Prognosis: Romance
GINA WILKINS
Fourth-year medical student James Stillman knew firsthand that life was lonely at the top. His privileged, isolated upbringing left him unable to build lasting relationships–professional or personal. Until he met a sexy, independent redhead who brought him back down to earth!Just when children's-party planner Shannon Gambill got her life in order, a handsome stranger strode into it and stirred something that could lead only to chaos. How could she possibly resist the gifted doctor who had saved her nephew's life… and set her heart ablaze with one smoldering look? A take-charge, dominating man was the last thing she wanted. Yet the considerate, passionate man lurking beneath James's hard exterior might be just what she needed….
He covered her hand, giving her fingers a little squeeze. “I like you, too,” he said.
He liked her. A perfectly innocuous and friendly statement, certainly nothing that should make her pulse leap this way. Hadn’t she just told him that she liked him, too? It was ridiculous for her to feel this schoolgirl breathlessness over such an innocent comment.
And yet there was nothing innocent about the gleam in his eyes when they lowered slowly from her own, pausing to study her mouth as if memorizing the contours. She could almost taste him again now—which only fueled her hunger for another sample.
Dear Reader,
I’ve had such a great time writing the DOCTORS IN TRAINING series, getting to know the five members of the study group I introduced in the first book, Diagnosis Daddy. I have to admit my favorite part of creating this series was all the time I spent quizzing my medical-resident daughter about her experiences in med school. She was so helpful, and we had a lot of fun dreaming up “what ifs.” Any errors or embellishments, of course, have been all mine—but I’m very grateful for her assistance.
As graduation approaches, only one member of the study group is single and unattached. As happy as he is for his friends, James Stillman isn’t sure there’s a woman out there who’s just right for him…until he meets free-spirited Shannon Gambill. Now his only problem is convincing Shannon that giving up her heart does not mean giving up her independence! I hope you enjoy their story.
Gina Wilkins
Prognosis: Romance
Gina Wilkins
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
GINA WILKINS
is a bestselling and award-winning author who has written more than seventy novels for Harlequin and Silhouette Books. She credits her successful career in romance to her long, happy marriage and her three “extraordinary” children.
A lifelong resident of central Arkansas, Ms. Wilkins sold her first book to Harlequin in 1987 and has been writing full-time since. She has appeared on the Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and USA TODAY bestseller lists. She is a three-time recipient of the Maggie Award for Excellence, sponsored by Georgia Romance Writers, and has won several awards from the reviewers of RT Book Reviews.
For my agent, Denise Marcil, in celebration of our silver anniversary of working together. What a great journey it has been!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Chapter One
“Aunt Shannon, watch me!”
“Aunt Shannon, catch!”
“Aunt Shannon, I’m swimming. See?”
“Aunt Shannon, Aunt Shannon!”
The woman who was obviously “Aunt Shannon” laughed as she turned from one side to another in the hip-deep water of the lake, trying to respond to the half dozen children competing for her attention. From his lounge chair in a shady spot on the beach nearby, James Stillman watched her in fascination.
Somewhere in her mid- to late-twenties, she wasn’t exactly beautiful, though he found the expressive face framed by a mop of red curls to be very intriguing. She looked a little familiar, but he couldn’t remember ever meeting her before—and he couldn’t imagine that he would have forgotten if he had.
Her slender body was nicely displayed in a bright yellow bikini that bared just the right amount of fair skin to be neither too modest nor too brazen. He hoped she was wearing sun-screen. Though it was late afternoon and the most dangerous UV rays were beginning to fade, it was still sunny enough to cause a burn if she wasn’t careful.
Or was that just the scientist in him fretting? He’d been accused many times of being too serious about everything.
He watched as the woman picked up a little boy and tossed him a few feet away into the water. The boy, who might have been three or four, bobbed to the surface sputtering with giggles. He begged, “Do it again, Aunt Shannon!”
“No, me. Me,” a little girl of perhaps five insisted. Splashing from within the confines of a snug yellow-and-orange life vest, she dog-paddled ahead of him. “Throw me, Aunt Shannon.”
A brunette woman, lounging on a towel not far from where James sat, looked in that direction momentarily taking her attention from the thick paperback in her hands. A ginger-haired man dozed beside her. “Jack. Caitlin. Settle down,” she called out, then returned her gaze to her book.
Her words had no visible effect on the children, who continued begging their aunt to play with them. Another boy, maybe seven or eight, floated on a neon-blue air mattress a few feet deeper in the water. He splashed his arms vigorously to propel the mattress forward, calling for Shannon to admire his navigational skills.
A girl who appeared to be about the same age as the boy on the raft tossed a purple beach ball into the waves, then swam to retrieve it. Occasionally she threw it at Shannon, who caught it deftly and lobbed it back. Two other girls, obviously twins, whom James estimated to be about ten years old, played nearby, vying to see who could float the longest without dropping her legs. They called out regularly for Shannon to determine the winner.
All of the children surrounding her had some shade of red hair, he noted. There were a few other families playing in the designated swimming area of the popular central Arkansas lake, but they were farther down the beach, giving Shannon and her boisterous nieces and nephews plenty of room to frolic. Brightly colored buoys strung together with yellow cording marked off the generous swimming area, protecting it from the ski boats and fishing boats skimming past on the lake and leaving behind waves to delight the swimmers.
From somewhere behind James, another red-haired woman who resembled Shannon enough that she had to be an older sister, wandered up with a ginger-haired toddler on her hip. The woman wore a modest, one-piece black swimsuit; the baby sported a swim diaper. She set him down and let him splash in the shallow water lapping at the hauled-in sand that made up the beach area. “Kyle, don’t go too far out,” she called to the boy on the float.
He waved impatiently at her and paddled harder while she turned her attention back to the baby.
Resting his head against the collapsible lounge chair he’d brought with him, James shifted his dark glasses on his nose and crossed his legs at the ankles. He wore navy swim trunks and a thin, pale gray T-shirt. His beach sandals sat on the brown sand beside the chair and a warm breeze tickled his bare feet. Considering it was an August Saturday afternoon, the heat wasn’t too bad here by the waters of Greers Ferry Lake. He’d already had a long swim along the buoy line and had spent the past two hours resting, sipping bottled water and reading, though he’d brought a medical textbook rather than the usual beach read.
It had been pure impulse that made him toss the chair and a cooler of bottled water and sandwiches into his car and make the hour-long drive from his condo to the lake. A free Saturday was so rare in his schedule these days that he’d figured he had to do something to celebrate. He could have invited some of his friends to come with him, but he figured they were all busy on such short notice. His only friends these days were fellow medical students—specifically, the four other members of the study group he’d joined three years earlier.
He knew Anne’s husband was in town and, since Liam traveled extensively, they would want to spend every spare minute together. Connor spent free weekends with his wife and almost-nine-year-old daughter. Newlyweds Haley and Ron were busily looking into residency programs in places that interested them both. Between those commitments and their hectic schedules as fourth-year medical students, none of them had much spare time. They were rarely able to take off on impulse.
He’d awakened that morning with a restless desire to get outside the confines of the hospital and his condo. The lake had been the first destination to pop into his head. He’d attended a class barbecue here in July, and he’d had such a nice time he decided to recapture the lazy good mood that day had inspired.
He quickly discovered it wasn’t quite the same being here by himself. He’d had a pleasant day, but when he’d realized he was surrounded by families and groups of teenagers, he had become aware of his solitude. He was well accustomed to spending time alone and was content with his own company for the most part, but he supposed he’d become a bit spoiled by belonging to a tightly-knit group for the past three years—the first time in his almost thirty years he’d felt that close to anyone.
Maybe that was part of the reason he’d been so entertained watching the attractive Shannon and her family. Safely camouflaged behind the lenses of his dark glasses in his shady nook, he’d watched them play since they’d descended on the beach almost an hour earlier. At first he thought she might be the mother of some of the redheaded kids, but he’d since decided none of them were hers.
“Hey, Karen,” she called to the woman with the book. “Tell my lazy brother to wake up and come play with us. Come on, Stu, get in the water.”
The man dozing on the towel grumbled.
“Come swim with us, Daddy,” the little boy Shannon had been tossing called out.
Stu sat up with exaggerated reluctance, stretching and yawning. At the water’s edge, the toddler tripped and fell face-first into the wet sand, resulting in a wail that got everyone’s attention. His mother righted him quickly, dusting off his chubby little legs and splashing water to divert him from his cries. “He’s okay. Just startled him,” she said.
Reassured, the others again started badgering Stu to join them in the water, everyone looking his way and laughing now.
James glanced idly past Shannon. Out by the buoys in the deeper water, the blue air mattress bobbed on the wake of a passing ski boat. Just as he straightened in his chair to look more closely, he saw a small red head emerge beside the floating mattress, then go beneath the water again, one hand flailing above the surface.
Tossing his sunglasses aside, he leaped from his chair. Dashing past the startled mother and toddler, he dived into the water just beyond where Shannon stood, striking out for the mattress with long, distance-eating strokes. He’d been out there earlier and he knew the water was a good twelve feet deep at the buoy line.
He heard someone scream behind him. Heard a woman yell, “Kyle!” Heard a splash and sensed someone following him through the choppy water, but his focus was on the empty float and the spot where he’d last seen the boy.
Drawing a deep breath, he ducked beneath the surface, peering into the sediment-filled lake water and seeing nothing. He came back up for a quick gulp of air, then went back under, swinging his arms wide in hope of finding…
There. His fingers closed around wet skin. A flailing leg caught him in the stomach hard enough to make bubbles escape his mouth. Ignoring the pain, he grabbed hold of hair and skin and kicked upward, hauling the boy with him.
He gasped for air. Then released his breath in a sigh of relief when he heard the child in his grasp coughing and sputtering.
“Kyle!” Shannon swam up to them, her expression horrified. “Are you all right?”
The boy was trying not to cry, but not succeeding very well. “I fell off the float,” he said, his words broken by racking coughs as James supported him. “I swallowed some water and I choked and I couldn’t start swimming.”
“Let’s get him on the float and tow him in,” James suggested, his arms still wrapped around the boy’s chest as he treaded water for both of them.
Shannon nodded and looked toward the bank. “He’s okay,” she shouted toward the crowd that had gathered to watch anxiously from the beach. “We’re bringing him in.”
Bobbing in the water, she grabbed one end of the rubber float. “I’ll steady this while you get him on it.”
James nodded and looked at the boy, who had almost stopped coughing but began to look a little ill. “You’ll be fine, Kyle,” he assured him. “I’m going to hoist you onto your mattress, okay? Can you help steady yourself?”
Kyle nodded weakly. “I can swim,” he muttered, clinging to what little pride he had left. “I just choked on some water.”
“That happens sometimes,” James replied matter-of-factly. “Okay, on three. One, two, three.”
With the final count, he lifted the kid up and onto the mattress. While Shannon kept the float from tilting, Kyle grabbed the edges to keep his balance until it stopped rocking. Confident the boy wouldn’t fall off again, James took hold of the rope attached to the top and struck out for the shore with Shannon swimming steadily on the other side of the mattress.
Leaving all the other kids on the shore, herded over by the woman who’d been reading earlier, Stu waded out to meet them as soon as their feet touched solid ground. Well, James’s feet touched. Being several inches shorter, Shannon had to swim a little farther before she could stand.
“You okay, Kyle?” Stu asked the boy.
“I’m okay, Uncle Stu,” Kyle murmured, looking both weary and mortified.
The mother of the toddler thrust her youngest child into the other woman’s arms and dashed out to knee-deep water to clutch Kyle as Stu lifted him off the mattress. “You’re okay, baby? You’re sure you’re okay?” she asked, patting him down as though looking for injuries.
“I’m okay,” Kyle repeated, squirming. “Geez, Mom, don’t call me ‘baby’ in front of everyone.”
Now that her fears were somewhat relieved, fear turned to anger. “I told you not to go out that far. What were you thinking?” she scolded.
The boy’s pouting lips were turning blue and he was beginning to shiver as his own emotional reactions flooded through him.
“You should probably get him out of the water and wrap him in a towel,” James advised. “Don’t want him to go into shock.”
The calm advice brought everyone out of their panic-driven paralysis. Stu carried the boy to shore, where his mother grabbed a large, thick beach towel imprinted with cartoon superheroes and wrapped him snugly inside it. The non-related bystanders who’d gathered to gawk wandered back to their own pursuits, leaving the family gathered around Kyle.
“Kyle drownded,” one of the younger kids said in awe.
“He didn’t drown,” Shannon said firmly. “He just came much too close.”
Turning to James then, she gazed up at him with liquid green eyes. “I don’t want to think about what might have happened if you hadn’t been here. We thought we were watching them all so carefully.”
The faint tug of familiarity nagged him again. Had he seen her somewhere before? She gave no sign of recognizing him.
“It’s easy for kids to slip under the radar,” he replied, thinking of the cases he’d seen in the emergency room when he’d done his pediatrics rotation last year. Many of the children brought in there had been injured when their adult supervisors had turned their backs only for a few moments.
Scooping her wet red hair away from her face, she grimaced. “We weren’t careful enough,” she said in self-recrimination. “Kyle really does swim well, and I guess we—I—thought he was okay on his float. I didn’t realize he’d drifted so far out, or that he would fall off and be too startled to remember his swim training.”
Drawing a deep, unsteady breath, she stuck out her dripping right hand. “I’m Shannon Gambill. Thank you for saving my nephew.”
He wrapped his fingers around her hand. The feel of wet skin to wet skin was as pleasurable as it was somewhat unsettling. “James Stillman. It’s nice to meet you, Shannon.”
Shannon had been aware of the man watching her while she’d played with her nieces and nephews. Not in a creepy sort of way—and she had well-developed creep-dar. He looked like a man who was using a day off to do some rather heavy reading, judging from the size of the book he’d perused. Maybe just escaping from drudgery for a few hours. She liked to go off on her own sometimes to recharge her batteries and think in blessed solitude. She’d assumed he was doing something similar since he didn’t seem to be accompanied by anyone.
Her older sister, Stacy, finally stopped hovering over Kyle to thank his rescuer. With typical exuberance, she threw her arms around James’s middle, saying, “Thank you so much for saving my son. You’re a true hero.”
Shannon was rather amused by the “hero’s” dumbstruck expression. It was obvious he wasn’t accustomed to being embraced by tearful strangers. Somewhat awkwardly, he patted Stacy’s shoulder, then carefully disentangled himself.
“Anyone would have done the same,” he assured her in a self-conscious mumble. “I just happened to notice the boy was in trouble.”
Her green eyes shining, Stacy shook her red head stubbornly and gazed up at him with an unsteady smile. “You were amazing. The way you just dived in and swam out there to save him… You should be given a medal or something.”
James’s cheeks were rather pink now. He glanced at Shannon as if begging for rescue, himself.
Smiling, she took pity on him, stepping forward to nudge her sister gently back a few inches. “This grateful mother is my sister, Stacy Malone. The twins are her oldest daughters, Briley and Baylee. You’ve met her son Kyle, of course, and the little one is Sammy.”
Stacy reached out to clutch James’s arm again. “I wish my husband, J.P., was here to thank you, too. He’s working today, so he couldn’t join us, but I know he’d want to express his gratitude for what you did for our family.”
James cleared his throat. “Um—”
Pushing his emotional sister aside, Stu stepped up to take her place, extending his right hand to James. “Stu Gambill—Stacy and Shannon’s older brother. It’s nice to meet you, James.”
Looking relieved by Stu’s matter-of-fact tone, James shook his hand. “The pleasure is mine.”
His rather old-fashioned phrasing matched the image Shannon was getting of him. She took pride in forming very accurate first impressions; it was almost a gift, as she’d bragged on more than one occasion. Maybe two or three years older than her own twenty-five years, he seemed very proper and scholarly, despite the muscles nicely defined by his wet T-shirt and swim trunks. Not shy, exactly, but reserved.
His hair was black, his eyes the color of rich, dark chocolate. His features were classically handsome—too masculine to be called “pretty,” but definitely appealing. Not quite her type—even if he was extremely attractive—but he seemed nice, nonetheless.
Did he look just a little familiar? If so, she couldn’t remember why.
Stu motioned to the woman at his side. “This is my wife, Karen. Our kids—Ginny, Jack and Caitlin. We’re what you might call a prolific family,” he added with a chuckle, waving toward the noisy cluster of siblings and cousins.
“Speak for yourself,” Shannon murmured, drawing a glance from James.
“Can we go back in the water now?” Ginny asked, clutching her purple beach ball and edging toward the shoreline. Her cousin’s misadventure was already consigned to a dramatic memory.
Kyle’s teeth had stopped chattering and Shannon was relieved to see his color was almost back to normal. The freckles across his cheeks no longer stood out as dramatically as they had when he’d been pulled from the water, pale and panic-stricken. She wouldn’t forget that look for a while, she thought with a hard swallow.
“I want to swim, too,” Kyle insisted, squirming out of the towel his mother had wrapped so tightly around him he could hardly move. Shannon suspected he wanted to prove to everyone that his near-drowning hadn’t made him afraid to go back in the water. Kyle’s innate recklessness was the bane of his harried mother’s existence.
“No more swimming right now,” Stu proclaimed. “It’s almost time to eat,” he added, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the chorus of protests. “I bet Grandpa and Uncle Lou have already got the coals heating back at the picnic area.”
“And don’t forget we’re having homemade ice cream for dessert,” Karen reminded them.
That was enough to divert the kids’ attention from water sports. They snatched up towels, toys and shoes in preparation to return to the picnic area.
“Are you by yourself today?” Shannon asked James.
He nodded. “Rare day off. It seemed like a good time to swim and read.”
Exactly as she’d surmised, she thought smugly. “My family’s having a cookout. We always have enough food for at least a dozen extra people. We would love to have you join us for burgers and ice cream.”
He looked startled again by the impulsive invitation, but Stacy jumped on the suggestion immediately. “Oh, yes, please do, James. Our parents would love to meet you.”
“Oh, but I—”
“Our family’s a little crazy, but a fun bunch,” Stu chimed in. “If you don’t mind sharing burgers with a few bees and a gang of rug rats, you’d be welcome.”
“No bees,” eight-year-old Ginny announced confidently. “Grandpa brought Cinderella candles.”
“Citronella,” Karen corrected her daughter with a smothered smile.
“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” James said.
Studying his face, Shannon thought he looked tempted by the invitation, even though he seemed to feel obliged to demur. That was all the impetus she needed to smile up at him and urge, “It wouldn’t be an intrusion at all. Our family loves making new friends. And after what you’ve done for us, we consider you a friend already.”
He pushed a hand through his wet, black hair, his dark eyes steady on her face. “Then I would be pleased to accept. On one condition. You have to stop thanking me. I was happy to be of assistance, but any of you would have done the same thing if you’d seen a boy in trouble.”
She laughed. “Well, you’ll probably have to endure my parents’ expressions of gratitude when they hear the story, but after that I promise we’ll drop the hero treatment, if you like.”
“I’d like,” he agreed with a faint smile.
She stuck out her hand. “Deal.”
His eyes glinting with amusement, he shook her hand again. Once again, she was aware of an odd tingling when they made skin-to-skin contact. She’d thought that was only an anomaly the first time. No surprise, really, she assured herself. After all, the guy was good-looking. And his long-lashed eyes were striking enough to make a healthy young woman’s heart flutter a little.
She was a healthy young woman.
His fingers tightened for only a moment around hers—as if she weren’t the only one aware of a spark between them—but then he released her and stepped back, his expression politely neutral again. “I’ll get my things.”
The others went ahead toward the picnic area, the three adults shepherding the seven children up the asphalt road, a task Shannon silently compared to herding cats. Slipping her feet into her sandals, she drew a loose, thin, white cover-up over her bikini. The sleeveless, thigh-length garment clung a bit to her damp suit, but it was cool, comfortable and modest enough to satisfy her mother and aunt.
She towel-dried her collar-length curls while James donned his sandals, draped a towel around the neck of his wet T-shirt and folded his chair. He tucked the chair beneath one arm, then picked up the small cooler and thick book that had been sitting beside it.
“I’ll drop these things off at my car,” he said. “It’s parked at the edge of the day area. I have some dry clothing in the car. I’d like to change before eating.”
“Of course. The changing rooms aren’t far from the tables we’ve claimed.” Imitating him, she looped her towel around her neck to free her hands. “Can I help you carry something?”
“That’s not necessary. I’ve—”
But she had already relieved him of the heavy hardcover tome as she fell into step beside him toward the parking lot. She discovered in surprise that it was a medical reference book. “Textbook of Infectious Diseases?” she asked in surprise. “Holy kamoley. You consider this beach reading?”
Amused by her wording, he shrugged. “It’s the only thing I have time to read at the moment.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Medical student,” he corrected her. “Just started my fourth year.”
“Oh.” She wouldn’t have been surprised had he said he was a doctor, because she’d pegged him as a professional man from the start, but she hadn’t expected him to still be in school. “Is medical school as tough as everyone says?”
“It’s challenging,” he said neutrally.
She would be willing to bet he was at the top of his class, and that the material came more easily to him than to others. He had an air of quiet competence that made her think he didn’t often fail at anything he attempted. She’d bet he was the single-minded, long-term-planning, never-give-up type, too.
She watched as he placed his folding chair into the back-seat of a sleek, expensive hybrid car and drew out a small, designer-label duffel bag. Money, she decided immediately. A social conscience, but no worries about paying his bills. Privileged background—private schools? Lifelong country-club membership? Social-register girlfriends?
Okay, maybe she was getting a little carried away with her predilection for making sweeping assumptions based on early impressions, she decided, reining in her imaginings. Her family had warned her she was going to be disappointed or even hurt someday when one of her first impressions turned out to be way off the mark. But because she believed at least most of her guesses about James were close to reality that meant they couldn’t be less suited. She kept her smile friendly rather than flirty when she handed him his textbook and told him she would meet him at the picnic area after he’d changed into his dry clothes.
James needn’t have worried about finding Shannon’s family after he changed into a green polo shirt and khaki cargo shorts. He spotted the clan as soon as he walked into the day-use area of the surrounding wooded campgrounds. They had claimed two picnic tables and a charcoal grill, from which smoke was streaming.
It was immediately obvious that he was expected. As soon as he appeared, a woman who looked like an older, blonde version of Shannon and Stacy dashed forward to greet him, holding out both hands in welcome. She caught his hands in hers, squeezing as though she would really prefer to be hugging him, the way Stacy had earlier. “Thank you so much for saving my grandson. Our family owes you such a huge debt of gratitude.”
He’d braced himself for this, but it didn’t make it any easier. He wasn’t at all comfortable being treated like a hero just for doing what anyone else would have done under the circumstances. For that matter, one of the other adults would probably have seen Kyle’s predicament only a moment or two after James had. He was just glad he’d been able to help.
“Okay, Mom, you’ve embarrassed James enough,” Shannon said, fondly nudging her mother back a few inches. “Let Dad thank him and then we’re going to cut the man some slack and let him eat a burger in peace.”
A man with a ring of hair that might once have been red circling a glossy bald head stepped forward to offer a hand to James. “Hollis Gambill. Consider yourself thanked again.”
The man’s calm, but sincere tone reminded James of Stu. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
“Call me Hollis. You answer to James or Jim?”
“Either, but I generally prefer James.”
Hollis nodded, apparently making a mental note of the preference as he motioned toward the people crowding around him. “This is my wife, Virginia. And my brother, Lou, and his wife, Lois.”
Hands were shaken all around and then James was towed toward the picnic tables, where the adults he’d met at the swimming area were all either cooking, setting out supplies for dinner, or supervising the seven children making noisy use of the nearby playground equipment. Stacy was one of the supervisors and she barely took her eyes off Kyle. James suspected that young man’s adventures were going to be closely monitored for the foreseeable future.
He offered his assistance with the dinner preparations, but was assured everything was under control. “Shannon, get your guest something cold to drink,” her mother ordered. “The food will be ready in just a minute.”
“Our guest, Mom,” Shannon corrected in a murmur. “What would you like, James? We have beer, bottled water, diet cola, fruit juices….”
He interrupted with a chuckle. “Bottled water will be fine. Thanks.”
She handed him a plastic bottle with a teasing, “Here you go, Doc.”
“Doc?” Her aunt Lois set down a stack of paper plates and studied James from the other side of the concrete picnic table where he’d been urged to have a seat. “You’re a doctor?”
“A medical student,” he corrected. “Fourth year.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Can you write me a prescription for those little yellow pills that perk me up when I’m feeling peckish? My doctor at home is being a real fuddy-duddy and he won’t let me have any more, but I told him I don’t overuse them. I just like to have them around when I need them.”
Though he’d been warned it could happen, it was the first time he’d actually been hit up for a prescription. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mrs. Gambill. As a medical student, I’m not allowed to write prescriptions.”
“Honestly, Lois,” Shannon’s mother scolded her sister-in-law. “This nice young man is going to think you’re a druggy. Don’t go pestering him for pills.”
“But I—”
“I’m sorry if Lois put you on the spot,” Virginia continued to James, ignoring Lois’s protests. “She isn’t really a drug addict.”
He struggled against a smile. “I didn’t think so.”
Virginia turned then to her daughter-in-law. “Karen, you should have the doctor look at that rash on Caitlin’s back and tummy. Maybe he’d know what’s causing it.”
“I’m not a doctor yet,” he reiterated. “I’m a medical student.”
“Bet you’ve seen a few rashes, though, haven’t you?”
“Well, I—”
“Caitlin. Come see Grammy, sweetie.”
“But I—”
“We did warn you the family’s crazy,” Shannon murmured, standing close behind him and not even bothering to hide a wry grin.
Because he wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, he didn’t even try. Little Caitlin, the five-year-old with hair that glowed almost neon orange, dutifully lifted her shirt upon her grandmother’s instructions, baring her tummy to James’s reluctant eyes. A blotchy pink rash splashed her skin, extending to her back when she turned around. James was relieved when they merely told him it was also on her bottom, rather than stripping her down to prove it.
“It doesn’t really look like heat rash to me,” Shannon’s mother fretted. “And it’s definitely not measles or chicken pox, because she’s had her vaccinations. I know what they look like, anyway. What do you think?”
“Probably not heat rash,” James agreed, trying to recall his days in the outpatient peds clinic. “It looks like contact dermatitis to me. Have you changed laundry detergents lately?”
“No,” Karen replied, straightening her daughter’s clothes. “I’ve used the same one since she was born.”
“I noticed the rash is only where her clothing touches,” he explained.
Everyone looked at the child, nodding to agree with his comment.
“Actually, Stu’s been doing the laundry this week,” Karen said thoughtfully, looking toward her husband. “I’ve been busy with other things. Stu?”
Turning from the smoking grill, her husband asked, “You need something, honey?”
“You’ve been using the regular laundry detergent this week, haven’t you?”
“Sure. Same kind we’ve always used,” he replied.
Virginia sighed in disappointment that their guest had been proven wrong.
“It was only a guess,” James said with a slight shrug. “I’m afraid I don’t know what’s causing the—”
“I did change fabric softeners, though,” Stu called out. “We ran out and another brand was on sale. Smelled good, so I thought I’d try it.”
Virginia beamed at James. “Well, there you go. She’s allergic to the fabric softener.”
“A sensitivity to it, perhaps. Probably not a true allergy,” he said.
Caitlin had already dashed off to play with her siblings and cousins again, her fun unimpeded by the rash that had concerned the adults.
“That was very clever of you,” Lois said to James, patting his shoulder approvingly. “Are you sure you can’t prescribe my little pills?”
“I’m sure, Mrs. Gambill.”
“Oh, call her Lois,” Virginia ordered. “And I’m Virginia. If you say Mrs. Gambill, Lois and Karen and I are all likely to answer.”
“Meat’s ready,” Hollis announced, setting a huge tray of steaming burgers and franks in the center of the table. “Stacy, you and Karen go ahead and fix the kids’ plates and let them start eating so the rest of us can enjoy our dinners.”
“Sit by your guest, Shannon,” her mother ordered, motioning toward the bench beside James. “You’re in the way here.”
Shannon heaved a sigh and moved to slide onto the bench beside him. “You’re in for it now,” she warned him in a low voice, her smile both mischievous and contagious. “Not only are you the hero who saved my nephew, you’re a doctor. I should warn you that the whole family will try to fix us up during the meal.”
“Fix us up?” he repeated.
“Yeah. They’ve been trying for months to match me up with someone. After all, I had my twenty-fifth birthday last spring, and I’m single and unattached—which, you can probably tell, is unheard of in this family of early breeders. You must look like a prize stud to them.”
Her blunt phrasing took him aback for a moment, but then she laughed. Her green eyes sparkled with humor and her grin was an invitation to share a secret joke with her.
It was an offer he couldn’t resist. He laughed, too, earning them approving smiles from Shannon’s mother and aunt. This, of course, only made them laugh harder.
James couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d laughed out loud like this. It felt pretty damned good, he decided, still smiling when he turned to the heaping plate of food his hosts nudged encouragingly toward him.
Chapter Two
It was, to say the least, an interesting meal. The Gambill clan was as colorful as their hair. They talked a lot, and everyone at once, so it was sometimes hard to follow all the conversations going on around him. He tried to keep them all straight—the men talked about baseball, Karen and Stacy chatted about their kids, Virginia and Lois seemed determined to learn everything there was to know about James, Shannon kept up a running beneath-her-breath commentary, and the kids interrupted every few moments with requests, tattling and other bids for attention.
“What type of medicine do you want to practice, James?” Virginia asked, cutting off a sports comment from her husband.
“I’m considering pediatric infectious disease, though I find pulmonology intriguing, too.”
He saw no need to mention that he had a younger cousin with cystic fibrosis, which perhaps explained his interest in pulmonology. Watching Kelly’s lifelong battle with the disease and hearing about the excellent care she had received from the doctors at the children’s hospital had probably been part of what had influenced him to enter medical school after receiving his advanced science degree, despite his parents’ displeasure that he’d chosen to leave academia. His parents were more interested in theory than practice in almost all disciplines, expounding that the true geniuses developed science while those of lesser intelligence and imagination put it to everyday use.
“Lou has a touch of emphysema,” Lois said eagerly, drawing James’s thoughts away from his parents’ affectations. “Maybe you could listen to his lungs later.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a stethoscope with me,” he replied.
Virginia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Lois. You’ve been after poor James for free prescriptions and exams ever since you found out he’s a medical student.”
Lois huffed. “Aren’t you the one who asked him to look at your granddaughter’s rash?”
“That’s different. I was simply asking for an opinion, not drugs.”
“I didn’t ask him to prescribe anything for Lou. I just thought he might want to listen.”
“Why would he want to do that?” Virginia demanded with a shake of her head.
“They’ve been arguing like that for more than sixty years,” Shannon informed James quietly, leaning toward him so he could hear her better over the noise of all the others. Her shoulder brushed his as they sat side by side on the bench.
A bit too keenly aware of that point of contact, he tried to concentrate on what she had said. “So they knew each other before they married brothers.”
“They’re first cousins. They were raised almost like sisters. Makes the family tree a little complicated.”
“I see. And you all live in this area?”
“I live in Little Rock, and so do Stu and Karen. Stacy and J.P. live in Bryant. Uncle Lou and Aunt Lois are visiting from St. Louis and staying for a few days with my parents in Sherwood. They have two daughters and five grandchildren of their own back in Missouri. Needless to say, it’s pretty crazy when both families get together on occasion.”
“Are you from this area, James?” Virginia asked.
Swallowing a bite of his juicy, perfectly grilled burger, James wiped his mouth on a paper napkin before replying. “I’m from northwest Arkansas. Fayetteville. My parents moved there from Tennessee when I was twelve. They’re both professors at the university.”
“Got my degree there,” Stu commented as he scooped potato salad onto a plastic fork. “Karen and I met at a music club on Dickson Street when I was a senior and she was a junior.”
“You’d have been a student there after Stu and Karen,” Lois commented, looking James over assessingly. “Stu’s thirty-eight. You’re—what—thirty?”
“I will be on October fifth. But I didn’t get my degree at Fayetteville. I went to Vanderbilt.”
Several of the people around him frowned and he could tell he’d just lost a few Arkie points.
“I’m still a Razorbacks fan, though,” he assured them. “Uh—woo, Pigs.”
The frowns turned to chuckles and conversation moved to the prospects for the next SEC football season.
“Nice save,” Shannon murmured into his ear. “Do you even like football?”
“Couldn’t care less,” he replied from behind his burger.
She laughed. “That’s what I thought.”
A noisy argument erupted from the kids’ table, requiring adult intervention, and then the overlapping conversations moved to new topics. During the next twenty minutes, James learned that Hollis was a retired quality-control manager, Virginia had been a dental hygienist, Stu was an elementary school principal, Karen an accounting office manager and Stacy was a stay-at-home mom married to a police officer.
“You haven’t mentioned what you do,” he commented to Shannon when there was a momentary lull in the chatter.
“Shannon drifts,” Stacy murmured, hearing the question.
Virginia seemed both annoyed and mildly alarmed by that remark. She looked at James as if worried he’d take Stacy’s comment the wrong way. “Shannon is so good at everything that she has a hard time narrowing her interests down to one career.”
Shannon grinned. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m too good to pin down.”
Her mother frowned at her.
Ignoring the silent censure, Shannon looked at James again. “I’ve had a few jobs that didn’t work out. You might say I get restless easily. But I just started a new business and I like it quite a bit.”
“What’s your new business?”
“I’m running a kids’ party business. I call it Kid Capers. Birthday parties mostly, though I do an occasional tea party or other special-occasion event. I handle all the planning and make the arrangements so all the parents have to do is show up and write a check afterward. It’s fun.”
“I see. Is there a big demand for kids’ party planners?” he asked, genuinely curious.
She shrugged. “The struggling economy isn’t helping, but there are still quite a few people who are willing to pay to have someone else take care of all the party details.”
“I’m surprised you’re free on a Saturday afternoon. Did you leave this day open to spend time with your family?”
“I, um, didn’t have any bookings today,” she admitted. “Like I said, a lot of people are pinching pennies these days.”
“Shannon really does throw some amazing parties,” her mother said loyally. “She has a binder full of themes for the clients to choose from or she takes their ideas and makes them work. She’s young, of course, and just getting started, but we’ve all offered to assist her in any way we can.”
“And as much as I appreciate the offer, I’ve told you repeatedly that I’ve got everything under control,” Shannon said with a firmness that made James suspect there had been a few arguments about that subject.
“By working part-time at a toy store to pay her bills,” Stacy murmured.
“Just twenty-five hours a week,” Shannon said quickly. “The manager there is very good to let me keep my weekends free for my new business and I enjoy working at the toy store. For one thing, it keeps me current on what’s popular with the kids for party themes.”
Shannon’s father chuckled. “I keep telling Shannon these fancy parties for kids are just downright frivolous. Back when our kids were little, we had cake and ice cream and a bunch of neighborhood pals over for pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and Twister. That was the extent of it.”
“Mama hired a pony for my birthday once, remember, Hollis?” his brother, Lou, reminisced. “My tenth, I think. I still remember how much fun that was.”
“And she didn’t need a planner to help her with it,” Hollis said pointedly.
Shannon tilted her head at him. “Okay, Dad. We got your point.”
She didn’t sound cross, exactly, James decided, studying the family dynamics. More resigned and just a little irked, as if she were used to her family indulgently dismissing her work—rather as if she didn’t like it, but half expected it, anyway.
“Do you remember a special birthday party from your youth, James?” Lois asked, looking eager to jump into the conversation again.
“I never actually had a birthday party. My parents weren’t really into that sort of thing.”
The sudden silence around the table was rather jarring after so much chatter.
“You never had a birthday party?” Virginia asked. “Surely you had a few friends over for cake.”
“Well, no. But my parents always took me to a nice restaurant on my birthday.” Uncomfortable with that conversational direction, he picked up the last segment of his sandwich. “This hamburger is delicious. What seasonings did you use, Hollis?”
“That’s a family secret,” Hollis replied with a grin. “We don’t share it with anyone who isn’t born a Gambill or married into the family.”
“It’s Cajun seasoning and Worcestershire sauce,” Shannon said with a roll of her eyes. “So, you can make your own hamburgers without proposing to anyone here.”
“Now you’ve done it, Shannon,” Stu scolded her with mock outrage. “Now we have to kill him.”
“Stu’s only joking, of course, James,” Lois said in a stage whisper.
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am. I know.”
“When do we get the ice cream, Mama?” one of the twins called out.
Hollis climbed out from behind the picnic table. “The ice cream is ready. Who wants strawberry and who wants peach?”
“Strawberry!”
“Peach!”
“Chocolate!”
Karen sighed. “We don’t have any chocolate, Jack. You’ll get peach.”
The kids went crazy when the rich homemade ice cream was spooned out of the stainless-steel tubs. The adults attacked the dessert with almost as much enthusiasm. James accepted a bowl of strawberry ice cream, which he enjoyed very much.
Shannon jumped a couple of feet when one of her little nieces dropped a scoop of strawberry ice cream down the front of her top.
“Holy kamoley, that’s cold!” she said, her voice suspiciously high-pitched as she snatched frantically for paper napkins. Rather than helping, her family laughed heartlessly as she did a funny dance trying to swipe the sticky, ice-cold mixture from her skin.
“Since she started her kids’ party business, Shannon’s taken to saying holy kamoley in place of any curse words,” Stacy explained to James with an indulgent, big-sister smile. “It’s rather annoying, but we’re getting used to it.”
He thought it was sort of funny, himself. Never having had an older sibling—or a younger one, for that matter—he wondered if Shannon minded being treated like one of the little kids dashing around the tables.
It was an interesting family, he mused, continuing to study them as they finished the dessert. Noisy, freewheeling, outspoken, good-humored, they gabbed and joked and argued and teased. So very different from his own family. He wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a family like this one, how he might have turned out.
An argument erupted among some of the children, and though it was dealt with quickly and firmly, everyone had to laugh when little Sammy piped in with a gusty, “Holy ’moley!”
James grinned, thinking how much his friend Ron would enjoy hearing about this eccentric clan. Ron usually had a funny anecdote to share when the study group managed to get together these days; next time, James would have a story of his own.
“Can we go swimming again?” one of the kids asked when the ice cream bowls had been scraped clean.
“No more swimming today,” Stacy said firmly. “But we can play ball. We brought the plastic bats and balls and the little rubber bases and there’s plenty of room on the grass over there to play.”
“Will Uncle Stu be the pitcher?”
Stu nodded. “Gladly. Aunt Shannon can be the catcher.”
“We don’t actually form teams,” Shannon explained to James. “We just let each kid bat and run the bases. That keeps them entertained for a while.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Want to join us? You can play shortstop. Aunt Lois tends to get distracted and wander off during the game.”
He chuckled, but shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d better head back to Little Rock. I have to be at the hospital early in the morning.”
The entire family protested when he announced he was leaving. He shook hands with the men again, waved off another round of thanks for his rescue of young Kyle, accepted hugs and cheek kisses from the women—and was less surprised when they were offered this time, since he’d gotten a bit more familiar with their demonstrativeness.
Lois insisted on giving him a handful of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies wrapped in a paper napkin. She told him she intended to bring them out after the ball game, in case anyone could possibly still be hungry by then.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll enjoy these.”
“Good. I hope to see you again sometime,” she replied. Tugging at his arm to get him to bend closer to her, she whispered, “My niece is single, you know.”
He smothered a smile and evaded the comment by saying, “It was very nice to meet you, Lois.”
“Shannon, why don’t you walk James to his car?” Virginia suggested.
He supposed he should have insisted he didn’t need an escort, but he figured he’d be wasting his breath. Not to mention that he didn’t mind spending a little more time with Shannon, even if only to walk to his car.
Once again he couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking when she nodded in response to her mother’s hint and turned to walk with him. Maybe she was simply thinking along the same lines as he—that it would be useless to protest. Not particularly flattering, if that were true.
He let her walk a couple of steps ahead of him toward the parking lot. Her thin white cover-up fluttered when she walked, floating around her slender body to end at midthigh. He could just see the outline of her yellow bikini through the now-dry fabric. Her hair had dried into a mop of soft red curls that looked temptingly touchable.
When she glanced back at him with a smile, it occurred to him that she wore no makeup, but she didn’t need enhancement. He found the splash of golden freckles across her nose and cheeks intriguing and couldn’t imagine why she would want to hide them. While she probably wouldn’t be described as a true beauty, he couldn’t imagine anything he would change about her fresh, pretty features.
He realized abruptly that he didn’t want to tell her goodbye and drive away without any prospect of seeing her again.
James cleared his throat as they reached his car, and Shannon braced herself, wishing they could skip past what she sensed was coming. She had hoped he would be immune to her relatives’ heavy-handed hints.
“I enjoyed the meal with your family,” he said, giving her one of his intriguingly faint smiles. “Thank you for inviting me to join you.”
“The least we could do,” she assured him. “And everyone enjoyed meeting you.”
She hoped that sounded casual and generic enough.
He frowned just a little, as if it had indeed caught his attention that she hadn’t referred specifically to herself, but he smoothed the expression almost immediately. “I’d like to hear more about your business sometime. It sounds very interesting.”
“You should check my Web site. Kid Capers dot com. All the details are there.”
His frown lasted a bit longer this time. “Um, yeah, I’ll check that out. But what I meant was, I’d like to hear more from you. Maybe we could have dinner sometime?”
He really was an attractive man. His dark hair was so thick and temptingly touchable. His elusive smile made her want to go to extra lengths to earn it. She liked the way he moved—with a deliberateness that was both elegant and masculine all at the same time. Her prided instincts told her this man was actually a study in contrasts—cordial, yet reserved; friendly, yet private; open to others, yet somehow closed on a personal level.
It was the latter quality that made her smile regretfully and shake her head. “I’m afraid I’m very busy right now, between my part-time job and getting my new business off the ground. I know you’re quite busy, too, so perhaps it would be best if we just say goodbye. It was very nice meeting you, James.”
His expression unreadable, he nodded and shook the hand she offered him. She tried without much success to ignore the frisson of awareness that went through her again when their palms touched so briefly. There were most definitely sparks here, she thought, rather quickly pulling away. Which didn’t mean she should place herself in a position to get burned. She still bore the scars from the last time she’d played with fire, romantically speaking.
“Goodbye, Shannon. Enjoy your ball game.”
With that, he climbed into his car. She turned to rejoin her family, but couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder as he drove away. She was aware of a funny little pang inside her when the car disappeared from her sight. Ordering herself to get over it, she drew a deep breath in preparation for her family’s scolding for letting that nice young doctor slip away.
Shannon hung up her cell phone with a satisfied smile. “And it’s a deal,” she murmured, pumping her fist in a gesture of success.
Devin Caswell, her friend, housemate and occasional assistant, clapped her hands with a muted cheer. “You got the gig?”
“Booked it.”
“Details?”
Shannon glanced at her notes. “Birthday party, nine-year-old girl, first Saturday in September—two weeks from tomorrow—at the home. The kid takes dance lessons, plays soccer, loves purple, like every other nine-year-old girl in the world and enjoys handcrafts. Her mom wants each guest to leave the party with a hand-crafted item to keep as a favor. I suggested decorated tote bags or headbands or beaded necklaces or friendship bracelets. She liked them all.”
Devin chuckled. “Going to be interesting trying to work all of that into a two-hour party.”
Wrinkling her nose, Shannon made another note on the pad. “The mom gave me free rein to come up with the projects, though I have a somewhat limited budget. It won’t be a big bash, but I’ll still make a small profit and that’s what counts. Maybe I’ll get some more jobs out of it.”
“Two weeks. Short notice, wasn’t it?”
“She apologized for that. She said she had intended to handle all the arrangements herself, but apparently she’s realized she just doesn’t have time to do the party justice. She said a friend of her husband’s recommended me. She was vague about who it was; I assume it was a former client. I’ll ask again next time I talk to her, so I can thank whoever it was for the referral.”
With a wry smile, she added, “Mrs. Hayes seemed to think it was a miracle we didn’t already have a party scheduled that day. I didn’t bother to mention we’re more likely to be free than booked on any given Saturday.”
Dark-haired, dark-eyed Devin wagged a finger, trying to keep her expression stern rather than amused. “Of course you didn’t mention that. One has to look successful to be successful, right?”
“Exactly.” That was the reason she and Devin had set up the living room of their small, rented house with as much an eye toward hosting potential clients as entertaining friends. The TV was housed in a cabinet with a door they kept closed when not in use. Few knickknacks cluttered the polished surfaces of the tables on either end of the plain, beige couch accessorized with a few colorful throw pillows. The framed posters on the walls were inexpensive, but tasteful.
Bookcases grouped around a round wood table in one corner of the room held albums of photographs and sample materials for the theme parties. The clutter of bookkeeping, order forms and supplies was stashed in the bedrooms and the tiny, barely-one-car garage used only for storage.
She hadn’t needed to show Mia Hayes any of the samples, she mused, glancing at the telephone. Mrs. Hayes had asked only a few questions before booking Shannon’s services. Whoever had passed along the recommendation must have been convincing. Shannon made a mental note to try to find out who it had been. Word of mouth was invaluable in this budding business and she wanted to make sure to express her gratitude.
She glanced at her watch, realizing she would have to try to solve that mystery later. “I’d better get going. Don’t want to be late to work.”
Having spent most of the last night at the hospital where she worked as a Certified Nurse Assistant, Devin yawned and nodded. “I’m headed to bed for a few hours. By the way, when you get home, I want to ask you about someone you met recently. A handsome young doctor?”
Freezing in the process of reaching for her purse, Shannon looked over her shoulder as a vividly clear image of James Stillman popped into her head. Six days had passed since their meeting at the lake, but she still had no trouble recalling every detail of his appearance. She could even still hear his deep, pleasant voice echoing in her ears as he’d asked her to dinner.
“How did you hear about that?”
“Talked to Stacy before work last night. She mentioned him, then asked if I knew him from the hospital. I told her the name doesn’t sound familiar. I don’t know all the med students, of course, only the ones working in post-op during my hours.”
Shannon sighed lightly. Stacy had probably given a dramatically embellished account of her son’s rescue. Who knew what else she’d said?
“Kyle fell off his floating mattress and a nice medical student happened to be there to help him. One of us probably would have noticed and gotten to him in time, but we were very grateful to James for his assistance. We asked him to join us for burgers, he did, it was all very pleasant and then he left. End of story.”
“Hmm.” Devin eyed her assessingly. “How come you didn’t tell me about that before? How come you didn’t ask if I knew him?”
Shannon still wasn’t sure why she hadn’t described the incident to Devin. Maybe because she was still chagrined she and her siblings had been so momentarily lax with watching the kids in the water. She didn’t even want to think about the worst-case outcome of that negligence.
As for the meeting with James, it was a onetime thing, so hardly worth mentioning. Right? “It didn’t come up. We’ve both been so busy lately.”
“Stacy said the guy sure seemed taken with you. Did he ask for your number?”
“No, he didn’t.” She wasn’t lying, she assured herself. Devin hadn’t inquired if James had asked her out.
Her housemate frowned in disapproval. “And you didn’t offer it?”
“I did not. I didn’t even know the guy.”
“According to Stacy, he was a gorgeous doctor-to-be who rescued your nephew and was nice to your aging relatives. What more do you need to know?”
Devin had fallen into the habit of serving as surrogate big sister to Shannon when Stacy wasn’t around. She’d been known to fuss about Shannon’s not-always-healthy eating habits, about her not always getting enough sleep or working too hard at her two jobs. Shannon didn’t like being supervised by her housemate any more than she did by her family. She had learned to be very firm in drawing boundaries with Devin.
Tucking her purse beneath her arm, she reached determinedly for her car keys. “I’m leaving now. Get some sleep, Dev.”
Looking dissatisfied, Devin sighed. “Okay, fine. See you later.”
Shannon opened the front door. “See you.”
Thoughts of James Stillman drifted through her mind as she made the drive to the west Little Rock toy store where she worked part-time. If she were being honest, she would have to admit it hadn’t taken the reminder from her housemate to bring him to her mind. Images of him had popped into her head too many times since their encounter.
He was the first man who’d seriously caught her attention in several months, but she wasn’t convinced she’d been wrong to turn down his invitation. Something inside her had warned that even a simple dinner date with James could lead to complications. Ever since her last painful relationship—the second romantic disaster in her relatively short life—she’d vowed to herself to always listen to her instincts from that point on.
She had just finished assisting a customer with finding a popular doll accessory two hours later when her sixth sense, or whatever it was, kicked into overdrive again. Blinking in a startled reaction to the sudden, unusual tingling feeling, she turned warily.
Looking preppy and gorgeous in a dark blue polo shirt and crisply pressed khaki pants, James Stillman smiled at her from the end of the aisle. “Hello, Shannon.”
Caught off guard by seeing him there—and by the presentiment that had been odd even for her—she gaped at him a moment before regaining her composure. “James. What are you doing here?”
Chapter Three
If James heard any suspicion in her question, it didn’t show in his easy smile. “I’m here to buy a gift for a friend’s daughter. Maybe you could help me choose something? To be honest, I’m clueless when it comes to that sort of thing.”
She eyed him with a frown. Was he really here only to buy a gift? He had just happened to come to the store where she worked for the purchase? She was pretty sure he’d heard the name of the store at the picnic. Had he come here today because she might be here, or was that speculation just conceit on her part?
The store manager, Bill Travis, walked by just in time to hear James’s comment. He smiled at the potential customer, then glanced at Shannon as if wondering what was taking her so long to reply. “She’ll be glad to help you, sir. Don’t hesitate to ask Shannon for any assistance you need.”
James nodded at the passing manager. “Thanks.”
Bill shot another look at Shannon, then continued on toward the back of the store where the offices and storage rooms were located.
Switching to the briskly professional tone she used with all the store’s customers, Shannon gave James a bright smile. “I’d be delighted to assist you. How old is your friend’s daughter?”
“Alexis is turning nine in a couple of weeks. What sort of thing do nine-year-old girls like?”
The girl’s name, along with her age, made a lightbulb turn on in Shannon’s head. “This girl’s last name wouldn’t be Hayes, would it?”
He lifted his dark eyebrows in surprise. “Why, yes. Alexis Hayes. How did you know?”
She sighed, uncertain herself how she’d put those particular dots together so quickly. “Her mother called me this morning to handle the birthday party arrangements. She said she’d been given my name by a friend. That would be you, wouldn’t it?”
“It would. Her husband, my friend and classmate, Connor, mentioned that Mia was really snowed under with her grad-school work, teaching duties and their daughter’s activities. He can’t help her much right now because he’s on a difficult rotation. When he said they were trying to find time to arrange a birthday party for Alexis, I suggested they contact you. Mia liked the idea of having someone else do all the work and planning for once.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about acquiring the job through James. It was her nature as the often patronizingly-indulged youngest sibling to immediately resist whenever it seemed that someone was offering her a handout, as if she were some charity case who needed assistance handling her own affairs. Her prickly independence, as Philip had referred to it, had been a definite sore spot between them.
But then she told herself she should be happy for any booking, no matter how it had come about, and chided herself for being unreasonable. Hadn’t she been grateful earlier for the word-of-mouth business? Before she’d learned from whose mouth the advice had issued? “Thank you. I appreciate the referral. I’ll do a good job for your friend.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t have recommended you if I’d thought otherwise.”
There it was again. That faint, somewhat elusive tilt of his lips that made her heart flutter foolishly and her own mouth tingle as if in wistful anticipation.
Turning brusquely toward the shelves of dolls and accessories, she spoke in a deliberately businesslike manner. “These things are probably too young for a nine-year-old. How well do you know Alexis?”
“I’ve known her since she was six, but that doesn’t mean I know what sort of things she likes,” he admitted. “She’s a cute kid. Smart. Polite. Active. That’s about the sum of what I can tell you.”
“Her mother said she likes dance and soccer and the color purple.”
“Sounds like her. You get any ideas for gifts out of that?”
“She also likes handcrafts.” She led him to another aisle filled with handcraft kits. “These are designed for children her age.”
James studied rows of kits for making stuffed toys and jewelry and sun catchers and hair accessories. Nothing seemed to interest him much. “I don’t know.”
“Okay, let’s look at this section,” she said, stepping around him. Their arms brushed as she did so and she was annoyed that her pulse rate stuttered in response to the contact. Focusing fiercely on the job at hand, she pointed out several rows of art supplies. “Does she like to draw or paint?”
“Actually, I have seen several pictures she drew displayed on the fridge when I’ve studied at their house,” he replied thoughtfully. “She’s pretty good, for a kid.”
“Maybe a box of pastels,” she suggested, picking up a small but nice set. He hadn’t said what he wanted to spend, but she figured that was a safe guess.
James examined the pastels she handed him, but his attention was quickly drawn to a larger art-supplies set packaged in a wooden box with brass hinges on each side. The box opened from the center to reveal a rainbow selection of colored pencils, pastels, watercolors and tubes of oil paints, graphite drawing pencils, erasers, sharpeners and other supplies.
Recommended for ages eight and up, the set was rather pricey—more than Shannon would be able to spend on her nieces and nephews for birthday gifts. She noted that James didn’t even check the price.
“This looks nice. Maybe she’d like this.”
“Any kid who likes to draw and paint would love that set. Heck, I’d like it, myself,” she added with a grin.
She was being quite candid. She had loved drawing and painting since her own childhood, though she considered herself only marginally talented. Artistic enough to come in handy for her children’s parties, anyway. Unfortunately, this lovely set was out of her miscellaneous-expense budget.
“Okay, I’ll get this,” James announced in sudden decision. “If she doesn’t care for it, I assume she can exchange it for something else?”
“Of course she can. But I bet she’ll keep it.”
She remembered her impression that James came from a privileged background. He certainly didn’t fit the image of a financially struggling medical student. But she didn’t get the feeling he was flashing his money, either. He seemed to simply want to buy a gift his little friend would enjoy.
She wondered if he could possibly identify with the very tight budget she lived on while she tried to get her struggling business off the ground. Could someone who’d never had to count pennies understand what it was like to worry about paying next month’s rent?
“Where do I pay for this?” he asked, hefting the sizable box.
“At the front register on your way out.”
“Okay, thanks.” He gave her another small smile. “You’ve been very accommodating.”
She swallowed, forcefully holding her own smile in place. “I’m glad I could help. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
He seemed to have been waiting for that very question. He replied without hesitation. “Yes. You can have dinner with me some night soon.”
It wasn’t totally a surprise, but she still blinked a couple of times before frowning at him. “I thought we’d already covered this subject. It’s nice of you to ask, but I’m going to have to decline.”
“Because we’re both too busy,” he said, quoting her excuse from before.
She lifted her chin. “That’s right.”
It was even true—if not the whole truth.
“There’s always time to eat a meal.”
He didn’t sound argumentative. Not even particularly determined to change her mind. He was simply stating a fact, she decided.
She answered in kind. “Well, yes, there’s always time for a meal. But—”
“But not with me.”
“It’s nothing personal.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, making it clear he didn’t buy that, either.
Sighing, she shook her head. “Okay, maybe it’s a little personal. You make me nervous, James.”
He looked startled, then chagrined. “I’m sorry. You needn’t worry about me bothering you again, Shannon. I’m really not…I just thought…well, never mind. I’ll just go pay for this now.”
Grimacing, she caught his arm when he would have hurried away. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
But he’d gone stiff in response to her thoughtless comment and she couldn’t begin to read his expression now. There was no evidence of his intriguing little half-smile when he drew away. “It’s okay. I understand. Thanks again for your help.”
“James—”
“Excuse me, miss, do you work here? I’m looking for that new Perky Pet that’s so popular.” The elderly customer glanced uncertainly from Shannon to James as if sensing she might have interrupted something more than a retail transaction.
James took advantage of the interruption to nod a goodbye to Shannon and disappear with his purchase.
Smoothing both her expression and the bright green vest that marked her as a store employee, Shannon focused on her new customer. “Yes, ma’am, we have a whole display devoted to Perky Pets. Follow me and I’ll show you the newest selections.”
She would mentally replay that clumsy interlude with James later, she predicted with an inner wince. She was quite sure she would come up with exactly the right things to have said, now that it was too late to correct her tactless blunder.
James had spent the entire month of August doing an AI, or Acting Internship, in pediatrics. It had been a demanding rotation, with only four days off during the month—one of which he’d spent at the lake where he’d met Shannon and her family. Still, he’d enjoyed the experience, finding it instructive and mentally challenging, both requirements he craved in his daily activities.
As the name implied, his duties mimicked those of a true medical intern, giving him experience for whatever residency program he would enter after his graduation in May. Beginning work at seven each morning, he carried the same patient load as an intern, wrote daily progress notes on the patients, made presentations during daily rounds and even wrote orders, though his orders had to be cosigned by a resident. He carried a pager and had been on call a couple of times, sleeping in the call room as did the regular pediatric residents.
The evaluations of his performance had been glowing, as far as his medical skills. He was noted as punctual, conscientious, perceptive and professional. He had excelled in the first two years of medical school, comprehending the lectures and acing the tests so that he’d entered the third year at the top of the class. No real surprise; he had entered medical school having already obtained a Ph.D in microbiology, so he’d had a solid foundation for the material in the lectures.
And yet, when it came to his communication skills, the remarks were less enthusiastic. And that frustrated him to no end.
His conversational abilities were fine. Having grown up in an academic household, he could express himself clearly, easily explain even the most complicated terms and hold his own in a debate. Spending time with his study-group friends the past three years had taught him more about making small talk and lightening tense moments with a smile and a quip—things he hadn’t learned from his intensely serious parents.
While it had been made clear from the beginning that physicians had to maintain a professional distance, and while some specialties required less personal interaction than others, James was primarily interested in the pediatric infectious disease practice. With his strong academic and research background in microbiology, he believed he had much to offer to the field. Yet dealing with the emotions of patients and their worried parents was very much a part of that specialty and James wondered sometimes if he’d ever master that particular skill.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care about the ailing children. Obviously he did, or he wouldn’t even consider dedicating the rest of his life to curing them. Nor was he hardened to the emotional toll a child’s illness took on the rest of the family. He always felt as if he was saying the right things, behaving as the situation required—and yet he still kept getting those vaguely worded evaluations about how he needed to work on his communication skills.
He was growing increasingly frustrated with that situation. How was he to maintain a professional distance and still empathize with the patients? How did one learn to express the optimum mixture of competency and compassion? If only there were some formula to memorize or some protocol to learn, he’d have no problem, but this was an intuitive, indefinable quality he wasn’t sure he possessed.
Obviously, he’d been less than successful in communicating with Shannon Gambill, he thought glumly, making a note in a patient chart before completing his duties on the last Thursday of his Acting Internship. He’d thought he’d been friendly and pleasant, just persistent enough to make his interest clear. Shannon had seen his behavior differently.
You make me nervous, James.
He still winced when he remembered those words. Apparently he’d come on too strong or too…something. It had certainly never been his intention to make her uncomfortable.
He supposed he really was lousy at this communication thing.
“Hey, James, how’s it going?”
Looking up from the chart in response to the greeting, James smiled at the slightly rumpled, sandy-haired medical student approaching from the end of the hallway. “Hi, Ron. I’m doing well, how about you?”
His friend Ron Gibson was also completing an AI in pediatrics, though Ron was assigned to pediatric oncology and hematology, or pedi hem-onc in medical jargon. Twenty-eight-year-old Ron had become one of James’s two closest male friends since they’d joined the same five-person study group in the first semester of their freshman year of medical school. Charming, laid-back and affable, Ron had struggled a bit during the first two years of classwork and exams, but he excelled in clinical practice, becoming an instant favorite with the very sick children he wanted to spend his career treating.
Ron seemed to have no problem at all communicating, James thought a bit glumly as he dropped the patient chart into the wall-mounted holder outside the hospital room. “What are you doing on this wing?”
“Looking for you. Haley, Connor and I are meeting for dinner this evening. Connor’s at loose ends tonight because Mia and Alexis are doing something girly and he thought it would be a good time to catch up. Want to join us?”
James didn’t even have to think about it. “Sure. What time?”
Moving to the next room on his assigned patients’ list after Ron went back to his own duties, James drew a deep breath as he picked up the chart and flipped through it. He pasted on a smile before entering, trying to add a little of Ron’s natural warmth to the expression.
It came so easily to Ron—why did James have to work so hard at it, when all he wanted to do was help his patients?
The Italian restaurant where the group had decided to meet was surprisingly busy for a Thursday evening. Looking for his friends, James entered past a crowd waiting for tables in the lobby. He wasn’t in the greatest of moods after his tiring day. It didn’t help that this restaurant was on the same street as the toy store where Shannon worked—as if he had needed that reminder.
Still, he looked forward to visiting for a little while with Connor and Ron and Haley. It was so rare for them to get together now that they were all on such different schedules. He’d miss seeing Anne, the only remaining member of the original study group, but since Ron hadn’t mentioned her joining them, he assumed she’d had other obligations.
A slightly harried-looking hostess gave him a vague smile when he approached. “How many, sir?”
“Actually, I’m meeting some people here. I don’t know if they’re here yet… Oh, there they are.” Never shy about calling attention to himself, Ron stood at a table across the busy dining room, waving his arms to get James’s attention.
Even though it was still five minutes before the agreed-upon meeting time, James was the last to arrive. He took the chair next to Connor, across the table from Ron and Haley.
Thirty-four-year-old Connor Hayes was the senior member of the group, having taught and coached for a few years before entering med school. James remembered how tough that first semester had been for his friend. Only a couple of months into his training, Connor had become fully responsible for the then-six-year-old daughter whose existence had been a secret to him before that time. Had it not been for his friend Mia, now his wife of just over two years, who had stepped forward to help him with Alexis, Connor might well have had to drop out of medical school in his first year.
Which would have been a shame, James thought, because there was such a shortage of primary-care doctors, which was what Connor wanted to practice. Connor would be an excellent family practitioner.
James looked curiously around the full dining room. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so busy here. Especially on a weeknight.”
Ron chuckled. “You don’t even know it’s half-price lasagna night, do you?”
“Is it?” James shrugged, now comprehending the restaurant’s popularity. “I guess that explains it. Maybe I’ve just never been here on a Thursday before.”
“Like you’d ever have to wait in line to save a few bucks on some pasta,” Ron joked.
“I appreciate a bargain as much as the next guy,” James assured him, taking no offense at the teasing. Ron joked with everyone. James had figured out long ago that it was never intended mean-spiritedly. Ron just liked laughing and encouraging people to laugh with him.
Like the others, James ordered the lasagna. He was well aware his friends were all on limited budgets as they completed medical school on student loans. He would’ve offered to pick up the check, but he’d tried that a couple of times early on and his friends had made it politely, but firmly, clear that they paid their own ways.
He’d always been very careful not to make an issue of his good fortune—after all, it wasn’t as if he’d earned the money himself. He just happened to have been born into a wealthy family, which was nothing more than the luck of the draw as far as he was concerned. He had long since realized how true it was that money couldn’t buy happiness. Or true friendship.
“Here’s to tomorrow, the last day of the current rotation,” Ron said, holding up his water glass. “One day closer to graduation.”
Laughing, they joined in the toast with sips of water.
They chatted about their experiences during the past month’s rotations, swapping amusing anecdotes and sharing tidbits they had learned. They were starting a new block the following week and that gave them something to discuss, as well. In addition, all of them would be spending time during the next few months doing away rotations in other states.
“I’m looking forward to my acting internship in Cincinnati in October,” Haley said, then added candidly, “even if I’m a little nervous about it. I’m sure they’ll do things differently than we do here.”
“They’ll love you there,” Ron assured her, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “How could they not?”
She smiled back at him a little wistfully. “It will be a long month away from you.”
“I’ll be in Lexington. Not that far from Cincinnati,” Ron replied with a shrug. “There’s a chance we can get together at least one weekend during the month.”
It would be the first time the newlyweds had been separated that long since they’d become engaged last December. Or maybe even before that, James mused, thinking of all the hours the study group had spent together during their first two years of school, before Haley and Ron had realized that the sparks they’d set off each other from the start had been due to more than temper.
James still shuddered to remember how close they’d come to losing Haley last December. He suspected Ron still had nightmares about the life-threatening injury Haley had sustained in a rare winter tornado that had brought down the ceiling of a diner where they had taken shelter, driving a piece of metal through Haley’s leg. She’d been airlifted to the trauma unit but because of blood loss, her condition had been dicey during the trip. Yet, with typical Haley optimism and determination, she had been back in rotations five weeks later, missing only one rotation she had been able to reschedule for fourth year, so that she would graduate with the rest of them.
Their wedding had been a small affair at the end of June, giving them only a week for a honeymoon. Neither had wanted an elaborate wedding—partially because of time constraints, but also because of finances. Neither of them came from an affluent family and both were attending medical school on student loans. They had married beneath a gazebo in a local park. James thought the simple ceremony had been as touching as any elaborate wedding he’d ever reluctantly attended.
“October’s going to be a tough month for Mia,” Connor commented as he sliced into the steaming pasta that had just been set in front of him. “With me in Chicago, she’ll be fully responsible for Alexis, in addition to her grad-school work and her teaching position.”
Connor’s guilt was evident to all of them. Typically, Haley was the first to offer encouragement. “They’ll be fine while you’re gone, Connor. Mia loves being with Alexis and vice versa. It isn’t as if Alexis is any trouble. She’s a good kid.”
From what James had observed, completing medical school while maintaining personal relationships was a tricky balancing act. Med school required total commitment, leaving little free time for family and friends, especially during those first two years of endless classes and studying. Fourth year wasn’t so bad, other than the highly recommended away rotations, but then would come residency programs. Everyone knew how many hours a medical resident spent at the hospitals.
James was aware of several marriages that had ended among his classmates during the past three years. But for his study-group friends, he was very optimistic that their romantic partnerships would endure.
Mia had been well prepared for what she was getting into when she’d married a single-father medical student. She had made it clear she considered the short-term sacrifices worth the effort to allow Connor to follow his dream, just as she was pursuing her own doctorate in education. Anne Easton had been through a rocky spell with her husband, Liam McCright, but that was due more to family issues than the demands of medical school. And Haley and Ron were certainly prepared to make the compromises necessary to be successful both in their careers and their relationship.
James had dated occasionally, but only casually. His record with relationships wasn’t particularly encouraging even without the demands of his career training to further complicate matters. Surreptitiously studying the smiles Haley and Ron exchanged, he was aware of a slight pang of…something. It felt almost like wistfulness, though he brushed that thought aside quickly. Apparently he was letting himself be affected by the rosy romances of his friends. He was the only single member left of this group, to whom he had become so close during the past three years.
Pulling his gaze from the happy couple, he glanced away from the table—only to have his glance intercepted by a pair of familiar green eyes.
No way, he thought, swallowing a groan. What were the odds that Shannon would show up here at this moment? Of course, the restaurant was only a few blocks from where she worked. And it was half-price lasagna night. But still, of all the restaurants in Little Rock…
This would probably give her even more reason to believe he was stalking her, he thought glumly. Even though he’d obviously arrived first, since she was just being led to a table along with another woman. And even though he was there with friends of his own.
She hesitated momentarily and he wondered if she was deciding whether to nod acknowledgment or pretend she hadn’t seen him. But then she stopped by his table and gave him a bright smile, motioning for her friend to continue on. “Hello, James.”
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