The Baby Doctor's Bride

by Jessica Matthews

  Twenty minutes later she parked in her spot behind the Danton clinic’s employee entrance and gratefully entered the air-conditioned wing which had been earmarked for pediatrics.

  Heather Fox, Ivy’s office nurse and inseparable childhood friend, poked her head out of an exam room as Ivy walked past. “How did it go?”

  Ivy detoured into the cubicle and sank into a chair. “Not well. He turned me down. Flatly and unequivocally. I shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed. It was a long shot.”

  Long shot or not, she’d carried high hopes…To add insult to injury, it wasn’t fair for a man with his good looks to be such a selfish grump! What an insult to pediatricians everywhere!

  “Hmm. I would have thought a retired gent would have been happy to hop back into the saddle and supplement his income for a few weeks.”

  “He’s not retired,” Ivy said. “I don’t know how Lew got that impression, but Ethan Locke hasn’t hit forty. To quote him, he’s on ‘an extended and well-deserved vacation’.”

  “He’s under forty and can take an extended holiday? Wow! Makes you wonder what his rates as a pediatrician are.”

  Remembering how he’d related to Ivy’s lack of finances, she wondered that herself. If he’d earned his millions by charging his patients exorbitant fees, it was a good thing he’d turned her down. Neither she nor the families in the area could afford his services. “No kidding.”

  Heather frowned, clearly puzzling out the situation. “So why did he say no? Even if he’s wealthy, I’d think he’d be willing to volunteer.”

  “‘Let me count the ways’,” Ivy quoted as she began ticking off his reasons on her fingers. “He’s on vacation. He’s not interested. He wants to be left alone.”

  “Did you explain he wouldn’t have any evening or weekend duty?”

  “I did, but he still wasn’t interested.” Ivy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Nothing I said made a difference.” She met her friend’s gaze, disappointed by her failure. “I’m sorry, Heather. I know you’d like to leave at a decent time every evening to spend time with your family, and now—”

  “Hey, don’t apologize. You did everything you could.” She sighed. “This hasn’t been the best welcome home for you, either, Ivy. Instead of a quiet summer with Dr. Griffith, getting to know the routine, you got tossed in over your head from the very beginning.”

  Ivy shrugged, although she smiled. “Don’t worry about me. Murphy’s Law and medicine seem to go hand in hand. We’ll do the best we can and hope it’s enough.”

  Like all other doctors, she’d learned how to function without sleep, and how to survive on a few winks grabbed here and there, but as an intern and as a resident at Children’s Mercy, there had always been medical people around to catch any blatant errors she might make. Here, she didn’t have a safety net.

  Ethan Locke was the nearest candidate, and he wasn’t interested. Still, no point in crying over circumstances that couldn’t be changed.

  “I just hate to ask you to work such long days when you have your own pre-schoolers at home,” Ivy continued.

  The nurse shrugged. “This situation won’t last forever. My mother loves babysitting, and I doubt if the kids miss Mom all that much when Grandma caters to their every whim.”

  “Believe me, when things get back to normal, I’ll insist on you taking time off.”

  “I won’t argue over that,” Heather said with a smile. “But if you ask me, you’re the one I’m worried about. When’s the last time you slept?”

  Ivy thought back. “I got a few hours last night.” Those had come between two-year-old Erica Weyland’s asthma attack and five-year-old Tabitha Jones’s sprained wrist after she’d fallen out of her new canopy twin bed.

  “And when did you eat last?”

  Ivy tried to remember. Breakfast seemed like such a long time ago. “I grabbed a cinnamon roll from the hospital cafeteria this morning.”

  “Then it’s a good thing your dad sent over a take-out order of his meatloaf special. It’s in the lounge with your name on it.”

  Ivy’s mouth watered, but her wristwatch told her it would have to wait. “I’ll eat later.”

  “You’ll eat it now,” Heather ordered. “The kids can wait ten more minutes to see you, especially if it means their doctor won’t collapse from hunger. So go, put up your feet for a few minutes, and don’t come back until you’ve cleaned your plate.”

  Ivy didn’t argue. “Yes, Mother,” she said, grateful that her father, once again, had come to her rescue.

  At least there were some good men in this world, she thought uncharitably as a mental picture of Ethan Locke appeared. It probably was a good thing he’d turned her down, because he might be handsome and he might be talented, but he clearly didn’t have a heart.

  Ethan slumped onto the sofa and stared at the blank television screen, wishing the bottle in his hand held something more bracing than water.

  When he’d first laid eyes on his surprise guest, he’d been dazzled. The easy way she moved, the apparent softness of her skin, the shine to her shoulder-length auburn hair, the impish smile on her beautiful face had made him feel as if the sun had reappeared in his life after months of cloudy days.

  And for the first time in a long time he’d also been curious. During the few weeks he’d been living here no one, not even the mail carrier, had wandered down his lane. For a man who’d been content to mark the days by the number of soda pop bottles he emptied, curiosity was a novel experience.

  Then she’d started asking questions, discussing things he didn’t want to discuss. One visit that could have held some promise and make him feel “normal” had suddenly ruined his day. Hell, she’d ruined his entire week!

  Almost six months ago he’d left his life behind in St. Louis. After severing the few ties he had in the Gateway City, he’d packed the belongings he couldn’t live without in his car and stored the rest. He’d headed west on I-70 without any clear-cut destination in mind other than a desire to find a quiet location to settle until he refocused his life.

  His criteria had been simple. He’d wanted a place where he would be as average as the next guy, a place where no one would expect more from him than he was willing to give, a place where he could sort out his life and find peace. A place where he could forget….

  Surprisingly enough, a place meeting his specifications had been more difficult to find than he’d expected, but after detouring off one interstate onto another that headed south, he’d stumbled across Danton, a southern Kansas town of about five thousand, which provided enough retail businesses and services to satisfy its residents. Healthcare was limited to a doctor and a ten-bed hospital that was equipped to deal with emergencies and provide nursing care for anyone needing round-the-clock attention they couldn’t receive at home. Thanks to a conversation with the loose-lipped Lew, who’d obviously found the doctor’s parking permit Ethan had yanked off the rearview mirror and shoved under the driver’s seat, he’d hunted down the owner of this cabin, signed a lease and moved in for the summer.

  He’d taken to his new surroundings without any problem, and knew he’d made the right choice to leave his old life. After nearly six months of drifting, he didn’t miss the phones ringing, his pager buzzing, the monitors beeping, the gentle whoosh of respirators, or babies that fit in the palm of his hand. More importantly, he didn’t miss the worry, the tears, or the sense of failure.

  Allowing each minute, each hour, to pass by quietly and without plan or purpose seemed therapeutic, although he didn’t expect to be healed of what ailed him.

  How did one recover from disillusionment, especially when you were disillusioned with yourself?

  I need your help.

  She might need help, but she didn’t need his, he thought sourly. He was the last doctor she’d want treating her precious patients, although she didn’t know that. Better for her to think he was a selfish bastard, that he had no heart, than for her to know the truth.

  Actually, knowing sh
e hung at the end of her emotional rope bothered him more than he cared to admit—mainly because he’d been there, done that. If only she’d stayed away; if only Lew hadn’t discovered Ethan was a doctor; if only he had chosen today to pack a lunch and explore the acres and acres surrounding the cabin. Then he could have remained in ignorant isolation.

  But she hadn’t left him in peace. In a few short minutes she’d done what his colleagues in St. Louis hadn’t been able to accomplish in months.

  She’d made him feel guilty.

  Feeling guilty was a step up from feeling like a failure, which was how he’d felt in the weeks before he left St. Louis. Like Dr. Harris, his colleagues had tried to convince him to reconsider, but he’d been adamant about pulling up stakes and they’d finally accepted his decision. A week later they’d found a replacement, who’d stepped into his shoes without the smallest hiccup, and life went on.

  It would for Ivy Harris, too. Besides, she’d seemed resourceful enough to locate someone to do what he could not.

  But what if she didn’t?

  She’d manage. Managing was what doctors did best, especially under the most difficult of circumstances.

  You don’t have any children, do you, Dr. Locke?

  Ivy’s voice echoed in his head and he steeled himself against the pain. She’d definitely played hardball with her remark, but he hadn’t been inclined to explain how every one of his tiny, tiny patients had been “his” kid. And he certainly hadn’t been about to admit that he’d fathered one of his own, because it would have prompted an entirely new set of questions; questions that would only lead to him reliving what still lay so heavily on his heart.

  In spite of his expertise, in spite of the advances in modern medicine, he hadn’t been able to save his own son.

  “How long has Robbie had this patch on his arm?” she asked Molly Owens.

  Molly shrugged. “Several weeks. At first I thought it was just part of his allergies, so I used an over-the-counter cortisone cream. But the area is getting larger, so I thought it was time to try something else.” The thirty-year-old grinned. “Unless you’re going to tell me I haven’t given the cream enough time to work?”

  The lesion was about the size of a silver dollar, red and flat, and the center was scaly looking. A textbook picture if she ever saw one.

  “Not a chance,” Ivy said with a smile. “Your cream won’t help. Robbie has ringworm. It’s a fungus infection and requires special medication.”

  “Ringworm?” Molly was aghast. “Are you sure?”

  “I could do a skin scraping for fungus and send it to the lab, if you’d like, but I’m certain about my diagnosis.”

  “Oh, I’m not questioning you,” Molly was quick to reply. “It’s just that I thought it was transmitted from animals, and we don’t have a dog or a cat.”

  “That’s often the case,” Ivy agreed, “but sometimes a child will pick up the fungus from the soil.”

  Molly exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “He does love to play in the dirt with his trucks,” she said as she fingercombed the little boy’s sandy-colored hair.

  “See my truck?” Robbie held the metal vehicle under Ivy’s nose. “It goes fast. Vroooom, vroooom.”

  “I see,” Ivy told him. “I’ll bet you’re an excellent driver.”

  Focused on his toy, and making the appropriate engine noises, Robbie jumped off his mom’s lap and began pushing it along the linoleum.

  “So what do I do?” Molly asked. “Keep him out of the dirt?”

  “You can try, but I suspect you’ll fight a losing battle.”

  “To put it mildly.”

  Ivy wrote on her prescription pad. “Here’s a script for an anti-fungal cream. Apply it to his arm twice daily.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until the patch disappears, which will take a few weeks.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You should also sterilize his towels, his bedding, and any clothes that come in contact with the area. You don’t want this to spread to anyone else in your family.”

  “OK. Not a problem.”

  “If you notice the lesion becomes redder, or oozes pus, come back. Same for if it hasn’t disappeared in three or four weeks. And if by some chance you notice another area developing, start treating it immediately with the cream.”

  “Will do. Thanks so much, Doctor.”

  Ivy smiled as she escorted Molly to the door of the exam room. “You’re welcome.”

  Heather waited outside the cubicle. “You aren’t going to believe this—”

  “After today, I can believe anything,” Ivy said dryly. “How many more patients are waiting?”

  “None.” The woman grinned. “Robbie was the last one.”

  Ivy glanced at the clock. 6:15 p.m. “You’re right. I don’t believe it. I thought we’d be here until seven at least.”

  “Same here. I guess we were lucky. And, speaking of lucky, you have a visitor.”

  It was too late in the evening for a drug rep to drop in and peddle his wares. “Who is it?”

  “I have no idea. He wouldn’t leave his name, but he’s quite a hunk if you ask me.”

  “Then it’s no one you know?”

  “Nope, which is a shame. He’s the sort who would have women flocking around him if he’d bother to smile. He’s the dark, brooding Heathcliffe type.”

  Instantly a picture of Ethan Locke flashed into Ivy’s head, but she dismissed the idea. He wouldn’t have any reason to stop by her office. No doubt he’d rather walk barefoot through a Texas sandburr patch than run into her again.

  “OK, I’ll find out who he is and what he wants. Meanwhile, enjoy your evening at home.”

  “I will.”

  Ivy told her receptionist goodnight, then beelined to the waiting room. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she told the tall fellow who was studying one of her favorite Anne Geddes prints, depicting three babies decked out in yellow bunny costumes, spooning each other as they lay fast asleep.

  He turned to face her and she caught her breath.

  Ethan Locke.

  He didn’t look much different than he had earlier, although he’d shaved, revealing an endearing dimple in his chin.

  “Well, well, this is a surprise,” she said evenly, both suspicious and curious as to why he’d tracked her down. But she didn’t intend to make it easy for him. “If you want a refill on your antisocial pills you’ll have to see Jed, because I don’t treat adults. His office is next door.”

  His face turned ruddy. “I deserve that, I suppose, but I came to apologize.”

  He’d surprised her, because on the basis of their first meeting she hadn’t thought he was the sort to worry over what she or anyone else might think of him, much less apologize for his actions. If she weren’t so tired, and if she didn’t have hospital rounds to make yet, she might have been willing to spar with him for a while longer. But she was, and she did, and she wanted to fall into bed as soon as possible.

  “Accepted. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Wait.”

  The one word stopped her in her tracks. She studied him carefully, noticing how he seemed to hesitate, as if he needed to bolster his courage. Instinctively, she knew his apology was only an excuse. Perhaps even a test of some sort….

  “Look,” she said slowly, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I have a hundred and one things to do before this day officially ends. If you’re here for a reason, just spit it out and save me the suspense. I don’t have the energy to play twenty questions.”

  “Have you found someone to help you?”

  “I haven’t had time,” she admitted. “But, as you said, I’m sure I’ll find someone. Eventually. Why do you ask?”

  She’d wanted to say Why do you care?, but she’d eaten lunch, and they’d finished earlier than she’d expected, so she could afford to be nice. For the moment.

  He paused, his gaze steady. “Because I’m offering my services.”

  CHAPTER TWO

>   FROM the expression on Ivy’s face, Ethan had obviously startled her speechless. He wouldn’t blame her if she told him to buzz off, after they’d parted on less than friendly terms. Part of him hoped she wouldn’t, but if she did he would go back to his rented cabin with his conscience appeased.

  Her surprise disappeared and her face settled into more impassive lines, as if she wanted to believe but wouldn’t allow herself to do so. “You’re offering to help?”

  “Yes.”

  “If this is some twisted idea of a joke…”

  “It isn’t. It’s a sincere offer.”

  “Forgive me, but I’d never dreamed…You’re actually willing to help me.” She narrowed her coffee-colored eyes in obvious suspicion as she dug her hands into her white lab coat.

  “For a few weeks.” He’d thought about extending on open-ended offer without a set final date as he planned to live in the area until the end of the summer, but he wanted—no, needed an escape clause. Helping a colleague in dire straits for a few weeks should be enough to appease his conscience.

  “Several hours ago you said you weren’t interested. What prompted you to change your mind?”

  “Does it matter?” he countered, unwilling to explain how, after her you-don’t-have-children comment, his former colleague and old friend’s phone call had tipped the scales in her favor.

  “Try something different,” Stewart Trimble had urged. “I understand your reasons for steering clear of medicine, but you still have a lot to give.”

  “I don’t,” Ethan had replied flatly. “The proverbial well is dry.”

  “Temporarily, perhaps, but you aren’t a quitter, Ethan,” Stewart had said. “Pediatricians aren’t limited to treating infants, you know. After bumming around the country for the last six months, don’t you owe yourself the old college try? What would it hurt to agree to a locum job in a practice where the worst thing you’ll treat is a sore throat and an occasional cough? Maybe your well isn’t as dry as you think.”

  Plenty, he’d wanted to say, but in the end the combination of seeing Ivy’s exhaustion, the new load of guilt she’d leveled on him, and Stewart’s thought-provoking encouragement had prompted him to drive into town and offer his services on a limited scale for an equally limited amount of time. It would be a trial period, he’d consoled himself as the distance to Ivy’s clinic had shortened. That was all. At the end of the three weeks she’d asked for he’d have a better idea of what he’d do with the rest of his life.