by Caro Carson
He downed the milk in a few gulps. With his head thrown back and the carton at his lips, his thirst seemed almost carnal to Kendry. She watched him, feeling that schoolgirl crush mature into something more physical.
And equally hopeless. Be happy that he’s your friend. Don’t wish for more.
Without standing, Jamie pitched the empty carton and the naked Popsicle stick into the nearest trash can. Then he angled himself toward her, stretching his arm across the back of the bench. “How about you? Would you like to be an E.R. doctor after tonight?”
“I really want to be a nurse. I’m more about the patient care than I am about the diagnosing.”
“Would you want to be an E.R. nurse, then?”
Kendry turned away to better see the rain coming down beyond the overhang. Better to keep a few inches between her back and his hand. “I have a long time left to decide.” She ducked her chin a bit, then slid him a glance. With a grin, she confessed, “But I was kind of loving that adrenaline in there tonight.”
Jamie laughed. “I knew you were. You’re either cut out for it or you’re not. You’ve got what it takes.”
His praise made Kendry want to burst with pride, but she tried to play it casual, crossing her arms over her chest and shrugging. “I’ve also got what it takes to fall asleep on a playroom floor with your son.”
“I’ve got that, too.”
They both laughed, and then Jamie placed his warm hand very firmly on her shoulder. This was no casual brushing of body parts. He was touching her on purpose, laughing with her.
Don’t wish for more.
“Kendry, don’t you see it? What a good pair we are?”
“We...” The sound of the rain was nearly drowned out by the sudden buzzing in her head. “We are?”
“In the middle of all this adrenaline, you stopped and checked on Sam, too. He’s on your mind, like he’s always on mine.”
“I wanted... It was just a habit, really. I see him almost every day, so...”
“You’re the closest thing to a mother he’s got.”
“I am?”
Jamie tightened his grip on her shoulder. “Kendry, listen to me. You can skip the CMA thing and go straight to nursing school. You should be a nurse. You have amazing instincts when it comes to patients.”
The rain kept falling, and Kendry kept feeling lost by the conversation. “Are you—are you offering me a scholarship?”
“I have enough money for anything you need. Tuition, books.” He paused and flicked a glance at the bandage that kept the earpiece of her eyeglasses together. “Glasses.”
“I never heard of a scholarship that included glasses.”
“I’m not talking about a scholarship.”
“Then what are you—”
“Marry me.”
For one second, Kendry was shocked. The next, she was hurt. Jamie didn’t know what he was playing with. He couldn’t know how hard she was working toward that nursing degree. Still, to joke about marrying someone was odd. “You had me going there for a minute. I thought you were serious about the nursing school.”
“I’ve never been more serious. Marry me, and my money becomes our money. And our money can certainly be spent on your education.”
“Marriage? We’re barely friends.”
“We’re definitely friends.”
“But—” She groped for the right thing to say. What she was hearing was so far from what she could possibly have expected. “You don’t marry someone because you’re friends.”
“You are more than just a friend to me, Kendry.”
She swallowed hard. She’d wished he saw her as more than a friend, and now here he was, about to tell her that her wish had come true. It didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem possible.
“This is an awfully big leap,” she whispered, “from friends to marriage. You’ve never taken me on a date. We’ve never kissed.”
At that, he seemed almost surprised. He let go of her shoulder and brought his hand to the back of his neck, kneading the muscles there in something of a nervous gesture. “I wasn’t thinking of that kind of marriage.”
“I see.” She saw nothing. What other kind of marriage was there?
“I want a wife who’ll be my partner raising Sam. I want my marriage to complete my family. I didn’t mean that I wanted something, uh, romantic.” He gestured between them with his hand. “We don’t have that kind of thing. You know that.”
No kind of chemistry between them? It was nothing more than she’d expected, that Jamie didn’t see her as girlfriend material, let alone wife material. He said it bluntly, in a tone that made it seem like he was stating something obvious. She felt sick to her stomach.
Jamie ducked his head a little, looking at her face, not letting her break eye contact. He chuckled. “I’ve sprung this on you a little too suddenly, huh? I’m not doing this very well.”
Jamie picked up one of her hands in his. “I didn’t plan on asking you here, but didn’t tonight prove how well we work together? You’re perfect for the kind of marriage I’m offering. The fact that we get along so well is an incredible bonus, as far as I’m concerned, because the most important thing is that Sam loves you.”
Kendry looked down at their loosely joined hands. Jamie ducked down to make eye contact again. “Sam does love you. There’s no doubt of that.”
Two women came from around the corner. They must have been outside for a smoke break, standing around the corner this whole time. They’d barely passed Kendry when they made those horrible sounds people make when they are trying to hold their laughter in.
The rain had stopped. Kendry hadn’t noticed it stopping, but the silence was now oppressive. “You keep bringing up Sam. How about Sam’s mother?” she said, jerking her hand away. “Maybe she’d like to fill the role.”
“She died during his birth.” Jamie let her hand go. “I thought you knew.”
Poor Sam. Now her heart hurt along with her stomach for poor little Sammy, and the poor woman who had never had the chance to cuddle her baby. Jamie was trying to fill the hole that woman must have left. Not the emptiness she’d apparently left in his heart, though. Only the empty space where a mother for Sam should be.
Or maybe her heart hurt because she felt sorry for herself. Poor little Kendry, so undesirable that a man thought she’d marry him without a kiss.
She stood up, which seem to startle Jamie, because he stood up, too, and stepped closer to her. “Do you need some time, maybe? Do you...do you want to talk about it?”
“No, I understand everything now. The lunches, meeting your brother, the way you kept asking for me tonight whenever the patient was a child. It was all an audition. You’ve been looking for a woman who would agree to a loveless marriage, and you think I’m that woman.”
“Not loveless. I want Sam to be raised in a home where his parents love him madly. Both of them.”
A sexless marriage. That’s what she didn’t have the guts to say. She was the perfect woman that an intelligent, caring man like Jamie MacDowell thought would jump at the chance for a sexless marriage.
No other man has made you any offer at all. Have you looked in a mirror?
The glass doors slid open and stayed open as some paramedics strolled out with an empty stretcher. Kendry didn’t want to speak in front of any more witnesses. Heck, she didn’t want to speak ever again. She didn’t want to be here.
But she and Jamie stayed where they were, silent, until the sounds inside the emergency room reached her ears. Snatches of voices. “I swear on a stack of Bibles. He asked her to marry him.” Snippets of conversation. “Not that kind of marriage.” Shrieks of laughter.
This was it. This was the price she’d now pay for reaching above herself and imagining that she was someone besides the girl who counted pennies. Sh
e’d had a grand future planned for herself at West Central Hospital. Now she wouldn’t be able to hold her head up.
“It doesn’t matter what other people think,” Jamie said stiffly. He must have heard every word she had. “If our arrangement works for us, who cares?”
“I care. I care that everyone in this hospital thinks I’m a joke. I thought you were my friend. You’re not.”
“Kendry.” He reached out to touch her arm, but she backed up.
“I have to go clock out now. Goodbye, Dr. MacDowell.”
With her head held high, Kendry walked through the E.R. to the bank of elevators. She hoped her broken glasses hid the tears in her eyes.
Chapter Eight
Where the hell was Kendry?
Two nights ago, she’d clearly been upset when she’d left the E.R. The patient load had prevented him from following her, but he’d told himself it was okay. They were okay. After all, the gossip had hurt her feelings, but Jamie had only said nice things to her about how much he wanted her in his life. She couldn’t have meant it when she said he wasn’t her friend.
When he’d brought Sam to the playroom on his next shift, a medical assistant he didn’t know had told him that Kendry was already gone for the day. Kendry normally worked the day shift, but Jamie had taken the swing shift; that was why their paths hadn’t crossed.
Today, he was back on the day shift. He’d been counting on finding Kendry in the playroom. Sam fussed when Jamie left him with a stranger.
The playroom had been full, as it usually was in the mornings. The two women on duty were not Kendry, however. Sam had cried when Jamie left him, which always tore at his nerves. He was determined to find Kendry in the cafeteria at lunch.
So where was she? He stood in the center of the dining area and turned in a slow circle, ignoring everyone who watched him. He checked the line of people waiting for the cashier. Nothing.
They’d met for lunch every time they’d both been working at the hospital. Every single day for nearly a month. She had to know he’d be looking for her, so why was she being so hard to find?
She has no reason to avoid me. I told her she was perfect for me. I told her my son loved her. I promised to send her to nursing school. I proposed to her.
But she hadn’t said yes. She’d been embarrassed by some gossip and had taken off running. She couldn’t blame him for that, could she?
Apparently, she could.
Okay, so his proposal had been clumsy, and it hadn’t occurred to him to sweep the area for eavesdroppers, but that wasn’t a good reason for her to avoid him now. His relationship with Kendry was better than that. Without any romantic ties, they could just be friends. Friends didn’t avoid each other.
By the time Jamie found her in the courtyard, he was feeling decidedly unfriendly. He’d walked past her twice without seeing her. For one thing, she had her back to the cafeteria and was seated on the farthest possible park bench. For another, she was wearing bright pink. He’d been looking for traditional green scrubs, the kind she always wore.
But it was Kendry, all right, taped glasses in place, mopping her nose with a fistful of napkins, as usual. “There you are,” he said, not attempting to keep the accusation from his tone.
She jumped like a startled bird and blinked up at him from under her bangs. She hadn’t been sneezing, he realized. She’d been crying. Was still crying.
All his anger and irritation fled in an instant. “Kendry, what’s wrong?”
She hid her face in her napkin immediately and shooed him away with one hand.
Right. Like he’d leave his friend like this. Jamie sat on the bench. Kendry scooted a few inches away from him. With each snuffled breath, her shoulders shook a little bit. Helplessly, he waited while she caught her breath, watched as she trembled in her stiff clothes.
She looked frail. He’d known she was thin, of course, but the pink scrubs emphasized how thin. They were obviously new, still creased from their packaging. He wished she’d say something. He wanted to help; her tears were distressing.
Of course they were. Tears pretty much equaled distress, but Kendry’s tears seemed somehow worse to him. Maybe because she was usually so sharp, so enthusiastic about her job. About Sam. About life.
He patted her on the shoulder, lightly, the way he patted Sam when he needed soothing.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said, pushing her bangs aside with the back of one hand. “I didn’t think anyone would find me here.”
“You did make it a challenge. I’ve been looking for a while. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, really. Just having a pity party.”
She wasn’t going to say any more, he could tell. She threw the last bit of a saltine at the base of a tree, for the squirrels or birds or ants.
“What’s the occasion, then, for the pity party?”
“Oh—” She flicked the back of her hand toward the tree, a sign of general irritation with the air. “It’s nothing.”
Jamie felt a little irritated himself. In his experience, women didn’t cry over nothing, despite popular male opinion to the contrary. But also in his experience, if a man asked what was wrong and then sat patiently and asked a second time—not that he thought he deserved a medal for it or anything—then the woman would be glad to share her reasons for crying.
Not Kendry. She crumpled the cellophane cracker wrapper in her fist and sat there, napkin in one hand and wrapper in the other.
Was he supposed to ask a third time?
He looked from her clenched fists to her face. She was looking away from him, which allowed him to study her profile. Her glasses were halfway down her wet nose, so he could see that no fresh tears were falling from her mostly green eyes, but her lashes were wet.
Really thick lashes.
Really irrelevant thought. The important thing was, she was upset, and she wouldn’t explain why. His eyes dropped to her mouth, as if he’d find a reason why words were failing to appear there. Her lips were pressed together, hard, with a tremor. She didn’t want to cry around him.
Whose shoulder did she cry on, then? Frankly, he didn’t like the idea that there might be someone else she felt more comfortable with. The background check he’d ordered on her had come back clean. No criminal past, only a single court appearance for a traffic accident. She’d earned a GED after sporadic school attendance, which Jamie knew was due to her parents’ travels. She’d never been married, and there was no indication that she had any man in her life, or that she did much besides work and go home to someplace she rented, for no property was in her name.
In other words, Kendry had no other person’s shoulder to cry on.
And so, for a third time, he asked her.
“Kendry, what’s wrong?”
* * *
The man was persistent. In a good way, if she were honest with herself. Persistent like a friend would be.
She sniffed in the last of her teary, sloppy self. Blew her breath upward to puff her bangs out of her eyes and tipped her head back to look at the sky. It was crisscrossed with the branches of the sumac tree. Very pretty. Picturesque.
“Nothing’s really wrong. I got thrown up on by one of the kids in the playroom. I had to get these new scrubs.”
“I know you can handle the sight of blood, but vomit can be something else entirely, can’t it?”
I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry. No matter how nice he is to me, I’m not going to cry.
Jamie kept being nice. “I’d understand if it grossed you out to be thrown up on, but why the tears?” He was trying to make her smile. Her heart broke a little more. Could she have dreamed up a more perfect man? Too bad she was barely even a female to him. He’d made that clear.
I didn’t mean that I wanted something romantic. We don’t have that kind of thin
g. You know that.
She looked down at the too-sharp crease in the too-crisp pants. “They made me take these scrubs. I didn’t want them.”
“Why not? You don’t like the color? C’mon, Kendry, talk to me. Something’s gotten to you, bad.”
“These are too expensive.” She said it very quietly as she used the index finger of one hand to trace the crease. Cracker crumbs from the cellophane in her palm left a little trail. “It’s my fault. I should have had a spare set on hand, but I didn’t, so my supervisor ordered me to put these on.”
“Ordered you to buy scrubs? They could have loaned you a set. The E.R. has stacks of them.”
“For their department. Departments don’t share that much, you know. All we have at peds is a supply of tiny gowns that don’t close in the back.” She spared him a quick glance. “Seriously, you don’t realize how easy it is to ask for something when you’re a doctor. I can’t pick up the phone and call surgery or emergency and ask them to send me a pair of scrubs.”
“Your supervisor could have called.”
Fresh tears sprang to her eyes. Tears of frustration, this time. “You have no idea what life is like at the bottom of the totem pole, Dr. MacDowell.”
“It’s Jamie, remember?”
He shifted closer to her, studying her. Kendry regretted her words already, and the scrutiny they were causing. She had her pride. It would be awful for him to know how tempting his offer of marriage had been from a purely financial standpoint.
“Call me next time,” he said, “but if I know you, you’ll always have a spare set on hand now.”
“I only have one set, if you haven’t noticed.”
“No, I didn’t.”
That almost made her smile. “Typical man.”
“All scrubs look alike,” he countered.