Harlequin Historical November 2015, Box Set 2 of 2 (4 page)

“And her mother?”

“Jeanne's used to it. Mothers get that way after a while. I know mine did.”

“Did you like bugs?”

“No. I liked horses and swimming. And books.” He grabbed the coffeepot. “I'll make some coffee.”

“What about your baby sister? Did she like bugs?”

Zane looked purposefully at the handle of the coffeepot, then stared past her shoulder out the kitchen window. “Maggie died when she was five. Scarlet fever. That's when I decided to become a doctor.”

Winifred could have bitten off her tongue. To lighten the pall that had fallen, she opened her mouth and blurted the first thing that came to mind. “I will scramble you some eggs this morning.”

His dark eyebrows rose. “You can cook?”

“Well, not much. Growing up, we always had a cook. But I wager that eggs are easy to scramble.”

“Celeste couldn't cook a damn thing,” he said quietly. And then he smiled.

It was the first real smile she'd ever seen on his face. For some reason it made her so happy she wanted to do something extra nice. Sam seemed to scramble eggs with no apparent effort; they must be easy to fix. She decided to make lots of them.

While Zane made coffee, Winifred found an iron frying pan and four eggs. She shooed Zane out of the kitchen and set to work. She heated the pan over the hottest part of the stove, cracked all four eggs into it at once and smashed them together with a fork.

They congealed instantly into rubbery globs that looked nothing like the creamy golden eggs Sam had set before her.

Apprehensively she scooped the mess out onto Zane's plate and set it before him. He sat looking at it for a long minute, gulped a swallow of coffee and looked up into her eyes.

“You can't cook a damn thing, either, can you?” he said softly.

And then he smiled again.

Chapter Four

Z
ane didn't want to hurt Winifred's feelings about the plate of hard, dry scrambled eggs she'd served him. But when Sam staggered into the kitchen full of apologies for sleeping late, Zane left him in charge of Rosemarie and walked down to make hospital rounds, check on Sarah Rose's grandson and his chicken pox, then ended up, as he'd planned, at the Smoke River Hotel dining room.

“Scrambled eggs, please, Rita.”

“Sure, Doc. Just come from the hospital, didja? How's the sheriff's new twins?”

“Maddie and the babies are doing well. Can't say the same for the sheriff, though. Seems he's been at the hospital the last twenty-four hours. Can't seem to take his eyes off his twin sons.”

A wide grin split the waitress's round face. “Don't blame him, Doc. Our Johnny's never been a father before. New babies take some gettin' used to.”

A plate of perfectly scrambled eggs appeared within minutes, and after he doused them liberally with catsup, he dug in. Rita hung at his elbow with the coffeepot.

“Guess you heard Johnny's been studyin' those law books Miss Maddie gave him. Gonna run for judge next election.”

“When will that be?” Zane bit a half circle into his toast. Jericho Silver—Johnny, as Rita called him—was a good man. Honest. Intelligent. Hardworking. He'd make an excellent judge.

“If he gets elected he can stay home nights, feeding those twins.”

Rita grinned. “Oh, he'll get elected all right, Doc. I'm his campaign manager.”

Zane saluted her with his empty cup. Just as Rita lifted the pot to fill it, Zane froze. Good God, Winifred was entering the restaurant. The moment she spied him she frowned, wiped it off her face, then let it return and crossed the room to his table.

“Are those scrambled eggs?” she demanded.

He rose and invited her to sit down. “Rita, bring another plate, will you?”

“And some scrambled eggs, please,” Winifred added.

They stared across the table at each other for a long minute.

“Quite a coincidence, isn't it?” he said at last. “Meeting here like this.”

“Maybe not so much. We're probably both hungry after my disastrous attempt in the kitchen this morning.”

“Yes,” he said. “We are. Both hungry, I mean.” He wondered at himself the instant the suggestive word crossed his lips. Thank God she didn't seem to hear.

Rita plopped a plate down in front of Winifred, and with an apologetic look at him, she lifted her fork. “This afternoon Sam is going to teach me how to scramble eggs.”

Zane stared at her. Celeste had never exchanged more than two sentences with Sam, and she'd certainly never asked him to teach her anything about cooking.

“But before my egg lesson,” Winifred continued, “there is something I'd like to discuss with you.”

Zane's nerves went on alert. “Now?”

“No, not now. Later.”

“I'll be at the hospital later.”

Very deliberately she laid her fork on the plate. “The truth is you don't want to talk to me, do you? I can understand your not liking me, but—”

“I do like you.” Oh, God, had he really said that? He drew in a long breath. “I apologize. That came out wrong. What I mean is we have nothing to discuss.”

“It's about Celeste.”

“Especially if it's about Celeste. She wanted the piano and all her music books shipped back to you at the conservatory, and her clothes—”

“Her clothes are too small for me, Zane. And she loved the color pink. I detest pink.”

“I detest pink, too, but...” His voice thickened. “But I loved it on Celeste.”

Winifred nodded. “I don't need the piano,” she said quietly. “It brings back painful memories.”

“Oh? What the hell do you think it does to
me
?” Instantly he regretted snapping at her. He waited, watching her coffee cup jiggle when she picked it up. Her fingers were trembling.

“Sorry. Guess I'm strung up a little tight these days.”

“Well, so am I.”

They stared at each other across the table for a long minute, and then Winifred dropped her eyes.

“Zane, when Cissy met you, she and I were about to go on tour. London, Paris, Vienna. Even Rome, which Cissy didn't want to visit because she feared it would be too hot. Did you know about this?”

“No, I did not know. She never told me. All I know is that there was a piano recital one night at the medical college and Celeste was playing. She wore some kind of flowing pink gown, chiffon, I guess it's called. And she was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. I fell in love with her during her first piece. Chopin, I remember. An étude.”

“In A-flat,” Winifred supplied.

“Is that what you want to discuss—the music tour you and Celeste were planning?”

“No, it isn't. It's, well, something else.”

Their eyes met and held. Hers were distant. Troubled. He didn't know what his eyes betrayed, but all at once she blinked and bit her lip.

“Zane, I am trying to understand about Celeste. She was so smitten she left everything we had planned to run away with you. I...” She swallowed. “I am trying hard to forgive her for leaving it all behind. And for dying,” she added, her voice pinched.

“I am trying, as well,” he said quietly. “Part of me is hurt and angry that she—that she is gone.” Another part of him, the part he could scarcely acknowledge to himself, much less share with Winifred Von Dannen, was his weariness. He was tired of the constant grinding pain. And he was hungry. Yes, that was the word, hungry for something else. The trouble was, he didn't have the slightest idea what that might be.

Winifred sipped her coffee and looked at him over the rim of the cup. “It must be very hard,” she said at last.

For a moment he couldn't speak over the ache in his throat. “It is hard,” he said at last. “You have no idea how hard.”

She looked at him with tears pooling in her eyes and all at once he could take no more. “I'll be at the hospital.”

Without another word he shoved back his chair and strode out the door onto the street.

Winifred watched him through the front dining room window, his long-legged gait decisive, angry, his shoulders hunched forward as if warding off a chill wind.
What wouldn't she give to have met him before Cissy had
.

Her coffee cup clanked onto the saucer. Where on earth had
that
thought come from?

“Somethin' wrong with your breakfast, ma'am?” Rita stood frowning at her elbow. “Never seen Doc bolt outta here like that.”

“Oh, no, Rita. The eggs were very good, just right in fact. Dr. Dougherty said he had to go to the hospital.”

“Huh,” the woman said. “That man's working too hard, if ya ask me. Never takes a day off, up all hours of the day and night. Ever since his wife died it's like he never stops runnin'.”

Winifred tried to smile, but her mouth wouldn't work right. She clenched her lower lip between her teeth to stop its trembling. She was a silly, sentimental fool.

“I'll jest put the meal on his account. Yours, too.”

Outside on the boardwalk she stood surveying the streets of the small town she found herself in, then on impulse started down a pretty maple-lined lane. Five houses from the corner an attractive yellow two-story house caught her eye. The white picket fence surrounding the property was thick with yellow roses, the same roses she'd found on Cissy's grave yesterday.

Just as she drew abreast of the gate, the front door opened and a handsome gray-haired gentleman descended the steps. Clutched in his hand was a bouquet of the same yellow roses.

“Mornin',” he said as he unlatched the gate. “Another fine day we're havin'.”

Winifred stared at the man. “What? Oh, yes. Excuse me, but...forgive my asking, but what will you do with those roses?”

He dropped his gaze to the bouquet. “These? Why, I'm takin' these to the graveyard where Miss Celeste—” He broke off and peered at her with startling blue eyes.

“Say, you must be her sister from the East.”

“Why, yes, I am. How did you guess that?”

“Weren't hard, seein' as how you look a lot like her. Name's Rooney Cloudman, ma'am. I was an admirer of yer sister.”

She held out her hand. “Winifred Von Dannen.”

Mr. Cloudman shifted the roses to his left hand and grasped hers in a finger-crunching grip. “Miss Celeste, she liked roses, so I take some to her grave every day. Sure do miss her piano-playin'. Used to sneak up on Doc's porch and set in the swing jest listenin'. Most beautiful music I ever heard.”

Winifred swallowed hard, unable to speak for a long moment. “Yes, she was quite gifted.”

“I never let on 'bout me listenin'. Figured Doc wouldn't mind, but I was afeared she'd stop playin' if she knew.”

“I am sure she would have been pleased, Mr. Cloudman.”

He gave her a wide smile. “Whyn't you go on into the house and introduce yerself to Sarah Rose. She loved Miss Celeste's music, too. Me, I'm off to the cemetery.” He tipped his battered wide-brimmed hat and ambled on down the street.

Winifred didn't feel like talking to anyone, especially about Cissy, so she decided to return to the doctor's house on the hill and take her cooking lesson from Sam. She snapped off a single yellow rose from the stems rambling along the fence, spun in place and marched back to the big hill and Dr. Dougherty's beautiful white house.

* * *

In the hospital foyer, Zane was stopped by Samuel Graham, the physician whose name the hospital bore. The older man laid a gentle hand on Zane's shoulder.

“How are you managing, son?”

“Well enough, I suppose.”

“Sorry I couldn't be here when Sarah's grandson took sick. I was called away to Gillette Springs for an emergency appendectomy.”

“Don't give it a thought, Samuel. You know Sarah always brings one of her apple pies—that's a large payment for a small favor.” He tried to accompany the statement with a smile but somehow this morning he couldn't manage it.

The hand on his shoulder tightened. “Don't mind my sayin' so, Zane, but you look fatigued. And your eyes...you been drinking?”

“Some,” Zane admitted. More than “some” on the days Celeste's death cut particularly deep. His medical partner had sharp eyes.

“Celeste's sister is here from St. Louis.”

Doc Graham's salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose. “That so? Must be why you're frowning. Is she a trial?”

Zane sighed. “She is not.” Winifred was far from a trial, as Samuel put it. She was...he didn't know what she was, just that he liked having her around.

“She's older than Celeste. More...mature.”

The keen-eyed physician nodded. “I did rounds at eight this morning. Just leaving now to go back to the boardinghouse. Sarah serves lunch early on Sunday.”

Zane blinked. It was Sunday? Good God, he was losing track of the days again. “Anything new?”

“Mrs. Madsen's leg ulcer looks better. I'd keep her in bed an extra day, give her some rest from that husband of hers. You'd think he had the only milk cows in the county the way he coddles them.”

“But not his wife,” Zane observed. “That how she fell, a cow knocked her down?”

Doc Graham nodded. “You might look in on Whitey Poletti. Keeps insisting he's well and itching to get back to his barbershop. Testy, too, so watch yourself.”

Zane had had a bellyful of Whitey. With each haircut the man insisted Zane also needed a shave. He'd tried it once; Whitey had sent him home with some girly-smelling cologne that brought on Celeste's asthma.

“And Zane,” the older man said. “Cut Nurse Sorensen some slack today, will you? It's her birthday.”

Graham pivoted toward the hospital entrance and Zane watched his head disappear as he went down the front steps.

He checked on Mrs. Madsen's leg ulcer, Whitey Poletti's gall bladder incision and finally Sheriff Silver's wife and the twins he'd delivered twenty-four hours ago.

“Good morning, Maddie. You ready to go home tomorrow?”

The sheriff's wife grinned up at him from her hospital bed. “
I
am ready, Dr. Dougherty. I'm not sure about Jericho.”

“All new fathers feel somewhat overwhelmed. I know I did. I couldn't quite believe such a tiny human being was my responsibility. And ever since Celeste—” He stopped short.

Maddie Silver gazed up at him with concerned eyes. “I am so sorry about your wife, Doc. I know I've said that before, but, well, you've been on my mind ever since the funeral.”

Zane took her small, capable hand in his. “And you've been on my mind, as well. It isn't every day a doctor gets to deliver twins. Especially for a Pinkerton agent.”

He checked Maddie over, asked whether the twins were nursing regularly and left to seek out Elvira Sorensen. Elvira was the full-time nurse the hospital employed; Zinnia Langenfelder worked part-time as a nurse's aide.

“Elvira, I want you to take the rest of the day and evening off.”

“What? But why? You know I always work the Sunday shift.”

“Zinnia can cover for you. You go on over to Uncle Charlie's bakery for one of those lemon cakes you're so fond of. Tell him to put it on my account.”

He planted a kiss on the older woman's cheek. “Happy birthday, Elvira.” Then he strode out of the hospital and down the front steps.

“Well,” Elvira huffed, patting her hot cheeks. “I never did understand that man. But he's a good 'un, I'd say.”