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“Of course. The changing rooms aren’t far from the tables we’ve claimed.” Imitating him, she looped her towel around her neck to free her hands. “Can I help you carry something?”
“That’s not necessary. I’ve—”
But she had already relieved him of the heavy hardcover tome as she fell into step beside him toward the parking lot. She discovered in surprise that it was a medical reference book. “Textbook of Infectious Diseases?” she asked in surprise. “Holy kamoley. You consider this beach reading?”
Amused by her wording, he shrugged. “It’s the only thing I have time to read at the moment.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Medical student,” he corrected her. “Just started my fourth year.”
“Oh.” She wouldn’t have been surprised had he said he was a doctor, because she’d pegged him as a professional man from the start, but she hadn’t expected him to still be in school. “Is medical school as tough as everyone says?”
“It’s challenging,” he said neutrally.
She would be willing to bet he was at the top of his class, and that the material came more easily to him than to others. He had an air of quiet competence that made her think he didn’t often fail at anything he attempted. She’d bet he was the single-minded, long-term-planning, never-give-up type, too.
She watched as he placed his folding chair into the back-seat of a sleek, expensive hybrid car and drew out a small, designer-label duffel bag. Money, she decided immediately. A social conscience, but no worries about paying his bills. Privileged background—private schools? Lifelong country-club membership? Social-register girlfriends?
Okay, maybe she was getting a little carried away with her predilection for making sweeping assumptions based on early impressions, she decided, reining in her imaginings. Her family had warned her she was going to be disappointed or even hurt someday when one of her first impressions turned out to be way off the mark. But because she believed at least most of her guesses about James were close to reality that meant they couldn’t be less suited. She kept her smile friendly rather than flirty when she handed him his textbook and told him she would meet him at the picnic area after he’d changed into his dry clothes.
James needn’t have worried about finding Shannon’s family after he changed into a green polo shirt and khaki cargo shorts. He spotted the clan as soon as he walked into the day-use area of the surrounding wooded campgrounds. They had claimed two picnic tables and a charcoal grill, from which smoke was streaming.
It was immediately obvious that he was expected. As soon as he appeared, a woman who looked like an older, blonde version of Shannon and Stacy dashed forward to greet him, holding out both hands in welcome. She caught his hands in hers, squeezing as though she would really prefer to be hugging him, the way Stacy had earlier. “Thank you so much for saving my grandson. Our family owes you such a huge debt of gratitude.”
He’d braced himself for this, but it didn’t make it any easier. He wasn’t at all comfortable being treated like a hero just for doing what anyone else would have done under the circumstances. For that matter, one of the other adults would probably have seen Kyle’s predicament only a moment or two after James had. He was just glad he’d been able to help.
“Okay, Mom, you’ve embarrassed James enough,” Shannon said, fondly nudging her mother back a few inches. “Let Dad thank him and then we’re going to cut the man some slack and let him eat a burger in peace.”
A man with a ring of hair that might once have been red circling a glossy bald head stepped forward to offer a hand to James. “Hollis Gambill. Consider yourself thanked again.”
The man’s calm, but sincere tone reminded James of Stu. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
“Call me Hollis. You answer to James or Jim?”
“Either, but I generally prefer James.”
Hollis nodded, apparently making a mental note of the preference as he motioned toward the people crowding around him. “This is my wife, Virginia. And my brother, Lou, and his wife, Lois.”
Hands were shaken all around and then James was towed toward the picnic tables, where the adults he’d met at the swimming area were all either cooking, setting out supplies for dinner, or supervising the seven children making noisy use of the nearby playground equipment. Stacy was one of the supervisors and she barely took her eyes off Kyle. James suspected that young man’s adventures were going to be closely monitored for the foreseeable future.
He offered his assistance with the dinner preparations, but was assured everything was under control. “Shannon, get your guest something cold to drink,” her mother ordered. “The food will be ready in just a minute.”
“Our guest, Mom,” Shannon corrected in a murmur. “What would you like, James? We have beer, bottled water, diet cola, fruit juices….”
He interrupted with a chuckle. “Bottled water will be fine. Thanks.”
She handed him a plastic bottle with a teasing, “Here you go, Doc.”
“Doc?” Her aunt Lois set down a stack of paper plates and studied James from the other side of the concrete picnic table where he’d been urged to have a seat. “You’re a doctor?”
“A medical student,” he corrected. “Fourth year.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Can you write me a prescription for those little yellow pills that perk me up when I’m feeling peckish? My doctor at home is being a real fuddy-duddy and he won’t let me have any more, but I told him I don’t overuse them. I just like to have them around when I need them.”
Though he’d been warned it could happen, it was the first time he’d actually been hit up for a prescription. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mrs. Gambill. As a medical student, I’m not allowed to write prescriptions.”
“Honestly, Lois,” Shannon’s mother scolded her sister-in-law. “This nice young man is going to think you’re a druggy. Don’t go pestering him for pills.”
“But I—”
“I’m sorry if Lois put you on the spot,” Virginia continued to James, ignoring Lois’s protests. “She isn’t really a drug addict.”
He struggled against a smile. “I didn’t think so.”
Virginia turned then to her daughter-in-law. “Karen, you should have the doctor look at that rash on Caitlin’s back and tummy. Maybe he’d know what’s causing it.”
“I’m not a doctor yet,” he reiterated. “I’m a medical student.”
“Bet you’ve seen a few rashes, though, haven’t you?”
“Well, I—”
“Caitlin. Come see Grammy, sweetie.”
“But I—”
“We did warn you the family’s crazy,” Shannon murmured, standing close behind him and not even bothering to hide a wry grin.
Because he wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, he didn’t even try. Little Caitlin, the five-year-old with hair that glowed almost neon orange, dutifully lifted her shirt upon her grandmother’s instructions, baring her tummy to James’s reluctant eyes. A blotchy pink rash splashed her skin, extending to her back when she turned around. James was relieved when they merely told him it was also on her bottom, rather than stripping her down to prove it.
“It doesn’t really look like heat rash to me,” Shannon’s mother fretted. “And it’s definitely not measles or chicken pox, because she’s had her vaccinations. I know what they look like, anyway. What do you think?”
“Probably not heat rash,” James agreed, trying to recall his days in the outpatient peds clinic. “It looks like contact dermatitis to me. Have you changed laundry detergents lately?”
“No,” Karen replied, straightening her daughter’s clothes. “I’ve used the same one since she was born.”
“I noticed the rash is only where her clothing touches,” he explained.
Everyone looked at the child, nodding to agree with his comment.
“Actually, Stu’s been doing the laundry this week,” Karen said thoughtfully, looking toward her husband. “I’ve been busy with other things. Stu?”
Turning from the smoking grill, her husband asked, “You need something, honey?”
“You’ve been using the regular laundry detergent this week, haven’t you?”
“Sure. Same kind we’ve always used,” he replied.
Virginia sighed in disappointment that their guest had been proven wrong.
“It was only a guess,” James said with a slight shrug. “I’m afraid I don’t know what’s causing the—”
“I did change fabric softeners, though,” Stu called out. “We ran out and another brand was on sale. Smelled good, so I thought I’d try it.”
Virginia beamed at James. “Well, there you go. She’s allergic to the fabric softener.”
“A sensitivity to it, perhaps. Probably not a true allergy,” he said.
Caitlin had already dashed off to play with her siblings and cousins again, her fun unimpeded by the rash that had concerned the adults.
“That was very clever of you,” Lois said to James, patting his shoulder approvingly. “Are you sure you can’t prescribe my little pills?”
“I’m sure, Mrs. Gambill.”
“Oh, call her Lois,” Virginia ordered. “And I’m Virginia. If you say Mrs. Gambill, Lois and Karen and I are all likely to answer.”
“Meat’s ready,” Hollis announced, setting a huge tray of steaming burgers and franks in the center of the table. “Stacy, you and Karen go ahead and fix the kids’ plates and let them start eating so the rest of us can enjoy our dinners.”
“Sit by your guest, Shannon,” her mother ordered, motioning toward the bench beside James. “You’re in the way here.”
Shannon heaved a sigh and moved to slide onto the bench beside him. “You’re in for it now,” she warned him in a low voice, her smile both mischievous and contagious. “Not only are you the hero who saved my nephew, you’re a doctor. I should warn you that the whole family will try to fix us up during the meal.”
“Fix us up?” he repeated.
“Yeah. They’ve been trying for months to match me up with someone. After all, I had my twenty-fifth birthday last spring, and I’m single and unattached—which, you can probably tell, is unheard of in this family of early breeders. You must look like a prize stud to them.”
Her blunt phrasing took him aback for a moment, but then she laughed. Her green eyes sparkled with humor and her grin was an invitation to share a secret joke with her.
It was an offer he couldn’t resist. He laughed, too, earning them approving smiles from Shannon’s mother and aunt. This, of course, only made them laugh harder.
James couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d laughed out loud like this. It felt pretty damned good, he decided, still smiling when he turned to the heaping plate of food his hosts nudged encouragingly toward him.
Chapter Two
It was, to say the least, an interesting meal. The Gambill clan was as colorful as their hair. They talked a lot, and everyone at once, so it was sometimes hard to follow all the conversations going on around him. He tried to keep them all straight—the men talked about baseball, Karen and Stacy chatted about their kids, Virginia and Lois seemed determined to learn everything there was to know about James, Shannon kept up a running beneath-her-breath commentary, and the kids interrupted every few moments with requests, tattling and other bids for attention.
“What type of medicine do you want to practice, James?” Virginia asked, cutting off a sports comment from her husband.
“I’m considering pediatric infectious disease, though I find pulmonology intriguing, too.”
He saw no need to mention that he had a younger cousin with cystic fibrosis, which perhaps explained his interest in pulmonology. Watching Kelly’s lifelong battle with the disease and hearing about the excellent care she had received from the doctors at the children’s hospital had probably been part of what had influenced him to enter medical school after receiving his advanced science degree, despite his parents’ displeasure that he’d chosen to leave academia. His parents were more interested in theory than practice in almost all disciplines, expounding that the true geniuses developed science while those of lesser intelligence and imagination put it to everyday use.
“Lou has a touch of emphysema,” Lois said eagerly, drawing James’s thoughts away from his parents’ affectations. “Maybe you could listen to his lungs later.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a stethoscope with me,” he replied.
Virginia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Lois. You’ve been after poor James for free prescriptions and exams ever since you found out he’s a medical student.”
Lois huffed. “Aren’t you the one who asked him to look at your granddaughter’s rash?”
“That’s different. I was simply asking for an opinion, not drugs.”
“I didn’t ask him to prescribe anything for Lou. I just thought he might want to listen.”
“Why would he want to do that?” Virginia demanded with a shake of her head.
“They’ve been arguing like that for more than sixty years,” Shannon informed James quietly, leaning toward him so he could hear her better over the noise of all the others. Her shoulder brushed his as they sat side by side on the bench.
A bit too keenly aware of that point of contact, he tried to concentrate on what she had said. “So they knew each other before they married brothers.”
“They’re first cousins. They were raised almost like sisters. Makes the family tree a little complicated.”
“I see. And you all live in this area?”
“I live in Little Rock, and so do Stu and Karen. Stacy and J.P. live in Bryant. Uncle Lou and Aunt Lois are visiting from St. Louis and staying for a few days with my parents in Sherwood. They have two daughters and five grandchildren of their own back in Missouri. Needless to say, it’s pretty crazy when both families get together on occasion.”
“Are you from this area, James?” Virginia asked.
Swallowing a bite of his juicy, perfectly grilled burger, James wiped his mouth on a paper napkin before replying. “I’m from northwest Arkansas. Fayetteville. My parents moved there from Tennessee when I was twelve. They’re both professors at the university.”
“Got my degree there,” Stu commented as he scooped potato salad onto a plastic fork. “Karen and I met at a music club on Dickson Street when I was a senior and she was a junior.”
“You’d have been a student there after Stu and Karen,” Lois commented, looking James over assessingly. “Stu’s thirty-eight. You’re—what—thirty?”
“I will be on October fifth. But I didn’t get my degree at Fayetteville. I went to Vanderbilt.”
Several of the people around him frowned and he could tell he’d just lost a few Arkie points.
“I’m still a Razorbacks fan, though,” he assured them. “Uh—woo, Pigs.”
The frowns turned to chuckles and conversation moved to the prospects for the next SEC football season.
“Nice save,” Shannon murmured into his ear. “Do you even like football?”
“Couldn’t care less,” he replied from behind his burger.
She laughed. “That’s what I thought.”
A noisy argument erupted from the kids’ table, requiring adult intervention, and then the overlapping conversations moved to new topics. During the next twenty minutes, James learned that Hollis was a retired quality-control manager, Virginia had been a dental hygienist, Stu was an elementary school principal, Karen an accounting office manager and Stacy was a stay-at-home mom married to a police officer.
“You haven’t mentioned what you do,” he commented to Shannon when there was a momentary lull in the chatter.
“Shannon drifts,” Stacy murmured, hearing the question.
Virginia seemed both annoyed and mildly alarmed by that remark. She looked at James as if worried he’d take Stacy’s comment the wrong way. “Shannon is so good at everything that she has a hard time narrowing her interests down to one career.”
Shannon grinned. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m too good to pin down.”
Her mother frowned at her.
Ignoring the silent censure, Shannon looked at James again. “I’ve had a few jobs that didn’t work out. You might say I get restless easily. But I just started a new business and I like it quite a bit.”
“What’s your new business?”
“I’m running a kids’ party business. I call it Kid Capers. Birthday parties mostly, though I do an occasional tea party or other special-occasion event. I handle all the planning and make the arrangements so all the parents have to do is show up and write a check afterward. It’s fun.”
“I see. Is there a big demand for kids’ party planners?” he asked, genuinely curious.
She shrugged. “The struggling economy isn’t helping, but there are still quite a few people who are willing to pay to have someone else take care of all the party details.”
“I’m surprised you’re free on a Saturday afternoon. Did you leave this day open to spend time with your family?”
“I, um, didn’t have any bookings today,” she admitted. “Like I said, a lot of people are pinching pennies these days.”
“Shannon really does throw some amazing parties,” her mother said loyally. “She has a binder full of themes for the clients to choose from or she takes their ideas and makes them work. She’s young, of course, and just getting started, but we’ve all offered to assist her in any way we can.”
“And as much as I appreciate the offer, I’ve told you repeatedly that I’ve got everything under control,” Shannon said with a firmness that made James suspect there had been a few arguments about that subject.
“By working part-time at a toy store to pay her bills,” Stacy murmured.
“Just twenty-five hours a week,” Shannon said quickly. “The manager there is very good to let me keep my weekends free for my new business and I enjoy working at the toy store. For one thing, it keeps me current on what’s popular with the kids for party themes.”
Shannon’s father chuckled. “I keep telling Shannon these fancy parties for kids are just downright frivolous. Back when our kids were little, we had cake and ice cream and a bunch of neighborhood pals over for pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and Twister. That was the extent of it.”
“Mama hired a pony for my birthday once, remember, Hollis?” his brother, Lou, reminisced. “My tenth, I think. I still remember how much fun that was.”
“And she didn’t need a planner to help her with it,” Hollis said pointedly.
Shannon tilted her head at him. “Okay, Dad. We got your point.”
She didn’t sound cross, exactly, James decided, studying the family dynamics. More resigned and just a little irked, as if she were used to her family indulgently dismissing her work—rather as if she didn’t like it, but half expected it, anyway.
“Do you remember a special birthday party from your youth, James?” Lois asked, looking eager to jump into the conversation again.
“I never actually had a birthday party. My parents weren’t really into that sort of thing.”
The sudden silence around the table was rather jarring after so much chatter.
“You never had a birthday party?” Virginia asked. “Surely you had a few friends over for cake.”
“Well, no. But my parents always took me to a nice restaurant on my birthday.” Uncomfortable with that conversational direction, he picked up the last segment of his sandwich. “This hamburger is delicious. What seasonings did you use, Hollis?”
“That’s a family secret,” Hollis replied with a grin. “We don’t share it with anyone who isn’t born a Gambill or married into the family.”
“It’s Cajun seasoning and Worcestershire sauce,” Shannon said with a roll of her eyes. “So, you can make your own hamburgers without proposing to anyone here.”
“Now you’ve done it, Shannon,” Stu scolded her with mock outrage. “Now we have to kill him.”
“Stu’s only joking, of course, James,” Lois said in a stage whisper.
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am. I know.”
“When do we get the ice cream, Mama?” one of the twins called out.
Hollis climbed out from behind the picnic table. “The ice cream is ready. Who wants strawberry and who wants peach?”
“Strawberry!”
“Peach!”
“Chocolate!”
Karen sighed. “We don’t have any chocolate, Jack. You’ll get peach.”
The kids went crazy when the rich homemade ice cream was spooned out of the stainless-steel tubs. The adults attacked the dessert with almost as much enthusiasm. James accepted a bowl of strawberry ice cream, which he enjoyed very much.
Shannon jumped a couple of feet when one of her little nieces dropped a scoop of strawberry ice cream down the front of her top.
“Holy kamoley, that’s cold!” she said, her voice suspiciously high-pitched as she snatched frantically for paper napkins. Rather than helping, her family laughed heartlessly as she did a funny dance trying to swipe the sticky, ice-cold mixture from her skin.
“Since she started her kids’ party business, Shannon’s taken to saying holy kamoley in place of any curse words,” Stacy explained to James with an indulgent, big-sister smile. “It’s rather annoying, but we’re getting used to it.”
He thought it was sort of funny, himself. Never having had an older sibling—or a younger one, for that matter—he wondered if Shannon minded being treated like one of the little kids dashing around the tables.
It was an interesting family, he mused, continuing to study them as they finished the dessert. Noisy, freewheeling, outspoken, good-humored, they gabbed and joked and argued and teased. So very different from his own family. He wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a family like this one, how he might have turned out.
An argument erupted among some of the children, and though it was dealt with quickly and firmly, everyone had to laugh when little Sammy piped in with a gusty, “Holy ’moley!”
James grinned, thinking how much his friend Ron would enjoy hearing about this eccentric clan. Ron usually had a funny anecdote to share when the study group managed to get together these days; next time, James would have a story of his own.
“Can we go swimming again?” one of the kids asked when the ice cream bowls had been scraped clean.
“No more swimming today,” Stacy said firmly. “But we can play ball. We brought the plastic bats and balls and the little rubber bases and there’s plenty of room on the grass over there to play.”
“Will Uncle Stu be the pitcher?”
Stu nodded. “Gladly. Aunt Shannon can be the catcher.”
“We don’t actually form teams,” Shannon explained to James. “We just let each kid bat and run the bases. That keeps them entertained for a while.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Want to join us? You can play shortstop. Aunt Lois tends to get distracted and wander off during the game.”
He chuckled, but shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d better head back to Little Rock. I have to be at the hospital early in the morning.”
The entire family protested when he announced he was leaving. He shook hands with the men again, waved off another round of thanks for his rescue of young Kyle, accepted hugs and cheek kisses from the women—and was less surprised when they were offered this time, since he’d gotten a bit more familiar with their demonstrativeness.
Lois insisted on giving him a handful of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies wrapped in a paper napkin. She told him she intended to bring them out after the ball game, in case anyone could possibly still be hungry by then.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll enjoy these.”
“Good. I hope to see you again sometime,” she replied. Tugging at his arm to get him to bend closer to her, she whispered, “My niece is single, you know.”
He smothered a smile and evaded the comment by saying, “It was very nice to meet you, Lois.”
“Shannon, why don’t you walk James to his car?” Virginia suggested.
He supposed he should have insisted he didn’t need an escort, but he figured he’d be wasting his breath. Not to mention that he didn’t mind spending a little more time with Shannon, even if only to walk to his car.
Once again he couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking when she nodded in response to her mother’s hint and turned to walk with him. Maybe she was simply thinking along the same lines as he—that it would be useless to protest. Not particularly flattering, if that were true.