A Doctor In Her Stocking. Elizabeth Bevarly

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ