by Bird, Peggy
He didn’t really know her yet, he reminded himself. That’s why he was here.
Zane came to himself at last and realized he still lay on the floor like an idiot. He let them assist him to a sitting position and tried to gather his wits.
“Miss Hartfield?” he wheezed. Damn, but he’d taken quite a fall. He wished he wasn’t so clumsy. Talk about making a miserable first impression on a beautiful woman.
She smiled and looked relieved. “Yes, I’m Georgeanne Hartfield. This isn’t the way we wanted to welcome you, Doctor.”
“I can assure you, I’ll never forget my first sight of you.” Zane smiled and placed one hand over his heart while he remained seated on the floor. She smelled of lilies. Zane decided lilies were his favorite flowers. “Keep your cleaning woman, Dr. Gant. She just did me a great favor.”
Georgeanne laughed. Zane considered the warm glow of gratitude in those gorgeous brown eyes an unexpected reward.
“The doctor does not need our help to get himself to his feet,” Dr. Baghri said in his humorous, broken English. “Our Georgie will lift him up by his heart.”
Georgeanne blushed. “Hush, Doctor. You’ll have our guest thinking I do heart transplants on the side.”
Zane Bryant stared again in spite of his fear that Georgeanne might consider him rude. This magnificent creature actually blushed. If she was the Georgeanne Hartfield who had been corresponding with him on Vijay Baghri’s behalf for the past few weeks, his good fortune looked too incredible to be true.
He rolled to his feet and reached down to help Georgeanne up. She stood only a few inches shorter than he did.
Splendid, he thought.
He wasn’t aware that he still held her hand and gazed at her face until Dr. James Gant cleared his throat in a meaningful way.
“Thank you, Dr. Bryant.” Georgeanne withdrew her hand with a startled look. “I’d better get back to work. Dr. Baghri’s letters are almost ready to go out. We’re dedicating the new clinic location in a couple of weeks.”
“I hope I’m invited,” Zane said.
Georgeanne gave him a swift, impersonal smile. “Of course you’re invited. If you’ll stop by my desk on your way out, I’ll see to it that you get your invitation this afternoon.”
Zane wondered if he could get out of touring the Saturday Clinic so he could get to know Georgeanne. Or better, if he could talk Georgeanne into acting as his tour-guide.
Georgeanne directed another smile in his direction and hurried back to her desk where the telephone sounded an insistent appeal.
While Zane pretended to listen to Dr. Baghri’s discourse, he noted that Georgeanne apparently reached the phone too late, because it stopped ringing. She looked at it in a regretful way and reached for some papers on her desk.
A dignified black woman in a white nurse’s uniform appeared at the counter behind Georgeanne’s desk. Georgeanne looked up with a warm smile. Zane wished she would direct all her smiles at him.
“Who was on the phone?” he heard Georgeanne ask.
“Mrs. Miguez is holding for Dr. Baghri,” the black woman said. “Tammy’s asthma is acting up again, and she’s panicking.”
“Oh, dear.” Georgeanne looked distressed and stood at once. “Dr. Baghri says she may have to be hospitalized this time. I’d better put him on immediately.”
“Have you seen my copy of Faking It?” the nurse asked. “I thought — there it is. You put your papers on top of it.”
Georgeanne glanced at the book on her desk and turned scarlet. Zane searched his memory but couldn’t immediately place the title. He resolved to look into the matter further. Anything that caused this incredible woman to blush interested him.
“What is it with you?” the nurse asked. “Every time I so much as mention this book, you do an imitation of a boiled lobster.”
“We have a visitor,” Georgeanne said, almost choking. “Would you mind getting that silly book off my desk?”
“What for?” the nurse asked, grinning. “Are you afraid the visiting doctor might see it and make a few assumptions?”
Georgeanne ignored that and hurried out of her office cubicle. She approached the doctors and spoke a few sentences in Dr. Baghri’s ear.
Zane watched her approach, smiled at her, and wished she would come close enough to speak in his ear. To his intense interest, she returned his smile and hurried back to her desk.
The telephone rang, and Georgeanne answered it without looking up when Zane crossed the room and glanced around her small cubicle.
“Yes, Mrs. St. George,” she said. “Yes, that’s the one. Thank you for telling me.”
Zane watched the smile that crept over her face with deep interest. She laughed, and Zane found himself equally fascinated by her full, rich chuckle.
“The article is based on my observations from working in a children’s clinic for several years,” she went on. “I’m so glad you enjoyed it.” She listened a moment. “Well, someday I hope to have children of my own, of course. One of these days, when Mr. Right comes along.”
Zane’s mind filled in the other side of the conversation. Georgeanne had written an article. That didn’t surprise him at all, considering the way he’d been pouncing on her epistles for the past few weeks.
What did surprise him was the image that rose in his mind of Georgeanne with a dark-headed baby at her breast. In his years as a pediatrician, he had seen many, many women with babies at their breasts, but none of those real images rocked him the way the vision of Georgeanne did.
All he had to do to make it come true was convince Georgeanne she had at last met Mr. Right.
Chapter 2
Zane couldn’t believe his luck. He hadn’t needed to say a word, and here he sat in Georgeanne Hartfield’s red SUV. They headed for the building that would become the new Saturday Clinic, while Dr. Vijay Baghri drove to a hospital in nearby Beaumont where little Tammy Miguez was being admitted.
Better yet, Georgeanne had discarded the white linen jacket she wore in the clinic. Only a clingy calf-length yellow jersey dress covered her satin skin. He admired the lush feminine curves beneath the yellow jersey and tried in a halfhearted way to keep his imagination under some semblance of control. He’d only met the lady an hour ago, and already he imagined what she looked like in the nude.
He thanked the heavens that Georgeanne Hartfield showed no signs of either doctor reverence or celebrity worship, nor did she quiz him about his famous brother. The only thing on her mind appeared to be explaining Dr. Baghri’s Saturday clinic so that he would understand the brilliance of the idea.
Zane wondered how long it would take him to become the primary item on Georgeanne Hartfield’s mind.
“Sorry about the grand entrance.” He ignored the spreading green rice fields and stands of spring-green Chinese tallow trees that surrounded them in favor of gazing at Georgeanne’s magnificent fall of brown hair and her porcelain complexion. “I’ve never learned to pick up my feet.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Georgeanne turned down the vehicle down a narrow dirt road that ran between two newly cultivated rice fields. “I simply didn’t look at the floor the way I should have when I straightened the office earlier.”
“It wasn’t exactly the sort of entrance guaranteed to impress a woman,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about first impressions.” She gave him a merry smile. “I was the only woman present in the office when you came in.”
She had no idea, Zane realized with some astonishment, no idea at all that she was the only woman whose first impression counted with him. He found it both refreshing and annoying.
“You’re saying then, that your image of me as a debonair, well-coordinated individual wasn’t totally destroyed by that pratfall?” he asked.
Georgeanne’s warm, dark chocolate eyes twinkled. “Doctor, I am forever grateful to you for claiming it was your own clumsiness rather than my carelessness that caused the unfortunate incident.”
&nb
sp; “I’m happy to have been of service,” he said. “I suppose what you’re not saying is that you were picking up the office because your cleaning woman is off with a sick headache or something.”
Georgeanne laughed, a throaty laugh of real amusement. “You’re very nearly right, but please don’t say anything to the doctors. Our cleaning woman can’t afford to lose this job. Her mother is quite ill and needs constant care.”
The spring sunlight gleamed off Georgeanne’s hair. Zane thought he had never seen hair so thick, or of such a rich and deep brown. He wanted to thrust his fingers into that hair and glove both his hands in it.
“I was sure it must be something like that.” She had a beautiful profile as well as the kind heart he’d suspected.
She turned the steering wheel, and his gaze fastened upon the motions of her graceful hands. He could watch those hands all day, he decided. He’d like most of all to watch them spread heat and comfort across his prone body after a hard day of examining small patients.
“I’ve temporarily hidden all the blue toys that blend into the carpet.” Georgeanne gave her delicious chuckle and turned the SUV into a rutted, overgrown, shell-covered parking lot before a single-story brick building with boarded-up windows. “This is our new building. Dr. Baghri received the deed from Mrs. Scott day before yesterday. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Zane looked, well aware that he was probably one of the few people who truly thought it wonderful. Only die-hards like himself and Georgeanne Hartfield could see anything wonderful about the neglected brick building surrounded by a grove of fast-growing tallow trees, out in the middle of nowhere.
“I’ve been impressed with the progress you’ve reported in establishing the Saturday Children’s Clinic,” Zane said. “Are you sure people will come all the way out here?”
“They came from all over the area when old Dr. Scott was alive,” she said. “If they came for Dr. Scott, they’ll come for the Saturday Children’s Clinic.”
She parked the Cherokee and didn’t wait for Zane to leap out and come around for her. By the time he got his feet on the ground, she applied a key to the door of the boarded-up building.
Zane watched her, thinking hard. The lady obviously wasn’t used to receiving common courtesies from men. Zane intended to remedy that before she grew much older.
“Dr. Baghri and I were here yesterday evening assessing what needs to be done,” Georgeanne said. “Dr. Scott died three years ago, and the building has been empty ever since.” She shoved open the door and stepped inside without hesitation. “The first thing we’re going to have to do is apply a little old-fashioned elbow grease and give it a thorough cleaning.”
Zane followed and cast a swift glance around. The clinic was a bare shell without furniture. The walls were discolored with mildew, the paint was peeling, and the electricity had long ago been cut off. The musty odor of mildew overrode the fresh spring scents of plowed ground and honeysuckle outside. The forlorn, neglected appearance of the place would have frightened most women into refusing to set foot inside.
But not Georgeanne.
“You mean you’re going to give it a thorough cleaning.” Zane felt sure he knew Georgeanne well enough to guess at that.
“I’ll have help,” Georgeanne said.
Sure you will, Zane thought. He sniffed and detected the faint odor of lilies on the mildew-scented air.
“I’ve got lots of people lined up.” She flicked on a flashlight and played it over the linoleum floor. Debris covered the floor, everything from empty paper cups to old magazines. “The utility company is sending someone out to restore the electrical service this afternoon. Once we have light, we can start cleaning. Dr. Baghri has already ordered the new phone system, and it’ll be installed Monday. That means we have the weekend to get the place cleaned and painted.”
“That’s a true volunteer’s ‘we’,” Zane said, amused and annoyed at the same time. “You’re the one who’s going to be doing most of the work.”
Georgeanne chuckled again, and the sparkling laughter moved something inside his heart. “You may have a point there. I enjoy cleaning, so I’ll probably do most of it myself during the next two days. Normal people enjoy painting, so I’m saving my volunteers for the big paintin Saturday.”
“You’re not a normal person?” Zane asked.
Georgeanne tossed her heavy mane of hair off her shoulders and looked around the moldy room in a possessive way. “I think everyone who knows me would probably agree that I’m not.”
“Because you like to clean rather than paint?” He stared at her mouth. Even in the dim light, he could see her soft, full lips.
“That’s as good a reason as any, don’t you think?” She turned dark-brown eyes on him that invited him to laugh with her.
Zane laughed and decided he needed to help in the preparations to open the Saturday Clinic. He thanked heaven that he wasn’t on call that weekend.
“There are two examining rooms.” Georgeanne stepped carefully across a mound of debris. Cockroaches scattered at her approach, but she ignored them. “Dr. Baghri’s chief worry when we hosted the Clinic in our office was that the volunteer doctors might refuse to examine patients in somebody else’s office. That’s why we’re so overjoyed about receiving this building.”
“I understand.” Zane followed behind her.
“If I can make volunteering here sound like an adventure, I’ll bet we get more doctors than we need.”
Zane agreed, enjoying the nuances in Georgeanne’s voice as much as he liked her words.
She meant it. Although the clinic was officially Dr. Baghri’s idea, it was Georgeanne’s faithful execution that ensured the clinic’s success. He recalled how diligently she’d corresponded with him on Dr. Baghri’s behalf, just to get him to donate a Saturday or two of his time during the year.
“This is where the clinic’s lab used to be.” Georgeanne shined the light over a dark, dank room furnished only with a long filthy counter and a double sink. “I’m sure the plumbing is still in good condition, but just in case, I’ll call a plumber friend of mine out Monday to check things over.”
“Do you have friends in almost every profession?” he asked.
She must have heard the amusement in his voice because she turned toward him with eagerness. “Just about. No electricians, though.” He sensed the humorous hope in her. “Maybe you know someone you can introduce me to?”
“Sorry.” He laughed with her. “I can see I’ve been remiss. All this time, I should have been making friends in high places.”
“It isn’t too late to begin.” She redirected the light beam so he could see to exit the room.
Zane stepped carefully over some debris and examined the sink. “I’ve wanted to be part of something like this ever since I started practice. When a friend told me of Dr. Baghri’s Saturday Clinic for children, I knew I needed to check it out.”
“We’re very glad you did,” Georgeanne said. “We’re just beginning, and at this point, every doctor counts. Plus, the more doctors who participate, the more doctors will want to join us.”
Zane intended to examine every square inch of the unprepossessing building and prolong his time alone with Georgeanne. He could listen to her rich, cheerful voice all day. “Dr. Baghri is lucky to have you on his side. His English isn’t the best at times.”
“That’s why he started out by recruiting me.” Georgeanne laughed. “He claims I’m his official spokesperson when it comes to the Clinic.”
“He couldn’t have chosen anyone better,” Zane said with feeling.
He directed his thoughts toward methods of spending more time with Georgeanne Hartfield and wondered how long it would take her to realize his interest in the Saturday Clinic took a back seat to his interest in her.
*
Georgeanne led the way back out to the parking lot, where the bright spring sunshine cast a glow over the neglected building. Glancing up at Zane, she registered once more how tall he was, but she refus
ed to let herself dwell on the fleeting thought that he was among the few men who were taller than she was. Nor did she allow herself to entertain the thought that his dark hair called for feminine fingers to fork it into order. She refused to consciously notice the thick, dark lashes that framed those incredible smoky eyes, or the slashing black brows above them.
Looks were not important in this case, she told herself. Compassion for sick children counted for everything.
And Dr. Baghri depended on her to explain his idea to other doctors and gain more volunteers to help those sick children.
“Dr. Baghri has been treating lots of children in the hospital emergency room during the past few years,” she began, “simply because they were too poor to see a family physician for routine medical care. When a child finally got so sick he had to see a doctor, the parents had no choice but to bring him to the emergency room because they didn’t have a family doctor.”
“I’ve seen a lot of that myself,” Zane said in grim tones. “When it comes to a choice between regular medical checkups or eating, parents nearly always choose eating.”
He took Georgeanne’s arm and walked her around the side of the building. His action surprised her and she ignored the speedier beat of her heart. Half the physicians in Southeast Texas probably ran when they saw her coming because of Dr. Baghri’s efforts to push her charms before his colleagues.
Georgeanne felt her pulse accelerate a bit more and told herself not to be a fool. She’d known Zane Bryant would resemble the handsome Hunter Howell. She just hadn’t allowed for the man’s sheer physical impact on her impressionable senses.
Why a fairly young doctor like Zane Bryant wanted to spend his rare leisure time examining a charity clinic in her company when he could be sailing or playing golf was not for her to question. She — and Dr. Baghri — needed him.
Dr. Bryant, she told herself, might be the doctor who would turn the tide in her struggle to recruit doctors for the clinic. She ignored the feminine jitters his presence provoked and strove to remember her talking points.
