Perfecting For Love - A Standalone Novel (A Doctors Romance Love Story) (Burbank Brothers, Book #3)

by Naomi Niles

  Colton worked hard running the business of his family's ranch, but he made a point of spending plenty of time with me and Hannah. Margie was a doting grandmother and a huge help to me. My friends from the city joked that it was a mistake to live in the same house as your mother-in-law, but Margie was true blessing to me and a good friend.

  I used to think of her as the mother I always wanted, but things had gotten better between Jillian and me.

  Perhaps it was finally having money (I gave her a percentage of all my sales, since putting the paintings up on the internet gallery site had been her idea in the first place). Or perhaps it was that I lived far enough away that we weren't in each other's way anymore, but close enough that she could hop on a plane and visit any time she wanted to – just so long as she didn't stay more than a few days.

  Colton's brothers had become the siblings I’d always wished for as a child, and I was never lonely; even when I wanted some privacy, it was hard to be alone. I could see why Colton joked that family wasn't always what it was cracked up to be, but in the case of the Hutchinson brothers, I welcomed the intrusion, and even reveled in it. Hannah thrived under the attention of four adoring uncles, too.

  She was tired of playing on Whiskey's back, and Colton took her down and set her gently on the ground. She toddled off on chubby legs, chasing after a bug she spied crawling in the grass. While our daughter played, Colton walked over to me to peek at my painting.

  "She's as beautiful as her mother," he beamed. I flushed under the praise.

  "Only she's a lot better off growing up out here in the country, away from the smog and the traffic of the city."

  "So, you don't regret giving up your internship and a chance to work in prestigious museum or have your art displayed in a fancy gallery, just to live out here with me in the manure and the mud?" he asked.

  "Never," I assured him with a kiss. We were still as passionate with our embraces as we had been when he first told me loved me almost three years ago. "I love living here on the ranch, having picnics by the lake, and picking fresh green beans from the garden. It's the perfect place to raise our daughters."

  Colton's eyes grew wide, and I realized he had caught my slip of the tongue.

  Putting his hand on my enormous belly, he grinned widely and said, "Daughters? So we're having another girl?"

  "Yes," I nodded, my eyes sparkling.

  Whooping with excitement, Colton pulled me into his arms and kissed me happily.

  I had come to this ranch looking to be a professional artist and to find my family, and that's exactly what I had done – only not at all like I had expected.

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  TORCH ME

  By Naomi Niles

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Naomi Niles

  Chapter 1

  “Page six, no byline, and you write two blogs a day for the website. That’s the offer: take it or leave it.” John’s tone was his normal gruff and he was frowning, or so I thought. He was a newspaperman from the sixties whose jowls, nose, and chin had formed a sort of cup holder effect around the stogie eternally clenched between his teeth. When the law prohibiting smoking indoors went into effect, the glowing red tip had disappeared, but the cigar was a permanent fixture. I’m fairly sure it was cemented in. “Well?” he barked, waking me from my reverie about his smoking habits.

  “That the best you can do?” I wasn’t very good at negotiating. Hunger did that to you.

  “Are you wastin’ my time, Ms. O’Reilly?” His tone was growing impatient.

  I sighed. “Call me Gwyne. Okay, okay… yes, I’ll take it.” I could see the tug-of-war rope between us was fraying.

  “And…?” he led me on, motioning his hand to continue.

  “Thank you?”

  “Good girl. Now get outta here and let me get some work done. You can see Martha, the old bag by the door. She’ll fill you in and get you set up.”

  I nodded walked out of his office. “Shut the damned door!” he bellowed behind me and I scrambled to do as told.

  The office was a museum of days gone by. Warner ran one of those businesses that was being dragged kicking and screaming into modern times. He had refused to get rid of ancient equipment—not because he was lazy, but because he figured someday people might come to their senses and things would go back to the way they used to be. He, and now I, yearned for the days when running a newspaper had been an honorable profession and not a servant to political blackmail or a shill for the local Wal-Mart.

  John didn’t know it, but I would have taken the job without pay. His was the era I wanted: when journalistic integrity wasn’t just a catch-phrase and you didn’t hide sloppy reporting behind your First Amendment rights. As I looked around, there was a 1930s hot lead Linotype resting in the corner. ‘Resting’ was exactly the right term because although it was made from cast iron, much of it had given up and needed to lean against another part for support. The brass keys, the molds into which the molten lead had been injected to form letters, were scattered about the keyboard and on the copy tray. Forms of lead type lay against the pedestal legs: a front page frozen in time.

  I found Martha, just as John had promised, crouched at her desk near the door. She wasn’t hard to pick out – she was the only person sitting in the room. My guess was that she was the only one besides John who ever came into the office, digital publishing being a remote sort of job. John probably only kept her as ringleader to keep the reporting circus in formation… and to give himself someone to shout at when things didn’t go right. She had to be close to eighty years-old; certainly her eyeglasses were. They sat on the end of her nose with the expected chain around her neck. I never understood the chain part because the glasses never left the nose; it was, perhaps, jewelry or a statement of having lived beyond retirement age.

  “So, you’re gonna give it a try?” she asked me, peering over those ancient glasses.

  “I thought I might. You are Martha, right?” I knew she was, but wanted to pay her the respect of acknowledging her name. She nodded.

  “That’s me. Been here since the old days when John bought the paper. Course it’s nothing like it used to be; course nothing is. Including me.” She smiled and I saw a mouth full of teeth that were yellowed dentures. I noted the Styrofoam coffee cup next to her keyboard. It was a pretty good bet.

  “John says you’ll be the one to get me started,” I mentioned to her. “Nice picture,” I said, nodding to the small, filigreed frame on the corner of her desk.

  She nodded. “That was my daughter when she was a little girl. Just nine years-old.” Her words were a little choked and I wondered why.

  “Grandkids?”

  “No, Sissy never made it to her 10th birthday. Her father was killed in Vietnam. I’m all that’s left. But don’t go getting all misty eyed on me; I’m used to it. Oh, I won’t say there hasn’t been the muscled body next to me a time or two through the years, but I don’t think I was meant to be married again. That’s for sops who don’t have any identity of their own. You’re not married, are you?”

  “Me? No, not married.”

  “Good. You’ll be better off if you keep it that way. Who the hell wants to clean up after some slob who can’t pee straight and blows his paycheck at the bar? Nah, not for me.”

  I could tell that Martha had definite opinions about marriage, and men in general. I wondered why she had put up with John all these years, but then again, maybe it wasn’t such a sacrifice. The pair of them could’ve stepped out of a Raymond Chandler mystery; they had that Perry Mason feel. “Sorry about your little girl, and about
your husband, Martha.” I let a few moments lapse out of respect and spoke again. “So, what do we need to do to get me set up? I’ve already got some ideas and I’m sort of anxious to get started.”

  “You’ll get over that, soon enough,” she observed as she opened the drawer of the massive wooden desk and extracted a couple of file folders. “Your name is…?”

  “Gwyne O’Reilly.”

  “Okay, Gwyne O’Reilly, here you go,” she said, handing me a small stack of papers. “You need to fill these out to get paid, these to satisfy the government, and this one tells you when to get your damned story in here so we can get it up in time. In all my years, I never thought newspapering would be about hittin’ a key on the keyboard and the whole damned world would see it. But, who am I to complain about changing? When I was your age, I was filled with spit and vinegar myself. I thought I was gonna change the world. Turns out, the world changed me,” she observed sardonically.

  “I know what you mean. Is this it? This is all I have to do?”

  “No, you’re going to have to write some stories, I suppose,” she mocked me. I grinned in return. “You can do that, right?”

  “Martha, you remind me of my dad.”

  “Well, that’s not somethin’ I hear every day. Why is that?” She had decided to look at me through the bottom part of her bifocals, which evidently were hinged to her jaw. Each time she looked up at me, her jaw automatically opened. It was as if she needed to mouth breathe while waiting upon a response. It occurred to me that she had probably had to do a lot of listening without speaking her part through the years. John was a sort of man who would’ve encouraged that sort of worship.

  “You are far more experienced, of course,” I told her, which was my way of saying she was a hell of a lot older than my dad. “But you’ve got that same, no nonsense approach to life. He’s seen a lot in his years and he doesn’t put up with the silly, unimportant things.”

  “Huh. Sounds like a smart man. What does your daddy do?” Her mouth was open again so I could tell she really wanted to know.

  “Actually, he’s a fire chief. 13th District; and he is actually the reason I’m doing this. While I was never allowed to ride along on the truck, obviously, he did come home with stories of things he’d seen in the people he’d met. He taught me to have respect for every man, woman, and child. Not every person is in charge of their own fate; sometimes life just dishes shit on you. I don’t think there’s enough spotlight on the ordinary guy. I’d like to change that.”

  Martha was shaking her head. “Oh, so you’re another one of them.”

  “Them?”

  She took a breath of resignation. “One of those do-gooders, still wet behind the ears. You’ll learn soon enough. People are what they want to be and you can’t change them. It doesn’t matter how many words you write about them, when the spotlight goes away, they go right back to who they were. Sort of like that hamster on a treadmill thing.”

  I considered what she’d said and admitted that she was even more like my dad than I’d originally guessed. I hoped I’d never lose the enthusiasm for life I was feeling at that moment. Perhaps my goal would prove me wrong, but I was out to bring some humanity back to New Yorkers, and if I was lucky, even beyond that.

  I picked up all the papers she had given me and stuck them in the cardboard portfolio I held against my chest. “Martha, it’s been a pleasure. I look for forward to hearing more about life from you. I truly mean that. You are one of those left from the days when this country was great. It is truly an honor,” I said, sticking out my hand. She stared at it for a moment and then seemed to be sort of pleased that I had acknowledged her. She reached out a thin, bony hand and briefly clasped mine.

  “Go get ‘em, kid,” she said, picking up her cup of cold coffee as a dismissal for me to leave. I obliged and went out the door, thereby entering the newest phase of my life.

  Chapter 2

  The traffic was heavier than usual. It had snowed the night before and, as was always the case with the first display of winter, people had to learn to drive all over again. I had planned to go straight home and begin writing, but the backup was getting to me. I decided to roll by Dad’s office instead. I was anxious to let him know about my new job.

  He had scoffed at my choosing journalism for a career. Men in his line of work seldom saw the press as practical on the scene of a fire or accident. They usually got in the way. Although he knew that I had learned to stay out of the action, I think he believed that I would be better suited to nursing, or maybe running a daycare. Dad was a real man’s men – none of that metrosexual, self-indulgence for him.

  I found an intersection that had actual, moving traffic and turned. Although I was only a few blocks from his fire station, the city required a circuitous route. I was anxious to talk to him and probably drove a bit too quickly. I felt the bumper of the car ahead of me before I visually processed it was there.

  Okay, I will admit that just maybe I was fumbling around in my purse for the press card and lanyard Martha had given me. It really wasn’t a very hard bump; after all, it was New York City during rush hour. You were lucky to get up steam to go twenty miles per hour. Of course, you couldn’t tell that by the look on the guy’s face, who unfolded his long legs from his car and headed my way. He didn’t look particularly happy to meet me. I wondered why that was. To be truthful, I really didn’t wonder why at all.

  “Why didn’t you stop?” asked a deep voice that belonged to a tall, lanky body that practically split his shoulder seams with muscles. Odd; I had never been drawn to someone who spent much time working out, but I had to admit, this one looked damned good.

  “Funny, but I’m asking myself that same thing right now. Hey, I’m really sorry. You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

  He held out his arms as if to look himself over and then smirked at me. “What would you say if I said I was hurt?”

  “I guess I would tell the police to send over an ambulance. Hey, I’m not trying to be smart or anything, I just want to make sure you’re okay. This was totally my fault. I admit it.” My eyes were glued on that set of shoulders. I think I would’ve admitted that I had just robbed a bank if it meant getting to look at him just a little longer.

  “Well, I guess maybe there is a heart in there, after all,” he said. “I’ve already called the police.”

  “You did? Damn! I was hoping we could sort of settle this ‘out-of-court’, if you get what I mean. After all, it’s really not much damage to your bumper. I could write you a check here and now and we could walk away.”

  He shook his head. That’s when I noticed his deep, blue eyes. I felt my knees go a little weak and I think maybe he thought I was going to faint because he reached out and caught me. Of course, I wasn’t going to explain why I had swayed; it was enough to just be held up by those muscled arms. “Sorry, no way. I go by the book. I have to.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. My dad is going to kill me. He warned me if I got just one more ticket he was going to take me off his insurance. I suppose it’s about time that I pay my own way.”

  About that time, a police siren could be heard about a block away. Given the traffic, I knew that only gave me twenty minutes or so to get this guy’s name. “Do you think we should swap names and addresses? I mean, just to be on the safe side?”

  He sort of cocked his head at me, as though questioning why I would do this voluntarily when it was obvious the police were going to be collecting that same information. “My name is Sean Delaney, but as for my address, I don’t really have one at the moment. I’m sort of, what you might say, in transit. Just moving to the city and hoping to ace a job interview that I am now going to be late for.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry about that. But it was you who called the police. If you hadn’t done that, you’d be a thousand bucks richer and on your way to your interview right now.” I was known for getting my way and that was one of the reasons I thought I would make a good reporter. However, at this moment, it felt mor
e like being sucked down into quicksand. I don’t think Sean Delaney completely appreciated my sense of humor. Nevertheless, I continued on, like a leaky faucet. “Well, I’m surprised, but here they are. The men in blue. I’m going back to my car and sit down in an attempt to look like a helpless victim. I suggest that you do the same.”

  With that, I went back to my car and climbed inside, beginning to panic when I couldn’t remember where I had put my proof of insurance and registration. I went through my wallet three times and although I found my missing JC Penney card, there was no proof of insurance or registration. That’s when it occurred to me. Of course! It was in the glove compartment! Sure enough, I opened it up and there they were in the nice, navy-blue, vinyl folder, just as dad had left it for me. Sometimes I guess dads do know best.

  As I watched, the officers approached Sean’s car first. They walked around, made note of his license plate number, and leaned inside his window to talk to him. The whole encounter only lasted maybe three minutes and then he put his car in drive and left. I sat there open mouthed.

  The officers approached me, walking around my car, and when they saw the fire department sticker on the back window, they looked at one another before tapping on my window. I lowered it and smiled sweetly. “Hello, officers.”

  “Miss,” one of them acknowledged. “This is your lucky day.”

  “Well, you might call it that, but for me it has just recently turned rather crappy. So, which one of you wants to see my driver’s license?”

  They looked at one another. The talking one answered first. “No need.”

  “No need?”

  “The guy you hit claims that you settled it between the two of you and since there is no complaint being filed, and it’s quite apparent that you weren’t speeding, we’re going to let you go.”

  “I don’t suppose the fact that I have a certain sticker on my back window has anything to do with this?” My dad was big on ethics and I felt that I needed to at least make a feeble objection… very feeble.