The Doctor Next Door. Victoria Pade

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СКАЧАТЬ thought of her?

      “Did I say that—the land of hayseeds?” she asked.

      “You did.”

      “When?”

      “High school.”

      “High school? You’re mad about something I said over a decade ago that I don’t even remember saying? About Northbridge?”

      “Mad? I’m not mad,” he said, again as if she were out of her mind. “I couldn’t care less about you or anything you’ve ever said. I was just letting you know that even if this is only Northbridge, things are still done just the way they are in the big city. All conditions and instruments will be sterile, every precaution will be taken to avoid contamination and infection.”

      No matter how much he denied it, he sounded mad and Faith wouldn’t let it go. “Did I do something to you that I don’t remember?”

      “No, ma’am, you didn’t,” he said as if he were proud that she’d never had the opportunity. “Now, either you want me to do this procedure or you don’t. What’ll it be?”

      Faith didn’t have any concerns that he would treat Charlie well—he was already cradling the dog in his arms and Charlie was lounging there trustingly. In the best interest of her pet, Faith decided she should just try to ignore Boone Pratt’s dislike of her.

      “I’d appreciate it if you would do the procedure,” she conceded.

      He stepped away from the counter. “I’ll take good care of Charlie and have my assistant call you when the extraction is over to let you know how it went.”

      He was dismissing her. So apparently he didn’t intend for her to stay in the office during the procedure.

      “And then I’ll be able to come get her and take her home?” Faith asked.

      “She’ll need some looking after when she wakes up, so I’d better keep her with me. At least overnight,” Boone Pratt decreed.

      “I can look after her,” Faith said. “I do take care of her the rest of the time.”

      “Yeah, I’ll bet you get your hands dirty,” he said cuttingly. Then, with the arch of one eyebrow, he said, “It’s up to you if you want to deal with post-op.”

      Faith honestly wasn’t afraid of whatever post-op entailed. But she also wanted Charlie to have the best care possible and since, afraid or not, she was completely inexperienced at caring for an animal after surgery, it was only logical to assume that the vet who performed the surgery would be better at it than she would.

      So, despite the fact that it was likely confirming his already negative opinion of her, Faith said, “She’s probably better off with you.”

      “Probably,” he said snidely.

      Then he took her dog and walked out the door that led to whatever was behind the examining room, leaving Faith staring, slack-jawed, at the door he closed behind himself.

      “The only thing worse than a hayseed is a rude, nasty hayseed,” she muttered to herself.

      “I heard that,” came Boone Pratt’s deep voice from just beyond that door.

      Faith wasn’t thrilled to know he’d heard her.

      But still, loud enough for him to also hear, she said, “Good!”

      Then she turned tail and walked out of the office of a man who might be drop-dead gorgeous but who—as far as she was concerned—could just drop dead.

      Well, after he fixed Charlie’s tooth, anyway.

      Chapter Two

      “Uh, Miss Charlie, the rule in this house is that the animals stay off the bed—that’s why you have a pillow on the floor,” Boone Pratt informed the schnauzer early Monday morning when he awoke to his patient sitting beside him on his king-sized mattress, facing him with an unwavering—and pitiful—stare.

      His own five dogs—all of them at least four times bigger than the schnauzer—were looking on from various spots around his bedroom, probably wondering at the smaller mutt’s audacity.

      But reprimanded or not, Charlie curled up against Boone’s side with a small whine to let him know she still didn’t feel well.

      “I know, nobody likes to be sick,” he commiserated, curving one arm around her to pet her with a minimum of effort.

      His alarm hadn’t yet gone off so he closed his eyes in hopes of catching a little snooze-time. He’d been up most of the night with Charlie. As happened with a lot of animals, the anesthetic had caused vomiting. Plus the particular pain medication he’d administered sometimes had the side-effect of inspiring a vocal response which had left her whimpering on every exhale. He had known she wasn’t hurting and it was nothing to be concerned about, but it always upset pet owners. The possibility of those two things happening were why he’d thought it better to keep Charlie with him rather than send her home after extracting her tooth. Especially home with Faith Perry.

      As if Charlie knew that Faith had just crossed Boone’s mind, the dog nudged against his side in what felt like a criticizing elbow-jab that made him think about Faith and their encounter the day before.

      “Yeah, I know, I should have my ass kicked for the way I acted yesterday,” he admitted to her dog.

      And he didn’t even have a good reason for how he’d treated Charlie’s mom.

      “I’m really not a jerk, you know,” he told Charlie.

      But what he didn’t confide—even to the animal—was what had been behind his behavior. It was something he’d never told anyone. Ever. Something that made him flinch just remembering it.

      The first crush he’d had on a girl had been on Faith Perry.

      And he could hardly stand thinking about it.

      It hadn’t been some macho, I’m-the-man kind of crush. If it had, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But he hadn’t been an I’m-the-man kind of kid.

      He’d had bad skin and braces on his teeth. He’d been barely five and a half feet tall, stocky, backward, awkward and immature at seventeen when—from out of nowhere—the late bloomer who had spent more time with animals than people had discovered he couldn’t think about anything but Faith Perry.

      And the crush itself? That had been a doe-eyed, tongue-tied, trip-over-his-own-feet, blushing, can’t-control-his-body’s-reaction crush. The kind of crush that he would have been ridiculed for if anyone had known. The kind that was completely hopeless and had just made him feel all the more inadequate.

      Especially because it had been on someone who was almost unaware that he was alive and had never made a secret of the fact that she couldn’t wait to get out of this one-horse town and away from everything and everyone in it to have a cultured life with classier people. Blue bloods, that’s what she’d aspired to, hobknobbing with blue bloods.

      And every time he’d gotten anywhere near her, every time СКАЧАТЬ