by Linda Turner
“I wouldn’t know,” Janey said quietly. “Who is he?”
“Dr. Reilly Jones,” Tanya replied, savoring the name as if it was some new tasty treat. “He just joined Dr. Michaels’s practice today.”
Shocked, Janey couldn’t believe she’d heard correctly. “Dan never said anything about taking on a partner. What’s going on?”
“I wish I knew,” Tanya said with one last longing look at the doors Reilly disappeared behind. “The word going around the hospital is Dr. Michaels is retiring and Reilly Jones is taking over his practice for him. Nobody knows who he is, though, or what his story is. I almost asked, but then I thought it’d be better not to push my luck. He seems to be a very private man, so I figured I’d give him some time to get comfortable here, then make my move.”
Janey didn’t care about Reilly Jones—if he was stupid enough to be taken in by Tanya, than he was dumber than she thought he was. No, it was Dan she was concerned about. He and his wife, Peggy, had been her parents’ best friends, then when Peggy and Janey’s father had both died, Dan and her mother had continued their friendship over the years. He was like a member of the family, and if he was retiring without telling anyone, something had to be horribly wrong.
Afraid he might be sick or something, Janey almost woke her mother to find out what was going on, later that evening when her shift was over and she went home, but she didn’t want to scare her. So she spent what was left of the night worrying about Dan and barely slept. Up by five-thirty and scheduled to report to work at her regular job at the nursing home by seven, she hurried downstairs just as soon as she was dressed.
As usual her mother, Sara, was already up and in the kitchen making breakfast. Seeing her at the old O’Keefe and Merrit stove that her mother wouldn’t have traded for anything, Janey had to smile. For as long as she could remember, her mother had been right there every morning of her life when she came down to breakfast. And today, as always, it amazed Janey how time had hardly touched her at all.
Sara Dawson McBride was sixty-four and didn’t look a day past fifty. She’d always claimed she was lucky to have good bone structure, but Janey knew better. Her mother had a good heart, the kind that would keep her forever young. Janey only hoped she was as lucky.
Glancing up from the stove, Sara sent her a smile that was as bright as the copper teakettle whistling happily on the stove. “Good morning, sweetie. Did you sleep well?”
She’d meant to wait until after breakfast to ask about Dan and Reilly Jones, but she found that she couldn’t. “Not really. I met a new doctor at the hospital last night. His name’s Reilly Jones. Apparently, he’s Dan’s new partner. I was shocked. Is Dan sick or something? The word going around the hospital is he’s going to retire.”
“But not because he’s sick,” her mother assured her quickly. “He’s been thinking about retiring for some time now, but he didn’t want me to say anything until he had someone lined up he felt comfortable turning his practice over to.”
“And Reilly Jones is that man?”
Unable to speculate on that, Sara poured them both a cup of tea. “It’s too early to tell. Right now they just have a temporary partnership—after three months they’ll decide if they want to make it permanent. Dan’s keeping his fingers crossed that it’ll work out. A doctor of Reilly’s caliber doesn’t come along every day. He’s an excellent heart surgeon.”
In the process of setting the table for breakfast, Janey frowned. “But Dan has a family practice. I wouldn’t think a cardiologist would be interested in that at all, especially in a small town like Liberty Hill. Most of the local surgeries are pretty routine.”
“He apparently wanted a break from L.A.,” Sara said simply. “His wife died recently, and he decided he needed a complete change of scene.”
That explained the sadness in his eyes. “That must have been very difficult for him. What happened?”
Sara shrugged. “He didn’t want to talk about it to Dan, so all I know is that he showed up in town the day before yesterday with only a fancy foreign car and two suitcases to his name. He didn’t even have a place to stay until Nick rented him the cabin.”
That stunned Janey almost as much as the news that Dan had taken on a partner. “Why am I just now finding out about this?”
But even as she asked, she knew. She’d worked double shifts at the nursing home all week because they were shorthanded due to an early flu bug that was going around. Then last night she’d spent half the night working with the volunteer fire department. She hadn’t seen any of the family except in passing all week.
“I guess I haven’t been around much,” she admitted with a grimace. “Obviously the good doctor impressed Nick—that cabin’s his baby. He wouldn’t rent to just anybody.”
“Dan says he’s a good man,” her mother replied. “Nick thinks so, too.”
And that said a lot. Besides her brothers, Janey couldn’t think of two men she respected more. If Reilly Jones made a good impression on them, that should have been enough to silence any questions she had about the man. It didn’t. As far as she could see, it just didn’t make sense. A man didn’t leave a million-dollar practice in L.A. for a significantly smaller one in the wilds of Colorado without a darn good reason. So what was Reilly Jones’s story? It would be interesting to find out.
Chapter 2
Reilly wasn’t surprised that he was the latest topic of conversation everywhere he went. Gossip was the grease that made most small towns run, and he was the new man in town. He’d expected questions, and there were plenty of them. But he had no intention of answering any of them. Not now, not ever. He’d come to Colorado to start fresh and put his past behind him, and he couldn’t do that if he was continually talking about it. So when people asked everything from how much money he’d made in L.A. to why he wasn’t married, he coolly replied that that was private information and he preferred not to talk about it.
It didn’t win him many friends.
Another man might have been bothered by that, but Reilly told himself he didn’t care. He wasn’t there to make friends. Friends took an emotional toll, and that was more than he could give at the moment. Which was one of the reasons he’d moved to Liberty Hill in the first place. He didn’t know anyone there and didn’t want to know anyone. He just wanted to work, then escape to the cabin in the woods he’d rented from the sheriff and just be left alone. After everything he’d been through, he didn’t think that was too much to ask.
Dan Michaels, his new partner, had other ideas.
Inviting him to lunch at the local diner to discuss the matter after he’d observed Reilly with the patients that morning, Dan took a chair across the table from him and ordered a grilled chicken sandwich without bothering to look at the menu. A tall, trim man with snow-white hair and the kindest eyes Reilly had ever seen, he waited until Reilly had given his order and the waitress had moved on before he met his gaze with a frown.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said quietly. “And if this partnership between us is going to work, I feel it’s important that we start it off right by discussing problems that crop up as soon as possible. Agreed?”
“Of course,” Reilly replied, surprised. Frowning, he thought back to some of the patients he’d seen that morning. He’d treated colds, allergies, a sprained wrist, even a minor burn, nothing that a first-year medical student couldn’t have handled with one hand tied behind his back. So what was the problem? “I thought everything went fairly smoothly. Did I miss something?”
“The patients,” the older man retorted, not unkindly. “Don’t get me wrong. I was watching you, and you were right on the money when it came to your diagnoses. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that when it comes to medicine, you’re a gifted doctor.”
“But you just said I missed something with the patients,” he said, confused. “I don’t understand.”
Careful to keep his voice down so it wouldn’t carry to the other diners, Dan said quietly, “I don’t have to tell you tha
t there’s more to practicing medicine than handing out prescriptions and doing everything right procedurally. In L.A., your patients might accept—and even expect—a cool business relationship with their doctors, but that won’t work here. This is a small town, Reilly. Your patients will expect you to not only be their doctor, but a friend, confidant, priest and therapist. They’ll treat you like family and ask you private questions they’ve got no business asking. And they won’t understand if you don’t tell them anything about yourself.”
Not liking the sound of that, Reilly scowled. “I have a right to my privacy.”
“Yes, you do,” he agreed. “And I know you’re still grieving. After my wife died, I just wanted to crawl in a hole and be left alone. But I couldn’t, and neither can you. Because you have patients who need you. And to them you’re a stranger. They want to accept you, to like you, but they don’t know anything about you. If you don’t open up a little and let them know who you are, there won’t be much trust between you. And without trust, you won’t be much good to them as a doctor.”
He wasn’t saying anything Reilly didn’t already know. A good doctor did a lot more than just treat physical ailments. But wasn’t he allowed to keep his private life separate from work? Couldn’t he earn patients’ trust without telling them about the house he’d owned in Beverly Hills and if he’d ever dated a movie star? Wasn’t he at least entitled to that?
“What’s important here is that the patients trust my judgment as a doctor,” he replied. “They don’t need to know anything about my private life to do that.”
Not a pushy man, Dan had said his piece. There was no point in beating the subject like a dead horse. “You know what’s best for you,” he said simply. “So how were things at the hospital last night? After the fancy operating rooms you practiced in in L.A., our little hospital must have been quite a shock to you. You probably felt like you’d stepped back in time.”
Reilly had to grin at that. “Well, maybe just a little, but I didn’t encounter anything I couldn’t handle. By the end of the evening, I felt right at home.”
“Good.” Pleased, Dan sat back as the waitress delivered their food. “I can’t remember the last time I had a night off. It was great, thanks to you.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Reilly said with a wry shrug. And Dan was no more grateful than he was. After sitting at home and brooding for months in L.A., he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed work. Last night he’d been so busy that he hadn’t had much time to think about Victoria.
His brother had been right—he had needed a change of scene and he hadn’t even realized it. He’d needed to work again, to find himself in medicine, and Liberty Hill, at least so far, seemed like a good place to do that. Dan was an excellent doctor—intelligent, thorough, kind—and Reilly hoped that their temporary three-month partnership worked out for both of them. He liked Dan and felt sure he was someone he could work with.
As for the patients Reilly was confident they would come around. He’d never lived in a small town before, but people were pretty much the same everywhere. All he had to do was give them time. If they were nosy, they’d learn soon enough that he had no intention of discussing his personal life with them. Once they accepted that, they’d all get along fine.
Satisfied that he had everything well in hand, he and Dan finished their lunch, then walked back to the office, which was conveniently located two blocks from the town square in an old craftsman cottage Dan had converted into office space ten years ago. Not surprisingly, the waiting room was full. Dan had warned him that once word got out that he’d joined the practice, they’d be flooded with patients wanting to get a look at him, and he’d been exactly right. Patients had come in and out of the office in a steady stream all morning, and only a handful of them had really been sick enough to require the attention of a doctor. The rest had used everything from a hangnail to a fake cough as an excuse to see Reilly, and they’d made no apologies for it.
Amused, he took the chart from the door of the first examining room and read the name on it. Myrtle Henderson. Stepping inside, he found an older woman pacing the small confines of the examining room impatiently. Tall and spare, with a lively step, she appeared to be in her early seventies and in excellent shape for her age. Reilly didn’t doubt for a second that she, like so many of the others, had come to check him out. According to her chart, she’d come in complaining of dizziness, but the second she heard him step through the door, she whirled to face him without the slightest sign of unsteadiness. If she was dizzy, she hid it well.
“You must be Dr. Jones,” she said with a delighted smile, holding out her hand for a firm shake. “Welcome to our neck of the woods, Doctor. It’s good to have you here.”
Amused, Reilly couldn’t help but like her. She looked as if she could be as tough as nails when the occasion called for it, but there was a twinkle in her direct blue eyes that was hard to resist. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s nice to be here. I understand you’re having a problem with dizziness. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll take your blood pressure?”
Reluctantly she took the chair he motioned to, all the while assuring him that she was sure it was nothing. “I didn’t eat breakfast, and that always makes me a little light-headed. And it was just for a second, anyway. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m sure I just imagined it.”
Biting back a smile, Reilly didn’t doubt that, but he took her blood pressure, anyway. Just as he’d suspected, it checked out fine. Removing his stethoscope from his ears, he sat back and arched a dark brow at her. “Well, it’s not your blood pressure. Have you had this problem before? Maybe I should schedule some tests—”
“Oh, no,” she laughed, dismissing the suggestion with a wave of her hand. “We don’t need to do that. I’m healthy as a horse—always have been. You look like you are, too,” she added, neatly changing the subject. “I bet you spent a lot of time playing golf and tennis at a fancy country club in L.A., didn’t you? You’ve got that healthy, outdoor California look to you.”
“Thank you,” he said dryly, and neatly sidetracked her question by not answering it at all.
Undaunted, Myrtle examined him with bright, curious eyes. “So what brought you to Liberty Hill? I’d think a good-looking young man like yourself would go stir crazy here by the end of the week. It’s pretty quiet. There’s not much nightlife. Though I could introduce you around, if you like. I know a couple of nice girls you might like to meet.”
Reilly cringed at the idea, but all he said was, “I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Henderson—”
“Myrtle,” she corrected him with a broad grin and a motherly pat on the hand. “Everyone calls me Myrtle.”
“But right now I don’t have time for a social life. Maybe some other time.”
She surprised him by accepting that with a rueful shrug. “It never hurts to try. If you change your mind, you let me know. I was born and raised here and know everybody in town.”
Her mission accomplished and curiosity satisfied, she sailed out without mentioning her dizziness at all, and Reilly could only smile and shake his head. Unfortunately, the patients he saw after her weren’t nearly as polite. By the time the office closed early at three so he and Dan could go on rounds at the local nursing home, he’d been grilled about everything from his credit history to the number of children he one day hoped to have. And then, there were the women who’d come on to him. He didn’t even want to think about that.
Dan took one look at him as they headed for the nursing home and arched a brow. “Rough afternoon?”
“No, thanks,” he said dryly. “I’ve already had one. Are the women around here always so aggressive?”
To his credit, Dan didn’t laugh. But his lips twitched with wry humor. “So the feeding frenzy’s starting already, has it? I was afraid of that. I went through the same thing after Peggy died.”
“There were some women in L.A. who made it clear they’d be happy to help me through my grief,” Reilly said with
a grimace of distaste, “but they were friends. These women don’t even know me!”
“Unfortunately, they know everything important they think they need to know about you,” the older man said as they walked the three blocks to the nursing home. Normally not a cynical man, he ticked off Reilly’s attributes. “You’re single, young, reasonably attractive. And you’ve got M.D. after your name. Every mama wants her daughter to marry a doctor—you know that. It’s not any different here than in L.A. Except that in a town the size of Liberty Hill, doctors are harder to come by. As long as you’re walking around free, you’ll be considered fair game.”
He spoke nothing less than the truth, and they both knew it. Reilly had married Victoria the summer before he started medical school, so he hadn’t been chased by marriage-minded women looking to land a rich doctor who could support them in the manner to which they wanted to become accustomed. But he’d been to more than his share of weddings where thrilled mamas of the bride paraded the groom around the reception hall as if he was a prize, introducing him to everyone as “my new son-in-law, the doctor.” Just thinking about it made him cringe.
That was not going to happen to him!
“They’re wasting their time,” he told Dan grimly as they reached the nursing home and the older man held the door open for him. “Victoria might be gone, but I still love her. I’ll always love her. If I can’t have her, I don’t want anyone.”
Sympathizing with him, Dan knew exactly how he felt. When Peggy had died, he’d thought his world had ended and he could never look at another woman as anything but a friend. He’d been wrong. Reilly would love again, too, but that was something he wasn’t ready to hear yet.
“You’re still new here,” he said diplomatically. “Once the women get to know you and realize you’re really not interested, they’ll back off. Just give them time.”
