“Out of the mouths of babes,” Barbara commented, then waved Lily toward her father. “Go give your daddy a hug, honey.”
Lily hung back, watching her father shyly.
She was small for her age and he towered over her. He supposed that he might look a little frightening to her. Kayley was right, he thought grudgingly. He needed to get home at a decent hour more often. It was as if Lily barely recognized him. If he kept this up, in another six months, she was liable not to know him at all.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the small bakery box in his hand.
He’d forgotten all about that. Holding it out to Lily, he said, “I brought you doughnuts.”
She stared at him as if he had just told her he was one of the princes in the fairy tales he knew that Barbara read to her at bedtime.
“Really?” she asked in disbelief, rocking back and forth on her toes.
He glanced at his mother-in-law for confirmation as he added, “With rainbow sprinkles.”
“Rainbow sprinkles? Can I see?” Lily asked excitedly. Then, as if there were any doubt about her being able to accept the dessert, she told him, “I ate my dinner.”
Because he left everything up to his mother-in-law—just as he had with Jill—and she was rearing Lily in his place, he looked at the woman to give Lily the go-ahead. “Barbara?” he asked.
“Don’t look at me,” she said, shooing him away. “Bond with your daughter.”
He opened the box, allowing both his daughter and his mother-in-law to see its contents.
Noticing the jelly doughnut nestled beside the two with rainbow sprinkles, Barbara reached in and plucked it out of the box.
“Lucas, are you bonding with me?” she asked, holding the doughnut up like a trophy. Powdered sugar rained down, leaving a slight confectionary trail in its wake.
“The doughnuts are from my physician’s assistant,” he told both of them, wanting to take no false credit for how the treats happened to have found their way into his house.
“You mean Kayley?” Barbara asked, remembering the young woman who had called on the phone. “It’s been ages since I had one of these,” she told Luke, taking a bite of the pastry and savoring the taste. “I am beginning to like that girl more and more, Luke.”
He frowned. “That makes one of us.”
“I like her, too,” Lily declared just before she stuffed half a doughnut into her small mouth.
Maybe he should have gone with tradition and released his patient after office hours after all, Luke thought, feeling somewhat awkward.
Chapter Seven
Luke started skipping his lunches. Rather than staying in his office and ordering in, he used the time between noon and two, when the office was closed, to go across the street to the hospital and check on the handful of inpatients he had. If any of them were to be discharged that day, he did it at that time instead of at the end of the day.
So, barring the occasional emergency that required his attention in the ER when he was on call, Luke was able to get home somewhere around six o’clock.
Things still were somewhat awkward and strained between Lily and him, but he felt that they were getting less so, bit by bit. The little girl was opening up to him and he was trying to do the same with her. This was what Jill would have wanted.
And if he was being entirely honest with himself, it was what he wanted, as well.
But it took work. More work than he would have thought. He supposed that just went along with the old adage that anything worthwhile always required a great deal of effort. Lily had been little more than a toddler, barely two, when he’d left for duty overseas. And then he’d been gone for two years. It was no wonder that his daughter looked upon him as a stranger—just a man she’d seen in the pictures her mother had shown her and an occasional voice on the phone.
Lily smiled at him now when he came home. And sometimes she even hugged him. Not with the abandon typical of a child her age, but cautiously, like she was anticipating rejection on some level.
That needed work, but it was ultimately his fault and he accepted the full blame. He also accepted the fact that it was up to him to do the work until the situation improved.
To that end, he was happy that he no longer looked at Lily and saw only Jill in her. He was beginning to recognize a little of himself within his daughter, as well.
Establishing a relationship with Lily was a work in progress, Luke told himself, trying to focus on the word progress.
* * *
When he walked in on Kayley in one of the recently vacated exam rooms a few weeks later, she was just terminating the call she was on. There was a strange expression on her face—like someone getting caught doing what she wasn’t supposed to be doing.
He found that his curiosity was piqued. “Something wrong?” Luke asked.
Kayley looked at her phone before tucking it away and took a deep breath. “That all depends on your point of view, I guess.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said dismissively, feeling uncomfortable. “I was only making conversation.” He changed topics. “Apparently, according to Julia,” he said, referring to one of the administrative assistants at the front desk, “Mr. Jacobson canceled his two-o’clock appointment for today, so we have some extra downtime. If you’d like to take a longer lunch today, feel free to do so.”
Preoccupied before, Kayley became alert. “As a matter of fact, I could use the extra time.”
“Well then, it all worked out, didn’t it?” he said rather formally. He was already walking away from the exam room.
Kayley took a step after him, wanting to ask a question before he disappeared on her. “You wouldn’t know your daughter’s favorite cake, would you?”
Now what was the woman up to? Luke turned around to look at her. “Why?”
“Well, it’s always polite to bring something when you’re invited to dinner,” Kayley began to explain, knowing that she was starting in the middle rather than at the beginning. But she never knew just how the doctor was going to take something and she wanted to ease into the subject slowly. However, she was hampered by the fact that she didn’t have all that much time to get her information.
“Are you having dinner with my daughter?” he asked.
Was that why she had looked so confused when he’d walked in on her? But Lily had just turned five years old. Five-year-olds didn’t make arrangements for dinner. What was going on here?
Kayley hesitated, searching for a way to frame her reply without setting the doctor off. “I think you should be forewarned.”
“About what?” Luke asked, his voice sounding dangerously low.
Kayley took a breath before answering. “Your mother-in-law invited me for dinner.”
He knew that Barbara still owned that condo she’d lived in before Jill’s death. She’d bought it shortly before Lily was born so she could help Jill out with the baby occasionally. The condo was located in Bedford, near the university.
After Jill’s death, his mother-in-law had moved into his house so she could help him take care of Lily. Oh, who was he kidding? She’d moved in to take over raising the little girl while he tried to rebuild his life and find a way to go on with his work.
His eyes locked with Kayley’s. “At her place?” he asked.
She supposed anywhere a person resided could be referred to as their place. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Out with it, Quartermain. You’re usually very vocal—about everything. What is it you’re trying to say this time?” he asked.
This was not of her doing; however, she supposed she had no choice but to spit it out. “That was your mother-in-law on the phone just now. She asked me to come to dinner. The way she made it sound, dinner was at your house. With Lily.”
Kayley assume
d since he’d been going home at an incredibly decent hour, that he would be there, as well. She felt it only fair to let him know about his mother-in-law’s invitation before he walked in and found her seated at his table. “I know that it’s rather unusual—”
“So, apparently, are you and my mother-in-law.” Looking far from happy, Luke sighed. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her yes,” she answered, still not taking her eyes off his face. Part of her was waiting for it to turn a bright shade of red. She began to reach for her cell phone again. “I’ll call her to cancel if you’d rather I didn’t come.”
“I have no feelings about this one way or another,” he told her brusquely, which wasn’t altogether true.
The idea of sharing a meal with her was both somewhat intriguing as well as just the tiniest bit disconcerting. As for it coming from Barbara, he didn’t want his PA getting the wrong idea. The invitation was just to satisfy his mother-in-law’s curiosity. And possibly, she was trying to do the same for Lily, who had ventured a couple of questions about the woman who had sent her doughnuts.
His laser-like scrutiny was making her uncomfortable. “So it’s all right with you if I come over?”
Broad shoulders rose and fell beneath a starched white lab coat. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter to me. I won’t be there tonight, anyway.” He had a late discharge that he hadn’t been able to work in at noon. The woman had needed a couple of tests to be processed before she could be discharged and that wasn’t happening until after two at the earliest.
“It’s not for tonight,” Kayley told him. “It’s for tomorrow night.”
“Saturday,” he acknowledged. “Well, I’m at the clinic.”
“Actually, tomorrow is your alternate Saturday,” she reminded him rather gently. “Dr. Barnett takes over for you every other Saturday.”
He frowned. He didn’t like being wrong, or corrected. Most of all, he didn’t like being backed up into a corner, which was what he felt his mother-in-law was doing.
“How is it you know my schedule better than I do?” Luke asked gruffly.
“Because I’m efficient and that’s part of what you pay me for,” she answered guilelessly. Debating for a moment—because she really did want to come to dinner—she finally told him, “I’ll call Mrs. Baxter back and tell her that I can’t come.”
“No, you can’t do that,” he told her gruffly. “She’ll think I forced you to say that. Barbara’s a good woman, but she can make her displeasure known in a hundred small, subtle ways that can make life turn into a living hell. In the long run, agreeing to this dinner is the easier option.”
Kayley turned her brilliant smile on him. “As long as it’s all right with you.”
No, it’s not all right with me, he thought, doing his best not to be mesmerized by that smile of hers. It’s not all right, because you’ve already infiltrated my professional life enough. I don’t want to be looking at you across a table in my own house.
But he knew that it was something he was better off temporarily coming to terms with. Besides, with both Barbara and Lily there, he wouldn’t be required to contribute one word to the conversation.
Even so, there was one conversation that he most certainly intended to have, however fleeting it might turn out to be.
* * *
“Don’t you think that you should have run asking my physician’s assistant to dinner by me first?” Luke asked his mother-in-law the moment he walked into the house that night.
Instead of answering his question, Barbara told him, “Lily missed you at dinner tonight.”
He sincerely doubted that. He hadn’t been coming home for dinner that much since he’d returned from the fighting overseas. Definitely not often enough for the little girl to become accustomed to seeing him there.
“No, she didn’t,” he told Barbara firmly, “and besides, it couldn’t have been avoided.” He frowned, giving her a look that said he knew what she was up to. “You’re changing the subject, Barbara.”
Her smile was quick and spasmodic. “Sorry, I learned that from the master,” she told him, and there was no mistaking who she meant by that.
“That ‘master’ is turning the question back to you,” Luke informed her. This time his voice was steely as he repeated his questions. “Why didn’t you ask me if it was all right before you invited Quartermain to dinner?”
“Because you would have said no.”
He saw no reason to deny it. “I see that woman enough five days a week at work.”
“Well, that’s beside the point. I wanted to meet the woman who got you to bring home a box of doughnuts to Lily and to me.”
Why was she making that big a deal out of it? Barbara was well-off enough to have bought and sold the entire bakery. “It was only three doughnuts.”
“Still, you had never done that before,” Barbara reminded him. “And I wanted to meet her for other reasons.”
“What reasons?” he asked suspiciously.
“Admit it—Kayley is the one who got you to finally come home at a decent hour and to alternate Saturdays and Sundays at the clinic with other doctors. If you ask me, that is a very persuasive, impressive young woman.”
“I didn’t ask,” he told her.
Barbara knew and liked her former son-in-law and she understood this blustery exterior that he had erected between himself and the world ever since Jill had died. Knew and understood but didn’t condone. Right now she felt that he was only half-alive and his daughter needed him to be fully committed to life.
“I still stand by my assessment,” she told him mildly.
He tried to appeal to her from a different angle. “Barbara, I’ve never had any of the other staff over for dinner.”
“And whose fault is that, Lucas?” she asked him lightly.
“Why is there this sudden desire to turn me into a social creature?” he asked, feeling irritated and stymied.
“Because charm like yours shouldn’t be hidden from the world,” she told him drily. “Look, Lucas,” Barbara said in a far more serious tone. “Working yourself to death and hiding in the off moments isn’t going to change anything. Much as it pains me to say it, doing what you’re doing isn’t going to bring Jill back. And Jill wouldn’t want you living like Rasputin.”
Now the woman had completely lost him. “Come again?” he asked.
“Rasputin,” she repeated, then explained, “The mad monk.”
“I know who Rasputin is,” he said, exasperated. “What I don’t know is what are you up to?”
“Just trying to get you socialized, and starting with the woman who actually seems to have made some sort of headway with you in regards to that. She got you to bring doughnuts to your daughter—and to me. And she got you to come home once in a while. A woman like that is a woman I really want to meet.” She looked at him innocently. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“There is if you drag me in on it.”
“I’ve got news for you,” Barbara said, patting his cheek. “You’re already dragged into it. Now stop complaining and deal with it, Lucas. Tomorrow evening is going to make your daughter very happy. She seems to regard Kayley as her heroine.”
How did all this happen? Luke wondered, stunned. “Quartermain is not—”
“And try not to call her by her last name like that, Lucas. She’s your physician’s assistant. You work together—you’re not inhabiting a marine trench together.”
“I guess you’re right about that,” Luke agreed. “If I were in a trench, I’d have a fighting chance of getting out alive.”
Barbara sighed, shaking her head. “Is this what my daughter had to put up with? This spirit-drowning pessimism of yours? Jill was a braver girl than I realized.”
He frowned at her. He knew she meant well, but that still didn’t ch
ange the bottom line. Quartermain was breaching his private domain by coming over for dinner tomorrow night.
“You still should have asked me,” he told her.
“Next time,” Barbara replied cheerfully. “By the way, if you’re hungry, Lily left you some dinner on the stove. Not really sure what it is,” she confessed. “She insisted on preparing something for you by herself.”
“You let her cook?” he asked, wondering if his mother-in-law had lost her mind.
“I let her put together bread and cold cuts. No lit matches were involved. Now, if you don’t mind, arguing always tires me out,” she said, turning toward the rear of the house, where her bedroom was. “I’m going to bed.”
“Bed?” he echoed. “It’s only—” He had to pause as he looked around for a clock.
“Late,” Barbara called over her shoulder. “It’s actually later than you think, Lucas.”
He wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but he knew it would only lead them into an argument and even though her actions today had annoyed him, he owed his mother-in-law a great deal. He would have been hard-pressed dealing with Lily and juggling her care with his practice, especially feeling the way that he did. Right now being a doctor was what he was. He needed that to tether him to life and he had a feeling that in her own way, Barbara understood that. Understood it and did what she could to facilitate things so that he could go on practicing, go on making a difference.
Some days he won. Other days his demons did. But without Barbara being there to take care of Lily, the demons would have won a lot more days than they had. Possibly all of them by now.
Opening the refrigerator, he found a large, rather sloppy sandwich on a plate. There was a note attached with tape to the plate. It read “Daddy’s dinner” in big sprawling block letters.
Touched, he brought it over to the kitchen table. He sat and ate the sandwich slowly.
He discovered that smiling made it more difficult to chew.
Chapter Eight
Saturday morning Barbara knocked on the door leading into the den and silently counted to ten before knocking one more time. She knew that Luke usually got so involved in whatever he was doing he didn’t hear anything. She also knew that if he wasn’t at the hospital or in his office, he would be in his den, reading up on the latest orthopedic surgical procedures.
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