To Begin Anew (Blue Jay Romance) (11 page)

~*~*~

The drive back to Blue Jay was both a good thing and a bad thing. Eric knew that, as a parent, there should be a time when not having twin attention seekers to spend his time on was a blessing, but he always felt a sadness creep on him when he was away from them for even a weekend.

To Eric, his children represented the last bit of happiness he had, his last tangible connection to the wife that was gone from him forever. He depended on them more than he could admit to himself and, even if he realized it, he still could never say out loud how much his children helped preserve the good man he’d become.

The problem with silence and too much time on a person’s hands was that it gave the opportunity for thoughts that normally were suppressed to rise to the surface and romp freely where they pleased.

Naturally, when he had a moment to himself, when there was a time for silence to engulf him, his thoughts turned to Debra. More than what she was becoming to his children, more than what she was to the people around her, he thought about what she was rapidly becoming to him. A friend, for certain. Eric knew, without having tested the theory, that Debra would be there for him, defend him, help him when he truly needed it. It wasn’t so much that he knew he could trust in it, or use it to his benefit, but that Debra as a woman was strong and capable and anyone who knew her understood that she was the rock that tethered the people she loved to the ground.

Even in the few days that he’d known her, he couldn’t help but think on occasion that he would have loved to have met her under different circumstances without the connection of her being his employee to muddle and confuse what otherwise could turn into more than what he sensed was a blossoming friendship.

Eric sighed and ran a hand through his hair. What in the world was he going to do? What in the world was he
thinking
? He’d taken his kids to his mother’s house so that he could spend the next day with a woman whom he sometimes thought of as a woman in more than the sense of friendship. She was attractive, giving, and every second he spent in her presence was a second he spent actually living instead of merely existing.

He swallowed hard, feeling a bit of panic take the place of some of his thoughts. Had he actually planned a date for Sunday? He roamed over the various guises that asking a woman to any sort of function could be taken under, and he settled for a friendship dinner and a movie. After all, two friends could do that, right? Besides, he thought to himself, even if it was a date - and he used the word lightly - it meant literally nothing. A dinner and a movie didn’t mean you were engaged to be married.

~*~*~

Debra woke Sunday morning, her brain pounding the sides of her skull like a jackhammer into a sidewalk. She wondered if this wasn’t some kind of sign that told her what the rest of the day was going to be like. She rolled out of bed, not bothering to dress, only grabbing her bathrobe, and as she glanced at the clock at her bedside, she felt a pang at her temple as though her headache was responding to her irritation.

The clock said that it was seven thirty, and since her sister had said that she would be there bright and early at seven and she wasn’t woken up by a knock at the door or a ringing of her doorbell, then Debra could assume, as was common with every other time Nikki wandered in her direction, that the girl was not going to be on time or even where she said she was going to be. Just as she made it down the hall from her bedroom, the doorbell rang followed by a heavy knock. If it wasn’t her sister, and maybe even if it was, she was going to kill the person on the other side and let the Man upstairs sort her out when it was her time to come see Him.

Moving to the front door, she passed the peep hole, deciding to be surprised and she opened the door. The man standing on her porch was obviously not her sister, since he lacked certain parts needed in certain places to accomplish it. There was a wide grin on his face, his handsome looks contrasting with the cheer that beamed out of his eyes like the red pointer sight of a rifle.

“Thought I might make you breakfast this morning.”

Eric hoped his grin would win Debra over and convince her that he hadn’t lost his mind since, by the way she was staring at him, he was certain that was what she was thinking. He waggled his eyebrows and said, “Come on, please?”

Words, like lucky breaks, failed her utterly. Debra saw a millennium pass and wander through all the stages of humanity and then some before she understood the gesture Dr. Nelson was trying to make. It was a nice thing for someone to do, a considerate action, but in all honesty, if she didn’t kill him where he stood she knew it was because Someone intervened on his behalf.

Debra noticed that the smile Dr. Nelson had plastered on his face seemed screwed in at the moment, that his eyes were wavering somewhere between panic and ‘Oh, no.’ He must have realized that it was too early in the morning to be waking up a perfectly innocent woman to make her breakfast. Suddenly, she didn’t have the heart to murder him. She said, her voice rushing out in a sigh despite what she did to prevent it, “Come on, get in here before you take up root on the porch.”

Eric moved like a machine in Debra’s kitchen, focusing on the task of putting the right ingredients in the right places, keeping his mind directed toward getting to the goal and avoiding the glaring woman sipping coffee in her bathrobe. He thought he was handling the problem in much the same way he handled most of his other problems - dive into work and it all goes away.

Debra watched Eric move through the kitchen, her anger abated to the point where she found herself paying attention to more than the pots and pans and splotches of flour that cluttered her kitchen.

She’d never said that Dr. Nelson wasn’t an attractive man. In the few days that she’d known him, he’d come to her in button down shirts and khaki pants with polished shoes and slicked back hair. He’d appeared to her very much the doctor that he was and more than that, the father that he was. But now as he tried desperately not to burn the eggs he had going in the frying pan, Debra noted that he wasn’t anything like the man she’d stolen the apple from a few days ago.

For one thing, he was dressed in blue jeans and until she’d seen them on him, Debra would have sworn he didn’t own any, and his shirt was a simple cotton T, the kind that hugged a man’s chest to outline his muscles. His hair, however, was the most striking thing about his new appearance - it was mopped all over his head, messy, and it looked as if it was too soft to be real. Debra mentally sighed and told herself to get a grip and drink more caffeine. He wasn’t nearly as attractive as all that - it was just her sleepy brain trying to rationalize not killing a perfectly fine upstanding citizen.
How could anyone think about doing anything bad to a man so handsome?
her brain whispered in her ear.

Debra was dismally aware of the contrast between them as well. Here she was, as was her right to be, sitting in her kitchen, hair a mess and dressed in her pajamas and bathrobe. She’d forgotten completely about meeting Dr. Nelson today, thinking that as easily as she’d let the idea go, he wouldn’t remember he’d suggested it either. Assumptions got a girl in trouble, she reminded herself.

Eric put the last touches on the eggs he’d scrambled, the coffee cake he’d picked up from the local store, the pancakes that he was fortunate not to scorch and the bacon and sausage he was told were the best in town. It certainly smelled good, and as he set Debra’s plate in front of her, he sat across from her and sighed as he finally got the chance to rest his feet.

“It looks really good, Dr. Nelson.”

Eric eyed Debra, felt a frown forming on his lips, and then decided to let it slide. If it was the last thing he did, he was going to get her to call him by his name. Hearing ‘Dr. Nelson’ all the time made him feel like his father. He said, “Go on and dig in before it gets cold, huh? You’ll have to tell me if I’m a good cook or not.”

Debra did as he asked and surprisingly enough, even though parts of her brain told her that it was mighty hard to ruin eggs and bacon, thought that it was exceptional. It tasted better to her because she hadn’t cooked it.

She heard Dr. Nelson chuckle through a bite of eggs and had to look up to see what had gotten into him. When she did, he said, “You look like I just gave you a bushel of apples.”

The comment took Debra by surprise, so much so that, as she began to laugh, she nearly choked on a bit of bacon she was working on swallowing. Once she was able to get it down, she said, “Don’t do that! What if I really did choke?”

Eric laughed harder. “I’m a doctor, I got your back.”

Debra laughed with him for a few minutes, enjoying his company, slipping into the ease of friendship she’d noticed was natural when it came to him. She started to get up to refill her coffee mug when the doorbell rang for the second time that morning.

She sighed, set her cup on the counter and went to the door. After the morning began the way it did, Debra wasn’t in the mood to suffer any more interesting surprises and so help her, if it was anyone other than her sister, there was going to be a punishment handed out like greeting cards.

Debra opened the door and before there was any sort of exchange, her sister flew in, set a baby carrier on the floor and rushed past her down the hall to bathroom.

“What…”

“Can’t talk - gotta go!”

Debra frowned at her sister’s flowing hair, at the heels that padded through the carpet and then clicked on the tile in the bathroom. She moved from where she stood at the door and removed little Annie from her carrier. The girl was cute as a button and would be one year old the coming November, but she never felt more sorry for any living creature.

“What a cute kid,” Dr. Nelson said as he moved to stand next to Debra. She hadn’t noticed before how much taller he was than her, but a person could notice a lot of things when there wasn’t much more than two inches separating you from them. Dr. Nelson was close enough to kiss her as he leaned in to get a good look at Annie.

Debra swallowed, hard, and backed out of his reach, nodding to keep herself from speaking. She didn’t trust her voice in the least. Thankfully for her sanity, he seemed to sense that being close to her made her uncomfortable, so he backed to a safe distance a foot away from her, but he reached over and tickled Annie’s tummy to make her giggle.

“She got a name?”

Before Debra could answer, her sister returned from the bathroom and as her eyes took in Dr. Nelson’s appearance, she let out a low wolf whistle and clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Wow, Deb, you didn’t tell me you had a man!”

Eric moved from where he stood, stuck his hand out and said with a smile, “Hello, I’m Dr. Eric Nelson.”

Nikki took hold of the moving Adonis’ hand and as she looked him up and down, she had to blink several times before her brain recognized why she felt like she already knew him.

“You’re THE Dr. Eric Nelson, aren’t you?” She let go of the hand in hers and looked beyond the wall of perfection to her sister, literally astounded. “Are you serious? Is he really standing in
your
living room?”

Dully, and because there was nothing better to say, Debra waved her hand between her sister and her boss, “Dr. Nelson, please meet my sister Nikki Brayden. Nik, meet Dr. Nelson.”

~*~*~

“Wow! I mean, I can’t believe it!”

Debra glared at her sister as she proceeded to eat what was left of her breakfast. To her strange delight, Dr. Nelson looked irritated. She said, “Nik, come on, would you not embarrass me? I mean, he’s just as human as you and I.”

Nikki giggled. “I’m your sister, what’s there to be embarrassed about? A guy you eat breakfast with ought to meet your sister anyway.”

Debra sighed. “It’s not like
that
.” For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why so many people jumped to the wrong conclusion, or that
particular
conclusion. Why would anyone who knew her think that a man like Dr. Nelson would be her boyfriend? Maybe Nikki had no clue what she was like.

Nikki raised an eyebrow. “So tell me what it
is
like, then.” A smirk played on her face as her eyes sparkled with youthful thoughts of ‘My sister has a crush on a famous doctor!’

Eric chose that moment to interrupt the girl by holding up his hand. The girl, even if he’d only known her for the better part of half an hour, was probably the most inconsiderate person he’d ever met, and he’d known his share. He said after all eyes were on him, “Miss Brown is my employee, and since she has been exceptionally kind to my children these past couple days, I thought it would be a nice gesture to cook breakfast for her on my day off.”