Just What the Doctor Ordered

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  And he was gone, replaced almost immediately by Bucky.

  “Hello, Cuteness.”

  Great. Just what she needed. Buckingham Ellis Winston, IV. “Hello, Bucky,” she said coolly and took a sip of the punch.

  “I’ve been looking for you. Thought maybe you’d be ready to talk to me now.”

  She turned toward him as she lowered the punch glass, not wanting to be rude, but not wanting to go over the same ground again, either. “I believe we’ve already said all there is to say, Bucky. What is there left to talk about?”

  Wrong question. Wrong, wrong, wrong. To someone like Bucky, who was seldom at a loss for words, it was the exact wrong thing to say.

  “I thought you’d be over your snit by now,” he began. “I thought you’d be ready to listen to reason.”

  “I’m not going to marry you, Bucky. Please, let’s not have this conversation. Not here. Not today.”

  “If you’d take my phone calls or agree to go to dinner one evening, it wouldn’t have to be here, today. But I’m getting to the end of my rope here. You’re going to have to talk to me sooner or later.”

  With a soft, determined sigh, she shook her head. “This is a special day for my family and the Foundation,” she said. “Let’s save our personal drama for a more appropriate place and time.”

  “I think this is the perfect place,” he said stubbornly. “We can just step back into one of the offices and talk about this. No one will even know we’re not out here mingling with the crowd.”

  “No. The Foundation is important to me and I’m not going to leave the reception for this wonderful new medical facility to listen to you tell me what a mistake I’m making.”

  He smiled. “The Foundation’s important to me, too, Ainsley, but not as important as you. Come on, Cuteness, let’s get this settled.”

  It was true. She knew she was more important to him than the work of the Foundation, than this children’s center, than probably anything else in his life. He’d always, right from the start, put her first. Had that been the attraction? Had that been the reason she’d thought she could marry him? Should marry him?

  Bucky had worked for the Foundation all the time they’d been dating, and it had never once crossed her mind to wonder when he would become lost in the cause, sucked into a life of ceaseless sacrifice. She’d known he’d be home on time, at dinner every evening, never out trying to make the world a better place, never making any sacrifice that cost him—or her—a moment’s discomfort. In that way, he’d seemed safe, but now, suddenly, she thought he was simply pointless. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Since you insist, we’ll do this right here, right now. For the last time, Bucky, it’s over. Don’t call me. Don’t drop by. Don’t send flowers. Don’t arrange any accidental meetings. And whatever you do, don’t ever call me Cuteness, again.”

  He blinked and opened his mouth, but she lifted a finger to shush him…and strangely enough, Bucky complied.

  At least long enough for her to turn and walk away from him for the last time. Her spirits lifted with every step, the corners of her mouth rose, too. That had felt good. Really good.

  This was a good day to be a Danville…even one with a slightly broken heart.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ainsley didn’t know why Ilsa had given her this assignment.

  “This research has to be done without anyone—and I do mean, anyone—suspecting what you’re doing,” Ilsa had said. “Discretion is the most important part of the assignment, Ainsley. I cannot stress that enough.”

  Ainsley had gotten the picture. Keep her mouth shut. Think before she spoke. Listen. Get the information. And avoid giving Peyton O’Reilly any reason at all to suspect she was talking to a matchmaker.

  Apprentice matchmaker.

  On a suicide mission.

  Ilsa must have lost her mind. Or else, Peyton’s odd-couple parents were paying a premium price to have IF Enterprises locate a suitable match for their independent-minded daughter.

  And of all the bad luck, the undercover work had to be done at the children’s research center. Ainsley had protested that part, tried to convince Ilsa it would arouse less suspicion if she managed to bump into Peyton at the country club a few times. But Ilsa was adamant. Peyton was volunteering at the center. Ainsley could volunteer, too. Ilsa got the information she needed. The patients at the center got the benefit. Voilà, a perfect plan.

  Perfect for whom? was what Ainsley would have liked to know. Because it wasn’t a good plan for someone who was trying to avoid a certain someone else. And sure enough, from the minute she’d walked through the front doors of the center to begin her “volunteer” work, until now, a whole week later, she’d seen Peyton exactly three times. She’d seen Ivan ten times that often.

  He was everywhere she went. In patients’ rooms. In the administrative offices. In the lunchroom. In the hallways. He nodded when he saw her, but as often as not, he passed her without even knowing she was there. It hadn’t taken even a month for the work to swallow him whole. She could see it in his face, in the weary lines around his mouth, in the purposeful way he moved, in the glint of satisfaction in his eyes. He was in his element, giving all he had every moment of every day and always on the lookout for the opportunity to do more.

  She was nosy, and she snooped around, asking questions until she discovered he came in early and went home late. Every day. He’d taken off only one day since the center opened, and she knew that because Matt had told her he had to insist that Ivan take at least one day off to move into his new house. She wondered what the house was like. Being nosy got her the address, so she drove by it one day out of curiosity.

  It was a lovely house, two-story, with a wide front porch, yellow frame, with white trim and a lawn of manicured green. It looked comfortable, New England cozy, and—from the outside, anyway—like the perfect place for a family. Ainsley wondered if he’d thought of that when he’d chosen this particular house, if he’d imagined children playing on the lawn, a wife waiting for him on the porch, if he’d thought that this would be a good place to call home, a comforting refuge to return to at the end of a long day. And somehow, she knew that he had considered all those things.

  It was undoubtedly true that Ivan would always give too much of himself away. But seeing this house made her realize he would never desert the family who would live there with him. His unselfishness would extend to his wife and children, too. They would be equal partners with him in his mission, another reason for him to give his best, his utmost effort every day. His dedication was one of the things she’d always admired about him, worried about for him, but now she understood that whatever time and energy he gave to the work of the Foundation nourished his soul, made him the man she’d fallen in love with.

  As her car idled in his driveway, she imagined the way the house would be if she lived there with him. She freely admitted that she wanted to sit on the porch, to walk through the rooms. In all her life, she’d never known such yearning as she felt now.

  And because of her—the apprentice matchmaker—the man she loved, the life she wanted, would be Miranda’s.

  Ainsley knew she had to talk to him, to apologize again for that impetuous kiss, and ask him if he would please forget it had ever happened and give her a second chance at being his friend. It wasn’t at all what she wanted, but it seemed now the best resolution she could hope for.

  But even with the decision made, finding the opportunity—the right opportunity—wasn’t that easy. Despite the time she was spending at the center, despite seeing him on a regular basis, there was never a good moment to say “Hey, can we talk?”, never a chance to pull him aside and say the words she had practiced over and over in her head. Any number of times, she’d buoyed her courage, lifted her chin, and set out determined to carry out her mission. But each time, she found herself
with words hovering on her lips and no one there to hear them.

  It wasn’t that he spun on his heel and walked in the opposite direction whenever he caught sight of her. It was more like he wasn’t even aware she was there.

  * * *

  Ivan knew she was there.

  How could he not know when every fiber of his being went on alert practically the very minute she walked through the front door?

  He had no idea how Ilsa had arranged for Ainsley to spend so much time at the center or what excuse she’d given. But he knew he couldn’t talk to her. Not yet. Ilsa had cautioned him to keep his distance, to let Ainsley see him, but to avoid having any but the most trivial conversation with her. It was crucial, Ilsa said, that he be the one to choose the time and place for their introduction of possibilities, and the inevitable heart to heart. But before that could happen, Ainsley needed to have had plenty of opportunity to be close enough to realize how much she missed him.

  Ivan could hardly stand the waiting, but he was putting all his faith in his matchmaker, following her advice to the letter, and hoping with all his heart she was right.

  * * *

  “I’m not doing it!” Jett, blond wig jiggling, was in fine form for her afternoon performance. “I’m not! And you can’t make me!”

  “Now, Jett,” Hugh drawled in his sing-song and rambling way. “You know you gotta do your exercising. You gotta work with your physical therapist.”

  “I don’t want to,” Jett said stubbornly.

  “Wellll…” Hugh drew the word into a long pause. “I think you’re gonna have to.”

  Jett pouted, pursing her movie-star lips. Then she turned toward the audience with a conspiratorial whisper, “Watch this. He won’t know what hit him.” Then, turning back to poor, dumb Hugh—the puppet with stuffing for brains—she batted her extra long, very flirty eyelashes. “Why don’t you do the work for me, Hughie? I’ll give you my dessert….”

  Ivan stopped in the doorway, caught as he always was by the ingenuity of the puppets’ design and by how real they sometimes seemed. The theater room was a hit. Sometimes the puppet shows were staged by patients, sometimes by family members, but there was usually a good-size audience, with staff dropping in as they could to catch the skits.

  It amazed Ivan, whenever he chanced to see them in action, how the puppets seemed to stay in character. Jett was always the manipulator. Hugh always the dupe. No matter who was behind the scenes acting out the parts. Jett could say she hated her therapist, convince Hugh to do her therapy for her, and everyone laughed at her silliness. Whether the skit dealt with friendship or an imaginary game of football, or even the fear of dying, the puppets expressed feelings that individuals had troubles with. That, perhaps, was the best thing about them.

  And Ivan knew he had Ainsley to thank.

  The little gathering of patients and aides laughed, and it was only when he heard Ainsley’s laughter that Ivan realized he was standing right behind her. He hadn’t even noticed her leaning there against the wall, watching the skit from just inside the doorway. His heart jerked to attention and thudded so hard against his ribs, he thought everyone in the room must be able to hear it. He should go, slip out before she was aware he was there, but he lingered, breathing in the sweet fruity scent of her hair, imagining how it would feel to brush his fingertip across her cheek, remembering the warm taste of her mouth.

  He must go. Make a seamless escape. Do exactly what he’d been doing for over a week. Wait until his matchmaker advised him the time for possibilities had arrived.

  But then Ainsley, as if sensing his presence, looked back and saw him and his heart stopped at the wistful yearning in her incredibly blue eyes. “Ivan,” she whispered, her voice full of longing, hinging on the edge of a question.

  And it was too late. He couldn’t just leave. But he said nothing, withholding the betraying murmur of her name, and just looked at her, knowing he had to make an excuse, had to get away before he ruined all of Ilsa’s careful planning.

  “The puppets are a hit,” he said softly, not wanting to attract the attention of anyone else in the room.

  “Yes,” she agreed, the word little more than a sigh. “Ivan, could I…would you, please…?” She paused, and the tip of her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. “Please, can I talk to you?”

  He could hear Ilsa’s voice in his head. Wait. Wait. “I, uh, have to…see a patient. It’s…” He didn’t know what it was, but suddenly, his excuse seemed a moot point as her palm flattened against his chest and propelled him out of the doorway and into the hall.

  “Look, I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks,” she said, her voice low, shaky with nerves, but intense. “And this isn’t going to be easy to say because I know I ruined everything, but you have to let me say this before that one thing gets to be this huge, big thing, like that rhyme about the horseshoe and the nail and the whole war being lost, so that there’s no chance of anything ever being right again, and I can’t keep working up my courage to do this and then not getting even close to being able to say it and…” She brought the frantic rush of words to a halt and blinked rapidly to keep from crying. “The thing is, Ivan, I’m sorry I kissed you, but if you’re going to be my brother-in-law we can’t not speak to each other for the rest of our lives.”

  He was trying to process what she’d said, but just then the puppet show ended and people began filtering out into the hall. She didn’t take her eyes off of him—probably afraid he’d disappear down the corridor if she did—while she nudged him farther along the hall and into the waiting room, away from the dispersing audience. It was late afternoon, nearly dinner time, and the waiting area was practically deserted except for a couple of adults and a teenager in the back corner. “Did you hear what I said?” Ainsley asked, moving from tears to a stalwart determination that she needed to finally have this discussion behind her. “You can’t not talk to me, Ivan. And you can’t keep avoiding me, either. I…I won’t let you.”

  He blinked, surprised by her sudden forcefulness, astonished by what he thought he’d heard her say. “You’re sorry you kissed me?” he said, sounding a lot like poor, dumb Hughie in his own ears. “But I kissed you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, yes, but I didn’t give you much of a choice, did I? And then it got all out of hand and I got carried away with…with…well, with feelings I didn’t know I had and I know it was stupid and I’ve regretted it ever since, but you wouldn’t talk to me and I know it ruined our friendship and…” She let out a rough sigh. “Yes, Ivan, yes. I’m sorry and if you won’t forgive me once and for all, I’m going to…to…to be sorry for the rest of my life.”

  His heart nearly leaped out of his chest. He couldn’t believe it. She thought she’d ruined their friendship. She was sorry because she’d gotten carried away with feelings she hadn’t known she had. She wanted him to forgive her.

  “Well, I didn’t think you’d be smiling like a fool right now,” she said, sounding a bit unsettled by his sudden grin. “I mean, accepting an apology is normally a pretty serious moment for most people.”

  He laughed once more, letting the joy work its way out in a throaty rumble. “Oh, Ainsley,” he said. “I do love you.” And picking her up, he whirled her around and around in the second-floor waiting room under the watchful, wide eyes of the funny, furry creatures she’d painted on the murals. She didn’t protest his joyous response, probably thought he’d lost his mind…but no, he’d only lost his heart to adorable, wonderful, mixed-up Ainsley. She couldn’t know what he was so happy about. Not yet. But he wanted to hold it—hold her—for a moment out of time while this was all new and all the possibilities were falling into place. Ilsa had been right. The introduction of possibilities had happened…and neither he nor Ainsley had recognized it for what it was. They’d jumped to the same conclusion—that the kiss signaled the end of th
eir relationship…instead of the beginning.

  Setting her feet back on the floor, he kept his hands at her shoulders and smiled down at her. “I kissed you with feelings I was only beginning to be aware of,” he said. “And I thought I’d ruined everything. I’ve been trying to work up my courage to offer you an apology.”

  She blinked and smiled, understanding more quickly than he had. “You mean, you thought I was upset because you kissed me and I thought you were upset because I kissed you, and neither one of us was really upset because we kissed each other?”

  He thought that was it in a nutshell. “I think that pretty well sums it up except for the possibilities those feelings introduced.”

  She blinked. “You think that was an…an introduction of possibilities…for you and me?”

  “What else, Ainsley?” His smile settled into a sweet certainty. “I’ve been having these funny feelings ever since I saw you that first day in your office. I wasn’t certain until you kissed me that it was love.”

  “You kissed me,” she corrected with a return of the sassy attitude he loved.

  “And was sure you’d never forgive me for it.”

  “I thought I’d embarrassed you something awful. And then I missed you so much.”

  “That was Ilsa’s idea.”

  “Ilsa was in on this?”

  He nodded. “I had to bring in an ace on this, Ainsley, so I hired her as my matchmaker. As our matchmaker.”

  “And she didn’t even tell me?”

  “She’s very discreet.”

  “Don’t I know it. I never even suspected when she sent me to the center to…” She bit back the rest of the sentence, her eyes widening, and Ivan suspected she’d been about to spill a secret. But then her gaze turned accusing. “You wouldn’t speak to me, either. That was her idea, wasn’t it?”