Dear Reader,

I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Harlequin Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.

But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.

I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Harlequin Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job, and my private life, so worth living.

Thank you for this tribute, Harlequin, and for putting up with me for thirty long years! Love to all of you.

Diana Palmer

DIANA PALMER

The prolific author of more than a hundred books, Diana Palmer got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi–New York Times bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.

Visit her website at www.DianaPalmer.com.

Coltrain’s Proposal
Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Darlene, Cindy and Melissa

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 1

The little boy’s leg was bleeding profusely. Dr. Louise Blakely knew exactly what to do, but it was difficult to get the right pressure on the cut so that the nicked artery would stop emptying onto the brown, dead December grass.

“It hurts!” the little boy, Matt, cried. “Ow!”

“We have to stop the bleeding,” she said reasonably. She smiled at him, her dark eyes twinkling in a face framed by thick, medium blond hair. “Maybe your mom could get you an ice cream after we’ve patched you up.” She glanced at the white-faced lady beside them, who nodded enthusiastically. “Okay?”

“Well…” He grimaced, holding his leg above where Lou was putting pressure to bear.

“Only a minute more,” she promised, looking around for the ambulance she’d asked a bystander to call. It was on the way. She could hear the siren. Even in a small town like Jacobsville, there was an efficient ambulance service. “You’re going to get to ride in a real ambulance,” she told the child. “You can tell your friends all about it on Monday at school!”

“Will I have to go back?” he asked, enthusiastic now. “Maybe I could stay in the hospital for a whole week?”

“I really think the emergency room is as far as you’re going to get this time.” Lou chuckled. “Now pay attention while they’re loading you up, so that you can remember everything!”

“I sure will!” he said.

She stood up as the ambulance pulled alongside the police car and two attendants jumped out. They started loading the boy onto a stretcher. Lou had a brief word with the female EMT and described the boy’s injuries and gave instructions. She was on staff at the local hospital where he would be taken, and she planned to follow the ambulance in her own car.

The police officer who’d been citing the reckless driver for hitting the small boy on the bicycle came over to talk to Lou. “Good thing you were having lunch in the café,” he remarked with a grin. “That was a bad cut.”

“He’ll be okay,” Lou said as she closed her medical bag. She always had it in the car when she left the office, and this time it had paid off.

“You’re Dr. Coltrain’s partner, aren’t you?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes.” She didn’t add anything to that. The expression on the officer’s face said enough. Most people around Jacobsville knew that Dr. Coltrain had as little use for his partner as he had for alcohol. He’d made it all too evident in the months she’d been sharing his practice.

“He’s a good man,” the officer added. “Saved my wife when her lung collapsed.” He smiled at the memory. “Nothing shakes him up. Nor you, either, judging by what I just saw. You’re a good hand in an emergency.”

“Thanks.” She gave him a brief smile and went to her small gray Ford to follow the ambulance to the hospital.

The emergency room was full, as usual. It was Saturday and accidents always doubled on weekends. She nodded to a couple of her patients that she recognized, and she kept walking, right behind the trolley that was taking young Matt to a treatment room.

Dr. Coltrain was on his way back from surgery. They met in the hall. The green surgical uniform looked sloppy on some of the surgeons, but not on Coltrain. Despite the cap that hid most of his thick red hair, he looked elegant and formidable.

“Why are you here on Saturday? I’m supposed to be doing rounds today for both of us,” he asked sharply.

Here he goes again, practicing Coltrain’s First Law…jump to conclusions, she thought. She didn’t grin, but she felt like it.

“I wound up at a car accident scene,” she began.

“The hospital pays EMTs to work wrecks,” he continued, glaring at her while hospital personnel came and went around them.

“I did not go out to—” she began hotly.

“Don’t let this happen again, or I’ll have a word with Wright, and you’ll be taken off staff here. Is that clear?” he added coldly. Wright was the hospital administrator and Coltrain was medical chief of staff. He had the authority to carry out the threat.

“Will you listen?” she asked irritably. “I didn’t go out with the ambulance…!”

“Doctor, are you coming?” one of the EMTs called to her.

Coltrain glanced toward the EMT and then back at Louise, irritably jerking off his cap and mask. His pale blue eyes were as intimidating as his stance. “If your social life is this stale, Doctor, perhaps you need to consider a move,” he added with biting sarcasm.

She opened her mouth to reply, but he was already walking away. She threw up her hands furiously. She couldn’t ever get a word in, because he kept talking, or interrupted her, and then stormed off without giving her a chance to reply. It was useless to argue with him, anyway. No matter what she said or did, she was always in the wrong.

“One day you’ll break something,” she told his retreating back. “And I’ll put you in a body cast, so help me God!”

A passing nurse patted her on the shoulder. “There, there, Doctor, you’re doing it again.”

She ground her teeth together. It was a standing joke in the hospital staff that Louise Blakely ended up talking to herself every time she argued with Dr. Coltrain. That meant that she talked to herself almost constantly. Presumably he heard her from time to time, but he never gave a single indication that he had.

With a furious groan deep in her throat, she turned down the hall to join the EMT.

It took an hour to see to the boy, who had more than one cut that needed stitches. His mother was going to have to buy him a lot of ice cream to make up for the pain, Lou thought, and she’d been wrong about another thing, too—he did have to stay overnight in the hospital. But that would only give him status among his peers, she thought, and left him smiling with a cautionary word about the proper way to ride a bicycle in town.

“No need to worry about that,” his mother said firmly. “He won’t be riding his bike across city streets anymore!”

She nodded and left the emergency room, her bag in hand. She looked more like a teenager on holiday than a doctor, she mused, in her blue jeans and T-shirt and sneakers. She’d pulled her long blond hair up into its habitual bun and she wore no makeup to enhance her full mouth or her deep brown eyes. She had no man to impress, except the one she loved, and he wouldn’t notice if she wore tar and feathers to the office they shared. “Copper” Coltrain had no interest in Lou Blakely, except as an efficient co-worker. Not that he ever acknowledged her efficiency; instead he found fault with her constantly. She wondered often why he ever agreed to work with her in the first place, when he couldn’t seem to stand the sight of her. She wondered, too, why she kept hanging on where she wasn’t wanted. The hunger her poor heart felt for him was her only excuse. And one day, even that wouldn’t be enough.

Dr. Drew Morris, the only friend she had on staff, came down the hall toward her. Like Coltrain, he’d been operating, because he was wearing the same familiar green surgical clothing. But where Coltrain did chest surgery, Drew’s talents were limited to tonsils, adenoids, appendices and other minor surgeries. His speciality was pediatrics. Coltrain’s was chest and lungs, and many of his patients were elderly.

“What are you doing here? It’s too early or too late for rounds, depending on your schedule,” he added with a grin. “Besides, I thought Copper was doing them today.”

Copper, indeed. Only a handful of people were privileged to call Dr. Coltrain by that nickname, and she wasn’t numbered among them.

She grimaced at him. He was about her height, although she was tall, and he had dark hair and eyes and was a little overweight. He was the one who’d phoned her at the Austin hospital where she was working just after her parents’ deaths, and he’d told her about the interviews Coltrain was holding for a partner. She’d jumped at the chance for a new start, in the hometown where her mother and father had both been born. And amazingly, in light of his ongoing animosity toward her, Coltrain had asked her to join him after a ten-minute interview.

“There was an accident in front of the café,” she said. “I was having lunch there. I haven’t been to the grocery store yet,” she added with a grimace. “I hate shopping.”

“Who doesn’t?” He smiled. “Doing okay?”

She shrugged. “As usual.”

He stuck his hands on his hips and shook his head. “It’s my fault. I thought it would get better, but it hasn’t, has it? It’s been almost a year, and he still suffers you.”

She winced. She didn’t quite avert her face fast enough to hide it.

“You poor kid,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. I suppose I was too enthusiastic about getting you here. I thought you needed a change, after…well, after your parents’ deaths. This looked like a good opportunity. Copper’s one of the best surgeons I’ve ever known, and you’re a skilled family practitioner. It seemed a good match of talent, and you’ve taken a load off him in his regular practice so that he could specialize in the surgery he’s so skilled at.” He sighed. “How wrong can a man be?”

“I signed a contract for one year,” she reminded him. “It’s almost up.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll go back to Austin.”

“You could work the E.R.,” he teased. It was a standing joke between them. The hospital had to contract out the emergency room staff, because none of the local doctors wanted to do it. The job was so demanding that one young resident had walked out in the middle of the unnecessary examination of a known hypochondriac at two in the morning and never came back.

Lou smiled, remembering that. “No, thanks. I like private practice, but I can’t afford to set up and equip an office of my own just yet. I’ll go back to the drawing board. There’s bound to be a practice somewhere in Texas.”

“You’re fit for this one,” he said shortly.

“Not to hear my partner tell it,” she said curtly. “I’m never right, didn’t you know?” She let out a long breath. “Anyway, I’m in a rut, Drew. I need a change.”

“Maybe you do, at that.” He pursed his lips and smiled. “What you really need is a good social life. I’ll be in touch.”

She watched him walk away with grave misgivings. She hoped that he didn’t mean what it sounded like he meant. She wanted nothing to do with Drew in a romantic way, although she did like him. He was a kind man, a widower who’d been in love with his wife and was still, after five years, getting over her. Drew was a native of Jacobsville, and knew Lou’s parents. He’d been very fond of her late mother. He’d met up with them again in Austin—that’s where Lou had met him.

Lou decided not to take Drew’s teasing seriously because she knew about his devotion to his wife’s memory. But he’d looked very solemn when he’d remarked that her social life needed uplifting.

She was probably imagining things, she told herself. She started out to the parking lot and met Dr. Coltrain, dressed in an expensive gray vested suit, bent on the same destination. She ground her teeth together and slowed her pace, but she still reached the doors at the same time he did.

He spared her a cold glance. “You look unprofessional,” he said curtly. “At least have the grace to dress decently if you’re going to cruise around with the ambulance service.”

She stopped and looked up at him without expression. “I wasn’t cruising anywhere. I don’t have a boat, so how could I cruise?”

He just looked at her. “They don’t need any new EMTs…”

“You shut up!” she snapped, surprising him speechless. “Now you listen to me for a change, and don’t interrupt!” she added, holding up her hand when his thin lips parted. “There was an accident in town. I was in the café, so I gave assistance. I don’t need to hang out with the ambulance crew for kicks, Doctor! And how I dress on my days off is none of your—” she almost turned blue biting back the curse “—business, Doctor!”

He was over his shock. His hand shot out and caught the wrist of her free hand, the one that wasn’t holding her black medical bag, and jerked. She caught her breath at the shock of his touch and squirmed, wrestling out of his grip. The muted violence of it brought back protective instincts that she’d almost forgotten. She stood very still, holding her breath, her eyes the size of saucers as she looked at him and waited for that hand to tighten and twist…

But it didn’t. He, unlike her late father, never seemed to lose control. He released her abruptly. His blue eyes narrowed. “Cold as ice, aren’t you?” he drawled mockingly. “You’d freeze any normal man to death. Is that why you never married, Doctor?”

It was the most personal thing he’d ever said to her, and one of the most insulting.

“You just think what you like,” she said.

“You might be surprised at what I think,” he replied. He looked at the hand he’d touched her with and laughed deep in his throat. “Frostbitten,” he pronounced. “No wonder Drew Morris doesn’t take you out. He’d need a blowtorch, wouldn’t he?” he added with a meaningful, unblinking blue stare.

“Maybe so, but you’d need a grenade launcher,” she retorted without thinking.

He lifted an eyebrow and gave her a look that held mingled contempt and distaste. “You’d be lucky.”

The remark was painful, but she didn’t let him see that. Her own eyebrows lifted. “Really?” She laughed and walked off to her car, happy to have seen him stiffen. She walked past his Mercedes without even a glance. Take that, she thought furiously. She didn’t care what he thought about her, she told herself. She spent most of her free time telling herself that. But she did care about him, far too much. That was the whole problem.

He thought she was cold, but she wasn’t. It was quite the reverse where he was concerned. She always jerked away when he came too close, when he touched her infrequently. It wasn’t because she found him repulsive but because his touch excited her so much. She trembled when he was too close, her breathing changed. She couldn’t control her shaky legs or her shaky voice. The only solution had been to distance herself physically from him, and that was what she’d done.

There were other reasons, too, why she avoided physical involvement. They were none of his business, or anyone else’s. She did her job and avoided trouble as much as possible. But just lately, her job was becoming an ordeal.

She drove home to the small dilapidated white house on the outskirts of town. It was in a quiet neighborhood that was just beginning to go downhill. The rent was cheap. She’d spent weekends painting the walls and adding bits and pieces to the house’s drab interior. She had it all but furnished now, and it reflected her own quiet personality. But there were other dimensions to the room, like the crazy cat sculpture on the mantel and the colorful serapes on the chairs, and the Indian pottery and exotic musical instruments on the bookshelf. The paintings were her own, disturbingly violent ones with reds and blacks and whites in dramatic chaos. A visitor would have found the combinations of flowers amid those paintings confusing. But, then, she’d never had a visitor. She kept to herself.

Coltrain did, too, as a rule. He had visitors to his ranch from time to time, but his invitations even when they included the medical staff invariably excluded Louise. The omission had caused gossip, which no one had been brave enough to question to his face. Louise didn’t care if he never invited her to his home. After all, she never invited him to hers.

Secretly she suspected that he was grieving for Jane Parker, his old flame who’d just recently married Todd Burke. Jane was blond and blue-eyed and beautiful, a former rodeo star with a warm heart and a gentle personality.

Lou often wondered why he’d ever agreed to work with someone he disliked so much, and on such short acquaintance. He and Dr. Drew Morris were friends, and she’d tried to question Drew about her sudden acceptance, but Drew was a clam. He always changed the subject.

Drew had known her parents in Jacobsville and he had been a student of her father’s at the Austin teaching hospital where he’d interned. He’d become an ally of her mother during some really tough times, but he didn’t like Lou’s father. He knew too much about his home life, and how Lou and her mother were treated.

There had been one whisper of gossip at the Jacobsville hospital when she’d first gone there on cases. She’d heard one of the senior nurses remark that it must disturb “him” to have Dr. Blakely’s daughter practicing at this hospital and thank God she didn’t do surgery. Lou had wanted to question the nurse, but she’d made herself scarce after that and eventually had retired.

Louise had never found out who “he” was or what was disturbing about having another Blakely practice at the Jacobsville hospital. But she did begin to realize that her father had a past here.

“What did my father do at this hospital, Drew?” she’d asked him one day suddenly, while they were doing rounds at the hospital.

He’d seemed taken aback. “He was a surgeon on staff, just as I am,” he said after a hesitation.

“He left here under a cloud, didn’t he?” she persisted.

He shook his head. “There was no scandal, no cloud on his reputation. He was a good surgeon and well respected, right until the end. You know that. Even if he was less than admirable as a husband and father, he was an exceptional surgeon.”

“Then why the whispers about him when I first came here?”

“It was nothing to do with his skill as a surgeon,” he replied quietly. “It’s nothing that really even concerns you, except in a roundabout way.”

“But what…?”

They’d been interrupted and he’d looked relieved. She hadn’t asked again. But she wondered more and more. Perhaps it had affected Dr. Coltrain in some way and that was why he disliked Lou. But wouldn’t he have mentioned it in a whole year?

She didn’t ever expect to understand the so-controlled Dr. Coltrain or his venomous attitude toward her. He’d been much more cordial when she first became his partner. But about the time she realized that she was in love with him, he became icy cold and antagonistic. He’d been that way ever since, raising eyebrows everywhere.

The remark he’d made this morning about her coldness was an old one. She’d jerked back from him at a Christmas party, soon after she’d come to work in his office in Jacobsville, to avoid a kiss under the mistletoe. She could hardly have admitted that even then the thought of his hard, thin mouth on hers made her knees threaten to buckle. Her attraction to him had been explosive and immediate, a frightening experience to a woman whose whole life had been wrapped around academic excellence and night upon night of exhaustive studying. She had no social life at all—even in high school. It had been the one thing that kept her father’s vicious sarcasm and brutality at bay, as long as she made good grades and stayed on the dean’s list.

Outside achievements had been the magic key that kept the balance in her dysfunctional family. She studied and won awards and scholarships and praise, and her father basked in it. She thought that he’d never felt much for her, except pride in her ability to excel. He was a cruel man and grew crueler as his addiction climbed year after year to new heights. Drugs had caused the plane crash. Her mother had died with him. God knew, that was fitting, because she’d loved him to the point of blindness, overlooking his brutality, his addiction, his cruelty in the name of fidelity.

Lou wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the chill of fear. She’d never marry. Any woman could wake up in a relationship that damaging. All she had to do was fall in love, lose control, give in to a man’s dominance. Even the best man could become a predator if he sensed vulnerability in a woman. So she would never be vulnerable, she assured herself. She would never be at a man’s mercy as her mother had been.

But Copper Coltrain made her vulnerable, and that was why she avoided any physical contact with him. She couldn’t give in to the feelings he roused in her, for fear of becoming a victim. Loneliness might be a disease, but it was certainly a more manageable one than love.

The ringing of the telephone caught her attention.

“Dr. Blakely?” Brenda, her office nurse, queried. “Sorry to bother you at home, but Dr. Coltrain said there’s been a wreck on the north end of town and they’ll be bringing the victims to the emergency room. Since he’s on call, you’ll have to cover the two-hour Saturday clinic at the office.”

“I’ll be right over,” she promised, wasting no more time in conversation.

The clinic was almost deserted. There was a football game at the local high school that night, and it was sunny and unseasonably warm outside for early December. It didn’t really surprise Lou that she only needed to see a handful of patients.

“Poor Dr. Coltrain,” Brenda said with a sigh as they finished the last case and closed up the office. “I’ll bet he won’t be in until midnight.”

“It’s a good thing he isn’t married,” Lou remarked. “He’d have no home life at all, as hard as he works.”

Brenda glanced at her, but with a kind smile. “That is true. But he should be thinking about it. He’s in his thirties now, and time is passing him by.” She turned the key in the lock. “Pity about Miss Parker marrying that Burke man, isn’t it? Dr. Coltrain was sweet on her for so many years. I always thought—I guess most people here did—that they were made for each other. But she was never more than friendly. If you saw them together, it was obvious that she didn’t feel what he did.”

In other words, Dr. Coltrain had felt a long and unrequited love for the lovely blond former rodeo cowgirl, Jane Parker. That much, Lou had learned from gossip. It must have hurt him very badly when she married someone else.

“What a pity that we can’t love to order,” Lou remarked quietly, thinking how much she’d give to be unscarred and find Dr. Coltrain as helplessly drawn to her as she was to him. That was the stuff of fantasy, however.

“Wasn’t it surprising about Ted Regan and Coreen Tarleton, though?” Brenda added with a chuckle.

“Indeed it was,” Lou agreed, smiling as she remembered having Ted for a patient. “She was shaking all over when she got him to me with that gored arm. He was cool. Nothing shakes Ted. But Coreen was as white as milk.”

“I thought they were already married,” Brenda groaned. “Well, I was new to the area and I didn’t know them. I do now,” she added, laughing. “I pass them at least once a week on their way to the obstetrician’s office. She’s due any day.”

“She’ll be a good mother, and Ted will certainly be a good father. Their children will have a happy life.”

Brenda caught the faint bitterness in the words and glanced at Lou, but the other woman was already calling her goodbyes and walking away.

She went home and spent the rest of the weekend buried in medical journals and the latest research on the new strain of bacteria that had, researchers surmised, mutated from a deadly scarlet fever bacterium that had caused many deaths at the turn of the century.

Chapter 2

Monday morning brought a variety of new cases, and Louise found herself stuck with the most routine of them, as usual. She and Coltrain were supposed to be partners, but when he wasn’t operating, he got the interesting, challenging illnesses. Louise got fractured ribs and colds.

He’d been stiff with her this morning, probably because he was still fuming over the argument they’d had about his mistaken idea of her weekend activities. Accusing her of lollygagging with the EMTs for excitement; really!

She watched his white-coated back disappear into an examination room down the hall in their small building and sighed half-angrily as she went back to check an X-ray in the files. The very worst thing about unrequited love, she thought miserably, was that it fed on itself. The more her partner in the medical practice ignored and antagonized her, the harder she had to fight her dreams about him. She didn’t want to get married; she didn’t even want to get involved. But he made her hungry.

He’d spent a lot of time with Jane Parker until she married that Burke man, and Lou had long ago given up hope that he would ever notice her in the same way he always noticed Jane. The two of them had grown up together, though, whereas Lou had only been in partnership with him for a year. She was a native of Austin, not Jacobsville. Small towns were like extended families. Everybody knew each other, and some families had been friends for more than one generation. Lou was a true outsider here, even though she was a native Texan. Perhaps that was one of many reasons that Dr. Coltrain found her so forgettable.

She wasn’t bad looking. She had long, thick blond hair and big brown eyes and a creamy, blemish-free complexion. She was tall and willowy, but still shorter than her colleague. She lacked his fiery temper and his authoritarian demeanor. He was tall and whipcord lean, with flaming red hair and blue eyes and a dark tan from working on his small ranch when he wasn’t treating patients. That tan was odd in a redhead, although he did have a smattering of freckles over his nose and the backs of his big hands. She’d often wondered if the freckles went any farther, but she had yet to see him without his professional white coat over his very formal suit. He wasn’t much on casual dressing at work. At home, she was sure that he dressed less formally.

That was something Lou would probably never know. She’d never been invited to his home, despite the fact that most of the medical staff at the local hospital had. Lou was automatically excluded from any social gathering that he coordinated.

Other people had commented on his less than friendly behavior toward her. It puzzled them, and it puzzled her, because she hadn’t become his partner in any under-handed way. He had known from the day of her application that she was female, so it couldn’t be that. Perhaps, she thought wistfully, he was one of those old-line dominating sort of men who thought women had no place in medicine. But he’d been instrumental in getting women into positions of authority at the hospital, so that theory wasn’t applicable, either. The bottom line was that he simply did not like Louise Blakely, medical degree or no medical degree, and she’d never known why.

She really should ask Drew Morris why, she told herself with determination. It had been Drew, a surgeon and friend of her family, who’d sent word about the opening in Coltrain’s practice. He’d wanted to help Lou get a job near him, so that he could give her some moral support in the terrible days following the deaths of her parents. She, in turn, had liked the idea of being in practice in a small town, one where she knew at least one doctor on the staff of the hospital. Despite growing up in Austin, it was still a big city and she was lonely. She was twenty-eight, a loner whose whole life had been medicine. She’d made sure that her infrequent dates never touched her heart, and she was innocent in an age when innocence was automatically looked on with disdain or suspicion.

Her nurse stuck her head in the doorway. “There’s a call for you. Dr. Morris is on line two.”

“Thanks, Brenda.”

She picked up the receiver absently, her finger poised over the designated line. But when she pressed it, before she could say a word, the sentence she’d intercepted accidentally blared in her ear in a familiar deep voice.

“…told you I wouldn’t have hired her in the first place, if I had known who she was related to. I did you a favor, never realizing she was Blakely’s daughter. You can’t imagine that I’ll ever forgive her father for what he did to the girl I loved, do you? She’s been a constant reminder, a constant torment!”

“That’s harsh, Copper,” Drew began.

“It’s how I feel. She’s nothing but a burden here. But to answer your question, hell no, you’re not stepping on my toes if you ask her out on a date! I find Louise Blakely repulsive and repugnant, and an automaton with no attractions whatsoever. Take her with my blessing. I’d give real money if she’d get out of my practice and out of my life, and the sooner the better!” There was a click and the line, obviously open, was waiting for her.

She clicked the receiver to announce her presence and said, as calmly as she could, “Dr. Lou Blakely.”

“Lou! It’s Drew Morris,” came the reply. “I hope I’m not catching you at a bad moment?”

“No.” She cleared her throat and fought to control her scattered emotions. “No, not at all. What can I do for you?”

“There’s a dinner at the Rotary Club Thursday. How about going with me?”

She and Drew occasionally went out together, in a friendly but not romantic way. She would have refused, but what Coltrain had said made her mad. “Yes, I would like to, thanks,” she said.

Drew laughed softly. “Great! I’ll pick you up at six on Thursday, then.”

“See you then.”

She hung up, checked the X-ray again meticulously, and put it away in its file. Brenda ordinarily pulled the X-rays for her, but it was Monday and, as usual, they were overflowing with patients who’d saved their weekend complaints for office hours.

She went back to her patient, her color a little high, but no disturbance visible in her expression.

She finished her quota of patients and then went into her small office. Mechanically she picked up a sheet of letterhead paper, with Dr. Coltrain’s name on one side and hers on the other. Irrelevantly, she thought that the stationery would have to be replaced now.

She typed out a neat resignation letter, put it in an envelope and went to place it on Dr. Coltrain’s desk. It was lunchtime and he’d already left the building. He made sure he always did, probably to insure that he didn’t risk having Lou invite herself to eat with him.

Brenda scowled as her boss started absently toward the back door. “Shouldn’t you take off your coat first?” she asked hesitantly.

Lou did, without a word, replaced it in her office, whipped her leather fanny pack around her waist and left the building.

It would have been nice if she’d had someone to talk to, she thought wistfully, about this latest crisis. She sat alone in the local café, drinking black coffee and picking at a small salad. She didn’t mingle well with people. When she wasn’t working, she was quiet and shy, and she kept to herself. It was difficult for strangers to approach her, but she didn’t realize that. She stared into her coffee and remembered every word Coltrain had said to Drew Morris about her. He hated her. He couldn’t possibly have made it clearer. She was repugnant, he’d said.

Well, perhaps she was. Her father had told her so, often enough, when he was alive. He and her mother were from Jacobsville but hadn’t lived in the area for years. He had never spoken of his past. Not that he spoke to Lou often, anyway, except to berate her grades and tell her that she’d never measure up.

“Excuse me?”

She looked up. The waitress was staring at her. “Yes?” she asked coolly.

“I don’t mean to pry, but are you all right?”

The question surprised Lou, and touched her. She managed a faint smile through her misery. “Yes. It’s been a…long morning. I’m not really hungry.”

“Okay.” The waitress smiled again, reassuringly, and went away.

Just as Lou was finishing her coffee, Coltrain came in the front door. He was wearing the elegant gray suit that looked so good on him, and carrying a silver belly Stetson by the brim. He looked furiously angry as his pale eyes scanned the room and finally spotted Lou, sitting all alone.

He never hesitated, she thought, watching him walk purposefully toward her. There must be an emergency…

He slammed the opened envelope down on the table in front of her. “What the hell do you mean by that?” he demanded in a dangerously quiet tone.

She raised her dark, cold eyes to his. “I’m leaving,” she explained and averted her gaze.

“I know that! I want to know why!”

She looked around. The café was almost empty, but the waitress and a local cowboy at the counter were glancing at them curiously.

Her chin came up. “I’d rather not discuss my private business in public, if you don’t mind,” she said stiffly.

His jaw clenched, and his eyes grew glittery. He stood back to allow her to get up. He waited while she paid for her salad and coffee and then followed her out to where her small gray Ford was parked.

Her heart raced when he caught her by the arm before she could get her key out of her jeans pocket. He jerked her around, not roughly, and walked her over to Jacobsville’s small town square, to a secluded bench in a grove of live oak and willow trees. Because it was barely December, there were no leaves on the trees and it was cool, despite her nervous perspiration. She tried to throw off his hand, to no avail.

He only loosened his grip on her when she sat down on a park bench. He remained standing, propping his boot on the bench beside her, leaning one long arm over his knee to study her. “This is private enough,” he said shortly. “Why are you leaving?”

“I signed a contract to work with you for one year. It’s almost up, anyway,” she said icily. “I want out. I want to go home.”

“You don’t have anyone left in Austin,” he said, surprising her.

“I have friends,” she began.

“You don’t have those, either. You don’t have friends at all, unless you count Drew Morris,” he said flatly.

Her fingers clenched around her car keys. She looked at them, biting into the flesh even though not a speck of emotion showed on her placid features.

His eyes followed hers to her lap and something moved in his face. There was an expression there that puzzled her. He reached down and opened her rigid hand, frowning when he saw the red marks the keys had made in her palm.

She jerked her fingers away from him.

He seemed disconcerted for a few seconds. He stared at her without speaking and she felt her heart beating wildly against her ribs. She hated being helpless.

He moved back, watching her relax. He took another step and saw her release the breath she’d been holding. Every trace of anger left him.

“It takes time for a partnership to work,” he said abruptly. “You’ve only given this one a year.”

“That’s right,” she said tonelessly. “I’ve given it a year.”

The emphasis she placed on the first word caught his attention. His blue eyes narrowed. “You sound as if you don’t think I’ve given it any time at all.”

She nodded. Her eyes met his. “You didn’t want me in the practice. I suspected it from the beginning, but it wasn’t until I heard what you told Drew on the phone this morning that—”

His eyes flashed oddly. “You heard what I said?” he asked huskily. “You heard…all of it!” he exclaimed.

Her lips trembled just faintly. “Yes,” she said.

He was remembering what he’d told Drew Morris in a characteristic outburst of bad temper. He often said things in heat that he regretted later, but this he regretted most of all. He’d never credited his cool, unflappable partner with any emotions at all. She’d backed away from him figuratively and physically since the first day she’d worked at the clinic. Her physical withdrawal had maddened him, although he’d always assumed she was frigid.

But in the past five minutes, he’d learned disturbing things about her without a word being spoken. He’d hurt her. He didn’t realize she’d cared that much about his opinion. Hell, he’d been furious because he’d just had to diagnose leukemia in a sweet little boy of four. It had hurt him to do that, and he’d lashed out at Morris over Lou in frustration at his own helplessness. But he’d had no idea that she’d overheard his vicious remarks. She was going to leave and it was no less than he deserved. He was genuinely sorry. She wasn’t going to believe that, though. He could tell by her mutinous expression, in her clenched hands, in the tight set of her mouth.

“You did Drew a favor and asked me to join you, probably over some other doctor you really wanted,” she said with a forced smile. “Well, no harm done. Perhaps you can get him back when I leave.”

“Wait a minute,” he began shortly.

She held up a hand. “Let’s not argue about it,” she said, sick at knowing his opinion of her, his real opinion. “I’m tired of fighting you to practice medicine here. I haven’t done the first thing right, according to you. I’m a burden. Well, I just want out. I’ll go on working until you can replace me.” She stood up.

His hand tightened on the brim of his hat. He was losing this battle. He didn’t know how to pull his irons out of the fire.

“I had to tell the Dawes that their son has leukemia,” he said, hating the need to explain his bad temper. “I say things I don’t mean sometimes.”

“We both know that you meant what you said about me,” she said flatly. Her eyes met his levelly. “You’ve hated me from almost the first day we worked together. Most of the time, you can’t even be bothered to be civil to me. I didn’t know that you had a grudge against me from the outset…”

She hadn’t thought about that until she said it, but there was a subtle change in his expression, a faint distaste that her mind locked on.

“So you heard that, too.” His jaw clenched on words he didn’t want to say. But maybe it was as well to say them. He’d lived a lie for the past year.

“Yes.” She gripped the wrought-iron frame of the park bench hard. “What happened? Did my father cause someone to die?”

His jaw tautened. He didn’t like saying this. “The girl I wanted to marry got pregnant by him. He performed a secret abortion and she was going to marry me anyway.” He laughed icily. “A fling, he called it. But the medical authority had other ideas, and they invited him to resign.”

Lou’s fingers went white on the cold wrought iron. Had her mother known? What had happened to the girl afterward?

“Only a handful of people knew,” Coltrain said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “I doubt that your mother did. She seemed very nice—hardly a fit match for a man like that.”

“And the girl?” she asked levelly.

“She left town. Eventually she married.” He rammed his hands into his pockets and glared at her. “If you want the whole truth, Drew felt sorry for you when your parents died so tragically. He knew I was looking for a partner, and he recommended you so highly that I asked you. I didn’t connect the name at first,” he added on a mocking note. “Ironic, isn’t it, that I’d choose as a partner the daughter of a man I hated until the day he died.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked irritably. “I would have resigned!”

“You were in no fit state to be told anything,” he replied with reluctant memories of her tragic face when she’d arrived. His hands clenched in his pockets. “Besides, you’d signed a one-year contract. The only way out was if you resigned.”

It all made sense immediately. She was too intelligent not to understand why he’d been so antagonistic. “I see,” she breathed. “But I didn’t resign.”

“You were made of stronger stuff than I imagined,” he agreed. “You wouldn’t back down an inch. No matter how rough it got, you threw my own bad temper back at me.” He rubbed his fingers absently over the car keys in his pocket while he studied her. “It’s been a long time since anyone around here stood up to me like that,” he added reluctantly.

She knew that without being told. He was a holy terror. Even grown men around Jacobsville gave him a wide berth when he lost his legendary temper. But Lou never had. She stood right up to him. She wasn’t fiery by nature, but her father had been viciously cruel to her. She’d learned early not to show fear or back down, because it only made him worse. The same rule seemed to apply to Coltrain. A weaker personality wouldn’t have lasted in his office one week, much less one year, male or female.

She knew now that Drew Morris had been doing what he thought was a good deed. Perhaps he’d thought it wouldn’t matter to Coltrain after such a long time to have a Blakely working for him. But he’d obviously underestimated the man. Lou would have realized at once, on the shortest acquaintance, that Coltrain didn’t forgive people.

He stared at her unblinkingly. “A year. A whole year, being reminded every day I took a breath what your father cost me. There were times when I’d have done anything to make you leave. Just the sight of you was painful.” He smiled wearily. “I think I hated you, at first.”

That was the last straw. She’d loved him, against her will and all her judgment, and he was telling her that all he saw when he looked at her was an ice woman whose father had betrayed him with the woman he loved. He hated her.

It was too much all at once. Lou had always had impeccable control over her emotions. It had been dangerous to let her father know that he was hurting her, because he enjoyed hurting her. And now here was the one man she’d ever loved telling her that he hated her because of her father.

What a surprise it would be for him to learn that her father, at the last, had been little more than a high-class drug addict, stealing narcotics from the hospital where he worked in Austin to support his growing habit. He’d been as high as a kite on narcotics, in fact, when the plane he was piloting went down, killing himself and his wife.

Tears swelled her eyelids. Not a sound passed her lips as they overflowed in two hot streaks down her pale cheeks.

He caught his breath. He’d seen her tired, impassive, worn-out, fighting mad, and even frustrated. But he’d never seen her cry. His lean hand shot out and touched the track of tears down one cheek, as if he had to touch them to make sure they were real.

She jerked back from him, laughing tearfully. “So that was why you were so horrible to me.” She choked out the words. “Drew never said a word…no wonder you suffered me! And I was silly enough to dream…!” The laughter was harsher now as she dashed away the tears, staring at him with eyes full of pain and loss. “What a fool I’ve been,” she whispered poignantly. “What a silly fool!”

She turned and walked away from him, gripping the car keys in her hand. The sight of her back was as eloquently telling as the words that haunted him. She’d dreamed…what?

For the next few days, Lou was polite and remote and as courteous as any stranger toward her partner. But something had altered in their relationship. He was aware of a subtle difference in her attitude toward him, in a distancing of herself that was new. Her eyes had always followed him, and he’d been aware of it at some subconscious level. Perhaps he’d been aware of more than covert glances, too. But Lou no longer watched him or went out of her way to seek him out. If she had questions, she wrote them down and left them for him on his desk. If there were messages to be passed on, she left them with Brenda.

The one time she did seek him out was Thursday afternoon as they closed up.

“Have you worked out an advertisement for someone to replace me?” she asked him politely.

He watched her calm dark eyes curiously. “Are you in such a hurry to leave?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said bluntly. “I’d like to leave after the Christmas holidays.” She turned and would have gone out the door, but his hand caught the sleeve of her white jacket. She slung it off and backed away. “At the first of the year.”

He glared at her, hating the instinctive withdrawal that came whenever he touched her. “You’re a good doctor,” he said flatly. “You’ve earned your place here.”

High praise for a man with his grudges. She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes wounded. “But you hate me, don’t you? I heard what you said to Drew, that every time you looked at me you remembered what my father had done and hated me all over again.”

He let go of her sleeve, frowning. He couldn’t find an answer.

“Well, don’t sweat it, Doctor,” she told him. “I’ll be gone in a month and you can find someone you like to work with you.”

She laughed curtly and walked out of the office.

She dressed sedately that evening for the Rotary Club dinner, in a neat off-white suit with a pink blouse. But she left her blond hair long around her shoulders for once, and used a light dusting of makeup. She didn’t spend much time looking in the mirror. Her appearance had long ago ceased to matter to her.

Drew was surprised by it, though, and curious. She looked strangely vulnerable. But when he tried to hold her hand, she drew away from him. He’d wanted to ask her for a long time if there were things in her past that she might like to share with someone. But Louise was an unknown quantity, and she could easily shy away. He couldn’t risk losing her altogether.

Drew held her arm as they entered the hall, and Lou was disconcerted to find Dr. Coltrain there. He almost never attended social functions unless Jane Parker was in attendance. But a quick glance around the room ascertained that Jane wasn’t around. She wondered if the doctor had brought a date. It didn’t take long to have that question answered, as a pretty young brunette came up beside him and clung to his arm as if it was the ticket to heaven.

Coltrain wasn’t looking at her, though. His pale, narrow eyes had lanced over Lou and he was watching her closely. He hadn’t seen her hair down in the year they’d worked together. She seemed more approachable tonight than he’d ever noticed, but she was Drew’s date. Probably Drew’s woman, too, he thought bitterly, despite her protests and reserve.

But trying to picture Lou in Drew’s bed was more difficult than he’d thought. It wasn’t at all in character. She was rigid in her views, just as she was in her mode of dress and her hairstyle. Just because she’d loosened that glorious hair tonight didn’t mean that she’d suddenly become uninhibited. Nonetheless, the change disturbed him, because it was unexpected.

“Copper’s got a new girl, I see,” Drew said with a grin. “That’s Nickie Bolton,” he added. “She works as a nurse’s aide at the hospital.”

“I didn’t recognize her out of uniform,” Lou murmured.

“I did,” he said. “She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

She nodded amiably. “Very young, too,” she added with an indulgent smile.

He took her hand gently and smiled down at her. “You aren’t exactly over the hill yourself,” he teased.

She smiled up at him with warm eyes. “You’re a nice man, Drew.”

Across the room, a redheaded man’s grip tightened ominously on a glass of punch. For over a year, Louise had avoided even his lightest touch. A few days ago, she’d thrown off his hand violently. But there she stood not only allowing Drew to hold her hand, but actually smiling at him. She’d never smiled at Coltrain that way; she’d never smiled at him any way at all.

His companion tapped him on the shoulder.

“You’re with me, remember?” she asked with a pert smile. “Stop staring daggers at your partner. You’re off duty. You don’t have to fight all the time, do you?”

He frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Everyone knows you hate her,” Nickie said pleasantly. “It’s common gossip at the hospital. You rake her over the coals and she walks around the corridors, red in the face and talking to herself. Well, most of the time, anyway. Once, Dr. Simpson found her crying in the nursery. But she doesn’t usually cry, no matter how bad she hurts. She’s pretty tough, in her way. I guess she’s had to be, huh? Even if there are more women in medical school these days, you don’t see that many women doctors yet. I’ll bet she had to fight a lot of prejudice when she was in medical school.”

That came as a shock. He’d never seen Lou cry until today, and he couldn’t imagine her being upset at any temperamental display of his. Or was it, he pondered uneasily, just that she’d learned how not to show her wounds to him?

Chapter 3

At dinner, Lou sat with Drew, as far away from Coltrain and his date as she could get. She listened attentively to the speakers and whispered to Drew in the spaces between speakers. But it was torture to watch Nickie’s small hand smooth over Coltrain’s, to see her flirt with him. Lou didn’t know how to flirt. There were a lot of things she didn’t know. But she’d learned to keep a poker face, and she did it very well this evening. The one time Coltrain glanced down the table toward her, he saw nothing on her face or in her eyes that could tell him anything. She was unreadable.

After the meeting, she let Drew hold her hand as they walked out of the restaurant. Behind them, Coltrain was glaring at her with subdued fury.

When they made it to the parking lot, she found that the other couple had caught up with them.

“Nice bit of surgery this morning, Copper,” Drew remarked. “You do memorable stitches. I doubt if Mrs. Blake will even have a scar to show around.”

He managed a smile and held Nickie’s hand all the tighter. “She was adamant about that,” he remarked. “It seems that her husband likes perfection.”

“He’ll have a good time searching for it in this imperfect world,” Drew replied. “I’ll see you in the morning. And I’d like your opinion on my little strep-throat patient. His mother wants the whole works taken out, tonsils and adenoids, but he doesn’t have strep often and I don’t like unnecessary surgery. Perhaps she’d listen to you.”

“Don’t count on it,” Copper said dryly. “I’ll have a look if you like, though.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” He glanced toward Lou, who hadn’t said a word. “You were ten minutes late this morning,” he added coldly.

“Oh, I overslept,” she replied pleasantly. “It wears me out to follow the EMTs around looking for work.”

She gave him a cool smile and got into the car before he realized that she’d made a joke, and at his expense.

“Be on time in the morning,” he admonished before he walked away with Nickie on his arm.

“On time,” Lou muttered beside Drew in the comfortable Ford he drove. Her hands crushed her purse. “I’ll give him on time! I’ll be sitting in his parking spot at eight-thirty on the dot!”

“He does it on purpose,” he told her as he started the car. “I think he likes to make you spark at him.”

“He’s overjoyed that I’m leaving,” she muttered. “And so am I!”

He gave her a quick glance and hid his smile. “If you say so.”

She twisted her small purse in her lap, fuming, all the way back to her small house.

“I haven’t been good company, Drew,” she said as he walked her to the door. “I’m sorry.”

He patted her shoulder absently. “Nothing wrong with the company,” he said, correcting her. He smiled down at her. “But you really do rub Copper the wrong way, don’t you?” he added thoughtfully. “I’ve noticed that antagonism from a distance, but tonight is the first time I’ve seen it at close range. Is he always like that?”

She nodded. “Always, from the beginning. Well, not quite,” she confessed, remembering. “From last Christmas.”

“What happened last Christmas?”

She studied him warily.

“I won’t tell him,” he promised. “What happened?”

“He tried to kiss me under the mistletoe and I, well, I sort of ducked and pulled away.” She flushed. “He rattled me. He does, mostly. I get shaky when he comes too close. He’s so forceful, and so physical. Even when he wants to talk to me, he’s forever trying to grab me by the wrist or a sleeve. It’s as if he knows how much it disturbs me, so he does it on purpose, just to make me uncomfortable.”

He reached down and caught her wrist very gently, watching her face distort and feeling the instinctive, helpless jerk of her hand.

He let go at once. “Tell me about it, Lou.”

With a wan smile, she rubbed her wrist. “No. It’s history.”

“It isn’t, you know. Not if it makes you shaky to have people touch you…”

“Not everyone, just him,” she muttered absently.

His eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t seem to be aware of what she’d just confessed.

She sighed heavily. “I’m so tired,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. “I don’t usually get so tired from even the longest days.”

He touched her forehead professionally and frowned. “You’re a bit warm. How do you feel?”

“Achy. Listless.” She grimaced. “It’s probably that virus that’s going around. I usually get at least one every winter.”

“Go to bed and if you aren’t better tomorrow, don’t go in,” he advised. “Want me to prescribe something?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be okay. Nothing does any good for a virus, you know that.”

He chuckled. “Not even a sugarcoated pill?”

“I can do without a placebo. I’ll get some rest. Thanks for tonight. I enjoyed it.”

“So did I. I haven’t done much socializing since Eve died. It’s been five long years and I still miss her. I don’t think I’ll ever get over her enough to start a new relationship with anyone. I only wish we’d had a child. It might have made it easier.”

She was studying him, puzzled. “It’s said that many people marry within months of losing a mate,” she began.

“I don’t fit that pattern,” he said quietly. “I only loved once. I’d rather have my memories of those twelve years with Eve than a hundred years with someone else. I suppose that sounds old-fashioned.”

She shook her head. “It sounds beautiful,” she said softly. “Lucky Eve, to have been loved so much.”

He actually flushed. “It was mutual.”

“I’m sure it was, Drew. I’m glad to have a friend like you.”

“That works both ways.” He smiled ruefully. “I’d like to take you out occasionally, so that people will stop thinking of me as a mental case. The gossip is beginning to get bad.”

“I’d love to go out with you,” she replied. She smiled. “I’m not very worldly, you know. It was books and exams and medicine for eight long years, and then internship. I was an honor student. I never had much time for men.” Her eyes darkened. “I never wanted to have much time for them. My parents’ marriage soured me. I never knew it could be happy or that people could love each other enough to be faithful—” She stopped, embarrassed.

“I knew about your father,” he said. “Most of the hospital staff did. He liked young girls.”

“Dr. Coltrain told me,” she said miserably.

“He what?”

She drew in a long breath. “I overheard what he said to you on the telephone the other day. I’m leaving. My year is up after New Year’s, anyway,” she reminded him. “He told me what my father had done. No wonder he didn’t want me here. You shouldn’t have done it, Drew. You shouldn’t have forced him to take me on.”

“I know. But it’s too late, isn’t it? I thought I was helping, if that’s any excuse.” He searched her face. “Maybe I hoped it would help Copper, too. He was infatuated with Jane Parker. She’s a lovely, sweet woman, and she has a temper, but she was never a match for Copper. He’s the sort who’d cow a woman who couldn’t stand up to him.”

“Just like my father,” she said shortly.

“I’ve never mentioned it, but one of your wrists looks as if it’s suffered a break.”

She flushed scarlet and drew back. “I have to go in now. Thanks again, Drew.”

“If you can’t talk to me, you need to talk to someone,” he said. “Did you really think you could go through life without having the past affect the future?”

She smiled sweetly. “Drive carefully going home.”

He shrugged. “Okay. I’ll drop it.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

She watched him drive away, absently rubbing the wrist he’d mentioned. She wouldn’t think about it, she told herself. She’d go to bed and put it out of her mind.

Only it didn’t work that way. She woke up in the middle of the night in tears, frightened until she remembered where she was. She was safe. It was over. But she felt sick and her throat was dry. She got up and found a pitcher, filling it with ice and water. She took a glass along with her and went back to bed. Except for frequent trips to the bathroom, she finally slept soundly.

There was a loud, furious knock at the front door. It kept on and on, followed by an equally loud voice. What a blessing that she didn’t have close neighbors, she thought drowsily, or the police would be screaming up the driveway.

She tried to get up, but surprisingly, her feet wouldn’t support her. She was dizzy and weak and sick at her stomach. Her head throbbed. She lay back down with a soft groan.

A minute later, the front door opened and a furious redheaded man in a lab coat came in the bedroom door.

“So this is where you are,” he muttered, taking in her condition with a glance. “You couldn’t have called?”

She barely focused on him. “I was up most of the night…”

“With Drew?”

She couldn’t even manage a glare. “Being sick,” she corrected. “Have you got anything on you to calm my stomach? I can’t keep down anything to stop the nausea.”

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