quite a slave driver, lucky for me.” He fetched a pair of mugs from the cabinet. “I was kind of distracted until we hit third year and began rotations.” That was when they’d started interacting with patients on a regular basis. Dealing with real cases had inspired Luke.
“Me, too. That first year, I was in full panic mode,” Jane said. “By the time I figured out that I was just as smart as the rest of you, I’d already established myself as the mother hen.”
More like a cute chick than a hen. Determined not to stray into touchy territory, Luke busied himself pouring the coffee. “Was I supposed to be at the office today?”
“No. We usually close on Saturdays.” From a china canister on the counter, she plucked a couple of sweetener packets. He hadn’t noticed until now that his landlady had left the containers filled.
“Okay, I give up,” he said.
“I’m sorry?” She regarded him quizzically.
“Is this a personal visit?” Luke asked. “I mean, I’m glad to see you. More than glad. But…”
She eyed him as if he were speaking an alien language. “But?”
“I can’t help wondering why you’re here.”
It was her turn to look baffled. “Like I said, I thought your house was on fire.”
Outside, a girl zoomed by on roller skates. When Luke peered between the flowered curtains, he was surprised to see the curb unobstructed. “Where’s your car?”
“In my garage.” She frowned as if he were the one talking in riddles.
“How’d you get here?”
She gestured toward her jogging shoes. Good heavens, had the woman run halfway across Brea to rescue him from charred pancakes?
“Exactly how far away were you when you smelled smoke?” he asked.
“I was just…” Her mouth formed an O. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I live next door.” She pointed toward the palm trees. “Oliver didn’t mention it?”
“No.” He hadn’t discussed the neighbors with the Realtor.
How unexpected that she lived so close. And how terrific, if she were willing to move past the old awkwardness between them. Luke got along with people easily, like the colleagues he’d played tennis with in L.A., but he formed few close bonds. He could do with a friend. “Hope you don’t mind my answering the door half-naked.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before.” Jane blushed. “Forget I said that.”
“Already forgotten.”
Her coffee cup clinked as she set it on the counter. “I’d better go.”
“Wait.” Reaching out, he caught her elbow. “I, uh…” Think fast. Anything to keep her from leaving on a sour note. “Hey, if you could identify this object, it would ease my mind. You know how stupid little things can drive you nuts? Kind of like seeing a familiar actor on TV and not being able to place where you know him from.”
From a drawer, he fetched a man-shaped metal frame roughly six inches high. “It’s kind of large to be a cookie cutter.” He really was curious. Also, when he brought Zoey here, he wanted to be able to answer all her questions. No reason for Daddy to look any more clueless than he had to.
“It’s for cutting gingerbread men,” Jane answered. “Sherry loves baking the stuff. In fact, she had a gingerbread house at her wedding.”
“Instead of cake?”
“There was cake, too.” She picked up the coffee cup and took another sip. Apparently he hadn’t driven her off, after all.
It surprised Luke that she still seemed sensitive about their long-ago encounter. He’d never been certain exactly what he’d done to make her pull back so abruptly. Something stupid he’d said, probably. He’d been an idiot in those days. He fiddled with the gingerbread cutter. “Since we’re neighbors, I wonder if I might ask a favor.”
“Shoot.” Reaching over, Jane plucked the device from his fingers. “You’ll bend that if you’re not careful.”
Had she felt that warmth when their hands touched? She showed no sign of it.
“Exactly my point. I’m hopeless in a kitchen,” Luke said. “Would you be willing to swap cooking lessons for whatever chores I can help you with?”
He wanted to make this a second home for Zoey. And perhaps in the not-too-distant future, a full-time home.
Right now, their relationship was stuck in visiting-dad mode, with Luke bending over backward trying to entertain her when they were together. It wasn’t working out too well.
A few weeks ago, he’d taken her to the beach. When the weather turned chilly, they’d shivered through a picnic of take-out fried chicken and an abbreviated session of digging in the sand. Last Saturday at the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park, they’d gone on rides until Zoey fell asleep against his shoulder.
He and his daughter needed time to simply become a family. Renting this cottage gave Luke the chance to become the kind of single dad he’d always intended to be. Part of that was learning how to cook.
“Cooking isn’t rocket science.” Jane bestowed on him one of those exasperated smiles he remembered from their studying days, when he used to confuse the similar-sounding names of medications. Later, when he had patients depending on him, Luke had come up with memory tricks to help him keep them straight, and double-checked every prescription. “It shouldn’t be hard for a guy who performs surgery.”
“People don’t teach themselves to be surgeons,” Luke pointed out. “They practice under an expert’s guidance.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“Is that ‘hmm’ as in ‘yes’?” he asked hopefully.
“That’s ‘hmm’ as in I do need a bit of muscle in the garden.” Jane eyed his biceps. “How are you with a shovel?”
His chest tightened at the directness of her gaze. “We’ll find out. I could use the exercise.” At Sean’s suggestion, he’d joined the health club at the Brea Community Center, but he’d be happy to skip a session to get down and dirty with Jane’s plants.
“It’s a deal.” She set her cup in the sink. “We can have our first cooking lesson next Saturday morning, if that’s all right. The monthly Harmony Circle potluck’s at noon. I could help you fix something to bring.”
“Sounds great.” Luke didn’t have plans with Zoey that day, since his ex-wife would be in Fullerton and wanted their daughter to herself. “How
about cookies?”
“Good enough,” she agreed. “Your assignment is to find a recipe on the Internet and buy the ingredients. If you’re serious about learning to cook, refrigerated dough is a no-no.”
That suited him. He’d love to show Zoey how to bake cookies from scratch. “I’m on board.”
She glanced toward the pan jutting from his trash can. “You might be able to save that. Pour on a thick layer of baking soda and sprinkle it with a little water. Let it soak and then scrub.”
“I’ll try that.”
Her cell phone rang, and she whipped it out. “Dr. McKay…Sure thing. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She pocketed the phone.
“Patient in labor?”
She nodded. “See you Monday.”
“I’ll try not to burn anything in the meantime.”
“Good idea.”
As she strode out, Luke wished he’d had time to tell her about his daughter. He could certainly use her advice about Zoey.
How interesting that Jane had worked as a nanny. He’d like to know more of her history, and more about the kind of person she’d become. When he learned that she and Sean were buying a practice together, Luke had thought about getting back in touch, but by then he’d been married.
At least she’d agreed to a cooking lesson, and a resumption, at some level, of their friendship. Right next door. Wasn’t that a stroke of good luck? he mused, and went to look for baking soda.
WHY WAS LUKE SO KEEN on cooking? Jane wondered as she hurried home. And why the curiosity about the gingerbread cutter? He’d changed—and she sensed there was a story there, if only he’d tell her.
Out of curiosity, she’d dropped a few questions to Sean regarding Luke’s activities these past few years. He’d mentioned a divorce, but proved unusually reticent about revealing more. “You should ask Luke,” he’d said.
A divorce. Much as she regretted hearing that the man’s marriage had fallen apart, Jane couldn’t claim to be surprised. Of course, she had no idea what had happened between him and his wife. Still, Luke had never struck her as the type most likely to celebrate a fiftieth anniversary.
The man had a brilliant mind and a gift for surgery, but he’d let flirtations distract him from studying as hard as he should have. Girlfriends flocked to him like iron filings to a magnet. Luke genuinely liked women, and he’d never been deliberately cruel, but several times, Jane had comforted fellow med students and nurses who were bewildered when Luke ended their affairs as casually as if he were returning a library book.
“He doesn’t have a clue how much he hurt me,” one young woman had wailed. “It’s like he thinks I’m some friend he plays basketball with, and now he’s tired of basketball.”
Despite everything she’d known, Jane, too, had succumbed. Chalk it up to the effects of close contact, to a long-simmering attraction, to a lowered guard late at night. Once she’d allowed herself to kiss him—she still didn’t remember who’d made the first move, or perhaps they’d both moved simultaneously—she’d been powerless to stop. No, not powerless, eager to continue. She flinched at the memory of wrapping herself around Luke as they fell across his bed. Even now, her body quivered at the thought.
She’d recognized her mistake as soon as the heat of their passion faded. She’d lain there in his arms, longing to hear him say he loved her and feeling like an utter fool for entrusting her heart to Luke, of all men. Naturally, he’d said nothing of the kind, merely murmured that he’d like to do this again sometime.
She’d left vowing to pretend the whole thing never happened. But for the rest of their fourth year, she’d avoided being alone with him, and he’d never pressed her to continue the affair. All he’d done was look hurt and confused.
Now, Luke exerted the same captivating charm as always. Jane marched into her house, irritated with herself for noticing and for agreeing to spend time with him away from work. On the other hand, why should she care?
She would never be naive enough to fall under his spell again. That infatuation lay in the past, and she intended to keep it there.
ON SUNDAY, Luke took Zoey to Disneyland in nearby Anaheim. They had so much fun on the rides, they stayed much later than he’d planned.
He hauled his tired, cranky daughter back to her grandmother’s, and received what he had to admit was a well-deserved tongue-lashing for keeping her out so late on a school night. If the dark circles beneath his daughter’s blue eyes hadn’t been reproach enough, her grandmother’s labored breathing made him regret inconveniencing her. At sixty-seven, Hetty was overweight and suffered from diabetes.
Luke had tried to give her advice more than once about eating more healthily and the need for exercise. Hetty always agreed to try, but nothing changed. At his urging, she had consulted a physician and begun taking medication, but pills couldn’t entirely undo the effect of her unhealthy lifestyle.
After apologizing, Luke asked, “Is it okay if I take her out next Sunday?” Although Pauline had e-mailed him to say that she’d be visiting her mother and daughter on Friday and part of Saturday, she planned to rejoin the band that evening.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Hetty grumbled.
Her comment surprised him. “Why not?”
“I need to talk to my daughter first. Then I’ll let you know.” That sounded ominous, but the tightness of her expression put him off asking more.
Luke reminded himself that, since he had joint custody, no one could prevent him from seeing Zoey. Whatever the problem was, they’d work it out. “I’ll call you Sunday around noon.”
“That would be fine.”
He didn’t have time to think much about the coming weekend during that hectic first few days working in Brea. There were new office procedures to master, case histories to review, patients to meet and the staff’s personalities to become familiar with.
On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, Luke performed the surgeries Sean had scheduled, and during his Thursday-night on-call shift, he delivered four babies. Thank goodness he and Jane shared off-hours duty with another obstetrical practice, or they’d have been working nonstop.
All the same, he wished he didn’t have to give up his weekly visits to a low-cost L.A. clinic for pregnant teens. It was too far to drive now and he wanted to spend more time with Zoey. A tennis-playing colleague had talked him into volunteering, and Luke was grateful. Helping impoverished young women, many of them victims of abuse or neglect, had given him a strong sense of purpose and helped ease the loneliness during Zoey’s absences.
He’d promised to keep in touch with one of his patients whom he was mentoring, so it came as no surprise when his phone rang on Saturday morning and the display read “Annie Raft.” The eighteen-year-old with a zany sense of humor and a heart-tugging childlike quality had arrived at the clinic six months pregnant, the baby’s father long gone. A month later, when she became homeless after a fight with her mother, Luke had arranged for a social worker to find her somewhere to live, and had scheduled extra time to listen to and encourage her.
After delivering her little girl, he’d gone with a clinic volunteer to visit her several times. Annie had loved the way he played with baby Tina, tickling her and inventing games as he’d done for Zoey.
“You’re like the dad I never knew,” she’d said wistfully. “I mean, like the dad I wished I’d had.”
When he’d told her he was moving to Orange County, she’d burst into tears. Luke had assured her she could call him to chat, and had given her his cell-phone number.
He supposed some people might think he was too involved, but he’d grown to care about this girl. Fortunately, she’d recently found a new boyfriend, a firefighter with a steady job and an upbeat temperament. When Luke took them and the baby out for dinner before his move, he’d been impressed with the young man’s obvious affection for both Annie and Tina. It seemed that she’d found a safe haven at last.
“Hi, Annie,” Luke said into the phone. “I enjoyed your last e-mail.”
&n
bsp; “The doctor jokes? I thought you’d like them,” she said.
“How’re you doing?”
“Great! Brian and I are going to move in together,” she announced. “I want you to be the first to know. Well, aside from my roommate. I had to tell her, of course.”
“Congratulations.” Luke would have preferred to hear about wedding plans, but perhaps this was a first step.
“We’re apartment hunting,” she said. “Oh, here’s Tina! Listen.” After some offstage coaxing, the baby babbled a few syllables into the receiver.
Her sweet voice ricocheted through Luke. Just like Zoey’s used to do.
“She’s amazing,” he told the proud mother.
“Yeah!” Annie crowed. “Oh, hey, gotta go. Brian’s here early. We’ll have you over for dinner when we move in.”
“I’d love that.”
When he clicked off, Luke noticed the time on the phone read 9:22 a.m. Jane had agreed to stop by at nine for their cooking session. How unusual for her to run late.
He pressed her number in his cell phone, but the call didn’t go through. She must either be on the phone or out of range. Well, she did live next door, a fact that increased his options significantly.
Interrupting her might not be the most diplomatic tactic. But she had promised.
Luke went outside and strolled past the palm trees to the adjacent lot. He’d glimpsed Jane’s two-story house from his car, but, up close, he paused to admire the profusion of flowers in the tiled front planter. What a merry blend of colors, all carefully tended and, as far as he could tell, weed-free. How like Jane to be both spirited and precise.
He was about to ring the bell when the sound of her voice floated from an open upstairs window. “No, I haven’t made an appointment, Brooke. Getting inseminated is a major step.”
Inseminated? He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop on such a personal conversation.
“Please don’t mention it to the foxes.” He wondered what she meant by “foxes.” Maybe he’d misunderstood the word. “What am I supposed to tell them? Hi, my name is Jane and I’m a baby-aholic?”
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