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And they showed up dressed to the nines, looking far more gorgeous than they had bothered to look for Dr. Winthrop. Elizabeth, for example, wore a graceful garland-print dress of crepe de chine silk. And her neatly coiffed hair suggested she had just come from the salon.
But Brennan Webb, too, had already shown up, exactly forty-five minutes early, as he always was. Brennan was eighty-one, frail but courtly, and had always been one of Dr. Winthrop’s—and Rebecca’s—favorite patients. He sat, content and in no hurry, in the waiting room’s most uncomfortable chair, an uncushioned ladderback. He wore a ranch suit with a square-tipped bow tie, an American-flag pin in his lapel. Brennan liked to boast that he was “still strong as horse radish.”
“You sure you don’t want the headphones and remote, Brennan?” she offered, deliberately taking her time to anger her waiting boss. “Won’t take me a second to turn the TV on for you.”
He waved off her suggestion. “I get enough of that crap at home, honey,” he groused at her. “I get more ’n’ fifty channels, hardly any of ’em worth a tinker’s damn.”
Immediately, however, Brennan altered his tone and added, with no logical connection, “This new doctor is young, but I’m told he knows B from a bull’s foot, all right.”
“Yes, he’s certainly a blessing,” Rebecca drawled with mild irony.
Not mild enough, however, to fool Brennan.
Fancy bridgework brightened the old man’s big smile. But he replied in a phony, quavering tone, “Methinks you protest too much, dearie, but I’m just a senile old man. What would I know?”
“Senile schmenile,” she tossed back at him, choosing to ignore his sly hint that romance was in the air. She also ignored the dirty look Elizabeth sent her way.
Since John Saville’s arrival in town, the young and available women treated her like a rival for the doctor’s attention, not the office nurse.
Even old curmudgeon Brennan has been sucked in, she marveled as she headed down the hallway toward John Saville’s private office. The whole town acted as though Apollo had just descended into Mystery Valley from Mount Olympus.
Lois was alone in examination room A, setting up Rebecca’s station for initial patient screening before Brennan saw the doctor.
Their eyes met as they passed in the hallway.
Rebecca paused a moment. “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
Lois nodded.
Rebecca didn’t have to explain where she was headed— Lois had overheard Dr. Saville’s strained request.
“Temper, temper,” she reminded Rebecca quietly. “That vein is pulsing in your left temple.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “You’re right, we just need to play it cool and break him in right. I’m not going to lose it around him.”
Lois, however, had worked with Rebecca going on six years now and trusted that pulsing vein the way weather-men trusted Doppler radar.
“If you’re fine, then put this on,” Lois dared, picking up the blood pressure cuff and separating the Velcro tabs.
“Take your own pressure and let’s see.”
Rebecca stepped inside, but only so she could speak privately. “Never mind that. I confess his tone rubbed me the wrong way,” she admitted. “Like fingernails scratching a blackboard, actually. But I mean it, I’m not giving him the pleasure of getting to me. Maybe I’ll even drop a curtsy as I go in.”
“Oh, cripes,” Lois fretted. “Everybody buckle up, we’re going to get some turbulence.”
“You’ll see—I mean it. Cool and professional.”
However, her resolve was under assault from the first moment she stepped into the doctor’s private office.
Usually he prefaced his little lectures with attempts at polite small talk. This morning, however, he waded right in without even testing the water.
“Miss O’Reilly, last Friday I noticed you being extremely rude, in my opinion, with the sales rep from Med-Tech Supplies.”
“I doubt if it left him a broken man,” she countered, surprising herself at the sarcasm in her tone.
John Saville stared at her for a moment, not sure whether he or the salesman was the target of her scornful tone.
Both of us, he decided, and he felt his angry pulse thrum in his palms.
She’s got a hell of a mouth on her, he fumed. But when he glanced at the defiant pout of her lips, he suddenly wondered what it would be like to kiss that angry mouth, kiss it hard until the anger turned to something very different….
Fat chance he had of ever finding out. That was obvious in the way she always looked at him as if she’d love to slap him.
“Yes?” she asked, cutting impatiently into his reverie, trying to get him back on track. “You saw me being rude, as you call it, with the Med-Tech guy?”
Her bossy tone irritated him anew. “Yeah, and now this morning,” he forged on, “I learn that you’ve switched our account to Rocky Mountain Medical Supplies.”
So that’s what’s got him all bent out of shape, she thought, noticing how his features seemed etched in anger.
“I didn’t attempt to conceal the change from anyone,” she countered, her face coolly indifferent to his obvious irritation. “Is there a problem?”
“None that I was aware of. That’s precisely my point in asking. Why fix what isn’t broken?”
“Rocky Mountain Medical is a dependable supplier. I switched for a good reason.”
Those deep, intensely blue eyes cut into her like diamond drill bits. “That reason being…?”
The salesman was a married man hitting on me, that’s why, she wanted to toss in his face. But she feared he would use it as proof of more “unprofessional behavior” on her part. Her resolve to rise above any fray crumbled completely. She suddenly flushed, more angry than embarrassed. “My reasons are personal.”
“Yes,” he said, smug with triumph, “I figured as much from your behavior last Friday. I could tell there was…something between the two of you.”
“You can’t possibly conclude—”
She caught herself in the nick of time before exploding. If this was just a fishing expedition, a search for things to throw in her face, she had no intention of taking his hook.
“Look,” she told him, her hands balled into fists on her hips, “you know that it’s the nurse in any office who uses most of the disposable medical supplies. Dr. Winthrop always trusted me—”
“Yeah, right, I know the riff by now,” he said, cutting her off impatiently. “Paul Winthrop is God Almighty, and I’m the heartless outsider. The spawn of Satan.”
His rather childish outburst surprised her. His tone had sounded almost human. She might even have felt some sympathy for him if she hadn’t still felt the sting of his “your behavior last Friday” remark.
Not that it was any of his damn business, she fumed. Why not just call her the office slut and at least be a man about it instead of dropping smug hints like some little schoolyard snitch?
“I’m sorry,” she told him archly, “that you feel so persecuted in Mystery, Doctor. I suppose we hayseed types must seem a bit quaint to sophisticated outsiders.”
Her tone heaped extra emphasis on the last two words.
He wanted to laugh out loud. Staring at her, he thought, you beautiful, hotheaded little fool, you are so wrong it’s even funny. Sophisticated? He almost snorted. What would she think if she knew he grew up living in a broken-down trailer, or that pretty girls just like her used to mock him in school because of his family’s poverty? Medical school had been the only way out. The only way. And he’d grasped it like a lifebuoy.
But it hardly mattered what he thought. She didn’t give him a chance to slip a word in.
“I am the office nurse, after all,” she said, pushing right on in spite of his closed, angry glower. “It’s my job to order medical supplies. But if you have some specific complaint about Rocky Moun—”
“No, it’s fine, what the hell,” he cut in sarcastically. “I’m only the doctor around here, don’t let me interfere with your plans for the office.”
“I said if you want, I’ll order—”
“Order it from a Hong Kong clearing house for all I care,” he snapped, his tone brusquely dismissive. “You’re right, it’s your job, not mine. Thanks for your time.”
He sat down behind his desk and flipped open the current issue of Surgical Medicine Quarterly. His rude behavior was meant to be her dismissal.
But Rebecca saw how his eyes were not really reading. Anger flicked in his gaze like light reflected off midnight ice, darkening the blue and tightening his lips and facial muscles.
The feeling is mutual, her own angry eyes assured him right back as she turned away, resenting him to the point of pure hatred.
“One last thing, Miss O’Reilly.”
His voice behind her stopped her like a firm grip on her shoulders.
She turned to watch him from the doorway of the office. “Yes?”
“Concerning what I witnessed last Friday—your, uh, personal intrigues are of course your own business. But professionals don’t mix business with pleasure for this very reason we see now—it causes unnecessary problems. Try to keep your love life out of the workplace.”
His presumptions and false assumptions made anger surge up within her, anger tinged with bewilderment. Why should she care if he had a false impression of her involvement with a would-be adultering creep? She refused to let Saville get that personal with her, right or wrong in his assumptions. His nose wasn’t just out of joint—it was also way too long.
The scornful twist of her mouth was meant to insult him more than any words could. Nonetheless, she flung a few at him for good measure.
“Despite your obvious belief that you are above everyone else,” she snipped, “this is not the Middle Ages, and you do not own your employees. I am a nurse, not a serf. My private life is my business and my business alone. Furthermore, as far as I see it, you have no right to make ridiculous observations like you have just now. In fact, you don’t have the right to even speak to me about my love life.”
Or lack thereof, she finished silently to herself with a twist of irony.
In the ensuing silence, her eyes refused to flee from his. Defiance edged every feature as she stared back at him.
His gaze turned toward the window and the view outside as if in surrender, but he still took up the gauntlet.
“If I did own you,” he assured her, “I’d see if I could swap you for an angry grizzly. Might make the office more pleasant.”
Down-home humor, she thought. Just what Mystery needed in a doctor from Chicago.
She turned and left the office. She didn’t make note of his angry stare or how it drilled into her. Burning. Burning.
By the time Hazel McCallum left for her 10:00 a.m. appointment with John Saville, not even a sweater was required, and the main yard and corral were teeming with horse wranglers and cow punchers.
Weather-rawed men wearing range clothes and neckerchiefs waved as her cinnamon-and-black Fleetwood wound through the crushed-stone driveway of the front yard. Some of the older hands refused to wave, considering that gesture beneath their dignity and Hazel’s status as the last living McCallum. Instead they touched their hats in a respectful “salute to the brand,” a gesture that never ceased to make Hazel feel pride in the cattleman’s traditions.
Those corporate boys in the big cities only talk about teamwork, she thought. One old-fashioned cattle drive would teach them the real meaning of pulling together.
She slowed for the asphalt road that led due east into town. Beyond the Lazy M’s far-flung corrals and pastures, blue sky curved down to meet green grass in a vista as wide as the eye could see. And rising majestically beyond the verdant floor of Mystery Valley, the hard granite peaks of the Rockies.
Even the stunning view, however, couldn’t quite keep her from remembering her daily horoscope, which she always consulted over morning coffee. She smiled, pleased but not at all surprised, as she recalled the advice to “make some connections that appear illogical on the surface.”
Illogical? It was worse than that—Hazel knew Rebecca O’Reilly and John Saville might be her most challenging match yet. But at age seventy-five she was one of the last true mavericks in the American West. Oil money had subdued most of the cattle hierarchy, but the Lazy M brand had survived, even thrived, under her astute management.
And she thrived on a challenge—life was too flat without long shots and lost causes.
She wound through a curve, swooped across a little stone bridge, and now came in sight of the white-painted fence where her land gave way on its east border to John Saville’s recently purchased property. She still thought of it as the Papenhagen place even though Tilly’s husband had passed away last year and she had sold out, moving to South Florida to join the condo-and-blue-rinse set.
Hazel had always liked the big fieldstone house with its indestructible slate roof and windows with leaded panes. The place is too big, though, for a bachelor, she thought yet again. It needed a wife, some dogs and cats, a few or a bunch of kids. If there were too many, she’d gladly handle the overflow, for Hazel missed having young neighbors around all the time as Rebecca and her school friends used to be, bless their hearts. If only kids wouldn’t grow up so fast.
Seeing the house reminded her: Rebecca was wrong about the young surgeon’s personality. Hazel was sure of that already, despite the fact he was not one to volunteer much about his past.
But she also knew that telling Rebecca about her mistake would be pointless. The girl was too headstrong, too young and independent. She would need to make the discovery on her own—with some guidance, of course, Hazel admitted to herself, from the area’s best matchmaking operative. For she was nearly convinced, even this early on, that newcomer John Saville and hometown girl Rebecca were an ideal match. If only each could survive the mutual shell shock of their first impressions.
“Lord,” Hazel said under her breath, “I’d be a hypocrite if I called matchmaking my burden. It’s too much fun. I’ve never been bashful about meddling.”
After all, she had some right to meddle. Her ancestors had been the first to settle in Mystery Valley; now she was determined to save as much of its traditional character as she could. That meant the careful pairing of natives with outsiders, forming bonds of real community. Bonds of real love.
John Saville’s classic Alfa Romeo Gran Sport, painted bloodred in the Italian racing tradition, sat in his reserved spot beside the clinic. The very sight of it stirred Hazel’s blood, for it had all the grace and power of a fine Thoroughbred. She parked in the spot beside it, admiring the graceful roadster body with its tan leather driver’s seat mounted almost over the rear axle.
Not the car of choice for an “old sobersides,” she thought as she followed a cobblestone walk toward the glassed-in foyer.
“Sorry if I’m late, ladies,” Hazel announced as she entered the waiting room. “I spent too much time gawking at the tourists downtown. My land, where do they learn to dress like they do? They must have one of those whatchamajiggers, a chat room for it on the Internet.”
All three of them usually poked harmless fun at the warm-weather influx of visitors, which grew larger every year. This morning, however, only Lois laughed with her. Rebecca was in one of her little snits that Hazel recognized well. Her pretty smile was in place, as usual, dazzling enough to fool most people. But the normally gentle and pleasing brow was now furled from pent-up anger. And that vein in her temple was pulsing, a sure sign.
Sensing Rebecca’s mood, Lois took over. “Hi, Hazel. You can come right on back if you want. I’ve got Becky’s station set up.”
Instead of heading right to examination room A, Hazel paused between the two women’s desks. “You and your new boss getting along any better?” she inquired bluntly of Rebecca.
“Oh, hey, better watch what you say,” she replied in a sarcastic warning tone. “The walls have ears, you know. Maybe even bugs planted in them.”
“I take it that’s a no?”
“A big, loud, resounding no. Frankly, I think there’re some people who took their toilet training way too seriously.”
“Takes one to know one,” Hazel suggested sweetly.
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. You’ll see. Don’t be surprised if I’m reading the Help Wanted ads soon. I’m glad this guy doesn’t wear a ring or we’d all have to kiss it.”
“Ahh-hemm.” Lois, busy opening mail, cleared her throat, warning Rebecca to hold her voice down. But she was still smarting from her earlier encounter with the doctor and didn’t much care what he overheard. Besides, in her mind Hazel was family, not a patient.
Hazel knew this headstrong side of her friend, had even encouraged it after a fashion when she saw how her mother’s death left the poor girl faltering in her self-confidence. So Hazel also knew that the only way to handle the lass was with reverse psychology.
In short, she decided with a perverse little grin, maybe Becky needed a date from hell to remind the haughty princess what it’s like “out there.” And then John Saville might start to look a tad better to her.
“What are you smiling about?” Rebecca challenged her as she led her patient into the examination room.
“Oh, I’m just building castles in the air,” Hazel confessed as she rolled up the sleeve of her blouse. “And even populating them.”
“Hmm,” was Rebecca’s only comment. Anger still distracted her.
She checked Hazel’s blood pressure and heart rate and recorded them on the chart in her clipboard. Next she took her temperature, then weighed her on the same old but reliable triple-beam scale Doc Winthrop had used for decades.
“Hazel,” she remarked, impressed as usual, “you never vary by an ounce, do you?”
“Wouldn’t know,” Hazel admitted. “We McCallums never kept a scale around. What for? Your horse is the only one needs to worry about your weight.”
A moment later John Saville appeared in the doorway, trim and handsome in gray slacks and a light-blue dress shirt with a navy rep tie, loosened but not sloppy. Rebecca handed him the clipboard and then stepped out, closing the door behind her and never once meeting his eyes.
“How’ve you been doing, Hazel?” he greeted her, friendly but somewhat distracted in his manner—just as Rebecca had been.
They’ve been at each other’s throats, all right, the matriarch mused. No good romance should have bland beginnings.
“Feisty as ever,” she assured him, “thanks to my talented young surgeon.”
John pinched the creases of his trousers and tugged them up a fraction, taking over Rebecca’s still-warm chair.
Before he could ask her anything else, Hazel demanded, “What year’s your Alfa? I’m guessing it’s a ’27?”
His face changed immediately, the stern features softening, and enthusiasm lifted his tone. “Hey, you’re pretty close. Nineteen twenty-five Gran Sport 1750,” he boasted like a proud papa. “It’s a classic and then some. That model won every road race of its day. She’s got a super-charged motor, all original. Even today I can push her up close to ninety-five.”
“A 1925, huh?” Hazel winked at him. “Made the same year I was born.”
He glanced briefly at her chart, then smiled. “Yeah, right. And both of you appear to be in excellent running order,” he remarked, holding those intensely blue eyes steady on her—more curious than suspicious, she decided. “I see you take only one medication?”
She nodded. “Nitroglycerin tablets. I only take them occasionally for mild angina pain.”
“But didn’t you mention to Miss O’Reilly—”
Her laugh cut him off. “Is it too hard to say Rebecca?”
“—to Rebecca that you had some questions about your diet since the surgery? Has there been some problem?”
“You know, I recall that I did mention something like that,” she confessed, “but here’s a better question just popped into my head—have you ever watched a cat sitting beside a gopher hole?”
The crease between his eyebrows deepened in a surprised frown. “Can’t say that I have. I was a military brat, lived all over the world. Including near gopher holes. Don’t remember any cats sitting beside them, though.”
“Well, come on out to my place sometime, I’ve got cats and gopher holes,” she assured him. “It’s well worth watching. You’ll soon learn that the cat’s patience is surpassed only by one thing—its confidence that the wait is worth it.”
He met her sparkling gaze for at least five seconds, and he suddenly realized, full force, that he was in the company of an extraordinarily perceptive person.
“There’s a lesson for me in that, right?”
Indeed there was, but Hazel knew she had to give the good doctor his medicine in doses. He wouldn’t admit it yet because he was still in the throes of denial. But he was “gone” on Rebecca, all right. Or not yet gone, she corrected herself, but he was going, going…and soon would be gone.
Right now he was still too irritated at her, baffled by her, his confidence thwarted because she was new to his experience. So during this visit, Hazel settled for merely planting a seed. She could water it later. Her secret garden of love.
“A lesson?” she finally responded, her tone innocent of any guile. “Why, Dr. Saville, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but no one ever has much trouble getting my point, if you’ll excuse the pun. Well, my goodness!”
She glanced at her watch, then stood up.
John Saville hastily rose, too.
“I’ve got yard work to do,” she explained. “The trees are still winter mulched, can you believe my lazy bones? And today I have to help pick out breed stock. Thanks for the wonderful advice.”
“What advice? I didn’t give you any.”
“Well had you, I’m sure it would have been excellent advice.”
“But, Hazel, we still haven’t—”
“Toodle-oo,” she called as she stepped quickly into the hallway. But she had more medicine to dispense before she left.
She deliberately left the door wide open so the doctor could hear her.
“Becky, hon,” she called, her tone making it sound like a mere afterthought. “Do you remember Rick Collins, my accountant, Larry’s, kid brother?”
Rebecca, busy taking inventory in the medical supply room, poked her head out into the hallway. She gave Hazel a little frown as she tried to recall. “Have I met him?”
“Not exactly, I don’t believe. You saw him waiting in Larry’s car one day in my driveway. Remember? You asked me who the cute guy was?”
Rebecca kept the blank expression as memory failed her. “I’m not sure I remember…”
“You said he had a nice smile. Sure you did. So I gave him your phone number,” Hazel supplied in an offhand tone. “Suggested he give you a call soon. And I warned him not to put it off too long or he’d end up on the waiting list.”
“Hazel,” she protested, “I really don’t remember—”
“Oh, Larry says he’s loads of fun,” Hazel said, cutting her off, already letting herself out. “He reads a lot, and you’ve always liked guys who read.”
“Hazel, I can’t—”
“I’ll send a check when I get home,” Hazel commented to Lois as she closed the door behind her. Her last glimpse showed John Saville in the hallway, watching Rebecca with the same hard expression he usually wore around her.
Let not your hearts be troubled, youngsters, she reflected as she walked to her car. True love always finds a way.
Or at least a good agent, she added, and sheer deviltry sparkled in her Prussian-blue eyes.
Three
Rick Collins must have followed Hazel’s advice about not wasting time, for he called later that very day. The phone rang only minutes after Rebecca had returned to her studio apartment, located just south of Mystery on Bluebush Road. Her place was only minutes from Valley General Hospital, where she’d worked as a surgical-recovery nurse briefly before Dr. Winthrop hired her, impressed by colleagues’ reports about her work.
Her very first telephone impression of Rick had been favorable. A nice voice, decidedly masculine but not macho, and he identified himself immediately. No cute little guessing games like some guys played. He simply skipped any preliminaries and politely asked her to dinner the coming weekend at the Hathaway House.