A Match for the Doctor (2 page)

“G
ood God, woman, have you been here all night?”

The partially perturbed, partially breathless question shot out of Nathan LeBeau's mouth ten seconds after he'd flipped on the light switch in the back office and subsequently jumped when he saw something moving on the white leather sofa. Nathan's thin, aristocratic hand was dramatically splayed over his shallow chest in the approximate region of his heart, presumably to keep it from leaping out of said chest.

“How am I supposed to impress you with my hard work when you keep insisting on being an overachiever and staying here until all hours of the night?” He went to the office's lone window and drew back the light blue vertical blinds. “You're lucky you're not dialing 9-1-1 right now.”

“Why would I be dialing 9-1-1?” Kennon Cassidy murmured, trying to clear the cobwebs out of her brain,
the sugary taste out of her mouth and the protesting kinks out of her shoulders. She had little success in any of the endeavors.

“Because you scared me half to death,” Nathan informed her with a toss of his deep chestnut mane. Blessed with incredibly thick hair, Nathan deliberately wore it long, in the fashion of a driven music conductor.

Nathan's words were addressed to Kennon Cassidy, technically his employer, more aptly described as his friend and, initially, his mentor.

Kennon sat up on the sofa and looked up at her tall and more than occasionally judgmental assistant. “What time is it?”

Nathan scrutinized her attire. “I'd say way past the time when your carriage turned into a pumpkin, standing in the field next to your musically gifted pet mice.”

Kennon waved a dismissive hand in his direction. “You've been watching way too many classic cartoons, Nathan.”

“Not by choice,” he said defensively. “Judith insists that's all I can let Rebecca and Stuart watch when I babysit the little darlings. Can't wait until those two hit puberty and stage a revolt on my straitlaced sister.”

Nathan put his hand on his hip expectantly as he regarded the slender, slightly rumpled blonde who had taken a chance on him when he had bluffed his way into the office four years ago. “You really need to move on, you know.”

Her eyes met his. There was no way she was having this discussion. “No, I really need to get rid of this sugary taste,” she told him. “Apparently I fell asleep with a cough drop in my mouth.”

Rising, Kennon caught her reflection in the window.
She shuddered. God, she looked like death warmed over.
Barely
warmed over.

The next second, she stifled a yawn while trying to remember when she'd fallen asleep. “I just lay down on the sofa for a minute to close my eyes.”

“Apparently you succeeded beyond your wildest dreams.”

“What time is it?” she asked Nathan, this time in earnest. “Really,” she underlined.

“It's tomorrow,” Nathan answered. When she looked at him quizzically he backtracked for her benefit. “Tuesday. Eight-thirty a.m. May fourth. The year of our Lord, two thousand—”

Kennon threw her hand up in the air to stop him. Nathan had the ability to go on and
on
if she let him.

“I know what year it is, Nathan,” she informed him. “I'm not exactly Rip Van Winkle, you know.”

“I hear he started out by taking long naps,” Nathan told her dryly. He glanced at the open sketchbook she was currently using. “Were you working on the Prestons' house?”

That had been her initial intent. But what she'd really been working on was her self-esteem. Although she loved Nathan like the brother she'd never had, she was
not
about to dwell on that point for him. It was bad enough that her assistant knew about her breakup with Pete, or rather, Pete's breakup with her, since Pete had been the one to end the relationship and walk out. Granted, she hadn't been head-over-heels, can't-seem-to-catch-my-breath in love with the man, but it bothered her to no end that she hadn't seen the breakup coming.

One morning, after living with her for two years, Pete announced that he'd fallen “out of love” with her. And in
love with some big-eyed, bigger-breasted, conscienceless little blonde whom he had the absolute gall to marry six short weeks after blowing a hole in her world.

Since she'd been so drastically wrong about the man she'd assumed she was going to marry, Kennon began to doubt her ability to make
any
kind of a decent judgment call.

She was finally putting her life back in order when she heard that Pete and his wife were expecting. It had hit her harder than she'd thought. She had a real weak spot when it came to children.

“Yes, I was,” she replied, thinking it best just to go along with the excuse Nathan had just handed her. “I was working on the Preston home.”

He pushed the sketchbook aside, clearly indicating that he saw nothing worthy of her expertise. “Okay, let's see it.”

The truth was, she had nothing to show for her efforts. She'd come up with better ideas her first year in college. “See what?” she asked vaguely.

“See what you've come up with,” Nathan said patiently.

“I think you've got this turned around, Nathan. I sign your checks, you don't sign mine.”

“You also didn't come up with anything, did you?” he asked.

She shrugged, looking away. “Nothing worth my time.”

“And that would apply to a broad spectrum of things,” he replied, circling her so that she could get the benefit of his pointed look.

She knew Nathan meant well, but he needed to back
off for now. “Nathan, I've already got one mother. I don't need two.”

“Good, because you don't have two,” he told her briskly. “I'm just a friend who doesn't want to see you wasting your time, missing a guy you shouldn't have given the time of day to in the first place.”

She'd given Pete more than the time of day. She'd given him over two years of her life, she thought angrily.

“I don't want to talk about him,” she said firmly.

Nathan nodded approvingly. “Good, because neither do I. Now splash some water in your face, put on some makeup and change your clothes,” he instructed. As he spoke, he opened a cabinet that ordinarily contained hanging files but now held a navy-blue pinstripe skirt and a white short-sleeved oval-neck top.

Whipping them out on their hangers, Nathan held the prizes aloft before her, even as he put one hand to the small of her back. He propelled her toward the bathroom. “We want you looking your best.”

Kennon stopped dead. “We? Exactly what ‘we' are you referring to?”

“Why, you and me ‘we,' of course,” he said, trying to sound innocently cheerful. “You always this suspicious this early in the morning?”

She took the clothes from him. “I am when you suddenly start acting like a social directing steamroller.”

“Fine.” Nathan held up his hands in surrender, backing away from her. “Look like an unmade bed and scare away our customers. See if I care. I can always go back to sleeping on my sister's couch, having those little monsters jump up and down on me in those awful pajamas
with the rubber bumps on the bottoms of their hard little feet.”

She capitulated. If she didn't give up, the drama would only get worse. “I'll splash water in my face, put on some makeup and change my clothes,” she sighed.

“That's my girl,” Nathan declared with a grin.

She gave him an unsettled, puzzled look as she slipped into the pearl-blue-tiled bathroom and closed the door.

“By the way,” he addressed the door in a matter-of-fact voice that wouldn't have fooled a two-year-old, “You're meeting a client in Newport Beach in an hour.”

An hour? Nothing she hated more than being rushed.

And then she remembered.

“I didn't
make
an appointment with a client for this morning,” she informed Nathan through the door.

“I know. I did.”

It wasn't that Nathan couldn't make appointments. But whenever he did, he always told her. Bragged was more like it. He took extreme pleasure in being able to say he carried his own weight and drew in clients.

“When?” she asked. “I was here all day yesterday—and last night. I didn't hear you making an appointment and no one new called the office.”

“It's a referral,” he told her.

Dressed, Kennon opened the door so she could look at Nathan. She began to apply her makeup.

“Oh? From who?” Kennon flicked a hint of blush across her pale cheeks. She needed to get some sun time.

“What does it matter?” Nathan said with a quick rise
and fall of his shoulder. “One happy, satisfied customer is like another. The main thing is the referral.”

She put down her lipstick tube. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark. “From who?” she asked again. Nathan was being incredibly mysterious—even for Nathan.

“Initially, your aunt Maizie,” he said evasively.

“Initially,” Kennon repeated. He didn't want to tell her. Why? “And the middleman would be…?”

“Of no interest to you,” Nathan assured her.

“Nathan.” There was a dangerous note in her voice. “Who is this ‘mystery' person and why are you acting like a poor man's would-be espionage agent?”

Nathan surrendered, knowing he couldn't win. “The middle ‘man' is your mother,” he mumbled. “Satisfied?”

“My mother,” Kennon repeated, stunned. “And Aunt Maizie? They talked? They actually talked?”

It didn't seem possible. Her mother never spoke to her aunt. And she definitely never sought Aunt Maizie out, on that Kennon was willing to stake her life. From what she and Nikki—her cousin and Maizie's only daughter—could piece together, it had something to do with the fact that Kennon's aunt had married her mother's brother, and her mother had not thought that Maizie was good enough for him.

Her mother was the only one who felt Maizie wasn't good enough. As for Kennon, she adored her aunt and had told Nikki more than once that she envied her cousin's relationship with such a forward-thinking woman.

“Anytime you want to trade, just let me know,” Nikki had said to her. At the time Nikki was somewhat upset
because she claimed that her mother was forever trying to play matchmaker and set her up with someone.

These days, Nikki was no longer complaining, especially since, according to what Kennon had heard, Aunt Maizie was the one who had set Nikki up with the sensitive, handsome hunk she had just recently married.

Kennon supposed that was one thing in her mother's favor. Ruth Connors Cassidy didn't play matchmaker, at least not anymore, she thought with a smile. Not since all the eligible sons of her mother's friends had been taken off the market.

But Aunt Maizie was making matches like gang-busters. What if her mother had gone to Aunt Maizie and asked her to…?

No. She was allowing her imagination to run away with her. Her mother wouldn't do that. Besides, she was through with men. To hell with all of them—except of course for Nathan, she amended. But then, he was more like a brother than a man anyway.

Kennon frowned into the small oval mirror over the pedestal sink. “Since I look like something that the cat dragged in, why don't you go in my place?” she suggested.

Nathan shook his head. “A, you no longer look like something that the cat dragged in. And B, the client said he only wanted to deal with the owner. In case your brain is still a little foggy, that would be you.”

“Since you took the referral, what else do you know?” she asked him.

“Only that your aunt sold him the house and the man has no furniture. He wants you to furnish his house.”

There was no point in fighting this, she thought. And maybe this was what she needed, a new project.
Decorating a whole house could come to a tidy little commission. “All right, get me the address and I'm on my way.”

“Got it right here,” Nathan told her, taking a folded piece of paper out of his vest pocket. “Printed out a map for you and everything,” he added, opening up the paper and handing it to her with a flourish. “Since I know how GPS-challenged you are.”

“I'm not GPS-challenged,” she corrected him. “I just don't like a machine telling me where to go.” Kennon looked at him pointedly. “I already get enough of that from you.”

Nathan took no offense. “You know you love it.”

“Keep reminding me,” Kennon instructed wearily.

 

She was still thinking that long after Nathan's voice had faded away and she had made the quick seven-mile trip to her destination. Right now, she felt like thirty miles of bad road. The last thing she wanted to do was meet a new client. But the economy being what it was, no job was too small at this point. And Nathan did say the man wanted enough furniture to fill his whole house. Hopefully, the man was not living in a one-bedroom house.

Dear God, Kennon, where's your optimism? Where's your hope? How could you have let that creep get to you this way? Nathan's right. The breakup was a godsend. It saved you from making a stupid mistake. You didn't love Pete, you loved the idea of him. Now get over it, damn it!

Following Nathan's map, she made another turn to the right. A few yards from the corner stood a magnificent two-story house.

Getting out of her vehicle, Kennon didn't bother locking the door. She walked up to the huge front door and rang the bell. The next second, the beginning notes of the Anvil Chorus sounded throughout the house.

Well, at least it wasn't taps, she thought.

S
imon Sheffield frowned as he tried to hurry into his clothes. His alarm hadn't gone off. Or, if it had, he'd shut it off in his sleep, instinctively attempting to escape from the annoying sound.

Uneasiness arrived the moment he was awake. The same question he'd been grappling with for the last week assaulted him again. Had he made a colossal mistake by uprooting the girls and moving here?

But then, what choice had he had? Seeing all those familiar surroundings in San Francisco had slowly ripped him to pieces. The entire city was fraught with memories for him and while some people could take comfort in memories when they'd lost someone, Simon found himself haunted by them.

Haunted to the point that he was having trouble focusing in order to function properly. And focusing to
the exclusion of everything else was crucial in his line of work.

Time and again he'd find himself frozen in a moment that whispered of Nancy and all the things they had once had, all the plans they had once made. Nancy, who was the light of not only his life but the lives of everyone she came in contact with. Nancy, who was the embodiment of optimism and hope, who could almost heal with the touch of her hand, the warmth of her smile. Nancy, for whom nothing was impossible.

Except coming back from the dead.

And she was dead because of him.

Dead because his urgent sense of duty and ethics had prevented him from keeping his prior promise to Doctors Without Borders. A much sought-after and gifted cardiovascular surgeon, Simon had willingly signed up to donate fifteen days of his service, going to a wretchedly impoverished region on the eastern coast of Africa. But when the time came for him to go, one of his patients, Jeremy Winterhaus, had suffered the collapse of one of the new valves that had been put in during his emergency bypass surgery. Always a man who saw things through, Simon hadn't felt comfortable about leaving Winterhaus in the care of another surgeon. Nancy, a general surgeon herself, had immediately stepped in and told him not to worry. She'd urged him to see to his patient, and she'd happily taken his place in the program.

And died in his place when the tsunami, born in the wake of the 8.3 earthquake that had ripped through Indonesia, swept away her and more than two dozen other people less than three days later.

Edna had been the one to break the news to him,
tapping on his door the morning that the tsunami had hit, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping. Edna O'Malley had once been Nancy's nanny and was now nanny to their two daughters, Madelyn and Meghan. She had come into his bedroom and in her soft, quiet voice said the words that ended the world as he knew it.

“Our Nancy was swept out to sea by a tsunami, Doctor.”

He'd stared at her in disbelief, then felt as if he'd been repeatedly stabbed in the gut with a rusted serrated knife.

Thirteen months later, he still hadn't healed. He knew that if he had a prayer of moving forward and providing for their girls, he needed to start somewhere fresh and lock away all the memories until such time as it wouldn't hurt so much to be confronted by them.

Because of her ties to Nancy, he'd almost left Edna back in San Francisco, as well. But he needed someone to look after the girls while he was away at the hospital, someone he trusted. As a cardiovascular surgeon he couldn't lay claim to an average nine-to-five existence, and he needed someone to be there to fill in the gaps. Finding a new nanny was much too time-consuming.

Besides, Edna needed something to keep her going, as well, a reason for waking up in the morning. Simon was well aware that in her own way, Edna had loved Nancy as much as he did, as much as a mother did. And she loved the girls, as well. To lose all three of them in thirteen months would have destroyed the woman, and God knew he didn't want someone else on his conscience.

Simon felt he already had more than enough guilt to deal with.

He had to get moving, Simon upbraided himself. It
was late. Getting out of bed in the morning was still unbelievably difficult for him. Especially when, for just a glimmer of a moment, when he first opened his eyes in the morning, he didn't remember.

And then he did.

The full weight of remembering oppressed him to the point that he had trouble breathing. But it was slowly getting easier. Not easy, but just easier, and that, he knew, was all he could logically hope for.

If he was going to be of any use to his patients and the hospital where he would be working, Simon knew he needed to get back to the business of living.

Which was why being late for his first meeting with Dr. Edward Hale, the chief of surgery at Blair Memorial, was not a very good idea.

When the doorbell rang with its odd, teeth-jarring chimes, it was just one more thing for him to be annoyed about.

Now what?
he wondered impatiently as he shrugged into his jacket. The obligatory necktie was stuffed into his pocket, knotted and ready to be pressed into service should he need it. As a rule, he hated ties and saw them as an unnecessary evil.

A sneeze in the distance told him that Edna was making her way to the front door. The last couple of days, she seemed to be coming down with a bad cold despite her protests that she was fine.

When it rained…

“I'll get it, Edna,” he called out. Edna already had more than her hands full, Simon thought, just getting Madelyn, eight, and Meghan, six, ready for school.

But even though he'd just told her that he would open
the front door on his way out, he knew Edna was too stubborn to retreat.

Sure enough, there she was, hurrying to the door. Dedicated right down to the soles of her excessively sensible shoes, Edna O'Malley appeared a bit older than her sixty-seven years and was, to the undiscerning eye, the epitome of the comfortable, capable British nanny of decades past. Not exactly plump, but far from thin, at five foot ten Edna cast a considerable shadow.

“I'm not dead yet, Doctor,” Edna told him firmly, refusing to tolerate being coddled in any manner. She struggled to stifle the deep cough that insisted on rumbling inside her chest.

Simon shook his head. “You will be if you don't take it easy,” he warned her.

Edna spared him a reproving glance. “If that's the kind of medical advice you're dispensing, Doctor, it's a surprise to me there's no wolf at our door. But wait, perhaps that's him now,” Edna amended glibly as she opened the massive door. Lights danced in through the beveled glass, casting multicolored bursts on the wall. “No, no wolf. A waif instead,” the nanny pronounced after giving the slender young woman standing on their doorstep a quick once-over.

The next moment, Edna quickly turned her head toward the door and sneezed loudly enough to befit a person twice her size and girth.

“Bless you,” Kennon said automatically. “I have an appointment to see a Dr. Simon Sheffield.”

Edna sneezed a third time, sighed heavily as she dug into her deep pockets for her handkerchief and blew her nose before giving the young woman another critical once-over.

Sniffling, she wadded the handkerchief back up and shoved it into her pocket again. “I'm afraid the doctor doesn't do house calls, miss—even from his own house. You'll have to see him during office hours in his office.”

Okay, this was obviously a misunderstanding. “But I'm not sick,” Kennon began. She got no further.

“Good for you,” the nanny declared. “That makes one of us. Me, I'm feeling rather poorly,” she went on to confide as she lowered her voice.

Kennon tried to look sympathetic while wondering what any of this had to do with her appointment. She pressed her lips together. Had there been a mistake?

The next moment, before she could speak further to the sneezing woman who stood in her way, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye.

A man, undoubtedly the poster boy for the description of “tall, dark and handsome,” came to the door. In his wake came two very lively little girls, obviously his. Each had the man's bright blue eyes and thick hair, except that his was dark and theirs was a lighter shade of brown and curly. And, unlike their father, the little girls weren't scowling. They were just eyeing her curiously.

“Who's that, Daddy?” the younger one asked, staring up at her with the bluest eyes Kennon had ever seen.

“A lady who's selling something,” he assumed. With a careful movement, he edged both Edna and his daughters back behind him and stood facing the woman on his doorstep. Attractive though she was, whatever the woman was selling, he had no time to hear her sales pitch. “I'm sorry but I'm in a hurry,” he apologized politely, “and I don't have time to buy anything.”

“I wasn't planning on pressuring you into buying
anything in five minutes flat,” Kennon assured the good-looking physician.

Furnishing a house took time and while she always accompanied a client when he or she went out to purchase an item, even subtly guiding them toward certain things, the ultimate choice was always theirs. After all, they were the ones who had to live with whatever they wound up selecting.

Kennon wasn't prepared for the puzzled, somewhat annoyed look that came over the man's face. The woman
was
trying to sell him something. Subscriptions? he guessed, glancing at the rather large, square briefcase in her hand.

Or did she represent some pharmaceutical company, wanting to snare his attention before any of the others got to him? He knew all about how competitive sales reps could be, but until now, he'd always had someone shielding him. One of the receptionists or office managers would field the calls, make appropriate comments and promise that “someone” would be getting back to them.

Had they taken to trying to corner physicians before they got to the office? It seemed unusual, but not out of the question. Competition, he'd heard, was steep and cutthroat.

Obviously, they'd sent their most attractive sales-woman. He couldn't help wondering if she had a brain, as well, or if chutzpa was all she was gifted with. That and possibly the longest legs he'd ever seen.

“Wow,” he murmured, “and I thought that the companies in San Francisco were pushy.”

“That's just the point, Doctor. I'm
not
pushy,” Kennon quietly corrected him. “The ultimate choice in what you
decide to buy or not buy is yours. All I do is just make a variety of suggestions.”

She had, he thought, the closest thing to a perfect figure he'd ever seen. But it still wasn't enough to make him promise to advise his patients to take one drug above another, just because
her
packaging was better than some other company's. He had to believe in a medication before he prescribed it.

He needed to get this woman out of here—and himself, as well. Suppressing a few exasperated words that rose to his lips, Simon took hold of the petite blonde's arm and firmly moved her across the threshold, back to his doorstep. “Look, I'm sure whatever you're pushing has a market, but right now, I'm not interested.”

Aunt Maizie, you're really going to have to test these guys for sanity before you send them on to someone,
Kennon thought.

She saw the man's little girls standing directly behind him, their blue eyes as big as proverbial saucers as they peered out at her. The little one smiled shyly at her.

The girls were adorable. Hopefully for their sake they were adopted, since insanity could run in the family, she thought.

Kennon glanced back at the doctor. “Look, Dr. Sheffield, I can't just do this hit-and-run. You're obviously too busy right now and I need some time in order to do my job properly.” He stared at her as if she'd suddenly started speaking pig Latin, so she tried to make him understand her approach. “I usually try to get to know a few things about my client before I really get started.”

The man still appeared stunned, not to mention somewhat bemused.

“It's very important to me that you wind up liking
what I do, not just for a referral for future jobs, but because I like leaving satisfied clients in my wake.”

He'd heard that drug reps were pushy, getting information about doctors so they could appeal to them on a friendly level, approach them like old friends instead of potential markets for their employer's product. This one was in a class by herself. He was almost tempted to ask her who she represented, but that would only be opening the door for her and he had a feeling that she could go on and on.

“I really don't have time for this.”

Kennon looked past the doctor's rather broad shoulders and into the heart of the house. It was a beautiful house. Beautiful and barren. He really did need some furniture. If only to give his daughters a feeling of stability.

“But your house is empty,” she protested. “You need furniture.”

“What does that have to do with it?” he asked.

“Everything,” Kennon insisted. Okay, maybe she should start all over again, she told herself. She'd obviously lost the man somewhere. “I'm Kennon Cassidy.” She put her hand out. When he didn't take it immediately, she added, “The decorator.” She waited for the light to dawn in his incredibly beautiful, piercing blue eyes. It didn't. Maybe the man had a short attention span and needed more input. “Maizie Sommers told you I'd be coming.” She took a breath. Still nothing. She added a coda. “She said you had an empty house that was badly in need of furnishing.”

That was when the bells finally went off in his head. “Oh. Maizie,” he repeated, recalling the savvy, attractive woman who had helped him find what she'd referred to
as “the right house for your girls.” He'd been completely at a loss when he'd gone to the Realtor. She'd all but reshaped him with her bare hands. For a moment he clung to the familiar name like a drowning man clung to a life preserver that had suddenly drifted within his reach.

Simon nodded, feeling more than a little like a fool for having made the mistake. If he'd let her talk instead of cutting her off at every sentence, maybe this misunderstanding wouldn't have taken up so much time.