“I am saving up to get a place of my own.”

“You can save faster if you take me up on my offer to come work at the clinic,” Dan reminded her.

She’d been considering it—and leaning toward saying yes.

The fact that working with the handsome, sexy doctor—who appeared to be unaware of just what kind of signals he was setting off—was a good opportunity for other reasons was something she chose not to explore at the moment.

Placing her hand in his, she said, “Okay, Doc, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

She intended for it to be nothing more than two people shaking hands. Instead, she had the feeling she was opening the floodgates for something else.

She pulled her hand away as if she’d touched fire.

Because maybe she had.

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Forever. It’s time for Tina’s story. You didn’t think I’d forget her, did you? Tina was the reason her sister even discovered the town—and what her heart was missing. When we first met Tina she was a very confused single mother whose baby’s father had just tried to kill both of them. The Tina who eventually emerged from that emotional train wreck became a stronger, more centered person, focused on her son rather than herself and her admittedly horrendous choice of a male companion. As we get back to her now, she is busy building up her life, getting an accounting degree and making plans for herself and her son. But the best-laid plans of mice, men and heroines are often led astray and the very handsome bump in Tina’s road is Dr. Dan Davenport, a man who comes with his own secret baggage to become Forever’s first doctor in thirty years. Is he just an obstacle, or something more? Come read and find out.

As ever, I thank you for reading (where would I be without you?) and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Best,

Marie Ferrarella

The Doctor’s Forever Family
Marie Ferrarella

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author Marie Ferrarella has written more than two hundred books for Silhouette and Harlequin Books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

To Patience and Sam.

May you have a lifetime plus a day of happiness.

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 One

So this is Forever.

The thought echoed like a not altogether quiet mantra in Dr. Daniel Davenport’s head. He stood on a ridge, staring down at the South Texas town with the somewhat ironically prophetic name of Forever.

Forever.

It sounded like a prison sentence.

Dan had pulled his newly purchased navy blue Mercedes sedan—a car he now realized was woefully out of step with the surrounding terrain—over to the side of the road for one last moment by himself. A last moment in which he still hadn’t put on the mantle of commitment, making himself one with the town that eagerly awaited his arrival.

Well, technically, they weren’t awaiting his arrival, he thought wryly. They were waiting for Warren’s. But that wasn’t about to happen. He would have given his own life to make Warren appear, but the man was now in a place where his presence could not be won by bartering and promising everlasting servitude. He knew that for a fact because he’d tried. Tried praying and pleading, promising to do whatever was needed of him if only Warren could be spared.

But Warren was gone.

Gone because, at the last moment, he’d managed to prevail upon his younger brother, managed to physically drag him away from packing up all his belongings in preparation for his journey to Forever. Instead, he’d gotten Warren to agree to go out for a night of celebration.

After all, they had both just finally graduated. Graduated everything: medical school, internships, residencies. Everything. They had done it, taken all the necessary steps that finally, finally brought them to this new threshold shimmering before them. They had jumped all the hurdles, completed all the tasks and marched proudly into the winners’ circle where they were both decorated with the well-earned and still, even in this day and age, enviable title of Doctor.

He and Warren had made the journey together despite the fact that he, Daniel, was a year older. It had taken him a year to figure out what he wanted to do with himself after he’d graduated from college, so he’d started medical school late, making it into those rarified waters by the skin of his teeth.

Dan sighed, shaking his head. It was all a blur now, but he’d been a carefree devil in that last lifetime. Brilliant but frivolous. So much so that of all the schools he’d applied to, he’d only gotten back one positive response. All the schools that Warren had applied to had come back with positive responses.

Everyone wanted Warren.

And why not? Warren was everything a future doctor should be. Smart, kind, dedicated. Selfless.

Warren was everything that he hadn’t been, Dan thought now with a sharp pang.

But he intended to be. He owed it to Warren to do the best job he could. Which was why his own plans, that of accepting NYU Hospital’s lucrative offer to be one of their in-house radiologists, had been placed on hold for the next nine months. Possibly longer, although hopefully not. Only until the town found a doctor to take Warren’s place.

Dan owed that much to Warren and this was one debt he intended to honor. Because, if not for him, Warren would be here right now, most likely staring down at the town that had happily greeted the news of his intentions of opening a practice here. No, Warren would be driving into the heart of this pint-size town, ready to roll up his sleeves and begin working right then and there.

And Forever would have been lucky to have him.

Warren was going to be the first doctor the town had had in decades. Currently, from what he’d managed to find out, if anyone became sick enough to need a doctor, he or she would have to drive to the next town, some fifty miles away.

He drew a deep breath as he continued to take in the surrounding terrain. It was one hell of a change from New York City. He was accustomed to having his choice of hospitals, to enjoying the company of an endless stream of physicians in all fields of expertise. Forever promised none of that. As far as he had determined, there was only one hospital in the region, and it was located in a place called Pine Ridge.

Which was why his brother had chosen Forever, Dan thought.

That was Warren. He never thought of himself or what he would miss out on by setting up a general practice in such an out-of-the-way place. All he ever thought about was how he could help. His brother had gone into medicine not for the money, not for the prestige but for the singular reason that he wanted to help his fellow human being, especially the ones who couldn’t afford to help themselves.

And he’d been gone for almost a month.

“You’re already probably a saint by now, making St. Peter feel humble just to be next to you,” Dan murmured under his breath to the brother whose presence he could swear he still sometimes felt.

It was the middle of July and getting beyond hot, but he was in no hurry to drive into the town. He knew places like this existed, but he’d never been able to actually picture one. Hell, if he hadn’t downloaded the latest maps onto his GPS, he doubted his ability to find the place. The whole area looked like an afterthought.

Afterthought.

Maybe that’s what they should have named it, Dan thought. Afterthought instead of Forever.

“You lost, mister?”

The softly spoken question nearly caused Dan to jump out of his skin. When he swung around, not knowing who or what to expect, his heart raced.

He found himself looking at an olive complexioned young man with the blackest hair he’d ever seen. It was peeking out from beneath an actual Stetson. The solemn-faced man wore a tan uniform with a sidearm strapped to his hip.

All in all the man looked as if he might have stepped out of the Old West—had it not been for the fact that the uniform looked clean and pressed. Instead of a horse, a Jeep stood parked in the background.

Dan thought of his own new car. A Jeep would have been a far more practical vehicle. But there had been a hundred details to see to, not to mention Warren’s funeral service, so he’d let the ball drop in this one instance.

Dan found irony curving his mouth in response to the man’s question about whether or not he was lost. He laughed shortly. “More than you can begin to guess, Sheriff.”

“It’s deputy,” the young man corrected him. “Deputy Joe Lone Wolf. And if you tell me where you’re headed, I can get you pointed in the right direction.”

The right direction.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Dan murmured more to himself than to the man standing beside him. “I’m due in Forever,” he told the man who seemed to have the ability to move more silently than a shadow, “which I’m assuming is that collection of buildings just below us.” He nodded toward the town.

“It is,” Deputy Joe Lone Wolf verified. “Who is it in Forever who’s expecting you?” he asked politely.

Dan took a deep breath and with it, he bid his former life goodbye and placed the life that would have been his present one on temporary hold. This was a promise he was determined to keep if he was ever to have a prayer of redemption.

Maybe, with luck, he wouldn’t have to remain here for the entire nine months. Maybe someone else with Warren’s noble mindset would come along and be dedicated to a place that looked as if it had barely scratched the surface of the twentieth century, much less the twenty-first.

Either a doctor like that, or one who would ultimately wash out in the real world. If the latter came along, the physician would be more than happy to practice in a place like Forever—one that couldn’t afford to be choosy.

“My guess is most likely everybody,” Dan said, answering the deputy’s question about who was waiting to see him.

Joe frowned for a moment, as if far from pleased at the riddle the stranger had tossed at him. And then the light seemed to dawn on him. His somber face took on a whole different expression, softening as it did so. “You must be the new doc.”

The term new doc would suggest that there was an old doc somewhere in this dusty, neglected place, Dan thought. He figured it was too much to hope for, but he asked anyway, “I was told that there were no doctors in Forever.”

“There aren’t,” Joe confirmed. “According to Miss Joan, there was one in Forever once, but he died a long time ago.”

Probably out of boredom, Dan thought, slanting another look at the place he was going to have to call home for the next three-quarters of a year. He kept the observation to himself.

Out loud, he asked, “Miss Joan?”

Joe nodded. “She runs the local diner. Miss Joan’s been around here as long as anyone can remember. There’s nothing worth knowing that Miss Joan doesn’t know.”

A town gossip, Dan thought. He knew the type. Someone to stay clear of.

As braced as he’d ever be, Dan extended his hand out and nodded at the man he guessed was going to be his guide into the heart of this Lilliputian-size village. “I’m Dr. Daniel Davenport.”

“Daniel?” Joe echoed with a slight note of confusion. “They told me your first name was Warren.”

“Warren’s my brother.” He realized he’d used the present tense, making the relationship an active, ongoing one. He hadn’t gotten used to putting Warren into the past just yet. He knew he really didn’t want to.

“Changed his mind and decided that he didn’t want to practice in a small town after all, huh?” Joe guessed, nodding his head. “Can’t say I don’t understand,” he went on before Dan could begin to explain the reason he was standing here instead of Warren. “Well, let’s get you down there,” Joe said, gesturing toward the town. “Got a lot of folks waiting on you.”

Dan looked at the deputy in surprise. Was the man telling him that he had patients lining up already? This was clearly going to be his penance. Not that he didn’t deserve it, Dan silently added. He deserved anything that was thrown at him.

“Exactly what do you mean by ‘waiting on you’?” he asked.

In response, the deputy merely smiled. “You’ll see,” was all he said by way of an explanation.

It was going to be a long nine months, Dan thought as he got into his car and prepared to follow the deputy into Forever.

TINA BLAYNE COULDN’T remember ever seeing the diner this crowded before. There was barely any room in which to maneuver. Maybe she shouldn’t have deliberately left coming to Miss Joan’s diner for last. But then, that was the way she usually worked her way through the day.

Since she had gotten what she gratefully felt was a second chance here in this wonderful, tiny dot-on-the-map town less than a year ago, Tina had applied herself to the business of rebuilding her life and making something of herself so that she was able to provide for her eleven-month-old son, Bobby.

To that end, she’d taken those last three missing credits that allowed her to finally get her undergraduate degree. From there she’d begun work on her accounting degree, taking online classes whenever she could. She had a ways to go yet, but the point was that she was getting there and it felt as if everyone in Forever—not just her older sister, Olivia, and her brother-in-law, Rick, who also just happened to be the sheriff in Forever—was supporting her, cheering her on, pitching in when she needed help.

Why else would so many of the store owners suddenly turn to her to “help” them with their books? She knew that Miss Joan was behind that. The woman was certainly as sharp as they came and she could easily handle her own books, but Miss Joan had handed that off to her. Granted that the woman had her hands full, running the diner that was Forever’s only decent place to eat, not to mention that it was also the last diner available for a good fifty miles to any traveler driving along the highway.

The latter fact was how she and Don, her son’s father, had happened upon Forever, because they’d needed to stop for a meal. They’d also left Forever—and Bobby—in their rearview mirror the same day. She hadn’t had much of a choice in that. It was during this sudden road trip that she’d realized Don was really, certifiably crazy. And that, depending on his whim, he’d destroy all three of them.

She’d been too in love with Don in the beginning to see that. But she was well aware of it that day. And she’d turned out to be right. Don had tried to kill them both by driving his car into a tree.

Luckily, he’d only succeeded halfway. Don had died, she hadn’t. And, after an emotionally rocky start, she finally began to live when she came out of her coma. That was all thanks to Olivia—and the caring, nurturing people of Forever.

As far as Tina was concerned, Forever was a perfect name for the place because she intended to stay here Forever, just like her older sister had. Moreover, this was the perfect place to raise her son—a place where everyone knew him and kept an eye out for him, just the way they kept an eye out for all the other children who lived here.

It didn’t get any better than this, Tina thought. She supposed, in some people’s opinion, it could be improved upon by introducing a little romance into her life, but she definitely didn’t have time for that. Nor the inclination, either. Falling in love with the wrong man had almost ruined her life and had very nearly killed her.

As far as she was concerned, let the others, like Olivia and Mona, Rick’s sister, have their romances. She’d had enough of so-called “romance” to last her a lifetime. Maybe two.

Walking through the diner, she hurried to the back before the tempting aroma of apple pie got to her and she stopped to have a piece. Nobody made apple pies like Miss Joan.

“Hey, wait up,” Miss Joan called out just before she managed to reach the rear of the diner and the small, cluttered room that Miss Joan referred to as her “official” office.

Stopping, Tina turned around and glanced toward the owner of the diner. Miss Joan beckoned for her to come over, which she did.

“Where are you going?” Miss Joan asked.

Puzzled, Tina answered, “Your office. To do the books. The way I always do every Wednesday. Why?” She looked around again and spotted her sister and Rick at the far end of the diner. “Is something wrong?”

Rather than answer her question, Miss Joan responded with one of her own. “Did you forget?” The knowing look on the woman’s face told her that she already had the answer to that one.

Tina thought for a moment, but couldn’t come up with anything. “What is it that I forgot?” Tina asked.

Miss Joan gestured around toward the other occupants of the diner. The place got progressively crowded. It was three o’clock and although she always did a healthy business around lunchtime, this was past the normal lunch hour. At three the crowd should have thinned out considerably, remaining that way until business picked up again for dinner. But right now, there were no empty seats except one at the counter that Miss Joan had placed her own marker on, reserving it for someone.

Otherwise, the place was packed. The way it was whenever Miss Joan decided to throw a party and celebrate.

Was that what was going on?

It had been a hectic morning and for a second, Tina drew a complete blank. And then, just like that, it came back to her, a conversation she’d had with Miss Joan just last week. With her ninety-mile-an-hour life, she’d lost track of things again.

“Oh, that’s right. The town’s finally getting a doctor. Was that today?” Tina asked as she looked around the place again. She made eye contact with several people, who nodded in response.

Miss Joan came around from behind the counter and slipped a deceptively thin but strong arm around her shoulders.

“That’s today,” she confirmed, then clucked as she shook her head. “You’ve got too much on your mind these days, Baby Girl,” the woman told her affectionately. “Being a mom to that handsome boy of yours, helping out your sister, doing the books for half the businesses in town. Pitching in here whenever one of the girls calls in sick and I’m shorthanded. Not to mention working on that accounting degree. You don’t have time to sleep, much less have a little fun. No wonder that brain of yours is so overloaded. There’s hardly any room in there for a new thought,” Miss Joan lamented.

“You’ve gotta slow down before you burn the candle not just at both ends but down the middle, too,” Miss Joan went on. “You don’t have to do everything all at once. Learn how to kick back once in a while,” the older woman advised.

“Now, sit yourself down,” she coaxed, holding on to Tina’s hand and leading her over to the stool she’d placed her sweater on earlier. She swept it off the seat, leaving it on the counter. “Have a little something to eat. Stay for the party.” Miss Joan leveled a penetrating look at her, second-guessing the thoughts that were going through her head. “Those books in my office aren’t going anywhere,” she promised. “They’ll still be there for you to go over in a couple of hours from now. Or even tomorrow if you can’t get to them today.”

The diner was her last stop of the day. It was here that Miss Joan and the waitresses took turns looking after her son while she worked. She felt good about that. Bobby certainly didn’t lack for attention and she had no concerns about leaving him here. But in the end, the little boy was her responsibility and she needed to finish the books in order to be able to take care of him by the end of the day.

“But Bobby—”

“—is very happy where he is,” Miss Joan assured her. To prove her point, she gestured toward the far end of the diner.

Bobby was playing with two of the waitresses. The women all took turns playing with him during their breaks and when there was a lull in business. Miss Joan pretended to look the other way. When it got busy, she took over caring for the boy. She made it seem completely effortless. It didn’t hurt that the boy had taken to her from day one.

Any further protests that Tina might have had to offer were curtailed because, just then, the front door opened and Joe Lone Wolf walked in. He was followed in by another man.

Another man who was, just possibly, the most handsome-looking man Tina had ever seen in her life.

“Maybe I will stay for a few minutes,” she heard herself telling Miss Joan as she sank down onto the last empty stool.

Her eyes were riveted on the town’s first doctor in over three decades.

It took her a second to realize that her breath had backed up in her lungs.

Chapter Two

Dan silently scanned the interior of the diner. It was standing room only from what he could see. He couldn’t help wondering if the entire town had piled into the aged, tarnished, silver railroad dining car wannabe, or if there were a few stray citizens who’d shown a little individuality, opted not to imitate sardines and had stayed away.

Despite how crowded it was, there were fewer people here than there had been in the last nightclub he’d been to. The last place he and Warren had been to, he amended, feeling the same sudden sharp pain in his gut that he did every time he thought of his late brother, which was still very, very often. He wondered if that would ever change, or at least get easier to bear.

Right now, from where he stood, he had serious doubts that it ever would.

Dan turned toward the deputy who had brought him to this place. “Is this everybody?” he asked, mildly curious.

His question brought a hint of amusement to the deputy’s otherwise solemn face. “Just how little do you think Forever is?”

“Small,” was all Dan said before he found himself on the receiving end of a surprisingly strong handshake delivered by a thin, ginger-haired woman of indeterminable age who had literally elbowed the deputy out of the way to get to him.

The woman had hazel eyes that seemed to go right through him, as deeply penetrating as any X-ray machine he’d ever encountered.

“Hello, I’m Joan Randall. Everyone around here just calls me Miss Joan.” She made no attempt to hide the fact that she was looking him up and down as if he was a piece of merchandise. “So you’re the new doctor,” Miss Joan declared in a voice that was one part gravel, two parts aged Kentucky bourbon.

There was that word again, he thought. New. He banked down the urge to ask about the “old” doctor. They’d think he was being antagonistic, and he didn’t mean to be. Ever since the fatal cab accident, he was having trouble finding a comfortable zone for his emotions. They kept flaring, bouncing all over the place, taking him with them.

He’d shift from sarcastic to contrite to cynical to humble. And sad, always sad, no matter what kind of front he put up. Coming here had been a duty, a responsibility he knew he had to shoulder. But wanting to be here was a whole different matter.

The woman who’d introduced herself as Miss Joan smiled at him. Her X-ray eyes smiled, as well. “Dr. Warren Davenport, right?” The X-ray eyes crinkled. “Welcome to Forever.”

“It’s Daniel,” Dan corrected her. “Dr. Daniel Davenport.”

A slight confused frown edged away the smile on the woman’s thin lips. “I thought for sure they told me your first name was Warren,” she said, referring to the people she’d spoken to on the phone in her quest to secure a physician for Forever.

It was through her efforts, as she relentlessly bombarded the American Medical Association with requests for a doctor, that Forever’s situation, she’d been told, had come to Warren Davenport’s attention. He’d been looking for some place where he could make a difference and Forever needed a dedicated doctor.

“Was there a mistake in the paperwork?” she now asked the young man before her.

The people in the diner seemed to tighten the circle around them. Dan doubted that it was just his imagination at work. Good thing for him that he wasn’t claustrophobic, he thought.

“No, no mistake, Warren was supposed to be here. But there was an accident.” He tried his best to sound detached as the words slowly left his lips. He had no intention of sharing his pain with anyone, least of all a town full of strangers.

“Was he badly hurt?” Miss Joan asked, concerned. He noticed that she still hadn’t released his hand, although she had stopped pumping it.

His throat felt dry, scratchy, as he stoically replied, “He was killed.”

“Oh.” Miss Joan appeared genuinely stunned. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He felt her squeeze his hand in what he assumed was a comforting gesture. “You’ve got the same last name. Was he a relative of yours?”

“He was my brother.” Dan congratulated himself for not choking on his reply.

The woman’s hazel eyes filled with compassion. The same look was mirrored in the eyes and faces of the people standing closest around him. For a moment, he was caught off guard.

Were they all pretending to be sympathetic?

After all, neither he nor his brother were anything to these people. Other than the obvious, that Warren was supposed to have come here to open up his practice, why would any of these people even care that he’d died? They’d never met Warren and as for him, well, they didn’t know him from Adam. How could they pretend to know or feel his pain? “I’m really sorry to hear that,” Miss Joan murmured.

She sounded so sincere, he could almost believe that she meant it—if it didn’t seem so impossible to him. She splayed her bony hand against her chest to emphasize what she was about to tell him.

“I’m the one who wrote to your brother. Actually,” she amended, “I called and wrote letters to the AMA. They finally referred me to your brother.” Her eyes met his and again, he had the eerie feeling that she could look right into him. “We only spoke the one time. But even then, he seemed like a very nice young man to me. Compassionate and caring,” she added.

That described his brother to a T, Dan thought. Warren had been the good brother, he had been the wild one. And now, he thought heavily, he was the only brother. “He was.”

Disappointment entered Miss Joan’s voice. “You didn’t have to come in person to deliver this news. I—we—would have understood.”

Just for a second, Dan saw his way out of this prospective prison sentence. He could just nod, go along with the woman’s interpretation of the situation and leave this speck of a place. Her assumption was his ticket back to New York. No one would be the wiser.

No one but him.

He’d made a promise. A promise to Warren that he would take his place until someone else more suitable could be found. Sure, he’d made the promise silently in his heart because Warren had been killed instantly when the taxi they were in had been slammed into by that swerving SUV.

But he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror each morning if he broke this promise to his dead brother.

Getting through each day was hard enough for him as it was. He couldn’t shake off the mantle of blame for this, for Warren’s death. If he hadn’t prevailed on Warren and dragged him out—

This wasn’t the time, Dan silently upbraided himself. The woman with the X-ray eyes would pick up on what he was thinking.

“I realize that,” he said to the diner owner. “But I didn’t come to tell you about my brother’s untimely death. I came to Forever to take his place. Warren would have wanted me to,” he felt obligated to add. He didn’t want any of the people in town to be grateful to him. He didn’t deserve gratitude.

The solemn mood that had begun to descend over the diner when they heard about Warren’s death suddenly evaporated as Dan’s words sank in.

Not one to leave anything to chance or misinterpretation, Miss Joan asked, “Then you’re going to be our doctor?”

“Yes.” He wanted to add that it was just until another substitute could be found, thereby giving himself the escape hatch he so badly needed. But something prevented him. Maybe he didn’t want to leave himself open to endless attempts to persuade him to think otherwise. Or maybe, since they looked so happy to finally have a physician in their midst, he didn’t want to be the one to rain on their parade.

Whatever the reason, for the time being he kept his qualifying phrase to himself.

The moment Miss Joan heard the word yes, the redhead’s porcelain-fair face broke out in a huge smile that overtook her entire countenance.

“I see that selflessness runs in your family,” she pronounced.

The last thing Dan wanted was to be regarded in the same light as Warren. They were nothing alike. Warren was the good one, the saint. The one who had entered medicine only with the thought of easing pain and giving back.

Dan began to deny Miss Joan’s assumption—and to ask for the use of his hand back—but he never got the opportunity to do either.

Releasing her grip, the ginger-haired woman in the light gray and white waitress uniform managed to surprise him again by throwing her arms around him and enveloping him in a fierce bear hug.

“Welcome to Forever, Doc,” she declared, a slight catch in her voice.

If he didn’t know better, he would have said that he’d just crossed over to the other side, a place from which there was no return. As it was, an uneasy feeling rippled through him as Miss Joan continued to hug him, effectively pinning his arms to his sides. He didn’t like being put up on a pedestal. It only made it that much easier for him to fall.

To his surprise, Miss Joan whispered something against his ear. “Any time you get the urge to just talk, feel free to come on by—day or night,” she invited sympathetically.

For a moment he thought that this animated woman could sense that he didn’t have anyone to talk to about Warren. At this point in their lives, he and his brother had no more family left. Uncle Jason had died two years ago, leaving his rather considerable bank accounts to them so that they could continue to fund their educations. Jason Davenport, their father’s older brother, had taken them in when their parents had died in a plane crash fifteen years ago.

Now there was no family. And no girlfriend, neither his nor Warren’s, in the wings ready to murmur sympathetic words. Warren had been so focused on becoming the best doctor he could, he never made time for a social life. As for him, he’d been too busy going from woman to woman to try to create even a semidecent relationship. Sure, he’d had a boatload of friends in college and during his residency, but the only one he had ever been remotely close to, really close to, was Warren.

Without commenting on Miss Joan’s hushed offer, Dan separated himself from the woman only to find himself besieged by the people who had begun to close in on him when Miss Joan had first approached him. Without advanced warning, introductions suddenly came from all sides. People saying names he hadn’t a prayer of remembering.

But he offered a perfunctory smile and nodded as if absorbing each and every one of them. In his place, he was certain that Warren would have remembered every single one. His brother had been like that. Warren had a knack for names and faces. Not only that, but he could zero in on the individuality of each person he came across.

As for him, well, he was better at remembering pretty women. And even then, it wasn’t always a sure thing.

But this time, as names and greetings swirled around his head like bees swarming around a hive, while various people pumped his hand, Daniel found himself becoming progressively aware of the blonde in the background. She appeared to be quietly watching her friends and neighbors swirl around him. She seemed to have no desire to join in the swarming.

He was surprised that it had taken him this long to notice her. Rather than joining in the throng around him, she was perched on a stool at the counter, her body turned in his direction as if a detached observer to this little show.

Questions sprang up in his head even as he went on making automatic responses to the people around him.

Was she from around here?

He couldn’t put his finger on it, but Dan had a feeling that maybe she wasn’t.

Which brought up another question. Why would someone who wasn’t born here willingly come to this little burg? Was it a matter of penance, the way it was for him? Or was there another reason the blonde had been transplanted?

As far as he could ascertain, there was no military base in the area, so she wasn’t some serviceman’s wife forced to temporarily call this forgotten part of the state her home.

What was her story?

As he pondered the question and debated how best to work his way over to the blonde, Dan suddenly found himself looking into the face of a man who had the easy air of assumed authority about him. The man had on the same kind of uniform as the deputy who had brought him to this place. Something told him that this man wasn’t just another deputy.

And he was right. “I’m Sheriff Rick Santiago,” the dark-haired man told him as he shook his hand. “You need anything, have any questions, come see me and I’ll try to get you the answers and whatever else you might feel you need.”

The offer was a friendly one, sincerely tendered. There was no false air of bravado. What the sheriff said to him next cemented Dan’s initial impression.

“Nobody expects you to remember all these names,” Rick assured him. “It’ll all come together for you after a while.”

Dan forced a smile to his lips. He knew the sheriff meant well, but he had his doubts that he would remember half these names no matter how long he stayed here. And once he was back in New York, not just the names but the people as well would all become a vague blur to him in less than a week.

All except for the blonde, he amended.

The blonde had the kind of face and body that lingered on a man’s mind long after she was physically gone from the room. That would be especially true if they interacted before he left Forever.

Miss Joan seemed to read his mind. He hadn’t realized that she was still this close by.

Before he knew it, the woman had slipped her arm through his and drew him over closer to where the blonde was sitting at the counter.

“That’s Tina Blayne, the sheriff’s sister-in-law.” Turning her face so that only he could see her smile and hear what she had to tell him, she said, “You’ll probably be seeing a lot of her.”

Now how the hell did the woman know that? He looked at her, banking down his curiosity and only looking mildly interested in what Miss Joan was saying. “Oh?”

Miss Joan nodded. “Yeah. Because of her little boy, Bobby. Cute as all get-out, but he keeps coming down with colds and fevers. She’s been running herself ragged, driving over to Pine Ridge every time the poor kid’s fever spikes. That, on top of working and taking classes for her degree, has been taking quite a toll on her. She’s really relieved about you—your brother—a doctor,” she finally settled on, “coming to town. Maybe the poor thing’ll get some sleep now.” She gestured toward the blonde she’d referred to as Tina, beckoning her over. “C’mere, Tina. Meet the new doc,” she coaxed.

Tina had been sitting there, observing from a distance, thinking to herself that the man who had arrived was just too damn good-looking to be much of a doctor. He looked like Hollywood’s concept of a doctor, not the real thing.

If the man actually had a degree, she had a feeling that he hadn’t really earned it. Most likely he’d gotten it by cutting corners. Men who looked like that always cut corners. Always used their good looks and charm to get by. They didn’t have to be good, they just had to smile and sound as if they knew what they were talking about.

She was well versed in the ways—and shortcomings—of good-looking men. Don had belonged to that club and if she hadn’t had the strength of character, a good-looking man would have been her downfall, if not her complete demise.

But, after Olivia, Miss Joan was like a second mother to her. It was Miss Joan who insisted she and Bobby come live with her once Olivia had gotten married to Rick. Miss Joan was also the one who had encouraged her to continue her education online. Once she was on that path, Miss Joan had urged her friends to take her on as an accountant even though her degree and accreditation were still more than a few months in the future.

So, when Miss Joan wanted her to go some place or be somewhere, she was not about to say no to the woman. Even if she would have preferred to beg off. This was Miss Joan and she’d walk through fire for the woman, she was that grateful to her.

Tina slid off the stool and approached the gathering around the new doctor. Miss Joan deliberately signaled for several of the men to step aside and clear a path for Tina. No one said no or ignored Miss Joan. They knew better than that.

“Dr. Daniel, this is Tina Blayne,” Miss Joan said, resting her hands on Tina’s slim shoulders. The next moment, she delicately pushed Tina in closer to the town’s new addition. “I have a feeling the two of you will be seeing a lot of each other,” she pronounced.

Tina looked at the woman sharply.

Miss Joan smiled innocently, as if she had said nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that Tina should find upsetting.

“I told him about Bobby and how sick he’s been lately,” Miss Joan explained after a sufficient beat had gone by.

Well, Dan decided, he might not want to be here and was here pretty much under duress—even if it was of his own making. But he was a doctor and he liked to think that he was a damn decent one, even if he hadn’t exactly graduated at the top of his class. That outcome had been not because he didn’t know his material, or because he wasn’t skilled at his craft. It was because he’d preferred partying to working on imaginary patients and cadavers. But when it came to the real thing, he was as conscientious as they came.

“Bobby?” he asked. She’d just said the name to him a couple of minutes ago. Referring to who? His brain still felt as if it was throbbing.

“My son,” Tina told him.

“Right.” He had to get his act together. Miss Joan had just told him that, Dan thought. He glanced at the young mother’s left hand. It was devoid of any rings. Divorced? Widowed? In any event, he took the absence of a ring to mean that she was a single mother. Things became interesting again.

“Why don’t you bring him by my office?” Dan told her. “Once I have an office,” he qualified.

“Oh, you have an office,” Miss Joan assured him. “Once you unwind a little I’m sure that the sheriff’ll be glad to take you there. Right, Rick?” she asked, peering around the new doctor’s arm.

“Just say when,” Rick replied good-naturedly.

“He will,” Miss Joan promised in Dan’s stead. She turned her attention back to the guest of honor. “But right now—” she looked around at the faces of the people she had, for the most part, watched grow up over the years, and then loudly declared “—we’re going to welcome ourselves a doctor.”

“About time!” a burly man toward the front of the crowd called out.

Miss Joan laughed and nodded. “I couldn’t agree with you more, Ezra.” She glanced over her shoulder toward two of her waitresses. “Julie, Rosa, see that everyone has a glass—and be sure to fill it. We need to make a toast to Dr. Dan.”

Dan braced himself for whatever was ultimately coming. He didn’t mind being in the spotlight, but he had the feeling that this attention came with a great many strings. He had one hell of a challenge in front of him.

This toast’s for you, Warren, Dan thought. Not me. He knew his brother would have been moved by it. As for him, it just gave him a feeling of anticipation that was far from good.

He sincerely hoped that he was up to the challenge. For Warren’s sake, he was going to have to be.

Chapter Three

“To Doctor Dan!” Miss Joan toasted with enthusiasm, raising her glass of sparkling cider high. “Thanks for setting up your practice here and we all hope that you never come to regret it.”

Dan raised his own glass to his lips. The woman was asking a great deal. More than was possible. If this was only about him, he’d be already regretting it. Already booking a flight back.

But this wasn’t about what he wanted. It was about Warren and what he had wanted. What he selflessly had wanted.

For now, he would make the best of it and muster through.

As the light amber liquid made its way past his lips and down his throat, the taste created a note of confusion in its wake. He’d thought that the waitresses had poured some sort of alcoholic beverage into the glasses that they then distributed to him and the others. One taste negated that impression. Other than a few bubbles and a deceptively yellowish color, what had been poured into his glass fell woefully short of having any sort of a kick.

His drink tasted suspiciously like soda pop.

Dan regarded his glass, unconsciously raising a quizzical eyebrow as he tried to pinpoint just what it was he was drinking.

Seeing his confused expression, Tina leaned into him so he could hear her. “It’s sparkling cider,” she told him, then added, “this is a diner. Miss Joan doesn’t serve any hard liquor here.”

For a moment, he was distracted by Tina’s closeness and the scent of her hair. Something light and floral. And heady.

Dan forced himself to focus on the conversation. Okay, no hard liquor. He could deal with that. But no liquor at all was something else again.

He thought of wine. Entire cultures had wine with their dinner. Dan sincerely hoped that this wasn’t a dry town. “How about ‘soft’ liquor?”

Amusement entered her eyes at the term. “None of that, either.”

“Do they have any liquor at all in this town?”

He wasn’t addicted to drinking, but he wanted to know if it was available should the need arise. There were times, since Warren’s death, that he felt the need to numb himself against the haunting memory of Warren’s last cry of pain and surprise. And, now that he thought of it, a drink at the end of the day after dealing with the good citizens of Sleepy Hollow might not be such a bad idea, either.

“You can find some in Hogan’s General Store,” she told him, giving him the name of the biggest grocery store/pharmacy in Forever. “Mostly, Mr. Hogan sells beer, but if you catch him in a good mood, he’ll take you to where he keeps the top shelf stuff. Whiskey, vodka, whatever your pleasure,” she told him.

Tina was doing her best not to prejudge the new doctor, or sound judgmental. But Don had been a drinker, as well as a closet drug addict. At the time she’d thrown her lot in with his, it hadn’t mattered. She’d been desperate to connect with someone other than the sister who had assumed the role of both mother and father to her. But it mattered now.

Looking back, she realized now that Olivia had worked incredibly challenging hours just to provide for them as well as furthering her law career. But at the time all she could think of was that her sister was never physically there when she wanted her. And Don might have ultimately been a very poor excuse for a human being, but he had been incredibly charismatic when he wanted to be. She had been both lonely and highly impressionable when their paths crossed.

In essence, she supposed she was a victim waiting to happen. But she survived all that, Tina thought, struggling to focus on the positive the way she’d learned to do. Survived, was the stronger for it and had a beautiful son to boot. All the rest of it was in the past and no longer of any consequence.

Since Miss Joan had personally placed a glass of sparkling cider in her hand, Tina raised it now a beat after the others had chanted the toast to the doctor. The pause was part of her effort not to just blindly follow someone else’s lead, even if that someone was Miss Joan. It was all part of the evolution she was determined to go through.

“To your stay in Forever,” she said, altering the toast to something she felt was more appropriate. Dr. Daniel Davenport didn’t have the air of someone who belonged in Forever.

Because of the din, Dan was forced to watch the sexy blonde’s lips to “hear” what she was saying.

Not exactly a hardship, he mused, since her lips were full and, at any other time, would have been decidedly tempting. But he wasn’t himself these days. He still struggled with his grief and the almost oppressively heavy weight of guilt that pressed down on him. Each time he managed to come up for air, to begin to pull himself together, the guilt would suddenly find him, stealing away the very air in his lungs.

Six weeks after Warren’s death he was still caught in an emotional tailspin. A small part of him was the old Dan, the man he’d been before Warren had died because of him. The rest was a pulsating, formless glob of sadness and guilt, viewing everything around him in shades of gray and black.

The first part was mired in denial. The second part was just mired. Both parts, he felt now, would need something stiffer than what was in his glass.

“This is Texas,” he pointed out needlessly to the shapely blonde. “Aren’t there any bars or saloons or whatever the locals call them around here?”

She noticed that he said “the locals,” not “you locals.” Was he deliberately excluding her from being part of Forever, giving her what he must have assumed was a compliment? Or was that just a slip of the tongue that he wasn’t aware of?

“There’s a place on the other side of town,” she told him. “It’s called ‘The Cattlemen.’” The entire building was hardly big enough to be able to sustain the sign that proclaimed its name, but it did qualify for the label of saloon.

“Didn’t think that this town was big enough to have an other side,” the doctor quipped.

That was a definite put-down. Tina took offense for her adopted town. But when she looked at Forever’s newest resident, she didn’t see a smug, superior expression on his face. Instead, his expression appeared unfathomable, as if his heart and mind were elsewhere and his mouth just moved thanks to some automatic pilot setting.

“It is and it does,” she assured him. She gave him a rundown on the establishment’s hours of operation. “The Cattlemen is only open after seven. The man who runs it also owns the barbershop next door and he works there in the daytime.”

“After seven,” Dan repeated incredulously, thinking of the bars and grills located on practically every other corner back in three of New York City’s five boroughs. Most of those establishments opened before noon under the guise of serving lunch. “How long does this Cattlemen stay open?”

Her eyes met his. Was the new doctor a closet drinker? she wondered uneasily.

Her expression gave nothing away as she answered, “Long enough.”

Her response brought an amused smile to his lips. The blonde probably thought he had a drinking problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. He had absolutely no intentions of drowning himself at the bottom of a bottle. For one thing, it wasn’t a solution. Warren still wouldn’t be alive once he sobered up. He was here, in Forever, for Warren’s sake. To make it up to his brother, at least a little—if Warren was up there somewhere, looking down and watching.

He vacillated between believing in an afterlife and cynically regarding it as a myth intended to give people something to hold on to during the worst spates of their lives. Today he found himself somewhere on middle ground. Mostly he was just hoping to get through this without embarrassing his brother’s memory.

“YOU LOOK LIKE THE CAT that swallowed a whole pitcher of cream,” Sheriff Rick Santiago observed as he passed Miss Joan in another part of the diner. He stopped to study the woman who had been one of his late grandmother’s friends. “What are you up to?” he asked. A hint of amusement flared in his green eyes as he regarded the owner of the diner.

Instead of answering the sheriff directly, Miss Joan nodded toward where the new doctor and Rick’s sister-in-law were standing at the counter.

“What do you see?” she asked, her voice deliberately innocent.

Rick glanced in the general direction the woman indicated. But he was accustomed to taking in the bigger picture. “A damn good tally for you at the end of the day.”

Miss Joan’s throaty laugh rumbled between them for a moment. “Well, yeah, there’s that, too, but something more interesting is going on. Look again.”

He narrowed his field of reference and went with the obvious. “We’ve finally gotten a doctor to practice in this one-horse town.”

“To go with the lawyer you got last year,” Olivia chimed in, joining her husband and Miss Joan. As Rick slipped his hand around her waist, drawing her closer, Olivia leaned her head against his shoulder. She was the picture of contentment—as well as pregnancy. “I won’t have a fifty-mile trip in front of me when my water breaks,” she said gratefully. “Looks like civilization has finally come to Forever,” she declared, immensely pleased.

“Looks like more than that from where I’m standing,” Miss Joan propped.

This time Rick and Olivia both looked over toward the diner owner’s reference point.

“Tina’s talking to the new doctor,” Olivia noted. That seemed only natural, considering that Bobby’d had more than his share of earaches and colds this past winter. Tina doted on the boy. Most likely, she was telling the new doctor all about him.

This could go on all afternoon, Miss Joan thought. Deciding to call an end to the fruitless guessing game, she gave them the answer she was waiting for.

“Tina’s also smiling wider than I’ve ever seen her smile,” Miss Joan pointed out.

Olivia narrowed her eyes a little, staring more intently at her sister. So that was it. Miss Joan was playing matchmaker. Well, the woman had certainly picked the wrong target this time.

“If you’re trying to pick out a man for my sister, I really wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”

Miss Joan had had several husbands in her lifetime. Three by some people’s count, four by others. And it was rumored that there had also been a number of serious love affairs when she’d been a very young woman. Unattached at present, the woman was nonetheless a romantic at heart and believed that men and women were created solely for the purpose of being paired up.

“Why not?” she asked, her eyes pinning Olivia in place. “Tina’s a young, pretty girl with her head on straight, and in case you haven’t noticed because you only seem to have eyes for Rick here, that new doc’s real easy on the eyes.”

Olivia shook her head. “That’s just the problem,” she informed the older woman.

Miss Joan looked at her for a long moment, clearly confused. “His being easy on the eyes?” she asked, unable to make any sense out of Olivia’s response.

“No, his being good-looking,” Olivia specified. She could see that Miss Joan wasn’t following this line of thinking so she made it clear for the woman. “The guy who almost ended my sister’s life—and who wanted to have their son die with them—was one of the handsomest specimens of manhood ever created. He was downright beautiful,” she concluded.

In that he was very much like the fallen angel, Lucifer, Olivia couldn’t help adding silently. And her sister had fallen for the worthless piece of wasted flesh like the proverbial ton of bricks. Tina had almost paid for her mistake with her life.

“More beautiful than me?” Rick asked teasingly.

She turned her body in toward him, brushing against him and creating a sizzle between them. She put her hand against his cheek, all the love she felt shining in her eyes. “I hate to tell you this, Rick, but you’re not beautiful. You, Sheriff Santiago, are ruggedly handsome. Especially when you come to bed with your badge pinned to your naked chest,” she added with a laugh, punctuating her declaration with a quick kiss. “Now that I’d like to see,” Miss Joan hooted.

“No offense, Miss Joan,” Olivia told the woman for whom she bore a great deal of affection, “but that’s never going to happen.” Her eyes danced as she specified, “That’s for private showings only.”

Miss Joan laughed, her low, Kentucky bourbon voice rumbling mildly. It pleased her more than she could say that Rick had finally found someone who could love him the way he fully deserved to be loved. He’d gone through a lot in his life, not the least of which was magnanimously reconciling with the mother who had abandoned him when he was a kid and his sister had been a year-old baby.

His sister had gone through the same set of hard knocks, in addition to stubbornly resisting the obvious. Luckily, Mona had finally come to her senses and was now engaged to Joe Lone Wolf, the deputy who had loved her from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her all the way back in grade school.

Forever looked forward to celebrating another wedding. Who knew? the woman silently speculated. There might be two in the offing. She had a great deal of affection in her heart for both Tina and her son. They currently lived with her, and while she was content to let the situation continue indefinitely, she knew that wasn’t in the best interest of the girl. Tina needed to have someone in her life to love, someone who loved her back the way she should be loved.

From where she stood, that man could very well be Dr. Dan.

“I can respect that,” Miss Joan said to Olivia. The statement was followed by a broad wink which told the sheriff’s wife that while she might have gotten a few years on her now, beneath it all was still the heart of a lusty, raring-to-go young woman who enjoyed the more physical side of love just as much as she enjoyed the concept of love in general.

Maybe even a little more.

Olivia read between the lines and made an accurate assessment. “Never mind my sister,” she said to the diner owner. “I think we’re going to have to find you a man, Miss Joan.”

Rather than protest that she didn’t know what she was talking about, or silently waving away the notion, Miss Joan treated them both to another wide, and this time unabashedly lusty, grin.

“Well, if you find someone who can keep up with me, Olivia, you know where to bring him. My door’s always open.”

Rick laughed softly. Leaning into his wife, he whispered so that only Olivia could hear him. “My guess is that’s not the only thing that’s ope— Hey!” he cried in surprise as Olivia swatted at him to keep him from finishing his sentence.

“Hush,” Olivia chided, a warning look in her eyes.

It wasn’t that she was afraid the older woman would take offense. It was just that she didn’t want her going off on a bawdy tangent the way she knew Miss Joan was very capable of doing.

Out of hearing range because of the increasing din, Miss Joan laughed at Olivia’s quick movement to silence her husband.

She guessed at the reason behind Olivia’s actions. She’d come to know both sisters very well since they’d arrived in Forever.

“Whatever he was about to say, Livy, I’ve heard ten times worse. My second husband, Bill, flew on helicopter missions. He was a tail gunner in Vietnam during the war. They haven’t invented a cuss word that didn’t come out of Bill’s mouth at one time or another.” She paused a moment. “Come to think of it, Bill wasn’t all that different from my first husband, Ray.”

Putting her memories behind her, Miss Joan shifted her attention to the present and the reason that her diner was filled to overflowing.

“Well, it looks like everybody’s here who’s going to be here,” she decided, then announced to the sheriff and his wife, as well as to several people who could actually hear her without her resorting to a microphone, “That means it’s time to bring out the cake.”

“Cake?” Alma Sanchez, one of Rick’s other deputies piped up, coming closer to her boss and the diner owner. For a woman who had a continuing love affair with all manner of sweets, with pastries at the top of the list, Deputy Alma Sanchez was an exceedingly petite, trim woman. “Did someone say cake?”

“Of course I said cake,” Miss Joan underscored. “You can’t expect to welcome someone properly without having baked a cake in his honor.”

The diner owner’s hazel eyes darted back and forth, taking Rick into account and then zeroing in on Joe, another young boy she’d watched grow to manhood, fulfilling the promise he’d projected years ago. She had no children of her own, but viewed so many of the town’s younger citizens as her own.

Joe was standing a few feet away, talking to his fiancée. She needed to borrow him for a few minutes. “Rick, Joe,” she called, raising her voice, “I need a couple of men with strong backs.”

“Thinking of taking them back to your place, Joan?” Mac Tyler called out, laughing at the joke he thought he’d just made.

“Better them than you, Mac, that’s for sure,” Miss Joan fired back without missing a beat. “If that man’s ego was any bigger,” Miss Joan confided to Olivia in tones that were not as hushed as they could have been, “he wouldn’t be able to get his head through a single doorway.”

Mac Tyler had also been sniffing at her heels for the longest time and at this stage of her life, she still hadn’t made up her mind if she wanted to make something of it or not. She couldn’t decide if Tyler was worth the trouble or the effort.

“C’mon, boys,” Miss Joan gestured to the sheriff and his senior deputy, “I’ve got a cake I need you to bring out of the walk-in.” Glancing over her shoulder, she addressed her words to the people in the diner. “Nobody even think about making a move toward the door. I’m bringing out the cake.”

Appreciative murmurs greeted her declaration. Everyone knew that Miss Joan’s cakes were conceived in heaven and given an earthly form as an afterthought. Rick’s late grandmother, a woman not easily given to offering compliments, had once asked Miss Joan how she kept her cakes from floating away.

As Miss Joan left the room, leading the way for her two helpers, Dan turned to Tina and asked, “She always take charge like that?”

There was more than a little affection in her expression as Tina’s mouth curved. “Actually, this is one of Miss Joan’s more laid-back days,” she said with an amused laugh.

Dan hardly heard her answer. The din in the diner had swallowed them up without so much as a telltale trace. He was forced to watch her mouth again in order to hear what she’d said.

He didn’t really mind.

Chapter Four

“This is it?”

Disbelief permeated Dan’s every syllable. It was a struggle not to allow his mouth to drop open in sheer, stunned amazement.

What the hell did I just get myself into?

That was his initial reaction to the two-story, ram-shackle seventy-five-year-old building that was to serve as both his home and the medical clinic. The ground floor was devoted to a couple of exam rooms, an office he could barely stretch out in and a reception area. The second floor was where the last doctor had lived thirty years ago.

Joe had once again volunteered to be his guide and had brought him here, leading the way in his Jeep, after the welcoming party had wound down. When the deputy had come to a stop before this building, Dan had followed suit. He’d gotten out of his sedan in what felt like surreal slow motion. His eyes were riveted to the dark, inhospitable and, undoubtedly, rotting building.

Dan felt like someone trapped in a nightmare he could only hope would end quickly. Except that it showed no signs of ending any time soon. The building loomed before him like a refugee from a bad, grade B, 1950s horror movie. All that was needed were bats.

Joe shifted ever so slightly, picking up on the other man’s disbelief. In comparison to what he’d known, the old building was in good condition.

“Yeah, this is it,” Joe acknowledged.

Still stunned, Dan turned to the deputy. Maybe this was some kind of a hazing, a prank the town was playing on “the new guy.” How was he supposed to work with this? The place probably leaked when it rained. And if it looked like this on the outside, what did it look like inside? What kind of equipment would he find?

Would he find equipment?

“You’re kidding,” he said to Joe, in fervent hopes that the stoic man had a warped sense of humor.

Joe’s tone was low, soft. Soothing. “It doesn’t look like much now—”

Now, there was a world-class understatement. “Did it ever?” Dan asked, cutting in.

How the hell was he supposed to work in a place like this, much less live in it?

Granted, he was accustomed to places like his late uncle’s spacious house in the Hamptons or the Fifth Avenue apartment that he and Warren had shared during their residency at NYU. Maybe that might have made him a snob in some people’s eyes. But there had to be a happy medium between where he’d come from and this.

The place looked hardly worthy of the label Rundown Shack. He had strong suspicions a massive collection of termites holding hands kept the walls up. If they ever let go, the walls, not like at Jericho, would come tumbling down without any kind of a warning.

He recalled that Warren had seen photographs of the place. The diner woman, Miss Jane or Joan or some name that began with a J, had sent them to him. His brother had never showed the photos to him, but he’d been excited about “the possibilities.”

The only possibility Dan saw was if the house was knocked down and someone started from scratch. And even then, he wasn’t so sure.

How could Warren have willingly agreed to live in this house? In this town? There was dedication and then there was insanity.

“Yeah,” Joe answered his question about what the building had looked like once. “It did. And with a little work,” he maintained rather firmly, “it can look that way again.”

He’d obviously insulted the man’s sense of loyalty to his place of birth, Dan thought. And he hadn’t meant to, but, hell, hopeless was hopeless. And this was hopeless. “Define a little,” Dan muttered under his breath.

“Okay,” Joe allowed reluctantly, “maybe a lot of work. But compared to the place I grew up in, this house looks pretty decent.”

“You grew up in a homeless camp?” The quip was out before Dan could think better of it.

The solemn man was quiet for a long moment. But it was clear that Joe had taken no offense as he replied, “Almost.”

The deputy sounded so serious Dan instantly regretted the offhanded remark. He hadn’t wanted to be disparaging. People were saddled with poverty through no fault of their own. He’d never been, but he and Warren had been two of the lucky ones—at the time, he amended. Until Warren’s luck had run out.

He could feel his gut twisting.

He’d never been good at apologizing, but he gave it a shot. “Hey, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to—”

Joe held his hand up as if to push any further apologetic words away. “That’s okay. I grew up on the reservation. It’s not all that far from the other side of town,” Joe added in case the doctor was unaware that there was a reservation in the area.

What Joe didn’t bother touching on was any of his history, or the fact that he’d been orphaned at an early age and raised by a more or less disinterested committee of distant relatives, all of whom had felt he was someone else’s responsibility.

“Things turned out okay.” He turned to look at Dan. “And you might not think so now, but this will, too. Things have a habit of turning out around here,” he assured Dan.

Dan sighed, looking at the building again. He hadn’t come here for a vacation, he reminded himself. This was all part of the penance he felt he had to undertake.

He frowned, his eyes sweeping over the structure. No question he would have to find a better place to attend to the patients lining up to see him—and soon. The inside of that building was a breeding ground for every bacteria known—and unknown—to man.

What had Warren been thinking when he’d agreed to put down a bid on this place?

A bid.

Dan found the term humorous. A bid would indicate that some sort of competition to secure this pathetic house/office. Who in their right mind would want this place?

Warren. Maybe his brother had seen something here that he wasn’t seeing, Dan speculated. But then, Warren had always been the one to bring home strays and try to mend their broken limbs as well as their broken spirits. This place certainly qualified for that. If ever he’d seen anything broken, this house was it.

First thing tomorrow, he would get on the phone with-some local contractors to make this place inhabitable. Since he’d seen no sign of a hotel in the area, he supposed he would have to rough it for tonight.

He fervently hoped that there was at least running water in the place, but he wasn’t about to place any bets. Bracing himself, he walked up onto the wooden front porch. The moment he did, he heard the wood groan beneath his shoes. It continued to groan with each step he took.

Joe glanced down at the offending slats. “That might need fixing,” he suggested.

Dan deliberately looked down at the boards beneath his feet. “Good guess,” he cracked.

The front door was ajar, with just enough space between it and the doorjamb to allow a medium-size furry invader to slip in. The thought did little to warm Dan’s heart.

Hand on the doorknob, Dan tried it and found that neither the doorknob nor the door would budge.

“Here,” Joe offered, politely edging him out of the way and placing his own torso in front of the offending door. “You don’t want to risk hurting that shoulder of yours.”

“And you can?” Dan asked.

“Part of the job,” was all Joe said.

Anything else he might have said in response died away as both he and Dan became aware of the sound of vehicles approaching in the distance. Dan turned from the house to see several cars, Jeeps mostly, but there was a truck or two as well, coming closer. Was it starting already?

“They don’t give you much time to set up here, do they?” he asked the deputy.

Well, whatever their complaints were, unless it pertained to a heart attack or a gunshot wound, the good citizens of One-Horse Town were going to have to wait until he had a chance to settle in and get the medical office in some kind of working order. He had his medical bag with him but he had a feeling that he would need a lot more in his supply closet before he could consider the place up and running.

Joe made no attempt to answer him. Instead, the deputy left his side and walked up to the first vehicle. He shouted out several names, greeting the people who were now disembarking, spilling out onto the front yard like the inhabitants of a circus clown car.

And every single one of them, man, woman and child alike, carried tools.

Confused, Dan looked to Joe for an explanation, but the deputy had moved on and was now busy, talking to a slender, dark-haired young woman with a quick smile and green flashing eyes. Dan didn’t remember seeing her at the diner. Probably couldn’t wiggle her way in, he speculated. The place had been crowded beyond belief by the time he and Joe had left.

And now they were all here. Why they had come with tools, he couldn’t begin to fathom—unless they were looking to barter, trading an item they thought he might need or want in exchange for his medical services.

He was fairly certain he was right. It felt like that kind of a place. A throwback to a simpler time.

Dan made up his mind to address his patients en masse. It saved time. “I can’t see any of you until I’ve had a chance to sanitize the exam room.” Assuming that’s even possible. He might just be taking things for granted.

“That’s why we’re here, Doc,” the sheriff told him, making his way to the front of the gathering. “We thought an extra pair of hands—or seven—might just help that along as bit.”

Burning the building down to the ground and starting from scratch would help even more. But Dan thought it wise to keep that observation to himself.

Instead, he saw more vehicles approaching on the horizon. “Looks like more than just a couple of extra pairs of hands to me.”

The sheriff flashed a grin as he inclined his head in agreement. “Math was never my strong suit. C’mon,” he urged, “let’s see how bad it really is.”

One hand holding on to a rather massive toolbox, Rick placed another hand on Dan’s shoulder, acting as if they were old friends instead of two men who’d met only a couple of hours ago.

As the sheriff urged him into the house, with Joe and a man who’d introduced himself earlier as Mick Henley, the town mechanic, bringing up the rear, Dan saw yet another vehicle pull up in front of the house. Tina, the blonde he’d talked to at the diner, and the sheriff’s wife, Olivia, got out. Between them, the women were carrying a rather large, unwieldy cooler.

“Miss Joan thought you might need this,” Olivia said, addressing her words to her husband.

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