“Have a nice day,” he said as he walked away.
That was her way of saying good-bye to customers. He left her with nothing to say as she watched him walk away — although his slender waist and firm backside made that a visual pleasure completely unconnected with who he was.
“What did he want?” Josie hurried up to her as soon as she had a break from serving coffee and donuts to the guys on break from the lumberyard.
“You know I can’t discuss customers with you,” Amy said, more weary than annoyed.
“Well, I saw him walk out with a prescription bag, but there can’t be much wrong with such a fine specimen of manhood,” Josie said with a grin.
“Please!” Amy looked toward the front of the store, hoping someone would bring her a prescription to interrupt this conversation.
“I wanted to come back and meet him,” Josie went on, oblivious to Amy’s reluctance to talk. “But wouldn’t you know, Ken and Billy kept going on and on about how we always run out of bear claws before they get here. It’s not as if I place the order for donuts.”
“You have another customer at the front,” Amy pointed out.
“Oh, it’s only Mrs. Cornwall. She’ll spend twenty minutes picking out a lipstick then realize she forgot her purse and can’t buy it this trip.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about Dr. Prince,” Amy said. Sometimes a person had to be up front with Josie.
“I don’t know why not. There hasn’t been such a stir in town since the pep club’s float tipped over in the homecoming parade when we were juniors. Remember how it messed up a pickup truck? My, that farmer was mad!”
“With good reason,” Amy said, glad Josie had changed the subject. “Whose idea was it to build a replica of the Eiffel tower on the roof of a Volkswagen?”
“Well, certainly not mine,” Josie protested. “I thought we should do a scene with the cutest football players in uniforms. That would include my hubby, of course.”
“Mrs. Cornwall is waiting to pay for something,” Amy said. “Remember Bert’s motto!”
“Yeah, I know. GTM. Get the money. Can’t pay the bills if we don’t sell anything.”
Josie hurried off to wait on the customer, and Amy couldn’t help but smile. If an accident in the homecoming parade was still on her friend’s mind after more than ten years, it was no wonder an outsider would find life dull in Heart City.
It was no concern of hers, though. Dr. Dan Prince was gorgeous, but he probably couldn’t wait to get back to sunny California and all the bikini-clad beauties on the beaches. As far as she was concerned, that couldn’t happen too soon for her peace of mind. She didn’t even want to think about him as a surfer in a skintight suit with water cascading over his broad, tanned chest and shoulders.
Hopefully she wouldn’t require more first aid from the hunky physician. She’d have to be especially careful to avoid illness, injury, and invitations that put her in range of Dr. Prince Charming.
CHAPTER 4
As Dan hurried through the rear entrance of the small building housing his practice, he didn’t know what was annoying him more: his itchy arms or the encounter with Amy Crane. It was a truism in his profession that doctors made lousy patients, but he hadn’t expected a pharmacist to suggest alternate medications.
He ripped open the small white sack from the drug store in the privacy of his office, dabbing the powerful ointment on his poison oak. Sitting at his desk with his eyes closed, hoping for quick relief, he tried to think of something besides the petite blonde. She wasn’t his type, even if he were looking for a relationship, which he definitely wasn’t.
Had he made a mistake accepting Heart City’s financial help in exchange for two years of his life? Now that he had to fulfill his obligation, it would be easy to dwell on his regrets. Certainly, he was eager to move back to California, and he had hopes of getting a residency there after he served his time as a general practitioner in Iowa.
“Be honest,” he chided himself, knowing he would’ve been swamped with debt without the financial aid. After the years of hard work to become a doctor, he should be able to do two years in Heart City with no sweat. The one thing he absolutely had to do was remain aggressively single with no entanglements with local women.
As he slipped into one of his neon lab coats, he still felt itchy and, face it, threatened. He should be thinking about his first day on duty instead of dwelling on Amy. Sure, she’d annoyed him, but he wasn’t thin-skinned as a rule. The way she looked in her little white jacket was much more disturbing. It covered her assets and made her look professional, but she was still beguiling in a cute sort of way that had never appealed to him before. So why couldn’t he get her out of his head?
“Dr. Prince?” His nurse assistant rapped sharply on the office door. “Are you ready to start seeing patients?”
Georgia Stewart was a semi-retired R.N. who’d agreed to work with him during his two-year stint. She was a plump, chatty older woman with fluffy gray curls and seemed to be über-efficient. After working with the former doctor, she knew office routine better than he did. If Dan could tune out her constant stream of town gossip, he should be able to rely on her professionalism.
“Almost ready,” he called out, wanting a few more minutes for the itching to subside.
His assistant popped her head into the room, looking a little startled when she saw him.
“Dr. Graham always wore a white coat,” she said. “He thought it made him look more trustworthy.”
Dan buttoned his neon green doctor’s coat and decided to let her comment pass. His main concern was to put young patients at ease, and he thought bright colors did that best. Of course, he had to admit the green was almost as bilious as Amy’s dress at the wedding.
There she was again, intruding on his thoughts when he needed to concentrate on meeting new patients. And his poison oak was still tormenting him. Apparently, he’d missed a few spots, much to his distress.
“I’ve put Mrs. Johnson in room one,” Georgia said. “Her chart is on the door. Poor thing can’t seem to get her asthma under control. Of course, it’s been a bad spring for allergies, but now that it’s June, she should be feeling better. I suspect she’s going to need steroids. Of course, she’s afraid they’ll make her gain weight.”
“Check her blood pressure. I’ll see her in a few minutes,” Dan said, wondering why they needed him when nurses and pharmacists were so quick to prescribe.
“Done. She’s one forty-two over eighty, but no doubt it will go down after you see her. She always gets nervous before she sees the doctor. And her weight is spot-on at 132. All that worry about gaining is mostly in her head.”
Georgia’s curls bounced around the edges of her nurse’s cap. Dan couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such an old-fashioned uniform. She was starchy and white right down to her hose and sensible shoes.
In spite of the publicity about his arrival, Dan only had four patients, including a divorcee who wanted to talk to him about breast implants.
“It’s not my field of expertise,” he explained to the flashy redhead. “But I don’t think the benefits justify the risk in your case.”
By the time he’d said the same thing in six or seven different ways, he understood the value of a good nurse. Georgia burst into the examining room and cut short the consultation.
“That’s it for today,” the nurse said when the waiting room was empty. “Folks in Heart City are pretty healthy. Of course, people are used to going to the emergency room at the hospital or Bert Warner at the pharmacy.”
“The pharmacist sees patients?” He was beginning to see how the town had gotten along without a doctor since the last one had retired.
“Oh, no, nothing like that. Folks just like to check with him or Amy before they waste time driving nearly twenty miles to see a doctor.”
/> A bell on the door heralded the arrival of what could be a walk-in patient, so Georgia hustled out to the waiting room. After a few minutes, she came back to Dan’s office, where he’d just finished smearing more ointment on the itching still tormenting him.
“Dr. Graham, this is Dr. Prince, straight from the University of Iowa Medical School,” the portly nurse said in the tone of one introducing a favorite grandchild.
“Nice to meet you.”
Dan found his hand in a vise-like grip, surprising in a man who barely came up to his chin and weighed less than the average twelve-year-old.
“My pleasure,” Dan said, taking in the man’s chartreuse and orange Hawaiian shirt, baggy golf knickers, and knit cap with a stiff bill.
“I’ll leave you two doctors to get acquainted,” Georgia said with a serene smile.
“So how’s it going?” Dr. Graham asked.
“This is my first day.”
Dan didn’t know whether the retired physician wanted a progress report or was only being courteous. Probably the latter, since he immediately launched into a long monologue about the best golf courses in the county.
“How long did you practice here?” Dan asked, genuinely curious.
“I came here planning to stay a year, got married, and stayed thirty-nine,” the elderly man said without further comment.
“That’s a long time,” Dan said, not knowing what else to say.
“My wife and I have a condo in Florida,” Dr. Graham said, “but she misses her friends here. So every spring we snowbirds make the trek back.”
After nearly half an hour of aimless chatter, the retired physician got down to his excuse for being there.
“I left some old medical journals in the closet with the custodian’s supplies. I got to thinking maybe I should take them home and see if there’s anything worth keeping. I’ll recycle what I don’t want. Get them out of your way.”
Before the old man finally left, Dan went from impatience to sympathy. The guy was bored out of his skin with retirement, and all he had to do today was drive his wife to her hair appointment. The old guy apparently had never intended to have a career in rural Iowa. Why hadn’t he married the woman and taken her away with him? Dan shuddered, able to see himself in the retired physician’s place, knocking a little ball around acres of grass when all he wanted to do was recapture his glory days of surfing in the Pacific.
Against his better judgment, he decided to grab a sandwich at the drug store lunch counter because it was convenient. Just because he was bored and, yes, a little lonely after leaving his many friends in Iowa City, it didn’t mean he should take an interest in Amy. She probably wouldn’t stand out at all on the university campus. He was only thinking about her because the prospects for any kind of diversion in the small town were nil.
The swivel stools at the soda fountain were filled, but Dan decided to wait. It was nearly one o’clock, and people would probably be leaving soon to get back to work. To kill time, he wandered the aisles, trying not to stare at the pharmacy department in the rear.
“Dr. Prince, how did your first day go?” Amy surprised him by appearing at the end of an aisle where she seemed to be recommending a pain relief cream to a mother with two kids in tow.
“Fine,” he said, interested to see what she was up to.
She turned away from him to crouch and talk to a small boy around five or six who was sniffling and rubbing his eyes with grubby hands.
“This will make it feel better,” she said, looking at his skinned knee. “But Mom has to wash it really well first so the dirty germs won’t give you an infection.”
Okay, Dan thought, she was clever about giving directions to the mother through her son. He certainly couldn’t fault her for that.
While Amy finished with her customer, Dan wandered around the store, never losing sight of the pharmacist for more than a few moments. He thought of leaving to seek out a more appealing lunch, but she had him mesmerized. This morning he’d been annoyed by her advice, but she obviously had a compassionate nature. He’d overreacted, since she certainly wouldn’t be prescribing for conditions requiring medical attention.
Clenching his fists to resist scratching a patch that still plagued him, he wandered back to the aisle with ointments, bandages, and such. He was tempted to try some over-the-counter meds, but his pride wouldn’t let him. His prescription would work. He just had to be sure he hadn’t overlooked any more spots, which was not easy when he was itching in places he couldn’t see. He remembered taking his shirt off while he was working outside, apparently a bad decision.
At least he might as well have a sandwich. He found an empty stool and slid onto it, surprised to find himself sitting next to Amy.
“I have to warn you, the sandwiches are made and wrapped at the local deli,” she said. “Some are pretty good, but if you get here at the end of the lunch rush, there’s not much choice left.”
A pert young woman who bounced up like a former cheerleader, which was probably what she was, came to take both their orders.
“Okay, guys, what will it be?”
“Josie, this is Dr. Prince,” Amy said. “What sandwiches do you have left?”
“Ham and cheese on rye — I got a few complaints those were dry — and tuna salad. I think they have too much mayonnaise, but that’s me,” the counter worker said.
“I’ll take a tuna,” Amy said, “with my usual.”
“Tuna and iced tea,” Josie called out, although she was the only one working behind the counter. “What can I get for you, Dr. Prince?”
“I’ll take a chance on ham and cheese with a frosted root beer,” he said.
“Not a fan of tuna?” Amy teased.
“Fresh grilled is great. It’s mayonnaise I don’t much like.” He couldn’t imagine a more trivial conversation, but discussing it with her invested it with new meaning.
“I usually bring a sack lunch,” Amy said, “but since I have my own apartment, it sometimes seems like too much nuisance to fix it. Guess my mom spoiled me with all those years of gourmet school lunches.”
“My mother used to deliver my lunch to the elementary school,” he said sheepishly. “Of course, when she got a full-time job, that had to stop. It was a little embarrassing anyway, but I loved the special treatment.”
He couldn’t remember ever telling that to anyone. What was it about this woman that coaxed memories like that from him?
The counter worker was right. His sandwich was so dry he was tempted to leave it, but instead he washed some of it down with root beer, an unusual beverage for him. The food was less important than the conversation. Amy had a way of making trivial subjects seem entertaining.
“I got an e-mail from my cousin — you know, the bride. Did you know Herbert Hoover was a great humanitarian? He was Iowa’s only president. According to Mandy, he got a bum rap, getting saddled with The Great Depression. It wasn’t the honeymoon report I’d expected.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” he said, grinning at the couple’s’ choice of destination. Of course, if they’d never been any place, a presidential birthplace wasn’t a terrible choice.
“I have to get back to work. Bert, my boss, won’t be here until mid-afternoon. He had to go to his chiropractor in Des Moines. That’s another profession we don’t have here.”
“Nice having lunch with you,” Dan said, deciding to abandon the last section of sandwich. “And you were good with the little boy. I liked the way you instructed his mother indirectly.”
“Hopefully it sunk in. She’s not noted for smart decisions. She’s on her fourth husband, and he’s no improvement over the first three. But I don’t want to bore you with small-town gossip.”
She slid off the stool and started toward the back of the store.
He started to go after her, but stopp
ed himself. What else could he say to her? They’d had lunch, and that was it. He was as determined as ever not to become involved with anyone in Heart City. Unlike the little retired doctor, he wasn’t vulnerable to an infatuation that would determine the course of his life. If that meant avoiding Amy, it was a small price to pay for getting back to California where he belonged.
It was too bad she was lively, intelligent, and sexy, not to mention genuinely pretty. Two years was a long time to resist temptation.
CHAPTER 5
“The poor man has been here nearly two weeks. It’s about time someone offered him some hospitality.” Alice Crane tried to stare down her daughter, but Amy wasn’t having it.
“No, no, no,” Amy said. “Absolutely not. I know what you two are up to, and I’m not going along with it.”
“How are you going to marry Prince Charming if you hide from him?” Hannah stared at her with saucer eyes, using all her seven-year-old charms trying to sway her aunt.
“You two are impossible,” Amy said, shaking her head at her mother and niece. “For one thing, I don’t cook — not when I can avoid it, anyway. Secondly, when a single woman invites an unmarried man to her apartment, it’s a date, not hospitality. The last time I checked, the man was supposed to do the asking.”
“Oh, dear,” her mother said with a chuckle. “My grandmother was more progressive than you are. Haven’t you heard it’s okay to invite a gentleman to dinner?”
“I am not asking Dr. Prince to dinner at my place, no matter how much you two gang up on me,” Amy said, throwing up her arms in mock despair.
“Don’t you like him?” Hannah sounded genuinely distressed.
“Yes, he seems nice,” Amy said to pacify her niece, although she actually did find the new doctor pleasant when he wasn’t annoying her by questioning how she did her job.
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