Читать книгу From Brooding Boss to Adoring Dad - Dianne Drake, Dianne Drake - Страница 7

“IT LOOKS bad. Is Trinique here?”

The man standing in front of Erin was holding a child in his arms. A child with a foot wrapped in a bloody towel. Instantly, Erin wanted to see the wound. “Bring him into the house,” she instructed, pushing open the door.

“We want to see Trinique.”

“I’m sorry, but she’s not here. Davion said she would be gone for a while.”

“Then I have to go see Doc Adam. He’ll know what to do.”

“Is Trinique a doctor?” Erin asked, clearly confused.

“No, ma’am. But she’s been taking care of us for a long time. Before Doc Adam, and since he’s working at the bar today, I didn’t want to bother him.”

“Look, I’m a doctor. I take care of children. Could I have a look at your son’s foot? See what I can do for him?” She wasn’t prepared, really. Didn’t have her medical kit. Hadn’t even come here as a doctor. But a child in need … she couldn’t turn them away.

The man wasn’t convinced, a sentiment that shone clearly on his face. “Doc Adam will do it fine, since Trinique isn’t here. But I appreciate the offer.”

“Doc Adam isn’t being a doctor right now. He’s busy serving beer and rum,” she said, instantly regretting the cutting remark. She didn’t know his circumstances and he certainly didn’t deserve the professional slap. “Look, how about I just take a little look? You bring your boy inside then while I get the wound cleaned up a little, you can go and get Doc Adam.”

That seemed to appease the man, because he brushed right past Erin and ran straight to the daybed in the front room, where he laid his son down. “His name is Tyjon, and I’m Ennis. Ennis Clarke.” He extended a hand to Erin, and shook hard when she took it. “I appreciate your offer. Good afternoon, ma’am Doctor.”

Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. The polite, customary greeting always used when addressing others. It was expected, especially in the more rural areas such as Regina. Her father had told her about this, told her to remember it. “Good afternoon, Mr Clarke. I’ll take very good care of Tyjon.”

Apparently, Ennis Clarke trusted that, because he turned and ran out the door, which gave Erin only a few minutes to assess the boy’s foot before Adam Coulson took over. She didn’t like that idea. But, then, she had no idea what kind of doctor he was. Didn’t even know if he was a real doctor, for that matter. “So, tell me what happened, Tyjon.”

“I stepped on glass. Broken bottle in the street. Cut my foot.”

“When? This morning?”

He shook his head. “Two days ago. It wasn’t so bad then. We washed it and it was OK. But now it hurts worse. And it started to bleed some more.”

She began unwrapping the towel, trying to be gentle because the dried blood had caused it to stick to his foot. When Tyjon winced, she slowed down the process, and as she peeled back the bulky layers and got closer to the wound, the smell of infection became noticeable. “Did you wash it with soap?” she asked.

He nodded. “My mother washed it very good.”

“And did you put on shoes and socks after you washed it?”

“No, ma’am Doctor. I don’t like shoes.”

Down to the last layer, she peeled it back carefully, and what she found wasn’t good. The cut was on his heel, almost the length of his heel. Very jagged, very dirty. And swollen. There was also pus, much more than she’d expected. General redness everywhere. On top of that, his whole foot seemed warm and slightly puffy. She needed supplies, something antiseptic to start the cleaning. Antibiotics at the very least. Suture materials. But she had … nothing at all.

Erin looked around. If Trinique was a healer of some kind, maybe she had a first aid kit. “I’ll be right back, Tyjon. I need to go and find something to clean up your foot.”

Water would work for starters. Get the dirt off. Give her a better look at what she had to deal with.

In the kitchen, she filled a basin full of water, grabbed two clean dishtowels then returned to Tyjon, who was laughing over something Doc Adam had apparently told him. Adam Coulson looked up at her. Saw the basin of water. “Fetching my cleaning supplies for me?” he asked.

“What I’m fetching is a basin of water so I can begin to clean Tyjon’s foot.”

“She’s a ma’am doctor,” Ennis Clarke explained quite seriously.

“So she says,” Adam snorted, standing then walking straight over to Erin and taking the basin of water from her hands. “My bag …” He pointed to it sitting next to the door. “Find my antibiotic cream in there. If I have any left. And I probably have some suture. See if you can also come up with a vial of lidocaine, too. I’m pretty sure I have some of that.”

“Pretty sure?”

He shrugged. “Supplies aren’t easy to come by. We have to make do, sometimes.”

“How do you make do without suture? Or lidocaine?” Lidocaine hydrochloride, more specifically, was the anesthetic agent he’d inject into Tyjon to dull the pain of the stitches.

“When you don’t have it, you don’t have it. So, you improvise.”

She wasn’t sure what that meant. Wasn’t sure she even wanted to find out.

“Davion,” Adam continued, “run back to the clinic and see if I have any antibiotic cream samples there so I can give them to Ennis. I think I might have a few left. Also, bring me a syringe and a vial of penicillin.”

“Penicillin?” Nobody used that any more. There were newer, much more effective drugs on the market. Occasionally, she’d prescribed one of the penicillin derivatives, but never penicillin itself.

“Good drug,” Adam quipped. “Highly underrated today, and even more highly underused.”

“And cheap,” Davion said on his way out the door.

“Well, that, too,” Adam agreed. He dipped the kitchen towel into the basin of water and started to wash Tyjon’s foot.

It had to hurt. She saw the poor boy grimacing, and wondered if the infection had spread beyond his foot. What she saw even more than that, though, was the gentle way Coulson was taking care of Tyjon. Soothing hands. It was a term her father used. He’d always said the best doctors didn’t get so tied up in the book learning that they forgot how to have soothing hands. He’d had those soothing hands for her all those times she’d been sick after her chemotherapy, during all those times she hadn’t been sure if she’d live or die. She remembered her father’s soothing hands and right now what she saw with Adam Coulson was what she’d known from her father.

“What can I do to help?” she asked, after a quick look through his medical bag produced a vial with barely enough lidocaine to do the job, a scant amount of fresh suture, a few pieces of candy, a package of sterile gauze strips and a stethoscope with shredded rubber earpieces.

“You a surgeon?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Pediatrician.”

“Then you’d be good at stitches because kids always need them.” Assumption made. It wasn’t a question.

“I’ve done my fair share.”

“OK, I’ll let you do the honors. In the meantime, freshen up the water in the basin.”

The water was nearly black with dirt, which made her cringe because all that dirt had come from Tyjon’s foot.

“Please,” Adam added.

“What?”

“Please. You were standing there, staring at the basin, so I figure you were waiting for me to say please. So … please.”

She hadn’t been waiting for politeness. From Adam Coulson, whom she’d known for only an hour, she expected none. But her hesitance was … well, she couldn’t explain it. What she was seeing here wasn’t exactly a shock, because there were areas all over the world where the medical standard was different from her medical standard. What she didn’t understand was the doctor—his casual attitude, his lack of basic medical supplies. “Are you really a doctor?” she asked. “Educated in a regular medical school, licensed to practice?” The question just popped out of her.

He paused in his bathing of Tyjon’s foot, looked up at her, frowned for a moment, then broke into a broad smile. “A little while ago, Davion had almost convinced me to feel guilty about refusing to hand over the deed to my land. Honestly, I was feeling a little bad about the way I was treating you, and fully prepared to apologize for it. Like I said, that was a little while ago. But not any more. Now, the water, please.”

So, maybe she deserved that. She wasn’t about to apologize for asking, but she wasn’t going to take too much offense to his reaction either, because she shouldn’t have challenged him that way, especially not in front of Tyjon. So, before she said something else she’d regret, Erin picked up the basin, returned to the kitchen, and dumped out the old water. As she gave the basin a quick wash with dish soap and water, she thought about why she was here, and it was too important to let these skirmishes with Adam Coulson get in her way. Make no mistake, they could get in the way if she wasn’t careful. He was, after all, the local doctor. While she had all her permissions in place for the hospital, and all the legalities out of the way, having the doctor with her, rather than against her, was smart. So for now, she’d have to curb her temper. “For you, Dad,” she whispered, fighting the tears welling up in her eyes when she thought about the graceful way her father was accepting his fate. She didn’t have that same gracefulness about her in any sense, no matter how hard she’d tried to find it within herself. She was reactionary, quick to fight. On the verge of dumping the water on Adam Coulson, although there was no grace in that. However, the thought of it did come with some surprising satisfaction. This wasn’t about her, though. When she remembered that, everything else faded away.

“You crying?” Adam asked from the doorway.

“No!” she snapped, blinking hard then brushing the back of her forearm across her eyes. “I splashed soap in my eyes.”

“'If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.'”

“What?” she sputtered, spinning to face him.

“That’s the kind of thing you’d expect me to say, isn’t it? I don’t have antibiotic cream, I still use penicillin, I make do with what I can find.”

“And the rubber earpieces for your stethoscope are wearing through.”

“You’ve judged me on several criteria that have nothing to do with my abilities as a doctor, so I thought telling you what to do with the soap in your eyes is what you’d expect from me. Especially since you haven’t seen my diploma from Harvard so you don’t know if I’m a real medical doctor.”

“Harvard?”

He chuckled. “Preconceptions are dangerous, Dr Glover. They can get you into all kinds of trouble. So much so that you’ll end up without antibiotic cream, decent rubber earpieces and a whole lot more trouble than you’d ever bargained for. Oh, and for your information, even though it’s none of your business, I’d use penicillin even if something out there was cheaper, because I like penicillin. Now, my water?”

The strains of the music wafted over to Trinique’s home, and Erin was finding herself strangely addicted to it already. It was calming. And happy. It transported her to the Jamaica her father had always told her of, the one she believed, with all her heart, was still there. Untouched.

“I wish you’d come with me,” she said over the phone. “Regina is a beautiful village. The cottages … they’re painted with all different colors. Reds, blues, pastels like pink and yellow. Every one a different combination. And they’ve all got so many types of tropical flowers in the yards … It’s like an artist’s pallet. Then, the people … they’re so nice. They just take you in and treat you like you belong, like you’re part of their family. Well, all but one, and he doesn’t count since he’s not Jamaican.” She wasn’t about to tell her father of the trouble brewing with the land purchase. As far as he knew, she had the deed by now and everything was moving forward. Oh, she was pretty sure Coulson would turn it over, but it was going to be in his own good time. Which wasn’t her time, as she had her dad fully involved now in the business plans for the new hospital, and the sooner those were finalized, the sooner he’d come to Jamaica … she hoped. It was her intention to put him in charge of the hospital, blind or not. Algernon Glover, Chief of Staff at the Algernon Glover Hospital. Maybe it would give him back some of his life. Maybe it would entice him to come out of his dark study, where he kept the shades drawn and the door closed. That’s the way he lived these days and it scared her. But soon, very soon, that would be over with. She hoped. “So, why don’t you come down? You can do everything you need to from here.”

“I’m fine where I am, and I have more than enough to keep me busy here.”

It was clear he didn’t like getting too far away from his comfort zone. That, more than anything else, was what made her feel sad. She and her dad had traveled to so many places together over the years, and done so many things. “But you could use a nice holiday, and the beach here is beautiful. Nicer than anything else I’ve seen in Jamaica. So pristine. No tourists.”

“There’ll be time enough for that in a while. Right how, I still have work to do right where I am. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find some time for a short holiday yourself. You wouldn’t want your father on your arm for that, would you? Especially if you meet a nice young man who’s in the mood for a little holiday, too?”

He lived in perpetual hope of that. Wanted grandchildren. But she’d … she’d never been that interested. It had been more than fifteen years since her last recurrence of leukemia, and the doctors had long since declared her recovered. Years and years of fighting the disease and all its nasty comebacks had taught her to be cautious. It had also taught her to stay focused on her goal … get through college, get through medical school, now this. Her life hadn’t afforded her the luxury of having more than one goal at a time because there had been so many times when even a single goal had been a struggle. So now she had a single goal to achieve, the most important one of her life, and she wouldn’t allow herself to think in terms of anything more.

“Dad, you know I’m not looking right now,” she told him.

“One of my big regrets, Erin, is that I have raised such a serious daughter. You were brought up in an old man’s world, I’m afraid, and you don’t know how to have fun.”

Her father was older, yes. But fun … her life had been filled with fun, filled with so many wonderful things. And this was her father’s standard argument, the one he used to make her feel guilty. “It’s not going to work,” she teased.

“What’s not going to work?” he asked, laughter just on the edge of his voice.

“You know what I’m talking about. And there’ll be plenty of time for grandchildren, if I ever do find the right man.”

“If you ever start looking.”

Oh, she’d looked. Come close to finding, actually. Then been jilted because a slight illness had brought up a cancer scare, which had scared a man she might have been serious about right out the door. And he had run so hard and fast he hadn’t even made the promise that he’d call, or see her again, or they’d work it out. He’d told her he loved her one week, then bolted the next. Like her high school sweetheart had when the cancer actually had returned. Or her childhood best friend had when the chemotherapy had claimed her hair. Oh, gross, Erin. You’re, like, going bald. That’s so disgusting. So, no more looking, no more expectations. Emotionally, it was easier that way. “On that note, I’m going to say goodnight. Love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too, Erin. Even if you are stubborn and too serious for your own good.”

He clicked off before she could get to her next comeback. And for a while after the phone call she sat with her feet propped up on the porch rail, enjoying the gentle, hot breeze, still listening to the strains of happy music wafting in. Thinking of Adam Coulson, not of her dad. Harvard education and without a decent stethoscope. On impulse, she dialed her dad back. “One more thing,” she said. “Could you send me a stethoscope?”

It was a small gesture, and she kept telling herself that it was for Tyjon, and anybody else needing treatment here. Not for Coulson.

“So, let’s just get this over with.” A voice came at her from out of the dark a while later.

Startled by Coulson’s intrusion into her pleasant solitude, Erin jumped. “Do you always sneak up on people that way?”

“I wasn’t sneaking.”

“And you didn’t exactly announce yourself either, did you?”

“Actually, I did. I said, ‘Let’s just get this over with.'”

Straightening in the chair and pulling her feet off the porch rail, she was a little sad to have her evening ended so abruptly. It was nice to relax for a while. The ambiance suited her, made her feel mellow. Lately, she hadn’t had time to relax, and who knew how long it had been since she’d felt mellow. “I agree,” she said, standing. “Let’s get this over with. Do you have my deed?”

He handed it over, without saying a word.

She didn’t look at it, though. He wouldn’t cheat her on this, and to look would be to insult him. No need to do that. No need to rub salt in what was obviously a very open, very raw wound. “Thank you,” she said, tucking the paper into her pocket.

“Just like that,” he said, almost under his breath.

“Like what?”

“Like in a split second, it’s gone.” He shrugged. “So that makes us neighbors now, doesn’t it?”

“In proximity, yes, I suppose it does. But we don’t have to be neighborly. I know you didn’t want to sell your land, and I know you resent me for buying it. So it’s OK with me if we’re not friends, not even neighbors who wave.”

“And you think that makes it better for me?”

“I don’t know what makes it better for you, Coulson. I’m just making an offer. I’ll stay away from you, leave you alone, won’t even come to Trinique’s, if it’s better for you that way.” It wasn’t much of a gesture, considering the circumstances. But it was the best she could do.

“What’s better for me is getting my property back, but that’s not going to happen. You need it for whatever reason you may have, and I wanted it for whatever reason I had.

But in the end, my reason wasn’t going to happen. Don’t know if yours will or not.”

“What was your reason?” she asked him.

“To use it as it was intended … as a hospital. But as you can see, I barely manage a clinic, so the hospital was a …”

“A dream?”

“A long way off. Money talks. You had it, I need it, and now one of us is happy while the other is better off. Fair trade, although I hate it to hell.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m going to open a children’s hospital.”

“Now, there’s an impractical idea if ever I’ve heard one.”

“You think a children’s hospital is impractical?” she practically growled, she was so angry.

“Not in the right setting. Which is someplace accessible, a place people can get to easily, where they’ll want to take their children. We’re not accessible here. You already know that. And nobody in their right mind will bring their children to a place where the only way in or out is on a rutted road. Put the hospital someplace where people can use it. Not here!”

“But here is perfect.” And her hospital wasn’t going to be just any ordinary hospital. It was going to be everything she hadn’t had when she’d spent so much time in various hospitals. It was going to be a place where being sick wasn’t the focus, but being normal was.

“Shows what you know about setting up a hospital. At least, when I wanted to start a hospital here, I had enough sense to know that the area would support a very small general hospital. General hospital, not a specialty facility.”

She tamped back her anger to face his challenge. With Adam Coulson, she had an idea that anger could turn into a steady diet, and she simply didn’t want to bristle then strike every time they met. So now was as good a time as any to start reining herself in. Because she wasn’t going anywhere. This was home. He was her shouting-distance neighbor. She didn’t want the strife on a lingering basis. Gritting her teeth, she smiled up at him. “Then I guess it’s up to me to prove you wrong, isn’t it?”

“Or the other way around.”

“Not going to happen, Coulson. I know what I’m doing.”

“The thing is, so do I, and I also know it’s a bad idea.”

“You’ll change your mind.” She hoped.

“You’ll change your plans.”

“I don’t think so.” Standing her ground with him was … stimulating. It made her tingle. So much so, she took a step back from him. “Look, there’s no point in arguing about it. I’m going forward with my plans, whether or not you like it, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Actually, I can stand back and watch you fail, then buy back my property for a fraction of what you paid me for it.”

He said it with a grin on his face, but she knew he was serious. The truth of the matter was, she didn’t blame him. Were she in his position, she’d probably be rooting for his failure. In a way, Erin respected his resolve. Too bad they both couldn’t have what they wanted. But that wasn’t going to happen. For her to win, he had to lose. For him to win, she had to lose, and that was something she just wasn’t going to do. The only thing was, he didn’t know how much she needed this hospital, how much she had to make the idea work. “Look, I don’t want to keep arguing, OK? We’re not going to agree, we might not even get along very well. But we’re going to be neighbors, and because of that I’d like to try for some civility between us. Even if it’s just civility on the surface for the sake of appearances.”

“So we smile and bare our fangs when we pass each other, and make sure we growl under our breath?”

She couldn’t help but laugh at him. The man did have his charm. It was coarse, and quite deviant, but she rather liked it. “Look, what can I do to smooth a little bit of the bumpy road between us so I don’t always have to bare my fangs? It causes wrinkles.”

“Funny you should ask, because I expect I’ll be seeing at least fifteen patients first thing in the morning at the clinic. That’s the usual number. I’ve promised Trinique three more days at the bar … she’s visiting her sick sister in Miami. And in between serving drinks I’ll see at least another dozen or so patients … in the back room. Trinique had it set up as a small clinic for me. Oh, and work until about three, when the bar closes. Meaning my days are getting pretty long. So, if you’re serious about your offer, I could use your help at the clinic. Then that way you can see where the real medical need is here.”

Honestly, his schedule surprised her. She’d pictured him more the hardly working type than the working hard type. “Do you work like that every day?” she asked, not really intending to seem so interested.

“No, sometimes I have more patients than that. You know, make a few house calls. Go up to Fontaine and squeeze in house calls there. Tomorrow seems a little light, which is why it’s probably the best day this week to have you see why general medical care is what the area needs.”

“Always plotting, aren’t you, Coulson?”

“I’d rather think of it as moving forward.”

She thought for a moment. Right now, there wasn’t much for her to do. She wouldn’t be meeting with her architects for a couple of days, and her plans were already far enough along that at this point there really wasn’t a whole lot more to work on. So, why not? Getting to know the people here was a good idea because she was going to be one of them, and what better way to do it than working in the clinic? Admittedly, she missed working. Somewhere over the past weeks it had taken a backseat to her hospital, so much so that she’d finally left her practice. She missed it, and this would help ease the dull ache that had been settling in. In her heart she was a doctor, and that’s what she needed to be doing. Adam Coulson might think he was handing her part of his plan for her failure, but she looked at it as just the opposite. “OK, I’ll work in the clinic.”

“You will?”

She stood to face him, drew every bit of her five feet eight inches up to his well-over-six-foot physique, and stared him straight in the eye. “Just tell me what time, and I’ll be there.” In the light from the single yellow bulb dangling on the other side of the porch, he was just about the best-looking man she’d ever seen. She’d looked from afar earlier, and had totally missed the detail in his eyes. The kindness there. The twinkling. Normally, she didn’t look at men this way and right now it bothered her that she was enjoying her long, rather cheeky look at him. Enjoying it too much. So she took another step backward, then two more just to be on the safe side. “But here’s the deal. For every day I work for you I expect a day in return where you won’t be plotting my demise … at least, where I can see it so obviously.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Red.”

“I’m offering you free labor, Coulson. You want me to see the real medical need here in the hope that I’ll back off? This is the only way it’s going to happen.”

“Then a day for a day it is.”

He held out his hand to shake on the deal, and when she took it, the jolt that passed between them passed all the way down to her toes. Did he feel it? She couldn’t tell by the expression on his face, but it was so real he had to. Or, maybe her imagination was simply getting away from her, being in a tropical paradise with a handsome man, and all. Whatever it was, she allowed the handshake to linger but a moment then pulled her hand back. Put up her imaginative safety net. “Tomorrow morning, Coulson.”

“Tomorrow morning … Red.”

The walk was short from Trinique’s cottage, down a long, winding jungle path, and each of her steps was deliberately slow. Sure, she’d seen the hospital compound online, knew the look of the buildings by heart. But there was a world of difference between the internet and in person, and she was actually a little nervous about this. She’d done it. She had her property—one hospital building, a handful of small cottages, and a stretch of beach. Paradise in a way most people would define it.

“He’s very grumpy this morning,” Davion said, catching up to her then falling into step. “When he came back to the bar last night, he broke glasses … on purpose. Threw a couple on the floor then took the money you’d given him earlier and put it into the cash register for my mother.”

She pulled the deed from the pocket of her skirt for Davion to see. “He didn’t give in without a fight. I know it wasn’t easy for him.”

“But he always does the right thing. Sometimes it takes him a while but, like I told you before, he’s a good man.”

“I think he’s a very … interesting man.”

Davion nodded. “That, too. And stubborn.”

“I’ve definitely seen that side of him.”

“And he’s seen that side of you, hasn’t he?”

“How did you get to be so perceptive at your age?”

Davion chuckled. “Being around Adam. He’s been in and out of half my life now, and I’ve been learning from the master.”

“Well, that’s what’s going to make you an exceptional doctor. You know how to read people. So, you say he’s been in and out of your life for most of your life. How long, exactly, has he been here?”

“Off and on, almost twelve years, I guess. Started coming when he was in medical school, came more often when he was out. Until he moved here permanently a couple of years ago.”

Well, she couldn’t fault Coulson for that. Jamaica was a wonderful place to visit. She’d been coming here almost from the day her father had adopted her, nearly twenty-five years ago. He’d bring her when she was well, and she’d feel guilty when she was sick because she knew she was keeping him from coming.

“So, is this your first time to the island, Dr Glover?”

“Please, call me Erin. And no. I’ve been here so many times I can’t remember. My father was from here … and my grandmother lived here until her dying day. Almost as far back as I can remember we tried to get here at least three or four times a year, more often if we could.”

“And where would here be, if I may ask?”

“In her later years, my grandmother moved to Kingston because of her health. But when she was young she lived in Alligator Pond. Ran a little fishing industry there, had a couple of boats.” That was being modest. Her grandmother had been a major player in the fishing business there, a woman well respected in her industry.

Davion arched his eyebrows. “Alligator Pond doesn’t have many … redheads.”

Erin laughed. “My grandmother wasn’t a redhead. Have you ever heard of Odessia Glover?”

Davion gave a soft whistle. “She was an honorable lady, well known for her generosity. She was your grandmother? ”

Nodding, Erin added, “And Algernon Glover is my father.”

“A respected gentleman. I’m impressed. Surprised, but impressed.”

“I was impressed, too, the first time I met him. And after all these years, he still impresses me.” She stopped, looked ahead, held her breath. “Is that my hospital?”

“That’s it. And all those buildings to the north. Adam told me that he’s put up a dividing line, and you’re not to cross over it. That everything on the other side is private property.”

“The rope?” She had to laugh. There was a slack rope tied loosely from palm tree to palm tree—in places it dipped into the sand. A lame, funny gesture, actually.

“I told you he’s stubborn. And if you haven’t looked at your bill of sale at the back of the deed he gave you last night, he’s added a provision on the end of it.”

She pulled the paper from her pocket, thumbed through the few pages and, sure enough, he’d penciled it in. A fence? “How like him!”

“Good fences make good neighbors!” Adam shouted, stepping out from a copse of palms. His side of the line, of course.

She jumped. “Why do you sneak up on people that way?”

“Why are you always so jumpy?”

“Look, I’ve got to go,” Davion said. “I’m helping in the clinic this morning and the patients are probably already lining up. They heard there’s a lady doctor here and they want to see her.” With that, he trotted off, crossed under the rope, and headed toward the larger of three buildings she could see on the other side of Coulson’s group of palm trees.

Erin strolled over to the dividing line, but didn’t cross it. “Are you serious about the fence?” she asked him.

His answer was a grin and a shrug. “Just trying to keep things honest between us.”

“It’s a rope, Coulson. Not even a taut rope.”

“A fence by any other name …”

“And how do I know this so-called fence is the true dividing line? Maybe it’s well over on my side and you’re cheating me of something I rightfully own.”

“What you rightfully own, Red, are the buildings, and the easement all the way down to the beach. I was being generous, giving you this little strip along the side here, because I thought, at some point, you might like to put in a better drive up to the hospital’s front door. But I could take it back, if you don’t want it.”

“And what do you want in additional payment, Doctor? A case of glasses to smash?”

“Stubborn, and with a temper, too. You’re actually pretty cute when you’re acting like that. It sets off the sparks in your green eyes.”

“Hazel. Not green.” She gave in to him with a laugh. “So, is this how the neighbor relationship is going to work between us? We’re going to stand back and spar at each other from across the … rope?”

“Unless you want to build a real fence. Doesn’t have to be a tall fence. Maybe six or eight feet.”

So, what was it about Adam Coulson that disarmed her? Here she was, standing on her side of this convoluted boundary he’d strung up, arguing almost into a seduction with him. It wasn’t that she wanted to be seduced, wasn’t that she particularly wanted to be friendly. But now they were practically face-to-face, and all she could think was how good he smelled—all masculine and tropical, maybe with a hint of lime.

“Look, I know you’re enjoying yourself playing gatekeeper at your rope, but am I going to have to ask permission to cross over so I can go to work? Provided you still want me to come and work.”

He swooped low, in a courtly gesture. “Permission to enter. And work.” Said with a grin. “Oh, and lunch.”

“Lunch?”

“You know, that meal that comes in the middle of the day?”

“You’re asking me to lunch?”

“Not a date, Red. A discussion. Since you’re going to be handling some of my medical load for a while …”

“Wait a minute. How did one morning at your medical clinic turn into me handling part of your medical load for a while?”

“I’m busy and it’s you who’s drawing them in, so it’s up to you to take care of them. I just thought I’d be civilized about this and go over some of the details with you.”

“I’m not taking over your practice, Coulson. Just giving you a couple hours of my time.”

“A couple of hours?” He pointed to the throng of people standing around one of the cottages on his side of the line. “They’re here for you, Red, and I don’t think you’re the kind of doctor who’s going to turn them down.”

She studied the people for a moment. Mostly women and children. A hard draw she couldn’t refuse to see, and she hated it that he had figured her out so well, so quickly, so easily. “When you say lunch, do you mean lunch as in two chairs at the dividing line, you on your side, me on mine?”

“Well, if that’s the way you’d like it, sure. Why not? But I was thinking we could go back to Trinique’s, have Kaven fix us his famous jerk nyamwich, I’d suggest the chicken, and bammy strips. Best on this side of the island.”

Food for the gods. Her mouth was already watering. “My father makes a good nyamwich … jerk chicken or beef, lettuce, tomato … Is Kaven’s served on coco bread?”

“What good nyamwich isn’t on coco bread?”

“And the bammy?”

Adam smiled. “Cassava flour and secret ingredients. He won’t tell anybody what they are, but I caught him smuggling yams in one day.”

“A yam bammy? That’s a new one on me. Guess I could be persuaded to try it.”

“So, that’s a yes?”

She nodded. “That’s a yes, but only for the yam bammy.” She stepped under the dividing line then looked back over her shoulder at her hospital. “I have a condition, too. You give me a guided tour of my property and all its buildings. Tonight.”

“That’s cruel, you know.”

“But who better than you? Besides, you get the fence, so I get the tour. It’s only fair.”

He sighed. “What’s fair is you selling me back what’s mine, and leaving me the hell alone.”

She laughed. “As they say, all’s fair in …”

“War and war.”

“That’s your version?”

“Not until this very moment. So, in the meantime, how long has it been since you’ve done an obstetrical exam? Because Breeon Edward is due anytime now.”

“I’m a pediatrician,” she said, following along behind him on their way to the clinic.

“That’s close enough.”

“Close enough? I haven’t delivered a baby since medical school.”

“But in the whole scheme of things you do know where babies come from?” he teased.

“Of course I know where babies come from.”

“Then Breeon will be happy to see you.”

“I don’t know, Coulson. All this for a yam bammy?” Of course, a yam bammy was unique. But, then, so was Adam Coulson. She had an idea, though, that he was an acquired taste, the way a good bammy was. Even so, she’d stick to the bammy! It was safer.