Was he serious? She stared. When he didn’t confess he was kidding, she caught her bottom lip and worried it as she considered his offer. A receptionist? For the hot—possibly cuckoo—doctor? On one hand, being the front desk person to the local doctor could put her in contact with a lot of people; on the other hand, well, the same reason had its cons, too. Someone was bound to notice the similarities between herself and Samuel eventually. What then? She didn’t have a good answer. But she did know that she needed a cash flow of some sort while she snooped around Cold Plains. The doctor’s offer solved two of three problems. She’d just have to deal with the other some way.
Smiling, she thrust her hand out. “Dr. Black, you’ve just landed yourself a receptionist. When do I start?”
* * *
Per his conversation with Hawk Bledsoe, he’d been planning to hire the new woman in town, but he hadn’t expected her to be carried into his office after fainting; he also hadn’t expected her to be so pretty.
Midnight hair with striking blue eyes that shone like the ocean in sunlight, she was enough to make a lesser man drool. Rafe wasn’t immune to a woman’s charms, but since arriving in Cold Plains he’d kept to himself. He hadn’t uprooted his life, basically going undercover in a rogue attempt to find his son, to mess around in some casual affair. And thus far, it’d been fairly easy to stay focused.
Until now.
If he hadn’t already agreed to hire the woman, he would’ve sent her packing. She was temptation and that was the last thing he needed.
He smothered the frown starting to build when he thought of the complication this woman represented through no fault of her own. She couldn’t help looking the way she did. There was something familiar about the woman that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. There were bigger problems, he reminded himself and moved on. “You can start tomorrow. Does that work for you?”
“Sure,” she said, following him into the lobby. “What’s the pay like?”
“Decent,” he answered with a shrug. “More than minimum wage.”
“Sounds good to me. How about the hours?”
“The clinic is open five days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., though I have been known to stay open for certain patients. Just ask me before you book a late night and we’ll play it by ear. You get an hour for lunch, and payday is every two weeks.” He gave her yellow, thin, strappy sundress a quick perusal, pretending not to notice the swell of her breasts, and said, “Business-casual attire, if you wouldn’t mind.”
She glanced down at her cleavage and actually blushed a little. “Sorry. I didn’t plan on an impromptu job interview.”
Rafe hated to sound like such a prig, but there were some very conservative types in town, and he didn’t want to ruffle feathers, particularly when he was putting an image of himself out there of a suitable candidate for pledging. He smiled, hoping it came across as warm and not uptight, saying, “It’s okay. I understand. So, tomorrow, bright and early? Please plan to arrive fifteen minutes early to familiarize yourself with the phone system. Where are you staying?”
“Uh, the hotel for now. Know of anyone renting a room?”
“No, sorry,” he said. There was no way he was going to offer the spare bedroom in his small two-bedroom cottage on the outskirts of town. For one, it was too cozy, and the idea of bumping into the woman at all hours posed too dangerous of an opportunity for slipups. “But I’ll keep an eye and ear out for anyone who might be,” he added, to be helpful.
“Thanks,” she said, shouldering her purse, glancing around as if wondering if they were supposed to chitchat or something to break the ice when neither were sure of the protocol. “So, what’s with the self-help seminars each night?”
A derisive smirk threatened but he held it in check. Samuel Grayson fancied himself some kind of guru, and there were plenty of people buying in, so until he knew that Darcy wasn’t among the followers, he’d play the part. He went to a small refrigerator and pulled out a bottled water to hand to her. “Have you had a chance to try the tonic water? It’s sort of Cold Plains’s signature thing.”
She accepted the bottle with a quizzical expression. “What’s with the water?”
“According to local legend, a restorative ribbon of water flows through Cold Plains. Samuel bottles the water from a secret location and distributes it to his people. Just another proponent of healthy living.”
Darcy studied the label for a moment, her expression inscrutable, and he wondered if she bought into the whole magic-water concept Samuel liked to play up, but he was left to wonder because she simply shrugged as if she was open to the possibility and asked, “So, how come there’s a price here on the label? They aren’t free?”
He smiled. “Nothing in life is free, even in Cold Plains. Devotees are encouraged to purchase and drink the tonic as a symbol of unity but also for good health.”
“Must work. Seems Cold Plains is full of healthy people,” she quipped, flashing a playful smile that showcased straight white teeth.
If only she knew the truth of just how “healthy” the population of the town really was…. Samuel abhorred illness, imperfection and unattractive people. Speaking of, Bledsoe was right about Darcy. The minute Samuel saw Darcy, he’d want to fold her into his flock—possibly even into his bed. There were rumors of Samuel cherry-picking from his flock to satisfy his sexual needs.
Darcy raised the bottle, her brow lifting. “So, what’s the damage?” she asked, referencing the water.
He waved her away. “This one’s on the house. But expect to shell out $25 at the next seminar.”
She couldn’t help her shock. “Thanks for the heads-up, but what the heck is in this tonic water? For $25 it better be the Fountain of Youth,” she said, unable to understand why anyone in their right mind would pay so much for water. He didn’t blame her; he agreed it was outrageous.
“It’s part of the magic of Cold Plains,” he answered with an enigmatic smile.
“I guess so,” she said. “See you tomorrow morning, Dr. Black.” She waved and let herself out.
Rafe watched her cross the street and head toward the row of shops lining the main street, possibly more sightseeing of her new adopted town. The poor girl… He couldn’t imagine that she had a clue as to what she’d gotten herself into.
Hell, did anyone?
Cold Plains was the Bermuda Triangle of the Midwest. People came in…but didn’t always come out.
Alive.
CHAPTER 5
Darcy left the doctor’s office with all manner of jumbled thoughts going through her head. What kind of man hired a woman right off the street? She could be a criminal, for crying out loud. Was there no crime in Cold Plains, that everyone was so blindly trusting? Chalk that up to another item in the weird column. She sighed and rubbed the back of her head where she must’ve hit it when she fell to the floor. Oh, how mortifying, she thought with a grimace. She’d never fainted in her life. Hopefully, this wasn’t the start of a distressing new trend. Granted, it wasn’t every day she saw her birth father. Funny, she’d never given her biological father much thought. The story Louise had told her had been that he’d knocked her up and then split, not much to talk about. And Louise had always been so tight-lipped about it, she figured it was probably a painful time in her life. Of course now Darcy knew differently. That her birth father hadn’t exactly split, but her mother certainly had. She blinked back sudden tears at the thought of Louise and everything that had happened in the past month. The grief still pulsed under the surface, but Darcy had been ruthless with herself, too determined to find answers to give in to the pain that scalded her heart. And now was no different. She ground the moisture from her eyes and focused on aligning the situation with the facts as she knew them.
What to do about Samuel Grayson? Surely if he saw her face-to-face, he’d notic
e the striking similarity between them. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d slide under his radar. The man was probably pretty busy running the town, pushing his tonic water. Speaking of… She twisted the cap of the water and took a tentative sip. Eh. Not bad. But certainly not worth the $25 price tag, unless it truly did have restorative properties. However, not likely. She inhaled the sweet, clean air and then wrinkled her nose at the sharp unfamiliar scent of blue skies and green grass of rural Wyoming. She took another drink of the tonic water. No Starbucks or Pete’s that she could see, and she could really use a shot of espresso to clear her mind. She spied a small coffeehouse sandwiched between two other shops and made a beeline straight toward it. Cold Plains Coffee—straight to the point, she thought wryly and stepped inside.
* * *
A sense of foreboding followed Rafe after Darcy left. He’d told Hawk he’d hire the woman, and he had against his better judgment, but something else gnawed at him that he couldn’t quite place. And it wasn’t just that she was a beautiful woman. If he couldn’t handle himself around a woman who had a great body and a face to match, he had bigger problems because Cold Plains was full of attractive women. It was something else…. His gut told him she was trouble. He scrubbed his palms across his face and pushed Darcy from his mind.
He pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket and opened a file he kept in a cloud network that he could access from his phone. He didn’t trust an actual computer to keep his notes because computers could be breached. All the cloud network required was a smartphone with Wi-Fi connectivity, and he was good. He tapped in Darcy’s name and his initial impression of the woman: pretty—might be trouble. Hired as receptionist at clinic. Unknown if she’s a Devotee.
Rafe logged off and pocketed his BlackBerry, which he kept with him at all times. He used the excuse that his clinic phone would forward to his cell during off-hours, but that was just a ruse to keep Samuel off his tail. Keeping Samuel thinking that he was playing for the home team enabled Rafe to slip in and out of places he would’ve been barred from otherwise.
Unfortunately, the one place he hadn’t been able to gain access was the one place he needed to go—Samuel’s secret medical infirmary.
If there was one. That was the question he couldn’t seem to find an answer to. No one was willing to admit that certain patients never returned from a visit to the clinic.
He suddenly thought of Liza Burbage as an example, an older woman suffering from type 2 diabetes who’d ignored multiple attempts to get her to change her diet so her diabetes wouldn’t change from type 2 to insulin-dependent. He still remembered the conversation he’d had with her after Samuel had approached him regarding her health.
“Liza, you really need to start watching your diet. No more cookies or sweets. Vegetables and lean protein,” he’d said, troubled by her recent weight gain and instable insulin numbers. “The Glucophage at the current dosage isn’t working any longer to control your insulin. We’re going to increase the dosage, but after that, we’re out of options.”
Liza sighed, a sound heavy with self-condemnation, and said, “I know, Dr. Black. I’m trying. It’s just so hard. I crave sweets and carbs.”
“Did you go to the clinic nutritionist?” he asked.
She made a face. “That sour-faced stick woman? She wanted me to cut my calories so much, I’d likely starve. And she wanted me to do weekly weigh-ins and sign a document that said I’d accept responsibility for increased weight while on the program. I don’t know, but it just felt so regimented. I’m more of a free-spirited kind of person. You know? And I like a cookie now and then.” She offered a shy but sweetly dimpled smile and shrugged. “Oh well, it’s my health and my problem. Last I checked, being overweight wasn’t a crime,” she said with a laugh.
Rafe nodded, but a frown threatened over something Samuel had made mention of when Samuel had come to him regarding the implementation of a Devotee meal plan. Of course Rafe had offered suggestions but, in the end, admitted nutrition as a science wasn’t his forte, which was when Samuel had brought in Heidi Kruch. And Rafe agreed with Liza—the nutritionist was a bit of a Nazi when it came to calorie counting. But Samuel found her approach in line with his personal philosophy, so she became the clinic nutritionist and Rafe was encouraged to send anyone with weight issues to pay a visit to Heidi to “get with the program.”
To date, Liza hadn’t gotten the message and not only was her weight ballooning, but her insulin levels were reaching dangerous levels. Rafe didn’t care if his patients were pleasantly plump as long their health wasn’t an issue. However, Samuel believed everyone ought to treat their body as a temple, and he aimed to see that everyone in Cold Plains was fit, healthy and happy. There were workout requirements, meal plans, tonic-water intake charts, morning yoga meetings and countless other measures aimed at creating exactly what Samuel was going for: cookie-cutter people.
“Please consider giving Heidi another chance,” he’d said, hating the words coming from his mouth. “She’s good at putting together meal plans that will improve your insulin numbers and ultimately your overall health.” He felt as if he were reading from a script, and he had no interest in playing the part. When Liza’s expression turned dour, he said, “I know she’s not the most personable, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The patients who have followed her advice have been successful in losing weight and improving their overall health.”
Liza sighed. “I’ll think about it, but only because you’re so nice about it, Dr. Black. Too bad you weren’t the nutritionist. I’d listen to what you have to say simply because you’re so cute.”
“Ahh.” He chuckled, yet inside he was twisting with his conscience. Liza was the wrong candidate for a nutritionist at this stage in her food addiction. She needed more than charts and strict rules. Likely, she needed counseling to determine why she self-sabotaged with food even when her health was at stake. But Samuel didn’t like head docs, as he called them. No small wonder there, seeing as a psychiatrist might question the mind-scramble Samuel did daily on the local people of Cold Plains. “Well, I hope you change your mind.”
He saw Liza out after she promised to check in with him in two weeks to do another insulin check. She never came back.
Considering their personable patient-doctor relationship and her distate for Heidi, the nutritionist, he found her absence suspect and it only provided fuel for his suspicion that Samuel made people go away if they didn’t “get with the program.” But for now he put it out of his mind.
Rafe spent the last few hours of the day tending to patients with various ailments—nothing more serious than the occasional flu bout or allergy flare-up—and when he flipped his sign and shut down his office, he wondered where Darcy was and what she was doing. The town wasn’t large, and there was little in the way of entertainment available that wasn’t sanctioned by Samuel. There was line dancing and ballroom dancing, knitting and quilting and creative brainstorming (a class Samuel suggested everyone take at least a few times a month to help with the marketing of the Cold Plains tonic water) but nothing like a dance club or bar that supported a wild time. He didn’t know Darcy, but he sensed she was a city girl, accustomed to everything a city had to offer.
He was tempted to casually stroll the main street to see if she was in any of the small shops, doing the tourist thing, but as he shut the lights and started to head that direction, he stopped. What was he doing? He didn’t care what she was doing or if she was bored out of her mind in the small town. Doing an abrupt about-face, he went to his car and climbed in.
He lived a short drive from town, but he appreciated the distance. Sometimes, playing the dutiful doctor wore on his nerves, and by the end of the day, he wanted to throw the mask across the room.
But it seemed relaxation wasn’t in his future tonight because parked in his short driveway was Police Chief Bo Fargo’s cruiser.
Rafe muttered
a curse word but pasted a smile on for Fargo’s benefit.
“Evening, Chief. What can I do for you?” he asked, not commenting on the odd fact that the older man was making a house call when he easily could’ve stopped by the clinic if he’d wanted to chat.
Bo Fargo was a big man with a belly that protruded over his utility belt, and hard eyes that never seemed to smile. Rafe had heard stories that Fargo was a bully and that when he couldn’t get what he wanted with the strength of his authority, he used his meaty, ham-hock fists. But in spite of Fargo’s character flaws, Rafe couldn’t be sure if he was a Devotee or not. The man didn’t follow the meal plan, plainly didn’t exercise and didn’t seem particularly enamored with anyone, much less Samuel Grayson, so that made him difficult to categorize in Rafe’s book. He hadn’t mentioned to Fargo about his missing baby, but with each brick wall and dead end, he wondered if it wasn’t time to elicit the help of law enforcement. To Rafe’s knowledge, that jack wad outside of Laramie hadn’t placed a call to Fargo like he’d said he would, but after landing in Cold Plains, Rafe realized that was probably a blessing in disguise.
Fargo acknowledged Rafe with a nod, then spit a sunflower seed shell onto the ground. “Evening, Doc. Got a minute?” he asked, the question plainly rhetorical, and they both knew it. Still Rafe smiled, as if being harassed by the local cop wasn’t an inconvenience at all, and leaned casually against his car.
“Sure. What’s up?” he asked, purposefully omitting an invitation to go into the house. It was his perverse way of keeping Cold Plains on the outside and, hopefully, the craziness out of his personal sanctuary. “Something wrong? That ulcer giving you trouble again?” he asked, referencing a recent diagnosis and course of treatment that Fargo had plainly ignored.
“Ain’t no ulcer. I’m fine,” he muttered, plainly irritated that Rafe had mentioned it. He narrowed his stare at Rafe, as if sizing him up and finding him worthy of a second, deeper look, and said, “Word around town is that you’re asking about some secret infirmary. That true? And if so, where the hell would some secret facility be hidden in a town as small as Cold Plains?”
Perfect Wyoming Complete Collection: Special Agent's Perfect Cover ; Rancher's Perfect Baby Rescue ; A Daughter's Perfect Secret ; Lawman's Perfect Surrender ; The Perfect Outsider ; Mercenary's Perfect Mission Page 37
