Читать книгу A Second Chance For The Single Dad - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

Chapter Three

There was a knock on the exam room door and the next moment, Rachel stuck her head in.

“I’m really sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but your next patient is getting very restless. Mr. Jeffers says he has an appointment with his lawyer right after he sees you and he’s worried that he’s going to be late. His lawyer charges by the quarter of the hour—whether he’s there or not.”

Having delivered her message, Rachel flashed an apologetic look in Kayley’s direction.

Luke rose from his stool. “Tell Mr. Jeffers I’ll be right with him.” Turning back to Kayley, he told her, “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Quartermain. I’ll be in touch.”

Her heart sank a little. Kayley knew what that meant: Don’t hold your breath.

Still, she wasn’t about to be rude. There was protocol to follow. Kayley forced a smile to her lips and went through the motions.

“I’ll look forward to your call, Doctor,” she told him—or rather his back because Dr. Dolan was already walking out the door and on his way to his impatient patient.

“Well, I tried,” she murmured, sticking her hands into her pockets. Her right hand touched the penny she’d found right outside the office. “I guess this wasn’t our lucky day after all, Mom,” she whispered just before she walked out of the exam room.

* * *

Giving in to impulse, Kayley stopped at the supermarket and picked up a consoling pint of rum raisin ice cream. She was tempted to buy two, but she knew that she had absolutely no willpower when she felt this disappointed. That meant that if she bought two pints, she would wind up eating two pints—in one sitting.

Keeping this in mind, Kayley restrained herself, took only the single pint to the checkout counter and then hurried out of the store before she weakened and went back for another one.

With the supermarket doors closing behind her, she stepped off the curb—and saw yet another penny.

“Nice try, Mom,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. “But I’m not buying it.”

Kayley walked right by the lone penny and was halfway to her car when her desire to think the best of every situation got the better of her. She stopped, turned around and retraced her steps until she was looking down at the penny again.

Picking the coin up, she found that unlike the shiny one she’d found earlier in front of the medical building, this one was old, worn and sticky. Apparently, some sort of gummy substance had been spilled on it.

Still, now that she’d picked it up, she couldn’t just toss it aside. Holding on to the coin, she headed back to where she had parked her car.

“Okay, so sue me. I’m an idiot and I have to believe in something,” she muttered as she opened her car. “I have to believe it’s going to be all right.”

Leaning over in her seat, she put the pint of ice cream on the passenger-side floor. Then she buckled up and drove home planning her evening: consuming a pint of rum raisin ice cream and watching an old movie on one of the classic-movie channels.

* * *

Her landline was ringing when she walked in.

Hoping against hope, Kayley dropped her purse on the floor next to the door and, still carrying the bag of ice cream, she quickly made her way over to the phone that was sitting on one of the two side tables bracketing the sofa.

Kayley grabbed the receiver and uttered a breathless “Hello?”

“How did it go?” the cheerful, maternal voice on the other end of the line asked.

Kayley suppressed the sigh that rose to her lips. It was her fairy godmother, calling to check on her. She should have guessed.

“I don’t know yet,” she told Maizie, temporarily sinking down on the sofa. She tried not to sound as dejected as she felt when she added, “Dr. Dolan said they’d be in touch.”

“Yes, but how did it go?” Maizie repeated with a touch of eagerness in her voice. “You must have some sort of impression about the way the interview with Dr. Dolan went.”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I do,” Kayley answered. “It went fast.”

There was a pause on Maizie’s end. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said.

“The doctor squeezed my interview between seeing two patients. That didn’t exactly give him much time to talk to me,” Kayley explained. Then, because Maizie had gone out of her way to arrange this interview for her, Kayley decided that it was only right to give her godmother a few more details. “He came in, looked over the copy of my résumé that he’d printed out and asked a couple of questions.”

“What kind of questions?” Maizie asked.

She told her godmother the first thing that she remembered. “Dr. Dolan wanted to know why I left San Francisco.”

It was obvious by the tone of Maizie’s response that the woman thought this was a good thing. There was almost excitement in the older woman’s voice as she asked, “And did you tell him that it was to nurse your poor sick mother?”

“Yes, I did, Aunt Maizie,” Kayley replied dutifully, smiling at the question.

There was a time when she would have resented being treated like a child, but now that her mother was gone, she had to admit she rather liked it. It took her back to when she was younger and was still someone’s little girl. Something that she was never going to be again, she thought sadly.

“And what did he say?”

“Something strange, actually,” Kayley answered. “I’m paraphrasing but he said that at least I was lucky enough to be able to be there to share some time with my mother before she died.”

“That’s because he was serving overseas when his wife was killed,” Maizie told her.

Kayley was surprised that Maizie knew that. But then again, Maizie always seemed to know everything.

“The physician’s assistant he’s sharing with another doctor told me something about that,” Kayley admitted.

Maizie’s tone brightened a little as she asked, “And then what did he say?”

“He didn’t,” Kayley told her. “He became very quiet and just stared at my résumé. Then the physician’s assistant stuck her head in to tell him that his next patient was becoming restless. That’s when Dr. Dolan thanked me for coming in and told me that he would be in touch.” Kayley sighed deeply. She was feeling rather dejected. This was the first interview she’d landed since her mother had died and it hadn’t gone very well. “Doesn’t sound very hopeful, does it, Aunt Maizie?” she asked.

“Oh, on the contrary, dear. It sounds very hopeful,” Maizie assured her. “Just remember, not everyone jumps into things the way you and I do,” she told her goddaughter. “Some people are quite slow and deliberate. They need to think things over before they make a decision.”

Kayley really wanted to believe that, but she didn’t quite see it that way. “The other physician’s assistant told me that Dr. Dolan had already interviewed five other candidates for the position and he’d turned each one of them down.”

“Did she happen to tell you why?” Maizie asked.

Kayley sighed again, feeling more and more certain that she was never going to hear from the doctor again—or if she did, it was going to be because he was turning her down and he didn’t like leaving any loose ends.

“No, she hadn’t a clue.”

As was her custom—because she had always been such an optimist—Maizie took the information in stride. “Well, you’ll get the job, dear. He rejected the first five applicants. Six is your lucky number.”

Kayley couldn’t help but laugh at Maizie’s unorthodox reasoning. “Since when?”

“Why, since right now, of course, dear. I’m sure of it. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Well, if your bones feel it, then it’s bound to happen,” Kayley said, humoring the woman although she was definitely not optimistic about the outcome. Still, she loved Maizie for trying to bolster her self-confidence this way.

“Listen, Kayley, I have to show a house to a client in half an hour, but I’m free afterward. Why don’t you come over for dinner, say at about six thirty? I could use the company.”

Kayley knew that her godmother was constantly on the go. She had a busy social life as well as a family consisting of her daughter, her son-in-law and a number of grandchildren she was quite proud of. Aunt Maizie didn’t need company. If anything, she needed an occasional moment of solitude. She was proposing the get-together for her sake.

“Thank you, Aunt Maizie, but I’m fine, really,” Kayley told her, begging off. “I’ve got some correspondence to catch up on and there’s a pint of ice cream that’s been calling my name since I walked in the door.”

Maizie wasn’t one to force her will on someone else, even when she meant well. “Well, if you’re sure,” she said, her voice trailing off.

“I’m sure,” Kayley assured her. Then, for good measure, because she could almost hear the hesitance in her godmother’s voice, she added what she hoped was an emphatic “Really.”

She heard the small resigned sigh that escaped from her godmother before Aunt Maizie said, “Call me the minute you get the job.”

Thanks for the positive pep talk, but I’m pretty sure I’m not getting the job, Aunt Maizie.

Out loud, Kayley cheerfully promised her, “I will. Now, I’ve got to go, Aunt Maizie. The ice cream’s melting and it really tastes much better if I use a spoon to eat it, not a straw.”

“I’ll let you go, then,” Maizie said. “I’ve got that house to show. Think positive, Kayley. Good things happen when you’re positive,” she advised just before she hung up.

“I am thinking positive,” Kayley said to the receiver as she replaced it in the cradle. “I’m positive he’s not going to call.”

Turning away from the phone, Kayley grabbed the bag with the ice cream in it and hurried into the kitchen with it. She could tell that the ice cream was already getting soft.

After taking a spoon out of the drawer, she crossed to the kitchen table and removed the pint out of the bag. She’d bypassed using the ice-cream scoop and a bowl. There was no reason to get either dirty. She intended to eat the whole thing in one sitting anyway.

“C’mon, rum raisin, you and I are going to make beautiful music together. Console me,” she said to the container as she took the lid off and dug her spoon in the cream-colored semisoft surface.

Kayley closed her eyes, savoring the first bite as she slid it between her lips.

Although it tasted delicious as always, it didn’t assuage the gaping disappointment she felt burrowing deep into her chest.

She needed a job.

Maybe not this very minute, but soon.

Very soon.

Some people would have eagerly jumped at having so much free time stretching before them, using it to catch up on their reading, watch movies they hadn’t gotten around to seeing and in general just enjoy themselves. But she had never been any good at kicking back and doing nothing. The way she saw it, free time didn’t mean anything if that was all there was. It was precious only if it was very limited and doled out a tiny bit at a time.

She took another mouthful of ice cream, hoping it would console her. But it didn’t.

“Wonderful,” she murmured, licking the spoon clean before sinking it into the container again. “Thirty-two years old and I’m sitting in the middle of my kitchen swallowing empty calories, getting fat and spouting philosophy to a pint of rum raisin ice cream,” she said critically, shaking her head. “I really hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.”

Just then the phone rang again. Turning her head toward the sound, she debated letting the answering machine pick up the caller. She just knew it was her godmother calling her back with another suggestion. She really wasn’t in the mood for another pep talk.

It was the kind of thing that Maizie did. Her godmother wouldn’t rest until she got Kayley to either agree to come over or invite Maizie to come to her mother’s house.

Her house now, Kayley corrected. Lord, it was hard to think of it that way.

The phone continued to ring.

Kayley pressed her lips together, frustrated. But ignoring the phone and letting the machine pick up was rude and she knew it. And the last person she wanted to be rude to was her godmother since Aunt Maizie had been so good to her. Most kids lost contact with their godmothers by the time they were five or six but Maizie had always been there for her, one way or another. Being rude was no way to pay Maizie back and the woman knew she was home right now.

With a sigh, Kayley momentarily abandoned the dwindling pint of ice cream, leaving it on the kitchen table as she hurried over to the phone.

“Really, I’m fine, Aunt Maizie,” she told her godmother the moment she picked up the receiver. “You don’t need to keep calling to check up on me.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and then she heard a distant-sounding male voice say, “I’m not Aunt Maizie, but I’m glad you’re fine.”

Dr. Dolan? It couldn’t be.

And yet...

Her fingers had gone slack and the receiver almost slipped out of her hand. Getting a better grip on it, Kayley fumbled with an apology. “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else—”

There was just the slightest hint of a laugh. Or maybe it qualified as only a dismissive chuckle.

“Obviously,” the deep voice said.

Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird.

“Who is this?” she asked uncertainly, although a part of her thought she already knew who it was—but that was probably just wishful thinking on her part.

Nobody called back this fast—unless it was to put her out of her misery by delivering the bad news quickly and cleanly.

Was he calling to do that?

“I’m sorry—let’s start over,” the man on the other end of the line said. “This is Dr. Dolan. I’m calling to speak to a Ms. Kayley Quartermain. Is this a number where I can reach her? I’ve already tried the cell phone number on her résumé, but I can’t get through to leave a message on her voice mail.”

Kayley closed her eyes.

Idiot!

She had to remember to recharge her phone. The battery kept draining and this had to be the third time this week that this had happened, she thought, flustered that she’d committed such a birdbrained oversight.

“Oh, Dr. Dolan, I’m so sorry. This is Kayley Quartermain. My cell phone’s old and it has trouble holding a charge for more than a couple of hours. It probably died, which is why you couldn’t get through.”

To her relief, the surgeon took the information in stride. “If that’s the case, you might want to look into getting a new cell phone.”

“I will,” she quickly agreed. “But I’ve been kind of busy with other things.” When he didn’t say anything to that, she asked, “Um, is there anything I can help you with?”

He’d probably thought of another question he wanted to ask her. There was no reason for her to get her hopes up. If they were up, they only had that much farther to fall.

Even so, she caught herself crossing her fingers as she waited for the doctor to say something.

“As a matter of fact, there is. How soon can you come in?”

“For another interview?” she asked, not knowing what to make of this.

“You’re not being vetted to run for president, Ms. Quartermain,” he informed her. “I don’t need to conduct another interview. I made a call and talked to the last doctor you worked with. He told me he was very pleased with your work and he wanted to know if there was any way you’d consider coming back.” And then he caught her completely by surprise by asking, “Is there?”

“No,” Kayley answered, trying to be diplomatic. “I enjoyed my time there and Dr. Andrews was great to work with, but as I told you, Bedford is home and right now I need to feel like I’m home.” She paused for a moment. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. You still haven’t answered my first question,” he told her. “How soon can you come in? And I mean to work.”

The hummingbirds began to crash into one another in her chest. “Is now too soon?”

“We’re closed now,” he said.

“Tomorrow, then.” She saw no point in attempting to hide her eagerness.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed. “Come in at eight. We’ll go over the rules and there’s paperwork to fill out.” And with that, he hung up.

“Yay!” With a laugh, Kayley threw out what was now incredibly soupy rum raisin, then went to call Maizie with the good news.