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“Okay, beautiful, are you ready?” David asked.
She assumed he meant Janie since he was looking at her. “Do you have any questions, peanut?” Courtney questioned.
“Is it gonna hurt?” Her mouth trembled as she looked at him.
He looked at Janie. “I’m going to give you some medicine so it won’t hurt. A small pinch and then nothing.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“What else is gonna happen?”
“I won’t lie to you, Janie.” David met her gaze. “I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going on.”
“No medical doublespeak requiring a translator?” Courtney asked.
“Honesty is always the best policy.” He must have seen the skepticism in her eyes because he added, “Especially with children. They always know when something’s not right. It’s my goal to keep her calm. If she’s not prepared for this she’s going to get agitated. Agitation is quickly followed by restlessness, then tension and stress. None of that is helpful.”
That made sense. “I see your point.”
He nodded, then focused on the child. “You’re going to feel a little pulling. Do you think you can be very still for me? More still than any other six-year-old girl ever?” When Janie nodded solemnly, he smiled. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
Courtney squeezed her daughter’s fingers while David picked up a swab and dabbed it over the area. He’d already explained that it was a topical anesthetic to take the edge off the injection that would numb her for the procedure. Now was where she did her mom thing. She needed to distract Janie while David worked.
“I think a six-year-old who can be more still than anyone ever deserves a special prize,” she said.
“What?” Janie asked, her attention snagged as hoped for.
“It’s got to be pretty special. What’s the most special thing you can think of?”
“What about ice cream?” David suggested.
“I like vanilla ice cream,” Janie said. “Milkshakes are best. But I think a toy would be good, too.”
“What toy?” Courtney asked.
“Maybe a doll. With a stroller.”
“Okay, Janie. It’s time to hold still for me. Then we can get serious about that doll-and-stroller thing.”
Janie tensed and whimpered when he did the injections but she barely moved a muscle.
Several moments later he announced, “All finished with that part. And it’s the worst. I promise. Now we wait for the medicine to do its work.”
“Do I win the prize?” Janie wanted to know.
“Hands down,” he agreed.
“Are you finished?”
He shook his head. “I still have a little more to do.”
“What?” Janie asked. She glanced at the tray of instruments beside him. “Where’s the needle?”
Courtney winced and felt David’s gaze on her. “I think everything the doctor is going to use is wrapped up there on the tray.”
“Why?”
“To keep them sterile,” David explained. “To keep the germs off. Did you ever have a scratch or scrape that got infected?”
The little girl pressed her lips together. “One time. It got really red and hurt. Mommy had to pour this stuff on—”
“Hydrogen peroxide,” Courtney said when Janie glanced at her for clarification.
“Then she put on cream and I got a Band-Aid.”
“Your mom did just the right thing,” David said.
Courtney felt the power of his praise course through her but that made no sense. Why should it make any difference to her whether or not he approved? And yet it did. How irritating was that? The good news was that Janie had been successfully distracted.
“You’ll heal faster if these cuts don’t get any germs in them,” he explained.
“You have to sew up my boo-boo?” she asked.
He thought for a moment. “I have to pull the edges together so it heals neatly.”
“Are you gonna use a big needle? Like the one my mommy uses to fix my jeans?”
His face was intensely serious as he answered the question. “I’m not sure what your mom uses for that,” he said, “but for what I’m going to do we need everything as small as possible.”
“’Cuz I’m small?”
Courtney’s throat tightened with emotion. Her child was too small to go through this, she thought. She knew she should say something, but couldn’t get anything past the lump in her throat. Some pillar of strength she was.
David’s sharp-eyed gaze seemed to pick up on her state of mind. “Janie, even if you were as big as Shrek I would use very tiny stuff.”
“How come?”
“Because tiny stuff will make the scar almost invisible.”
“So that stuff is magic?”
“In the right hands it is.”
Courtney looked at his long, elegant gloved fingers. “Are your hands magic?”
“Yes.” He smiled.
His tone wasn’t arrogant, just matter-of-fact. There was nothing even remotely sensual or suggestive in his response or the way he looked at her, but Courtney felt that smile dance over her skin and touch her everywhere. She swore she felt tingles and considering her opinion of this man, he wielded some kind of powerful magic.
“You said ‘almost’ invisible. That means a little bit visible,” she said, glancing at Janie.
“It does.” He glanced at Janie, too, gauging her reaction. “Believe it or not, there’s some good news.”
“I could sure use some of that,” Courtney answered, and she’d never meant anything more in her entire life.
With a gloved finger, he pointed to the long gash on her chin. “Because this is on the jawline, it will be practically unnoticeable under her chin. Her ear, while exceptionally lovely and delicate, has creases and folds.”
“Like Mr. Potato Head?” Janie asked.
David laughed. “You’re much prettier than he is. But here’s the thing, ears have lots of places to hide the sutures. And so does your eye—a natural fold between your eyelid and brow bone. It’s a matter of using what nature gave you for camouflage. All of that makes my job easier.”
Courtney was relieved to hear that, but wondered if he took the easy way out in his personal life, too. It was as if he was all about how things appeared on the outside. He’d come home for his mother’s funeral, then his father’s. But nothing in between. She’d known James Wilder pretty well. For some reason the man had taken an interest in her and Janie and his passing left a big hole in her life. But while his father was still alive, David never came to visit. It wasn’t a stretch to conclude that he didn’t take after the elder Dr. Wilder who’d cared more about the inside of people than the outside.
“Okay, Janie, I’m going to start. Are you ready to hold still again?”
“You don’t need a nurse?” Courtney asked.
He shook his head. “I’m used to working alone, and they’re busy.”
“Is it okay if I shut my eyes?” Janie said.
“If you want.”
Courtney wished she could shut her eyes too, but from where she was sitting in the chair, she couldn’t really see much anyway. Just the slow, methodical way his elegant hands moved. The suture material was so fine it was barely visible and he held it with forceps. Between the pain medication she’d received and being physically drained from what she’d been through, Janie actually drifted off while David worked.
He might not be much like his father, but he was really good with her daughter. It seemed natural, something she wouldn’t have expected. “Where did you learn to get along with kids?”
His gaze met hers briefly. “I was one once.”
So was she. About a million years ago. On second thought, she didn’t actually remember being a kid. It seemed as if she’d always been the grown-up, handling one crisis after another when her father was too drunk even to take care of himself.
But if David had taken a course in med school on how to charm children, apparently he’d aced it. The man was putting sutures in Janie’s chin and she trusted him enough to fall asleep. The ability to do that didn’t mesh with what little Courtney knew about him.
“But you’re not a kid now,” she said. That was the understatement of the century. He was a man who sprinkled sex appeal like fairy dust wherever he went, if tabloid stories linking him to models and actresses were anything to go by. “And you didn’t talk down to her.”
“Kids know when you do that. They don’t like it.”
She actually laughed. “That’s true.”
Who’d have thought anyone could make her laugh under the circumstances? Maybe he was magic. That thought made her uneasy and when she was uneasy it was time to fall back on defenses.
“So why did you agree to look at Janie?” she asked.
He glanced at her. “Because my sister called.”
“But you’re not helping your sister. Janie and I are total strangers to you.” And from what she gathered, his family wasn’t too much more to him. Yet he was here because Ella called. By any definition that was a nice thing. Men who did nice things usually wanted something and she wasn’t comfortable with that kind of balance sheet.
“Let’s just say this is the least I can do for the widow and daughter of a war hero,” he said.
Courtney cringed at his words. It was what everyone thought, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. The anger welled up and after a day like today she didn’t have the emotional reserves to bite her tongue.
“Joining the army wasn’t about truth, justice and the American way for Joe. My husband was a lot of things, but noble wasn’t one of them.”
David’s hands stopped moving and he looked at her. “He gave his life for his country. That seems pretty noble to me.”
It would have been if his reasons for joining the military hadn’t been about getting away from his wife and baby girl. He’d gone because he wanted liberty, but not for his country. For himself. He wanted freedom from domestic restraints so he could play around with women, any woman who wasn’t his wife.
As quickly as the rage reared up, it let her down. She was so tired. Tired of being angry about something she couldn’t change. Mostly she was just tired. And sore. It felt as if every muscle ached and her body was the percussion section in a marching band. Her head throbbed, then her wrist pounded. And that was her only excuse for revealing relationship failures to the doctor who’d been nice enough to help Janie.
She met his questioning gaze and sighed. “Is it too late to take that back?”
“Pretty much,” he confirmed.
She sighed. “Ordinarily I’m not prone to sharing personal information. Especially with someone I don’t know. Someone who went out of his way to do a nice thing. I can only plead probable brain damage after hitting my head. How about we pretend I didn’t say anything?”
“Okay.”
That was too easy. Or maybe not. He probably didn’t want to hear her tragic story any more than she wanted to tell it. When his good deed was done, he’d be out of here. And it couldn’t be too soon for her. The man did things to her. He’d surprised her when he was so good with Janie. It surprised her when he’d picked up the slack in the support department when she was feeling about as strong as a fettuccine noodle. She didn’t like surprises.
They were never good.
David rolled his disposable gloves off and dropped them on the tray beside him, then studied his work. He’d made the sutures as tiny as humanly possible and knew that the stubborn little chin would heal nicely. When he noted Courtney’s pale face he figured it best not to make her study the finished product.
But he couldn’t resist saying, “Not bad.”
“Humble, aren’t you?” Edgy sarcasm laced the words, but he had a feeling that spirit was the only reason she was still on her feet.
He decided to help her out. “Haven’t you heard? Arrogance is a prerequisite for doctors.”
“I’ve heard that. But I haven’t seen it up close and personal until now.”
He vaguely remembered Ella saying Courtney was a hospital employee, but a bad connection while he was in the airport had prevented him hearing in what capacity. Because of that call, he was here instead of on a plane to L.A.
When he looked at Courtney’s mouth, his wish that he were on a plane to anywhere took hold. Her lips took up forty-five percent of her face—a slight exaggeration, but if she didn’t have the sexiest mouth he’d ever seen, he’d turn in his forceps and start making house calls.
“You do work here at the hospital,” he clarified.
“I manage the gift shop.”
“So you don’t work directly with doctors?”
“No.”
She met his gaze and didn’t look away, but he’d swear her self-respect took a hit. Something in her eyes dimmed, some inner spark that was struggling to burst into flame all but sputtered and went out. He wasn’t sure what he’d said, but he wanted to fix it, even though he’d tried fixing things for a woman once and it hadn’t gone well.
“You’re lucky you don’t work with doctors,” he said. “There’s a whole needing-to-be-right, needing-to-be-worshipped thing that can get pretty annoying.”
“With so many doctors in your family, that must be an interesting dynamic.”
It probably would be if he’d spent any significant time with them. But he hadn’t. Not since his father had told him he couldn’t stand the sight of him. David had lashed out, defended actions that really had no defense. But he’d been in love and the woman who’d captured his heart had stolen his soul. It wasn’t long before he found out she’d been using his feelings for her to make him a puppet who jumped when she yanked his strings.
He’d lost the person he cared about most because of her and no matter what he did, there didn’t seem to be any way to fill up the void.
His thoughts hadn’t taken this pathetic a turn for a long time and when he looked at Courtney’s full lips, it occurred to him that the sooner he got out of Walnut River the better.
And he would. But right now Janie needed a sterile dressing on her chin. He could have called a nurse to do it, but after the arrogance discussion, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to do it himself. Which wasn’t a problem. He’d had a lot of practice on his overseas trips. Arrogance had no place in a Nicaraguan jungle or an African desert.
After cutting several strips of paper tape, he unwrapped a nonstick pad and secured it to the little girl’s determined chin. It crossed his mind that she’d inherited that from her mother, along with her dimples. At some point he was going to have to break the news to Courtney that her daughter wouldn’t ever again have a matched set. So far that detail hadn’t come up, most likely because she’d been more worried about the big picture. And for now that was more important.
When he saw Courtney watching him intently, he said, “She’s going to be sore for a while. Chewing will probably cause her some discomfort and she may not want to eat, but she has to keep her strength up. Here in the hospital they’ll give her soft foods, but when you take her home, she probably won’t want a steak for awhile.”
“Okay. And, for the record, she doesn’t really like steak.”
“But you get my drift.” He gently smoothed the edges of the tape. “These sutures should be checked in a day or two and will probably need to come out in about a week. For facial trauma, we don’t like to leave them in too long.”
“Why not?”
“Too long can be worse than not long enough. If soft tissue heals around the suture, it’s too hard to remove and can cause pulling. Not what we want.”
“Okay.”
“In plastics, one of the first things you learn is that the tenderest tissue needs the gentlest touch.”
Courtney’s battered face was clear evidence that fate hadn’t dealt especially gently with her today. But it was the shadows in her eyes that made him wonder about her past, the personal stuff she’d let slip. Patients didn’t always tell the truth and doctors learned to read between the lines. It seemed likely that Courtney was bruised and tender on the inside and needed a very soft touch. From someone besides him.
David walked around the bed and looked down at Courtney. “That’s all we can do for now. She’s resting comfortably. It’s time you took care of yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s a nasty bump on your head.”
“That’s all it is. Nothing showed up on the CT scan.”
“What about your wrist?”
“Dr. Wilder—” She stopped as one corner of her mouth curved up. “Your sister looked at the X-rays and said it might need surgery but she couldn’t be sure until the swelling goes down. So I don’t have an appointment for the O.R. tonight.”
Was that a hint? Not likely if the semi-hostile looks she’d lobbed at him were anything to go by. “And no hot date?”
“Oh, please,” she said wryly. “I’ve sworn off men.”
“And you’re sharing that only because of that bump on your head?”
“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” She pointed to the nasty-looking contusion. “However bad you think it looks on the outside, it’s way worse on the inside.”
She meant her body, but he’d been talking about her spirit. Must be something about being back in Walnut River, in the hospital his father had nurtured into the fine facility it was today. Something was turning his thoughts to a dark, introspective place and he didn’t much like going there. It was pointless to spend any energy on things he couldn’t change. Practical considerations were much less complicated. Like what his sister, Ella, had decided about Courtney.
“I’ll ask Ella to give you something for the pain,” he suggested.
“No. I’m fine. Over-the-counter pain meds are taking the edge off. Anything stronger will make me sleepy and I need to keep as clear a head as I can. For Janie.”
“She’s being well cared for. Maybe you should take the doctor’s advice and be admitted to the hospital.”
“Not even on a bet.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need to take up a bed.”
“Why are you fighting it? You have insurance—”
“There’s a deductible,” she interrupted. “And I’m okay. Besides, I can’t take care of Janie from a hospital bed.”
“You can’t take care of Janie at all if you don’t take care of yourself first. If you won’t take the doctor’s advice, at least go home and get some rest.”
“I don’t have a car. It’s a little banged up, too. And even if I did, Ella said I probably shouldn’t drive for a couple of days.”
David folded his arms over his chest as he stared down at her. “So you embrace the orders you like and scrap everything else.”
“Pretty much.”
“I’ll take you home,” he said, then cursed himself for knuckling to the appeal of a needy woman.
“Thanks, but I can’t leave. Janie and I appreciate everything you did, David. Thank you for coming.”
That was a dismissal if he’d ever heard one. She was telling him to go, that his work here was done. That she could take it from here. He should go, and he planned to…until he made the mistake of looking at her, sitting in a chair and holding her sleeping child’s hand. By sheer strength of will she was going to sit here. Probably all night. He stared for several moments at her delicate profile, the strain, the bruises, the pride, the guts and he couldn’t just walk out.
One more time. “Courtney, your body has been through a trauma, too. Rest is the best thing—” He stopped when she shot him a look—fiercely female and protective.
“How can I rest when my baby is in the hospital? What if she wakes up and gets scared? What if she needs me? It’s my fault she’s here in the first place. I have to live with that, but I could never live with myself if I left her here all alone.” She shook her head with a vehemence that had to hurt. “I’m not going anywhere. Again, thanks for everything. Good night, David.”
He sat down in the chair beside hers and noticed her staring. “What?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Courtney frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Probably the reason Ella wanted you admitted was for observation. To make sure you’re okay. Consider yourself observed on an outpatient basis.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. That’s silly. You should go. I’m fine. And if I’m not, the nurses are in and out. Help is right here.”
“You can’t stay here all night. Sooner or later they’re going to throw you out.”
“I’m willing to risk it.”
“Okay.” He stretched out his legs and rested his hands on his abdomen. He didn’t need to be at Peter’s cocktail party for a while. “I’ll keep you company.”
Courtney looked puzzled. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
That made two of them. “Does it matter?”
“It kind of does in my world.” She stared at him. “I haven’t known many people who gave to others without having a personal agenda. Your father was one.”
“What did he give you?”
“My job in the gift shop for one thing. I needed it badly and somehow he knew that. He sort of took Janie and me under his wing and watched out for us. Never once did he ask for anything in return.”
But he’d been on the receiving end of his father’s dark side. Everybody had one, even James Wilder.
“Hell of a guy,” David said.
“That he was. You look a lot like him,” Courtney observed.
“Is that a compliment?”
“Maybe. Mostly just stating a fact. But you’re very different from him.”
“Another fact?”
“Just an observation.”
“Based on what?” he asked.
“Based on the fact that your father went out of his way to befriend a stranger.”
“And?”
“What makes you think there’s an ‘and’?”
“Don’t ever try to bluff in a poker game, Court. Your feelings are all over your face,” he said. He should know. Faces were his bread and butter.
“Okay. Remember you asked. I can’t imagine your father going long periods of time without visiting his family.”
“Unless they screwed with his moral code,” David snapped. She was right. He shouldn’t have asked.
“So your father disapproved of something you did?” she guessed.
His father had disapproved of almost everything he did. “Didn’t he tell you I was Walnut River’s resident bad boy?”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Every time I rode my motorcycle through town people said there goes that Wilder boy, living up to his name again.” When he looked over at her she was smiling, which somehow took the sting out of the memories.
“You had a motorcycle?”
“I paid for it myself.”
“So you and your father had issues?” she asked.
“My father said I needed my head examined and if I insisted on riding the bike it was only a question of time until it happened.”
“Want to talk about the deeper issues?” she asked.
“You want to talk about your husband?” he shot back.
“Not especially.”
“Me either,” he agreed.
She was quiet for several moments before saying, “It just seems to me that whatever you did must have been pretty bad to cut yourself off from family.”
“So you’re an expert on family matters?”
“Hardly.” She shook her head. “I never had one, which is why it strikes me as so incredibly sad that you’d ignore a perfectly good one.”
“Have you ever heard that saying—don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes?”
“Yes. And I stand by what I said.”
“Meaning you don’t think much of me.”
“Look, I don’t mean to be an ungrateful witch. And my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it—”
“But?”
“I knew your father and the distance between you must have hurt him a lot.”
“Distance goes both ways,” he shot back, knowing it was lame and childish.
But the anger was gone as quickly as it ignited. Not reaching out was one more transgression in a long list. David had always thought there would be time to make things right. Even if Courtney had a point, which he wasn’t saying she did, there was no way to fix it now. His father was dead and any chance of rectifying the past had died with him.
Speaking of death, she was a widow and obviously understood losing someone—even someone she had issues with. But the man had died in service to his country. Either her standards were a tad high or she had just cause. He found himself curious when he didn’t want to be interested in anything about Courtney Albright.