Healing the Doctor's Heart

by Carolyne Aarsen

  “I think Carter figured about two or three, depending on how heavy the person is,” Shannon said, resting her chin on her stacked hands.

  “Have you gone riding?” Ben asked Shannon.

  “Used to all the time when we came here. We used to race each other around the field and often got into trouble with Grandpa for tearing up the hay field. Usually we behaved and rode the trails up the mountains.” Her smile transformed her face, putting a sparkle in her eyes, softening her features.

  Making her even more attractive than she already was.

  As if sensing his regard, her gaze slid toward him, her hazel eyes holding his.

  “Sounds like you and your cousins had a lot of fun here.”

  Her smile grew and with it, her appeal. “Many good memories, that’s for sure.”

  They were quiet again, the only sound the rustling of the new colt’s hooves in the straw and a low throated whicker from his mother.

  “I’m going to the tree house,” Adam announced all of a sudden, jumping down from the stool.

  “I’m coming, too,” Natasha said, scrambling down from her perch by the door, leaving Ben and Shannon alone.

  As if unwilling to be left alone with him, Shannon followed the kids out of the barn, but paused at the door, a wince of pain distorting her face.

  “Are you okay?”

  Shannon waved off his concern. “I’m fine. My knee just twinges now and again if I put too much weight on it.”

  “It’s not infected, is it? Have you noticed any redness? Swelling?”

  Shannon gave him an oblique look. “Are you being a doctor now?”

  He shrugged aside her comment. “Just concerned.” He saw another bale of hay just inside the door and dragged it outside, pushing it up against the barn. “Here. Sit down. You can watch the kids from here.”

  “You sure sound like a doctor,” Shannon said, but she didn’t make any move to sit down.

  “And you are acting like every nurse I’ve ever worked with,” he retorted. “Just rest for a few moments. No one will think you’re a wimp.”

  Her laugh ricocheted through his heart and softened her smile. Since coming to the ranch she appeared more relaxed. As if she’d sloughed off her habitual reserve and became this softer, kinder version of Shannon Deacon.

  “Okay, Dr. Brouwer.” She slid down onto the bale, watching the kids, who were swinging from a pair of old tires attached to a crossbeam of a tree fort.

  “Lucky kids,” Ben said slipping his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans, leaning against the doorway of the barn. The wood was still warm from the sun, which was now drifting down toward the mountains. In the silence surrounding them he heard the faint nicker of the mare and her colt in the barn behind them, the chirp of some birds as they flew past the barns and the burbling of a creek coming from the woods edging the yard. “Whenever I think of the perfect way to raise a kid, this is the image that comes to mind,” he said, releasing a sigh as the peace of the place seemed to ease the relentless grip of tension that had held him since he left Ottawa.

  “It comes pretty close to heaven, that’s for sure.”

  Ben looked around and released a cynical laugh. “I’m not so sure I believe in heaven anymore. Or God. And if I did, I would want a few choice words with him.”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than he wished he could take them back. Shannon didn’t need to know about his faith or lack thereof. She had just been making a general statement, the kind sentimental people make around children and nature. He blamed his response on the effect this place had on him. It made him lower his reserves.

  “Did you once believe in God?” Shannon asked.

  How was he supposed to get back to ordinary conversation after revealing this much? Besides, he knew that Shannon was a Christian, as was the rest of her family. The conversation around the dinner table had showed him as much, as had the devotions they’d had after dinner was over.

  “I did. Once,” he admitted. “My mom and dad took us to church and I did all the churchy kind of things. But then life took over and God got pushed to the side.”

  “I imagine working in the E.R. in a big city didn’t help bring God back into the forefront?”

  Ben kept his attention on Adam and Natasha and the bits of their indistinct chatter floating back to him and Shannon. Two innocent children he prayed would never see the things he had.

  “It’s hard to get a real grasp of a loving, caring heavenly father when you see so much death,” he finally said with a sigh of resignation.

  “But you saw life, too, didn’t you?”

  He let her comment sift down through his memories and felt the subtle undertow of happier times. The mother of three who had flatlined, then, inexplicably, come back. The baby who had been left to die but refused to. The couple badly injured, but still clinging to each other, unwilling to let go.

  He let them drift up to the surface, but then, with them, came the sound of his ex-wife’s voice on the telephone. The panic edging her words.

  Her pleading for him to come to talk to her. Pleading that he had ignored.

  “Ben? Are you okay?” Shannon’s words were underlined by her touch. It was no more than the brushing of her fingers over his arm, but he jumped.

  He shook his head, as if dislodging the memories, then forced a smile as he pulled himself back to the present.

  “I understood from the conversation around the dinner table you and your sisters spent a lot of time out here,” he said, determined to shift the topic to the present.

  She smiled, her eyes drifting as if gathering up the memories. “Most every weekend and as much of the summer as our mother would allow. Which was usually most of it when we were younger.” The faint note of resentment in her voice was at odds with her smile. “Thankfully Nana didn’t mind having the place overrun with grandkids all summer. Though I think she was pretty pleased that Grandpa built the cabins later on.”

  “What cabins?”

  “Over there. By the swings the kids are playing on.”

  Ben followed the direction of her finger and then saw three small log cabins standing in a row tucked between another shed and the tree fort. “I can’t believe I didn’t see them when we drove up here.”

  “You were too busy looking at the mountains,” she said with a gentle laugh. Her gaze drifted over the yard, then came to rest on him.

  “Don’t get to see them too much out east.” He returned her smile but didn’t look away. Her smile wavered, but to his surprise she didn’t look away, either.

  And for a moment an indefinable emotion hovered between them. He wanted to brush it away, to ignore it, but the loneliness in his soul let the moment linger in spite of who she was and what had happened to him.

  Then Shannon blinked and looked back at the children, her hands now resting open on her lap. “I love this place,” she said abruptly. “I’ll miss it when I move to Chicago.”

  “What made you choose Chicago?” he asked. He was still surprised she had chosen to work there after living in Hartley Creek.

  She shrugged as she twisted a strand of hair around her finger again. “I saw an advertisement for travel nurses and I thought it might be interesting to live in a big city for a change. And the money was good.”

  “You don’t strike me as the kind of person to whom money would be important.”

  “Guess you don’t know that much about me,” she said with a humorless laugh.

  “I know some. Arthur did talk about you from time to time.”

  The stricken look she shot him made him want to kick himself for bringing up his brother’s name. But then she looked away, her eyes on the children.

  “I’m surprised I even rated a mention in any of his conversations,” she
said, a faint note of bitterness in her voice. “Other than to get you to tell me he didn’t want to marry me.”

  Ben folded his arms over his chest, watching the children playing, trying to find the right way to tell her what he had wanted to since he had delivered that awful news.

  “I should never have agreed to deliver that message for him,” he said. “But I had to.”

  Shannon stretched her injured leg in front of her then pulled in a long breath. “Arthur should have done his own dirty work. You didn’t need to do it for him.”

  “Arthur was gone.”

  Shannon’s eyes shot to his. “What do you mean?”

  “When I came to town before the wedding, Arthur had already skipped town. He left me a note.”

  Her eyes narrowed and he could see her hands clenching in her lap. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” The anger in her voice didn’t surprise him, but the intensity of it did.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you he’d left. I was too busy wanting to throttle him myself.”

  Shannon blinked, and to his dismay he saw a glimmer of moisture in her eyes, but then she blinked and it was gone.

  “He may be my brother,” he continued, “but, as I said before, you deserve better than him.”

  Shannon’s only response was a vague shrug. She looked as if she was about to say more when Adam called out.

  “Mr. Brouwer, see how high I’m going?”

  “I see,” Ben returned, adding a wave in case the boy didn’t hear him. “That’s pretty amazing.”

  “Adam seems quite taken with you,” Shannon said.

  “I guess so” was all he could say, still watching the children playing. “Though I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything to encourage that.” He couldn’t help remembering how he had responded to the boy just a few moments ago.

  “He’s a sweet kid.” Shannon leaned back against the wall, her fingers still twirling her hair, though her movements had slowed. “I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but you seemed upset when Adam wanted to address you as Doctor.”

  He kept his eyes on Adam and Natasha, listening to their carefree laughter and feeling as if Shannon had some kind of key to his inner thoughts.

  But he decided to be straightforward.

  “Calling me Doctor is way too formal outside of the hospital, that’s all. And since I’m not practicing right now—” He caught himself. What was wrong with him? Why did he tell her that?

  “I thought you were just taking a break?” Shannon’s question came out quietly, but he caught a hint of determination in it.

  “I am,” he said, hoping he sounded more carefree than he felt, as his mind drifted back to the past.

  “Will you be going back to Ottawa when your break is over?”

  Her question pulled him back to the present. He blinked, orienting himself, then shook his head. “No. Not a chance.”

  “So would you go somewhere else?”

  He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. He didn’t want to look beyond his current job of patching up the holes in the drywall of her grandmother’s house and fixing up his mother’s yard.

  “If I can put in a plug for the hospital here in Hartley Creek,” Shannon was saying. “They’re short-staffed and desperately looking for a doctor.”

  He let the comment lie between them. He didn’t want to look rude by dismissing it, but he wasn’t responding to her employment suggestion. Lately his thoughts and plans weren’t moving in that direction.

  And where are you going? All your life you wanted to be a doctor. What else would you do?

  “Don’t think I’m interested,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because being a doctor just…”

  To his annoyance he couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Just what?” Shannon pressed.

  “I should go check on the kids,” he said, pushing himself away from the barn without responding to her question.

  He knew he was avoiding her and as he walked away, he could feel her eyes following him.

  She doesn’t need to know anything, he reminded himself. She’s a temporary blip in your life. She’s going to Chicago and you’re going—

  He clenched his fists as if holding the thoughts in.

  Just because I don’t have a destination, doesn’t mean I’m lost. But as he strode toward the swings and the children, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was.

  Nor could he shake the feeling Shannon wasn’t letting this go.

  * * *

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little pale.” Emma slowed her pace as she walked with Shannon down the sidewalk of the house toward Ben’s truck.

  A burst of laughter floated across the yard, and Shannon glanced past Ben’s truck to the corrals where Ben, Carter, Dan, Hailey and the children had gathered, watching the new colt. Carter had let the mare and her filly out of the barn and Shannon suspected the laughter was over the colt’s antics.

  “My knee is bothering me, that’s all,” Shannon said.

  “You should have Dr. Ben take a look at it,” Emma said with a grin. “I’m sure he won’t mind the opportunity to ease your pain.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, I am a registered nurse and just as capable of making a decision about my knee as he is.” Shannon didn’t mean for her comment to come out sounding so defensive. Emma had been making a joke.

  But since she and Ben had come back from looking at the colt with the kids she had put up with knowing smirks from her sister and raised eyebrows from her future cousin-in-law, Emma.

  She’d ignored them all. Saying nothing was usually the best defense around her family. When any of them had a chance, they would do the “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” thing that had become prevalent in the family since Hailey and Carter’s engagement.

  Emma slipped her hands in the back pockets of her blue jeans, giving Shannon a coy look. “So you and the good doctor—”

  “Please. Just stop,” Shannon protested.

  “He’s way better-looking than Arthur,” Emma continued as if she hadn’t heard her friend. “And then there’s that whole doctor-nurse thingy.”

  Shannon hurried her pace as if to outrun her friend’s innuendos. But that was a mistake. Pain stabbed her knee. She stumbled and would have fallen if not for Emma catching her.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” Emma said, helping her regain her balance. “Please forgive me?”

  Shannon held Emma’s dark eyes and when she saw the contrition in her expression, she relented. “I do. But please, no more talk about Ben.”

  Emma dropped her head to one side. “Really? Why?”

  Didn’t she get it?

  “He’s Arthur’s brother, that’s why.”

  “So?”

  “It’s strange and…bizarre and…” She hesitated, wishing she could articulate her reasons. “Family get-togethers would be more strained what with Arthur and all.”

  “Still not seeing the problems here,” Emma said. “You said yourself you’re over Arthur. And he’s not even around much. Besides, Ben is a way better catch. And I think he’s interested in you. I caught him watching you a lot.”

  This information did nothing for Shannon’s already shaky equilibrium. Spending time with Ben around Carter and Emma, who were full of talk of their upcoming wedding, and Dan and her sister Hailey, who now sported a delicate engagement ring, created an unspoken assumption that now it was Shannon’s turn. And why not with the single guy she had come with?

  “I’m moving to Chicago.” Shannon threw out the comment like a trump card. “I’m moving on with my life by getting away from this town.”

  Emma’s expression grew dour. “Do you real
ly think that will fix anything?”

  “It will fix everything,” Shannon said, turning and walking back toward the truck, but a bit more slowly this time. “Every time I turn around in this town I feel as if people don’t see me, Shannon Deacon. They see the poor bride that got dumped just before her wedding. The girl who couldn’t keep a guy. I don’t want to be that girl anymore and to do that I need to move away.”

  As the words spilled out Shannon heard them through her friend’s ears. She sounded like a person stuck in a rut. Someone who was forever looking back.

  But she wasn’t that person, she reminded herself. She had plans. She was looking ahead. Moving on.

  Moving to Chicago.

  “I’m sorry.” Emma laid her hand on Shannon’s shoulder. “I was trying to make you feel better.” She held Shannon back, then slowly turned her friend to face her. “I know I wasn’t there when Arthur dumped you, but I came to the ranch shortly after that. As we got to know each other better I had always hoped you would tell me more about how you felt. But you didn’t and I figured you were a person who didn’t dwell in the past and who didn’t talk much.” She gave Shannon a self-conscious smile. “This is the first time I’ve heard you say how you feel. I’m sorry for what you’ve had to deal with. But you’re not some poor sod. You’re a beautiful woman and any man would be truly blessed to have you in his life.”

  Shannon held Emma’s earnest gaze and felt a warmth ease up into her heart at her friend’s little speech. “Thanks for that,” she said quietly, allowing a gentle smile to lift her mouth. “You’re a good friend.”

  “So are you. And I don’t want you to move away.”

  Shannon’s second thoughts dive-bombed into her mind. She looked past Emma to the mountains surrounding the ranch. Mountains she had ridden up on horseback, climbed and explored with her cousins and her sisters. So many memories were tied not only to this place but to Hartley Creek.

  Could she really leave all this?

  “I need to do this,” Shannon said, though her words didn’t hold as much conviction as before.

  “But if you and Ben—”

  Shannon held up a warning hand.