The Single Dad Finds a Wife (6 page)

What if they began a relationship? And what if he lied to her the way Keith had? She had given her heart once before only to have it thoroughly and utterly trounced. Crushed by a man she'd trusted and thought she'd loved, a man she had been ready to marry.

That made her think of her sister's upcoming engagement party, an event Spring knew she would have to attend no matter how much it hurt. She was truly happy for Summer and knew that in Cameron Jackson her sister had found a man of strong faith and character. Summer and Cameron weren't responsible for the heartsick memories their happiness invoked in her.

“Dr. Darling, are you all right?”

Spring blinked. Mrs. Camden's gentle hand rested on her arm as if holding her steady.

She forced a smile and nodded. “I'm fine. Really,” she added as if to assure herself rather than the other woman.

“For a second there you looked in pain.”

“My thoughts just drifted for a moment.”

Straight down a rabbit hole
, she thought. Spring wasn't given to flights of fancy or romantic notions. She was the straight-arrow Darling sister, the one totally focused on career and community. So she didn't know where the scenario of a relationship had sprung from.

David Camden was the parent of a patient...and he'd planted a kiss on her that she still remembered, felt and wished to experience again.

“Dr. Spring?”

Her focus shifted again to her young patient.

“Yes?”

“What should I name my bear?”

Spring cocked her head a bit, considering the little boy and the bear almost as big as he was. “Well,” she said. “He's wearing a bow tie. So how about Beau? B-E-A-U,” she added for his benefit.

Jeremy's face lit up. “Okay. I like that. Hi, Beau,” he said, giving the bear a kiss. He then hugged it to him and closed his eyes. A moment later, he was sound asleep.

Charlotte smiled down at her grandson. “He and his father are the joys of my life,” she said.

“You're blessed to have both of them,” Spring said, realizing that she truly meant the words. They were not merely the sort of pleasant platitude or banal cliché offered when two strangers conversed or when a doctor was trying to be pleasant with a patient's family.

Knowing it wasn't protocol, but unable to stop herself, Spring bent and placed a kiss on Jeremy's head, then said goodbye to Charlotte.

With Jeremy on her mind and a quiet prayer of thanksgiving on her heart, she slipped from his hospital room, turned right and collided with David Camden.

Chapter Five

“I
'm sorry,” Spring said as her sparkling blue eyes widened and a blush crept up her cheeks.

“My fault,” David said at the same time.

He had been thinking about Dr. Spring Darling only to have the pretty physician walk straight into his arms. He steadied her, then let go quickly even though he wanted to breathe in the scent of her hair and hold her for just a moment. Since neither was appropriate, he held up a now partially crumpled piece of paper.

“I was headed to the hotel when I glanced at this and realized I needed some clarification from the nurses.”

“Let me see,” Spring offered. “I may be able to help.”

Although they were no longer in physical contact, neither of them moved from the spot where they'd collided.

Her eyes, he decided, were the blue of a cloudless summer day, and her lashes were full and long.

“Your eyelashes are beautiful.”

As soon as the inane words left his mouth, David felt as if he were fifteen and trying to ask Cindy Rae, his longtime secret crush, if he could walk her home from vacation Bible school. What type of lame guy complimented a woman on her eyelashes?

But instead of the “Well, bless your naive little heart for even thinking you had a shot with me” look that Cindy Rae had given him all those years ago, Spring Darling actually smiled. He watched as her eyes lit up with genuine humor and not the amused pity of a pageant princess in the making. The smile that now curved Spring's mouth was the very one that he'd dreamed about while dozing on the chair in Jeremy's room.

“I'm the envy of my younger sisters, who spend hundreds of dollars every year on eyelash plumpers, lash curlers and every new mascara that hits the market.”

“Brains and beauty,” he said almost to himself. “Now there's a lethal combination.”

“I'm as tame as they come,” she said. “Would you like me to take a look at the instructions?”

After taking half a step back from her to clear his head, as well as put some physical distance between them, David smoothed the paper on his pants leg before handing it to her.

“Dr. Emmanuel is going to release him tomorrow,” he told her. “I asked for instructions early so I could get anything he might need and have it ready.”

“Jeremy's just fallen asleep,” Spring said. “We can talk in the atrium. It's right down the hall.”

He glanced at Jeremy's closed hospital door. Even though he'd left barely half an hour ago, he couldn't resist checking to make sure he was resting comfortably. “I'll just take a quick look.”

Spring nodded, and he thought she might be used to anxious parents who wanted to assure themselves that their little ones fared well. “I'll wait here.”

Charlotte glanced up from the newspaper she was reading in the very chair where David had spent the night. She smiled and lifted a finger to her mouth. “Shh.”

He nodded.

Jeremy was indeed sleeping, looking as he always did. Were it not for the hospital bed, the monitors and a huge teddy bear that he was clutching, his son would have looked as if he were at home in his own bed. The life-size bear sported a polka-dot bow tie and was just the sort of toy David would have gotten for him had his mind been on anything but the surgery his little boy had undergone.

“That was a good idea,” he told his mom with a nod toward Jeremy's new companion. “Thank you.”

Charlotte shook her head. “Not from me. It's from Dr. Darling.”

David's brow lifted in surprise. “Really?”

She nodded, then whispered, “He named it Beau for the bow tie.”

David didn't know what to make of this news, but he was grateful to see Jeremy looking so peaceful following the trauma of the previous night. After coming out of recovery and waking, he'd been fretful and the night had been long. The nurses told him that it was normal for children to be anxious in the unfamiliar surroundings.

“I'm going to talk to the doctor,” he said, still keeping his voice low so Jeremy wouldn't be disturbed.

“All right, dear,” his mother said. “I'll be right here.”

David leaned over the bed rail and kissed the top of his son's head. Then, after sending a smile his mother's way, he returned to the hall, missing Charlotte's speculative glance at him.

Spring Darling was still there, not that he'd expected her to disappear. Her head was lowered in the position that he'd starting calling “Americans and their best friends” as she tapped on her phone. She must have sensed him standing there because she looked up. And when she smiled, David's breath caught.

Her beauty was refined and classic, putting him in mind of pearls and calla lilies, rather than, say, daisies and bare feet, though no flowers or jewelry save a watch and small gold posts adorned her. No gold band was on her left hand, and he had the impression she would be the type of woman who would display her union with that symbol. He realized that he was interested in getting to know her...and that interest had nothing at all to do with the fact that she'd come to his son's aid last night even though the clinic was officially closed.

“We can talk in the atrium,” she said again.

With that comment, David realized that Dr. Spring Darling was a pediatrician and her business was medicine. She was just doing her job, seeing to patients and ready to answer any questions parents had about care.

Then what was the teddy bear all about, he wondered to himself.

* * *

Spring wasn't quite sure how it happened. One minute they were headed to the atrium, and the next she was suggesting the patio terrace of a coffeehouse near the hospital instead. She told herself that the atrium was crowded with patients and their families getting a bit of morning sun, but knew that wasn't the full reason behind her decision.

Like a moth to a flame, something about David Camden called to her, beckoned her. And instead of activating the emotional shields she erected whenever a man got too close or seemed interested in her, she opened herself to the possibilities. If she wasn't mistaken, she'd seen a spark in his eyes that mirrored her own when it came to him.

It was an intriguing and unique situation for her. And she was a grown woman. As her youngest sister, Autumn, would say, “Life's too short to miss the game. Play ball!”

So she and David Camden settled on the patio terrace of the coffee shop that was a gravel pathway away from Cedar Springs General Hospital. The spot, frequented by hospital staff and employees from the nearby medical office complex, buzzed with the midmorning chatter of people taking quick breaks or grabbing an early lunch before dashing back to cubicles, labs and patients.

“Thank you,” David said. “For the teddy bear you gave Jeremy.”

Spring felt her cheeks grow warm and knew she couldn't attribute it to the skinny chai latte she sipped. “I saw it and thought of him. He seemed to like it.”

Silence fell between them then, as though they both searched for words to fill the space. Instead of being awkward, the shared contemplation seemed comfortable to Spring. It even, she dared think, felt right. As if they'd done this many times before. And before she knew it, she'd voiced just that idea.

He smiled. “I thought it was just me.”

Well
, Spring surmised.
Well, well, well.

After taking another sip of her latte, she nodded toward the papers from Adam Emmanuel that David had placed on the table. “Dr. Emmanuel's instructions are spot-on,” she told him. “After discharge tomorrow, Jeremy will need bed rest. You'll know he's ready to resume his normal schedule when he's fidgeting to get out of bed or says he's hungry.”

He smiled. “That would be always,” he said. “And spoken from experience I take it. How many children do you have?”

“About three hundred,” she said. “But I loan them out to their other parents for extended periods of time.”

That earned a laugh from him, and Spring liked the way it sounded, as if a well of good humor lived deep within him and he tapped it often.

“I know it was scary,” she said.

“Terrifying.”

“But he came through like an ace.”

David nodded. “With a lot of praying and deal making with God.”

Curious about that, she asked the obvious follow-up question. “What did you offer?”

“Everything,” David said. “My job keeps me busy, and being a single father has its challenges. I didn't know—or maybe it's that I didn't realize how easy it was to prioritize until now. Jeremy comes first.”

“Your mother said she's going to stay with him.”

He nodded. “She got the adjoining room at the hotel and will stay for a day or two, then take Jeremy home while I finish up here.”

“What's your work?” she asked.

“Ah, so you finally believe I'm a productive member of society? I'm an architect,” he said. “If you'd like, I can have someone from my office scan and email my degrees and licenses to prove it.”

Her cheeks grew warm again, a recurring affair around this man, but this time she knew the cause was embarrassment. “I'm sorry.”

He shrugged, then flashed a grin that was quick and easy. “When I had an objective moment to think about it in the middle of the night, I had to laugh. We must have been quite a sight at the Common Ground clinic. The clerk at the front desk directed me there as the closest and best place to get medical treatment.”

“I'm glad, then,” she said, even though she knew her words could and probably would be interpreted as flirting. Spring couldn't remember the last time she'd flirted with a man.

“Me, too,” he said. “We got the best doctor in town.”

With a start, she realized that he was flirting with her.

As they enjoyed their beverages, David told her a funny story about Jeremy and a stuffed dinosaur he'd gotten after a visit to the natural history museum.

“The next thing I know, I'm trying to convince him that monsters are not under the bed or in the closet trying to eat him. In retrospect, a dinosaur exhibit may have been a bit much for a three-year-old. The ones at the museum were not purple and cuddly.”

She was barely able to keep the laughter from her voice as she told him, “I know for a fact it was too much for a little girl who was six years old.”

“You?”

Spring shook her head. “My sister Summer. I was fifteen and she was six when we had to douse the entire house with monster spray before she would settle down.”

“Amazing things, those spray bottles filled with water,” he said with a grin.

“I wish it had just been water,” Spring said. “I added a couple of drops of green food coloring and made up a label that said, ‘Certified by the Dinosaur Society of America' to lend it authenticity. Summer stopped crying and went to sleep assured that our house was safe from dinosaurs that liked to munch on little girls. Unfortunately, Mother didn't appreciate the pale green tint added to her silk-covered throw pillows and dry-clean-only draperies.”

“How much trouble did you get into?”

“I had to pay for the cleaning out of my allowance and I was banned from doing any more educational babysitting.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Did you say your sister's name is Summer?”

Spring groaned. “I wondered if you'd caught that. We were the objects of much amusement for a while.” She lifted a hand before he could say anything else. “There's also a Winter and an Autumn.”

She saw his eyes widen, and Spring knew he was trying to wrap his head around the fact that the four sisters were named for the seasons. His grin grew broader.

“Collectively, we were called The Seasons of Love or, more familiarly, simply The Seasons.”

“Okay,” he said around a sip of his coffee. “I'll bite. Why?”

“Why were we called The Seasons, or why were we named by obvious lunatics?” The amusement in her voice conveyed that she bore no real ill will toward said lunatics.

He seemed to be trying to hold the chuckles in, and he just waved a hand in a go-on-with-the-story expansive motion.

“My mother's name is Louvenia, but everyone calls her Lovie. Hence, The Seasons of Love. And that little sister who was certain that a dinosaur would come to life and that she would be its midnight snack is all grown-up and getting married soon.”

David cocked his head and studied her for a moment. “Why does that bother you?”

Spring's breath caught. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your sister Summer,” he said. “Her upcoming wedding bothers you.”

“Wh-what would make you say such a thing?”

He shrugged and sat back. “The light. In your eyes, I mean. It seemed to dim a bit when you said she's getting married soon. Is the groom-to-be not quite up to what you'd hoped for your little sister?”

Spring cleared her throat and reached for her latte cup, only to discover it empty. She glanced around, looking for an out, for a way not to get into this. Finding none, she opted for the only option open to her.

“I...I have to leave now,” she said. “I'm sorry to have kept you so long. Your mother said you had to prepare for business meetings.”

Spring rose, knowing that she was being cool and rude but unable to stop herself.

This man she'd known all of a day had taken one look at her and discerned the secret she thought she hid so well.

Her younger sister had been widowed two years ago, had moved home to Cedar Springs from Georgia and promptly found and fallen in love with Cameron Jackson, the town's fire chief.

It wasn't fair.

Life wasn't fair, and Spring knew at the heart of it she
was
happy for her sister. Summer had been through a lot and more than deserved any and every happiness she could find. Summer had overcome emotional barriers that Spring didn't think she, the eldest of the Darling girls, would have been able to handle if put in the same set of circumstances.