Beach Reads Boxed Set

by Marie Force

  “I’m going to head home,” Ted said, even though he would normally love to spend the day being pampered on the boat. Today, however, he thought it best to leave before the situation got any worse. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of before tomorrow. I’m on call for forty-eight hours.”

  Parker shook his head. “I don’t know how you can keep up that schedule.”

  “You get used to it,” Ted said with a shrug. “Being on call will give me time to work on a grant proposal that’s due this week. I need funding for some research I want to do into the genetics of this one type of brain tumor I’ve been seeing a lot of lately. It’s exciting stuff.”

  “Sounds like it,” Parker said dryly.

  Ted laughed. “I know it’s not Kramer vs. Kramer, but it’s interesting to me.”

  “Hey, not all of us can be curing cancer, so we have to get our thrills where we can.”

  “Is your father still after you to move to the Big Apple and onto the family payroll?”

  “All the time,” Parker said. “He never gives up.”

  “And he never will. He knows you’re a great lawyer, and he wants you looking out for him.”

  “What he really wants is to get me under his thumb where he can control my whole life. No thanks. Been there, done that.”

  They ate at one of their favorite diners and lingered over a second cup of coffee.

  “So what happened to that girl you were seeing?” Ted asked. “What was her name? Julie?”

  “Julia,” Parker corrected.

  “That’s right.” Ted had only met her once.

  “No spark, you know what I mean?” Parker spun his spoon around in his coffee cup. Forty-eight hours earlier Ted would have said no, but now he knew exactly what Parker meant. “Yes, I think I do.”

  “Yeah, you had it with Marcy.”

  Startled by the reminder of his college girlfriend, Ted stared at Parker. In that moment, Ted realized what he’d felt for his girlfriend of three years was insignificant compared to what he already felt for Caroline. Despair, the likes of which he had never known before, settled over him.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?” Parker asked with concern. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “Nothing,” Ted said softly. “Nothing’s wrong. I need to go.”

  “Back to the house?”

  “No, I need to go home.”

  Ted appreciated that Parker didn’t ask any questions as he followed him out of the restaurant.

  Chapter Five

  Ted’s abrupt departure resulted in a flurry of phone calls from all three of his friends, who wanted to know if something was wrong. Ted told each of them the same thing: Everything’s fine, something came up, and I’ll see you in two weeks since he was on call the following weekend.

  As he ran through the marina near his condo late that afternoon, he tried to put the emotionally draining weekend behind him by making a plan to get over his infatuation with Caroline. What I need is a girlfriend of my own. That will set things straight.

  Contrary to the gossip in the hospital, he was aware of the appreciative looks he got from the women he worked with and the whispering that went on behind his back as they speculated on his personal life—or lack thereof.

  He knew they wondered if he was gay or afflicted with some sort of social disorder that kept what they considered a highly eligible bachelor out of the hospital’s dating frenzy. Since the doctors, nurses, residents, and fellows worked so many hours together, the inevitable romances developed, but Ted had never indulged. Maybe it was time he did. Maybe if he hadn’t been living like a monk he wouldn’t have had such a strong reaction to Caroline.

  The majority of his love and attention went to the kids he cared for, but at the end of the day he was left with an empty home and an even emptier bed. Suddenly, the life he had been so content with just a few short days ago wasn’t enough anymore. Meeting Caroline had shown him exactly what he had been missing, and now he yearned for more.

  Determined to jump start his love life, Ted decided to pay closer attention to the women at work over the next week and to find one he could ask out to dinner by the following weekend. He needed to start somewhere. Having drawn up a plan for his love life the way he would compile a treatment plan for a patient, Ted jogged the last mile back to his condo with a newfound sense of relief, if not satisfaction.

  The late-afternoon sun hung like a ball of fire over the busy marina. As he watched a boat come in under sail, he found that despite his good intentions his thoughts had already wandered back to Caroline. He wondered how her ankle was, if she was in pain, and if she too was thinking about him and the instantaneous connection they’d shared. She had felt it, too. He had no doubt about that.

  Ted groaned, realizing that not thinking about her was going to be a project in and of itself. He needed to get a life, not to mention a sex life. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex. No wonder why she’d rocked his world. But even as he told himself it had been far too long since he’d been truly attracted to a woman, he had to acknowledge there had never been another attraction quite like the one he felt for her.

  He used the key he kept under a flower pot on his front porch to let himself into his house. The sleek condo, like the Mercedes, had been a gift from his grandparents, who took such tremendous joy in doting on their only grandson that he had long ago given up on trying to put a stop to their boundless generosity. While Ted had used the trust fund they had set up for him to pay for his education, his younger sister Tish had blown through hers to fuel a ferocious addiction to heroin that had preoccupied the entire family for almost a decade. Only when she had run out of money and options had Tish entered rehab. Now, six years later, she was married to a nice guy and had a baby on the way. Her years of drug addiction seemed like a bad dream since she had gotten her life together, and no one was more proud of her than Ted.

  He checked his messages and found one from Roger Newsome, the colleague who covered for him on summer weekends. “Hey, Ted. Pretty quiet weekend, so no need to check in with me before tomorrow. I admitted Matthew Janik because his fever hit 103, and he was dehydrated after the last round of chemo. I’ll check on him tonight. Also, Hannah Ohrstrom’s mother called. Hannah had a fever, too, but it broke after two doses of Tylenol. That’s about it. Call me if you have any questions.”

  The next message was from his mother.

  “Hello, darling,” she said in that breathless, Main Line Philadelphia voice of hers. “Just a reminder about the party on the twenty-first. Do feel free to bring someone with you and remember it’s formal. Also, remind the boys they’re invited as well. We’d love to see you out here before then if you can tear yourself away from Newport one of these weekends. Hope you’re not working too hard. Give me a call this week. Love you bunches.”

  Ted mimicked the kisses that Matilda “Mitzi” Dunbar Duffy predictably tacked on to the end of the message. The party she referred to was Ted’s parents’ fortieth anniversary and his grandparents’ sixty-fifth anniversary, which would be held under a tent at his parents’ summer home on Block Island. The two couples celebrated their common anniversary with a fancy soiree every five years.

  Another weekend in Newport down the tubes, Ted sighed, as he thought of the social event of the season his mother and grandmother were no doubt planning. He had grown up attending their little parties for two hundred of their closest friends and knew exactly what to expect. But despite their love of all things social, his mother and grandmother were the two best women he knew: loving, faithful, protective, and fun. All his life, Ted had considered them the ideal, and the women he dated had the misfortune of being measured against them and often found lacking.

  Mitzi, who’d had a stiff and difficult relationship with her own mother, had found the mother of her heart when she married Dr. Edward Theodore Duffy Jr. She and Lillian hit it off from their first meeting and had been fast friends ever since, bonding over their love of a good party, a rousing
tennis match, a frozen margarita at the end of a long summer day, and the blessings and burdens that came with marriage to pediatric oncologists.

  Their grandparents had been such a big part of their lives that Ted and Tish had grown up feeling like they had two mothers and two fathers. Even in their late eighties, Lillian and Theo kept up an active, busy life that still included at least eighteen holes of golf each week.

  While Ted adored them all, the only fault they had was their ongoing meddling in his life. They were forever calling about a woman he just had to meet, a stock he just had to invest in, a party he just had to come to, or a tidbit of gossip from their various social circles he just had to hear. Sometimes when he received calls from the four of them in the same day, it was all he could do not to remind them of how busy he was and how trivial their news was compared to what he was doing. He never stopped being amazed at how easily his father and grandfather had slipped into retirement, seeming to forget about how challenging, heartbreaking, and overwhelming their work had once been—and still was for Ted.

  The one thing he had succeeded in was getting them to drop the annoying nickname they had given him at birth, until he left for college and let them know he would no longer answer to “Third.” He had told them on his way to Princeton that although his name Edward Theodore Duffy the third, he’d decided to go by Ted in college, and he had better not hear any more of that other ridiculous name. There must have been something in his tone or the expression on his face that told them he meant it because none of them had ever called him that again. Occasionally his grandfather still slipped up, but Ted had perfected an icy look that usually set him straight. The name change was one of very few major battles he’d ever won with the mighty foursome, and he was proud of it.

  Ted picked up the phone in his home office and dialed a number he almost knew by heart after three years of caring for Hannah Ohrstrom. As he waited for someone to answer, he gazed out the window at the sun setting over the marina.

  “Hi, Peg. It’s Ted Duffy.”

  “Oh, hi, thanks for calling. Dr. Newsome said you were out of town.”

  “I was, but I’m back now.”

  “I hope you did something fun,” she said wistfully.

  Ted knew her life had been anything but fun since Hannah had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at the age of six. After two years of chemotherapy, Hannah had been in remission for a year, and Ted was optimistic about her long-term prognosis. “I was in Newport where I rent a summer place with some college friends, but I heard Hannah was down with a fever, so I wanted to check in. How’s she doing?”

  “A little better today than last night. She’s still kind of listless, though.”

  “Any temp today?” He fired up his laptop to log into the hospital’s scheduling system.

  “It was 101 this morning, but it’s normal now.”

  “Any other symptoms?”

  “No, just the fever.”

  “Why don’t you bring her by the clinic tomorrow? I can get her in at eleven if that works for you.”

  “Sure,” she said haltingly. “I can do that.” She paused. “It’s not back, is it?”

  “I know it’s hard to believe after everything you’ve been through, but not all fevers are sinister. I just want to take a quick look and do a CBC to be safe, okay? I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Okay, thanks. I appreciate you checking in. I’ve told so many people about how great you’ve been to us. No one can believe we have a doctor in this day and age who makes house calls and cares the way you do. Thank you so much.”

  “It’s no problem at all,” Ted said, touched by her effusive praise. People like Peg and her adorable, precocious daughter were what he loved best about his job. “Page me if you have any problems during the night.”

  “I will. Thank you again.”

  “See you tomorrow.” Ted hung up feeling like he had finally done something positive with this miserable day.

  The next morning passed in a blur. After signing the discharge paperwork on the re-hydrated Matthew Janik, Ted saw nine patients in the clinic—seven of them frequent fliers and two of them new kids who were just beginning their journey with cancer—before he got to Hannah an hour later than scheduled. Knowing how worried Peg was about a recurrence, he hated to keep her waiting, but he had taken the time to coach one of his residents through his first-ever “day one” chat in which parents are told their child has cancer and are given the planned course of treatment.

  These all-important conversations were handled with the utmost delicacy and compassion. Since there was a right way—and a wrong way—to do it, Ted was pleased with the job his resident had done. He had hit on all the most important points and had used the word “cancer” several times so the devastated parents were left with no doubt as to what they were being told. The resident had included statistics about the cure rate and had given them the cold, hard facts about what to expect during treatment.

  Ted had been part of hundreds of day one conversations, but it never got any easier to watch a family’s plans and dreams be derailed by cancer. After he left the family in the capable hands of his resident, Ted took the time for a quick cup of coffee to decompress before he continued with his clinic.

  He pushed the exam room door open to find Peg chewing on her thumbnail as anxiety all but coursed through her slim frame.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “It’s no problem. You snuck us in.”

  “Didn’t you bring Miss Hannah?” Ted looked around the room at everything but the girl sitting Indian-style on the exam table. He washed his hands and pulled on latex gloves.

  “I’m getting far too old for that game, Dr. Duff,” she said with a dramatic roll of her soft brown eyes. Her dark curls were corralled today in a high ponytail.

  “Then I’ll just have to take my game up a notch in the future.” He sat on a stool and scooted to the exam table. “How’s the fever?”

  “Gone. I feel fine. I told my mom that, but she still called this weekend.”

  “That’s exactly what she should have done.” Ted did a quick but thorough exam. He was only slightly concerned by the pallor in her cheeks, but it was enough to confirm his decision to order a complete blood count.

  “Are you going to stick me?” Hannah asked, sounding more like a frightened nine-year-old and less like a bored pre-teen.

  “I’m afraid so, but we’ll make it quick and painless. I promise.”

  “Will you do it yourself? It never hurts when you do it.”

  “Sure,” he said, even though it would put him further behind schedule. “I’ll be right back.”

  He went out to the desk to ask one of the nurses to set up the blood draw for him.

  “I can take it from here,” said Kelly Hopper, one of his favorite nurses. She was a pretty blond with bright blue eyes and an infectious smile. The kids loved her, and she was very devoted to them.

  “Miss Hannah requested a Dr. Duff special,” he said with a self-deprecating grimace.

  Kelly grinned, and Ted noticed for the first time that she had dimples. Cute dimples.

  “Jeez, you’ve even got the little ones falling at your feet, don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah, there’s a regular line forming.”

  “Are you going to Joey’s funeral?”

  Sobered by the reminder of his recent loss, he nodded. “John called this morning and asked me to say a few words at the service. Are you going?”

  “A few of us from the floor are going. You can ride with us if you’d like.”

  “That would be great, thanks. I wasn’t thrilled about going alone.”

  Remembering his plan to find a girlfriend, he studied Kelly like he hadn’t seen her almost every day for six years.

  “What?”

  Ted cleared his throat. “Oh, um, sorry. I was just thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Would you like to have dinner
some night?” he asked before he could chicken out.

  Kelly’s eyes widened into an expression of shock that probably wouldn’t have been all that different if Ted had knocked her over the head with a baseball bat.

  “Or, um, if you think it would be too weird, I mean because we work together . . .”

  “No.”

  “Oh, okay.” Ted felt like a bumbling fool. Clearly, this dating thing was going to take some practice. “I understand.”

  She held up her hand and shook her head. “I meant no, I don’t think it would be weird. I’d love to have dinner with you.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “Great. How about Thursday?”

  “Thursday’s good.”

  “Think about where you want to go.”

  “I’ll do that, and I’ll get that stick ready for you.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right. Thanks.”

  Ted watched her walk away and wondered if she always did that thing with her hips or if she had done it for his benefit. Either way, it had his attention. “Nothing to it,” he whispered as he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead.

  Chapter Six

  On Tuesday morning, Ted met Kelly and two of the other pediatric oncology nurses in the staff parking lot to go to Joey’s funeral. Three of Ted’s residents and one of the fellows would join them at the church. Ted wore a dark navy suit, a white shirt, and a Red Sox tie in deference to Joey’s love of the team.

  “Great tie,” Kelly said with a nod of approval. She had worn a black suit and heels that brought her almost to Ted’s shoulder.

  He held the car door for her. “I think Joey would approve.”

  They sat together in the back seat of the car while one of the other nurses drove.

  During the hour-long ride west to Worcester, Ted reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat for the notes he had jotted down earlier in his office and looked them over one last time.