Finished eating, he retired his knife and fork and studied his mother quietly. Had he missed something? “You make it sound like you’re signing off from the job,” he observed.
Charlotte was quick to flash her son a reassuring smile. “Not by a long shot, but none of us know how long we have. Your father thought he was going to live forever, and it didn’t quite work out that way,” she noted sadly. “I wanted you to experience the feeling of making a real difference in someone’s life—sooner rather than later,” she emphasized. “These women and children at the shelter, they desperately need someone like you making them feel as if they matter.”
“Where’s this coming from, Mom?”
“From the heart,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation. “I just wanted to make sure you had one—a heart,” she said in case she’d lost him. “You’ve been too removed, too distant of late.”
“I’ve been busy,” he said pointedly.
Just because Bedford had one of the country’s lowest crime rates for a city of its size did not mean that all he ever got to see were cuts and bruises. Some of the things that came into the ER definitely challenged him as a doctor as well as a surgeon.
“I know,” Charlotte said soothingly. “But I didn’t want you to lose the common touch.”
“I never had the common touch, Mother,” Mitch reminded her. He made sure of that because something like that, the common touch, left him open to grieving over the lives that were lost on his operating table, had him grieving over the lives he couldn’t ultimately save.
He was a better doctor by keeping himself in check and removed.
But his mother obviously didn’t see it that way. “All right, then it’s high time that you developed it.”
Charlotte could see that her son didn’t look overly happy about the direction the conversation had taken and she didn’t want to irritate him to the point that he was rethinking his volunteer work altogether.
She glanced at the watch he’d given her three Christmases ago. The one she never took off except when she showered—it was her small way of keeping him close to her.
“Well,” she announced briskly, putting down her own fork beside her empty salad bowl, “I seem to have monopolized you for too long again. Looks like you need to get back to work, dear,” she said, tapping the face of her wristwatch.
Moving his chair back, Mitch dug into his pocket for his wallet.
Charlotte placed her hand on his arm, stopping him before he had a chance to pull the wallet out.
“No, this is my treat, dear,” she insisted. “I dragged you out of the hospital, the least I can do is pay for the privilege of seeing my only son for lunch.”
Mitch sighed. “You don’t have to pay for it and it’s not a ‘privilege,’ Mom,” he told her, trying to keep his voice down.
He didn’t want to draw any undue attention, but his mother could irritate him in a relatively short amount of time despite all of her good intentions.
Rather than back off, Charlotte affectionately laughed at her son and firmly held her ground. “Don’t argue with me, dear. I gave you life. Certain rights go along with that little parlor trick.”
She gathered her things together, intending on walking as far as the cashier with him. To make sure he wouldn’t attempt to make off with the bill and pay it, she held it in her hand.
“This was fun,” she told Mitch. “Maybe we can do this again soon.”
He was open to that. “Sure.” Mitch paused to kiss the top of his mother’s head. “Just without the interrogation this time.”
Charlotte paused, stopping just short of the cashier’s desk. “What interrogation?” she asked him innocently.
Mitch almost laughed out loud. “You are definitely going to have to work on your delivery, Mom. That was not at all convincing.”
She was in too deep to back down now, Charlotte thought. Besides, if she made any admissions, he would be within his rights to ask her more questions. She couldn’t answer any of those without throwing the plan in jeopardy.
So she said the only thing she could. She embraced ignorance. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Mitch merely grinned. If he’d had any doubts before, they were all gone now. His mother was engaged in something, something he would undoubtedly find annoying and which would, more than likely, add a severely complicating factor to his life. “Uh-huh.”
* * *
As he hurried back to the hospital and the remainder of his shift, it occurred to Mitch that there was a lot about his mother and the way she operated that unfortunately reminded him of the woman volunteering on a permanent basis at the shelter. The annoying one with the light blue eyes and the smart mouth that never seemed to stop moving.
Not that his mother and Melanie looked anything like one another, but there was something about his mother’s attitude that immediately made him think of Melanie—except that his mother was a lot kinder.
It wasn’t that Melanie wasn’t kind, he amended silently. Melanie was just somehow sharper. He guessed that was the best word to describe her attitude. Not that her mind was sharp but her tongue certainly was.
Parking his vehicle, he got out and then, as his last thoughts played back in his head, he stopped short just before he walked in through the hospital’s rear double doors.
What the hell was he doing, thinking about that woman’s attitude?
Or thinking about that woman, period?
Judging by the amount of vehicles he’d just passed in the rear parking lot, he had a full four hours ahead of him. That meant that there would be no downtime for him to think about the shelter or the woman who immediately popped up in his head the second his thoughts turned in that direction.
The time to think about the shelter, Mitch told himself, continuing to walk into the hospital, was when he was actually at the shelter.
The time to think about Melanie was never.
* * *
“Why do you do it?”
The question was directed to Melanie two days and five hours later.
He’d arrived at the shelter five hours ago, intending on staying roughly two hours this time around. He was immediately caught up with one patient after another. It seemed like being engulfed in an endless rushing stream. He quickly found out the reason why.
There were several new residents at the shelter. Among them were two little boys who, along with their mother, had been diagnosed with the most pronounced case of lice Mitch could ever remember not only seeing, but reading about.
Consequently, everyone had to be treated for lice as a preventative measure, even the ones who had no signs of it and loudly protested being subjected to both the exam and the harsh soap necessary to ensure that they would not be unwilling participants in the infestation.
The past five hours had been a nonstop flurry of activity and he’d reached a point where he felt it was never going to let up.
But it did.
And when it finally began to let up, Melanie momentarily vanished from his side. When he didn’t see her, Mitch just assumed that she’d gone to take a well deserved break, possibly even a quick nap, something he caught himself longing for.
So he was surprised when she’d returned a few minutes later with a tall travel mug filled with coffee. Melanie pressed the mug into his hands when he had just looked at her quizzically.
After taking a long, life-affirming mouthful and swallowing it, he began to feel a little more human. A second swallow had him looking very thoughtfully at Melanie.
Since the onslaught of children had let up, he’d allowed himself to sit down on the stripped exam table. She had proceeded to join him, sitting down, producing her own smaller mug of light coffee and silently taking a drink.
The question he’d addressed to her came after he felt, thanks to her, more like himself.
Thoughts of his conversation over lunch with his mother had prompted him to ask Melanie the simple question which, he knew, didn’t really have a simple answer.<
br />
Holding her mug in both hands, she looked at him a little uncertainly. “Excuse me?”
“Why do you do it?” he repeated. “Why do you come here day after day, ministering to these people the way you do?”
He knew it had to be draining—and she certainly wasn’t getting paid for this. He wanted to understand what motivated her to keep coming back.
“I guess the simple answer is that someone has to,” she replied in an offhand manner.
He wasn’t sure if he was buying that. “What’s the less simple answer?” Mitch asked. “Do you see this as some kind of penance?”
Her eyebrows drew together in a mystified line. “Penance?” she echoed, completely at a loss as to what he was really asking.
“Yes.” The notion stuck in his head and the more he thought about it, the more fitting it seemed to him. “You know, ‘I feel guilty because my life is so much better than theirs is so I need to do something to assuage that guilt I’m feeling.’”
Melanie looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. She wasn’t altogether sure that he hadn’t.
“I don’t feel guilt,” she said indignantly. “I feel compassion.” Taking a breath, she forced herself to calm down a bit. “Yes, I can pay my rent and I don’t worry where my next meal is coming from—at least, not at this point,” she interjected, thinking of her ever-shrinking bank account. Eventually, she would have to get back into the work force to resuscitate her earning power. “But I just want to help other people feel that there’s always hope, that they shouldn’t give up, not on life, not on themselves.”
She paused, looking at him. “Are you here because you feel some sort of guilt or need for atonement?” she asked, turning the tables on him. After all, why else would he have phrased his question like that if he wasn’t experiencing the same thing himself?
He should have realized that she would try to use what he asked to try to analyze him. “I’m here because it makes my mother happy.”
She waved her hand at what he’d just said. He was playing a game of smoke and mirrors, which was fine, except that he wanted true confessions from her while he wanted to maintain his aura of mystery.
“That’s just an excuse. You definitely don’t strike me as a mama’s boy.”
“Okay,” he said gamely, his curiosity aroused. “You seem like such an expert. Why am I here?”
“For the same reason I am,” she told him, referring to what she’d already told him was her reason for being here. “The only reason you won’t admit it is because you seem to think that saying so damages the image you have of yourself.” She shrugged, pausing for more coffee before adding, “Maybe it even makes you seem too human and for some reason, you want to see yourself—and have the world see you—as some kind of cold, distant robot.” Her eyes met his. “And you’re not.”
“What makes you so sure?”
She sat there beside him, drinking her coffee and lightly swinging her legs to and fro like a woman without a care in the world instead of one whom life had beaten down—or tried to.
Humor curved the corners of her mouth as she told him, “I can just tell.”
Mitch laughed shortly, shaking his head. “If you say so.”
It was meant to be dismissive. He was in no way prepared for the ambush that happened next.
Nor was he prepared for the reaction that occurred in its wake.
Chapter Seven
One moment Mitch was amused by this steamroller’s naive presumption that she felt she knew him better than he knew himself, the next he had turned his head in her direction at the same time that she had turned her face up to his.
For a fleeting moment, it made him think of a flower turning toward its source of light.
However he saw it or tried to describe it to himself, the bottom line was that somehow, their faces wound up being less than an inch away from each other.
Close enough for him to breathe in the breath that Melanie had just exhaled.
Close enough for him to share that same breath with her.
Close enough for their lips to almost touch.
And then they did touch.
To Mitch’s astonishment, there was no more space. There was just them.
If the fate of the world depended on his memory of how it had happened—whether he was the one to breach that infinitesimal space or if she was—he wouldn’t have been able to say.
All he knew was suddenly, there they were, with no gap at all between them. Not even enough to be able to slip in a straight pin.
He was kissing her and she was kissing him.
And after the surprise of that came an even greater surprise: his reaction to that entirely unplanned, unexpected event.
He wanted to keep on kissing her.
Not just keep on kissing her but he wanted to deepen that kiss until there was nothing of any consequence left beyond its heated boundaries.
He wanted to take her breath away because she had taken the very air out of his world, leaving him winded—and wanting more.
Had she slipped something into his coffee to make him feel like this? Or was he just that deprived, that isolated?
For the life of him, he didn’t know.
Code Red! Code Red!
His mind fairly shouted the alarm. In hospital-speak it meant that a fire was occurring in the facility—in this case inside of him—and it called for emergency measures to be taken immediately in order to ensure survival.
Which meant that if he intended to survive longer than the next couple of minutes, he was going to have to terminate contact.
Now.
Taking hold of Melanie’s slim shoulders—the woman felt far more delicate than he knew she was—he pushed her back, away from him while silently and simultaneously mourning the immediate loss of contact.
He could have sworn he still tasted her on his lips. Blueberries. How the hell did he taste blueberries lingering on his lips when she’d been drinking coffee, same as he?
It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.
Especially not his kissing her. He had so much more restraint than that. Or at least he had, until now.
“Thanks for the coffee,” he murmured, leaving the travel mug behind on the exam table. Clearing his throat, he told her, “Maybe next time it should have less of a kick.”
“Maybe,” Melanie heard herself say.
Or maybe she just thought she made a reply. The truth of it was, she was utterly stunned and more than a little dazed by what had just happened.
He’d kissed her.
Just like that, out of the blue.
She would have bet a million dollars—if she’d had a million dollars—that Mitch would have never even considered kissing her, much less doing it. And yet that was exactly what he’d done.
Her mind reeling, she tried to take stock and center herself. What had just happened here? And why? Was the world ending? Had something happened when she wasn’t paying attention and they all had barely five minutes to live?
What other explanation was there? Sure, they’d made eye contact on a few occasions, but that was a long way from lip contact, even if she’d felt something unsettling going on each time she was around him.
Get a grip, Mel, she ordered herself. Stop making such a big deal about it. It was just a kiss, less than nothing. People do it all the time.
Well, maybe people did it all the time, but she didn’t. Ever.
She hadn’t kissed another man, not since she was back in high school.
Jeremy had always been the one, there had never been any doubt in her mind. And now that he was no longer part of this life, well, she wasn’t interested in making another connection with the male of the species, not in that way at any rate.
Oh yeah? So who was that I saw kissing Dr. Forget-Me-Not just now?
Closing her eyes for a moment, Melanie sighed. She had no answer for the taunting voice in her head. No theory to put forth to satisfy her conscience and this sudden, unannounced wave of guilt th
at had just washed over her. She wasn’t even sure if the ground beneath her feet hadn’t disappeared altogether. She felt just that unsteady.
She’d stayed sitting down even after Mitch had left the room.
Damn it, the man kissed you, he didn’t perform a lobotomy on you with his tongue. Get a grip and get back to work. Life goes on, remember?
That was just the problem. Life went on. The love of her life had been taken away ten months ago and for some reason, life still went on.
Squaring her shoulders, she slid off the makeshift exam table, otherwise known in her mind as the scene of the crime, tested the steadiness of her legs and once that was established, left the room.
Whether Melanie liked it or not, there was still a lot of work to do and it wouldn’t get done by itself.
She had almost managed to talk herself into a neutral, rational place as she made her way past the dining hall which, when Mitch was here, still served as his unofficial waiting room. That was when she heard Mitch call out to her.
“Melanie, I need you.”
Everything inside of her completely froze.
It was the same outside. It was as if her legs, after working fine all these years, had suddenly forgotten how to move and take her from point A to point B.
She had to have heard him wrong.
The Dr. Mitchell Stewart she had come to know these past few weeks would have never uttered those words to anyone, least of all to her.
And would the Mitchell Stewart you think you know so well have singed off your lips like that?
Okay, so maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did, but still, he wouldn’t have said something like that to her, especially where someone else—anyone else—could have heard him say it.
Knowing she couldn’t afford to just ignore him and keep on walking, Melanie blinked and turned her head in his direction. She could feel her heart pounding like a jackhammer set on high.
“Excuse me?” she said in a raspy whisper, unable to produce anything louder out of her mouth at the moment no matter how hard she tried.
Dr. Forget-Me-Not (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 7