Mission: M.D.

by Linda Turner

  For an answer, Harvey gave him a friendly shove. “Next time, I really am eating your chicken.”

  The poker game began promptly at seven-thirty, just as it had every Saturday night for the past four months. Rachel had come up with the idea of starting the game—not only was the whole country going crazy over the game, but there was some evidence that it helped keep the mind sharp and possibly warded off Alzheimer’s in later years. When Rachel told her grandmother and her friends the statistics, that was all the encouragement they needed to start a weekly game. And she had to give them credit—they weren’t just going through the motions. They played to win, and in spite of Lawrence’s poor attempt at bluffing, they had all become quite good at winning with outrageously poor hands.

  “Why don’t we plan a trip to Vegas next month?” Evelyn suggested as Lawrence dealt the first hand and Harvey rationed the same number of peanuts to everyone. “I think it’s time we found out if we’re any good or not.”

  “I don’t know about that, Gran,” Rachel said with a frown. “That’s a little ambitious, don’t you think? Maybe it would be better if we get our feet wet with a local competition, instead.”

  “Yeah, I heard there was a big competition in Austin in a couple of weeks. Why don’t we try that?”

  “I’ll check the Internet and see how much the entrance fee is,” Harvey said. “I’ll drive, if you like.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lawrence scoffed. “I’ve ridden with you on the interstate, remember? We’ll let Rachel drive. She’s got better eyes than the three of us put together.”

  “In that case, you won’t mind if I suggest that you stop dealing from the bottom of the deck,” Rachel said dryly. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I prefer my cards from the top.”

  “Whatever you say, sweetheart,” he told her with a wink as he immediately dealt the rest of the cards from the top of the deck. “Just checking to see if anyone’s paying attention.”

  “We appreciate that,” Evelyn said dryly. Checking her cards, she grinned at Lawrence. “Thanks for the hand. I’ll see your five and raise you twenty.”

  Harvey eyed her speculatively. “I think you’re bluffing. I’ll see your twenty and raise you ten.”

  Her face carefully blank of expression, Rachel studied her grandmother and her card-shark buddies over the top of her cards, fighting a grin all the while. Personally, she thought they were both bluffing, and Lawrence had to know that…because he’d dealt her a straight flush.

  “Well, Rachel?” Lawrence asked, just a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Fish or cut bait, sweetheart. What’s it going to be?”

  “I’m debating,” she replied, knowing very well he knew she wasn’t. “It’s going to be a long evening. I don’t want to risk everything on the first hand.”

  “Study long, you study wrong,” Harvey quipped. “Not that it matters, you’re not going to win this hand, anyway.”

  “You’re probably right about that, but I’ll try…just for fun.” She tossed in her peanuts, then raised eyebrows when she refused more cards. “I’ll go with the ones I have, thanks.”

  The others looked at one another, exchanged knowing glances, then immediately folded. “C’mon, guys! This isn’t fair!”

  “You never hold all your cards unless you’ve got a pat hand, sweetheart,” her grandmother chuckled. “What’ve you got?”

  “Just a straight flush,” she retorted, grinning. “After listening to the three of you—two of you,” she corrected when Lawrence loudly cleared his throat, “I felt sure one of you was bound to have a royal flush.”

  For an answer, her grandmother and Harvey both threw down their cards. Between the two of them, they didn’t have a single pair, let alone anything close to a straight or a flush.

  Laughing, Evelyn reached for the cards. “My deal!”

  It was after midnight when Harvey walked Rachel to her door and made sure she was safely inside before heading home himself. The night had been fun, but then again, she’d known that it would be. Harvey and Lawrence always treated her like a favorite granddaughter, and they never failed to make her laugh. And she’d won! She had a purse full of peanuts, and even though her bluffing skills still needed work, she couldn’t complain.

  Until she looked out of her bedroom window and her eyes fell on Turk’s house. Through his bare windows, she could see him working on the Sheetrock in his living room. Didn’t the man ever sleep? she wondered, irritated for reasons she couldn’t begin to explain. It was almost one o’clock in the morning! If he started hammering, she was going to give him a piece of her mind!

  But ten minutes later when she turned out her bedroom light and crawled into bed, only silence greeted her ears. Relieved, she pulled the covers up and sighed as her eyes drifted shut. Within two ticks of the clock, she was sound asleep.

  Hours later, she was still dead to the world when the rumbling growl of a truck pulled at her consciousness. Squinting at the clock on her bedside table, she groaned when she saw that it was barely seven in the morning. What idiot was out and about so early in the morning? Didn’t they know this was her one morning to sleep late? Rolling over, she buried her head under her pillow and sighed in contentment as she drifted back to sleep.

  “Come on back! You’ve got plenty of room. Just watch the trees. Yeah, you’re doing great! Another few feet—”

  Rachel’s eyes popped open at the sound of Turk, yelling at someone over the sound of a truck making an incredible racket, apparently right outside her bedroom window! “What the—”

  “Watch it! You’re only a couple of feet from the yard light! You need to move to the left. Yeah, that’s it—”

  “No, that’s not it!” Rachel retorted, throwing back her covers. Irritating man! It was seven o’clock in the morning, dammit! Sunday morning! Had he lost his mind?

  “Inconsiderate oaf!” she muttered as she jerked on her robe and jammed her bare feet into her house shoes. “Was he raised in a barn? Obviously, he thinks he’s the only one on the damn planet. Just wait. When I get through with him, he’s going to wish he was!”

  Fuming, she stormed outside, uncaring that her hair was flying and she hadn’t even taken the time to wash her face. The second she spied him standing in his driveway as if it was the middle of the afternoon, directing the truck driver, who was changing the overflowing Dumpster in his driveway for an empty one, she saw red. “Do you know what time it is?”

  Over the roar of the diesel truck and the clang of the empty Dumpster, Turk couldn’t hear a thing. But he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced up in time to see Rachel bearing down on him with a look in her blue eyes that would have sent the bravest man running for the hills. Turk only grinned and yelled a cheery “Good morning!”

  “You woke me up! Dammit, this is the only day of the week I can sleep late!”

  Turk heard every word, but he only cupped his hand to his ear and said, “What? I can’t hear you!”

  “It’s Sunday!” she yelled back in growing frustration. “You woke me up!”

  Cupping his hand to his ear, he shrugged, then pointed to the Dumpster, which the driver had started to lower to the ground, and shrugged his shoulders in an age-old gesture that told her without words that he couldn’t hear a thing she was saying. And this time, he wasn’t pretending. The noise was tremendous. She was left with no choice but to watch.

  She was so frustrated, Turk could almost feel the air humming, and it was all he could do not to laugh.

  When the Dumpster hit the ground with a clattering loud enough to wake the dead, Rachel jumped, swearing, and glared at Turk. “Hey, it’s not my fault the truck is so loud,” he told her, but he might as well have saved his breath. The truck driver chose that moment to rev his motor, honk his horn and drive off, grinding his gears as he rumbled down the street.

  Wincing, Turk grinned. “Sorry about that. So what was it you were saying?”

  “What was I saying?” she sputtered. �
�What do you think I was saying? Do you know what time it is? Obviously not, or you wouldn’t be waking everyone in the neighborhood!”

  The volume of her voice went up with every word until she was practically shouting at him. She was in a fine temper, and Turk couldn’t say he blamed her. It was early, and when he’d ordered a clean Dumpster, he hadn’t stopped to think just how noisy the delivery would be…or that his neighbors might not appreciate the early delivery time.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I never dreamed it would be so loud—”

  “It’s Sunday, for heaven’s sake!” she fumed. “The only day of the week some people get to sleep! But do you care? Do you even warn people?”

  “I—”

  “No! You just have the thing hauled in here and make enough noise to wake the dead!”

  “And I’ve apologized for that. But I needed to change out the Dumpster, and today was the only day I had open to have it delivered. I had to pay extra for a Sunday delivery.”

  “Extra?” she sputtered. “You paid extra to disturb everyone within a five-block radius?”

  Not the least disturbed that she was furious with him, Turk couldn’t take his eyes off her. Grinning, he wondered if she knew how her eyes flashed with temper when she was in a snit? Or that her cheeks were flushed, her hair wild? He definitely liked the way she looked when she got right out of bed. Did she realize she was standing before him in nothing but a gown and robe? She didn’t have a lick of makeup on…and couldn’t have managed to look more beautiful if she’d tried.

  “Are you listening to me? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “As a matter of fact I do,” he retorted gruffly. And with no more warning than that, he reached for her and hauled her into his arms.

  He hadn’t planned to kiss her, hadn’t planned to touch her at all. But there was just something about her that he found incredibly appealing…especially when she stood toe to toe with him and gave him a piece of her mind. He liked a woman who stood up for herself. He liked the challenge in her eyes, the jut of her stubborn chin, the flush in her cheeks. But most of all, he liked the taste of her—

  Suddenly realizing that he was kissing the stuffing out of her—and she was kissing him back!—he regained his senses with a jolt. What the devil was he doing? He’d just meant to tease her…not lose himself in her! Had he forgotten what had happened with Laureen so quickly? That’s how his problems with her had started, with just a little kiss, and he’d been regretting it ever since. He wasn’t going there again, not with a woman he barely knew. And he certainly wasn’t getting involved with anyone right now, not when he was still trying to establish his practice and remodel his house and start his life over. He just didn’t have time.

  That didn’t mean, however, that he wouldn’t spend a heck of a lot of time thinking about this particular kiss…and this particular woman.

  Regret tugging at him, he stepped back only to almost reach for her again when she looked up at him dazedly. Who would have thought Miss in Control Martin could be thrown into confusion with just a kiss?

  Amused, his own pounding heart his secret to keep, he made no attempt to hold back a grin. “Don’t look at me like that, sweetheart, or I’ll think you want me to kiss you again.”

  Her eyes snapped at that, delighting him. “Okay, that’s more like it,” he said approvingly. “There’s the woman I like to tease and torment. I thought I’d lost you for a minute.”

  Still reeling from his kiss, she gave serious consideration to shooting the man. Unfortunately, that had been illegal for quite some time, so all she could do was glare at him and pray that he couldn’t hear the still-crazy pounding of her heart. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said coolly. “In case you don’t recognize it when you see it, that was nothing but pure indifference.”

  Far from insulted, he only grinned. “Really? Sounds like a throw down to me.”

  When he took a step toward her, she would have given anything to just stand there and let him kiss her without showing an ounce of emotion. But her heart was still jumping, her knees trembling, and if he touched her again, kissed her again, she knew the last thing she would be was indifferent.

  Taking a quick step back, she said, “Oh, no you don’t. You keep your hands and your lips to yourself, Turk Garrison! Stay away from me! Do you hear me? You stay on your side of your property line and I’ll stay on mine, and we’ll both get along fine!”

  His aforementioned lips twitched. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Miss Martin, you’re on my side of the property line.”

  Heat singed her cheeks. She was, dammit! Her chin held high, she stepped onto her own property and confronted him from the relatively safe distance of twenty feet away. “There! I trust I have made myself clear?”

  “Completely, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “I make you nervous.”

  He couldn’t begin to know how much. Infuriated that he could read her so easily, she sniffed, “There you go again, flattering yourself. You really should do something about that ego of yours. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get some sleep before the morning is completely gone.”

  Without another word, she turned and stormed off. With every step, she could feel his eyes on her, the touch of his infuriating grin, and that only irritated her more. Impossible man! she fumed. He was a tease and a flirt and he knew just what to say and do to make her heart pound. That didn’t mean she was interested in him. It was just chemistry. She wasn’t interested in anyone. She just wanted a baby. So why was she having such a difficult time remembering that whenever she got within twenty feet of Turk Garrison? There had to be some way to get the man out of her head.

  Avoid him, the irritating voice in her head retorted. It shouldn’t be that difficult. You know where the man works, where he spends his days, where he lives, for heaven’s sake! When you see him, turn and go the other direction.

  That sounded so easy. And it would have been…with anyone else but Turk. He turned up at the bakery every morning, and in spite of her resolve not to wait on him, she found herself face-to-face with him across the counter, serving him coffee and doughnuts. He came by the river when she fed the ducks, carried broken pieces of Sheetrock out to the Dumpster in his driveway when she dragged her trashcans to the curb on garbage day, and grinned at her whenever he passed her on the street.

  That, however, wasn’t the worst of it. She couldn’t get him out of her head. She found herself looking for him everywhere she went, listening for him when he arrived home after a long day at the clinic, catching glimpses of him in line at the grocery store and post office and bank. She had to be losing her mind.

  In growing desperation, she went out with an old friend who was newly divorced and just looking for a way to forget her ex-husband. Hoping to meet someone, anyone, who might take her mind off Turk and get her back on track in her hunt for a sperm donor, Rachel wore black slacks and a red spaghetti-strap camisole that was sparkly and sexy and eye-popping. She might as well have worn a duster. In spite of the fact that the uptown bar they went to had a live band and seemed to be overflowing with good-looking, successful men, she just wasn’t in the mood.

  Discouraged, she called it quits after two hours of torture and headed home. What was wrong with her? she wondered as she pulled into her driveway and cut the engine. All she wanted to do was go inside and cry. Nothing was working out as she’d planned and she didn’t understand why.

  Lost in her own misery, she stepped out of her car and didn’t see Turk sitting on his front porch in the darkness until a car unexpectedly turned the corner and its headlights swept across both Turk’s yard and hers. In the sudden flash of bright lights, she suddenly spied him on his porch, just sitting in a wooden rocker, gently rocking back and forth. His eye met hers and clung, even after the car disappeared down the street, leaving them, once again, surrounded by darkness.

  She could barely see him sitting in the shadows, but she knew his eyes were locked with hers. She had nothing to say to him—she
should have just nodded and gone into the house. But her heart was knocking against her ribs, and the kiss that she’d been trying to forget for days was suddenly right there between them, setting the night air pulsing with an emotion she refused to put a name to. Suddenly breathless, her head and heart reeling, she couldn’t have moved if her life had depended on it.

  Later, she didn’t know how long she would have stood there, caught in the heat of the memory, if Daisy hadn’t suddenly spotted her from Turk’s backyard and started to bark. Snapping back to her surroundings, she hurried inside without sparing Turk another glance.

  Her house was quiet, dark, empty. Standing in the shadowy darkness of her living room, she’d never felt so lonely in her life. All she wanted to do was go to bed and cry herself to sleep. Heading for her bedroom, she flipped on the light and started to change into her nightgown, only to remember that tomorrow was trash pickup and she hadn’t put the cans out at the road. She wouldn’t have time to do it in the morning—getting to the bakery by four-thirty every morning left her no time to do anything but throw on some clothes and put on her makeup.

  “Damn!” Swearing softly, she quickly changed out of her dating finery into jeans and a T-shirt. Then she flipped on lights as she moved from one room to another, making her way through the house as she collected the trash.

  Sitting in the darkness on his front porch, Turk watched the lights go on and off, room by room, in Rachel’s house. What the heck was she doing? he wondered. He’d watched her leave earlier and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since. She’d been dressed for trouble when she’d left, and he’d taken one look at her and forgotten to breathe. Did the woman know how hot she was? Or what trouble she could get into dressed in that sexy top?

  He’d been worrying about her ever since she left, looking out the front windows to see if she was back again, watching the clock. Irritated with himself, he’d finally gone out on the front porch to wait for her, just like an overanxious father waiting on a teenage daughter out on the town for the first time. And that irritated the hell out of him. What was wrong with him? He hardly knew her, damn it!