Was it her imagination, or was Mitch even sterner-looking right now than he had been at any other given time since she’d first met him?
“I’ve got to examine Mrs. Sanchez and Ms. Ames,” he told her matter-of-factly, indicating the two women who were standing behind him. “I need to have another woman present. Regulations,” he specified, looking no happier about having to ask her than she was to be asked. “Remember?”
“Oh.” Of course, how could she have been so stupid? He wasn’t telling her he needed her, he was telling her he needed her. “Yes. Of course,” she answered in a stilted voice, feeling like an idiot. “Ready when you are, Doctor.”
The problem was, Mitch thought as he walked past her to lead the way back to the makeshift exam room—the room where he had taken leave of his senses—he wasn’t ready at all.
Volunteering was definitely not working out the way he had been led to believe that it would. He needed to rethink a few things the first chance he got, Mitch promised himself.
* * *
“You look feverish, Melanie. Are you all right?” Theresa asked, peering at the younger woman’s face.
Concerned, the caterer walked away from the long tables where some of the people she’d brought with her were setting up, preparing to feed the shelter’s residents the tenderloin stew that she had whipped up in her catering kitchen before coming here.
She paused now in front of Melanie and studied her a little more closely.
“I’m fine,” Melanie protested, turning away self-consciously.
Even so, Theresa politely but firmly got in her way. Then, placing one hand on her shoulder to keep the younger woman from leaving, Theresa first touched the back of her hand to Melanie’s forehead, then fell back on the universal Mother’s Thermometer—she pressed her lips to Melanie’s forehead.
“I don’t know,” Theresa said thoughtfully. “Your forehead seems a little warm to me.”
Melanie supposed she should be grateful that the woman hadn’t attempted to take her pulse. It was still doing a drumroll more than an hour after the fact. Mitch might very well have healing hands, but at the same time, the man had a lethal mouth.
“I’ve been running around,” Melanie said evasively, doing her best to dismiss the other woman’s less than scientific findings.
“Are you sure that’s all it is? With everyone being in such close quarters here and all the little ones always coming down with colds, it’s all too easy to catch something.” She looked at Melanie knowingly. “Especially if you let yourself get run down.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Melanie promised, trying her best to politely disentangle herself from the woman and get away before there were any more questions, ones that could trip her up.
And then, the very next minute, that was exactly what happened. “Maybe you should have Dr. Mitch check you out, just to be sure,” Theresa suggested.
Melanie reacted before she could think to censor herself.
“No! I mean, no,” she said, uttering the word several decibels lower, “the doctor’s busy enough as it is seeing sick people. He doesn’t have time to waste on someone with imaginary symptoms.”
“Symptoms?” Theresa repeated with interest. “You didn’t mention symptoms. What sort of symptoms are you experiencing?”
Flustered, Melanie tried to remember what the woman had said to her initially. “What you told me—that I looked flushed.”
“I said feverish,” Theresa gently corrected, looking not unlike an elementary school teacher catching one of her favorite students in a lie.
“Right. Feverish,” Melanie repeated. “I meant feverish.”
And she was getting more so by the second, Melanie couldn’t help thinking. She was beginning to feel like a trapped hummingbird, desperately searching for an avenue of escape.
And getting nowhere.
Fast.
Taking Melanie’s hand in hers, Theresa gently tugged on it as she deliberately moved farther away from the dining area and its ensuing noise.
Once she felt they had secured more privacy, Theresa fixed the younger woman with a compassionate look. “Tell me what’s wrong, Melanie.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Melanie insisted.
She did her best to avoid the other woman’s eyes. It was hard enough avoiding the truth without having to do it while making eye contact, as well. Theresa’s eyes seemed to bore into her very soul.
And obviously, she discovered a moment later, she wasn’t very successful at avoiding making eye contact.
“Melanie, I’ve raised two children and been around a lot more in my time. Please believe me that I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you don’t lie very well at all. Now please, be honest,” Theresa implored. “Why do you suddenly look like a deer caught out in the open on the first day of hunting season?”
Melanie wanted to tell the woman that it was just her imagination. That there was nothing wrong and that she was most certainly not lying.
But she was lying and furthermore, she knew that she had no gift for it. To insist otherwise to Theresa would be insulting someone she liked as well as painting herself in a very bad light. Which was what she told her.
Or tried to.
“I—we—this is, he—he kissed me,” Melanie finally managed to get out. To her ear, her own words sounded almost garbled.
“He?” Theresa asked, praying she wasn’t jumping to conclusions. The last time she’d observed him—from a distance—while he was working, the exceptionally handsome doctor with the chiseled features behaved as if he had a heart to match...it was just under lock and key.
But keys could be used to open locks.
“Dr. Mitch.” Melanie had to practically force the words out of her mouth.
“Oh, he,” Theresa said, more pleased than she could remember being in a long, long time. “That he,” she added just for good measure. And then she looked at Melanie a little more closely still. The young woman was obviously distressed. Disappointment descended over her like dark, heavy humidity from a hovering rain cloud.
“Was he that bad, dear?” she asked.
Guilt was pricking at her conscience since she was partially responsible for having orchestrated what was beginning to appear to be a disaster.
“No,” Melanie replied, her voice sounding even more sorrowful than before, “he was that good.”
Theresa’s eyebrows knitted together in apparent complete confusion. Putting her arm around Melanie’s shoulders, Theresa drew her even farther away from the dining area to an alcove that despite its rather open appearance, was still off to the side and away from general traffic.
“Forgive me for saying this, but at least in my day, when a young man kissed well, it was a thing to celebrate, however quietly, not bemoan,” she added knowingly. “You look as if someone had just told you that a flash flood was imminent and then they tied lead weights to your ankles.”
She might as well tell the woman the whole story so Theresa could at least understand why she was acting so upset.
“He kisses better than anything I’ve ever experienced,” Melanie reluctantly admitted. “It’s just that...” She knew she had to seem stupid to the other woman. “It’s just that...”
Her voice trailed off. Melanie just couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence.
So Theresa finished it for her. “It’s just that you feel disloyal to your late fiancé because you’re feeling this way.”
“Yes!” The word rushed out on its own power and once it was out, Melanie was almost relieved. But she wasn’t accustomed to being so open about her feelings. “I mean, no.”
“Do you?” Theresa gave her a penetrating look.
“No.” Melanie sighed. Against her will, she told Theresa the reason behind her reaction. “That part of my life is over. I don’t want to feel anything for another man.”
Theresa was nothing if not understanding. She knew exactly what Melanie was experiencing—and she knew exactly why that was wrong at
this stage of her life.
“Dear, you’re young with your whole life ahead of you. You’re not dead and Jeremy wouldn’t have wanted you to behave as if you were,” she argued.
Melanie stared at her, stunned. Not only had the woman hit it exactly on the head, she had also called her fiancé by his name. A name she had never mentioned to Theresa.
“How did you...?”
Theresa’s smile effectively swept the pending question under the rug, to be disposed of at a later, more convenient date. Right now she needed to keep Melanie and the good doctor together.
“I have friends with connections,” she told Melanie. “I ask questions about people I care about.” She smiled at her. “You are a very good person, Melanie. You’re selfless and you’re always giving of yourself. Tell you what,” she proposed, lowering her voice as if the two of them were planning some sort of necessary, secret invasion. “Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you give yourself permission to be happy? After all the good you’ve done here, you deserve to get a little happiness in return.”
She gave Melanie a quick squeeze to seal the suggestion.
It was getting closer to dinnertime and Theresa knew she had to be getting back to oversee things. Her crew, as well as the regular volunteers here, were perfectly capable of handling things on their own, but she liked to think that she helped facilitate things a little.
“Trust me. I’m older. I’m right about this,” the woman added with a wink. “And by the way, I intend to follow up on this, so get back to me,” she instructed Melanie.
Melanie had no doubts that Theresa meant what she said about following up. Which was why the butterflies began dive-bombing with a vengeance in the pit of her stomach.
Chapter Eight
Thanks to several new people who had come to the shelter since his last visit, the rest of Mitch’s afternoon was, for the most part, one new patient after another. The time was completely taken up with exams. So much so that despite the fact that he was working beside Melanie, no words were exchanged between them other than the necessary ones involving the patients.
It seemed like an endless shuffle of people with a few of the established patients mixed in. No sooner did one patient exit the tiny makeshift exam room than another entered, leaving absolutely no time for idle chatter, much less an awkwardly tendered apology on his part.
Mitch still wasn’t sure if he had initiated what had happened between them, but if he’d learned one thing from listening to others talk, it was always the man’s fault. It was far easier to accept blame than to contest it.
And easier still if he bowed out from the shelter altogether, he couldn’t help thinking as he went home that evening. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have withdrawn his participation in the volunteer program without any qualms. But something had changed his perspective in the past few weeks. He’d always been a conscientious doctor in general. After coming here sometimes several times a week, he had, almost without actually realizing it, developed a sense of responsibility toward these people.
As a general surgeon, he rarely saw patients more than three, sometimes four times. Pre-and post-op, and of course, the day of the surgery. Once in a rare while, there were two post-op visits. Terminating his association with the shelter would leave the residents at the shelter in a bad way, at least temporarily. He knew he wouldn’t feel right about it unless he found someone to take his place. So that had to become his next order of business.
It might be the next order of business but that didn’t mean that it was going to be easy for him. He didn’t interact with the other physicians at his hospital in that kind of manner. While he was always up for consultations and was ready with a second opinion if asked, Mitch didn’t really socialize. He no longer attended hospital fund raisers and he didn’t attend any smaller, more private parties. He didn’t go out after a shift for a friendly drink. He didn’t even go out for lunch with any of them, preferring to eat alone while he caught up on whatever else might need his attention at the time. He was accustomed to multitasking, not maintaining interpersonal relationships.
So how would he go about finding out if anyone would be willing to take his place at the shelter? Mitch wondered. And yet, if he wanted to ease himself out of the arrangement he’d made with the shelter, that was exactly what he was going to have to do.
* * *
He still hadn’t come up with a solution by his next visit to the shelter. Abhorring awkward encounters, he decided to grab the bull by its proverbial horns and sought Melanie out before getting started with the scheduled exams for the afternoon.
But Melanie didn’t seem to be around. It figured, he thought, getting his lab coat out of the closet. At the hospital, he tended to wear suits when consulting with patients and scrubs when operating on them. Here, the director had told him, the sight of a lab coat inspired a feeling of well-being. Though he believed it silly, he went along with it anyway.
“We need to talk,” Melanie said, seemingly materializing out of thin air as she came up behind him.
Startled, he swung around. Damn, but she moved quietly. He didn’t like being caught off guard. The next moment, he managed to collect himself.
Mitch crisply told her, “No, we don’t.” He’d just passed several women who’d said they needed to see him about one matter or another, and this convinced him that this wasn’t the time or place to discuss his momentary lapse of judgment.
“Yes, we do,” Melanie insisted.
She had spent the past two days agonizing over this moment. Despite her conversation with Theresa, she’d decided that she needed to nip this—whatever “this” turned out to be—in the bud. She didn’t want that kiss, fantastic though it was, to lead to anything else between them—or to have him think that she expected it to lead to something else. She wanted it to be perfectly clear that she didn’t want it leading to something else.
Ever.
“Look, if this is about the other day in the exam room—”
“It is,” she interjected.
“Then there’s no need to talk about it,” he told her firmly.
Just as firmly, she said, “I disagree.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he asked, more of himself than of her. Thoughts about being chivalrous and accepting the blame evaporated. He just wanted her to agree to stop talking about it until another, more suitable time. “Look—”
She was sure that he was probably accustomed to charming his way through everything. He was handsome, he was successful in his field and undoubtedly used to winning, but she was not about to have him believing that there was a casual fling in the offing. There was no fling about to be flung, casual or otherwise.
“No, you look,” she retorted forcefully. “I want to go on working here—I need to go on working here,” she emphasized with feeling. “And the shelter definitely needs you to continue volunteering your time here. That’s not going to work out if we’re feeling self-conscious around one another—and that’s not going to go away until we clear the air about expectations.”
“Melanie,” he began, trying to get in a word edgewise to let her know that he didn’t have any expectations and if she did, well then he was very sorry about that but he in no way wanted her to believe that he was about to come through in that department, no matter what her expectations were.
But Melanie continued as if he hadn’t made any attempt to curtail the conversation, hadn’t said anything at all.
“There can’t be any expectations,” she informed him quietly.
The rebuttal he was forming in his mind came to an abrupt, skidding halt. Mitch stared at her, stunned. “What?”
“No expectations,” she repeated. “I’m sorry if it seemed as if I was open to something happening between us, but I’m not and I don’t want you worrying that this was going to blow up somewhere along the line because there isn’t going to be anything to blow up. If I gave you the impression that there was going to be anything like that, that there was som
ething between us, I’m really very sorry.”
Listening to her, Mitch was both relieved—and just a little puzzled. Melanie was saying exactly what he had hoped for—that the moment of indulgence carried no consequences with it. He should have been pleased and immensely thankful.
And yet...
And yet he couldn’t help being puzzled as to what would have prompted her to say something like that. Was there something about him that she found off-putting? Yet, ultimately this was what he wanted—so why did he find it so disturbing that she was, in essence, rejecting him?
He was pushing himself too hard. This was what happened when he overextended himself. He started making no sense at all.
“It’s fine,” he told her in a tone that said just the opposite.
It prompted her concern. Guilt, Melanie had discovered, was never very far away these days. She’d hurt his feelings or his ego, she wasn’t sure which. Possibly both and she hadn’t wanted to do either. She took another stab at an explanation and trying to make things right.
“It was a moment of weakness and I’m not sure why it happened, all I know is that I don’t want anything like that in my life anymore.” This was coming out all wrong. “I mean—”
“Anymore?”
That had been an unfortunate slip of the tongue, Melanie silently upbraided herself. At this point, she felt that the more she talked, the worse it was going to get.
“Never mind,” Melanie said with finality, hoping to bury the subject altogether. “You have a lot of patients to see.”
So now she was telling him his job? “I am aware of that,” he retorted coolly.
“Good, then we’re on the same page.”
Not hardly, Mitch thought as he finally put on the white lab coat he’d gotten out of the closet what seemed like eons ago.
He had no time to wonder about what Melanie had said because the moment he slipped on his lab coat, there was a quick knock on the door frame and his first patient came in.
By now, he was familiar with all their faces, if not their names. But this patient was even more familiar than the others. The first patient of his afternoon was April O’Neill.
Dr. Forget-Me-Not (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 8