Читать книгу The M.d. Courts His Nurse - Meagan McKinney, Meagan McKinney - Страница 8

“I just figured out why men get smarter during sex,” Lois Brubaker announced in a sly undertone, even though the waiting room was presently empty.

Rebecca O’Reilly, busy updating patient files at her wide glass-and-chrome desk, glanced up at her friend and co-worker. For a few confused moments she almost replied seriously, “They do?” Then she realized it was a joke, and she flushed slightly at the unintended reminder of her own sexual ignorance.

But she obligingly fished for the punchline. “Why?”

“Because they’re plugged in to a genius,” Lois replied in a deadpan manner.

A heartbeat later both women burst into laughter just as the door to the examination room swung open. Dr. John Saville emerged, escorting an elderly, moon-faced woman who wore a pullover tunic with a broomstick-pleated skirt.

Rebecca’s laughter died on her lips when John Saville’s eyes, an intensely deep cobalt-blue, seemed to lash at her like whips. He frowned, a deep crease appearing between his eyebrows.

But he stoically ignored her and Lois, walking his elderly patient into the waiting room with its leather-and-chrome furniture and fresh lilacs in wicker baskets. Old-time lithographs of Mystery Valley roundup scenes decorated each pastel painted wall. The decor said homey but high priced, and John Saville’s rates only made the talented young surgeon that much more exclusive and valuable in the eyes of his patients.

“You needn’t worry about your nightly glass of wine, Esther,” he assured her. “Especially since you have it with dinner.”

“Glass—or two?” She seemed prepared to bargain.

That coaxed a smile out of him. “Yes, even two glasses, so long as you don’t mean one-quart glasses.”

Esther Miller laughed and placed a flirtatious hand on his arm. “I was afraid you might not approve,” she confessed. “You seem so stern, Dr. Saville. Old Dr. Winthrop was a regular talk-show host—you know, always kidding around. A caution to screech owls, as my uncle Stan used to say. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. You seem like a very capable young man. And handsome—my lands! I admit I scheduled my operation early just to meet you and see what all the fuss was about. Next time I may even forego the anesthetic just to watch you in action.”

For a moment Rebecca gloated when John Saville, obviously nonplussed by such candor, actually flushed until his smooth-shaven cheeks looked sunburned.

He’s stern, all right, she thought. In fact, the man who prescribes your medicine, Esther, is one bitter pill himself—though it certainly did come in an attractive package.

“I’ll see you at your next appointment, Esther,” he replied so stiffly that Lois and Rebecca exchanged a secret smirk. The pill never did know how to take a compliment. It would require way too much loosening up, and that was something Dr. Dry-As-Dust never did.

But even Rebecca conceded that her new employer was handsome—dangerously so. He was the wrong kind of handsome for his chosen profession. His aristocratic face, athletic build, golden tan and intense eyes conveyed the impression of a French tennis star or a soap opera heart-throb, not a dedicated and brilliant surgeon who ran a thriving private practice, was on twenty-four-hour call at Valley General in nearby Lambertville and still managed to present his published research at several medical conventions each year.

But his good looks were a total, tragic waste, at least where she was concerned. While he was warm and concerned with his patients, with his employees Jekyll became Hyde and started throwing attitude around.

Just like Brian had done to her.

A thick lump of unwanted emotion clogged her throat. She’d told herself for months that Brian was the past, and someone better was the future. But it still didn’t make the hurt go away. Brian had been her love, her light, her hope for more than two years. She’d met him at the beginning of his physician’s internship at Lutheran Hospital—a man who wanted to heal with her by his side. They’d talked of the future, of children and of building a practice together.

By the end, however, Dr. Brian Gage could only talk about what class of Mercedes he wanted to upgrade to, and what golf community he was going to build his mansion in when he got his chance to wave goodbye to hicksville Mystery, Montana.

He upgraded his fiancée too, exchanging good old small-town Becky for a much better class of trophy wife; one who hadn’t grown up poor; one who hadn’t grown up struggling. One who didn’t wear nurse’s scrubs and who had no more ambition to help her fellow human than Marie Antoinette.

Even now Rebecca cursed herself for the bitterness. It was still there, lurking in her heart when she thought she’d scoured it out for good. She was bound and determined that Brian wasn’t going to ruin her, and he hadn’t. His rejection still stung, but she’d gone on with her life. She even had some hope left for the future. Her only caveat was that her future would contain no more doctors. Not even handsome ones.

And Dr. John Saville was handsome enough to be a threat.

It was sure a good thing that he was such a pill. Otherwise, as she told herself in a fit of brutal honesty, she might find herself attracted once more to the flame that had almost killed her.

“Miss O’Reilly, may I see you in my office, please?”

She looked up. The doctor stood over her desk, those laser-blue eyes focused straight on her.

She nodded. Even now, after two weeks of working with him, his imperious, autocratic manner struck her as more appropriate to a dictator than a doctor. Especially since she’d already had plenty of experience with men who treated her like a lump of gravel on their launch pads.

My word, she thought, we’ve been working together day in and day out, and he’s still “Doctor,” his office nurse still “Miss O’Reilly.” All the stilted formality made him seem intent on reminding others of their subordinate place in life. And, oh how she hated it.

She stood, sorely missing retired Paul Winthrop’s old-world charm and easy smile. He never made her or anyone else feel as if they belonged to an inferior caste.

“Of course, Doctor,” she replied, knowing full well what was coming. She watched his ramrod-straight back retreat down the hall toward his private office at the rear.

“Sorry, Becky,” Lois told her, keeping her voice down. “I should’ve saved the joke for lunchtime.”

“Oh, baloney,” she assured the office manager. “We weren’t doing anything wrong. Laughter is good medicine, right? I’m sick of the way he acts as if this place is a funeral home. Cover my phone for me, Lo?”

Lois nodded. She was in her late thirties with stiffly sculpted blond hair and a pleasant face. “Now remember you’ve got that hair-trigger Irish temper,” she cautioned her younger co-worker. “He’s still new, we’ll have to break him in gradually.”

Rebecca stood up, smoothing her skirt with both hands.

John Saville had left the door open for her. He stood poker rigid in front of his neat desk, arms folded over his chest.

For an absurd moment she felt as if she was back in high school, reporting to the principal’s office. Except that Mr. McNulty wasn’t a bronzed hunk and a half who wore hand-sewn silk ties and Bond Street jackets.

“Yes, Doctor?” she said from the doorway.

His stern visage seemed to rearrange itself in surprise as his gaze took in this full-frontal view of her in the soft, indirect lighting. Unlike hospital nurses, she was not required to wear a uniform, and for a few moments he studied her plum-colored V-neck dress with its wide, flowing skirt. As usual, her long, chestnut hair was combed back and held in place with barrettes. The hairstyle only highlighted her brow, now furrowed in irritation, and eyes that were once called “snapping-blue.”

“You wanted to see me?” she prompted again.

“Yes, right—of course.” He seemed to collect himself, and the stiff formality was back. “Please come in.”

She did, but he remained standing so she did, too.

The window beside his double row of file cabinets was cracked open a few inches. It was early May, and though the nights still had a nip to them, the days were sunny and growing warmer. Outside, the box elders and dogwoods that grew throughout Mystery were budding into leaf.

“Miss O’Reilly,” he began again, gathering steam now, “would it be at all possible for you and Mrs. Brubaker to practice a bit more…professional decorum on the job?”

She remembered Lois’s warning—and even with her heart speeding up, she admitted she really did have a temper.

But beneath all the anger was a tightly coiled spring of hurt and rejection. It hadn’t been quite six months since Brian had finished his medical internship and dropped her like a bad habit.

It took conscious self-control when she replied, “I’m not sure what you mean, Dr. Saville, by professional decorum.”

“What I mean,” he said tightly, “is that you both need to be more professional about your work. Is that clear enough?”

His tone instantly made her combative. But she remembered to let the first flush of anger pass before she answered. “Is there some problem with my competence as a nurse? Or Lo’s as office manager?”

“Competence?” he repeated. That deep crease between his eyebrows was back as he frowned at her question.

“Yes. I mean, are there problems with medical mistakes? Or have any patients complained about my manner?”

“Well…no. It’s nothing like that. Just as Dr. Winthrop assured me, you are quite efficient and knowledgeable. You and Mrs. Brubaker both. It’s just…”

“Just what, Doctor?”

His glance touched her and quickly slid away. Now, as he finally remembered his specific grievance, a little irritation seeped into his tone.

“Frankly, the walls in this building are not all that thick. Even when you lower your voices,” he added significantly. “And tell…off-color jokes.”

Now it was her turn to flush, although she almost laughed outright at the same time. He must have heard the “plugged-in” joke Lois told her.

But so what, it was harmless. The effort to control her smile alerted him that she’d caught on to his reference.

He spoke up quickly. “It gets difficult at times to concentrate on my patients with—well, with all this loud laughter and chatter. You and Mrs. Brubaker seem to forget this is not a sorority house.”

“It’s Lois, not Mrs. Brubaker,” she retorted irritably. “And I was a full-time working student in nursing school, so I’d know nothing about sorority life.”

As I’m sure you do, golden boy, she almost added, barely catching herself in time.

Her comment, and tone of hurt dignity, forced him into momentary silence.

She felt anger hammer at her temples. Just like all the other male doctors she knew, he was a buttoned-down, wind-up medical doll who could shatter a person’s self-esteem just as effortlessly as tie up a suture. Was he up twenty minutes early this morning to pick those damned lilacs in the waiting room? But he acted as if such things just happened by magic, not even a polite thank-you. Humor was her only “perk” around here—and only a jerk would begrudge it to her.

But she cooled off a bit during his silence. “Lois and I like to have a little harmless fun,” she informed him with cold precision. “The time passes faster that way.”

Obviously hearing the rough bristles in her tone, he arched his eyebrows. His mouth set itself in a grim, straight line of disapproval.

“Having fun,” he lectured her, “isn’t the point of this clinic. We’re supposed to be health professionals. Frankly, I worry what the patients think about our staff.”

“Dr. Saville, I realize you completed your medical studies and residency in Chicago. But this is Mystery, Montana, population four thousand. Your patients are my neighbors, folks I’ve grown up with all my life. They like the staff.”

If a voice could frown, his did now. “I have a solid grasp of my location, Miss O’Reilly—I deliberately picked this town, I didn’t just stick a pin in the map.”

“I confess I can’t see why it appealed to you,” she told him boldly. But she didn’t quite have the courage to add, After all, we’re not royalty here.

“Look, no offense intended—”

“Well, plenty is taken,” she assured him, feeling the warmth of anger in her face and scalp. “You’ve made your point, Doctor. I’ve duly noted the fact that laughter and smiles irritate you. Now, unless you have more complaints I’d like to finish my inventory of the medical supplies.”

For a moment there Rebecca would have sworn his ultracontrolled face showed a flicker of angry animation. If so, the chiseled-coin image was immediately back in place.

“The other complaints can wait,” he assured her.

Dr. Dry-As-Dust. That’s what Lois had nicknamed their stiffly choreographed boss. But all that disappeared, Rebecca reminded herself, the moment some sleek socialite in a fox jacket cape showed up. Then suddenly he became the essence of charm and joie de vivre.

She stepped out of his office, shutting the door harder than necessary, and immediately made eye contact with Lois, just then turning away from the reception window with the day’s mail.

Rebecca waited until she was a few safe steps from the rear office. Then she made a fist and smote her head in jest. Close enough to Lois now that she knew Dr. Saville couldn’t hear her from his office, she said in a stage whisper, “Forgive me, Doctor, for I have sinned.”

Immediately Lois looked horrified, and Rebecca remembered too late how quietly his door opened. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder and saw him only five feet behind her, staring with eyes like hard blue gems. Obviously he overheard her wisecrack.

Miraculously she was reprieved by the telephone on her desk.

“I’ll get it, Lo,” she called too eagerly at Lois. Even as she hurried to her desk, face flaming, John Saville turned on his heel and retreated into his office again, slamming the door even more loudly than Rebecca had.

“Doctor Saville’s office,” she answered the phone somewhat breathlessly. “Rebecca O’Reilly speaking.”

“What’s going on, pecan?” a throaty voice greeted her.

“Hazel, hi.”

“You sound as if you’ve been jogging.”

“I ran to the phone,” she explained. Looking at the closed door, she rolled her eyes. “And I’m sure glad you called.”

“Why? Don’t tell me you’re actually hoping I need a doctor?”

Rebecca’s voice turned serious. “You don’t, do you?”

“Honey, since my surgery I’m fit as a fiddle,” the notorious cattle baroness assured her. “I just called to shoot the breeze.”

Rebecca felt a weight lift from her. Her mother had died from a brain tumor while Rebecca was still in junior high school. With her father’s job as a freelance security consultant keeping him on the road constantly, Hazel had practically adopted her, even insisting that she stay out at the ranch when her father was gone. She still missed her mother fiercely, and the thought of anything happening to Hazel was like a cold hand wrapping her heart.

“Actually,” Hazel confessed, “I’m curious as the dickens to know how your love life is getting on. Did that good-looking sales rep fellow ever ask you out? The blond who drives the Town Car?”

“No, and he’d better not. His flirting was all a smoke screen.”

“No fire behind the smoke, you mean?”

“No, a wife behind the smoke, I mean. Last time he was here he forgot to take his wedding band off the way he usually does. Horny creep.”

Hazel sighed at her end. “It’s true, isn’t it? The real hunks are either married, gay or cowboys.”

Or snobs suffering from a bad case of “It’s all about me!” Rebecca added inwardly, her glance sliding toward John Saville’s closed door. Still pouting in his office, she told herself. At least she knew this conversation was safe from his sonar ears—her private line was separate from his.

“So how do you like your new boss?” Hazel probed as if plucking Rebecca’s thoughts from her mind.

“I don’t. For such a young man, he’s sure an old sobersides. At least with his co-workers. Or should I say, with his servant staff. It’s funny. I mean, he replaced Dr. Winthrop, but he seems even older. And, heavens, cranky? He’s always got his nose out of joint about something.”

“Well, I met him briefly at the reception Dottie Bryce hosted for him. I didn’t get that impression at all—his nose was perfectly in place, and so was the rest of him. He’s certainly good-looking. He’s well knit, as Grandma Mystery used to say of men with nice builds.”

“Little appeal beyond the eighteenth hole,” Rebecca insisted dismissively.

“Hmm,” was all Hazel said to that—a speculative tone that Rebecca knew well by now. “Anyway,” the rancher went on briskly, “I guess I would like to schedule an appointment after all.”

“I thought you were fit as a fiddle?”

“Hon, even a fiddle needs its strings tuned now and then.”

Hazel’s ironic tone turned the words strings tuned into a bawdy innuendo. Rebecca couldn’t help feeling it was also a little nudge from Hazel, the only person in town besides Lois who knew she was still a virgin with “untuned strings.”

Hazel added quickly, “I just want to ask Dr. Saville some questions about my diet since the gall bladder surgery.”

“Uh-huh,” she replied skeptically as she checked Lois’s appointment calendar. “Seems like a lot of female patients in the Mystery area suddenly want to discuss something with their new doctor.”

“So what? We gals of a certain age aren’t as finicky as you proud and stubborn little twenty-three-year-olds. That’s because you don’t feel Time nipping at your taut little fannies yet. We can feel it, in the form of gravity.”

Rebecca laughed as she scheduled her friend. But Hazel was wrong about one thing—she did feel Time nipping. And the question wasn’t lack of desire or fear about her first time. The one man she had felt like “giving it up to” had coldly rejected her as his social inferior. And once burned, twice shy.

“Ten o’clock next Tuesday sound all right?” she asked Hazel.

“That’s hunky-dory, hon. See you then.”

Even as she put the handset back in its cradle, however, Rebecca was already wondering what the sly Matriarch of Mystery was really up to.