But by God, he was not going to let some old administrator fart who had some cockamamie idea that his physicians had to be happily married stop him from getting the job he was born for. He was determined to carry on his grandfather’s legacy and help the people who had believed in him when he was a young boy. Give back to his town for what they did for him.
He fisted his hands. “This job is the most important thing I’ve ever wanted. I belong in that ER, Meggie. I have every qualification and I’m a damn good doctor. It’s not fair to disqualify me because I don’t have a wife or a steady girlfriend.”
She looked straight at him, her gaze unwavering. “I agree, Ben, but I’m a terrible liar. Plus, I know the Donaldsons. I’ve worked with them on the library levy and on the blanket project for the hospital. They’ll know we’re not really dating.”
Conflict flickered over her face as she wrestled with the decision and he did his best to tip the ball to his side of the court. “They’ll know you’re genuine, that you’re always doing charitable stuff around town.” He touched her shoulder. “Please,” he added. He’d known her a long time, since they were kids, and he knew her character. Meg didn’t let people down. Not her sick mother, not her best friends.
When the library levy was up for renewal and not getting much support, she rallied half the town to come to a charity ball that was such a success, the levy passed with rainbow colors. When the assisted-living center threw a bake sale to raise money for new exercise equipment, she baked twelve dozen cupcakes herself. And sold them all at the Mirror Lake July Fourth celebration. And wasn’t she staging a lakeside bridal show at the end of August to showcase her business, to get it on the map as a destination shop, despite the fact that her partner was laid up?
Her green eyes softened. He’d never noticed how unusual they were, a pure emerald color that reminded him of photos of the green hills of Ireland. Her full lips held a touch of lipstick that matched her shirt. Bold for her, but tasteful. It had been so long since he’d really looked at her, he’d forgotten how stunning she was.
People had whispered she’d had a crush on him for years but he didn’t believe it. She could do a lot better than him, that was for sure.
He wasn’t for her. And he couldn’t ever be.
But this date was temporary, just for tonight. Not a real date by any means. How much damage could one night do?
“What do you say?” he cajoled. “Just a couple hours. For an old friend.”
She smiled sweetly. He knew he could count on her. He released a pent-up breath.
“No.”
He thought he heard her wrong. She was still smiling.
Wait a minute . . . she’d said no. That had happened exactly never.
“Come on, Meggie.” He wasn’t beyond begging.
Her shoulders straightened. “I’m sorry, Ben. I’d love to help you but . . . I’ve got plans.”
She glanced at a thickset grandfather clock standing stalwart in the middle of the hall. “You’ve still got a couple hours to find another willing female in Mirror Lake to help you. Best of luck. I’ve got to go.”
His pleading hadn’t budged her. Nor had his natural charm. At a loss as to how to crack this egg, he did what he had to do. Called a retreat. “Well, if you change your mind,” he called after her, “I’m in Room 225.”
She half turned as she walked away. “Thanks again for your help.”
“Anytime.” Irritated and strangely disappointed, he watched her walk down the hall and disappear into the Klines’ suite.
A strange, unsettling feeling tossed in his stomach that had nothing to do with the damn dinner. He wanted to tell her how nice it had been to see her again. He wanted to ask how she was doing, get her to stop frowning and exchanging comebacks with him, and see what she looked like when she really smiled.
But all that was madness, and she was already gone.
CHAPTER 3
“Stand up and take a deep breath.” Meg grasped the fragile zipper tab on the delicately beaded lavender silk dress and prepared to pull, pausing only to say a few prayers. Ancient, rote, time-tested ones, because she needed to summon all the help she could get. Because there was no way in hell Priscilla’s dress was going to fit. She knew it with as much certainty and dread as she knew when a guy she never wanted to date again was about to ask her out.
The seam was about to split even worse than her head was about to right now, and when it did, her day, which was circling the bowl as it was, would head even farther south and totally tank.
“I don’t understand why it’s not fitting.” Priscilla flicked back her thick mass of honey-blonde hair. Concern filled her deep blue eyes. She was a pretty woman, but her personality was as venomous as a brown recluse spider.
For as long as Meg had known her, Priscilla had been sure to inject herself into the middle of every conversation and every social gathering. She’d been liked by the cutest guys, worn the trendiest clothes. While Meg and her friends headed off to their jobs after school, Priscilla took trips to the mall with her toxic posse. She lived to insult, and it seemed as if no one in all these years had ever really stood up to her.
Her mother, a reed-thin woman with platinum blonde hair in a poofy hair-sprayed bob, was already wearing an elegant champagne-colored dress and matching high-heeled sandals. She approached for a closer view of the disaster. Meg could feel her alcohol-tainted breath on her back. The mayor, a large, bald man in a tuxedo, sat in a Queen Anne chair by the window of the elegant suite and read the paper, oblivious to the unfolding drama.
“The dress is too small,” Irene Kline said, accusation creeping into her voice. “Are you certain you brought the right size?”
Meg met Mrs. Kline’s cold silver eyes in the full-length cheval mirror. Sweat broke out on Meg’s lip. The room started to spin, and she gulped more air to steady herself. Of course it was the right dress. She had the proof in her pocket, the order slip where Alex had written, Against advice, customer is ordering a smaller size than recommended. Hell, Priscilla’s signature was on the bottom.
Dammit, why had they allowed her to get away with that? Their policy was always to have customers sign off on against-advice orders, which they had, but how could they ever enforce it with her, the mayor’s daughter? Especially when Irene Kline sat on the bank board? They should have ordered a duplicate dress, one size up, specifically to avoid this disaster.
Meg was so screwed, because any answer would be the wrong one. Instead, she tugged and pulled, resisting the comical impulse to brace her foot on Priscilla’s back for leverage. A sudden ripping sound made her freeze.
“Oh, my God,” Priscilla said in a panicky voice. “You’re ripping my dress.”
Meg stood up and walked over to open a window. It was that or pass out. She sucked in some late-afternoon August air, still hot and humid but with a just a hint of coolness, a harbinger that something a little different was to come. “If you take it off,” she called to Priscilla over her shoulder, “I’ll work on letting out the seam.” Major work with little time to spare, and Meg was not a seamstress. All their alterations were done off-site. But her Grandma Gloria had taught her enough about sewing that she could stitch herself out of this mess. She hoped.
“I don’t think we should have to pay for this if you brought the wrong size,” the mayor said from across the room.
“Perhaps you should go back to the shop and bring a larger one,” Mrs. Kline said.
Meg shook her head. “It was a special order. There’s only one.”
Meg stared at Priscilla, who glanced at her quickly then looked away.
She knew.
Of course she knew. They’d discussed this with her the day she ordered the stupid dress. Told her not to order the smaller size. They’d always advised women not to order down, even when they were dieting. That usually created more stress than it was worth. Yet she’d signed on the dotted line, accepting all the terms and conditions.
But how could Meg call her out? N
o matter how much she disliked Priscilla, she would never make things worse right now, less than an hour before her party.
Not to mention risk losing her most important clients. Which in turn would make her lose her loan, that precious key that was so critical for her scheme of self-improvement. And her future success as a well-respected entrepreneur in this town.
“This is . . . So. Not. Fair.” Priscilla paced back and forth clutching her zipper across the plush, nearly white area rug. Water in a giant vase of white lilies reflected the slanted afternoon sunlight from the window. The wooden floors gleamed. Meg bet there was a giant spa tub in the large adjacent bathroom, nothing like the old claw-foot in her century-old apartment above the bridal shop. It wasn’t luxurious but it would do just fine for the six-hour soak she would need after all this stress.
“I can make a minor adjustment.” Minor adjustment my ass. The entire seam would need to be ripped out and resewn.
Meg looked at Priscilla and for the first time in her life, she felt sorry for her. She had a gorgeous figure, and she would have been stunning in a dress of the proper size. But she had fallen prey to the ridiculous get-thin-as-a-stick pressure brides often felt.
“What if I don’t look good?” Priscilla said, pacing nervously. “This is a huge party. Half of Connecticut will be there. And all of Evan’s colleagues. I have to look my absolute best.”
“I can make this work,” Meg said, injecting fake confidence into her voice. “There’s still plenty of time. Why don’t you both make some tea while I start?” She pointed to the beverage brewer sitting on a chest.
Priscilla seemed frozen, the one colorful thing in the middle of the gorgeous all-white room. In fact, she was becoming more colorful with every passing moment. Bright red blotches appeared on her creamy cheeks, her chest, even her upper arms. Suddenly, she turned to her mother. “Mommy, I can’t—I can’t breathe.” Priscilla flapped her perfectly manicured nails in the air, an expression of real panic on her face.
Meg unzipped the dress, hoping that would solve the lack-of-oxygen problem. Priscilla inhaled a deep breath and turned on her. “The dress is all wrong. One hundred and fifty people are about to show up for my party. I’m going to look completely ratchet and it’s all your fault!”
Her mother turned an identically pinched face toward her, but with strangely less expression, probably from a recent Botox fix. Across the room, the mayor harrumphed.
Priscilla turned to her mother. “I should have known not to trust that little country bumpkin. How would she even know what style is when she dresses like a reject from the sixties and the last guy she dated got drunk and crashed his boat into the dock?”
Bumpkin and a reject from the sixties? Those she could take, because Alex had assembled her outfit today and assured her she looked stylish and trendy, but the dating comment was the one that pierced. And it was so untrue. Her date had not been drunk. His glasses had flown off when he’d hit a wave and he’d just so happened to be legally blind without them.
Well, Priscilla should try finding a decent guy in a town the size of a safety pin. She’d found hers through her daddy, as her fiancé, Evan Wallmeyer, was the son of a neighboring mayor.
Anger and hurt welled up inside of Meg despite her trying to fend them off with humor. The reputation of the shop she’d given her heart and soul to over the past five years dangled in front of her like a carrot on a stick, one big, satisfying cussword away from being ruined forever.
She bit her teeth into her lip hard so she wouldn’t say it. F. Ffffff. Oh, Firetruck. “I know I can make this right,” she said calmly. “Give me a few minutes.”
Meg laid the dress out on the bed, opened her sewing bag, and got to work. As she threaded her needle, she skimmed her hand over her Grandma Gloria’s old stuffed sewing tomato, stashed into the corner of her bag. It wasn’t just any old red sewing tomato with little green leaves. This one had a bit more personality, and reflected her grandmother’s love of all things British. A thick black marker line ran down one of the seams, her crazy grandmother’s version of a butt crack. On one side were the letters “FE” and on the other side “AR.” And the narrow ribbon sewn at the top stated in blue embroidered letters: “POKE FEAR IN THE ARSE.” That’s what she had to do now. She could hear her grandmother saying it. And she’d probably say something else, too—For God’s sake, keep sewing!
Priscilla began to cry loudly. Out of the corner of her eyes, Meg could see her mother holding out a glass of ice water. Tributaries of tears weaved through her once-fresh makeup.
Meg worked fast, opening the seam, knowing the faster she finished, the faster this awful night would end, tub or no tub.
Suddenly, Priscilla began to gasp loudly, holding her throat. A panicked expression flooded her face, reminding Meg of how her mom looked once when she fell on the ice and couldn’t get up on her own.
At first, Meg thought Priscilla was simply performing, but that terrified look in her eyes was real.
“Dear, are you all right?” Mrs. Kline asked Priscilla, then called out to the mayor, who dropped the sports section and strode over to assess his daughter.
Meg walked over to stand behind Mrs. Kline. She pulled an empty brown lunch sack from her bag and handed it to Priscilla’s mom. “Have her try breathing into this.”
Priscilla had enough wits about her to shake her head and smack the bag away. Anger and fright flashed in her eyes. “Call—911.” She clutched at her throat. “Can’t—breathe.”
Meg couldn’t believe this was happening. Her gut told her even if there was a good possibility that Priscilla was merely being her usual histrionic drama-queen self, she shouldn’t take any chances. She punched the emergency numbers into her cell and gave the appropriate information. “Ben Rushford is staying one floor below,” she told the Klines. “I’m going to get him.”
The mayor nodded, busy telling his hysterical daughter to calm down and take deep breaths. Meg kicked out of her high heels and threw open the door, rushing down the hall to the stairwell and running two floors down. She pounded on the door of Room 225 with all her strength.
“Ben! Ben, are you there?”
No answer. He was probably in the lobby, reconnoitering another date.
She threw her body against the door. Pounded with both fists. Yelled again.
Maybe she was a bad person. Because the thought at the forefront of her mind was that there was no way in hell she was going to allow Priscilla and her panic attack to be the end of Bridal Aisle.
She raised her hand to pound again but suddenly the door opened, causing her to launch forward like a toy rocket, stopped from disaster only by Ben’s rock-hard chest.
Whoa. Make that his bare rock-hard chest. And a fine one it was, with a smattering of hair over lean, defined muscle that was currently grazing her cheek. Oh, lordie, she was touching his solid, satiny pecs, by accident, of course, but what a fine way to break a fall.
His hair was a little rumpled in an adorable way. Most disturbing, he wore gray boxer briefs that clung to his thighs like a second skin, accentuating thigh muscles so tight you could bounce a penny off them. And some other parts of his anatomy she quickly averted her eyes from.
“What is it?” he asked, all concern and zero embarrassment. He clutched at her arms, steadying her back onto her feet.
Meg forced her focus on the crisis instead of the heat of his smoldering body. What if it wasn’t a panic attack? What if Priscilla had choked on something? Or what if her heart was giving out—if she had one, that is. She couldn’t allow herself to be sidetracked by his hotness.
She grabbed his arms and shook. “You’ve got to come with me right now. Priscilla’s having a panic attack. At least I think that’s what it is. She got really upset that her dress didn’t fit and now she says she can’t breathe.”
In a split second, Ben turned and ran into his room, grabbed his pants off a chair, and tugged them on. She followed him in, closing the door but still leaning against it, wat
ching, fascinated, as he shoved his bare feet into a pair of loafers.
That elfish voice in her head was still stirring up trouble. This is what he looks like after he makes love, it said. A little rumpled, his beard shadowy and shorn close and sexy as all get out.
Meg looked quickly away, but not fast enough to stop the heat from rising up her neck and engulfing her entire face in flames. As if she’d never seen a half-naked man before. Which she had, although not for a while. The last one didn’t really count, the night of the assisted-living Christmas party, when old Mr. Thompson got a little drunk and went streaking through the snow-covered courtyard, wearing only his favorite red plaid flannel shirt.
But even compared to the younger male parts she’d seen, Ben Rushford’s raw-muscled masculinity set her to quivering from head to toe.
“Let’s go.” He pocketed his hotel key from the television stand and opened the door.
“Don’t you have—tools?” Meg asked as she followed.
He shot her a quizzical look as they ran down the hall. “Honey, I have great tools.”
“I mean your doctor equipment.”
He held up his hands like a surgeon would before donning his gloves. Fine, capable hands with long fingers made for suturing and saving. “These are the only tools I need to handle whatever problem you have.” Then he grinned, slow and languid, and the heat that had ebbed rose up again to wash all over her.
“But I also brought this.” He pulled something from his back pocket and then held up his left hand. A stethoscope snaked down from it. He’d probably had it from one of his moonlighting shifts in the Mirror Lake hospital ER. Show off. His mouth was curved up in the faintest smile, but before she could respond, he’d found his way to the stairwell and began to take the steps two at a time.
This Love of Mine Page 3
