by Linda Turner
“Sorry,” she retorted coolly. “I’m busy Saturday night. I have to do my laundry.”
She could have done her laundry any time and the glint in his eye told her he knew it. But he accepted the excuse with a shrug and a grin. “Shot down again. Damn, I hate it when that happens. But that’s okay. I’ll just have to ask again when you’re not so busy. See you around, sweetcakes.”
Flashing his dimples at her, he stuffed a tip in the tip jar, grabbed his coffee and the doughnut she’d sacked for him, and walked out with an easy animal grace that Rachel couldn’t help but appreciate. She wasn’t the only one. When she finally blinked back to attention, every other woman in the bakery was watching the long, tall drink of water saunter out of the bakery.
“I’ll have some of that,” Dixie Hicks sighed dreamily from a nearby table. “He’s cute.”
Next in line at the counter, Hilda Stevens cackled, “He certainly is. Reminds me of my third husband. I never should have let him go—he was a fantastic lover.”
Three years past eighty and showing no signs of slowing down, Hilda loved nothing more than talking about her ex-husbands…and shocking people. Amused, Rachel just rolled her eyes. “Now, Hilda, you know I can’t let you talk about the exes. We’ve got schoolkids here….”
“Oh, they’re trying to decide what doughnuts they want,” she scoffed. “They’re not paying any attention to an old woman.”
“Kids hear everything, Hilda. You know that.”
“They’re not going to hear the good stuff. Anyway, this is about you, not me. Why didn’t you take that boy up on his invitation? I’m not interested,” she mimicked, scowling. “Of course you’re interested! He was cute as a button. Maybe you’re working too hard. I think I need to talk to your grandmother.”
“No!” She was already getting enough grief from her grandmother—she didn’t need more! “I appreciate your concern, Hilda, but I don’t need help from Gran or anyone else. I can get my own dates.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” the older woman retorted. “Look what you just let walk out the door!”
It had been a long time since a woman had turned him down for a date, Turk Garrison thought with a grin as he headed back to his house. His timing must have been off. That was okay—he’d ask her again. He knew where she worked. Even if he hadn’t, he could walk the length and breadth of Hunter’s Ridge in less than an hour. Finding her again wouldn’t be a problem.
And that’s what he loved about Hunter’s Ridge…its size. He’d grown up in Dallas, in the shadow of his father, who was one of the most well-known heart surgeons in the city, and all he’d ever wanted to be was a small-town doctor like his grandfather. For his father’s sake, however, he’d tried to follow in his footsteps, but he’d hated it. He’d given it two years—that was all he could manage. Now he was going to do what he wanted to do.
Have you lost your mind? What kind of career can you have in a small town? There’s no future there. No money! You’ve got the hands of a heart surgeon. It’s in your blood! You can’t walk away from that to play Marcus Welby in Small Town, America! It’s insane.
His father had never been one to pull his punches, and he certainly hadn’t when he’d informed him last month that he intended to resign from his father’s practice and open his own clinic in Hunter’s Ridge. He’d ranted and raved and tried to reason with him, and when that hadn’t worked, he’d used his most powerful weapon—Janice, Turk’s mother.
To her credit, his mother had sympathized with his dream of having a less-complicated life and practice. But ultimately, she, too, had stressed how much he would be giving up if he chose Hunter’s Ridge over Dallas…wealth, prestige, professional affiliations with some of the top surgeons in the country. How could he give that up? Why would he want to?
Watching a family of ducks walk across River Road to the river, Turk would never understand how his parents understood him so little. There was no question that his father was successful when it came to making money—but he often passed patients on the street and didn’t have a clue who they were. Turk’s grandfather, on the other hand, not only knew his patients, he knew their children, their hopes and fears, their birthdays and anniversaries and where they planned to be buried.
That was what Turk wanted, what he intended to have.
Even though he’d told his parents he was settling in Hunter’s Ridge, they hadn’t really believed he’d leave Dallas and turn his back on the kind of career he could have there. That, however, is exactly what he’d done. He’d found office space in the town’s newest—and only—strip mall, spent the last two weeks hiring staff and advertising the fact that Hunter’s Ridge had a new doctor in town. The clinic opened for business tomorrow, and it was only three blocks from his house. He’d be able to walk to work every day.
“You’re not in Dallas anymore, Doc,” he told himself with a grin. And that was never more apparent than when he strolled up the front walk to his house.
There was no doubt that it was a fixer-upper. A block off Main Street, it was a hundred years old and looked it. It hadn’t been painted in years, the gutters were drooping, and there was more than one rotting eave that needed to be replaced. The wiring was iffy, the plumbing hadn’t been updated in fifty years, and the pier-and-beam foundation obviously needed some major adjustments—windows and doors throughout the house didn’t shut properly. But the place had good bones. It had ten-foot ceilings, crown molding and stained glass, and it reminded him of his grandparents’ house. He’d taken one look at it and bought it on the spot.
His friends and family thought he was crazy, but he was doing much of the work himself. He enjoyed the physical labor and liked the idea of putting his own stamp on the place. He’d been tearing out Sheetrock almost from the moment he’d moved in two days ago. Once he had it all out, he’d have to bring in an electrician and plumber and a foundation repairman, but in the meantime, he was having a hell of a good time.
Unlocking the front door, he stepped inside and grinned. His mother would have had a stroke if she could see the way he was living. It would be months before the house was no longer a construction zone, so he’d placed all his furniture in storage, then bought a few secondhand pieces to use in the house during the remodeling. He had an old wooden straight chair and a TV tray that he used in the kitchen, a scarred bed and dresser in the huge master bedroom, and an ancient recliner in the living room. And everywhere he looked, there was a fine coating of Sheetrock dust. And he’d just started tearing it out. He could just imagine what the place was going to look like in a few weeks.
From the backyard, Daisy, his yellow Lab, knew the instant he walked into the kitchen. She gave a sharp bark at the back door, but he only laughed. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he called through the door. “I want to work on the Sheetrock, and if I let you in, I won’t get a thing done. Wait a second. I’ve got a treat for you.”
He found a steak bone in the refrigerator from last night’s dinner and opened the back door to offer it to Daisy. She wasn’t a pig when it came to snacks—taking the bone very delicately, she turned and trotted into her doghouse. Turk knew she wouldn’t come out again until the bone was history. Grinning, he grabbed his hammer and nail puller and went to work.
Five hours later, he had a mess on his hands. The floor in the master bedroom was a foot deep with broken pieces of Sheetrock and enough dust to choke a horse. And that was just from the demolition of one wall. Pleased, he attacked the debris on the floor with a commercial broom and dustpan, then spent the next thirty minutes carting it all out to the Dumpster. When he finished, one wall was bare of Sheetrock, and the floor was broom-clean.
Planning to start on the west wall of the bedroom next, he’d just walked into the kitchen to see about making a sandwich for a late lunch when he heard Daisy barking angrily in the backyard. Surprised—she was usually pretty mild-mannered—he glanced out the kitchen window just in time to see her chase a cat across the backyard. A split second later, the cat
—and Daisy—sailed over the back fence without ever breaking stride.
“What the hell!” Jerking open the back door, he yelled “Daisy! Get your butt back in this yard right this minute!”
He might as well have told the wind not to blow. Daisy never looked back.
“Damn!” Swearing, he took off after her.
Later, he couldn’t have said how many streets he ran down, how many times he came so close to catching her that he could see the mischief dancing in her eyes. Then she would take off again, barking in excitement at the game. Huffing and puffing, he had no choice but to follow. Hunter’s Ridge had a leash law, but that was the least of his worries. He loved the goofball and it’d break his heart if she darted into the road and got hit.
Ten minutes later, he came around a corner and spied her standing in the front yard of a house that was very much like his, but beautifully restored. At first, he thought Daisy had mistaken the place for home…then, as he drew closer, he realized that she was too busy eating something to notice the house—or the fact that he was quickly bearing down on her.
Relieved, he grabbed her collar. “Gotcha!” Only then did he realize that she hadn’t dug up a bone somewhere. She was eating a cherry pie!
“Daisy! Oh, my God! Where’d you get that?”
Glancing sharply around, he spied a table on the side porch of the house they stood right in front of. There were two other pies cooling there. Swearing, he gave Daisy a reproving look. “Shame on you! This isn’t the way to meet the neighbors! Or potential patients! Now what are we going to do?”
Totally unconcerned, Daisy licked her chops as she finished the rest of her pie.
“C’mon,” Turk growled, tightening his grip on her collar. “It’s time to fess up.”
Bracing for a tongue-lashing—Daisy hadn’t just snatched any pie; it was a homemade one!—he knocked on the door, then waited. Through the frosted oval glass of the front door, Turk could just make out the blurred figure of a woman approaching. “Wipe that smile off your face,” he told Daisy quickly. “At least try to look contrite.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the door was pulled open and he found himself facing an older, white-haired woman with rounded cheeks, a quick smile and faded blue eyes that seemed to have a perpetual twinkle.
Her gaze moving from him to Daisy and back again, she lifted a delicately arched brow. “Yes? May I help you?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said with a rueful smile, “but I seem to owe you an apology.”
Surprised, she blinked. “I don’t think so, young man. I don’t even know you.”
“I just moved to town this week,” he explained, and held out his hand. “I’m Turk Garrison. And this is Daisy,” he added, nodding to the Lab. “She owes you an apology, too. She just ate one of your pies.”
“What?” Startled, she glanced past him to the side porch, where an empty trivet spoke of the missing pie.
Watching the emotions flicker lightning quick across her face, Turk wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d given him a piece of her mind. Daisy had wolfed down in seconds something that had, no doubt, taken her hours to make. She had every right to be furious.
Instead, she laughed. “Well, this is a first.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she assured him. “Or Daisy’s.” Holding out her hand to the dog so she could sniff it, she grinned when Daisy licked her fingers. “I was the one who put the pies outside,” she told Turk, her blue eyes twinkling behind the lenses of her wire-rimmed glasses. “And I’ll tell right now, they smelled darn good. How was a dog supposed to resist?”
“But—”
“It was just a pie. No harm done. I can make another one.” The matter settled, she held out her hand. “I’m Evelyn Martin. Welcome to Hunter’s Ridge. How about a piece of pie for you? I just finished lunch and was about to have some dessert and coffee. We can have it out here on the porch and you can tell me all about yourself. Are you married? I’ve got a granddaughter…”
“Oh, no,” he said quickly, laughing. “Nothing against your granddaughter, but I just moved away from my woman problems. I don’t need any more. Not that your granddaughter would be a problem,” he quickly assured her. “I’m sure she’s very nice, but—”
“It’s okay,” she chuckled. “I’m not offended. You’ll change your mind if you ever meet her. In the meantime, you should know I make a darn good pie—best in the county. If you don’t believe me, ask Daisy.”
Daisy barked at the mention of her name, drawing a laugh from both of them. “I’m sure it was delicious,” Turk said wryly. “I’ve never seen her gulp down anything like she did that pie, but I’ve really got to get home. Thanks again, though, for being so understanding. Daisy and I owe you.”
“No problem,” she replied. “I’m sure I’ll see you around town. And come back when you’ve got some time. We’ll talk.”
Promising to do just that, Turk headed home with Daisy in tow, thankful that the two of them had gotten off so lightly. “You’re just darn lucky that Mrs. Martin didn’t call the dog catcher on you,” he told the Lab as they reached the house. “You could be at the pound right now and I’d be fined for disobeying the leash law.”
Far from chastised, Daisy just wandered over to her bed in the corner of the living room and collapsed with a heartfelt sigh. Within a matter of moments, she was snoring.
Turk rolled his eyes. “Brat. You’ve got your belly full of cherry pie and now it’s time for a nap. You don’t have to worry about anybody wanting to set you up with some cute chick. No, I’m the lucky one who gets to deal with that. Twice in one day. That’s got to be some kind of record. It must be something in the water here.”
It was more than that, however, and he knew it. Women just liked to set people up, and now that he was the new man in town, he’s was probably going to get hit a lot with that. And he could handle it, he assured himself. After dealing with Susan and Laureen, he could deal with just about anything.
He still didn’t know how he’d gotten himself into such a mess. Susan Presley was the daughter of his father’s best friend, and she and Turk had lived together for the past year and a half. He’d thought she was the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with. Then he’d told her he was going to give up working with his father to move to Hunter’s Ridge, and she’d dropped him like a hot rock.
He was stunned and hurt. Then his friends had convinced him the only way to get over one woman was to go out with another. So he’d asked Laureen Becker out. A nurse at the hospital, she was cute and fun and didn’t appear to be the gold digger that Susan was. Then a week after they’d gone out a couple of times, she’d told everyone at the hospital that they were engaged.
Turk’s gut knotted just at the thought of how Laureen had reacted when he questioned her about the rumor. Not that least bit chagrined that he’d found out about the rumor and that she was the one spreading it, she only smiled and kissed him and told him of course they were getting married. She wasn’t like Susan. She knew a good man when she saw one and she’d fallen in love with him the first time she laid eyes on him. She knew he felt the same way.
He’d thought she was joking. They’d only gone out twice! And he hadn’t done anything more than kiss her, and his heart hadn’t been in that. He couldn’t tell her that, of course—he wasn’t that insensitive. So he’d tried to spare her feelings and explained instead that he was moving, starting a new life, and he was doing that alone. Any woman with an ounce of pride would have assured him she was just teasing and let the subject pass. Not Laureen. Far from discouraged, she’d laughed…then assured him that he would eventually realize they were soul-mates. He just needed time.
She’d been so confident, she’d scared the hell out of him. Left with no choice but to be brutally honest, he’d made it clear that not only were they not soul-mates, he didn’t love her, she wasn’t a part of his future, and she never would be. Then he’d broken thin
gs off with her and hadn’t spoken to her since.
That was a month ago. Considering how determined she’d seemed, he hadn’t expected her to let him walk away without a fight. But that’s exactly what she’d done. There’d been no phone calls, no letters, no more rumors that they were engaged. She’d avoided him like the plague, thank God, and he’d left Dallas without contacting her again. It was over.
Then, she’d left a message on his cell phone yesterday morning. And last night. And both messages were virtually the same.
“Turk, sweetheart, how are you? I know you must be incredibly busy, setting up your practice and everything, darling, but I thought you’d call me by now. Do you miss me? I think of you constantly. I know you must do the same. Isn’t it awful? We have to find a way to be together, darling. Have you found us a house yet? When you do, let me know. I can decorate it for us. We’re going to have a wonderful home, sweetheart. Think of that, think of me, in the dark of night, when you’re all alone and missing me. We’ll be together soon, darling. I promise. Then we’ll never have to be apart again. I love you. I don’t need to tell you that—you already know. Call me when you can.”
He should have called her and made it clear once and for all that she was wasting her time—he wanted nothing to do with her. But there was something in her voice that turned his blood to ice. Something that set alarm bells clanging in his head. Something that wasn’t quite right. And for the life of him, he couldn’t put his finger on what it was…confidence, determination, insanity. Whatever it was, he knew he wanted nothing to do with it…or her. Immediately calling his cell phone company, he changed his cell phone number.
Chapter 3