Just What the Doctor Ordered
Page 1
“Whatever happened in your past has nearly destroyed the man inside the doctor’s coat.
Letter to Reader
Title Page
Dedication
Books by Leigh Greenwood
LEIGH GREENWOOD
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Copyright
“Whatever happened in your past has nearly destroyed the man inside the doctor’s coat.
“I say nearly,” Liz continued. “Little bits and pieces have survived. Enough for everybody in Iron Springs to like you. Enough for my two children to think you’re the best thing that’s happened to them.”
Liz turned and hurried inside. She knew she shouldn’t have gotten so personal with Matt. But it irked her to see him intentionally cutting himself off from every human emotion.
Besides, he did care. It showed in the way he treated his patients. He might call it good medicine. She called it caring.
And much to her dismay, she’d started to care about Matt. She hardly knew the man, yet somehow she knew he was most like his real self when he was with her kids—and that Matt had enough heart and soul for any woman.
Dear Reader,
Special Edition welcomes you to a brand-new year of romance! As always, we are committed to providing you with captivating love stories that will take your breath away.
This January, Lisa Jackson wraps up her engrossing FOREVER FAMILY miniseries with A Family Kind of Wedding. THAT SPECIAL WOMAN! Katie Kinkaid has her hands full being an ace reporter—and a full-time mom. But when a sexy, mysterious Texas rancher crosses her path, her life changes forever!
In these next three stories, love conquers all. First, a twist of fate brings an adorably insecure heroine face-to-face with the reclusive millionaire of her dreams in bestselling author Susan Mallery’s emotional love story, The Millionaire Bachelor. Next, Ginna Gray continues her popular series, THE BLAINES AND THE McCALLS OF CROCKETT, TEXAS, with Meant for Each Other. In this poignant story, Dr. Mike McCall heroically saves a life and wins the heart of an alluring colleague in the process. And onetime teenage sweethearts march down the wedding aisle in I Take This Man—Again! by Carole Halston.
Also this month, acclaimed historical author Leigh Greenwood debuts in Special Edition with Just What the Doctor Ordered—a heartwarming tale about a brooding doctor finding his heart in a remote mountain community. Finally, in Prenuptial Agreement by Doris Rangel, a rugged rancher marries for his son’s sake, but he’s about to fall in love for real....
I hope you enjoy January’s selections. We wish you all the best for a happy new year!
Sincerely,
Karen Taylor Richman
Senior Editor
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LEIGH GREENWOOD
JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED
To my father,
who didn’t live to see that first book.
Boy, would he be surprised at what’s happened since then.
Books by Leigh Greenwood
Silhouette Special Edition
Just What the Doctor Ordered #1223
LEIGH GREENWOOD
has authored twenty historical romances and debuts in Silhouette Special Edition with Just What the Doctor Ordered The proud parent of three children ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-four, Leigh lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can write to Leigh Greenwood at P.O. Box 470761, Charlotte, NC 28226. A SASE would be appreciated.
Chapter One
Dr. Matt Dennis could barely hear Rod Stewart above the moaning of his 1980 Ford Fairmont station wagon as it labored up the steep mountain grade. He snapped off the tape player. The air-conditioning had ceased to work as the overtaxed engine gave its all to climb the twisting, narrow road through Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains. Matt glanced down at the dashboard controls. The temperature gauge wasn’t in the danger zone. Yet. It was crucial the station wagon not overheat. Or blow a gasket. He wouldn’t have any money for repairs until he got his first check, at least a month from now.
The scenery was completely unlike Gull’s Landing on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, where he’d grown up. He was unused to mountains that rose five hundred feet into the air, or chasms that dropped a thousand feet. Instead of gnarled sea oaks and scrub pine, the narrow, two-lane road wound its way through a forest of oak, hickory, walnut, cedar, maple and more kinds of pine trees than he ever knew existed.
But the mountain was just as devoid of human life as the flat, sandy, windswept peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay where he spent his childhood, shuffled from one foster home to another, living with many families, belonging to none.
Matt shoved his finger inside his collar and prayed for a flat piece of road to ease the strain on the engine so the air conditioner would kick back in, but all he got was another hairpin curve and more road that seemed to climb the mountain at a forty-five-degree angle.
Suddenly the ascent flattened out. The engine stopped groaning. Gradually the temperature inside the station wagon dropped. Matt hadn’t grown up with air-conditioning. Even in the eighties, people in Gull’s Landing did without it. He could remember sweltering summers when the humidity competed with the temperature to see which could go higher. He had gotten used to air-conditioning in medical school. That’s where he started wearing a suit and tie. He liked it. It was his image of what a doctor should be, of what he wanted to be.
Without warning, Matt’s battered station wagon plunged down the other side of the mountain, the grade as steep as the one coming up. As he skidded around the first hairpin curve, his right rear tire spewed gravel into the treetops below. All that stood between him and an airborne trip to eternity was a pair of worn brake shoes. He wished he’d taken Dr. Andrews’s advice and had them replaced before he left Charlottesville.
Matt took another curve to the accompaniment of grinding brakes and squealing tires. He’d have given his whole first month’s salary for a guardrail. Perspiration that had nothing to do with heat popped out on his forehead. He whipped the wheel around to negotiate a third curve, felt his tires bump over a rock as he skidded dangerously close to the edge.
He might not live to reach the damned clinic.
A few minutes later, the road turned abruptly, crossed a stream and flattened out. Matt’s pulse gradually returned to normal as he drove down a narrow hollow that lay between ridges rising several hundred feet. Nowhere did he see any sign of recent life, only overgrown driveways, vine-covered, decaying houses and barns long abandoned, fence rails sagging or broken. Trees crowded the narrow road, their leaves blocking out the sunlight, their roots cracking the pavement. Even the moist, cool air seemed green and moss covered.
He wouldn’t be going through any of this if he hadn’t been in the way of Dr. Reichenbach’s favorite nephew getting appointed to a plum residency position. The committee decided Matt needed more one-on-one experience. Then a week ago the doctor assigned to Iron Springs got married and backed out, and Dr
. Reichenbach had Matt’s assignment changed to this hellhole deep in the mountains. Matt would have enjoyed breaking Dr. Reichenbach’s neck just above the cervical vertebrae. He was furious over being sucked back to a small rural community, everything he’d tried to escape.
The road meandered through a narrow valley alongside an empty meadow, past a sign that told him Iron Springs was two miles ahead. Where? On top of the next mountain? The road had begun to climb again.
He didn’t intend to stay more than a week. A month at most. His mentor, Dr. Andrews, had assured Matt he’d have him back in Charlottesville inside two weeks. The things Dr. Andrews said about Dr. Reichenbach were exceeded only by what he said about Dr. Reichenbach’s nephew.
Matt negotiated a curve and a sharp dip in the road, crossed another stream—probably the same one he’d crossed twice already—and entered another belt of trees. About a hundred feet later, he emerged to see the first occupied house since starting up the mountain fifteen miles back.
Slowing to the required fifteen miles per hour, Matt crept down Iron Springs’s main street. Its only street. All the houses were white-shingled, two-story bungalows set about thirty feet from the road. None of them were numbered. How the hell was he supposed to find anybody in this place?
He pulled his station wagon to a stop under an oak that must have been around when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. He opened the door, and heat and humidity clamped down on him like a mask. The air felt thick and spongy, too dense to be drawn into his lungs.
He crossed the road to the tiny store that declared itself to be Hannah’s Drugs. A rusty, antiquated gas pump next to the building and a shiny, modern soft-drink machine on the porch stood in stark contrast to one another. The wooden steps up to the tilted porch sagged under his weight. The weathered floorboards squeaked at each footstep. The door was propped open with a ladder-back chair. A sagging, wood-framed screen door hopefully kept the flies out.
Matt removed his sunglasses before he stepped inside. The tiny store appeared to be a drugstore, general store, post office and tourist trap all at once. Aisles almost too narrow to allow passage separated black metal racks bent under the weight of junk food, T-shirts and motor oil. A modern, glass-fronted refrigerator containing everything from milk to beer stood next to an ancient cooler filled with soft drinks submerged in ice water. An air conditioner rumbled somewhere behind the banks of merchandise.
“Could you tell me where I can find Mrs. Elizabeth Rawlins?” he asked the woman behind the counter.
She was short, stout, on the far side of fifty, her short gray hair mostly hidden under an Atlanta Braves baseball cap. Small, clear gray eyes returned his gaze. “What would you be wanting Liz for?”
Matt was a little startled. He wasn’t used to people asking his business. “I’ve rented her rooms.”
“Are you the new doctor?”
“Yes.”
She stepped out from behind the counter, brazenly inspecting him, front and back, before breaking into a broad grin. “Liz sure will be surprised to find you on her doorstep.”
Matt had been undressed by women before, both with their eyes and their hands, but never so blatantly by a woman probably old enough to be his grandmother.
“I’ll wager that passel of women up at the hotel will soon be coming down with all sorts of complaints. Artists, you know. No morals at all. They’ll be on you like chickens on a June bug. The men aren’t as pushy as the women, but you’ll want to watch out for them, too. No good getting that kind of reputation. You got yourself a wife?”
Matt never discussed his personal life with anyone, certainly not a stranger. “No.”
“Too bad. You might as well put up a sign declaring open season. Oh, well, I expect Sadie and Salome will hold them off. Be careful how you say her name,” she warned. “It’s Sa-low-me, not like that harlot in the Bible. The boys used to call her that just to tease her. They stopped it after she broke Shamus Birdbright’s arm. She doesn’t look to be that strong, but she’ll fool you. You been to the clinic yet?”
“I just got here,” Matt replied, dazed by the unstinted flow of information.
“So that’s why you’re looking at me like you’re simpleminded. Stay in your office. Leave them to Salome.”
“Just tell me how to find Mrs. Rawlins,” Matt said, feeling an urgent need for fresh air. No one had ever called him simpleminded.
“Third house on the right as you head out of town,” said a man who’d been leaning on the counter. He looked to be at least a hundred, thin as dental floss, his head covered with a battered brown hat. He wore creaseless brown pants and a faded blue shirt of coarse material. His face was brown and deeply wrinkled. “That gal is pretty as a sixteen-pig litter. Don’t know why she came back here. She could catch any man she wanted.”
“Be quiet, Solomon. I won’t have you talking about Liz like that.”
“It’s God’s own truth.”
“Maybe so, but she’s had troubles enough without an old coot like you telling everything you know and some you don’t.”
Solomon cackled. “Go see for yourself, young man. Something’s wrong with you if a good look don’t make you randy as a billy goat.”
“Solomon Trinket, you get on out of my store.”
“Don’t you order me about, Hannah Coleman.”
Solomon pushed off the counter. He gave Matt nearly as thorough an inspection as Hannah had. “A hot-blooded young man like you is bound to cause trouble,” he said as he shuffled toward the door. “You keep your pants zipped, or some husband’s liable to come after you with a shotgun.”
“Go on with you,” Hannah said, practically shoving Solomon out the door. “Don’t seem right for your mind to be taken up with such wickedness and you a great-grandfather.”
Thoughts of escape filled Matt’s mind. If he had believed his car could have made it back over the mountain without blowing up, he’d have tried. “Thanks for your help,” he mumbled to Hannah before hurrying outside.
“You come back,” she called after him. “I’m open from ten till ten with an hour off for lunch.”
Matt was relieved to see old Solomon was not heading in his direction. He didn’t think he was up to another brutally frank conversation about his appearance, his sexual appetite or the reaction of the male population to his expected pursuit of their wives and daughters. Matt was no different from any other healthy man of thirty, but he knew better than to get involved with a woman in a small rural community.
He got in his car and pulled onto the empty road. The third house was white, like all the others, but it proved to be considerably larger with a porch on three sides. Avoiding a large pothole that still contained rainwater, Matt pulled to a stop in the unpaved driveway. He wondered if Liz Rawlins was as outspoken as everybody else he’d met.
Liz stood at the kitchen counter, shelling some late English peas. Zip! She tore the green string off the spine of a pea. Her thumb pushed through the hull, sending peas bouncing into the pan. While her right hand discarded the empty shell, her left reached for a fresh pea.
Liz could remember her mother standing in the same spot, doing the same thing, when Liz was a little girl. Her father had died when she was seven. Her mother hung pictures of him in every room. She said he was watching Liz, that she would never be alone. When she grew older, Liz realized the pictures were more for her mother than for herself.
Liz loved her home. Even growing up, longing to get away from the stifling confinement of a small mountain town, she had always imagined herself living in a house like this. Its polished oak floors and faded rugs were as dear to her as the tin roof and windows that stuck when it rained. She never climbed the stairs without remembering sleeping in the rope bed her grandfather had made out of a hickory tree a storm blew over onto the back porch.
Liz washed the peas and put them into small plastic bags. They would soon be joined in the freezer by other packages of vegetables from the garden. She believed vegetab
les were good for growing children.
Liz threw out the pea hulls, dried and put away her pan and headed upstairs. She wanted to make sure the rented rooms were ready. Her new boarder, Dr. Jane Lumas, would be arriving today. Liz didn’t mind renting her rooms. She liked the company, and she needed the money for her kids’ college fund. They were only three and four, but those days would come sooner than she wanted.
“Mama, there’s a car in the yard,” Rebecca called from the front hall.
Liz came to the top of the stairway.
Rebecca had her nose pressed against the screen. “It’s a man I never saw before.”
“Get away from the door,” Liz called as she headed down the stairs. “It’s rude to stare.”
Ben, wearing nothing but training pants, ran to the door, chubby legs churning so fast he careened into his sister. When Liz reached the door, he pointed at a man getting out of his car. “Big man,” he announced proudly.
Liz picked up her son and looked out. She was surprised to see the man was wearing a suit. It was rare for anyone in Iron Springs to wear a white shirt or tie, especially in the summer.
She hardly had time to settle her wiggling son on her hip before the stranger climbed her steps and was at the door, looking at her with big brown eyes.
“Are you the lady with the rooms for rent?” he asked.
Liz liked the sound of his voice. It was soft, easy, comforting.
“Sorry. My rooms are already taken.”
His look turned to annoyance.