Welcome home…

Dr. Callie Layman isn’t looking forward to going home to White Pine Lake, Michigan. She isn’t looking forward to taking over as the physician in charge of the community clinic after only recently becoming a doctor. She isn’t looking forward to facing her new stepmother, stepsiblings or the changes in her relationship with her father. And she certainly isn’t looking forward to going head-to-head with Zach Gibson, the handsome former combat medic who’s been running the clinic and will now be her assistant.

And yet the community needs her expertise. Her family needs her to help them heal. And, she learns, so does Zach. Callie decides she has to try to help them, but ultimately can she be everything they need her to be?

Maybe he was right....

Maybe Callie couldn’t spin all the separate ends of her family ties together into a long, strong yarn that could be woven into a whole. But she had to try.

Zach lifted his hand and touched her lips, just a brush of his fingertip, but it felt as if her skin had been seared by fire. “I know you have to try. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you. You want what’s best for everyone, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen, Callie. And that’s not your fault. Sometimes you can’t make it all come out right.”

Tears blurred her vision. She blinked them away. She didn’t like being this vulnerable. She didn’t like having her innermost hopes and dreams exposed—particularly to a man as perceptive as Zach Gibson.

And she knew what was going to happen next. He was going to kiss her….

Dear Reader,

Marian and I are thrilled to be contributing our story, Family Practice, to the Harlequin Heartwarming line. For many years we’ve wanted to be able to write a book that concentrated on the emotional aspects of falling in love and staying in love and less on the physical side of the equation. Thanks to Marsha Zinberg and her wonderful editorial staff, we’ve been able to do just that.

Callie Layman is a newly minted M.D. She returns to her small northern Michigan hometown—with real misgivings—to care for its colorful inhabitants and to try to blend the disparate elements of her own complicated family situation, including precocious and antagonistic eleven-year-old stepsiblings, a pregnant stepmother and rebuilding the bond between herself and the mother who abandoned her years before. On top of everything else, she finds she’s obligated to share her practice with handsome physician’s assistant Zach Gibson, who, unlike Callie, knows exactly what he wants from his life. And one of those things he knows he wants is Callie.

Will Callie be able to have it all? A career, a love of her own, a happy life in White Pine Lake? Will she be able to weave all these tangled strands of family and romance into a seamless loving whole, or will it all be too much? Will she end up with her happy-ever-after or will Callie turn her back on everything and everyone she cares about rather than risk it all for love?

We hope you enjoy reading Family Practice as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Sincerely,

Marisa Carroll

(Carol Wagner and Marian Franz)

Family Practice

Marisa Carroll

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARISA CARROLL

Marisa Carroll is the pen name of sisters Carol Wagner and Marian Franz. They have been writing bestselling books as a team for more than twenty-five years. During that time they have published more than forty titles, many for the Harlequin Superromance line and Feature and Custom Publishing. They are the recipients of several industry awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from RT Book Reviews and a RITA® Award nomination from Romance Writers of America, and their books have been featured on the USA TODAY, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton bestseller lists. The sisters live near each other in northwestern Ohio, surrounded by children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and old and dear friends.

To Marsha Zinberg

For all your years of excellent editorial advice,

steadfast friendship

and your uncanny ability

to choose the restaurants with the best crème brûlée.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CALLIE LAYMAN STEERED her eight-year-old Jeep off the pavement and into a small, scenic turnout. Luckily, it was momentarily devoid of camera-wielding tourists and their bored offspring, and so for a precious few minutes she had the parking lot and the spectacular view of the Sleeping Bear Dunes to herself.

She had a love/hate relationship with this season. Tourism was the mainstay of the economy for this semi-remote region of Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula; it was also its bane. Tourists came for the unspoiled natural beauty and the opportunity to commune with nature. They stayed, in droves, to complain that their internet connections were too slow, their cell-phone reception was spotty at best and nonexistent at worst, and that the nearest Starbucks was more than an hour away. Through it all, the citizens of White Pine Lake, her hometown, smiled and nodded and kept their opinions on city folks’ strange ways to themselves, as their cash registers jingled and the motel rooms and rental cottages filled up.

The problem for Callie was she felt like one of those city folks these days, one of those barely tolerated outsiders. She’d been gone from White Pine Lake for over a decade, attending college and medical school. She wasn’t ready for what she had agreed to do this summer—assume responsibility for the health and well-being of the citizens of her old hometown. What if she wasn’t up to the challenge? What if she failed them? Luckily, just days before she headed north, she’d gotten another job offer—an escape plan if things here didn’t go well.

She had left Ann Arbor in the early afternoon. It was now a little after eight in the evening. Five hours with only one stop. Not bad travel time on the two-lane state highway. Especially on a late-July weekend when mud-splattered RVs pulling all shapes and sizes of boats and trailers loaded with camping equipment slowed traffic to a crawl.

She was tired and stiff, but she’d managed to arrive a day ahead of schedule. No one expected her until tomorrow, and she was in no hurry to resume her journey. So she unhooked her seat belt and rested her forearms on the steering wheel, soaking in the quiet and the view. Below her the ruffled blue water of White Pine Lake was dotted with fishing boats and the red-and-white sails of small sailboats. The occasional Jet Ski cavorted among them, rooster tails streaked with iridescent rainbows shooting high in their wakes. The sun was just dropping behind the horizon, painting the sky with a dozen shades of red and gold. At the far edge of the lake was the town of the same name, the place where she’d grown up.

She loved this view, especially at this moment in midsummer when the sky was so high and blue, the trees a dozen shades of green, from the darkest pine to the palest silver-green of birch and poplar—“popples,” as they were called this far north—and the last of the warm golden sunlight shining bright and benign on the cottages that dotted the shoreline.

Even from this distance, she could tell that Lake Street was crowded with cars, a good sign in these hard economic times. It appeared as if McGruders’ Bait and Tackle was doing a brisk business in minnows and night crawlers to tempt the lake’s wily perch and walleye onto anglers’ hooks, and Kilroy’s ice-cream parlor had a line at the takeout window. Only three streets deep and half a mile in length, the town where she’d been raised was so small it could be viewed in its entirety from her vantage point.

The year-round businesses were clustered at the intersection of the county highway and Main Street: a hardware store, the grocery and pharmacy, a single gas station, a pizza shop and an auto-repair shop. Across the street, rental cottages and three or four motels turned their back sides to the pavement so their patrons could enjoy the lake views from decks and shaded porches. Further to the north, where the street narrowed and clung to the shoreline, tourists strolled along, window-shopping at the galleries and gift and fudge shops that comprised the “historic” district. A few miles south, toward Traverse City and the Leelanau Peninsula, the land grew more rolling and fertile, home to dozens of boutique wineries and the sweet-cherry orchards the area was world famous for. White Pine Lake tended to cater more to families and retirees, so there were no casinos or tasting rooms to lure the upscale and trendy, and that suited Callie just fine.

She let her attention be drawn to the place she had always loved best in the world, a three-story white clapboard building with a steeply slanted roofline, topped by a glassed-in widow’s walk with an oxidized copper roof. The White Pine Lake Bar and Grill had been sitting foursquare and solid on that slight rise above Lake Street since the 1930s. It was the business that had sustained her family for three generations, and it was her childhood home.

She couldn’t quite make out the details from this distance, but the memory was clear in her mind. Six double-hung windows guarded by faded green shutters were spaced across the second floor, above the long, covered porch. Stone steps, bordered by flowerbeds filled with cascading petunias, daisies and lush green ferns, led from the sidewalk to the wide porch set with small tables and chairs. The building’s tall double doors always stood open whenever the weather permitted, as it did today. The wood-framed screen doors that kept the mosquitoes away banged shut behind customers with a satisfying snap when they stepped into the native white-pine foyer that separated the family-oriented dining room from the bar.

Callie had always been fascinated by the history of the place, too. Over a hundred years old now, the building, once a railway hotel, had been moved to its current lakeside location by teams of huge draft horses. The black-and-white photos taken by her grandfather Layman in his youth chronicled the fifteen-mile journey and still hung in the taproom. When her father was a child, the town’s historical society had published a little booklet documenting the move and sold it for three dollars a copy. For as long as she could remember, the booklets had been kept in a stack by the cash register.

She wondered if they were still there or if they had been moved or just plain done away with. There was no telling what kind of changes Ginger Markwood Layman had made to the place since Callie’s last visit at Christmas. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised if nothing was the same as it had been. Her dad certainly wasn’t.

Callie straightened and refastened her seat belt, ashamed of her lapse into uncharacteristic spitefulness. J. R. Layman was exactly the man he’d always been: honest, hardworking, thoughtful and soft-spoken. What was different about him was that at forty-nine years of age, the staid, upstanding, fifteen years-divorced CPA had fallen head over heels in love with a woman a dozen years younger than he was, gotten her pregnant and married her.

Consequently at twenty-nine Callie was going to be a big sister. Well, technically, she already was a big sister, she amended as she shifted out of Park and checked her side mirror for traffic coming up behind her on the narrow, curving road. Her new stepmother had two children by her first marriage—eleven-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, Becca and Brandon. At least they were fraternal twins, so she didn’t have any trouble telling them apart, but she was very much afraid she would have trouble relating to them once she was home permanently.

Their first meeting had been during her last visit at Christmas. It hadn’t been a roaring success. The gifts she’d chosen for the twins hadn’t suited their interests and had only been grudgingly acknowledged, and the awkwardness of all of them being thrown together, virtual strangers to each other at the most family-oriented time of the year, had made the visit even more painful.

Still, she had to get used to being around preteens and babies. Not only because she had stepsiblings and a new half brother or sister on the way, but because in less than forty-eight hours she would begin practice at White Pine Lake Community Health Center, and that meant treating everyone, young and old, who walked through its doors. Whether she felt ready for the challenge or not.

And Callie truly had no idea what she was walking into. Gail Wilberforce, the fiftysomething veteran certified nurse practitioner at the clinic, had up and eloped with a golf pro and moved with him to North Carolina. So a physician’s assistant she’d never met was staffing the clinic—one Zach Gibson, former navy combat medic.

Her dad said Zach was one heck of a nice guy, but the practice required more than just one PA. They needed a doctor—they needed Callie.

Since Callie had the summer off—her first ever, she thought with a pang—and since the clinic was dedicated to her grandparents, who had worked for years to see it built and staffed, and since her dad was now the president of the Physician’s Committee, she couldn’t say no. Even though it was the last place in the world she wanted to start her professional life.

But she was a Layman. There had been Laymans in White Pine Lake for a hundred years, and all of them had done whatever they could for the town. So here she was, a freshly minted M.D. with no real-world experience to speak of, about to step into the most frightening situation she could imagine—being responsible for the health and well-being of people she’d known all her life on top of being thrust into partnership with a man the whole town considered a bona fide war hero.

Describing Zachary Gibson as battle hardened wasn’t a cliché. It was the plain, unvarnished truth. After two tours of duty in Afghanistan and an honorable discharge from the military, he’d moved to Petoskey and begun working with one of the staff surgeons at the hospital there. He had military decorations and commendations and a 4.0 grade-point average during his medical training, as well as glowing recommendations from his boss, a hotshot neurosurgeon.

Her dad had told her all of this, proudly believing such a résumé would sweeten the deal for Callie to take over as the clinic’s doctor. Unfortunately, it only added to her insecurity. On paper, at least, she was the physician in charge, the boss, but deep down inside where it really mattered she wasn’t so sure of herself. She was the rookie, the one with no street smarts and little small-town-practice experience. She was afraid it wouldn’t take long for her combat-tested PA to figure out he was the one really running the show.

* * *

ZACH GIBSON WONDERED what the hell else could go wrong today. It was Saturday. He was supposed to be out on the lake in the small aluminum boat that came with the tiny, amenity-scarce cottage he rented, watching the sunset, swatting mosquitoes, hoping to latch onto a keeper walleye or a couple of nice bluegill and perch to fry up for his dinner. Fishing usually put him in a great mood, let him concentrate on his thoughts, and this afternoon’s outing was supposed to have given him a chance to make a game plan for Monday morning. Should he show up for work in khakis and a nice shirt to impress the new boss, or stay with his usual T-shirt and fatigues beneath his white coat, silently making a stand for doing his own thing right from the start?

Instead he was ankle-deep in water in the middle of the clinic lab, wielding the hose of an industrial vacuum cleaner in hopes of keeping the floor tiles from buckling, ready to duck and cover if the ceiling caved in. From the size of the increasing bulge in the tiles above his head, his buddy Rudy Koslowski hadn’t yet found the leak in the sprinkler system that had caused the damage in the first place and shut it down.

So much for making a gonzo first impression on the new M.D. He’d be lucky now if they could even open the clinic for regular hours Monday morning. Mercifully the plastic cover they used to keep dust off the X-ray machine had saved it, but the computer system was gone and all the supplies in the lower cupboards were waterlogged and probably ruined. They would have lost all the temperature-sensitive medications and vaccines stored in the ten-year-old fridge as well if he hadn’t decided to come check on a few things before he went fishing. And he didn’t even want to think about what kind of mess they’d be in if the water had gotten high enough to reach the shelves of patient records stored in the room next to where he was standing. Thankfully, only the oldest records, the ones waiting to be purged and shredded, had gotten wet, and then only the plastic containers that they’d been stored in. Still, the containers would have to be checked to make sure there weren’t any cracks in the plastic or partially opened lids that had let water get inside.

Any plans he had of spending the rest of the weekend fishing sank like a stone tossed into the waters of White Pine Lake.

When he’d come in and discovered the flooding, he’d shut off the electricity and the propane supply and called Rudy. That was four hours ago. He’d been on damage control ever since.

Cold water began dripping on his head. He flipped the switch on the shop vac and took a prudent step to one side, wondering how much the exam rooms would have to be dried out. The emergency shutoff system seemed to have done its job in that part of the L-shaped building, and hopefully Burt Abrahms from the hardware store would show up soon with some extra extension cords and a couple big fans to hurry along the process. If the ceiling didn’t collapse first.

“Rudy,” he yelled. “Why the heck isn’t the water off? The ceiling’s ready to cave in. It’s looking like the last few minutes of the Titanic in here.”

“Good heavens,” a shocked female voice responded—not his handyman’s. “What happened?”

Zach didn’t make the mistake of thinking she was a tourist who had wandered inside. Though they’d never been introduced, he’d noticed her picture on the wall in the White Pine Lake Bar and Grill, and most recently on the front page of the White Pine Lake Flag in an article announcing her graduation from the University of Michigan Medical School.

Dr. Callie Layman, M.D., wasn’t supposed to arrive in town until tomorrow. But here she was.

He’d been wondering what else could go wrong. Now he had his answer.

“Broken water line in the sprinkler system, ma’am,” he said, eight years of military protocol kicking in. “Situation’s under control.”

She raised one hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the harsh emergency lighting and gave him a skeptical look. “It doesn’t appear to be under control at all, as far as I can see.”

Something in her cool, detached tone and her equally cool, detached appearance—despite the fact that she had apparently just driven over three hundred miles in hot July weather—rankled, but Zach stopped himself from snapping his reply. “We’ll be open for business by Monday morning. I give you my word, Dr. Layman.”

She gave him another sharp glance. “Have we met?”

“No,” he admitted. No reason to be churlish. He held out his hand after wiping it dry on his shorts. “I’m Zach Gibson, your PA. Welcome back to White Pine Lake.”

She wasn’t as tall as he was, but she wasn’t a short woman, either. He guessed about five foot seven or eight, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds. Her mouth was thinner than he preferred on a woman, but a rounded chin and a nose that could only be called “pert” softened the overall contours of her face, framed by cinnamon-brown hair. Her eyes were hazel, big and fringed with long, gold-tipped lashes, and saved her from being plain. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous. Many wouldn’t even call her pretty, but for some reason he’d found her face interesting in photographs—at least in the rare ones where she’d been smiling—and now, in person, he found her even more appealing.

“Thank you,” she said. Her tone was dubious, and frankly he couldn’t blame her, considering the condition of her future workplace. “How do you plan to clean up this mess?”

“My buddy’s got a construction business. He’s here hunting down the source of the leak and hopefully shutting it down.”

“Only the two of you? You need to get more people in here.”

Zach didn’t let the judgmental remark goad him into a retort. “I called your father. He’s rounding up some volunteers.” She had grown up in this town. Surely she realized people would pitch in to help once word went out? Or had she been living in the rarified world of a Big Ten medical school so long she’d forgotten her roots?

She might have blushed but he couldn’t be sure with the lousy lighting. “Of course they’ll come.”

Though she didn’t offer to pitch in and grab a mop herself. Great, was she going to be one of those kinds of doctors, the ones with the God complexes and the egos to go with it?

“We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow,” he said as the ominous sound of dripping water filled the silence between them.

“I left Ann Arbor a day early.” She peered around at the boxes of rescued lab supplies and disintegrating cartons of exam gloves, the empty, wide-open refrigerator with the remains of a collapsed ceiling tile still piled on top, balanced precariously on the carcass of the shorted-out police scanner. A frown drew her arched brows together. “Do you have an assessment of the damages?” She didn’t bother to make eye contact this time, just clipped out the question. “Will we be able to see patients on schedule Monday morning?”

Great, she was going to be one of those ramrod-and-ruin kinds. It was going to be a long summer. But two could play at her game. “We lost the computer system and the police scanner, ma’am. That’s the worst so far. I don’t believe there’s any structural damage to the building.”

“But the mess.” She made a little sweeping gesture with her right hand. “There’s water everywhere—”

“Incoming,” Rudy yelled from the doorway. Zach reached out and wrapped his fingers around Callie’s wrist, hauling her forward and almost into his arms as three overhead tiles crashed to the floor, splattering Zach and Callie with water and soggy, cardboardlike shrapnel.

He was wearing old cargo shorts and an even older T-shirt, and he was already wet through, but his new boss hadn’t been expecting a dousing. She let out a shocked gasp as the cold water cascaded down her back and soaked her to the skin.

* * *

“SORRY ABOUT THAT, Doc.”

Callie shifted her attention to the man in the doorway, a short, ruddy-faced, stocky guy with a buzz cut not doing anything to hide his receding hairline, and laughing blue eyes. He was wearing a faded red T-shirt emblazoned with U*S*M*C in equally faded gold letters, and shorts that exposed the prosthesis that replaced his left leg below the knee. His leather tool belt hung low on his hips, as if he were an old-time gunslinger. Rudy Koslowski. She remembered him from high school, even though he’d been a couple of years ahead of her. He’d joined the Marines immediately after graduation and lost his leg in a suicide-bomb attack in Afghanistan.

“Hi, Rudy,” she said, swallowing a sharp comment about the inadequacy of his warning. Rudy had always been a gossip even as a kid. She doubted he’d changed much over the years, and the last thing she wanted was to be reported to all and sundry as a bitch her first day on the job. “Quite a welcome home you arranged for me.”

“We aim to please. You still got the moves, Doc,” he said next.

“I beg your pardon?” But Rudy wasn’t looking at her; he was grinning at the man beside her.

“Oops.” Rudy chuckled, his expression as mischievous as Callie remembered from high school. “Guess we’re going to have to figure out another nickname for you, Corpsman. Can’t have two Docs in the place, can we?” He paused as if waiting for his barb to strike home.

Rudy was smiling, but Zach wasn’t. “Stow it, Rudy. She outranks us.”

“Sure thing.” Rudy raised both hands, signaling surrender, but his grin grew a little wider as he stared pointedly at their joined hands. “Whatever you say.” Belatedly Callie tugged herself free of Zach’s grasp. Why hadn’t she noticed Zach was still holding her hand before Rudy did? Maybe because she had enjoyed the feel of Zach’s long, strong fingers wrapped around her wrist. He had big hands, but his hold on her had been gentle. He would have no trouble setting a bone or reducing a dislocation with those hands and that strength, even in a combat situation. Experience she certainly didn’t have.

“Zach’s patients may call him whatever they and he are comfortable with,” she said, appalled at how condescending the remark sounded. She hadn’t meant it that way. She avoided speaking to colleagues in that manner, although she’d been talked down to plenty of times herself. Medicine, for the most part, was still a man’s world.

“Sure thing, Dr. Layman,” Rudy said. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“What can I do to help?” she asked, hoping to make some kind of amends. This was not how she’d wanted to start her relationship with Zach Gibson, especially not with a witness as talkative as Rudy.

“Nothing, ma’am.”

She wished he wouldn’t call her that, but she could hardly ask him to call her Callie so soon, and insisting on being addressed as Dr. Layman would only add insult to injury at this point. “I want to help,” she said. “It’s my practice now,” she couldn’t stop herself from adding.

Zach’s face hardened momentarily. “You don’t know where a bloody thing is yet, or where it goes.” His tone softened, probably when he remembered he was talking to his boss. “You’re soaking wet and covered with fiberglass. Go on over to the White Pine and get changed. Besides, Leola and Bonnie are on their way to lend a hand.” The two women, both of whom Callie knew from her childhood, were the clinic’s nurses and receptionist/bookkeepers, both essential to the efficient functioning of the practice. “Everything’s under control here, ma’am.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she snapped before she could censure her words.

“Yes, ma’am.” A corner of his mouth ticked up in what might have been a grin, but it was so fleeting Callie couldn’t be sure. “Go, Dr. Layman,” he said, the words just shy of being an outright command. “Let your dad and your new stepmother know you’re in town. Get yourself settled in and we’ll have this place ready for business on Monday morning.”

So this was the way he wanted things to go. Where he continued to call the shots and she had no say in the decisions.

Zach Gibson didn’t want her here; that was easy enough to figure out. The problem was...he was right. She would be more of a hindrance than a help to these people, who were used to working together as a team. She was the outsider. And the one thing she could never let any of them guess, especially her new PA, was that she was afraid she would never fit in.

CHAPTER TWO

THERE WAS NO PARKING space in front of the White Pine Bar and Grill, though Callie would have been surprised to find one on a Saturday evening in midsummer. She drove on by, turned left at the corner onto Perch Street, climbed the low hill, turned left again and angled her Jeep into the narrow gravel alleyway that ran behind the building. Her stepmother’s minivan was parked in the spot next to her dad’s SUV, but there was just enough space alongside the storage shed to park her car, if she didn’t ever need to open the passenger-side door.

She wiggled out of the Jeep and brushed at the front of her slacks. The fiberglass had made her itchy, not to put too fine a point on it. She wanted a hot shower and a change of clothes. She tugged her overnight bag out of the car and headed toward the kitchen entrance. There was an outside stairway leading to the family quarters on the second floor but she didn’t have a key to the door at the top, so the back stairs through the kitchen was her only option. She just hoped the White Pine’s longtime head cook, Margaret McElroy—Mac to everyone who knew her—would be too busy to question Callie on her unexpected arrival and bedraggled appearance.

She was in luck. As Callie entered, Mac, pushing sixty, wiry-haired, and as short and round as a fireplug, was haranguing her staff of college students and long-suffering grill cooks like the army drill sergeant she used to be. The high, screened windows, although open to the cooling evening breeze, did little to dispel the heat and humidity in the too-small room. The dishwasher was rumbling away, fire flared in the grill, and the smell of seared beef and hot grease caused Callie’s stomach to rumble. She hadn’t eaten since she left Ann Arbor and she suddenly realized just how hungry she was. The White Pine served great steaks, but what the restaurant was really famous for was the all-you-could-eat perch and bluegill dinners.

She’d return to the kitchen for some of each as soon as she was clean and dry. She grabbed her duffel, holding it to her chest, and hurried up the steep, narrow stairs. In the days when the building was a hotel, the stairs would have been used by the maids to carry hot water to the patrons in the rooms above. Nowadays it led to a door that opened into the family kitchen she and her dad had seldom used. She hesitated for a moment before the closed door. Should she knock? After all, it really wasn’t her home anymore. It was her father’s—and Ginger’s. She was only a guest. She settled on a quick, light tap, the kind of combined warning and greeting you’d give anyone before you opened a closed door in a house. No response. She opened the door. The kitchen was empty. The light was on, since it was now almost nine and the windows faced away from the lake into the lower branches of the pines and maples on the hillside. Ginger hadn’t gotten around to changing much in the small, functional room beyond painting the old pine cabinets a creamy white and adding a colorful valance above the utilitarian white blinds on the windows. Although the changes were minimal, Callie had to admit the room was a lot more inviting than it had been in the past.

“Hello, anybody home?” Callie called out. She didn’t really expect her dad or her stepmother to be here. They would be downstairs, her stepmother overseeing the dining-room operation and her dad behind the bar, where he still helped out during busy weekend evenings. But her stepsiblings might be hanging around. “Brandon? Becca?”

Silence. Maybe the twins were busing tables. She’d been younger than they were when she’d started busing, under the less than enthusiastic supervision of her mother. Free-spirited and fun-loving, Karen Layman hadn’t wanted to work in the grill when her in-laws retired to Arizona, but business hadn’t been good enough to warrant the expense of another full-time employee. So Callie’s mother had reluctantly filled the role of manager until the long hours, tight money and long, cold winters she hated had drained all the joy from her life and her marriage.

At least, that was what she’d told Callie when she’d taken off to rethink her priorities three weeks after Callie’s sixteenth birthday. From then on it had been just Callie and her dad...at least until a little over a year ago when Ginger Markwood had come into the White Pine inquiring about a job. She’d found not only employment but a place in J.R.’s heart. Now she was his wife, and her two children—three, soon—called Callie’s old home their own. The realization was more disturbing than she cared to admit.

“Hey, kids? Anyone here?” Callie called out again, moving from the kitchen into the big, high-ceilinged great room that had once been a dormitory for male guests. A huge river-rock fireplace dominated the wall to her left, twin to the one in the dining room that helped make it so inviting. The three double-hung windows covered in long, sheer panels of voile that were currently moving in the breeze faced Lake Street and also had a view of the lake, as did the window in her bedroom. What had once been six smaller private rooms bisected by a hallway leading off the wall opposite the fireplace had now become a master suite and small bathroom on the hill side and three bedrooms along the lake side. Her old room, the first on the left, was above the foyer on the main floor, the others above the dining room. When she was little, Callie had often lain in bed and listened to the muffled sounds of laughter and low conversations and the chiming of silverware against the edge of a china plate downstairs.

The living area with its worn, overstuffed leather furniture—she remembered what a production it had been to get it up the stairs—was empty, the TV turned off. She had the place to herself. The bar was directly below her but the ceiling had been soundproofed years before, so unless there was a live band playing on the occasional Saturday night, the room was as quiet as any other home’s main living area.

She hurried into the hallway toward the bathroom. The itching was getting worse. She didn’t carry a black doctor’s bag in this day and age but she did have a very well-equipped first-aid kit in the Jeep and she’d transferred some cortisone-based skin cream to her duffel before she came upstairs.

A nice hot shower, clean hair, dry clothes, and relief from the itching on her feet and calves, and she’d be ready to face her new family. She opened the door of her bedroom and swung the heavy walnut panel inward. But it wasn’t her bedroom anymore. Gone were the pale pink rose-strewn sheers and matching comforter her mother had helped her pick out the year before she left. The walls were newly painted a cloudy gray, and the drapes at the windows were heavy and pleated and almost black, casting the room into shadows now that the sun had set. Her brass bed had been replaced by a futon with a blood-red throw scattered with half a dozen pillows in jewel tones. The walls were plastered with posters of dragons and gryphons, elves and sorceresses, and hard-muscled, broad-shouldered mystical warriors in armor and chain mail that oddly enough reminded Callie just a tiny bit of Zach Gibson as he’d been earlier, legs spread wide, wielding his shop vac instead of a magical sword.

“Hey, what are you doing in my bedroom without permission?” a voice demanded. Callie gave a little yelp of surprise. Her new stepsister had come up behind Callie without her noticing and was standing in the hallway, hands on hips, her chin thrust out at a stubborn angle.

Becca was not a pretty child. She was tall and reed thin with long, straight strawberry blond hair, freckles, and a nose that was too big and too sharp for her face. Someday she would grow out of this awkward stage and become a striking, if not classically beautiful, woman. But today, dressed in a pine-green T-shirt with the White Pine logo on the left breast pocket and khakis—the uniform of the restaurant’s waitstaff—she was just plain homely. Her expression was as belligerent as her tone of voice.

“I’m sorry,” Callie said, shutting the door. “I...I didn’t realize you’d moved into my...into this room.”

“The new baby’s getting my room,” Becca said. She was still scowling and Callie wasn’t able to tell if she was happy with the move or not.

Her twin, Brandon, stuck his head around his sister’s shoulder and stared at Callie’s bedraggled appearance. “What happened to you? You’re all wet.”

He had the same strawberry blond hair and blue-gray eyes as his sister, but the resemblance ended there. He was three inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier than his sister, with a linebacker’s build and a round baby face that would be the bane of his existence well into his thirties, Callie guessed.

“Hi, Brandon.” She smiled, and it wasn’t quite as forced as when she’d greeted Becca. Brandon was a lot less hostile than his sister, even if she had disappointed him at Christmas by buying him a Detroit Tigers baseball jersey when his favorite team was the Cleveland Indians. Lesson learned, she’d promised herself. From now on she would consult Ginger before picking out gifts for her children. “I stopped at the clinic. There’s a broken water line in the ceiling. There’s water everywhere.”

“We heard,” Becca said. “Zach called us. Mom and your dad are going to the clinic to help as soon as the dinner rush is over.”

“You weren’t supposed to get here until tomorrow,” Brandon said. His blue-gray eyes were clouded with worry. “Everything was supposed to be cleaned up. You weren’t supposed to see the mess.”

“I wish I hadn’t,” Callie said frankly. Brandon seemed to be one of those kids who always felt as if everything that went wrong around them was their fault. Another reason she found it easier to relate to him. She remembered being the same way at his age. “It was an accident. We’ll get it all squared away.” She smiled again, although she wasn’t all that confident of her own words.

“Oh, dear, Callie? It is you.” The light, musical voice belonged to her stepmother. “Mac thought she saw you sneaking up the stairs. I sent the twins up to check, and when they didn’t return, I figured she was right.”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” Callie said, defending herself. “Hello, Ginger.” She spread her hands. “I wasn’t too keen on being seen this way.”

“Goodness.” Ginger took Brandon by the shoulders and moved him out of her way. Becca flattened herself against the wall, pointedly avoiding any contact with her mother’s protruding belly as Ginger moved forward to get a closer view of Callie. “What happened?” Her eyes narrowed as understanding dawned. “You’ve been to the clinic.”

“The door was open. There were cars in the parking lot when I drove by. It seemed unusual for this late on a Saturday. I thought I should check it out.”

“It’s lucky Zach stopped in when he did. It could have been a lot worse.”

“He seemed to have things pretty well under control when I left.” The way he’d dismissed her offer of help still bothered her slightly, but she didn’t say anything more. It was obvious her stepmother held the man in high regard—as did her father, she reminded herself. Professional courtesy and self-preservation warned her to keep her less flattering opinion of the PA to herself.

“Nothing’s going the way I planned it,” Ginger lamented. “Nothing’s ready for you.” She furrowed her brow, as if trying to figure out what to do next. She was a small woman, several inches shorter than Callie, with strawberry blonde hair the same shade as Becca’s but cut short and feathery, and with Brandon’s rounded face and snub nose. There were tiny laugh lines at the corners of her generous mouth and blue-gray eyes, another trait she shared with her children. She was pretty and petite and she laughed a lot. Maybe that was why her dad had fallen head over heels in love with her, even if she did come with a ready-made family in tow.

“Should we tell Dad she’s here?” Brandon asked.

A tiny needle prick of jealousy shot through Callie, an unsettling sensation. It was the first she’d heard either of Ginger’s children refer to her father that way. She hoped her involuntary reaction hadn’t been evident on her face or in her eyes. She was a grown woman. She could share her father’s love and affection. It was just going to take a little getting used to, that was all. “No, Dad’s probably busy behind the bar. I’d rather he not see me this way. Really, all I want now is to shower off this fiberglass and get into some dry clothes. I didn’t know where else to go. I’ll call around and find a motel room.” Callie was mortified. “It was thoughtless of me not to call you about the change of plans.”

She belatedly remembered that the Physican’s Committee had arranged a place for her to live, but no one had given her the details. She’d been so busy packing away her things and finalizing the sublet on her tiny apartment in Ann Arbor that it had slipped her mind to inquire further. If pressed she’d admit she just assumed she’d be staying in her old room until she got settled in. A miscalculation in line with everything else that had happened today. She had nowhere else to go except to her mother’s, and she wasn’t up to dealing with Karen tonight.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll stay right here. No more arguing. Of course you’ll be wanting a shower.” Ginger laid her hand on her stomach, glancing across the hall at the bathroom door. She was wearing a pine-green top over slim white slacks. The top was fitted below her breasts and elasticized at the bottom so that it flared gently over her baby bump and fitted snugly on her hips. The shade of green that washed out her daughter’s pale skin tone flattered Ginger’s warmer complexion.

Her stepmother was getting quite big, Callie noticed, but she was already in her third trimester.

Callie wouldn’t be delivering any babies while she worked at the clinic—the hospital was too far away to make that practical, and to be truthful an ob-gyn practice had never been what she wanted—but she would be seeing prenatal patients and coordinating their care with the obstetrician in Petoskey. Ginger, however, was family, and medical ethics prohibited her from treating or prescribing medications for family members. If she was honest with herself, she was relieved not to be forced into such an intimate relationship with her stepmother, who was, when she got right down to it, a virtual stranger. And sleeping with her father to boot.

“Mom, our bathroom’s trashed, remember,” Becca said acidly. “We were going to clean tomorrow. You and J.R. made us work on the cottage today.” She shot Callie an accusing glare as though the messy bathroom was somehow her fault. So, her dad evidently hadn’t made as much progress with Becca as he had with Brandon.

“I’m not fussy,” Callie said. “A few dirty towels lying around won’t bother me.” She’d only stayed with her new extended family on the one previous occasion—the not-so- successful Christmas visit—and then only for two nights. The apartment had been spotless. Callie had been impressed and said so. Neither she nor her dad were particularly good housekeepers but evidently Ginger was.

“I wanted everything to be just right,” Ginger said under her breath. “I’m sorry. We changed Becca’s room because I wanted the one closest to us for the baby. Your dad hasn’t been sleeping well lately. I...I decided it would be better for the little one to be in a room of his or her own.”

J.R. and Ginger had decided against learning the sex of the new baby. That was fine with Callie, but she was disturbed to hear that her dad wasn’t sleeping well. Was it stress or, worse, some kind of health problem he was keeping from her? It seemed every few minutes something else served to remind her just how long she’d been away, how little she was aware of what went on in her dad’s life these days. It hurt.

But she could begin to do something about it now that she’d returned to White Pine Lake. Being close enough to spend time with her dad was one of the reasons she’d taken the job. She had to keep reminding herself of that.

“It’s fine. I don’t care what the bathroom looks like. I’m the one who should be apologizing for not telling you I was coming early,” she repeated, sincerely remorseful. “If there’s a clean towel and hot water, I’ll be fine.”

Ginger smiled and almost got it right. “Stop apologizing for wanting to come home a day early. Just pretend you’re the first person to take a shower after a hurricane blew through the bathroom, okay?”

“I promise not to notice a thing.”

“Have you eaten?” Ginger caressed her stomach absently as though soothing herself as well as the baby inside her.

“No, and I’m starved,” Callie said, grinning. “I hope you aren’t sold out of the bluegill tonight.”

“I’ll go down right now and have Mac set some aside.”

“And a spinach salad,” Callie said, “oh, and a baked sweet potato. I’ve been craving one for a couple of weeks.”

“Cravings have taken over my life,” Ginger said, seeming to relax a little.

“You’re craving sweet potatoes? That’s a new one.”

Ginger laughed. “Nothing so healthy, I’m afraid. Anything salty and crunchy and sweet.” She threw up her hands. “Every kind of junk food. It’s driving your dad crazy. Thank goodness we live above a restaurant. I can always raid the snack rack by the cash register, even in the middle of the night.”

“She set off the alarm once.” Brandon snickered. “The fire department came and everything. You can ask Dad.”

Ginger flushed an unbecoming red. “Oh, let’s not,” she said. “Go tell Mac that Callie will want dinner in, oh, about twenty minutes or so?”

“Twenty minutes. Great.”

“And I’ll remind her not to forget the cinnamon butter for your potato,” Brandon offered. “It’s my favorite.”

“Mine, too.”

“All right.” Brandon gave her a thumbs-up and took off at a trot.

“Are you sure it’s not too much trouble for me to shower here? I could drive out to Mom’s farm.” She was embarrassed. Ginger must assume she was as unreliable and unprepared as her mother. She didn’t appreciate the comparison one bit.

“That was going to be part of the surprise tomorrow,” Ginger said. “The elderly couple who always rent half the double cottage for six weeks had to cancel due to health issues. It’s small but so much nicer than the ‘mini suite’ at the Commodore Motel the committee picked out for you.” Her tone of voice when she said “mini suite” suggested the Commodore Motel wasn’t the nicest in town by a long shot. Callie was relieved she wouldn’t be staying there. “The cottage is all ready for you to move into as soon as you’ve cleaned up and eaten dinner. Peace and privacy. Well, a place of your own, anyway,” she added cryptically.

“Thank you.” She couldn’t quite keep the relief out of her voice. She loved the tiny duplex cottage on the lakeshore. And it was within walking distance of the White Pine and only half a mile from the clinic. She could bicycle to work—if her old bike was still hanging from the rafters in the garage.

“I’m glad you’re pleased. Your dad said you would be.” Ginger didn’t sound as convinced as J.R. apparently was. “The other side is rented, so it won’t be all that private, but it’s the only property not booked solid for the season.”

“It is my favorite, and I’ll love it, neighbor or no neighbor.” But the duplex was income for her dad. She couldn’t just move in during peak tourist season. “I’ll make up your shortfall on the rent. I’m sure the Physician’s Committee bullied Dad into giving them the same rate they were getting from the manager at the Commodore.”

“Settle that with your father over dinner,” Ginger said, waving off Callie’s suggestion.

Dinner with Dad. Callie couldn’t believe how much she wanted just that. There would be no expansive emotional display from J.R. when she came into the bar. When he caught her eye, he would smile at her, jerk his head in a signal to meet him in the kitchen at the old Formica table with its eight well-worn chairs—the “Cook’s Corner,” as her grandmother had named it years before Callie was born—where the staff ate. He would give her a quick, awkward hug, pull out her chair, set a steaming plate of fish before her and straddle the seat beside her so he could watch her eat. He wouldn’t scold her for not calling to say she was coming a day early, but she would apologize anyway because she had caused Ginger distress. He would tell her not to worry, that it was okay. It’s good to have you home, Callie girl, he would say. And that would be all she needed to hear. She would be home, and everything would be right with the world, because J.R. Layman could make it so.

At least, it had seemed that way to her when she was a child. But she wasn’t a child any longer, and J.R. had new responsibilities and a new family to keep safe from the big, bad world. She was on her own now, and that was the way it should be. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt to be the outsider in this new family grouping—it did hurt—but that didn’t mean she intended to stand aside and do nothing to improve the situation, if for no other reason than to make things easier on her dad. She would do what she could to make them all a family.

“C’mon, Becca, you’re on the clock until nine, remember.” Her stepmother’s strained voice brought her back to the moment at hand. Ginger held out her arms, attempting to gather her daughter close. Becca sidestepped the embrace. Ginger hesitated a moment, her arms still outstretched, and then she dropped them to her side. “We really are happy to welcome you home, Callie.” Her smile didn’t falter but her eyes were bleak. So, the unhappy vibe Callie had picked up on when Becca had told her about switching bedrooms hadn’t been her imagination. There was some tension between mother and daughter over the new baby’s arrival, and perhaps between her father and his new wife, too?

Suddenly all the insecurity she’d been experiencing since she’d agreed to take the position at the clinic returned in a rush, almost overwhelming her determination to help her family. Developing relationships with her stepmother and stepsiblings and finding her own place in a new blended family was yet another complication to add to the weight of uncertainty over her sojourn to White Pine Lake. At least she had options if she couldn’t stay.

It was going to be a very long summer.

CHAPTER THREE

THUNDER RUMBLED OVERHEAD and Zach swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands, staring down at the scarred pine floor. It was barely daybreak but he wouldn’t be sleeping any more. Something about the long, rolling rumble of a storm coming in off the big lake reminded him of Afghanistan. There weren’t a lot of thunderstorms in that far-off, arid country, but there was a lot of gunfire. The one aspect he didn’t like of living near a big body of water was the really loud thunderstorms. Occasionally, they still triggered a bout of PTSD, and he didn’t want that happening with his brand-new roommate just on the other side of the wall.

He’d grown up on the edge of the California desert, shuffled from one foster home to another. He had no idea who his parents were, his people, but he suspected somewhere in his lineage there had been at least one sailor. He’d been fascinated by the sea as a child, and now as an adult by the great inland seas so nearby. The day after he graduated from high school, he’d left the last foster home he’d been placed in and joined the navy. He’d thought he’d spend the next four years surrounded by water, maybe even assigned to an aircraft carrier, but instead he’d ended up in Afghanistan. Twice.

In White Pine Lake there was water everywhere he looked, exactly as he’d envisioned as a child, but he still didn’t like thunderstorms.

He pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Rudy had advised him early on not to wander around in his skivvies while he was living in White Pine Lake, and his old Marine buddy had been right. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to come knocking on his front door at any hour of the day or night for free medical advice. He wondered how his new neighbor, the uptight Dr. Layman, would handle that aspect of a small-town practice. Not well, he’d guess. He wondered what she was doing here at all.

Actually, the answer to that one was easy enough. She was a Layman. Knowing J.R., hearing the praises of J.R.’s father and—from the old-timers who remembered that far back—his father sung throughout the town, it was because of an overdeveloped sense of duty, not because practicing medicine in a small town was what she wanted most in life.

Well, it was what he wanted, and he intended to hang on to this job with both hands, even if it meant butting heads with her at every turn.

He’d been willing to make amends after their less-than-stellar first meeting when he’d heard her Jeep pull into the parking space behind the duplex that first night. He’d gotten up off the couch, even though he was bone tired, and walked out into the cool, humid night to greet her and offer a hand to help unload her Jeep. He could hear a radio playing in a nearby cottage, and traffic sounds from Lake Street intermittently drowned out the chirping of crickets and the eerie wail of a loon calling for its absent mate. A small tingle of uneasiness prowled at the edge of his consciousness. A motorcycle going by had masked his footsteps on the gravel, so she whirled in surprise when he spoke, hitting him in the thigh with a big overstuffed duffel bag as she swung around.

“Oof,” he said.

“Good heavens, you scared the life out of me. What are you doing here?” She dropped the duffel with a thud, barely missing his foot in the process.

“I was coming to offer my help unloading your Jeep.”

They were standing under a streetlight. He could see her face clearly. Surprise at his appearance had widened her eyes momentarily. Now they narrowed with suspicion. “Where exactly did you come from?”

He hooked his thumb over his shoulder toward the duplex. “Didn’t your dad explain? We’re neighbors. Real close neighbors.”

“No.” Her lips thinned. “He did not. He just said he knew the cabin was my favorite place and since it had become available—” She put her hands on her hips. “This isn’t acceptable,” she said.

“Why not? You just said how much you like the place.”

“What I am worried about is what people will think of us living so close. It’s...it’s not professional.”

“Come off it, Dr. Layman. This isn’t the Middle Ages. You’re not giving your friends and neighbors enough credit. Why should they care?” She had a point, though. There would be some small-minded people who would raise their eyebrows and wag their tongues—there always were in a town this size. “It’s no different from a coed dorm. Are you saying you’ve never lived in close proximity to a man?”

“I...” she sputtered. “Of course I have.”

Did that mean she’d been in a serious relationship? Did she still have a boyfriend? Somehow he didn’t like that idea, although he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. He didn’t pursue the topic, however, for the same reason he hadn’t elaborated on town gossips. Now that she was here, he didn’t want to scare her off. “Do you believe your dad would have sent you down here if he didn’t trust me to behave myself?” He was beginning to enjoy this. She was so easy to rattle.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, but she sounded as if the fight had gone out of her. For the first time he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the droop to her shoulders. She’d had as long and as hard a day as he had. He ought to be ashamed of himself for goading her. “Good. Then that’s settled. You’re staying. It’s late. We can work out some ground rules for sharing the place in the morning so we can both have our privacy.”

He bent to pick up the duffel and so did she. They both straightened with a hand on a strap. He tugged and she had the grace to let go without a struggle. “I don’t need ground rules,” she said. “I just believe it’s better if I find another place. We’ll be together quite enough during office hours.” She didn’t give up easily; she’d hold her ground in an argument or a fight.

“Whatever you say, Dr. Layman,” he replied as formally. “But don’t count on finding anything better. It’s high season. The town’s booked solid. No landlord in his right mind will accept the stipend the Physician’s Committee’s willing to pay, except for that old coot at the Commodore. If you’re determined to make up the difference out of your own pocket, you might as well stay here.”

“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “You have made your point, and it’s too late to argue with you any more tonight. Just be careful with that duffel. It’s got my coffeemaker in it and I don’t want it to get broken. I can’t function in the morning without my caffeine.”

That scene had taken place Saturday night. Now, four days later and three days into their working relationship, it was still the longest conversation they’d had so far.

It was shaping up to be a long summer.

He punched the button to start the coffeemaker he’d found in the thrift store and headed for the closet-size bathroom to shower and shave.

Ten minutes later he was on the porch, one shoulder propped against the stone pillar that supported the roof, drinking his coffee while he kept one eye on the leaden skies. He heard the door on Callie Layman’s side of the duplex open. He shifted position slightly so it wouldn’t seem as if he was hiding from her as she sat down in one of the two pine rockers that matched the set on his half of the porch. She was already dressed for her day at the clinic in slacks, a tailored shirt and the long white lab coat that he thought was an attempt to look as much like a man as possible. It didn’t work, though. The curves beneath the layers of fabric were all female.

“Good morning, Dr. Layman,” he said, lifting his mug in salute—might as well be neighborly. He wasn’t going inside just so she could have the porch to herself.

She jumped a little in surprise and hot liquid sloshed over the rim of her coffee mug. “I didn’t see you there,” she said with a hint of accusation in her voice, holding the mug out so it didn’t drip on her slacks.

“Just checking on the weather.” The duplex was about the size of a two-car garage, with doors at opposite ends of a shared front porch. The porch was divided by a screen made from an old pair of folding doors that offered about as much privacy as adjoining hotel balconies. In the past the building had been a garage, then a bait shop and finally used for boat storage before Callie’s dad had remodeled it into two one-bedroom rental units. It was built of native river rock and, with its weathered wood trim and faded green shutters, was solid and sturdy and rooted to its spot on the lakeshore. It was small and cramped and lacking in all kinds of creature comforts like internet service and cable TV, but it suited Zach just fine.

“Looks like the storm might miss us.” He gestured out over the lake with his mug. The air was cool, and mist shrouded the far shore of the lake and clung to the tops of the high dunes in the distance, but when the sun eventually broke through the clouds, it would be a warm day.

“It will,” Callie responded confidently, scanning the dark rolling clouds at the far edge of the lake. She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t smell the rain, so it’s not coming this way.” She tilted her head slightly as though waiting for him to contradict her.

“You think so?” Why couldn’t he just agree with her? What was it about her that made him want to challenge everything she said?

“I know so. I grew up on this lake, remember. And I come from a long line of avid weather watchers.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he conceded.

She nodded, satisfied she’d won the argument. “Just a light show in the sky giving the fishermen time for another cup of coffee before they head out onto the lake,” Callie said as a three-pronged lightning strike arced out of the dark clouds and disappeared behind the dunes. Thunder rolled on like a giant’s chorus of kettledrums. Zach tightened his grip on the handle of his mug and worked to slow his too-fast heartbeat. He forgot the retort he’d been going to make. “Where did you grow up?” she asked before he could come up with another.

“California. Little town in the desert.”

“That’s a long way from White Pine Lake. How did you end up here?”

“I like water,” he said, “and Rudy boasted they had lots of it where he came from. He was right.”

“You and Rudy served together?”

“He was my buddy and my patient,” Zach said. Now, why the hell had he said that? The storm had shaken him more than he realized. He didn’t want to talk about Afghanistan and the things that had happened there. If Rudy wanted to tell her about the IED attack that had cost him half his leg, that was his business, but Zach wasn’t going to. He set his teeth and remained silent.

She tilted her head and gave him a long, straight look, then nodded slightly. “I see. Afghanistan is off-limits. I accept that.” She reverted to their previous subject. “We could use some rain, though. It’s pretty dry.”

Maybe he’d been too quick in judging her; she’d picked up on his reluctance to talk about his past and hadn’t pressed him on it. He just hoped she did as well with her patients. He relaxed, confident he had himself under control again. It was getting easier as time went on and the flashbacks became fewer and less intense. “Yeah, we could use a good shower or two.” Last winter there hadn’t been a lot of snow, so too-little rain in the summer months increased the danger of wildfires in the heavily wooded national parkland surrounding the town. “I’ll water the planters before I leave this morning. That should guarantee at least a little rain.”

The corners of her mouth turned up in only a slight smile, but it was enough. It transformed her face and made him catch his breath. He wondered what she would look like if she really let go. Spectacular, he suspected.

“Same with washing your car. Works every time,” she said. “I’ll take my turn later in the week.”

“It’s no trouble. I’ve been taking care of them all summer.”

“So I’ve noticed,” she said drily. “When was the last time you deadheaded the petunias?”

“Uh, you’ve got me there.” Did she always have to be in charge? Be the one to give the orders? But her next words surprised him.

“We’ve got joint custody of the landscaping now, so I’ll do my share. How’s this for a division of labor—you water, I’ll weed. Deal?”

“Deal.” He considered holding out his hand to shake on the agreement but found himself reluctant to do so. He remembered how the softness of her palms against his that first day had electrified his nerve endings and then refused to fade away. Better not to touch her at all, no matter how casual the contact. Anyway, she’d probably take it as an insult, call it inappropriate conduct. She kept both her hands wrapped around her coffee mug as she rose from her seat. “Good. That’s settled. I’d better go. I have some things I need to research before office hours start.”

He considered taking the reference to office hours as an opening to talk about their working arrangements. The situation was awkward for all of them at the clinic right now, as most of the patients were on his schedule and there was little chance to discuss which of those patients would be least upset to be moved to her care, as the doctor in charge.

So over the past couple of days, he’d taken the established patients while Callie had dealt with the walk-ins. She’d spent the rest of her workday reviewing their procedure list, making notes on her laptop, discussing with Bonnie and Leola the changes they would like to see when the clinic was remodeled, and generally avoiding being alone with him.

This practice wasn’t as structured as the military. The chain of command was clear as mud. Outside of the mandatory guidelines and protocols the hospital imposed on them, they had to work out their own routine, and Zach preferred to do that in private. The sooner the better. He opened his mouth to start the ball rolling but he’d waited too long.

“I’ll see you at the clinic,” she said, her hand already on the screen door handle as another long, low peal of thunder rumbled out over the lake, fainter than before and even farther away, as she had predicted. “It will be a zoo today with the carpet cleaners in the waiting room and the electrical inspector coming at noon. We’ll have to keep a pretty strict schedule this morning to have room for him.”

“I don’t like to rush my patients,” he said. There was no way he was going to turn into a clock-watching corporate sawbones just because she wanted to clear the schedule over the noon hour.

Nonetheless, he had to admit she was right—he was heavily booked. He was going to have to keep people moving through at a steady clip, whether he wanted to or not.

“I’m not asking you to rush any of your appointments, but I also don’t approve of patients sitting in the waiting room for too long,” she said, all starchy and nose-in-the-air. She was very much on her high horse again, no hint of the incandescent smile he’d witnessed earlier, no softening of her professional demeanor. The humorless and by-the-book Dr. Layman had returned.

“Neither do I.”

“Good, then we do agree on something.” It wasn’t quite a question but he chose to respond as if it was.

“Yes, Dr. Layman, I guess we do.”

* * *

“HI, DAD, WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” Callie looked up from the chart she was attempting to decipher. The White Pine Lake Community Health Center had not yet gone digital in its record keeping. Zach Gibson might not be entitled to an M.D. after his name but he sure had the chicken-scratch handwriting that usually accompanied the title.

“Ezra Colliflower asked me to sit in on the electrical inspector’s walk-through. He’ll be gone all day delivering a load of lumber to the mill in Gaylord.”

“Good. I’d rather have you here than Ezra. He’s scared me ever since he caught me and Gerry Forrester mushroom hunting in the woods out by his place and threatened to come after us with his chain saw. I still say we were on the other side of his property line, but he acted as if we were stealing his family jewels or something.”

“You did have a heck of a bag of morels,” J.R. reminded her. “I’ve never tasted better. Worth their weight in gold.”

Callie sighed, remembering her haul of succulent fungi. “Hmm. Maybe he did have a reason to be angry, but I still say we were on the right side of the line on state ground. Twenty years hasn’t mellowed him, either.He’s still bad-tempered and cranky.”

“He wouldn’t be Ezra if he changed his habits,” J.R. said with a grin. Her father was a handsome man, just under six feet tall, with a full head of steel-gray hair and skin permanently bronzed by years of exposure to wind and sun and the cold temperatures of long northern winters.

“Rudy and his gang finished the subfloor in the lab section this morning. Hopefully they’ll have the new laminate flooring installed as soon as the electrical inspector gives the okay on the additional wiring. Bonnie and Leola are thrilled by the layout for the new electrical outlets. They’re tired of running extension cords all over the place whenever we get a new piece of equipment.”

“I’m glad you brought it to my attention. Zach said he’d intended to bring the subject up himself but you beat him to it.”

Zach hadn’t mentioned any of that to her. But to be fair she hadn’t spoken to him about her conversations with the female staff. She should have. They were on the same team, after all. Something she had difficulty remembering whenever she was in the same room with him.

J.R. crossed his ankle over his knee. He was dressed in jeans and a green White Pine polo, so she guessed he was taking the early shift behind the bar today. The middle of summer wasn’t a busy time for his CPA business but it was for the bar and grill. It usually worked out well for him, but today he seemed tired and there were new lines around his hazel eyes, the same color as hers. She wondered briefly if the new baby would share their eye color, Ginger’s blue-gray or a shade unique and entirely his own? “How are you and Zach getting along?” J.R. asked before she could start her own line of questioning about his health.

“Fine,” she said automatically.

“Hmm,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “So not very smoothly, huh?” He knew her too well.

Callie cut her eyes to the open door. Her new office had been doing double duty as a storage area since the sprinkler malfunction, although she couldn’t complain; she only had the occasional interruption to deal with, not patients funneling in and out for blood tests and weights and measurements as Zach did. “He’s good at his job,” she said, determined to put the best face on it. “We have different styles of interacting with our patients, that’s all.”

“Coming from the military, he’s had a lot of responsibility thrust on him from a young age. He’s used to being his own boss,” J.R. said. “But I’m confident you two will work it out.”

“Of course we will. We’re both professionals.”

“I know it hasn’t helped that you’re in the other half of the duplex,” J.R. said with a frown. “It’s just...well, things are complicated right now. I didn’t plan far enough ahead. All those years of the two of us rattling around alone at the White Pine, I never realized it could get overcrowded, but it has. Becca’s too old to share a room with her brother, and I assured Ginger I was fine with the baby being in our room, but—”

“It’s a huge improvement over the mini-suite at the Commodore.” She gave an exaggerated mock shudder and was rewarded with a quick smile from her father. “But it’s as much my fault as yours. I should have planned where I’d be staying before I ever got here,” Callie said. “Dad, is everything all right between you and Ginger?” She waited, not quite sure how he would react to such a direct personal question from her. Her father was a very private man.

“It’s not easy getting used to the idea of being a new father when you’re staring your fiftieth birthday in the eye,” he said candidly. He shook his head ruefully, one side of his mouth lifting in a grin.

“Or being a sister when you’re twenty-nine,” Callie admitted, returning the smile. She waited but he didn’t add anything further. “We’ll figure this blended-family thing out together. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said. “Your mother has plenty of room out at her place if it gets too uncomfortable being in such close proximity to Zach Gibson day and night.”

“The prospect of moving in with Mom and the goats and the chickens should be all the incentive I require to come to a truce with my PA.”

She’d made peace with her mother over the years, accepting the reality that Karen could only be happy marching to the beat of her own drummer. J.R., however, had never come to that same acceptance. He might have forgiven Karen for leaving him and their marriage, but never for abandoning Callie. Her parents were civil to each other these days but by no means friendly. Juggling birthdays and holidays without causing hard feelings was stressful for Callie—for all of them, really. Deep down she had to admit that continuing animosity between her parents was the biggest reason she hadn’t come home as often as she could have these past few years.

“That’s settled, then.” J.R. relaxed in his chair, but she knew him too well not to notice that the tension hadn’t completely left him.

“You are okay with the new baby, aren’t you?” Overcoming a lifetime of reticence on her dad’s part—and on hers—wasn’t going to happen overnight, she realized.

“Sure,” he said a little too quickly. “Especially if I get another great little girl like you.”

“Come on, Dad. You can admit you really want a boy.”

He dropped his foot to the floor, not reacting to her smile. “Either one is fine with me as long as he or she and Ginger are both fine.” He stood up. “I’m going to go check in with Rudy and the inspector and see what’s going on. Want to come along?”

“I don’t know anything about electricity, and I don’t want to know any more than it hides in the wall and comes out when you plug something into a socket. Don’t you dare tell anyone I said that. Especially Zach.” She stood up and straightened her shoulders. “But when duty calls, we Laymans step up to the plate.” J.R. opened his mouth and Callie was afraid he might broach the subject of her staying longer than the three months she’d agreed to. “While we’re at it, I could use another receptacle or two in here.”

J.R. took the hint. “We don’t have an unlimited budget, remember. Especially not until we find out how much the insurance company is going to pay for the water damage.”

“Not enough,” Zach’s voice said. Callie glanced away from her father to find her PA standing in the doorway. Her first day in the office he’d worn khakis and an open-throated pale blue dress shirt, but since then he’d shown up in camo-patterned fatigues and olive-green T-shirts beneath his long white lab coat. She didn’t approve of the casualness of his dress but she had to admit the clothes suited his warm skin tone, dull gold hair and military bearing.

“Is something wrong?” She came out from behind her desk as she noted Zach’s grim expression with a sinking sensation in her chest.

“We’ve got wiring problems,” Zach announced.

“Oh, boy,” J.R. muttered under his breath. “That’s not good news.”

“You’re right. It’s not. Evidently the breaker box is going to have to be changed.”

J.R. whistled softly. “That’s going to cost a pretty penny. Are you sure?” Zach nodded. “Well, it can’t be helped. Let’s go hear what the man has to say.”

The two men stepped back so that Callie could lead the way into the staff room at the back of the building. They joined Bonnie Highway, copper-skinned, dark-haired and stout, and Leola Townley, tall and fair with light brown hair and the sharply etched features of her Finnish logger ancestors. They were both staring at the open circuit box as though it contained a nest of snakes. Callie hid a grin.

Rudy, whom she remembered owned a construction business in town, and a middle-aged balding man in jeans and a wrinkled cotton shirt were discussing the wiring, the inspector pointing out problems with the beam of his pencil-size flashlight, Rudy shaking his head and jotting notes on a clipboard. They broke off as the newcomers entered the room. Zach made a quick introduction, Callie first and then J.R.

“We have a serious problem here, Dr. Layman,” the man explained. “Whoever put this box in must have wired it up blindfolded.”

“The building’s over twenty years old. I don’t even remember who the original electrician was,” J.R. admitted.

Rudy lifted his shoulders in a brief shrug. “Before my time.”

“It has to be replaced,” the inspector said, his voice pleasant but implacable. “There’s no way I can approve any upgrades to this box. It’s a miracle you haven’t had a fire before now.”

“How long will it take?” Callie asked. “We’re trying to run a medical practice here.”

“Three days,” Rudy replied. “Have to go to Petoskey for a bigger box. Then get hold of the power company to shut off the juice. Replace the box, run new wire, run new ground wire, too, put in the new receptacles, then get Art to okay all of it before we get the power switched on again.”

“Is that as quickly as it can be done?” Callie asked, dismayed. “We’re already behind schedule because of the water break.”

“I’ll do my best,” Rudy promised.

“I’ll give you my home phone and my cell number,” the inspector offered. “I’ll come as soon as I can get here when Rudy calls.”

“Thank you,” Callie said, smiling in relief. “We’re grateful for your cooperation. Can we finish seeing patients this afternoon, Rudy, or do you have to shut off the electricity right away?”

“I’ll head to the electrical supply place in Petoskey once I figure out everything we need. You go ahead and finish out your day.”

“Shall I start rescheduling our Friday patients?” Leola asked Callie after Rudy and the inspector had gone outside with J.R. to mark the location of the underground electric cable.

“That’s a good idea. Don’t you agree, Zach?”

“Yes, unless you want to set up a tent and examine patients in the parking lot.”

She wasn’t certain if he was joking or not, so she decided to respond as if it was a serious suggestion. “I don’t believe that’s necessary.”

“I’ll make sure the meds are taken care of, Dr. Layman,” Bonnie promised. “I’ve still got plenty of room in my basement fridge from the first go-round. Is there anything else you want us to do?” She included Zach in the question.

“No,” he responded. “Why don’t you switch on the answering machine and take a lunch break while you have the chance?”

“Yes,” Callie agreed, wishing she’d thought of suggesting it first. “It’s almost 12:30. You both are already late for your break. Our afternoon patients will be showing up before you know it.”

The phone at the reception desk rang and both women rolled their eyes. “You get our lunch bags out of the fridge,” Leola said, “and I’ll answer the phone.”

“I’ll call the Petoskey hospital and inform them what we’re up against,” Zach offered, pulling his stethoscope out of his coat pocket and wrapping it around his neck. For a split second as she watched his movements, Callie remembered the heat and strength of his touch on her arm and she shivered. “We’ll have to get their okay to close the office Friday.”

“I guess we have no choice. We can’t function without electricity.” More work-arounds, more improvising, more confusion, more failures. “I should never have left Ann Arbor,” she said before she could stop herself.

Zach gave her a long, steady look. “Hey,” he said. “Rudy’s the Marine, not me, but it’s time we apply a little Corps philosophy to the situation.”

“What philosophy would that be?” she asked suspiciously.

“Improvise. Adapt. Overcome,” he said.

“Improvise? Adapt? Overcome? I don’t understand.” She hated how uptight and prissy she sounded, but she was not in the mood for word games.

“We’re improvising like hell right now, right?” He grinned, a very appealing, very handsome grin.

“I suppose we are,” she admitted reluctantly.

“Next we adapt so we can overcome this latest cluster...fluff,” he said, hesitating until he came up with a sufficiently mild substitute for what he’d obviously really wanted to say. “We just got handed Friday off whether we wanted it or not. Do you have plans?”

“My plans were to be here doing what I was hired to do.”

“Now you have room on your calendar to do something else.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Go fishing with me.”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “That’s an absurd suggestion. If we do anything together it will be to discuss which of our patients you’ll be assigning to my care. We have put it off long enough.”

“Why can’t we do that after we’ve gone fishing?”

A little curl of anger stirred inside her. He’d avoided discussing transitioning some of his patients to her, as if he didn’t want to give them up, as if he didn’t think she could hack it. This man was getting on her nerves.

“Stop making light of the situation, Zach. We’d get more done here working in the dark than we would after we’ve been out on the lake in a boat.”

The humor faded from his eyes. “I’m sorry, Dr. Layman. You’re right. It was a bad idea. If you want to talk about the patients, we can do that from home. We don’t need the internet or access to the hospital network. We’ll do it low-tech. I’ll give you thumbnail sketches of our patient roster and you can choose the ones you consider the best fit. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes.” She was ashamed of losing her temper. It was unprofessional. She hated appearing unprofessional. “Yes, I agree that would be a better solution. We should have done it days ago.”

“In a perfect world we would have. This is not a perfect world. I’ll be over at eight.”

“Eight?” She’d hoped she might be able to sleep in for an hour or so in the morning.

“Improvise, adapt, overcome, Dr. Layman. Remember? I still plan on going fishing. So the earlier we get started, the earlier we get done.” He gave her a two-fingered mock salute and strolled off toward his office, leaving Callie without a word to say.

CHAPTER FOUR

CALLIE SAT QUIETLY, moving the base of the old-fashioned garden swing with her feet, letting the sunlight shining through the leaves of the big maple in her mother’s yard dance against her closed eyelids.

She had never imagined her mother would end up returning to White Pine Lake, and certainly not to the farm her bachelor-farmer great-uncle had left her. But as always, Karen Freebeing—the name she had chosen for herself when she joined a commune in Oregon—had defied expectations and done just that, raising Angora goats and free-range chickens, and making videos of her off-the-grid lifestyle that were surprisingly popular and even profitable.

Today Callie was just very glad to have a place to get away from the clinic—and Zach Gibson.

High summer was her favorite season on the farm. The warm breeze whispered overhead, in the distance a tractor started up in a neighboring field, but it was a long way off and didn’t interfere with her drowsy thoughts. In the paddock by the barn, her mother’s Angora goats grazed, the babies bleating in high-pitched alarm whenever their mothers drifted too far away. Closer by, bees buzzed among the flowers, and the long-handled well-pump creaked and groaned as it settled a little in its sleep.

A nap would be nice, just a quick one. She hadn’t been sleeping all that well. The duplex seemed smaller than she remembered and the soundproofing not quite as good. On some level, she seemed to always be aware of the man on the other side of the dividing wall. So it was nice to have a couple of hours to unwind after the hectic morning of electrical malfunctions and yet more rearranging of schedules and appointments at the clinic. She had to admit she was looking forward to the day off tomorrow, at least the part that would come after her meeting with Zach Gibson.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Karen said, setting a tray of lemonade and a crockery bowl of popcorn down on a rusty wrought-iron table beside the swing.

“Oh, Mom, I didn’t hear you coming. I must have dozed off for a minute or two.”

“You work too hard. You always have. You should slow down and smell the roses.”

“I am taking your advice, although it’s mint I smell and not roses.”

“The Girls have been looking for grubs in the mint patch, I suspect.”

“Yes, they have. They’ve been giving me the evil eye ever since I sat down here.”

“Must be Miss Fancy Pants and Evangeline, then. This swing is their favorite spot.” Her mother’s Buff Orpington chickens all had names and, Karen swore, personalities. They were pets as well as a source of income. Karen sold their eggs and they also starred in a series of their own videos.

“They don’t take kindly to trespassers,” Callie said as she accepted the cold glass of lemonade and scooted over a little to make room for her mother on the glider. When Karen sat down, the glider swayed harder, and Callie held out her vintage water-lily-patterned glass to keep lemonade from splashing over the edge.

“Sorry,” Karen said. “I’ve put on a couple of pounds the last few weeks. Too much strawberry shortcake.” Her mother was tall and long-legged, full-figured but not overweight. She favored long skirts, peasant blouses, and vests and sweaters she knitted herself from the fiber of her goats. Her hair was long and straight and today she had it piled on top of her head, held in place by a leather-covered comb.

The two big red-gold hens they’d been discussing bustled forward from beneath the sunflowers and began eating the popcorn kernels Karen tossed to them.

“Mmm, the lemonade is wonderful,” Callie said, closing her eyes as she savored the cool drink. “Just what I needed to sweeten my day.”

“You’re welcome to move in here if being too close to J.R.’s new wife and kids is too much of a strain.”

“It’s not Ginger and the twins that are stressing me out.” That wasn’t precisely the truth, but close enough. “And you know you and I are too different to get along well even in a house this size.”

Karen didn’t press the invitation. Their relationship had improved as Callie matured. In her own way Karen had done her best to make amends for the years she’d been away, and Callie had done her best to try to forget how much her mother’s desertion had hurt. But there was still a thin, transparent barrier between them, and so far neither of them had made an attempt to strip it completely away. Perhaps they never would.

“What possessed that man?” Bitterness seeped into Karen’s tone and she threw the next handful of popcorn hard enough that the kernels overshot the hens and landed in an overturned bushel basket planted with yellow and white daisies and pink waterfall petunias. The chickens clucked in annoyance.

Callie didn’t have to ask what Karen meant. “He fell in love with her, Mom.”

“And where has it gotten him? Fifty years old and about to become a father again. He’s the laughingstock of White Pine Lake—”

“Mom, change the subject.” She wasn’t going to go that route with her mother today. She suspected that Karen was still a tiny bit in love with J.R. But there was no going back for any of them and Callie had stopped indulging the fantasy of reuniting her parents many years ago.

Karen sighed and patted Callie’s hand. “Sorry, baby. Letting the bad vibes get the better of me today. I should fire up the sauna and indulge myself in a good purging. What’s on your agenda for the weekend?”

“House hunting,” Callie said, although she hadn’t actually planned on it until that moment.

“Hmm,” Karen said, aiming the next handful of popcorn so it fell like a puffy white shower on top of the hens’ heads. “Too close for comfort with Doc Hottie on the other side of the wall, huh?”

“What are you talking about?” Callie hoped she wasn’t blushing. “No, it’s not Zach. Well, mostly it’s not Zach. The duplex is income property, after all, and sort of out of my price range now that it’s high season.” She could afford the rent on the duplex for a couple of months, but as she suspected he would, her father had refused to accept it. “And besides, it’s too small.”

“Too small? Don’t try to flimflam me.” Her mother rolled her eyes. “It’s Zach. He’s a hottie,” Karen repeated, fanning herself with one hand. “Every premenopausal woman within twenty miles flocks to him for sympathy and hand-holding. And a bunch of the older ones who ought to know better, too.”

Callie took a moment to consider what her mother had just said. Karen had spoken lightly and more than half-teasingly, but there was probably a lot of truth in her observation about the town’s ladies. She wondered how Zach handled the unwanted attention. Very professionally, she was certain, and probably with good humor, she admitted grudgingly to herself, but would he be trying to transfer a gaggle of disappointed female patients onto her shoulders? Did he want her to take them to avoid the hassle and not because he recognized her skill? She would have to make it perfectly clear to him that she wanted a mix of patients of all ages and both sexes, not just women’s care. She would have to be very firm on that point when they met in the morning.

“Of course, if he was in a relationship, they wouldn’t be quite so pushy,” Karen continued, and Callie caught herself tilting her head just slightly to listen to what her mother had to say.

“He’s dating someone?” She wished she had enough self-control not to ask the question but she didn’t.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Karen admitted. “And I would have heard, believe me. The gossip chain in this town moves at the speed of light.”

“I don’t know anything about him, really,” Callie confessed. “Just little things. He grew up in California and served as a navy medic attached to a Marine unit for two tours in Afghanistan. That’s how he met Rudy and eventually ended up here.”

Karen nodded. “I don’t think he has family, or if he does they are all out west. He eats most of his meals out. That’s another favorite pastime for the older women in town, feeding him. As for some of the younger ones, like I said, it’s not his stomach they’re interested in.” She sighed a little wistfully. “Although I have to admit it’s a very nice flat one. And those shoulders—”

“Hang on, Mom, I’m getting up,” Callie said, forestalling any more comments on Zach Gibson’s physique. She put one foot onto the floor of the glider and the other on the ground before she scooted off the seat. The glider rocked, forcing her to take a quick step to avoid landing with her face in a pot of nasturtiums. “I will never get the hang of getting out of this thing,” she grumbled.

“You’re going already? I hoped to talk you into staying for supper.” Karen sounded disappointed.

“I promised Dad I’d have supper with him and Ginger and the kids,” she said cautiously. She had to be careful how she handled these kinds of situations with her mother. Luckily she’d had a lot of practice over the years. “I haven’t spent any more time with them than I have with you this week.” She wasn’t overly thrilled about the prospect of making small talk with her stepmother and stepsiblings after the day she’d had, but she hadn’t been able to refuse the invitation, just as she hadn’t been able to convince her conscience that a visit to her mother could wait a few more days. “I’ll come out any day next week you want me.”

Karen’s expression lightened. “The kale is ready to pick and I’ve been hungry for creamed kale and new potatoes.”

Callie made a little face. Karen rolled her eyes. “All right, I’ll add some ham. How does that sound?”

“Better,” Callie said, grinning. Karen ate little meat. Callie had nothing against vegetables but she preferred some protein mixed in with them.

“And I have a strawberry-rhubarb pie in the freezer. I’ll bake that for dessert.”

“I’ll bring ice cream from Kilroy’s. I might not be able to get here early enough to make our own.”

“Wonderful.” Karen shooed the chickens back toward their enclosure. They went, tails high and fluffed, ships under sail. “Call and let me know what day is good for you.”

“I will, I promise. But it will probably be later in the week. Everything’s still pretty hectic at the clinic, and since I’ll be seeing regular patients for the first time, the visits will take longer than usual. I’ll probably be running behind schedule the first few days.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.

“Good luck with your negotiations with Doc Hottie,” Karen said with a little half smile that could be interpreted in all kinds of ways. Callie chose not to notice the open-ended comment.

“Thanks. Love you.” She let Karen enfold her in a quick hug and then headed for her car before her mother could say anything else.

* * *

THE OTHER HALF of her family, she discovered, wasn’t averse to asking her questions about Zach Gibson, either; they were just a little slower getting to the subject. The five of them were eating at the cook’s table in the restaurant kitchen instead of upstairs. Ginger had no problem admitting she couldn’t hold a candle to Mac’s cooking and wasn’t about to try.

“I helped Mac prep the vegetables today,” Brandon announced, proudly indicating the sautéed fresh green beans on Callie’s plate. He had evidently decided a grown-up stepsister was preferable to a new baby in the family and had attached himself to Callie as soon as she walked through the door, even offering to help her with chores around the cottage to earn money for a new computer game. Becca, however, had kept her distance. “Mac won’t let me use a knife until I’m thirteen, but I’m thinking I might be a chef someday,” Brandon chatted on.

Becca snorted. “Last week you wanted to be a fireman. The week before that you were going to be a professional gamer and make a billion dollars designing computer games.” Callie noticed the girl had eaten two servings of the green beans and most of her fish, but hadn’t touched the fresh-baked rolls dipped in honey butter or the sweet-potato casserole.

“I changed my mind,” Brandon responded. “The good chefs make a lot of money, too, and write books and have their own TV shows and everything.”

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