A Doctor In Her Stocking. Elizabeth Bevarly

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      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,” СКАЧАТЬ