“I don’t know,” Hope mused. “Maybe it would be better if I left.”
Stephen’s face fell. “What? No, you can’t do that, Hope. You’re great at what you do. You can’t leave!”
“Dr. Harvey said one of us would have to leave. She’d never fire you. You’re her nephew,” Hope reasoned.
Stephen shook his head. “No. My aunt loves me, but you were here first, and she really respects you. Plus, like you said, I’m only here for a short time. She wouldn’t want to let you go. Maybe I should just cut my losses and go back to Seattle now.”
“No!” Hope exclaimed before she knew what she was saying.
“No?” Stephen asked with a hopeful expression. “You don’t want me to go?”
Hope finally offered Stephen her hand. They shook, and she felt that familiar jolt of excitement. She allowed him to keep holding onto her hand and stood up.
Stephen drew her closer. Hope’s heart was beating at a dizzying pace. She felt out of breath.
Stephen leaned in toward her and whispered into her ear. “Why don’t you want me to go?”
Hope felt shivers all over her body. She could only groan in response.
Stephen pressed his lips against Hope’s. His tongue found hers and urgently explored her mouth. It took all of Hope’s focus to continue standing.
Stephen felt all of the stress leaving his body as he kissed Hope. He had wanted to take her into his arms like this since the first time he’d seen her. He knew they had their issues to work out, but for the moment, all he wanted was to be close to her.
Hope pulled away. “Wait. This isn’t appropriate. I work for you.”
Stephen took a deep breath. “I think you actually work for my aunt.”
Hope arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think this is what Dr. Harvey meant when she said we should figure out a way to work together.”
Stephen looked at her and they both burst into uncontrollable laughter. Stephen pulled Hope into his chest and stroked her hair.
Hope sighed. She loved the warm feeling she had when she was in Stephen’s embrace. The kiss he’d given her moments before had electrified her and woken up parts of her that she’d never realized existed. She found herself imagining what it would be like to be Stephen’s wife, to build a life with him and bear his children. And then she remembered that soon, he would be heading back to Seattle. She pushed herself away from him and sat back down at her desk.
Stephen sensed a shift in Hope’s mood. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We should get back to work,” Hope said briskly.
Stephen walked around and stood behind Hope. He placed his hands on her shoulders and began to massage them gently.
Hope shook Stephen’s hands off. “Please, let me get back to work.”
“What’s going on, Hope?” Stephen asked. He didn’t understand what had happened.
“I have a lot of work to do. So do you,” Hope said.
Stephen sighed and went to the back office. He could tell that there would be no talking to Hope in the mood she was in.
A few days later, Dr. Harvey was in the exam room with a woman who was expecting twins. Stephen worked on a stack of paperwork in the office as Hope tidied the hallway just outside.
Hope dusted the walls and wondered if Stephen was catching up on his paperwork. He liked to talk to his patients throughout the visit, which meant he had to finish all of his written notes after they had left. He quickly fell behind, leading to long evenings in the office.
Since their kiss, they had mostly ignored each other. Hope was terrified of how much she cared for him and wanted to be with him. She was also scared that he would take off for Seattle again sometime soon. She tried to put him out of her mind completely.
Stephen listlessly wrote down his note about a gentleman with stomach pains. Since his kiss with Hope, he had been unable to think of anything else. He had barely slept or eaten a thing. His aunt had remarked upon his appetite and said he had better not get sick. There was no sense at all in a sick doctor!
He knew that the right thing to do would be to ask her parents’ permission to court Hope, but he also worried that it would go against Hope’s wishes. She’d barely spoken a word to him since their kiss, and when she did speak, it wasn’t anything personal or important. He wondered if the Sanders family would laugh at him. Plus, there was the problem of her suitor, Abner. He hadn’t been back to the office since the day he’d gotten his hand stuck in the honey jar, but Stephen couldn’t get the image of him and Hope out of his mind. For the first time, Stephen thought of a horrifying possibility. What if Abner and Hope were already promised to one another?
Stephen sighed and tried to concentrate once again. He could hear Hope in the hallway, cleaning the office. It was maddening to work in such close proximity to her and not be able to grab her waist, dip her back, and kiss her passionately. He wanted to do so much more than kissing, but knew that she was a wholesome girl who deserved to be treated appropriately.
Hope finished dusting and returned to her desk. She began to work on the day’s filing and soon realized that she needed Dr. Harvey’s notes from the previous day, which were in the office. She walked to the back of the practice and knocked on the door.
“May I come in for a moment?” Hope asked.
“Sure,” Stephen replied.
Hope gently nudged the door open and stepped inside the tiny room. “I need Dr. Harvey’s files from yesterday. Do you know where they are?”
Stephen’s arm brushed against Hope’s as he reached for a pile on one of the shelves. Hope sucked in a deep breath as she felt the electric jolt. She could tell Stephen felt it too, because he paused with his arm in mid-air.
“Oh, Hope,” Stephen breathed, then buried his face into her neck. He put his hands around her waist and ran them down her hips.
Hope sighed in pleasure. “Stephen.”
“I want to hold you right here like this forever,” Stephen admitted.
Hope felt tears spring to her eyes. She hadn’t realized he felt the same way that she did. “Me, too.”
Stephen couldn’t believe his ears. He’d thought there was no way Hope would be interested in him.
Just then, the door swung open and Hope and Stephen jumped apart.
Dr. Harvey peered into the room. The room was too small for her to join them inside. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were both in here. I wanted to reference one of my books.” She pointed to the one she needed, and Stephen took it down from the shelf and handed it to her.
Dr. Harvey looked back and forth between her nephew and her assistant. Both were breathing heavily, as if they had just run a race. “Are you two all right?”
“Yes!” Hope and Stephen called in unison, then stared at each other, horrified that they’d spoken at the same time.
Hope stumbled out into the hallway. “I’m finished in here. You can go in, Dr. Harvey.”
“I actually need to get back to the exam room.” Dr. Harvey turned and headed in that direction.
“Hope?” Stephen called from inside the office.
Hope took a deep breath. “Yes?” She replied uncertainly.
“You forgot these.” Stephen handed her Dr. Harvey’s files from the day before—the reason she had come into the office in the first place.
“Oh, yes, that’s right.” Hope turned bright red and grabbed the files, then darted back to the front office. She set the files down onto the desk and plopped down into her chair, feeling exhausted. She had never experienced the kind of exhilaration she felt with Stephen, and she found herself wishing she could have stayed in his office with him.
Inside his office, Stephen found it hard to calm his racing nerves. He went outside to the back of the medical office building to get some fresh air. He couldn’t believe how incredible it had felt to hold and kiss Hope. He was also shocked that she had admitted that she enjoyed it, too. Still, he couldn’t help but think about Abner and what he had said about going out with Hope. He k
new Hope was fully honest, so he thought there had to be some kind of misunderstanding.
Then again, if he knew one thing, it was that he was terrible at understanding women. He took after his father in that department. They both needed all the help they could get. He found himself wishing that someone in Nowhere would write a column on how to win the hand of a local young woman. He would certainly read it and take its advice to heart!
His heart was still beating faster than usual, and he felt too keyed up and anxious to go back into the office. He walked around the small plot of land a few times, but nothing helped. He was thinking about Hope and all the things he wanted to one day be able to do with her. He spotted a garden hose out of the corner of his eye. Without thinking, he walked over to it, picked it up, and pointed the spigot directly at his face. He turned the hose on and felt the icy water blast onto his face and shoulders, soaking his head and neck. Ah, he thought to himself. Much better. He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. It was going to be a long rest of the day.
In the exam room, Dr. Iris Harvey waved goodbye to her patient and sat down on the stool in the room, jotting down a few notes about the visit. She shook her head as she recalled the expression on Hope and Stephen’s faces when she’d interrupted them in the office.
She supposed in a way, it was her fault. After all, she had told them that they needed to find a way to work together without fighting. She hadn’t meant that they should work so well together that they ended up kissing in her tiny office! She thought it was funny that they thought she didn’t know. The expressions on their faces had made it plain as day that they had been embracing before she’d opened the office door. She chuckled to herself. Did they think she was so unaware that she wouldn’t know what was going on inside her own office? She, too, had been young and in love only a few years before.
She was happy that these two were enjoying each other’s company, but she also knew she had to keep an eye on things. After all, she had a business to run, and Hope and Stephen had jobs to do. She didn’t want anyone to suspect that anything untoward was going on under her watch. She decided to talk to Edna Petunia about it. The older woman always knew what to do.
Chapter 8
“Oh, if only I could have been a fly on the wall to see their faces!” Edna Petunia howled with laughter as Iris told her about Hope and Stephen’s faces when she had opened the door to her office and caught them inside together.
Iris gripped her mug of hot tea at Edna Petunia’s kitchen table. “It was rather amusing. But what are we going to do?”
“I say let the kids have fun—for a bit. We won’t tell them we know what they’ve been up to. But we should also prepare for a wedding sooner rather than later.” Edna Petunia arched an eyebrow.
Iris sighed. She knew exactly what Edna Petunia was thinking. The woman loved to go all out planning elaborate festivities for special events, and she pulled out all the stops any time one of her so-called bastards was getting married. Iris didn’t know if the town of Nowhere could handle another Sanders family wedding—it had been less than two years since Penny’s and Tom’s huge celebration. In that time, three other orphans had also married, but much to Edna Petunia’s chagrin, they had married quickly and without her help preparing. “Maybe we should give them a little time, Edna.”
“Nonsense! We need all the time we can get to plan a wedding. I won’t be tricked like the last few times. This wedding is going to happen the way I want it to,” Edna Petunia declared.
Iris shook her head. She knew Edna Petunia’s heart was in the right place. But she had a sneaking suspicion that it might be a bumpy ride. She tried to change the subject. “But what should I do at work? I don’t want my patients to think anything inappropriate is going on.”
“Yes. You can’t let anyone know that they have feelings for one another.” Edna Petunia thought for a moment. “I have an idea.”
When Hope arrived at work the following day, she saw a new schedule posted next to her desk. She frowned as she read through it.
Dr. Harvey came out into the front office. “Good morning, Hope!”
Hope pointed to the new schedule. “What’s this about?”
Dr. Harvey smiled brightly. “You know it was getting so crowded here in such a small space. I thought I’d even out the schedule so we wouldn’t get in each other’s way. No more than two of us will be working at the same time.”
Hope looked at the schedule a little more closely. “It seems like all you did was make sure that Dr. Bennett and I are never working together.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed!” Dr. Harvey tried to keep an innocent expression on her face. “Is that a problem?”
“Yes!” Hope cried. Her first instinct was always to tell the truth, no matter what. When she saw how Dr. Harvey was staring at her, though, she thought about how her words would sound to the doctor. “Actually, no. It’s no problem at all. I just wanted to make sure that Ste—I mean, Dr. Bennett—has what he needs. Maybe he can leave his notes for me and I can type them up.”
Dr. Harvey smiled. “Great idea, Hope. I’ll have him do that. Thank you.” She walked back to her office. She couldn’t believe Hope had almost called her nephew by his first name. It sounded like things were getting serious between the two of them. If things kept going at this rate, there would be another wedding before Christmas!
Dr. Harvey was thrilled at the possibility of her nephew marrying Hope. Though the girl certainly had a few rough edges, she was wholesome and hard-working, exactly the type of person who would keep her nephew on track in his life. She also loved Edna Petunia as if the woman were one of her own sisters, so the chance to be related to a dear friend by marriage was remarkable.
Still, she also knew that if she or Edna Petunia pushed too hard, Stephen and Hope might rebel and drift apart. She knew they needed to be subtle and stay out of the young people’s way. She didn’t have any concerns about her own ability to do that, but she thought it might be a struggle for Edna Petunia. The woman didn’t have a subtle bone in her body.
At her desk, Hope fought back tears. The medical office was the only time she actually was able to talk with Stephen. Although they also saw each other Sunday in church, their families and the rest of the congregation were always around and could hear everything they had to say.
Hope couldn’t believe she was almost crying. She prided herself on her ability to keep calm and collected in almost any situation. She knew it was a skill that Dr. Harvey prized in an assistant. There were many challenging and stressful events that occurred in their little office, and it was important that Hope could act rationally and confidently. But now, faced with never being able to talk to Stephen privately, she was getting emotional.
Hope tried to focus on her work for the day. It was going to be a busy schedule of patients, and Hope knew that Dr. Harvey relied on her to keep everything in order so no one had to wait too long to see the doctor. Before long, the first patients of the day had arrived, a pair of six-year-old twin boys brought in by their mother, Mrs. Pierce. She wore a dress and makeup as if she were going to church.
“Hey, that’s my train! Mother, he took my train!” one boy shouted.
“Mother, it’s my train! It has my name on it!” the other one cried.
“No, that’s my name!” the first boy yelled, grabbing a small toy train out of the other one’s hands. Hope was thankful for the distraction.
“Boys, I’ll give you a piece of candy after your visit if you wait quietly for the doctor and behave yourselves,” Hope told them. The boys quieted almost immediately.
Mrs. Pierce looked at Hope gratefully. “Thank you.”
Hope gave Mrs. Pierce a clipboard full of forms to fill out while the boys waited, playing quietly with the train and taking turns.
When Mrs. Pierce was finished, she handed the clipboard back to Hope. “Do you mind if I ask a question? It might sound strange.”
“No, go right ahead.” Hope said, taking the forms
from the clipboard and making a few notes in the boys’ medical charts so Dr. Harvey would see.
“I heard that there’s a new doctor, a man? Doctor…something with a B?” Mrs. Pierce began, smoothing her hair.
“Yes, Dr. Bennett. He’s Dr. Harvey’s nephew and he’s training with her.” Hope explained.
“Oh, that’s nice. Well, I thought it might be nice for the boys to see him, if he’s available. It’s just…ever since their father died…” Mrs. Pierce smiled at Hope, and with a flash, Hope understood what the woman was asking.
Hope tried to end the conversation. “He’s not here today.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Pierce’s face fell. “I was hoping we could meet him. I just think it would be so good for—for the boys!”
“No,” Hope said bluntly.
“So there’s no way that…” Mrs. Pierce tried again.
Just then, Dr. Harvey came out. “Maxwell and Martin, so lovely to see you! Come on in. Your mom can join us in the exam room, too.”
Mrs. Pierce looked back at Hope with a pleading glance, but Hope simply shook her head. She couldn’t believe the boldness of this woman! She did feel sympathy, as she knew Mrs. Pierce’s husband had died several years ago in a fire. She knew it couldn’t have been easy, raising twin boys all on her own. At the same time, she felt an infuriating sting of jealousy at the thought of Mrs. Pierce and Stephen getting together.
Hope knew she had no claim to Stephen Bennett, but that didn’t stop her from growing red with envy every time that line of thinking crossed her mind for the rest of the morning. She wondered what Mrs. Pierce was talking to Dr. Harvey about while her boys were in the exam room. She also was curious what the doctor would think about her nephew and Mrs. Pierce. Maybe she wanted him to find a woman who already had a family.
Hope thought about asking Dr. Harvey, but she decided that nothing good could come of it. Instead, she scrubbed the entire office top to bottom, including Dr. Harvey and Stephen’s office. She lingered in the spot where Stephen’s arms and lips had caressed her and imagined what would happen the next time they had a private moment. She knew it was inappropriate for her to have those types of thoughts about Stephen, but she couldn’t help herself. He was all she could think about, day or night. She wondered if he thought about her or missed her nearly as much as she missed him.
Hope (Orlan Orphans Book 10) Page 6
