Reunited With Her Army Doc. Dianne Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ forced a laugh. “What would the good people of Marrell think, if they knew?”

      “That your man misses you in ways they’ve probably never even thought of.”

      * * *

      It had been three days since Leanne had asked him to take charge of the hospital, and he’d been successful in avoiding any thought of it as the clinic had suddenly turned busy. Good excuse for putting it out of his mind, he decided while he escorted Mrs. Gentry down the hall to the reception area to schedule her next appointment. “Like I told you, it’s not serious—yet. It’s poison ivy, and the shot I’ve given you should start to clear it up, plus the pills I’ve prescribed will finish that. But you’ve got to take those pills,” he warned the woman, fighting to hold his concentration. This past hour, Leanne had crept into his thoughts more than he was comfortable with. Her changes. His trust issues. Especially way she looked... And while his patient’s condition was annoying to her, it just wasn’t enough to hold his undivided attention. “Do you understand me? Your poison ivy is close to spreading to your eyes, and if that happens, it will turn into a serious situation.”

      “I’ll do my best, Caleb,” she told him, then reached up and patted him on the cheek. “You’ve grown up to be such a nice, polite boy. I always thought you had it in you to do good things. Even when you were acting out the way you did.”

      Sally Gentry was his grandmother’s next-door neighbor. He’d played in her yard, eaten her homemade cookies, drunk her lemonade. Now he was her doctor, and she’d brought him cookies and lemonade today. “Just take care of yourself. Promise me?” It was tough treating old friends, knowing things about them that their doctor didn’t have a right to know. He wondered how Henry had done that for the past forty years, how he’d separated the doctor from the friend or neighbor. Wondered if he could. Or if the town would let him, considering how most of them remembered him, remembered what he’d done.

      “Ruth and I are cooking together tonight, if you’d like to come over for dinner.” Ruth Carsten was his grandmother, and she and Sally spent a lot of time together now that they were both widows. “We’re fixing your favorite fried chicken.”

      “I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Gentry, but Matthew and I have other plans.” Actually, they didn’t. But a night spent with two octogenarians fussing over him wouldn’t sit well with Matthew, especially when all he wanted to do with his evenings right now was learn Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu, Opus 66, for his upcoming audition with Hans Schilling. Caleb didn’t want to interrupt his son’s regular habits any more than they’d been disrupted by moving here. “Send my love to my grandmother, though, and tell her Matthew and I will drop by in a couple of days.”

      Patients came and went for the next couple of hours, and Caleb kept himself busy, all the while trying not to think about the jerk he’d made of himself with Leanne. And make no mistake about it, he’d been a real jerk. Rude. Almost hostile. He’d known their meeting would be inevitable, and difficult, but he’d reckoned he’d put away some of his teenage feelings for her a long time ago. Had hoped that he wouldn’t react to her the way he had the last time they’d seen each other—the day when he’d been hauled out of Marrell in handcuffs, in the back of a police car.

      But no. One look at her, and he’d turned right back into that hurt teenager who’d let himself become the object of some serious bullying. And her plaything. Good old Caleb, there when she’d needed him, rejected when she hadn’t. Made fun of in all those times in-between. Apparently, where Leanne was concerned, he hadn’t moved too far away from the boy who’d been too hurt and confused to know how to respond. He wasn’t sure he knew how, even now.

      What surprised him most, though—totally shocked him—were the other feelings coming to surface. Ones where all he’d wanted was her attention. Ones that had carried him from a little-boy crush into a teenage heartbreak over a love he couldn’t have. He’d hated her for what she’d done to him, but he couldn’t help loving her at the same time. And some of those feelings were churning up in him now. Not that he loved her anymore, because he didn’t. But the memories of that young love were surprisingly vivid, and stirring.

      “I’m out of here,” he told Betty, his secretary, on his way through the door, still trying to shake off all images of Leanne. He needed to concentrate on Matthew now. Not her. “Have a good evening.”

      “You, too, Caleb.”

      He smiled at her use of his name. Everyone in town knew him or his family, and everybody called him Caleb. He didn’t mind, but then again, he wondered about Henry, who had the same familiarity in town but was never addressed as anything but Doctor. Maybe it was the age difference; more age equaled more respect. Or maybe the town still saw him as Martha and Tom’s embarrassment. Well, that was Marrell, wasn’t it?

      “Headed home?” Leanne asked, catching up with Caleb in the parking lot.

      He drew in a deep breath, promised himself he would be civil, and caught himself being fascinated by the way the late-day sun danced with the auburn of her hair. Too fascinated. He immediately went into standoff mode. Took a step back from her. “Going to go get Matthew first. My folks watch him during the day,” he said, forcing his stare to the black asphalt beneath his feet, a much safer place to stare.

      “Any plans for dinner? Because Dad and Dora have been fishing all afternoon again, and since you turned me down for the last fish fry, I thought the two of you might like to join us.”

      It was a tempting offer, and he appreciated that Leanne hadn’t been so put off by him the other day that she was extending this invitation, but he still wasn’t easy with it. He’d never been one to give much credence to people who claimed they needed closure, but he wondered if he, himself, had needed it all those years ago. Or even now? “Thanks, but Matthew’s practice...”

      “You’ve got to eat, Caleb. Couldn’t he take a break for an hour or so, and the two of you come to the house? I mean, I don’t know what happened between us the other day, but I’d like to have the chance to start over, on a better footing.”

      He cleared his throat. “Sorry about that. I’m not usually that rude.”

      “I don’t remember you ever being rude.”

      He smiled, forcing himself to relax. No, he hadn’t been. Not up until the very end. More like he’d always been unsuspecting. Until he’d snapped. “Oh, I’m sure I had my moments. You probably weren’t there to see them, though.”

      “We all have our moments, don’t we? Good, bad, somewhere in between, all subject to rising up and taking over without notice.”

      Caleb laughed. “Some of us more than others.”

      “Well, it’s forgotten. Or, better, you owe me one. Next time I have my moment, you’ll be cordial about it and maybe invite me to a fish fry.”

      She reached out and laid her hand on his arm, a simple, casual gesture that caused a spark to run the whole way up to his shoulder. “Maybe we will stop by for a little while after all,” he said, wondering why the tingle was still lingering. Wondering why he liked her, even though he didn’t want to. Liked her sensibilities. Saw a depth in her he’d never seen before. “So, what time do you want us?”

      “About seven. Will that give Matthew enough time to get some practicing in? I figured that by the time you picked him up and got him home...”

      He was pleased that she’d thought to schedule around his son’s habits. It improved her status with him СКАЧАТЬ