The Baby Who Stole the Doctor's Heart

by Dianne Drake

  “White Elk is filled with nice places. But what’s good at Catie’s is that while I’m cooking, she’ll look after Sarah for me. In fact, she’s set up a little nursery in her office for whenever I stop by, or Gabby Ranard stops by with her babies.”

  “You’ve been a single mom for a while?” He already knew the answer to that, but asking seemed like the next logical step in the conversation.

  “He left me when he found out I was pregnant. But Sarah and I are doing pretty well without him. It wasn’t what I’d planned, but life happens, doesn’t it? When the bottom drops out of it, you replace it and start over. Being a single mom works quite nicely for both Sarah and me, and I have a lot of support here in White Elk. So, do you have any children?”

  “No,” he said too quickly, too gruffly. “One marriage on the rocks, no children.” And no desire to talk about it either. Just to let her know, he folded his arms tightly across his chest, leaned his head against the chair back, and shut his eyes. This conversation had already gone much further than he’d intended, bordering on private things he didn’t get into with anybody, not even with his best friends, and he wanted to end it before it went any further. So, nothing like some nice, rigid body language to convey the message.

  “You’re not very subtle, you know,” Angela said.

  “About what?” he asked, instantly regretting that he had. Because asking would lead to more conversation, which he didn’t want. Not with anybody, but especially not with Angela. She made him think too hard, made him come too close to the edge of wishing for something he couldn’t let himself have. Or even dream of.

  “About what you don’t want to talk about. You’re the one who brought up the subject, in case you’ve already forgotten that.”

  He refused to open his eyes, refused to unfold his arms. “How did I bring up the subject?”

  “You asked how long I’d been a single mom. Which led to me asking if you had children. It’s a natural flow to the conversation we were having, Mark. If you don’t want to talk about it, I’d suggest you don’t initiate the topic.”

  Damn, she was a spitfire! Soon to be a thorn in his side, too, if he wasn’t careful. “I was making pleasant conversation. Not trying to bring up any particular thing. Saying the first thing about you that came to mind.” Well, that was a whopper of a lie. Over the course of the day too many things about Angela had come to mind. Things that had no business being there in the first place but, apparently, had implanted themselves pretty deeply anyway. “You know, trying to be polite.”

  “Well, your definition of pleasant conversation and mine sure don’t agree, because mine doesn’t end with my conversation partner turning all grouchy on me, the way you’ve done.”

  She just wasn’t going to give up. “That might be the case if I were your conversation partner. But I’m not. I’m just a doctor who came in here to put his feet up and rest for a few minutes. Not to be disturbed.”

  “But—”

  “Not to be disturbed,” he interrupted.

  “All I was going to say was—”

  “Not to be disturbed,” he repeated. Eyes still closed. Arms still folded. “Disturb. From the Latin disturbare, meaning to break up the quietness or serenity of. In other words, break up the quietness or serenity of…me!”

  Rather than taking offense, Angela laughed as she pushed herself off her chair. “Look, Sarah is spending the night with her cousins since I’m getting off way past her bedtime, and I’ll be headed down to Catie’s Overlook in a while. I’m going to cook for a couple of hours, testing my recipe for Chilean sea bass puttanesca with seared fingerling potatoes. Catie’s thinking about adding it to her menu. So, if you’re not quite so disturbed by then, feel free to come and have dinner with me. My treat. Actually, you’ll be eating by yourself, but you will be eating my cooking. Which will probably suit you rather nicely, since you’ll be dining undisturbed.”

  “Is that a dinner invitation?” he asked, ready to turn her down.

  “As in a date for two people, no. As in, if you’re hungry, I’ll have food, yes. That’s an invitation. And normally after my Chilean sea bass puttanesca, no one stays grouchy.”

  He opened his eyes to respond, to turn her down good and proper, in such a fashion that she’d leave him alone from now on, but she was already gone. Which was just as well. Because he had no intention of more interaction with Angela Blanchard, since interaction seemed to lead to…thoughts.

  “Damn,” he muttered shutting his eyes, then opening them immediately, when the first image that popped into his mind was… “Damn.”

  “It’s crazy,” Angela said, handing the diaper bag to her sister, who was already holding onto Sarah for dear life as the toddler struggled to get loose. Which was being encouraged by the twins, Paige and Pippa, who flanked their mother’s side, literally bouncing up and down with excitement. Six years old, and they had more energy than Angela had ever seen in any one spot. “He’s barely even nice to me, and what do I do? I invite him to Catie’s for dinner.”

  “You’re cooking tonight?” Dinah asked.

  “Later, after I get off work from the hospital. Trying out a recipe for her.”

  “So it’s not like you two would be sitting down, having a meal together, would it?”

  “The two of us can barely be in the same room together, so I don’t think we’d survive a meal sitting at the same table. But, no, we won’t be together. In fact, we won’t even be in the same part of the restaurant. Which is why this will probably work, if he decides to come. He’ll be in the dining room, I’ll stay in the kitchen, there’ll be walls and doors between us. A beautiful start to what’s destined to be a rocky relationship.” Laughing, she tossed a bag of Sarah’s toys at the twins. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, I could take Sarah down to Catie’s with me. You know how she loves watching her, and she does have the office set up.”

  “No, Aunt Angela!” the twins cried in unison.

  “They’ve been waiting all day for this. They want to play dress-up with Sarah. I think they also have big plans to decorate the crib as a castle for a fairy princess. And to be honest, I need some baby time. It’s nice just…just holding her. And she’s not going to tolerate that for too much longer.”

  “Are you…?” Angela indicated a swollen belly, so not to say the word pregnant where the twins would hear.

  “Not yet,” Dinah said wistfully. “So I think it’s the time. If Eric ever has time to slow down a little. That’s one of the reasons he brought Mark here, to take up some of the slack while he and Neil spend more family time.”

  One of the reasons. Gabby had hinted at something else, too, and she wondered if her sister knew. Now wasn’t the time to ask, though. Not while the twins were within earshot and Catie was expecting her any minute. “Well, when you do, you know you can count on me for anything.”

  “For what?” Paige piped up. “What can my mom count on you for?”

  “A nice fruit tart I intend to make tonight.”

  “Me too,” the twins cried together.

  “You too,” Angela said, then gave each of her nieces kisses and hugs. Her nieces… Dinah was a lucky woman, married to a man like Eric who had two such great little girls. They were a good family and she did envy them their family structure. It’s what she’d thought…deluded herself into thinking she’d have with Brad, but that hadn’t turnd out to be the case. “Fruit tart for everyone. And now I’ve really got to run.”

  She paused long enough to give Sarah a kiss. “I’ll be back tomorrow, sweetie,” she said. “Aunt Dinah is going to take good care of you and I think your cousins have a lot of plans for the evening.” She’d spent nights away from her daughter before, but it was never easy. Not even when it was her own sister taking care of Sarah. One more kiss sufficed, though, before the trickle of tears started, then Angela scooted out the door and hurried to her car.

  She was already well into her recipe prep, almost two hours now, and as far as she knew Mark ha
dn’t come into the restaurant. Two more hours of work at the hospital after she’d dropped Sarah off and she hadn’t seen him there. Now she’d caught herself craning to have a quick look through the pass-through more than she should have, then being oddly disappointed when she didn’t see him. But what did she expect? He didn’t like her, and while she wouldn’t go quite so far as to say she didn’t like him, she did recognize that their relationship was strained. Actually, it wasn’t even a relationship. More like a walking, breathing case of antagonism that crept up on them whenever the two of them happened to be in the same place at the same time.

  He fascinated her, though. She didn’t know why, couldn’t explain it, and maybe didn’t want to. But, yes, he did fascinate her. Which was why, deep down, she’d hoped he would come tonight. No date intended, of course.

  “Who would you be looking for?” Catie asked.

  “No one.”

  “Which is why you’ve been glancing longingly through the pass-through every five minutes for the past hour and a half.”

  “I invited someone to taste my sea bass, but I haven’t been glancing longingly,” she snapped.

  Catie laughed. “Must be a man, the way you’re all riled up.”

  “A colleague from the hospital.”

  “Tall, dark and handsome? Likes two eggs over easy, dry wheat toast, a bowl of fruit and black coffee for breakfast every morning?”

  “Every morning?” Angela asked.

  “Every morning. No variations on a breakfast theme. Not ever.”

  “Sounds boring.”

  “Sounds like you’re trying to dodge my question,” Catie countered, chuckling. “But that’s OK. Everybody’s entitled to some privacy.”

  “There’s nothing to be private about. He said he has dinner here quite often, and I offered him my Chilean sea bass puttanesca if he happened to stop by tonight. Which he hasn’t.”

  “Actually, he has. He’s sitting in the alcove. You can’t see it from the pass-through. And he did ask for your sea bass, as a matter of fact.”

  Angela’s pulse sped up a blip. Then she took a deep breath to calm herself down. “I’ll have it ready for him in seven minutes.”

  “You could make that a dinner for two, and join him. I mean, it’s almost closing time, there aren’t many people left in the dining room, and there’s really no reason for you being in the kitchen the rest of the evening, since we’ll be starting our closing prep in the next half hour. So, cook your meal for him, then join him.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks. And it wasn’t a heat coming from the kitchen.

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t get along. Not even a little bit. I think that if I were even in the same room with him while he was eating I’d ruin his digestion.”

  “Yet he specifically wants your sea bass?” Catie shook her head. “If he thought you’d ruin his digestion, he’d have gone somewhere else for dinner. But he didn’t. And I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “I don’t have time for…for anything. Especially not for… well, you know. I’ve got Sarah, and my life is pretty hectic. Even if I didn’t ruin his digestion, I still couldn’t…have dinner with him. Bad timing. Other priorities.”

  “Suit yourself. But in my experience, there’s always time, if you want it badly enough. And if you do want it badly enough, surprising things can happen, but only if you give them a chance. Personally, I think Chilean sea bass puttanesca for two is a good chance to take.”

  Angela glanced over to the back door, to the great hulk of a man loitering there. Walt Graham, her new medical advisor in her camp program. He was a newly diagnosed diabetic himself, and under the close eye of Catie and her healthy cooking. Also the surprise of Catie’s life. Two widowed people, old friends from way back now with one reason to keep them together. No one had seen it coming, but everybody was happy for them. “Maybe for someone else, but I can’t take that chance,” Angela said, turning to the stove. Seven minutes to fix the meal, then she was going home. Out the back door, not through the dining room.

  “I’ll admit, it was the best Chilean sea bass puttanesca I’ve ever had,” Mark said. The snow was coming down hard for early March. For White Elk that was good as it extended the ski season. And maybe, just maybe, he’d finally find some time to hit the slopes. He’d been intending to for the three months he’d been here, but so far it hadn’t happened.

  Angela rose from under the hood of her car, and glared at him. “Glad you liked it,” she snapped.

  “I suppose my logical question here is, are you having car trouble? Or do you simply enjoy tinkering with your carburetor in a heavy snow in a dark parking lot?”

  “I’m not tinkering with my carburetor.”

  He pulled his penlight from his pocket and shined it down, underneath the car hood. “That’s the carburetor, and it looks to me like you’re tinkering with it.”

  “My car won’t start,” she admitted.

  “And you’re a mechanic? That’s why you’re attempting to fix it?” From the look on her face, he figured he was about to get hit with a snowball, but to put himself in the position of the knight in shining armor coming to the rescue of the damsel in distress simply didn’t suit him. Oh, he’d help her. It was the only proper thing to do. But he wanted to make sure it was on the terms of the relationship they’d already established for themselves. Contentious. That was the only safe thing to do when he couldn’t keep a safe distance from her.

  “No, I’m not a mechanic. And I don’t know a carburetor from…from anything else under the hood.”

  “Then I’d suggest you get out from under the hood, get into the car and give it a crank so I can hear what’s going on.”

  “You’re going to help me?”

  She actually sounded surprised, which made him feel bad. And guilty. She was a nice woman with a tough life. Maybe he didn’t want to get involved in all that, but he certainly didn’t want his problems heaped on top of hers. “Look, Angela, I know we’re got some differences—”

  “Big differences,” she interrupted.

  In spite of himself, he couldn’t help smiling. This was the Angela that intrigued him. “Big differences. But I never meant you to get the impression that I was downright mean.”

  “And rude,” she supplied.

  He chuckled. “OK, mean and rude. But I’m at a bad place in my life right now, which has nothing to do with you. And I really just want to be left alone. Which is hard to do when—”

  “When I keep coming at you?”

  “Actually, you do keep coming at me, but that’s not it. It’s…everything.” He gestured to the restaurant, to the Three Sisters mountain peaks shadowed in the distance, to the main street of the village. To the parking light, where in the pinkish haze the snowflakes danced like fairy ballerinas. “It’s everything. I don’t want to be here. Don’t want this kind of life. Not medicine, not anything that I’ve had. But I’ve got it for the next year and a half, like it or not, and so far you seem to be the one who’s always closest when I feel it all closing in around me.”

  “So, because of proximity, I get the brunt of your bad mood?”

  Mark cringed. She was right about that and it made him feel ashamed. Yet something in the very essence of Angela Blanchard made him want to correct his life, and correct it immediately. Whatever it was about her that stirred that frantic beast in him burrowed to the very heart of what he needed. When she wasn’t around, he was able to concentrate on the tasks at hand; when she was, that compulsion to change, to try on a different existence nearly consumed him. “Something like that, and I’m sorry. I read your proposal earlier, and I respect what you’re trying to do. It looks like an amazing program and I have every intention of speaking up on your behalf tomorrow, and supporting it in the months I’ll be here.”

  “I hope you’ll speak on my behalf with a smile on your face, because with the scowl you’re usually wearing, Eric and Neil won’t be con
vinced that you really think it’s a good idea.”

  Yes, she did come straight at him and he was beginning to like that directness. “I don’t always scowl, do I?”

  “About ninety-nine percent of the time.”

  “Then tomorrow I promise ninety-eight.”

  “You resist moving by leaps and bounds, don’t you? You prefer baby steps.”

  “And you always move by leaps and bounds.”

  “Life is short,” she said, pulling her scarf tighter around her neck as a gust of wind hit her. “I know there’s that poem that talks about not going gently into the good night, and that’s how I want to live my life, because there’s so much I want to do, and I won’t get it done going gently. I lost eight years I can’t get back, and I’m not wasting another minute.”

  “Which is why you want to be a mountain rescue paramedic,” he said, feeling a fragile thread of guilt for not including her in the program. But he wasn’t going to. If he had to do this, he was going to give it his best, and that included putting the right people in place. As tough as Angela was, she still didn’t fit the criteria and, on that, he couldn’t budge. “So I assume this is where you’re going to make your pitch again? Right?”

  “Wrong. You’re not getting rid of me, and I intend on being in your class, not in the back row, though. But I accept your decision. Don’t like it, but I’ll make it work for me.”

  Which was one of the reasons he couldn’t afford any kind of relationship with her. She was so dynamic, so positive. He truly feared it could rub off on him. Truly feared it could make him change his mind about so many things he’d been etching in stone these past couple of years. “Well, right now we need to figure out if we can make your car work for you.”

  Angela climbed in, turned the key, elicited only a clicking noise. No grinding, no sputtering, no nothing.