“What’s happening?”

Guy’s grip on Maude’s arm stopped her and brought her back under the rain-battered awning.

“I’ve got a patient coming in.”

He pulled her closer and held her by both arms. Reflexively she raised her hands, then balled them into fists instead of putting them on his chest as she wanted to do. She tried to concentrate on a raindrop trickling down her face, but all she could see was the darkness of his eyes and all she could hear was the pounding of her heart. She needed to kiss this man.

Slowly, as if time had no meaning, he lowered his mouth to hers and the fire burst inside her. Flames raged through her senses and threatened to consume everything except her desire for him—until the doctor took over.

She pushed back. “I’ve got to go.”

MILLS & BOON

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Dear Reader,

Rugged western Montana urged me to tell a story amid its soaring mountains and sweeping pine forests. To do so, I needed characters who would stand out against a backdrop of magnificent scenery. Maude and Guy, two doctors so wounded they could not heal themselves, fit the roles well.

Enemies in the past and now touched by the same tragedy, they must forgive each other—then forgive themselves. When they do, the passion between them becomes love. With love as big as all Montana, they make a family for a little girl orphaned by the same tragic loss.

Sometimes life hurts. I believe it is the pain that shows us how brightly the joy can shine.

I loved taking these three “injured by life” people and, in my first book for Harlequin, molding a fiercely loving family who couldn’t imagine living without one another. I hope you love them, too.

I’d love to hear from you. Visit my Web site at www.marybrady.net or write to me at MaryBrady@ marybrady.net.

Regards and happy reading,

Mary Brady

HE CALLS HER DOC
Mary Brady

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Brady lives in the Midwest and considers road trips into the rest of the continent to be a necessary part of life. When she’s not out exploring, she helps run a manufacturing company and has a great time living with her handsome husband, her super son and one cheeky little bird.

For my husband and son, with whom I make my own

fiercely loving—and laughing—family of three.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the people of Montana, who have never been anything but welcoming to me and who won’t know where to find the town of St. Adelbert, because it exists only in my mind.

And to Dr. Gillian Rickmeier, who selflessly answered my questions about the medical field. That said, any errors in this book—especially errors concerning medical issues—are mine and mine alone.

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 ONE

MAUDE DEVANE, M.D., bypassed her crisp white lab coat and slipped on the one with a couple of badges of courage stained faintly into the fabric. Collar turned to the chill of the sunny June morning, she stepped out onto the ramp of the Wm. Avery Clinic’s emergency entrance. Somewhere under the biggest, bluest of Montana skies a man had fallen from a horse.

And she was ready, make that eager, to help her first patient in her brand-new solo practice.

On cue, the Squat-D Ranch’s red pickup truck careened around a corner and raced up Main Street. Traffic in the tiny mountain town of St. Adelbert made way as if they knew the passenger was unconscious.

Some of them probably did.

The truck lurched up the ramp and fishtailed to a halt, engulfing Maude in the smell of oily exhaust.

Curly Martin’s great-grandson Jimmy burst out the driver’s side door. “He still ain’t talking to me, Dr. DeVane!”

The bear-size seventeen-year-old barreled around toward the passenger side. As Maude reached the dusty truck, she leaned in to see the ninety-two-year-old rancher slumped against the door.

“Jimmy, get back in the truck.” Maude conveyed calm in her command. “And hold him in position. Don’t move him at all, especially his head.” And if they were all very lucky, the old man was not already paralyzed.

Jimmy dashed back around and scrambled into the cab. As he cradled his great-grandfather in his giant hands, Maude opened the door and reached in to feel for a pulse.

“Is he dead?” Jimmy peered at her from under the bill of his faded green cap.

She gave him a quick smile. “He’s alive, Jimmy.” Curly Martin, icon, epitome of cowboy in these parts, was not going down to a spill from a horse, not if she had any say.

She patted Curly’s chest. “Mr. Martin.” No response. “Curly, open your eyes.” She rubbed her knuckles into the man’s breastbone hard enough to awaken a sleeping person. The man remained still, his lips a pale slash in his tanned face.

“Keep holding him just like that, Jimmy. I need to put a protective collar on his neck.”

“I’m here, Dr. DeVane,” a woman’s quiet voice said from behind her.

Maude turned to the dark-haired, scrubs-clad, on-call nurse holding the stiff cervical collar in her hand. Maude smiled. “Thanks for getting here so quickly, Abby.”

“Carolyn will be here soon,” Abby said of the tech on call.

Maude nodded and then bent down to speak into Curly’s “good” ear. “Mr. Martin, I’m going to put a safety collar around your neck,” she said in the event he could actually hear her. After stabilizing his neck, the three of them lifted the unconscious man onto the waiting gurney and wheeled him inside the glass and aluminum entrance doors of the red-brick clinic.

“I’ll have vitals for you in a sec,” Abby said when they had moved Curly into the trauma room, a large, well-stocked room reserved for critical cases.

The serious knot on the side of his gray old head indicated the likely cause of his unconsciousness. But Maude wondered if he had fallen because he was unconscious or if he was unconscious because he had fallen. One of the slippery slopes of emergency medicine.

“Jimmy.” Maude turned to the wide-eyed kid standing at the foot of the cart. “Did you see what happened?”

“No, ma’am, Dr. DeVane. Black Jaxx came around the barn lookin’ proud like he a’ways does when he’s thrown a rider. When I got to Granddad, he was on the ground.”

“You should have let the rescue squad bring him in the ambulance.”

“He’d’a killed me dead if I’d done that. Heck, he’ll yell at me anyway.” The boy rubbed the back of his thick neck.

“I know.” Maude put a hand on Jimmy’s arm. “He told Doc Avery he was too old to have a fuss made over him.”

Jimmy grinned, then his face got serious again. “Will he wake up? Do you think you can save him, Dr. DeVane?”

“I’ll know more after I examine him. If he wakes up soon, it’ll be best.”

Maude patted the old man’s bony thigh through his worn jeans and started a more thorough exam. She gently prodded and searched for signs of injury, and just as she was satisfied there was no other neurological deficit, Curly began to mumble and tried to reach across his body with his left hand. Maude gently put his arm back at his side and let a little of her concern lift. Purposeful movement meant a decent level of brain function.

When Abby pulled off one boot, he murmured a few words.

Another moment later, “Danged horse,” came out loud and clear, followed by something they probably didn’t want to understand, period.

As Maude reached for Curly’s right arm, he sat straight up. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“Granddad!” Jimmy cried.

Curly looked around, blinked a few times and then swatted at Abby, who was tugging on his other low-heeled boot.

“And you can leave that right where it is, missy.”

Abby easily evaded the swat and grinned at the old man. “Hullo, Curly Martin.”

He let Abby ease him back against the pillow.

“Nurse Abby. Didn’t expect to be back here so soon.” With that, he gave Jimmy a look that made the boy squirm.

“I’m glad he brought you in, Mr. Martin.” Maude put a hand on his shoulder to encourage him to stay put while she finished her exam.

Curly smirked his Montana charm and relaxed. “You’re lookin’ perty as a picture today, Maudie. But I guess it’s Dr. DeVane nowadays.”

“Well, Mr. Martin.” Maude let the diminutive given to her in this valley when she was a child slide off her. “Now that you’re smiling, you don’t look so bad yourself. Does anything hurt?”

He grinned. “Just this.” He held up the arm she had been about to examine. The bone under the brown weatherworn skin of his forearm jutted off in a slightly unnatural direction.

“Let me take a closer look at that,” Maude said as she cradled his deformed wrist in the palm of her hand.

Curly’s thick, frosty eyebrows drew together. “Nothin’ a little time won’t fix,” he said as he tried to pull away.

“Curly Martin, are you in here giving people trouble again?”

All heads turned as the sound of the deep male voice thundered from the doorway. Maude smiled at her predecessor.

“Doc, I thought you left for civilization already.” Curly grinned gap-toothed at Dr. William Avery, founder of the only clinic in her hometown, the place where Maude hoped to practice medicine as long as he had—hoped the town would let her.

“Don’t you have a great-grandbaby back East to help birth?” Curly continued.

“Doc” pulled off distinguished-looking even in his travel clothes. “I heard you came all the way in from the ranch to say goodbye, so I stopped by for a minute.” He gave Curly a cursory once-over, touching the bruise on Curly’s head.

“Guess I wasn’t glued on to that danged horse well enough.”

“Good thing you landed on your hard head.” Doc chuckled as he gently brushed a thumb over the wrist fracture.

“Dr. DeVane,” he said as he turned to Maude, “I know you have everything under control here. If you have any questions, call me anytime.”

“Thank you, I will. I hope you make it in time for the baby’s birth, Dr. Avery.” Maude smiled and kept her tone light. Doc Avery trusted her, but this visit would play differently through the gossip network. “Have a safe drive and a great retirement.”

He smiled at her, patted Curly on the shoulder, nodded at Abby and Jimmy and walked out the door to his new life, no doubt leaving a trail of wagging tongues. Old Doc Avery couldn’t even get out of town without checking up on Dr. DeVane one last time. Lordy, what’s going to happen to us when he’s gone?

Earlier at the grocery store she had overheard, “What if little Maudie messes up?” Did it not matter to anyone in this tiny throwback town that she had earned the M.D. after her name? She gave X-ray orders to Abby and left the room.

Well, she’d earn their trust. In the two years they had advertised for a doctor to take over the clinic, she was the only one to apply, and because she was their only choice of doctors in this valley, they’d have to give her what she needed to win them over—time.

TWELVE MOUNTAIN MILES northwest of St. Adelbert, on the Whispering Winds Ranch, where pine trees towered and snowcapped mountains etched the sky—the doorbell rang shrilly and repeatedly.

Guy Daley pushed away from the desk. Cynthia Stone, one of the participants in the executive development program, was at his door for the third day in a row with an excuse to chicken out of an activity. He had coerced her into the hike and the overnight, but this canyon crossing was going to be tricky.

The shrill bell rang again and he yanked the door open.

“Why’s the door locked?” demanded the child on the stoop. She looked twenty, but he knew she was not quite thirteen. Mascara smeared under her eyes. Jeans shredded on the bottoms. Tail of her smudged pink T-shirt almost covering her belly and a riot of red curls mashed in on one side. She wore a deep scowl, just like her father had all those years ago when he’d run away from home and shown up at Guy’s college apartment.

A fist of grief punched Guy in the gut. He took it and smiled at his niece.

“Lexie.” He should be shocked or horrified she’d found her way, probably by herself, from Chicago to Montana, but he was oddly glad to see her.

“Uncle Guy.” She glared at him, large blue eyes narrowed in challenge.

He reached for her bag, but she pulled away, so he stepped back to let her drag the purple duffle into the timbered living room. The last time he had tried to hug her, she’d slugged him.

“Does your mom know where you are?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Kelly’s too busy with the baby.” She hefted the huge bag and hugged it to her. “Maybe she knows by now. I’m supposed to be at my friend’s house until tomorrow.”

Red streaks scored the whites of her eyes. “When was the last time you ate?”

She lifted the shoulder again.

Dirty, tired and hungry.

“Leave the bag. Go wash your hands.”

She dropped the bag with a thud on the hardwood floor and headed down the hallway toward the bathroom.

“Eggs or cakers?” he called after her.

“Cakers.” She turned for a moment and smiled sadly at him. Her father, his brother, had called pancakes “cakers,” after a character in a kids’ book. “And coffee.”

“And orange juice,” he muttered.

As she closed the bathroom door behind her, he took a second to feel the renewed ache spiraling through him. Maybe coming to his brother’s ranch hadn’t been such a good idea. Maybe he should have stayed in Chicago?

Twenty minutes later, Guy sat across the table and watched red curls bob up and down in rhythm to the forkfuls of pancakes being shoveled into the child’s mouth.

“I called Kelly,” Guy said of Lexie’s stepmother. “She told me to tell you she’s sorry you were unhappy.”

She nodded and continued to fork in the fuel.

Her stepmother’s exact words had been, “With the baby here I can’t do this anymore. Keep her with you. Even I’m not uncaring enough to send her to your parents.” Poor kid, if he was her last hope.

The whistle and choo-choo chugging of the ludicrous clock above the stove told him he was late for the startup of this morning’s executive training program. “Leap of Faith,” Henry had named crossing a small canyon on a zip wire.

“I’ve got people to see. Will you be all right by yourself for a while?”

“I’m a kid, not an idiot.” She forked in the last bite.

He smiled. So like her father.

She sat in front of the plate pooled with syrup, empty orange juice glass in her hand, and stared out the window at the sun-sprayed shadows in the pine trees behind the house.

“I wish I had more than a couple of years with him.”

“I wish you did, too. Sleep might be a good idea right now. Your room is still there.”

“I guess I could sleep a little.” Her voice trembled as she spoke. She turned her big blue eyes, pooled with unshed tears, on him. “Kelly said you restarted Dad’s business.”

He gave her a grim nod. “Bessie and her daughter’ll be back from shopping soon, so you won’t be alone long.”

She swiped the back of her hand at the tears and smiled. “I hope she got Twinkies.”

He frowned.

“What? I already had two apples today. No, wait, that was yesterday, sometime.” She did her shoulder thing. “I’ll go up and sleep for a little while, and then you can tell me whether or not you’re going to keep me.”

“Lexie, this is your home anytime you want it to be.”

“Yeah.” She turned away.

Guy watched her bounce off as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Her home. She’d had many in her short life.

“I’ll be back by noon,” he called after her.

UP ON A RIDGE a half mile away from the ranch house at the edge of a small canyon, Guy snugged the strap of the aerial-runway seat across Cynthia Stone’s flabby abdomen.

“I don’t want to be hurled across that damn canyon in this—this thing.” Her voice scratched at his eardrums.

He crouched down beside her. “It’ll be over soon.”

“Let me out!” Little fat bulges stuck out here and there as she squirmed in her pale aqua warm-up suit.

“You won’t go across unless you want to.” He wasn’t sure how his brother did this job, but right now it beat trying to practice medicine.

“Come on, Cynthia. Don’t be a chicken. The fox won’t bite,” one of the executives called from the other side of the canyon.

“Fox? What fox? I wasn’t told about any foxes.” She jerked around to glare at Guy.

He checked a reply. He knew her well enough to know the “fox” distress was a delay tactic.

“An aerial-conveyance system like this is sometimes called a flying fox.” Or death slide. “Aerial runway works for the purposes of Mountain High Executive Services. It’s a kind of pathway from your old self to your new leader-conqueror self.”

“My old self is just fine.” She yanked on the harness. “How do I know this is safe?”

“Aircraft-grade wire.” He pointed up to the wire above her head spanning the canyon. “Safety harness and a hand-activated braking system. You can’t fall unless you try really hard, and you don’t have to go fast.” She’d be a piece of work on the high ropes tomorrow.

“What if it doesn’t have one more crossing left in it?”

“Ms. Stone—”

She gave him a tired look, so he leaned in. “Cynthia—” He lowered his voice to just above a whisper.

She studied him as if seeing him for the first time.

“There are times when we have to take a leap, or we’ll never know how far we can go.” Guy tried to make the words sound sincere. He knew Henry would have.

“I didn’t want to come here.” Her tone was almost timid now. Apologizing. “My father made me.”

“Where do you want to go in your company?”

“I’ll be president and CEO one day.”

“Because you’re the owner’s daughter.”

She nodded.

“Is it enough for you to have the job because your blood type is Stone, or do you want to be able to wield the authority you’ll be given?”

When she didn’t answer, Guy tugged hard on her harness to show her it was safe. “The others crossed. And some of them may deserve to be president or CEO one day. You only need to recognize that in yourself.”

She grabbed the harness and held on for a ten-mile ride. Too bad she was only going a few hundred feet.

But, he might be getting through to her…

“Just shove me across the damn thing and get it over with. And that man at the other end had better catch me because I don’t trust that flimsy-looking net, either.”

Maybe not…

“Use the hand brake if you have to, but it’s a gutsier experience if you let the net catch you.”

“Just do it.” She kicked up a puff of light brown dust.

Guy took hold of the harness and signaled Jake Hancock, the man who had been Henry’s friend and right-hand man, and who now stood waiting at the other end of the runway.

“Are you sure?” he asked the woman in the harness.

She lifted her feet from the ground and glared at him.

He smiled and gave her a small push.

After a few seconds, she glided out over the rim of the canyon filled with jagged rocks and a few hardy plants. When she scanned the distance to the bottom, she let out a shriek so piercing Guy expected birds to fall from the sky.

“I got you, Ms. Stone,” Jake shouted as he gestured to show her he was waiting on the far side to help her.

Hang in there a few more seconds, Guy thought as she picked up speed and hurtled toward the other side.

“Stop me! Stop—ME!” The closer she got to the end, the harder she kicked and squirmed.

“Use the hand brake, Ms. Stone,” Guy called.

“Nooooo, I can’t!” She began to flail her legs wildly.

As Jake reached out for her, she jerked backward and snapped her legs straight out; a blink later she landed with the thud of both feet in the middle of Jake’s chest.

Guy watched in horror as Jake flew backward, landed, bounced and lay still in the dust. Guy grabbed a spare harness and attached it to the aerial runway.

“Get her off.” He waved at the others as Cynthia sat sagging in the rig, her head resting against the safety netting.

Instead of assisting Cynthia, the other five executives rushed up to Jake’s unmoving form.

“Cynthia, get out of the harness,” Guy shouted.

After a few more moments of helpless watching, he broke one of Henry’s cardinal safety rules and crossed the gap while Cynthia still hung in her harness.

When he reached the other side, he dug his boots in to stop near where Jake lay on the ground. “I’ll be right back, Cynthia.” He signaled to the still-dangling woman.

“He’s breathing,” a lithe forty-something executive said as she lifted her ear from Jake’s chest. Guy was sure the woman had wanted to put her head on the rugged cowboy’s chest since the first day.

Guy knelt beside the man on the ground and shook him gently. “Jake, open your eyes.”

Jake blinked. “What?” He started to sit up.

A sharp scream came from over his shoulder. Guy turned to see Ms. Stone on the ground curled up in a ball.

He turned back to Jake. “Don’t move until I can check you.” He gave Jake a reassuring pat and addressed the woman who had had her ear on Jake’s chest. “Stay with him.” To which she nodded agreeably.

Guy ran to where Ms. Stone lay sprawled on the ground. What a sight, all that aqua covered with dust.

“My ankle. My ankle,” she cried when she saw him, and then moaned loudly.

“Ms. Stone, it’s all right. I’ll help you.”

“It’s broken. I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I knew it was wrong to come here.” She waved a hand as if she were referring to all of Montana.

She probably was.

“Relax and let me have a look at your ankle.”

“Don’t touch me. I want a doctor, not a seminar leader.”

It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he nodded. “I’ll take you to the doctor.”

He thought of the doctor in St. Adelbert, Dr. Maude DeVane. He should have let her take advantage of his younger brother’s good nature and generous heart all those years ago.

He could have saved Henry from a gold digger.

IN TOWN, Curly Martin held up his hot-pink cast. “Thank you so much, Dr. DeVane. This ought to set their tongues a waggin’.” He guffawed and stepped down from the table in the ortho room where he had acquiesced to sit so Maude could cast his arm properly.

“I’ll walk you out, Curly,” Maude said. Her suggestion of keeping Curly for observation had been met with true mirth by the nonagenarian. “What’ll happen, Dr. DeVane?” he’d said. “I might die before my time?”

The phone on the main desk rang as Maude and Curly passed. Abby snatched it up and began to write on a notepad.

“Remember.” Maude walked beside the old man. “If there’s a problem, I want to see you within the hour, not the next day because you decided to wait and see what happened.”

“Told ya, did he.”

“Jimmy did the right thing to bring you here. And I want to check your arm in two weeks.”

“I’ll be good, Dr. DeVane.”

Curly’s great-grandson, who had been banished to the truck for “showing a bit too much concern for such a young fella,” jumped out and took his great-grandfather by his uninjured arm.

Curly turned back toward Maude and rolled his eyes, but he let the boy help him as if he needed it.

“Thanks a million, Doctor,” Jimmy called over his shoulder as he stuffed Curly into the cab of the truck.

“Curly, either stay on the horse, or stay off it.” Maude smiled at the old man.

He grinned and waved with the cast she had applied because she didn’t think he’d keep a splint on for any longer than he was in her direct sight. The pink had been his idea.

As they drove off, an eddy of dust from their wake made its way across the town’s wide main thoroughfare and dissipated against the white-and-blue facade of Alice’s Diner. There had been many an “Alice” over the years. In the distance, a flock of birds flew above the trees with the sun glistening off the white of their feathers.

“Home.” Contentment like she hadn’t known in years swept through her. Soon, it wouldn’t matter that she had once been the little girl everyone called Maudie.

As she reentered the building, Abby came toward her with a paper in her hand. “There’s two more coming in, Dr. DeVane. An ankle. Not too serious, by the sound of it. The other was kicked in the chest.”

“Any details on the second one?” Kicked in the chest by a horse or a steer was often life threatening. Broken ribs. Punctured lungs. Bruised heart muscle. “Kicked by what?”

“They say he seems fine, but he was apparently kicked by the other one.”

“Hard enough to hurt an ankle?” Maude gave a small shudder as she thought of how that might have come about. “How soon?”

“A few minutes. And there’s one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“They’re coming from Mountain High.”

“But—” Maude stopped as pain rushed in and nearly took her breath away.

“I’m sorry, Dr. DeVane. I know Henry was your friend.”

“It’s okay.” Maude waved off the nurse’s concern and turned into the office. Someone had restarted Henry Daley’s business. When the young entrepreneur had died last summer, she had thought Mountain High Executive Services had died with him.

She sat down to enter notes in Curly’s medical record, but tapped a pen tip on the clipboard instead. The first time she met Henry, he had tried to die on her. Before she got the chance to make a diagnosis, his arrogant, older, M.D. brother whisked the younger man away to another hospital.

Henry…

“Dr. DeVane?”

Maude cleared the tightness from her throat and faced Abby. “Are they here?”

“The van’s coming up the street. Carolyn’s still here and we’ll call if there’s something you need to see right away.”

“Thanks, Abby,” Maude said as Abby hurried away.

Maude repositioned the squeezy clip in the back of her wavy, shoulder-length brown hair. The clinic was old-fashioned in some respects, but the nurses, like Abby, and techs, like Carolyn, were as good as those at big-city clinics.

They had to be; they cared for their neighbors every day.

After a few minutes, the automatic doors opened, and a loud wail filled the clinic. Maude leaped from her chair and stepped out into the hallway to see Carolyn pushing a wheelchair filled with a mildly obese, fifty-something woman.

“Is that the doctor? Help me, Doctor.” The woman reached toward Maude with outstretched hands.

Carolyn, a small woman with big red glasses, an X-ray technician by training and one of Doc Avery’s long-standing assistants, patted the woman’s shoulder. “Dr. DeVane will be in as soon as I get you more comfortable, ma’am.”

The woman wailed again, and the tech hurried her off to a treatment room.

The outside doors whooshed open and Abby entered, pushing an empty wheelchair. The second patient walked beside her. When he saw Maude, the man touched a finger to the brim of an imaginary hat. “Hello, Dr. DeVane.” Grief touched his look.

She led him toward the treatment room. “Mr. Hancock, I’ll be in to see you after the nurse gets you settled.” Jake had been the one who’d called her in Chicago about Henry’s fatal accident, but true to his tacit nature, she got few details. Jake must have somehow restarted Mountain High.

Maude turned away and as she did, she noticed a man in the clinic doorway standing with his back to her. The glare of the bright sun pouring in the doorway outlined his tall form, his broad shoulders and trim waist, a man of her fantasies, if she ever had time for those anymore. The man lifted a folded piece of paper and tilted his head like—

“Guy Daley.”

The name escaped as her heart began to pound. She forced a breath in and out…remembering.

In spite of the cold, his kiss had made her feel as if she were riding a wind on fire. Dangerous and exciting, it had left her soul scorched. But whatever she had thought she felt for this man, he had killed on that rainy Chicago night.

He stepped forward out of the halo of sunlight into the artificially lit hallway, dressed in ranch-work clothes, his challenging gaze fixed on her. She found herself staring into dark eyes. Eyes she once gazed into wondering if there were feelings for her buried somewhere in the deep shadows.

A primal urge arose in her, a craving she had wanted never again to have for this man. She crushed it.

Fool me once…

“Hello, Dr. Daley,” she said, glad her voice came out strong and firm. So much for being the only doctor in the valley.

“Dr. DeVane.”

“I’m sorry about your brother.” She squared her shoulders as if he might fight her on her right to feel anything for Henry. He had in the past.

“Thank you,” was all he said, but his expression slid to one with a chilling lack of emotion as he tucked the paper he had been reading into his shirt pocket.

“Are you here about the people from Mountain High?” She gestured down the hallway toward the treatment rooms.

“I am.”

“Did Mr. Hancock restart the program?”

“No.” The clipped response demanded no further questions.

But she ignored it. “Then who—”

“I would have thought you’d know I was on the ranch,” he said before she had a chance to finish what she was about to ask.

The sharp tone of his words almost made her laugh. He had disliked her for so long it didn’t bother her much anymore. And now that Henry was gone, she realized, it didn’t have to bother her at all. “I’m the last stop on the gossip network.”

A loud wail filled the hallway.

“Does this clinic have the facilities to see these patients or should I take them to a bigger town?”

She thought of her first week of emergency medicine rotation when the great Dr. Daley had yanked his younger brother from her care and taken him to another hospital.

“I’ll see them and if you don’t like what I have to say, Kalispell is about two hours away—each way—from the ranch.”

She lifted her chin, but he said nothing.

Into the silence, the patient wailed again, this time holding the quavering tone like a coyote announcing territory.

“I have patients to see.” She headed toward the keening.

“There’s nothing wrong with her ankle.” His voice was a low rumble behind her.

“I get to decide that,” she said without turning.

As she walked toward the room, she found herself wondering why the highest and mightiest emergency medicine physician in the Midwest was tucked away on a ranch in Montana.

“Hello. I’m Dr. DeVane,” Maude said as she pushed back the curtain in the room where the woman sat with one foot elevated on a pillow.

Ms. Stone greeted her and then shifted to fidget with the bright white sheet the way one might expect a nervous queen on her throne to tend the folds of her velvet gown.

“Tell me what happened, Ms. Stone.”

“What happened is that seminar leader made me break my ankle.” She put her head back and her arm over her face.

Seminar leader? She called Dr. Guy Daley a seminar leader?

“Let me take a look at your ankle, and then you can tell me how you were injured.”

Maude lifted the sheet and the ice pack to see a pale, puffy ankle.

“It all started…”

It all started was usually not a good place to begin.

“…when my father—”

“Why don’t we start with when you injured your ankle?”

After listening and examining, Maude had to agree. Guy Daley’s assessment was probably correct. There was no injury, but in case there was some unseen problem, she gave the patient the benefit of the doubt. “We’ll get some X-rays.”

“Thank you so much, Doctor.”

The long, low moan the woman gave out this time had Maude biting her lip and hurrying out the door, grateful she had somewhere else to be. Abby should have a set of vitals and a brief history from Jake by now.

“Really? X-rays?” Guy Daley put out his hands to fend her off as she nearly plowed into him.

She sidestepped and exhaled a huff of air to short circuit the emotions her brain was trying to make from the smell of clean cotton and male pheromones. “This clinic may be in the back woods, but we treat the patient’s privacy as a serious matter.”

“Don’t let that seminar leader tell you what to do, Doctor,” Ms. Stone called from the treatment room.

Guy pulled her away from the doorway.

She frowned down at where he held her arm and then up into his face. His dark gaze challenged her and then he let go. “I suspect Ms. Stone is looking for sympathy.”

“If she’s not injured, why did you bring her here?”

“She wanted to see a doctor. Jake and Bessie are the only people out here that know I’m a physician—and you.”

The level gaze he aimed at her told Maude he wasn’t about to expound. This time she didn’t challenge him.

“You can have a seat—” she started.

“—in the waiting room? No, thank you. I’ll be back after I see to a few things.” He immediately walked toward the exit. The arrogance that should have been in his step was missing.

She wondered if he had secrets as desperate as her own.

“Dr. DeVane?”

Maude turned as the nurse approached her. “Yes, Abby.”

“You might want to come right away.”

CHAPTER TWO

GUY SLIPPED OUT into the warming wind of the early afternoon. He had seen the questions in Maude DeVane’s eyes, and he had no intention of sharing his grief with someone whose loss could be measured in dollars. He kicked a pebble with the toe of his boot and stepped off the curb to cross the wide street.

He remembered the feel of her responsive lips beneath his. Five years ago, for one brief moment he had wanted to be wrong about her. He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. He wouldn’t be surprised if Maude DeVane still held out hope that Henry had somehow left the ranch that had been her parents’ to her.

As he reached the far side of the street, he stopped in front of the diner and slid the letter that had arrived in this morning’s mail from his pocket.

To Whom It May Concern: the letter began. Kelly was right about his parents. This letter was from their attorney, most likely at his mother’s behest. Any and all persons now occupying the Whispering Winds Ranch shall vacate…

Nice bluff, Mother. His parents had no control over Lexie’s inheritance, but that didn’t stop them from trying. As the firstborn son, Guy had been the only focus of their attention. Everything he did mattered. Everything Henry did was irrelevant. Guy had tried to shield Henry as much as he could, but Henry was only eight when Guy went off to college. After Guy left, Henry accelerated his campaign to get their parents to notice him. By the time Henry got out of high school, he had already begun a series of extreme adventure trips that would ultimately take his life.

Now Lexie’s grandparents wanted control of the ranch. If Guy thought for a moment they had forgiven Henry for fathering a child at age fifteen with a casual acquaintance, he might think they were trying to protect Lexie. He knew his parents well enough. If there was wealth they could control, they thought it some sort of negligence not to try.

Guy tossed the letter into a nearby trash can, and headed down the block. “Stop at the hardware store,” was Bessie’s plea to anyone from the ranch who went to town. There was always something at the cluttered, dusty old store the ranch needed.

“Hello, Mr. Daley.” The storeowner smiled at Guy and furrowed his well-trimmed eyebrows. “Bessie called. Said she didn’t have lightbulbs on her list this morning and she’d appreciate if you’d get some. Also says she wishes you’d carry your phone.”

“Thanks.” Guy gave the storekeeper what he hoped was an equally friendly Montana-like smile. At the light-bulb display, he touched where the pocket of his lab coat would have been and where his cell phone and pager had spent most of his waking hours. No lab coat. No cell phone. No hospital pager.

He bowed his head and studied blue-and-yellow light-bulb packages before he chose several with no dust.

At the checkout, he picked up a handful of Tootsie Pops in a bouquetlike arrangement and laid it on the counter beside the lightbulbs. He thought about it for moment, and added a second colorful bouquet.

MAUDE PUSHED OPEN the treatment-room door to see Jake Hancock perched on the edge of the patient cart, hospital gown draped loosely over his torso. As Maude stepped inside the room, Abby took up a position at the door, as if she might tackle him if he tried to leave. And she might.

“Abby says you’re trying to bolt.”

“The longer I sit here, the sillier I feel, ma’am.”

“Tell me what happened to you.”

“Nothing worth frettin’ about.”

Maude took a step closer. “Well, now that you’re already here, I’ll examine you, take a listen to your chest and if need be, we’ll go from there.”

“Is it really necessary?” He swung one leg and tapped the cart’s metal end with a boot heel.

She stared steadily at him and knit her eyebrows as if contemplating a great puzzle. She knew his type. Needed a limb dangling before help seemed necessary. “That’s one of the tricky things about trauma medicine. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s ‘necessary’ until I examine the patient and see if it’s necessary.”

“You’re sure?”

“There is one tried-and-true way to cover the worst-case scenario without examining you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small tag with a string attached to it by way of a reinforced hole. One of the M.D.’s who’d helped her train in rural medicine had given it to her. One of my old tricks, he had said.

Maude had thought she’d never use it, but here she was handing it to her third patient.

Abby laughed out loud and came up to stand beside Jake.

Jake took the small tag and let it dangle from his fingertips. “What’s this?”

“A toe tag.” Abby doubled over as she spoke.

Maude held a steady, serious expression. “Tie it on your big toe. Saves us the trouble if…”

Jake held up a hand to stop her. “You’re very persuasive, Dr. DeVane.”

“It’s how I can afford my yacht.” She took the tag from him and tucked it back into her pocket.

He looked at her briefly and then laughed. “Trying to picture someone tugging a yacht up into these mountains.”

She took the stethoscope from her pocket and held it in her hands. “So, tell me how you feel.”

He settled back as if he might stay for the exam. “Like I was kicked into the dirt by a Boardroom Betty. Mostly a pride injury, I suspect. I was only down for a couple seconds.”

“He has two small impact marks on his chest,” Abby offered.

Maude examined him, read the electrocardiogram and found nothing to make her think he had any serious side effects from the kick or the fall, but harbored her usual suspicion for a posttrauma case.

“Sir, you seem to have pronounced your diagnosis correctly. You are ‘fine’ as far as your exam and tests show.”

He leaped off the cart and grabbed the blue work shirt from the counter.

“We’ll give you privacy to dress, but don’t leave yet.”

“Yes, ma’am. And, please, tell the boss I didn’t just get up and run away. He’s likely not to believe me.” He smiled at them as Maude and Abby stepped into the corridor.

“I’ll tell him, Mr. Hancock.” Maude pulled the door closed.

Now, back to the seminar leader’s problem pupil.

Seminar leader. It’s not that she hated Guy Daley or anything—not really. He was being a big brother looking after Henry. Though he was overbearing and a snob and sometimes…

Maybe she hated him a little. She’d have to work on that one if they were going to live in the same valley. Henry had loved him after all. Maybe he’d mellowed in the years since she’d seen him.

“Excuse me.” Guy stood in the hallway, his hair a bit disheveled. A dark lock fell over his forehead, making him look a little like a cross between a certain superhero and his alter ego.

Feelings shot through her which she banished almost before she acknowledged them.

“The tech has the X-rays finished. They look…Well, they’re ready for you to read,” he said, as he followed her down the hallway.

She stopped and turned. “Dr. Daley.”

“I’ll be waiting down there.” He gestured toward the entrance and walked away.

She smiled a little. He couldn’t stand to be sent to the waiting room instead of doing the sending.

She continued to the small recess that served as the tiny clinic’s supply closet and X-ray viewing room. The tech had kindly moved the mop and pail out of the way so she could get a good close look at the X-ray films.

A few minutes later, she went in to see Ms. Stone and found her patient reclined on the cart with a damp wash-cloth over her eyes. Maude touched the woman’s arm.

“Yes.” Cynthia’s voice was weak and, well, pathetic if Maude was to go there.

“Ms. Stone, I’ve looked at your X-rays.”

The patient removed the cloth from her eyes. A hopeful look spread over her face. Maude liked giving good news. It was one of the best parts of being a doctor.

“There’s no break and no signs of any degenerative joint disease. The bone structure of your foot and ankle looks just fine.”

Ms. Stone’s expression became distorted. But she remained silent.

Not exactly the reaction Maude expected.

“You might have a small muscle tear or a strained ligament which wouldn’t show up on X-ray. The tech will tell you what you need to do for it, give you home-care instructions and wrap it with an elastic bandage. If it hurts too much, use an over-the-counter pain medication. I’ll call—”

Ms. Stone began to squirm and look around the room, to look anywhere except at Maude.

“Is there something wrong?” Maude asked.

“I can’t go with Mr. Daley. You’ll have to keep me here until I’m better.” She still avoided looking at Maude.

“Is there a problem I should know about?” Other than a problem with a hotshot emergency doctor not telling anyone he was a physician? Maude quickly put the thought away. She could examine it when she had no one else’s welfare at stake.

“I can’t go back to that place.” Ms. Stone studied her chipped nail polish intently.

“I’m sorry. We have no overnight facilities at the clinic.”

“I need to stay here until I can travel,” she said after a few more moments of polish-studying.

“There are motels nearby.”

The woman looked away, and when she looked back, there were tears in her eyes.

“Then I’d—” She paused.

“Yes?” Maude placed a hand on her patient’s shoulder.

“I’d be alone.”

Maude wondered if Cynthia Stone had ever been alone. She’d met the type, always had nannies, traveling companions, live-in servants. Never alone.

“You wouldn’t be by yourself at the ranch. It’s such a pretty place.”

“You know it? You know that place and about that thing he has strung across the canyon?”

Maude smiled. She hadn’t seen Henry’s contraptions, but he had an uncanny respect for the land; she trusted him to somehow make Mountain High fit in to the natural surroundings.

She realized Ms. Stone was waiting for a response.

“You chose to participate in the program, didn’t you?”

“Well—um—yes.”

“And you paid for it?”

“Of course.” She looked at her fingernails again. “Well, my father did.”

Maude stepped back and folded her arms over her chest. “Then you’re the boss. Choose to participate or choose not to. They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. You can discuss options with the people from Mountain High.”

Cynthia Stone crossed her arms over her chest, mimicking Maude’s stance, but said nothing.

“I’ll send in D—um—Mr. Daley.” Mr. Daley. Dr. Daley, whatever. It wasn’t her place to rat him out.

Cynthia huffed out a derisive sound. “It won’t do any good. I don’t trust any of them. I don’t know what they think they’re doing out there in the middle of the wilderness on that horrible ranch.”

“I’ll send him in.”

Maude left the door slightly ajar as she exited the room. Horrible ranch. She thought many things of the ranch where she grew up, but horrible was never one of them. Not even when its isolation helped cause great harm to her sister.

She remembered the ever-present smile on the face of her beautiful sister. A sister who had once been so smart and capable.

“You can go in and see Ms. Stone now,” Maude said as she approached Guy Daley. “She’s convinced she needs to stay.”

He nodded and disappeared into the treatment room.

If he didn’t talk the woman into leaving, there was always Sheriff Potts. The imposing man with the badge had little trouble in a face-to-face confrontation. Though law enforcement was rarely needed in the small rural valley’s only clinic, the sheriff was always glad to help out—at least that’s what Doc Avery told her. He had told her a lot of things during the short two weeks she had to get acquainted with his, and now her, practice.

Not much later, Maude looked up from the office desk where she was finishing paperwork to see Guy coming down the hallway toward her. So soon. She wondered if she’d need the sheriff after all.

“The tech is helping her learn how to use crutches and then I’ll take her back to the ranch.”

Maude swallowed a startled “What?” She couldn’t believe the woman in the treatment room would consent to going anywhere with him, let alone back to the ranch, and so quickly.

“She said she’d leave because—” He paused.

She checked to see if he was gloating.

Holding his expression emotionless, he said, “I told her you’d make a house call.”

She pushed up from her chair to face him. “You what? A house call? For a minor ankle injury?” She thought of the old and the infirm patients Doc Avery used to visit at home. She would gladly see those people, but Cynthia Stone didn’t fit any category of patient who might need a house call.

“Having you come by to check up on her was the only thing that got her interested in leaving.”

The ranch. The place she had managed, with one excuse or another, not to go back to for over ten years.

“Tell her I won’t be there.”

“She’s your patient,” he stated matter-of-factly, and walked out the door.

Even after Henry most generously bought the ranch from her parents to save them from bankruptcy and to fund their retirement and her sister’s care—Maude could not make herself return.

Soon, Mountain High’s blue van pulled up to the door.

Yes, she did hate Guy Daley. She did so want to be bigger than that, but he made it too easy.

Worse—

He was forcing her hand. She should visit the ranch for her own sake. She hadn’t had the moral fortitude to go back there since she left for medical school, and had even less courage after her parents sold the ranch to Henry. Making a house call would keep her from chickening out.

She stepped into the warm afternoon sunlight and walked over to where Guy stood looking tall and Western, not at all like a Chicago doctor, and leaning on the van’s driver’s side door with his arms crossed.

“I’ll come,” she said as she stopped in front of him.

He unfolded his arms and looked at her to continue.

“Please keep an eye on Mr. Hancock. My confidence is low that he’d report any problems if he had them.”

Guy frowned and Maude knew he wanted to ask for confidential patient information, but he didn’t, always the utmost professional. Recalling the earlier promise she’d made, she said, “He asked that I tell you he ‘didn’t just get up and run away.’ That I released him.”

“That would be Jake.” One corner of his mouth turned up into the beginnings of what she knew to be a beguiling smile.

Oh, yes. This was Henry Daley’s brother. Charm had poured from Henry at every turn. From his brother it had to be coaxed and, if given, was hard fought for. The only people she ever saw charm the great Dr. Daley were his brother Henry and Henry’s daughter, Lexie. For Maude, the charm had never been there.

“I’ll come tomorrow morning.” “Solo practice” popped into her head. “Make that afternoon. Tuesday morning is office hours, there are patients for me to see.”

“Tomorrow afternoon then.”

She could have sworn he gave her the tiniest of bows before he reached for the sliding passenger door and made himself busy making room for Queen Cynthia.

As Maude turned away, a sense of relief flooded through her, followed quickly by annoyance. She couldn’t let Guy Daley get to her. Much water had flowed under many bridges for both of them, and the past needed to stay in the past.

THE NEXT MORNING, dressed in her neatly pressed blue oxford shirt and navy slacks with her lab coat over her arm, Maude entered the foyer of the Wm. Avery Clinic ready to let people see how well she could do the job. The truth be told, she was better than old Doc Avery, at least technically, and the more patients she kept alive and healthy, the more people in this valley would accept her as Dr. DeVane and forget about little Maudie.

Arlene, the receptionist, looked up with a nervous smile. That would change, Maude knew. They’d all get used to her.

“Good morning, Arlene.” Maude turned slowly in the empty reception area. “Are they all in the treatment rooms?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. DeVane.” The receptionist took the pencil from behind her ear and fiddled with it. “They—um—canceled and two of them who are usually early didn’t show up at all. I’m really sorry. Mrs. Effington was here for her nine-thirty, but when she saw no one else was here, she—um—decided to leave, too.”

“Is there anyone left on the books for today?”

“Only Mr. Stanley to have his stitches taken out, and he’s already in one of the exam rooms.”

Maude felt some of the puff go out of her ego, but she was careful not to let Arlene see. “And he’s only here because he can’t take the stitches out himself?”

“I suspect you’re right, Dr. DeVane. Can I get you a cup of coffee, or maybe tea?” Arlene was trying hard to put her at ease.

“No, thank you. Say, Arlene, how would you like a paid day off?” The offer didn’t seem to make Arlene any more comfortable and Maude continued. “I’ll see Mr. Stanley and while I do, you make a note for the door. If anyone needs us, they can call the emergency number, and you won’t have to be here all morning without anyone to greet.”

“I can do paperwork.”

“Paperwork will keep.” Maude gestured at the empty waiting room. “They’ll come back. In the meantime, we’ll make lemonade out of this big lemon of a day.”

Arlene nodded and Maude went in to see the only one of Dr. Avery’s patients willing to have her treat him this morning.

After Arlene left, Maude stayed at the office for a while. When she was tired of reading charts, but mostly frustrated at being alone, she went to find an ear that would give her sympathy—or a knock upside the head, whichever she needed the most.

“SALLY, THEY STOOD ME UP!” Maude said as she entered the back door of a large, rambling old house in a cul-de-sac only a few blocks from her own tidy little home.

Sally Sanderson, Maude’s friend since childhood, glanced up from the washer into which she had been shoving colorful clothing of many small sizes. “Well, I’m glad.”

“What?”

Sally snorted a laugh as she pulled her mop of blond curls away from her gray eyes and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Go pour us some coffee. I’ll be done in a sec.”

Maude put cream and sugar into Sally’s—I need the energy, she had said about the added calories—and sat down to wait. Sally did need the energy. Her slight five-foot-two-inch body chased five children all day and half the night.

“I wasn’t sure I’d get to see much of you after Doc left,” Sally said as she set a basket of folded towels by the door and took a seat at the worn wooden table big enough to seat the small army of Sandersons and a few more.

“Me, too.” Maude laughed. “Doc Avery was supposed to be here for a month after I got here, but it seems their granddaughter had her delivery date recalculated.”

“Mommy. Mommy.”

Sally reached down and picked up Lizzy, a shy five-year-old replica of herself, who had wandered into the room, spotted the intruder and made a beeline for the safety of her mother’s lap. The sparkling stars mounted on floppy stalks attached to the headband Lizzy wore batted her mother on the chin and Sally pushed them gently aside. “Doc’s gone only one day and here we are. I’m delighted to have your company.”

“I’m glad you are. Thank you.”

“All right. So what’s that about?” Sally stroked Lizzy’s hair.

“Yesterday morning at the grocery store they were gossiping, called me little Maudie.”

“And you just had to hide behind the dill pickle display and listen?”

“Well something like that. It was canned peas.” Maude reached down and patted Barney, the docile family dog that had followed Lizzy into the room and now sat with his head against Maude’s leg. “What if this keeps up?”

Sally snort-laughed again and Lizzy looked up at her. “This is St. Adelbert, honey. It took them a year to decide to plant flowers around the flagpole in the town square. Give them time.”

“I just feel sort of blindsided. I came here because I knew there would be no one when Doc Avery left. It’s not as if I’m an outsider. They know me. Most of them know my family. Was I some kind of moron when I was a child?”

“No, but you were cute.” Sally hugged the child on her lap. Laughter played in her big wide-set eyes.

“Cute? Who wants a cute doctor?” Maude stirred her coffee.

“Barry Farmington.”

“Oh, please. He doesn’t count. He’d hit on a lamppost if he thought he could get some.” Maude sipped coffee, put it down and stirred again.

“They’ll come around,” Sally assured her.

“What do I do in the meantime? I’m used to working sixteen hours a day.” Maude tapped her fingertips on the tabletop until Sally reached over and quieted the tapping by covering Maude’s hand with her own.

“Since it won’t last long, take some time for yourself. Drive to Kalispell and have a massage. Go out and make new friends. Eat dirt. What do you feel like doing?”

“I don’t know. Yesterday, when a patient came in as an emergency, someone must have called Doc Avery. He stopped in…on his way out of town.”

“Cora and Ethel. Know everything. Blab all.” Sally smoothed the hair back from her daughter’s forehead. Lizzy snuggled closer into her mother’s bosom.

“You heard.” Maude crossed and uncrossed her legs.

Sally nodded. “I was behind the cornflakes this morning.”

Maude put her face in her hands.

“It’s early.” Sally patted her on the head and played with her hair the way she did her daughter’s. “Besides, they asked you to come and take over.”

Maude laughed and looked up. “I didn’t tell you what they said the first time I called, when I was just starting my Rural Medicine fellowship. It’s too embarrassing.”

“How about…‘Oh, Maudie, you’re too cute to be our doctor’?”

“Close. ‘We’re sure we’ll find someone before you’re ready.’ I know I heard the head of the selection committee cringe when she said it, too, hoping I wasn’t going to beg for crumbs or anything. That was two years ago and I was already board certified in internal medicine.”

“The jerks, but like I said…”

“I know. It’s early.” Maude sat up and pulled her shoulders back, and then slumped forward onto her elbows. “Maybe I’ll go to Fiji and then come back next spring to see if ‘little Maudie’ is better than no doctor at all.”

“Yeah, go. And while you’re there, you can choose another profession, maybe something that doesn’t take any backbone.”

As if to emphasize Sally’s point, Barney put his paws on Maude’s lap and stretched up to lick her face. “Thank you. I needed that,” she said to Sally and Barney. She scratched the back of the dog’s head.

“See the patients that come. Treat them like kings and queens, and give away ice-cream cones. They’ll come back.”

“Possibly. Where are the rest of the kids?” Maude reached out and touched the silken cheek of the girl in her friend’s lap and got a shy smile as a reward.

“The twins are having a nap—early, but I take what I can get. The older two are on a playdate, so I have peace and quiet—just what you’re shunning. Remember this day. You’ll rue it if you waste it. Now tell me what else has you going.”

“Going?”

“You’re twitchy and I know all this maudlin—” she paused to cover Lizzy’s ears “—crap is a cover-up for what you don’t want to talk about.”

“I am not—” Maude gestured with her spoon “—twitchy.”

“You stirred your black coffee. Twice. The only time you get that twitchy is when—Oh, yes.” Sally threw a fist in the air. “Lizzy honey, Mommy wants you to take that pack of Oreos we just bought and go watch television.”

Maude dropped her coffee spoon on the table with a clatter. She eyed her friend suspiciously as Lizzy hopped down, sprinted for the cupboard and, hardly stopping, turned and ran to the family room holding her prize with both hands, blond curls flying, sparkling stars dancing wildly.

“A whole pack of cookies and television?”

“Who is he?”

“No. No. No.” Maude held her hands up. “It’s not what you think. He isn’t anyone.”

“Better and better. You usually fall for the somebodies who treat you badly and send you back crying to me.”

“I don’t cry. Besides, I like to think I dump them. I’m a busy doctor, remember. No time for such dalliances. Love ’em and leave ’em.”

“Let’s see. It’s not Curly or Jimmy Martin. Who else did you see yesterday? Um. Oh, yes, Jake, but he’s not your type. He’s the right age and heaven knows good looking.”

“Hey, Jake Hancock’s an idea.” Maude knew where Sally was heading, and she didn’t want to go there.

“Is not. He’s too cowboy for you. Besides, if you’d have thought so, you’d have jumped his bones when your parents tried to set you up with him a couple years ago, after they moved off the ranch.”

“And they had nothing left to do but meddle in their daughter’s life,” Maude finished for her.

Sally tapped her chin. “There’s a man out at your ranch running Mountain High. It must be him.”

“It isn’t and never has been my ranch.”

“Oh, you are dodging on this one. He was in town a couple of times before you got here. I hear he’s hunky.”

“Sally, he’s Henry’s brother,” Maude said.

“The doctor? From Chicago?” Sally folded her arms over her chest and wrinkled her brow. “We don’t like him, do we?”

“I’m trying not to hate him.” Maude let a flash of pain for her lost friend Henry grip her.

“Just give me ten minutes with the man.”

Maude laughed imagining five-foot-nothing Sally taking on Guy Daley. She’d do it, too.

“What’s he doing on your ranch, anyway?”

Maude started to reply, but Sally waved her off. “I know you don’t own it, but you should.”

“Because I grew up there?”

Sally nodded emphatically.

“The truth is—” Maude paused.

“What? What have you been hiding from me?”

Maude put her chin down toward her chest and then confessed, “I could have had it.”

“The ranch!”

She nodded. “If I had wanted to be in debt until I was a hundred and ninety-three. The bank said as an M.D. and as a prospective long-standing member of the community we could work something out.”

“So that’s not it.”

“No, it’s not. I just couldn’t imagine working that hard for something…” Maude let her voice trail off. She didn’t know if she could say the words even to Sally. She barely said them to herself. She put her hands down on the table and rested her chin on them.

“Something?” Sally prodded in a gentle tone.

When Maude said nothing, Sally poked her on the arm. When Maude still didn’t respond, Sally poked harder.

“Ouch.” Maude rubbed her arm that really didn’t hurt.

Sally had squared her shoulders and made herself look like Atlas ready to shoulder the world.

Maude chuckled. “Yeah, you don’t have any worries of your own.”

Sally relaxed against the slat-back chair. “Well, there is the new worry I have about Lizzy hurling Oreos all over the carpet in front of the TV because she’s no doubt sitting too close, catching as much electromagnetic radiation as she can.”

“Maybe we should go rescue her.”

“Lizzy, sit on the couch and watch TV,” Sally called over the sound of Big Bird. Then she looked at Maude and smiled. “I can always flip the couch cushion over. Now what’s up with the ranch and how much does it have to do with one Daley brother or the other?”

“It didn’t have anything to do with a Daley brother. At least it didn’t at the time.”

“It had to do with…” Sally peered over the top of her glasses at Maude.

“I didn’t want to work that hard for something that broke my heart every day.” Maude expelled a breath of frustration.

“Amanda,” Sally said quietly.

Maude nodded her head as she thought of the accident twenty years ago that now seemed as if it had happened yesterday. “One day I was the goofy girl with an older sister who wanted to take over from Doc Avery and the next day all I had were neighbors hovering over me not telling me a thing about what was going on.”

“And all this time, I thought it was because you couldn’t afford it.”

“Mom and Dad owed so much to the banks, I told them to sell it to the highest bidder.”

“Yeah, one of those rich Coasters or some Arab sheik. I hate it when families move off the ranches.”

“Henry was sanctimonious when he thought I’d lose my childhood home forever. He was determined I’d want it someday, so he bought it to save it from your Coasters and sheiks. Said he’d sell it to me when I was ready. He was so excited, I just couldn’t convince him I might never want the ranch. And my parents, well, they were tickled to be out from under the burden and retire to Great Falls with the nest egg Henry overpaid them. And we all knew with Amanda in a bigger town, she’d be well taken care of for the rest of her life.”

Sally rubbed Maude’s shoulder. “Do you want the ranch now?”

“I don’t. Too many memories. Too much work.” But as she said the words she thought of taking a dip in the swimming hole and long hikes to the hunter’s cabin.

“Are you sure?”

“We did have fun there.”

The two friends sipped coffee as warm sunshine streamed between the white curtains with embroidered red tulips and fell over them like a warm blanket. Maude thought of the solace they had found in each other in grade school when they realized they each had an older sister who outshined them by, Sally had said, about a gagillion candlepower.

“Maudie likes the enemy,” Sally singsonged softly.

“Creep.” Maude laughed and smacked the top of the table with her hand. “I’m going back to the office where there is no one to tease me.”

“No, you aren’t. You’re going to the hunk’s ranch to make a house call.”

“Nothing is a secret in this town.”

“There’s nine hundred and seventy-three of us in the entire valley besides you—no, nine hundred and seventy-four—Midge had her baby last week and, of course, we all know as much of everybody’s business as we can ferret out or make up.”

“Can we change the subject to something that doesn’t involve me?”

“But you came here to talk about you.”

“I came here to sulk. You can imagine the jubilation that will break loose in this town if they find out there is a real doctor, a man doctor, in the valley.”

Sally waggled her blond eyebrows at Maude. “Want to eat Oreos and watch Sesame Street?”

“Yes, and then I have a house call to make.”

Lizzy sat between them on the couch. All three wore headbands with sparkling stars on floppy stalks and ate cookies with a big yellow bird. Barney sat on the floor with his muzzle on the edge of the couch, eyes watching each cookie go from package to mouth, hoping.

EARLY WILDFLOWERS greeted Maude as she drove the highway toward the ranch. At intervals a granite gray stream rollicked beside the road, and in some places rough escarpments soared high, held back by luck and prayers.

Around many curves in the road, snowcapped mountains peeked above pine trees but never seemed to get any closer. Around others lay breathtaking drop-offs where the world fell away and if you drove off the edge, no one would find you for weeks—or ever.

Maude accelerated, loving the sense of adventure clinging to the edge gave her. She smiled. Henry had taught her to push the envelope once in a while. And then she slowed, wondering if anyone would ever care that she felt that way, if she’d ever have a relationship and a family like Sally had, if the town would ever accept her as their doctor.

What would her sister have done under the circumstances?

She gripped the steering wheel hard and then made herself relax. There wouldn’t have been any such “circumstances.” Amanda, the golden child, had been smart and beautiful with an aura of grace and strength. Everyone would have welcomed her warmly as a replacement for Doc Avery…even though she wasn’t a man.

She rounded the last sharp curve, and the valley green with both darkness and light spread out before her. The stunning nature of the land had not changed.

She could face Guy Daley—

“Oh God.” She laughed. She had tried so hard not to think of him. If what didn’t kill you made you stronger, then this man had contributed greatly to her strength over the years.

She slowed to turn onto the long road from the highway to the ranch house. The roughly graded gravel took her through what had been pastureland, but now seemed unused and undisturbed, still beautiful, not lessened by having nature’s free hand.

As she rounded the last corner, the ranch house and buildings came into view.

She stopped near the barn.

A rustic yet sturdy-looking two-story log building stood next to the house, apparently a guesthouse for the participants in Henry’s program. It didn’t destroy the look of the homestead, but it had replaced the old oak tree. The one that Granddad had always insisted shouldn’t be growing there, and maybe it shouldn’t have been.

They’d put the building right where Amanda had lain for so long in the snow. A heart-wringing longing filled Maude, and she rested her forehead on her white-knuckled hands. She missed her sister and the life they’d had.

She suddenly felt closer to Amanda than she had in years. “I’m doing it, Amanda.” She would fulfill her sister’s dream no matter how hard she had to fight to get the people of the valley to accept her. The lovely, craggy valley, full of skeptical people, would have a doctor, one who cared, and one everyone could call Doc.

The sound of rapping on the window of the car brought her head sharply up.

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