“I’m Matt Dennis, the new doctor at the clinic,” he said. “I was told the county had rented your rooms for me.”
Liz’s casual curiosity turned to unpleasant shock. “But I was expecting a woman.”
“She got married. I was appointed at the last minute.”
“You can’t stay here. I’m a single woman.”
“I have to stay somewhere.”
“Try the hotel.” She stepped out onto the porch. Ben wiggled out of her arms. “It’s at the end of the road on the left. You can’t miss it.”
Matt shifted his gaze to Ben and Rebecca, who peered up at him from either side of their mother. He smiled. Ben promptly tried to hide behind Liz. Rebecca timidly smiled back.
“Looks to me like you’ve got a full bodyguard.” He indicated the children.
“Who man?” Ben asked.
“He’s a doctor,” Liz said.
“Who doctor?”
“He sticks you with a needle,” Rebecca informed her brother.
That effectively dried up Ben’s curiosity.
The doctor looked at the children with a softened gaze. “Do you take them to the clinic?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll look forward to seeing them.” He tousled Rebecca’s blond hair. “Probably not very often. They look remarkably healthy.”
“Will you give Ben a shot?” Rebecca asked.
“Maybe.”
“He’ll cry.”
Matt knelt down in front of Ben. “Do you cry?”
Her son looked a little scared. He reached for a handful of her skirt. “I don’t like shots. They bite.”
“I promise I won’t let the needle bite you.” He poked Ben’s stomach with his finger. The boy giggled.
The doctor stood up. Liz watched him change back into the frowning man who resented her preference for female boarders. “It won’t be for long,” he said. “I was assigned by mistake. I ought to be gone in a week or two.”
She was caught. She didn’t want a strange man in her house, but the health department had reserved her rooms for the clinic doctor. She’d already put the money into the kids’ accounts. With a fatalistic sigh of acceptance, she opened the screen door and stepped inside.
“You’d better have a look at the rooms before you decide. They’re at the top of the stairs. There’s a bedroom, a sitting room and a private bath,” she explained, leading the way up the wide stairs. A carpet with faded floral design muffled their footsteps. “Unfortunately you can only enter the bathroom from the hall.”
They reached the wide hall at the top of the stairs. Windows in the front and back guaranteed a breeze and plenty of light. She opened the first door on the left.
“This is the sitting room.”
It was a large, airy room with a low ceiling. Cream curtains, wine-colored carpet and floral-print slipcovers made it look like a room for a woman, which she had meant it to be. “The rooms come with meals. Three on weekdays, breakfast and lunch on Saturday and supper on Sunday.”
“Do you rent those rooms, as well?” Matt asked, indicating the two doors across the hall.
“They’re the children’s bedrooms.”
Everything about him changed, his posture, his expression, the tone of his voice.
“I need complete privacy.”
“You’ll have plenty,” Liz said. “I come up only to clean.”
“It won’t work,” Matt said. “Can you tell me where I can find some other rooms?”
She couldn’t help but feel annoyed with him. She’d bent over backward to be obliging. He repaid her by being stiff-necked and obstinate. “I don’t know of any, but you can ask Dr. Evans.”
“Where would I find him?”
“At the clinic.”
He looked as though his patience was just about gone. “Where do I find the clinic?”
“Take the road past Hannah’s store. The clinic’s on the left, about a quarter of a mile. You can’t miss it. It’s the only road going south out of town.”
“I’ve already noticed the scarcity of escape routes.”
Liz bit her tongue to keep from returning a rude reply. She followed as he almost ran down the steps, watched him hurry down the walk with a ground-eating stride. She reentered the house and locked the screen door, started toward the kitchen.
“Is he going to live here?” Rebecca asked as she hopped down the hall on one foot ahead of Liz.
“No,” she replied.
“I like man,” Ben said, pointing at Dr. Dennis’s retreating form. “Want apple.”
“How about a banana instead?” Liz followed them into the kitchen. She put Ben in his high chair, sliced half a banana on a plate and set it in front of him. Rebecca ate her half from the peeling.
Liz sat down at the kitchen table. After her last boarder left, she had agreed to hold her rooms for the new doctor only because she’d been assured she would be a single woman. Matt was clearly not a woman, and unless she was badly mistaken, he wouldn’t find any other rooms.
The phone rang. She wasn’t surprised to find it was Hannah. She knew everything at least five minutes before anyone else.
“Yes, he arrived.... Yes, I did notice he wasn’t a woman. It would be hard not to since he’s the best-looking man I’ve seen all summer.... You didn’t tell him that, did you? Amos will have your head. You know he loves his artists best of all.... Oh, no! Not even Solomon would say something like that!.... Good Lord, no wonder he looked like he thought I might bite him. You tell Solomon I’m going to give him a black eye.... No, he’s not going to stay here.... I have no idea where he means to stay, but he’s gone to the clinic. You can be sure Salome will know if anybody does.... He’s a grown man. I imagine he can take care of himself.... I’ve got to go, Hannah. It’s time for the children’s nap.”
She hung up. Nobody would have to worry about Matt Dennis. He wouldn’t be around long enough for that.
Matt put the key in the ignition. Solomon Trinket was right. Liz Rawlins was a damned fine-looking woman, but he’d seen prettier, certainly more sophisticated. She had met him at the door wearing a low-necked blouse and a tight jean skirt, her thick blond hair in a ponytail. A redneck yuppie—that was his first thought, but her bare feet didn’t fit the image. She should have been wearing some fancy jogging shoes, at least white socks and tennis shoes.
Matt started the engine. Remembering to avoid the pothole, he backed into the road. The less he saw of Liz, the better. Redneck or yuppie, he sensed she was the kind of woman who could work her way into a man’s dreams. When that happened, wedding bells threatened. Matt had sworn wedding bells would never ring for him.
Chapter Two
The Shenandoah County Medical Clinic was a long, low, cinder-block building situated on the edge of a meadow. Brown trim and maroon, plastic-covered furniture made the cramped waiting room look garish. Matt expected to find that the examining-room lights were fly-specked, sixty-watt bulbs suspended on wires from the ceiling. The young bleached blonde sitting behind the reception desk eyed him in what he could only describe as a predatory manner.
“You want something?” she asked, her bright orange fingernails drumming, on the counter. Matching lipstick clashed violently with her green eye shadow. “You don’t look like you need a doctor to me.” She accompanied that remark by a wiggling movement of her shoulders that thrust her breasts forward.
Matt had already noticed that particular attribute. And that her uniform was at least two sizes too small. “I’m Matt Dennis.”
“So?”
She clearly wasn’t impressed. “I’m the new doctor,” he said, hoping for a more positive response.
“You must have the wrong clinic. We’re expecting a lady doctor.”
“She got married. They sent me instead.”
A squeal beyond his ability to describe escaped those orange lips. She turned and yelled down the hall behind her, “Sadie, get your behind out here this minute! You won’t believe the hunk who’s going to be
our new doctor. Those women up at the hotel will go ape.”
Matt heard the soft squishing sound of crepe soles.
“Salome Halfacre, if anybody from the health office ever hears you talk like that, they’ll fire you in a...” Her voice trailed off. “I’m Sadie Whiteside,” she said after a pause. “I’m the nurse. Salome is the receptionist.”
“How do you do? I’m Matt Dennis. Is Dr. Evans in?” Sadie was an improvement on Salome, but her faded blue sweater and pink knit slacks made her look too much like a civilian. He felt an urgent need to talk to somebody who looked like a professional.
“He’s been expecting you. Follow me.”
A wolf whistle echoed down the hall after him.
“Ignore Salome. She does a wonderful job on the desk, but she’s sure got a mouth on her.”
“I bet she’s related to Solomon Trinket,” Matt mumbled before he realized he was thinking out loud.
“His great-granddaughter,” Sadie said. “How did you guess?”
Deciding it would be best to keep his thoughts to himself, Matt silently followed Sadie into Dr. Evans’s office.
Dr. Evans didn’t fit Matt’s image, either. At least forty pounds overweight, he wore a yellow knit shirt open at the throat, shapeless blue slacks, and crepe-soled shoes. Cigarette butts spilled from an ashtray on his desk.
“How do you like your rooms?” Dr. Evans asked as soon as the introductions were completed and Matt had settled into a chair upholstered in cracked vinyl.
“I don’t,” Matt replied. “I was hoping you could help me find something else.”
“You won’t find any rooms within twenty miles,” Dr. Evans assured Matt. “It took me three months to find my house. The closest apartments are forty-five minutes away. Unless you’ve got a four-wheel drive, you’ll never get over that mountain in winter. If you stay at the hotel, you’ll have to pay for it out of your own pocket.”
Matt didn’t know which unsettled him more, the prospect of going back to Liz Rawlins’s, or of working every day with Salome Halfacre.
“I was hoping for more privacy.”
“There’s no such thing in Iron Springs. Everybody’s related to everybody else and knows everybody’s business. They’ll know yours before the week’s out.”
“I don’t expect to be here long. I’m only here because of a mix-up.”
“That may be how you got here,” Dr. Evans said, offering Matt a cigarette he refused, “but I’ll lay odds you’ll still be here this time next year. Know anything about the mountains?”
“No. I grew up on the Eastern Shore.”
Dr. Evans made a face. “You’ll like the people if you give yourself a chance to get to know them. Now, I suggest you hurry back to Liz’s and make your peace with her.”
“When are you leaving?”
“In two days. The moving van is at the house right aow.”
“Can’t I rent your house?”
“The landlady’s son is getting married. He’s already rushing me out.”
“May I use your phone?”
“Sure.”
Dr. Evans left the room, and Matt quickly dialed a number.
“Dr. Andrews? This is Matt. I don’t care what you do—promise them money, promise them my organ-donor card—but you’ve got to get me out of here.”
Liz swung slowly in a wooden swing suspended from the limb of an ancient oak. It was her favorite spot in the world. Behind her the yard ran down to a small creek that gurgled noisily in its rocky bed as it skirted the base of Spencer Mountain. Timber-covered slopes rose more than a thousand feet. Crisp air from its pine- and hardwood-covered flanks drifted down to cool hot, sultry summer days and nights. Liz remembered as a child spending the afternoon playing with her dolls under this oak. As a teenager, she had spent hours swinging and dreaming of what she would do when she grew up.
Maybe if her mother hadn’t died the summer between Liz’s freshman and sophomore years of college, she wouldn’t have fallen in love with David. Aunt Marian had tried to fill the void left by her parents’ deaths, but it was too big.
David had stepped right in.
It was flattering to have the attention of such a smart, handsome senior. She had tumbled into love in less than a week, had gone through that spring with her head in the clouds. She couldn’t blame him for her quitting school to support him while he got his MBA. She had suggested it.
Liz picked up her glass of fresh lemonade from the white-painted oak table her father had built around the trunk of the tree. She wondered how many glasses of lemonade she’d drunk under this tree since she left David. She’d spent the first three months here, swinging, trying not to think, trying to put her heart back together. The squeaking of the chain as she slowly swung back and forth, the sound of water rushing over the rocks after it rained on the mountain, the croaking of frogs when the creek was low and the water slowed to a trickle, the sounds of campers playing somewhere on the slopes, the rustling of leaves as they stirred in the breeze—they all helped to ease the pain, to dim the memories, to bring back some of the peacefulness she had known as a child. It had taken her two years to heal, but she had recovered. The town, the oak, her children had all done their part.
She saw Matt when he came around the side of the house, his gaze searching the lawn until he spied her. She stilled the swing as he crossed the rough grass toward her, his face set in a smile that said he was going to be pleasant if it killed him.
He reminded her so much of David it was unnerving. They both had the same coldness she had at first mistaken for confidence. Yet there was something different about Matt. The children liked him, and they never liked strangers. Then there was that buzz she’d felt standing close to him. She didn’t know what else to call it. It was like an adrenaline rush, a tingle of excitement.
“Dr. Evans tells me there aren’t any other rooms for rent this side of the mountain,” he said when he reached her.
Even though she knew she was going to let him have the rooms, she couldn’t resist tweaking his pride just a bit. “I didn’t think there were.”
“You’re going to gloat, aren’t you?”
“Maybe, but only a little.”
His smile was almost genuine, Liz thought. “I don’t expect to be here long. There was a mix-up in the assignments. In two weeks, you could be showing your rooms to a little old lady who only comes out to go to church.”
It was a good thing. She wouldn’t like feeling this way for a whole year. “I do have two children,” she reminded him.
“It’s hard to miss kids that cute.”
“They do talk, you know, and laugh and run.”
“And cry and scream occasionally, I imagine.”
His smile was positively dazzling. She’d have to be mush brained not to know he was oozing charm because he had nowhere else to lay his handsome head. She slid out of the swing. “Let me give you a hand.”
“I don’t have much.”
When they reached the station wagon, he opened the back. “You see before you everything I own.”
What she saw was at least a dozen boxes of books. She was amazed the car had made it up the mountain. “Don’t you have any clothes?”
“In the front seat.”
Everything else he owned was crammed into one suitcase and a clothes bag. It was comforting to know the doctor thought it more important to spend his money on medical books than on himself.
“I’ll take the bag,” she said. “I’ll leave you to wrestle with those books. What did you think of the clinic?” she asked as she started back to the house.
“It’s a disaster,” Matt said as he hefted a box of books to his shoulder. “Small, dingy rooms, no decent equipment, barely basic supplies. I don’t know how Evans put up with it.”
“The clinic mostly does family practice. Emergencies are sent to the hospital in Woodstock. It’s just twenty miles away.” She held the door open for him, then followed him up the stairs. “Was Salome at the clinic?”
“Yes. If she and a woman named Hannah are to be believed, the female artists at the hotel are man-eaters.”
Liz laughed, laid the suit bag down. “I’m afraid their reputation is well deserved.”
“Hannah said it was unfortunate I had no wife to protect me, but she seems to believe Salome—sorry, Sa-low-me—can hold them off.”
Liz laughed again. “Salome can handle just about anybody.”
She stood by the door while he unpacked the books and put them into piles. “How did you come to be here? Everybody’s going to want to know,” she said when he looked up at her, a chill in his gaze. “It’s easier to tell them right away and get it over with.”
She watched his expression harden.
“We’ve all known each other since birth,” she explained. “We’re hopelessly curious about any outsider.” She guessed that’s what he’d feel like the whole time he was here.
“I went to medical school on scholarship,” he told her as he resumed unpacking his books. “In exchange, I have to work for the public-health service for three years.”
She had intended to leave, but her curiosity was too great. “Tell me about your family.”
He had his back to her, reaching inside the box for another book. “That’s really no one’s business. It can’t possibly have any effect on my medical abilities.”
Liz flushed. The rebuke was deserved. She didn’t have to ask questions just because everybody else did. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to appear nosy.”
He turned, but his look wasn’t forgiving.
“I’ll leave you to your unpacking. Dinner’s at six. Let me know if you need anything.”
She walked back downstairs, scolding herself under her breath. She was just as bad as everybody else in town. There was no reason to let this strange reaction to his presence cause her to ask questions about things that didn’t concern her.
Matt thought the house was empty when he came downstairs. Then he heard sounds coming from the kitchen. He didn’t want to talk to Liz. He didn’t like her questions, but it was Liz herself who affected him. Her combination of lush maturity and country innocence didn’t fit into one of his neat categories. He didn’t trust the anomaly, but it intrigued him.
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