Читать книгу A Doctor In Her Stocking - Elizabeth Bevarly - Страница 9

Mindy had never been more exhausted in her entire life than she was as the dinner rush began to wind down. Boy, the first trimester had been bad enough, she thought, had had her nodding off at the worst times, in the strangest places. She’d once fallen asleep while riding the elevator to the OB-GYN’s office. She recalled reading somewhere that women were supposed to have a burst of energy in the second trimester. They were supposed to feel strong and animated and invincible, like some kind of prenatal Wonder Woman.

Mindy, however, felt more like Washer Woman.

“Order up, Mindy!”

She sighed heavily, hoisting herself up from the chair behind the counter where she’d collapsed in the hopes of stealing a minute or two off her feet. Then, when a rush of wintry wind blasted her from the door that was opening ahead of two more diners, she hugged her sweater more tightly around herself. She was almost as cold these days as she was tired. She hadn’t felt warm for five months now.

She stood up on tiptoe to pluck the Reuben sandwich and fries from the kitchen window, settling them onto her tray before reaching up to retrieve their mate, a chicken salad on whole wheat. And as she crossed the diner to present both plates to their rightful owners, another patron lifted a hand, indicating he wanted to place an order. Mindy nodded as she took care of one table before approaching the other, tugging a stubby pencil from beneath her by-now-dismembered ponytail as she made her way to the newcomer.

She smiled as she stopped by his table, so much did he resemble Santa Claus—a really skinny Santa Claus, anyway. But where Santa’s dapper red suit looked plenty warm, this guy’s attire was neither red nor dapper, nor did it look in any way warm. His tweed jacket was threadbare, his gloves more hole than wool. A knit cap covered his ears, but she couldn’t believe the man received much warmth from it.

Poor thing, she thought. It must be in the twenties out there tonight—so far, December had been unseasonably cold—and he probably didn’t have anyplace else to go. She thanked her lucky stars again that she wasn’t out on the streets—yet—and conjured the most winning smile from her arsenal.

“What can I get for you?” she asked the man.

He smiled back at her, and although he may have been cold on the outside, he certainly radiated warmth from within. “I’m celebratin’,” he said without preamble.

Mindy chuckled, so infectious were his high spirits. “Good for you,” she told him. “What’s the occasion?”

“It’s my birthday,” he replied proudly, his voice sounding rusty from disuse but happy nonetheless.

“Hey, congratulations. Is it the big three-oh?” she teased, because, clearly, it had been decades since this man had seen thirty.

He laughed and shook his head. “I’m eighty years old today, missy. Eighty! What d’ya think about that?”

“Get out!” she exclaimed, nudging his bony shoulder playfully with her elbow. “And here I thought I was going to have to card you if you asked for a beer.”

He laughed some more. “No, ma’am. I don’t touch that stuff. But I think I might like to sample some of that chili I hear they do so good here.”

Mindy nodded as she scribbled down his order. “It’s the best,” she assured him. “Evie’s special recipe, passed down through generations. What else can I get for you?”

The man’s smile dimmed some. “Maybe just a glassa water. That oughta do me.”

She started to object, started to remind him that it was his birthday and that he was entitled to celebrate with more than just a bowl of chili, then she realized that a bowl of chili was probably all he could afford to buy. And heaven only knew how long he’d been saving to manage even that for a birthday feast.

So she smiled once more, tucking her pencil back into her hair, and said, “I’ll be right back with your water.”

Among other things, she thought. She rattled the change in her pocket as she strode toward the carousel over the kitchen window. She’d had a good night tonight, considering the fact that it was Monday. Thanks to the nearby mall and hospital, Evie’s Diner always had a nice, steady stream of patrons, both from people who worked in those places and the people visiting them. Heck, Mindy had probably cleared almost twenty bucks this shift, in addition to her—very tiny, granted—wages. Still, there was no reason she couldn’t spring for a little birthday present for someone who was marking such a major milestone.

She made a few more notations to the man’s order, then clipped it onto the carousel and spun it around to the kitchen. “Order in, Tom!” she called to the cook. Then she went to the coffeepot to fill a cup of hot birthday cheer for her customer.

“The club sandwich looks good.”

Reed mumbled something in agreement to Seth’s gourmet analysis, but his attention wasn’t on the plastic-coated menu in his hand. It was on the blond, pale, exhausted-looking—and slightly pregnant—waitress on the other side of the diner, the one who seemed to be this close to falling over if one more stiff wind from outside hit her. Involuntarily, his gaze skidded over to the main entrance as two more diners strode through. He had to force himself not to shout, “Hey! Close the damned door, will ya?” or jump up to close it himself.

Fortunately, when he looked over at her again, he saw that the little blond waitress had moved behind the counter to sit down. Reed mentally willed the newcomers to take a seat in somebody else’s section and glanced down at the menu again.

Hmm…The club sandwich did look pretty good. Of course, at this point, he was so hungry that a rubber chicken with a wax apple stuck in its mouth would look good.

“No, the French dip, I think,” Seth was saying.

But again, Reed’s attention had been diverted, because wouldn’t you know it, those two idiots who had just come in had indeed sat down at one of the exhausted-looking waitress’s tables, and she was making her way toward them now.

He felt he could honestly say that he’d never met a weak woman in his entire life. Never. The doctors and nurses of the feminine persuasion who surrounded him at the hospital were in no way fragile, in no way weak. On the contrary, they were the hardiest, sturdiest people he knew, both physically and emotionally. And the women in his family, both Atchisons on his father’s side and Thurmons on his mother’s side, had been uncommonly stalwart. Strong-willed, strong-minded, strongtempered.

Which maybe explained why he couldn’t take his eyes off of the waitress who seemed to be none of those things. She was an alien creature of sorts, a fragile female. And something inside Reed—something he had never felt before in his entire life—surged up out of nowhere, nearly overwhelming him. A desire to protect her, he marveled. To take care of her. That was what the something welling up inside him was. She was a total stranger, he tried to remind himself. And probably not quite as fragile as she appeared.

Still…

He shook off the incomplete rumination as he watched her. In spite of her obvious exhaustion and her faintly rounded belly, she moved with certainty and purpose. And even though she looked ready to collapse, she stood firm—even smiled a little—as she scribbled down an order on her pad and moved away from the table. She joked with the elderly man seated in the booth across from Reed and Seth, and her laughter sounded robust enough as it warmed the room around her.

And still Reed couldn’t quite take his eyes off of her. Still, he felt compelled to do something—he had no idea exactly what—to ease her fatigue.

He told himself it was because she was pretty, in a pale, fragile kind of way, and any man worth his weight in testosterone would just naturally respond to that. But there must be something else, too, he mused. Because he’d been around women who were prettier than she was, women who wore much-more-attractive outfits than a yellow polyester waitress uniform and sneakers. And they hadn’t come close to capturing his attention the way this woman had.

She was pretty, though. And she smiled a lot. And even though she seemed fragile, there was something about her that indicated she probably could take care of herself just fine. That maybe she had been taking care of herself for some time now. He supposed looks could be deceiving. And after all was said and done, she really was none of his business.

Still, he thought, she was pretty.

“Definitely the French dip,” Seth said, bringing Reed’s thoughts back to the matter at hand—food.

Their waitress—a brash, blousy brunette whose name tag proclaimed her to be Donna—returned then, and Seth repeated his order for her. Reed asked for the club sandwich because he’d never read past it—and, hey, it did look good—along with coffee. He was about to ask for a side of onion rings when a quiet outburst of laughter erupted from the other side of the room, claiming not only his attention but Seth’s and their waitress’s as well.

“‘Scuse me for a minute, will you, gents?” she asked as she moved away from their table and over to the one across the way.

As Reed and Seth watched, every waitress in the place, along with the cashier, the busboy and a couple of gravystained kitchen workers, gathered around the other booth and began belting out a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” to the elderly man seated there. He seemed not to know what to make of the episode at first, then he smiled, a huge grin that softened his craggy features and actually brought tears to his eyes.

Tears, Reed marveled. Just because a bunch of diner employees were singing “Happy Birthday” to him. Unbelievable. He shook his head in bemusement, then turned to say something to Seth. But he stopped short, because, naturally, Seth was looking as if he wanted to burst into tears himself.

Oh, man. What a pushover.

“Why don’t you just go over and join them for another chorus?” Reed asked, only half joking.

But Seth didn’t rise to the bait. “Hey, if they sing another chorus, maybe I will.”

“You are such a bleeding heart.”

“Hey, at least I have a heart to bleed.”

Meaning, of course, that Reed didn’t have a heart, he thought grimly. Then again, he couldn’t exactly deny Seth’s assertion, could he? Not when he went out of his way, every single day of his life, to illustrate exactly that fact. Hey, it was hereditary, after all. Heartlessness ran on both sides of his family tree.

“Why is it that you became a neurologist?” Reed suddenly asked the other man. “You’d do much better with hearts.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Seth returned dryly. “You being a cardiologist, I mean, seeing as how you would do so much better with heads.”

“Maybe I just like cutting them open,” Reed said, unable to help himself. “Or better yet, cutting them out.”

“Or maybe,” Seth posed, “you’re just trying to figure out what makes them tick. Trying to learn how to jump-start your own.”

Reed eyed him thoughtfully, thinking he should probably be offended by what Seth had said. Oddly, he wasn’t. In spite of that, he responded, “You know, that’s a hell of a thing for a man to say to his best friend.”

“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” Seth agreed. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Seth was spared having to answer that question by the return of their waitress, who was still chuckling when she pulled her pencil from behind her ear again. With a couple of quick cracks of her gum, she sighed out a final laugh and said, “Oh, that was fun. Now then. Can I get anything else for youse? Coffee? Beer?”

Reed was about to ask for those onion rings again, but Seth gestured toward the other table and piped up, “What was that all about?”

Donna smiled, one of those too-bright, why-don’t-youcome-up-to-my-place-and-see-my-etchings? kind of smiles. And Seth, naturally, returned it with one of his own. Seth always had liked brash, blousy brunettes. And brash, blousy blondes. Brash, blousy redheads, too. And really, they didn’t have to be brash. Or blousy, either, for that matter. As long as they were breathing.

“That,” Donna said, “was yet another one of Mindy’s good deeds. The kid’s got a heart of gold. Go figure.”

Well, that certainly perked Seth right up, Reed noticed. Not that Seth needed perking. He was just about the perkiest damned man on the planet already.

“Good deed?” he echoed. “Heart of gold? Gosh, that’s really, really interesting. And just who, may I ask, is Mindy?”

Donna jutted her stubby pencil over her shoulder, toward the pretty—pregnant—blond waitress who had commanded so much of Reed’s attention. “She’s a total sweetheart, that’s who Mindy is,” she told them. “Like I said, go figure. In the last year, her house burned to the ground, her husband got himself killed and every nickel she had left went to straightening out the mess he’d made of their lives. And now she’s being evicted from her crummy apartment so the scumbag landlord can turn it into a co-op. And she’s five months preggers, to boot. And broke. And all she has is this lousy-paying job to get her through. But even at that, she bought the old guy dinner tonight, because it’s his eightieth birthday.”

“Oh, really?” Seth asked with much interest, folding an elbow onto the table and cupping his chin in his palm. “My, but that was certainly a nice thing for her to do.”

Reed frowned, knowing where this was going. “So that must be her grandfather or something, right?” he asked, jerking his head toward the elderly man across the way.

Donna shook her head, her dark ponytail dancing when she did. “Naw, she never saw the guy before tonight. He’s homeless, I think. Prob’ly usually gets his dinner out of the Dumpster out back.”

“Oh, really?” Seth reiterated. “She’d never met him before tonight? He was a total stranger to her?”

“Yeah, but on account of it’s his birthday, he came in and ordered a bowl of chili, ‘cause he wanted to celebrate. But Mindy thought he should get more than just a bowl of chili, so she used some of her tips to buy him a cuppa coffee and a steak sandwich and a piece a peach pie to go with.”

“Oh, really?”

Donna, finally, gave him a funny look. “Yeah, really. Boy, it doesn’t take much to interest you, does it?”

Seth threw her a salacious grin and cocked one blond eyebrow. “You might be surprised.”

Donna tossed him a pretty lascivious smile right back. “Oh, yeah?”

Reed cleared his throat in a manner that was by no means discreet. “Uh, do you think you could go ahead and place that order now?” he asked. He was, after all, going to take a bite out of the table if someone didn’t put something edible in front of him soon.

“Yeah, sure thing,” Donna said, turning.

Reed was about to add that extra part about onion rings before she could get away, but before he had a chance Seth caught her gently by the elbow and said, “So this Mindy has nothing in the world, is about to be bounced out of her apartment, along with her unborn child, but she squeezed out a few bucks from her tips just so this old guy she’d never met before could have a decent birthday dinner?”

Donna scrunched up her shoulders and let them drop. “Didn’t I just say that?”

Reed nodded and released her. “Yeah, you did. But I wanted to make sure my friend here heard all the details.”

“I heard,” Reed muttered.

As always, Seth ignored him. “Thanks, Donna,” he said instead, releasing their waitress so that she could place their order. Finally.

“No problem, big guy,” she returned with a bright smile. “I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

And then she was gone. Before Reed could tell her how much he wanted those onion rings. He sighed with much disappointment.

“Did you hear that, Reed?” Seth asked, turning to sit forward at the table again.

“I heard,” Reed repeated.

“Mindy, that big, selfless, generous sweetheart, did that out of the goodness of her heart.”

“I heard.”

“Just because it was the right thing to do.”

“I heard.”

“Because she’s a kind, decent human being.”

“I heard, dammit.”

Seth leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms with much satisfaction, grinning triumphantly. “Can you imagine?”

Reed ground his teeth hard. “According to our waitress, she’s also pregnant,” he pointed out. “It was probably just some kind of maternal instinct or hormonal reaction kicking in.”

Seth chuckled. “Yeah, you wish.”

There was no way Reed was going to get out of this one, he thought. Seth had gotten lucky tonight. He’d taken a chance that they’d encounter some bleeding heart like himself, and for once in his life, the guy’s gamble had played out. Which meant no golfing vacation in Scotland. No bottle of thirty-sixyear-old, single-malt scotch. But worse than all that, now Reed was going to have to do something…nice…for somebody.

In a word, ew.

“All right, you win,” he conceded. “I’ll perform a good deed. Can I just write a check to the Salvation Army?”

Seth smiled. “Of course you can. But don’t think for a moment that doing so will settle our wager.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“You have to perform a good deed,” his friend reminded him. “A physical act of niceness and goodwill. Check writing is too impersonal. But by all means, you can include a check to some deserving organization as part of your payment for your debt.”

“Fine.”

“But you know who could probably really use a helping hand right about now?” Seth added.

Reed narrowed his eyes. He could tell by the other man’s tone of voice that he wasn’t going to like the suggestion that would inevitably follow.

“Mindy, that’s who.”

Yep, Reed had known he wasn’t going to like his friend’s suggestion at all.

“I mean, think about it,” Seth continued. “She’s pregnant, she’s about to be evicted. And just three weeks before Christmas, too. Evicted, do you believe that? What kind of scumbag landlord does such a thing?”

Reed frowned at him. “Uh, yeah, I do believe that, Seth. I’m the one who expects the worst from everybody, remember?”

Seth gave that some thought. “Oh, yeah. Well, there you have it. Sometimes you’re right. Not usually,” he quickly interjected when Reed opened his mouth to pounce on the concession. “But sometimes. Anyway, getting back to Mindy.”

“I’d rather not.”

“I think she’d be a likely recipient for your goodwill,” Seth went on, ignoring, as always, Reed’s objection.

“Fine. Then I’ll write her a check.”

Seth shook his head. Vehemently. “No, no, no, no, no. You’re missing the whole point. You have to do something nice for her. A good deed.”

“Hey, writing a check is doing something. It involves a physical activity.”

Seth made a face at him. “You know what I mean.” Then, before Reed could utter another word, his friend lifted a hand and called out, “Oh, Mindy! Excuse me, Mindy?”

Reed squeezed his eyes shut tight. He could not believe what was happening. He felt as if he was in seventh grade again and his best buddy, Bobby Weatherly, was about to reveal the crush Reed had had on Susan Middleton. Man, that had been humiliating. To this day, Reed simply could not speak to any woman named Susan without feeling embarrassed. Now it looked as if he was going to have the same problem with all future Mindys.

The little blond waitress appeared to be understandably confused as she approached their table but she didn’t seem at all anxious. As she drew nearer, though, Reed saw that she looked even more fragile and exhausted than she had from a distance. Her eyes were smudged by faint purple crescents, her cheeks were overly pink, as if she’d exerted herself far too much this evening. Her face had a thin, pinched look to it, as if her pregnancy so far had left her drained.

As a doctor, even if he was a cardiologist instead of an obstetrician, he knew pregnancy hit different women different ways. Some women continued on with their lives as if there were nothing out of the ordinary going on with their bodies. Some women had more energy than ever. And some, like Mindy, were left looking almost ghostlike, thanks to the extra work their bodies were forced to perform in order to generate life.

She wrapped her sweater more tightly around herself as she paused by their table. Her gaze lit first on Seth, and then on Reed, then quickly ricocheted back to Seth, as if she’d been troubled by something in Reed’s expression.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Her voice, too, was thin and fragile, soft, but warm. She looked to be in her midtwenties, Reed thought, even if she did carry herself like an old woman. The other waitress’s words came back to him, almost as if he hadn’t heard them clearly the first time. She said Mindy’s husband had “gotten himself killed,” thereby leaving this young woman a widow. She’d suffered a very significant*md;and very recent, seeing as how her pregnancy was barely showing—tragedy, and now she was about to suffer another in being evicted from her home.

Why did life do that to some people? he wondered. Why did it just keep hitting them and hitting them and hitting them, then kicking them again for good measure when. they were down? Why were some people singled out from others to receive the lion’s share of misfortune? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. People like this pale, fragile woman surely deserved better than that.

“My friend and I couldn’t help but overhear that rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday,”‘ Seth said, scattering Reed’s thoughts. “Nor could we help but notice that you seemed to be leading the choir.”

Mindy smiled. “Yeah, it was great, wasn’t it? Well, not the singing necessarily,” she quickly qualified with an even brighter smile. “I know I have a long way to go before I could be a Supreme. I meant it’s great that Mr. McCoy has reached his eightieth birthday. Eighty! Isn’t that amazing?” she asked, her voice growing more animated. “I mean, think about it. He’s lived through the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World War II, the Race for Space, the Cold War, Vietnam.”

“And he survived leisure suits and the disco era, too,” Seth added. “No mean feat, that.”

Mindy nodded. “Exactly. The world has changed so much in his lifetime. And he can remember all of it. It’s incredible.”

Reed looked over at Seth and found his friend hanging on Mindy’s every word, as if she were revealing the secrets of the universe to him. “Incredible,” he echoed in a voice that Reed had heard before, the one Seth used when he was fast falling for a woman he shouldn’t be falling for, fast or otherwise.

Of course, Seth fell fast for a new woman nearly every hour, which meant that Reed should put a stop to his descent right now. That way he could spare the innocent Mindy the ugly aftermath of his friend’s wandering ways.

“Miss, uh…” Reed began.

The waitress turned to him, but where she’d had a sunny smile in place for Seth, her features quickly schooled into a polite, if bland, expression for him. “Mindy is fine,” she told him.

Yes, Mindy is indeed fine, Reed thought before he could stop himself.

That thought was immediately followed by another, one that essentially went, Holy cow! Where did that come from? Immediately, he pushed both thoughts away. She was pregnant, for God’s sake, he reminded himself. No way did she deserve to be ogled like a.like a.like a beautiful woman, he finished lamely. Even if that was precisely what she was. She was a beautiful woman. One who was waif thin and delicate looking.

She was in no way the kind of woman he normally ogled, anyway, pregnant or otherwise. He preferred women his own age, professional women in his own income bracket, women who’d shared some of the same life experiences he’d had himself. Strong women. Women who didn’t look so damned exhausted and.well, fragile.

“Mindy,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse my friend here. He’s easily impressed.”

She nodded, but somehow he knew she had no idea what he was talking about. “Well, enjoy your dinner,” she said hastily, turning away.

“Wait,” Seth exclaimed, halting her progress, “don’t go.”

She spun around again, but this time her expression was unmistakably wary. “Was there something else? I’ll be happy to go get Donna for you.”

“No, no,” Seth told her. “It’s what we can do for you. Or rather, what my friend and colleague can do for you. Because, Mindy, sweetheart, Dr. Atchison here is about to make you an offer you can’t refuse.” Seth turned his attention pointedly on Reed and asked, “Aren’t you, old buddy, old pal?”

Mindy eyed first the blond man in the booth before her, and then the black-haired one…and felt the hairs on the back of her neck leap to attention. The two men were like color negatives of each other: one handsome, fair and blue-eyed, the other handsome, dark and brown-eyed. Their dispositions, too, seemed to be utterly opposite each other. Where the blonde put Mindy immediately at ease and seemed pleasant enough, the dark-haired man sent every sense on alert and made her entire body hum with electricity.

Not that he seemed scary by any stretch of the imagination. Not in a dangerous way, at any rate. He did, however, inspire a kind of caution, the kind a woman felt when faced with a man who had the potential to break her heart. Strange, that, she thought, seeing as how she’d only known him for about thirty seconds now.

Although both men were certainly attractive, the blonde was a bit too boyish in his looks, a bit too adorable in his presentation, for Mindy to find him anything other than kind of cute. The dark-haired man, however.

Well, she’d always been partial to black hair. And brown eyes. And craggy, blunt good looks. Which made her choice of husband odd, now that she thought more about it, because Sam Harmon had been a sandy-haired, blue-eyed, surfer-dude wannabe. Therefore, this man was nothing at all like Sam. And therefore, she told herself, she shouldn’t feel intimidated by him the way she had felt around Sam there toward the end.

And really, intimidated was the last thing she felt at the moment. As standoffish as the dark-haired man’s demeanor seemed to be, Mindy immediately sensed something within him—way deep down within him—that was almost…personable? Warm? Good-hearted? Kind? Oh, no, surely not, she corrected herself. Not with a frown like that. Not with a glare like that.

Still…

“He really is going to make you an offer you can’t refuse,” the blond man said, shaking off the odd sensation winding its way through Mindy’s soul. “Just watch. Reed?” he said further. “Tell our studio audience what Mindy here has won.”

She eyed the dark-haired man—the one called Reed—in confusion, then turned back to the blonde. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you guys seem to have me at a loss. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She waited for the blond man to offer an explanation—or even the dark man, for that matter. She wasn’t particular, so long as she received some kind of explanation—and when none was forthcoming, she arched her eyebrows in silent query.

Finally taking the hint, the blond man dipped his head toward his companion. “My friend here,” he said, “is Dr. Reed Atchison, resident heart surgeon over at Seton General Hospital. I,” he added hastily, seeming genuinely surprised to realize that he had neglected to introduce himself as well, “am Dr. Seth Mahoney. And Reed and I have been having an interesting difference of opinion lately. You, my dear Miss…uh, Mindy.have just solved the dilemma for us.”

Mindy eyed him warily. “Um, thanks. I guess.”

“No, no, thank you,” he immediately—and very enthusiastically—replied. “This has been a most enlightening meal, and we haven’t even received our food yet.”

“We haven’t received our coffee yet, either,” the dark-haired man—Reed…Dr. Atchison—mumbled.

“Oh, I’ll go get Donna and remind her,” Mindy offered quickly, snatching the opportunity to excuse herself from what was promising to become a puzzling—if not outright bizarre—situation.

“Not yet,” the blonde—Seth…Dr. Mahoney…whoever—halted her.

She sighed fitfully. “I’m really sorry,” she said again, “but I don’t know what you guys are talking about, and I have a lot of work to do right now, so if you’ll just excuse me…”

The blond M.D. nodded. “I understand,” he said. Gosh, that made one of them, Mindy thought dryly. Before she could comment, however, he added, “We can continue our conversation after your shift has ended.”

Mindy shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think that would be—”

“It’s no problem,” the man assured her. Then he turned to his friend. “Right, Reed?”

Dr. Atchison grumbled something under his breath that she was fairly certain wasn’t an agreement.

“What was that?” Dr. Mahoney asked.

“I said, ‘Fine,’“ the other man snapped.

Funny, Mindy thought, but it sure hadn’t sounded as if he’d said, Fine.

“Um, really,” she continued hastily, “I don’t think I—”

“Of course you do,” Dr. Mahoney assured her.

Mindy decided not to dwell on that. “I’m probably going to be working late,” she said instead, “and you doubtless have other things to—”

“Not a thing in the world,” the blond doctor assured her. “In fact, we’ve been looking forward to a nice, leisurely meal, haven’t we, Reed?”

“Mmm.”

Dr. Mahoney smiled at Mindy winningly. “And there you have it.”

She opened her mouth to say something else that might excuse her from any further association with these two enigmatic—albeit very attractive and not a little intriguing—men, but Donna returned with their coffee, elbowing Mindy gently out of the way.

“You go sit,” the other waitress said. “Get off your feet for a little while. I’ll keep an eye on your tables. The dinner rush is about over, anyway. And you gotta take care of that little bun in your oven.”

Mindy felt herself color at the other waitress’s comment. She wrapped her sweater even more tightly around herself, crossing her arms over her lower abdomen as if she might protect the life growing there, even though there was really no threat to that life at all—not at the moment, anyway.

Because she was so small, and because this was her first time being pregnant, she still wasn’t showing that much, even though she was five months along. She had hoped the average observer wouldn’t notice her condition yet but she supposed she was kidding herself in that. Not that she hadn’t told her co-workers at Evie’s about it—hey, they deserved to know she’d be incapacitated for a few weeks come April, after all. But she didn’t want anyone else, especially total strangers, to know the particulars of her private life.

“Donna,” she muttered. “You don’t have to broadcast my…condition…to the whole world, you know.”

But Donna only shrugged as she dumped a handful of creamers onto the table. “It’s okay, Min,” she said. “These guys know all about it.”

Mindy closed her eyes and felt her cheeks flame brighter. “Donna…” she said again. Because these two men probably hadn’t noticed her condition before now. The reason they knew about her pregnancy was more than likely because someone—someone like, oh, say Donna—had told them about it. And seeing as how once you got Donna started, it was really hard to turn her off, Mindy could only imagine what else the other waitress had let slip.

“Oh, come on,” Donna said. “It’s no big deal, being knocked up and homeless. It happens to a lot of women.”

Mindy raised a hand to cup it over her eyes and closed them tight. “I was not knocked up,” she said. “Sam and I made a conscious decision to have a baby. Can I help it if he…” She sighed heavily, dropped her hand back to her side and strove for a bright smile that she was certain fell short. “Never mind. Just…try not to spread around the particulars, okay? Please?”

Donna shrugged again. “Sure thing, Min.” Then she turned to the two men seated at the booth. “Forget I said anything about Mindy’s…you know…situation, okay, gents? And please do point out to her that I never told you about what a big drunk her husband was, did I? Or how he slept around on her the whole time they were married? Or how, in my opinion, she’s better off without him anyway?”

“It’s true,” Dr. Mahoney agreed. “She never did tell us about that.”

Donna nodded, smugly, Mindy thought. “See? That was private, so I kept that part to myself.” She turned back to her two customers. “Your sandwiches should only take a few more minutes.”

And with that, Donna spun around and headed back toward the kitchen, leaving Mindy to fend for herself.

“Oooh…” she said, lifting her hand to her forehead again. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Here, sit down.”

She felt two strong hands cup her shoulders and softly urge her forward and was surprised, upon opening her eyes, to see that it was the dark-haired doctor who was doing the gentle cajoling. It seemed like a gesture that would have been more appropriate coming from the man who’d identified himself as Dr. Mahoney. Or perhaps not, she thought further as she let Dr. Atchison sit her down at his place in the booth. He remained standing, hooking his hands on his hips, but he glowered at his friend.

“Now look what you’ve done,” he said.

“What I’ve done?” the other doctor exclaimed. “I didn’t do anything. What are you talking about?”

“You’ve embarrassed her,” Dr. Atchison said. “How could you embarrass her like that?”

Dr. Mahoney gaped at him. “I didn’t do that. Donna did that.”

“But you’re the one who started this whole thing, so you’re responsible.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You should be ashamed of yourself. Taking advantage of a pregnant woman. Just where do you get off?”

“Reed, what the hell has gotten into you? I never—”

“She obviously wants to be left alone, so we ought to just leave her alone.”

“But, Reed, she’s—”

“A nice girl. You said so yourself. So we should both definitely—”

“Excuse me!”

Mindy had to raise her voice when she interrupted, so animated—and loud—had the two men become in their argument. An argument that she seemed to be at the heart of, an argument she didn’t for one moment understand, an argument that everyone in Evie’s Diner seemed really, really interested in hearing. Thankfully, though, both men ceased at her outburst. Unfortunately, they both turned to stare at her in openmouthed surprise, as if she’d just jumped up onto the table to dance the. cha-cha with a rose stuck between her teeth.

She pushed her way out of the booth and stood next to Dr. Atchison, trying not to feel overwhelmed by the fact that he towered over her by at least a foot, and probably weighed twice as much as she did. “If you’ll both excuse me,” she said, “I have work to do.”

“We’ll talk later,” Dr. Mahoney told her as she turned to go.

“No, we won’t,” she assured him.

But without missing a beat, he assured her right back, “Oh, yes, Miss…Mindy…we will.”