The M.D. Courts His Nurse Read online

  She glanced up from her computer and saw Lois watching her with a knowing grin.

  “What?” she demanded defensively, feeling heat come into her face.

  Lois laughed. “Would you look at Nurse Becky blush. Things are starting to get mighty interesting around here.”

  At 1:30 p.m. Lois left for a dental appointment, Rebecca having agreed to cover the phone and reception duties for her. With no patient scheduled until Janet arrived at two, Rebecca decided to ready the next pickup for the lab courier who stopped by each afternoon.

  She was seated at the front desk, recording sample ID numbers into a ledger, when John came up front from his office.

  “Mail come yet?” he asked, flashing a smile at her.

  “It usually doesn’t get here until two or two-thirty,” she replied, returning the smile.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  She was pretty sure he already knew that. And he made no movement to leave, just standing there in the doorway watching her. It occurred to her that the mail was a pretext to get a conversation started.

  Instead of resuming her task, she pushed the sample tray aside and widened her smile, encouraging him.

  “We’re hardly ever alone like this,” he said awkwardly. “I mean, now that we’ve…”

  “Become friends?” she asked with forced lightness and charm.

  He looked at her. Whatever he wanted to say, it was evidently costing him an effort. He shrugged. She watched his shirt tighten around his biceps and shoulders when he did.

  “You sure are in good shape,” she said, resorting to compliments in order to avoid the pain. “No wonder you were able to carry that teacher up the mountain.”

  His eyes took in all of her in one lingering, smoldering look.

  A mutual, awkward silence deepened.

  He opted for a burst of candor. “Look, can I ask you a very personal question?”

  “Seeing as how we’ve both already been ‘very personal’ with each other,” she replied, “I don’t think it’s a problem.”

  “How in the world could a woman like you still be a virgin?”

  She gave him a brittle laugh. “You forgot to add ‘until recently.’”

  “You know where I’m going here. I mean, there must have been plenty of guys who were more than eager to change that fact.”

  “Maybe I was just too picky,” she said, her eyes turning away. “But maybe it never felt quite like the right time.”

  His intense eyes held her gaze. “Tuesday? Did that feel like the right time?”

  She grew silent, wrestling with her out-of-control emotions. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Look, I can’t say it was the right time. It just felt right, so I did it. Hey, it was long overdue. It’s really not a big deal. Happens every day to some woman, I assure you.”

  He hesitated, then spoke what was on his mind. “I guess I wasn’t really sure if…well, you know. I wasn’t sure if you just had a moment of weakness, and maybe I sort of unfairly exploited it.”

  “If so,” she assured him coolly, logically, completely avoiding her true feelings, “then we both did. You were the innocent one, after all. If I was so worried about being a ‘good girl,’ I could’ve made up a bed on the floor.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Sure. Same here.” She tried to shrug off his conversation and go back to her work, but her mistake was to look at him.

  His stare held her spellbound.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “if I’d woken up first, I’d’ve joined you on the floor.”

  Like a magnet pulling on steel, he drew steadily closer. He placed his hands on the desk, and drew down, until his lips barely brushed hers.

  The kiss was testing, inquisitive, hungry, even while his posture was dominant and pressing. His mouth invited, his body language possessed. The contact was electric.

  She stared up at him, her insides melting as desire sent her pulse thrumming through her veins.

  He leaned down again and answered her wordless invitation. His strong surgeon’s hand cupped her chin and his lips covered hers in a soul-probing kiss.

  Time stood still. For sweet precious seconds, Rebecca surrendered to him; to the enticing taste of his insistent mouth, to the dark pheromonal scent of his maleness that clung to his skin like a drug that had been concocted for her pleasure alone. He deepened the kiss with his tongue, probing, licking, consuming. She tugged on his bottom lip with her teeth, affirming his sexual onslaught with her answer.

  Gone was all her cool logic and prudence. She wanted more of him, hell, she wanted all of him. And she wanted him now. Her feelings for him went core deep. She couldn’t ever see it going away, not when she was fifty, or eighty, or when she married another man and had his children. Some needs lasted a lifetime, and she was beginning to see that what he had sparked in her was destined only to be quenched by him.

  She released a small moan when he broke away. Loneliness and greed for him rushed back like an ill wind she wanted gone.

  “Does this mean,” he whispered against her hair, his voice husky with desire, “I wouldn’t be out of line if I asked you out?”

  Before she could reply, however, the door in the foyer sprang open. He straightened and just barely managed to put a respectable distance between them before Janet Longchamps’ statuesque form appeared in the waiting room—fifteen minutes early, Rebecca noted with a stirring of resentment and irritation.

  “I’m a weensie bit early, Dr. Saville,” she called out with that magisterial nuance of tone Rebecca remembered from high school. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll just flip through a magazine until you’re ready to see me.”

  So far she hadn’t seemed to recognize—or even notice— Rebecca. That treatment had begun even before Rebecca’s mother died and she became “poor little Becky O’Reilly, Hazel McCallum’s favorite charity.” Janet and Louise were horrified that she actually had to baby-sit and do other jobs to pay for simple little things like her school photos and senior class ring.

  Janet radiated that limitless confidence Rebecca had noticed among some who came from wealthy backgrounds. Tall, designer clad, perfectly poised, she moved across the empty waiting room with the hypnotic grace of a model on a fashion runway.

  Rebecca could not blame John for staring at her, for she herself was also getting an eyeful of Janet. She wore a sexy black knit dress that clung to her svelte, aerobically fine-tuned figure like plastic wrap. Platinum-blond bangs were feathered over her forehead. When she demurely settled into a leather-and-chrome chair, she crossed long legs, setting them off to perfection.

  “I’ll be ready in a couple minutes,” John called out to Janet, giving Rebecca a long deep stare. “I just need to download something on my computer. Becky will have a few routine background questions for you first.” He left reluctantly for his office.

  Only now, when they were alone, did Janet deign to finally notice Rebecca. She studied her for a few moments as if she were a zoo animal Janet couldn’t quite remember.

  “I recognize you,” she abruptly announced as if she deserved jewels in heaven. Her tone was off-putting if not quite rude. “Becky O’Reilly.”

  A mechanical smile was the best Rebecca could muster. “Hi, Janet. I haven’t seen you in, what, almost six years, I guess.”

  She wasn’t sure if that odd contortion of Janet’s mouth was a smile or a smirk. “Yes, since high school. I was away at Holyoke for several years, then I got married and lived in Boston briefly. Now I’m divorced,” she added as if that were the natural course of things among Those Who Are. “And I’m back in the valley. My father is teaching me the real estate business. So…you’ve become a receptionist?”

  “Actually I’m a nurse. Just filling in up front.”

  “I see,” Janet replied as if it hardly mattered to her what the hoi polloi chose to do. She had been just as indifferent toward Rebecca when they were in school together. Janet’s time was spent on social activities like cheerleading and govern
ing her exclusive clique, which had included Louise Wallant. Rebecca had excelled, on the other hand, at academics and spent her free time helping Hazel and riding horses at the Lazy M.

  Rebecca took out the standard medical history form required of all first-visit patients.

  “I just need to ask you a few—”

  “Oh, save yourself the trouble, Becky,” Janet cut her off rudely. “I’m not here for any medical problem.”

  Rebecca’s strained smile wilted at the rude, dismissive tone. “But this is a medical office. Why have you requested an appointment?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m paying for it. I had to come into town, anyway, to show a property, so I figured I’d chat up Dr. Saville while I’m here. I know he’s busy, so I figured an appointment was the best bet.”

  Chat up, Rebecca thought with disdain. Just as pretentious as she’d always been. Hazel’s words about Barbara Wallant now occurred to her: She’s all hat and no cattle.

  “I saw his photograph in yesterday’s newspaper. He’s quite a handsome and distinguished-looking man for one so young.”

  “Yes,” Rebecca replied, keeping her tone carefully level. “I was in that photo, too.”

  Janet’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, was that other person you? I must have read the caption too quickly. Besides, you look much different today without your uniform.”

  I wasn’t wearing a uniform, Rebecca almost pointed out, then thought better of it. Why bother? Egocentric Janet couldn’t care less.

  Behind her, she heard John open his office door, signifying that he was ready to see his patient.

  “You can go on back now,” Rebecca told her, restraining herself from adding, But why don’t you go to hell instead?

  She half expected the visit to end quickly, for John was pretty much all business when it came to medicine. He surely wouldn’t appreciate this frivolous use of office time for obvious socializing.

  But she was wrong. Before very long, peals of laughter—masculine and feminine—reached her in the front office. And a lively conversation was ensuing, although she couldn’t hear their actual words.

  Well, let’s just close down the office and have a party, she fumed, anger replacing the warmth and closeness she had just begun to feel with John. All it took was the arrival of a “pert skirt” with a bankroll to turn the guy into a medical playboy.

  But even as her fury mounted with each new peal of mirth, she cautioned herself against giving in to jealousy. It was her own fault she was miserable. She had no business having a fling with her employer. Cool and detached were the only ways to go and she had almost slipped up again with his unexpected kiss.

  While she was ruminating, the postman dropped the day’s mail through the slot.

  She crossed the waiting room and knelt to pick it up, rolling the rubber band off and starting to sort through it as she returned to the reception desk. A few medical-supply catalogs, a bill for the new air conditioner, a couple of payment envelopes…

  She stopped a few steps from the desk, staring at a vellum-finish envelope with fancy, gold-embossed letters in the upper lefthand corner:

  Louise Wallant

  17 Congress Street

  Deer Lodge, Montana

  In one keenly disappointing moment, Rebecca felt her newfound hope eroding. She had just finished lecturing herself about being unfair regarding Janet; now this new blow caught her with no defenses left.

  What I told Hazel about reincarnation was wrong, she thought. I wasn’t John’s maid in an earlier life; I was the maid to his rich girlfriends.

  For a moment she actually envisioned herself drudge-capped and aproned, dropping a servile curtsy as John disappeared behind bedroom doors, Janet on one arm, Louise on the other. She was still holding that unwelcome image when the doctor and his visitor appeared in the front office again, still engrossed in their chat.

  Again Janet didn’t even deign to notice her, as if she were merely a piece of furniture. And John’s behavior toward his wealthy visitor— Anger knotted Rebecca’s insides as she noticed how easy, confident and relaxed he’d become, Lothario with a stethoscope, natural-born seducer of socialites.

  That glib mouth of his, she realized with a sinking feeling, had just kissed her own lips.

  However, Rebecca kept her anger out of her face and manner as Janet left, not even bothering to say goodbye to her.

  John, still smiling from the visit, turned to his nurse again.

  “As I recall—” he picked up their curtailed conversation “—you and I were arranging a date.”

  She had resumed her task of recording lab samples in the ledger. Before he could say anything else, she spoke up. “All right. How about this coming weekend? Saturday night’s good for me.”

  Just as she had feared, a frown settled onto his handsome features. “I’m tied up this weekend.”

  Tied up, she thought sarcastically. Gets kinky at Louise’s, does it?

  “Oh?” she replied demurely. Her eyes cut to the stack of mail she’d put on Lois’s desk. Louise’s letter sat atop the stack and seemed to stare back at her—mockingly so.

  She waited to see if he would offer any further explanation as to how he might be “tied up.”

  The lull became painful, then excruciating, as he simply stood there and said nothing.

  “What about weekend after next?” he suggested. “Or during the week, would that be okay?”

  She suddenly felt both crushed and infuriated that he would actually schedule her in as one of his concubines like a raja managing his harem. And this was the callous creep she’d surrendered her virginity to?

  “I’ll tell you what,” she offered in icy tones, “how ’bout when I’m in the mood, I’ll call you.”

  His mouth fell open in astonishment.

  Before he could respond, the front door swung open and Lois appeared. She took one look at Rebecca’s angry features, then at John’s dumbfounded face.

  “Ooops,” Lois said, realizing she’d arrived at an awkward moment. “Should I go run an errand or two?”

  “No,” Rebecca answered firmly for both of them. “Our conversation is terminated.”

  I took Hazel’s advice, John stewed later that evening while his frozen lasagna dinner thawed in the microwave. I wasn’t defensive, I showed warmth and all that good stuff. And where did it get me? Becky turned on me like a rabid animal.

  A late-spring cold front had moved in from Canada after sunset, and he had built up a small fire in the living room’s big fieldstone fireplace. The house had been partially furnished when he’d purchased it, but he had gotten rid of the ugly embossed-plush sofa and the rest of the mass-produced furnishings that had rendered the room functional and tasteless.

  He hadn’t yet found time, however, to replace the stuff he’d tossed out, and the big house had an empty, cavernous feel. But he had kept the quaint lamps with parchment shades, and he had kept the sheer curtains and buffalo-check overdrapes.

  Right now, however, he couldn’t care less about decor. Not when the memory of his clash with Becky still smarted like an open wound.

  Out in the kitchen the timer on the microwave dinged, letting him know supper was ready. But he simply sat motionless in the room’s only armchair, trying to figure out what he had done wrong.

  Shallow socialites like Janet Longchamps were predictable to him—they had been throwing themselves at him since his medical school days. But unique women like Becky stymied and intimidated him, for she was far more complex, far less manipulable.

  He stared at the telephone on the mantel, trying to work up the courage to call her.

  But anger, and a newly constructed wall of defensiveness, killed his impulse. By following Hazel’s advice, he had taken a considerable emotional risk. And when she just turned on him like she did, Becky only confirmed his instinct to stay on the defensive with her.

  Failure is not an option, his father’s voice still echoed in memory.

  His gaze lifted above the crackling, sa
wing flames to the decorative centerpiece of the room, mounted in a glass-fronted case: a beautifully carved, painted and decorated Blackfoot warrior coup stick.

  It had been presented to him in a special council meeting of the tribe elders at their reservation located in the Bitterroot Valley, between Montana and Idaho. It was not a replica, but the genuine article from the glory days of the early nineteenth century, one of the most highly prized possessions of the tribe.

  Fifteen brightly dyed feathers were tied to it, one for each time the warrior had “counted coup” on an enemy—touched the enemy or his horse with the stick. Anyone could kill from a distance, Indian warriors had reasoned, including a coward. But it took even more courage and risks to come close enough to actually touch a foe. In fact, a coup was far more honored than taking a life.

  Risks…

  Again John stared at the telephone. He took great pride in that coup stick, for it meant he was one of the few outsiders to be taken into the heart of the tribe. Yet, could he find the courage now to count coup on Becky, to move in close and touch her again despite the emotional risks?

  He almost stood up and crossed to the telephone.

  But then he reminded himself that it wasn’t just a matter of courage. He had done nothing to merit her coldness today. If she wasn’t interested in him, then that was her choice. He couldn’t force her to want him.

  Anger and resentment stirred within him, steeling his resolve to just forget about her.

  Hazel, he decided, was a good and fascinating woman with her heart in the right place. Unfortunately, she just didn’t understand Becky’s personality.

  “You can go to hell, too, Rebecca O’Reilly,” he declared out loud in the big, nearly empty room.

  And that, he assured himself, is my final word on it.

  Twelve

  Friday at the medical office was an excruciating ordeal for Lois, who was forced to witness two stubborn, prideful fools obviously trying to deny their love and attraction for each other.