The M.D. Courts His Nurse (12 page)

“Actually I'm a nurse. Just filling in up front.”

“I see,” Janet replied as if it hardly mattered to her what the hoi polloi chose to do. She had been just as indifferent toward Rebecca when they were in school together. Janet's time was spent on social activities like cheerleading and governing her exclusive clique, which had included Louise Wallant. Rebecca had excelled, on the other hand, at academics and spent her free time helping Hazel and riding horses at the Lazy M.

Rebecca took out the standard medical history form required of all first-visit patients.

“I just need to ask you a few—”

“Oh, save yourself the trouble, Becky,” Janet cut her off rudely. “I'm not here for any medical problem.”

Rebecca's strained smile wilted at the rude, dismissive tone. “But this is a
medical
office. Why have you requested an appointment?”

“Don't worry, I'm paying for it. I had to come into town, anyway, to show a property, so I figured I'd chat up Dr. Saville while I'm here. I know he's busy, so I figured an appointment was the best bet.”

Chat up,
Rebecca thought with disdain. Just as pretentious as she'd always been. Hazel's words about Barbara Wallant now occurred to her:
She's all hat and no cattle.

“I saw his photograph in yesterday's newspaper. He's quite a handsome and distinguished-looking man for one so young.”

“Yes,” Rebecca replied, keeping her tone carefully level. “I was in that photo, too.”

Janet's eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, was that other person you? I must have read the caption too quickly. Besides, you look much different today without your uniform.”

I wasn't
wearing
a uniform, Rebecca almost pointed out, then thought better of it. Why bother? Egocentric Janet couldn't care less.

Behind her, she heard John open his office door, signifying that he was ready to see his patient.

“You can go on back now,” Rebecca told her, restraining herself from adding,
But why don't you go to hell instead?

She half expected the visit to end quickly, for John was pretty much all business when it came to medicine. He
surely wouldn't appreciate this frivolous use of office time for obvious socializing.

But she was wrong. Before very long, peals of laughter—masculine and feminine—reached her in the front office. And a lively conversation was ensuing, although she couldn't hear their actual words.

Well, let's just close down the office and have a party, she fumed, anger replacing the warmth and closeness she had just begun to feel with John. All it took was the arrival of a “pert skirt” with a bankroll to turn the guy into a medical playboy.

But even as her fury mounted with each new peal of mirth, she cautioned herself against giving in to jealousy. It was her own fault she was miserable. She had no business having a fling with her employer. Cool and detached were the only ways to go and she had almost slipped up again with his unexpected kiss.

While she was ruminating, the postman dropped the day's mail through the slot.

She crossed the waiting room and knelt to pick it up, rolling the rubber band off and starting to sort through it as she returned to the reception desk. A few medical-supply catalogs, a bill for the new air conditioner, a couple of payment envelopes…

She stopped a few steps from the desk, staring at a vellum-finish envelope with fancy, gold-embossed letters in the upper lefthand corner:

Louise Wallant
17 Congress Street
Deer Lodge, Montana

In one keenly disappointing moment, Rebecca felt her newfound hope eroding. She had just finished lecturing her
self about being unfair regarding Janet; now this new blow caught her with no defenses left.

What I told Hazel about reincarnation was wrong, she thought. I wasn't John's maid in an earlier life; I was the maid to his rich girlfriends.

For a moment she actually envisioned herself drudge-capped and aproned, dropping a servile curtsy as John disappeared behind bedroom doors, Janet on one arm, Louise on the other. She was still holding that unwelcome image when the doctor and his visitor appeared in the front office again, still engrossed in their chat.

Again Janet didn't even deign to notice her, as if she were merely a piece of furniture. And John's behavior toward his wealthy visitor— Anger knotted Rebecca's insides as she noticed how easy, confident and relaxed he'd become, Lothario with a stethoscope, natural-born seducer of socialites.

That glib mouth of his, she realized with a sinking feeling, had just kissed her own lips.

However, Rebecca kept her anger out of her face and manner as Janet left, not even bothering to say goodbye to her.

John, still smiling from the visit, turned to his nurse again.

“As I recall—” he picked up their curtailed conversation “—you and I were arranging a date.”

She had resumed her task of recording lab samples in the ledger. Before he could say anything else, she spoke up. “All right. How about this coming weekend? Saturday night's good for me.”

Just as she had feared, a frown settled onto his handsome features. “I'm tied up this weekend.”

Tied up, she thought sarcastically. Gets kinky at Louise's, does it?

“Oh?” she replied demurely. Her eyes cut to the stack
of mail she'd put on Lois's desk. Louise's letter sat atop the stack and seemed to stare back at her—mockingly so.

She waited to see if he would offer any further explanation as to how he might be “tied up.”

The lull became painful, then excruciating, as he simply stood there and said nothing.

“What about weekend after next?” he suggested. “Or during the week, would that be okay?”

She suddenly felt both crushed and infuriated that he would actually schedule her in as one of his concubines like a raja managing his harem. And
this
was the callous creep she'd surrendered her virginity to?

“I'll tell you what,” she offered in icy tones, “how 'bout when I'm in the mood, I'll call you.”

His mouth fell open in astonishment.

Before he could respond, the front door swung open and Lois appeared. She took one look at Rebecca's angry features, then at John's dumbfounded face.

“Ooops,” Lois said, realizing she'd arrived at an awkward moment. “Should I go run an errand or two?”

“No,” Rebecca answered firmly for both of them. “Our conversation is terminated.”

 

I took Hazel's advice, John stewed later that evening while his frozen lasagna dinner thawed in the microwave. I wasn't defensive, I showed warmth and all that good stuff. And where did it get me? Becky turned on me like a rabid animal.

A late-spring cold front had moved in from Canada after sunset, and he had built up a small fire in the living room's big fieldstone fireplace. The house had been partially furnished when he'd purchased it, but he had gotten rid of the ugly embossed-plush sofa and the rest of the mass-produced furnishings that had rendered the room functional and tasteless.

He hadn't yet found time, however, to replace the stuff he'd tossed out, and the big house had an empty, cavernous feel. But he had kept the quaint lamps with parchment shades, and he had kept the sheer curtains and buffalo-check overdrapes.

Right now, however, he couldn't care less about decor. Not when the memory of his clash with Becky still smarted like an open wound.

Out in the kitchen the timer on the microwave dinged, letting him know supper was ready. But he simply sat motionless in the room's only armchair, trying to figure out what he had done wrong.

Shallow socialites like Janet Longchamps were predictable to him—they had been throwing themselves at him since his medical school days. But unique women like Becky stymied and intimidated him, for she was far more complex, far less manipulable.

He stared at the telephone on the mantel, trying to work up the courage to call her.

But anger, and a newly constructed wall of defensiveness, killed his impulse. By following Hazel's advice, he had taken a considerable emotional risk. And when she just turned on him like she did, Becky only confirmed his instinct to stay on the defensive with her.

Failure is not an option,
his father's voice still echoed in memory.

His gaze lifted above the crackling, sawing flames to the decorative centerpiece of the room, mounted in a glass-fronted case: a beautifully carved, painted and decorated Blackfoot warrior coup stick.

It had been presented to him in a special council meeting of the tribe elders at their reservation located in the Bitterroot Valley, between Montana and Idaho. It was not a replica, but the genuine article from the glory days of the early
nineteenth century, one of the most highly prized possessions of the tribe.

Fifteen brightly dyed feathers were tied to it, one for each time the warrior had “counted coup” on an enemy—touched the enemy or his horse with the stick. Anyone could kill from a distance, Indian warriors had reasoned, including a coward. But it took even more courage and risks to come close enough to actually touch a foe. In fact, a coup was far more honored than taking a life.

Risks…

Again John stared at the telephone. He took great pride in that coup stick, for it meant he was one of the few outsiders to be taken into the heart of the tribe. Yet, could he find the courage now to count coup on Becky, to move in close and touch her again despite the emotional risks?

He almost stood up and crossed to the telephone.

But then he reminded himself that it wasn't just a matter of courage. He had done nothing to merit her coldness today. If she wasn't interested in him, then that was her choice. He couldn't force her to want him.

Anger and resentment stirred within him, steeling his resolve to just forget about her.

Hazel, he decided, was a good and fascinating woman with her heart in the right place. Unfortunately, she just didn't understand Becky's personality.

“
You
can go to hell, too, Rebecca O'Reilly,” he declared out loud in the big, nearly empty room.

And that, he assured himself, is my final word on it.

F
riday at the medical office was an excruciating ordeal for Lois, who was forced to witness two stubborn, prideful fools obviously trying to deny their love and attraction for each other.

The stiff, uncomfortable formality between John and Rebecca was back with a vengeance. It was “Dr. Saville” and “Miss O'Reilly” again, and while both of them still had plenty of smiles and kind words for the patients or Lois, with each other they could barely manage to be civil.

Twice Lois had to diplomatically intercede to prevent them from going at each other hammer and tongs over completely trivial matters.

Because she had been at the dentist's yesterday when the latest trouble storm brewed, Lois wasn't sure exactly what the problem was. By now, however, she and Hazel had become allies of a sort for this latest matchmaking campaign. So on Friday afternoon, when John stepped out of
the office to grab a sandwich, and Rebecca was busy putting supplies away in the storeroom, Lois made a quick phone call to Hazel.

“Code Red,” she informed the rancher, keeping her voice down so Rebecca wouldn't overhear her. “It's getting ugly, Hazel. Our two lovebirds are now involved in a full-fledged cockfight.”

“What happened?” Hazel demanded.

“I wish I knew. Things were humming along just fine yesterday before I left for my dental appointment. By the time I got back, full-scale war had erupted.”

Hazel expelled a long sigh at her end. “Has Becky said anything to you?”

“Zip. And when I asked her what was wrong, she just gave me the ugliest frown and said, ‘Nothing a good hit man couldn't fix.'”

“Hmm…can't call that very promising—or can we? Obviously, some deep feelings are involved here, just not the right ones. Well, I'll run my traps. You got any hunches?”

“Well, there
was
a letter from Louise Wallant on top of the mail stack when I came back. And John's taking off again this weekend.”

“That's better than a hunch,” Hazel assured her. “I'll bet you just put your finger right on the problem.”

“
Is
he driving to Deer Lodge weekends to see Louise?”

“Maybe. I understand they did have an affair at one time. But unless I read him all wrong, I just can't see him and Louise making beautiful music together.”

“Same here,” Lois agreed. “Uh-oh, I hear her coming, gotta go.”

“Thanks for the report,” Hazel told her just before they both hung up. “I'll work on her this weekend, though I confess I'm beginning to have my doubts about these two.”

 

Saturday turned out to be a gloomy, cheerless day that perfectly matched Rebecca's mood. While the rain seemed to be holding off, not even a narrow seam of sunshine appeared in a cloudy sky the color of dirty bathwater.

She was up and dressed by 8:00 a.m. Although she had no appetite, she forced herself to eat a croissant with her morning coffee. But it was impossible to hang around her place—not with the sense of John's presence still so strong there.

She needed some busywork, so she decided to wash clothes. Since her apartment was too small for a washer and dryer, she had to drive to the laundromat in Mystery.

After I finish that, she resolved, I think I'll go apartment hunting.

She had purposely kept her small efficiency apartment, even though she could afford a roomier place, mainly because she knew Brian had been embarrassed by it. She'd refused to let a self-centered creep like him determine her lifestyle. But now it contained echoes she didn't want to hear anymore, and she no longer cared about her pride. She just wanted out.

Out.
As she watched the hypnotic tumbling of her clothes in the dryers, that word kept gnawing at her. Out of her old apartment—and why not out of her job, too? After all, as bitterly unhappy as she felt, there was really no other solution.

For one thing, those weekend disappearances of John's, which once intrigued her, now made her feel very differently since they'd made love.

Sure, she could probably play John's game and simply go about her job as if nothing had ever happened between them. But unlike his, her heart was broken. There was no denying it any longer. The hurt Brian had caused her was
nothing compared to working day in and day out with a man who'd been her lover.

So she knew what she must do: get another job, maybe at Lutheran Hospital, and put John Saville behind her. The way she felt about him, it would be the hardest thing she'd ever done. But as a nurse, she also knew that the best way to cure some hurts was to lance them quickly.

She was dismayed at how certain painful social moments were just that—over and gone in a blink, so far as time went. But when one had to relive them over and over in memory, the pain of it could endure a lifetime. Like overhearing a phone call or spotting the letter from Louise.

Tears filmed her eyes as she carried her clean laundry out to the Bronco. She chided herself for thinking again about just where John probably was this weekend: in the arms and bed of a woman she despised. The idea that he could be so cold and casual about sexual intimacy infuriated her and strengthened her resolve.

Yes, it would be hard to stick to her guns. No matter how much she denied it, John was not just one more bit player in the drama of her life—he was a fundamental part. For that very reason, she told herself, trying to feel determined and resolute, I've got to get another job.

Her cell phone chirred, and grateful for the distraction she pulled the phone out of her purse.

“Hello?”

“What's new, Boogaloo?” Hazel's throaty voice greeted her. “You busy right now?”

“Hi. Not really, I'm just driving home after a thrilling trip to the laundromat.”

“Be out of your way to swing by? There's something I'd like to show you.”

“I haven't passed your road yet, anyway. I'll be there in maybe five minutes.”

“Good. Look for me out in the side yard.”

“What's—”

But Hazel hung up before Rebecca could ask any questions.

 

She spotted Hazel in the big side yard even before she turned in at the stone gateposts of the Lazy M. The rancher was accompanied by a man Rebecca had glimpsed around town but never met. She parked behind a new pickup truck with huge toolboxes in the back and a yellow hard hat visible on the dashboard.

The doors of the truck advertised Dave Perry, Construction Contractor and included a phone number in nearby Lambertville. Now she guessed what was going on. Hazel had mentioned her intention to replace the old pump house, built in 1920, with a new one. Mountain snowmelt was low this year, and the Lazy M depended on pumps to keep water flowing to outlying irrigation ditches and stock ponds up in the summer pastures.

“Becky!” Hazel called to her as the latter threaded her way through the tall spruces toward them. “I'd like you to meet someone. Becky O'Reilly, this is Dave Perry.”

He smiled at her from a face pleasantly tanned from years of outdoor work. He had a neat, closely trimmed beard slightly darker than the sandy-blond hair curling over the top of his collar. Dave Perry was lithe and slim-hipped, dressed in jeans and a clean flannel shirt, with a measuring tape clipped to one of his belt loops.

“Pleasure to meet you, Becky.” The long, appreciative look he gave her showed that he was indeed pleased.

At the moment, however, male attention was not high on her lists of priorities.

“Dave stopped by to give me an estimate on a new pumping station,” Hazel explained. “Naturally he wants to skin me alive on the price.”

Dave glanced at Rebecca and sent her a quick wink to let her know he wasn't fooled by Hazel's tricks.

“She calls me the Robin Hood of construction contracting,” he confided with another smile. “She claims I rob the rich and give to the poor—namely myself.”

“Poor?” Hazel rolled her eyes. “What, is last year's hot tub out-of-date already?”

Despite her despondent mood, Rebecca had to smile at the pious, innocent face Dave assumed. Clearly he liked to clown around.

“Hazel, you've been fed vicious rumors about me. Why, I live so simply and humbly my neighbors call me the Dali Dave. And what
looks
like a satellite dish in my yard? It's really just a birdbath in the style of Picasso.”

Both women laughed at Dave's charming silliness. By now, however, Rebecca fully realized he was the “something” Hazel wanted to show her. The incurable old romantic was up to her matchmaking tricks again, for it was in her nature to do her all for Mystery's future. “The quality of any town,” she once insisted to Rebecca, “equals the quality of the people who live in it.”

At the moment, however, Rebecca had little time to resent Hazel's meddling because she was forced to laugh repeatedly as the Matriarch of Mystery and Dali Dave concluded their business deal, drawing it out in true Western horse trader's fashion. Hazel complained bitterly that, land love us, she was a helpless old widow being fleeced. Dave stubbornly insisted he was practically giving the work away for nothing, for crying out loud. They eventually settled on the price they each knew beforehand would be agreed to. But this way was more fun.

Dave's truck was still meandering down the driveway when Hazel asked slyly, “Would
he
have been a better choice than Rick Collins?”

“I s'pose,” Rebecca conceded without much interest.

“You ‘s'pose,'” Hazel exclaimed in disbelief. “Girl, I double-hog-tie dare you to look me in the eye and tell me you don't find Dave Perry attractive.”

“Sure, he's all right,” she conceded. “Lively sense of humor, too.”

But something about the distracted, detached way she said it made Hazel study her for a moment, her eyes narrowing. “You know,” she confessed, “I've got him in mind for your next date. Believe it or not, he's neither married nor gay, and he's definitely available. I noticed how he was checking you out nine ways to Sunday.”

“No, thanks,” Rebecca demurred. “Nothing against Dave. I'm sure plenty of women have their sights set on him.”

“As a matter of fact, yep,” Hazel affirmed, still watching her friend from shrewd eyes. “You
are
in love with John Saville, aren'cha?”

Rebecca flushed. That was answer enough for Hazel.

“Listen, hon,” she urged Rebecca, “a date with a fun guy like Dave is just the tonic you need right now. Why become a she-hermit just because you've had some bad luck in love?”

However, Rebecca resolutely shook her head. She couldn't explain it to Hazel, but she simply could not “play the field” right now. Never mind that even as they spoke, John was probably with Louise, perhaps even making love to her. Until Rebecca managed to shake him out of her heart, she simply could not go out with another man.

“I'm going to be pretty busy for a while,” she explained. “I'll be apartment hunting, and I may be looking for a new job, too.”

“A new job? Becky, you're shooting a shotgun into a rain barrel. Just because you've had some little spat with John—”

“It's no spat,” Rebecca said, her voice charged with feeling. “He isn't just an arrogant snob, Hazel. He's also
a…well, he collects women in his bed, that's what. And I won't work for a man like him.”

“All right.” Hazel surrendered. She knew Rebecca's moods to a hair—trying to change her mind, once it was set, was harder than holding the ocean back with a broom. “Well, if a handsome jasper like Dave Perry doesn't entice you, I'm out of options.”

“Are you
sure
about that?” Rebecca demanded. “The more I think about that date with Rick Collins, the more all the ‘coincidences' bother me. Especially the fact that John showed up right on time to give me a ride home.”

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” Hazel quoted, her face and tone exaggeratedly innocent.

“Yeah, well, so do you.”

Hazel shrugged. “Well, if a system works for the Lord…”

Unable to help herself, Rebecca laughed. “Hazel, shame on you! True, I didn't think much of Rick, but causing him all that trouble wasn't right.”

“Oh, pouf. Don't worry about that. I had one of my wranglers slip an envelope under his door anonymously. There was a hundred-dollar bill in it to compensate him for the trouble.”

Hazel's comment about being out of options may have seemed like surrender at last. But after Rebecca had left, Hazel remained out in the yard, turning this urgent problem back and forth for a while.

This is serious, she decided. Dave Perry had been the ace up her sleeve. Since the disaster-date plan had failed, she had decided to reverse her approach and set Rebecca up with a truly sexy, fun-filled guy—somebody to take her mind off John. But the poor girl was so far gone in love with her employer she was inconsolable.

This is a tough match, Hazel conceded again. She was still convinced, however, that Rebecca and John would be a superb couple if only the “speed bumps” on the road to
love could be smoothed out. But Rebecca was on the verge of radical steps, such as quitting her job.

Hazel recalled that comment about how John Saville “collects women in his bed.” She was convinced, despite a lack of any evidence, that Rebecca had him sized up all wrong. That young man was
not
a womanizer—he was steady and faithful, like an altar lamp that never goes out.

Her face settled into a mask of determination as she again stared toward the big main barn. The old foreman's quarters would need plenty of sprucing up, and quickly, but she had capable workers on her payroll. She must move swiftly now, or else this rocky
pas de deux
between John and Rebecca would soon be over.

 

“That's it,” Dr. Saville finally announced, stepping back from the operating table and the heavily sedated young boy. He surveyed his work, peeling off his latex gloves. “Betcha fifty bucks this little guy won't even have a scar to prove we operated.”