Love Inspired March 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: North Country FamilySmall-Town MidwifeProtecting the Widow's Heart

by Lois Richer

  In two long strides, Jon was beside her on the walkway in front of her door.

  “If you need a refill, I made plenty.” Not exactly the way to discourage him from hanging around. She glanced at Jon out of the corner of her eye. But he was so right there. She’d needed to say something.

  “That’d be great.”

  “Go ahead and I’ll bring the pot out.” What had gotten into her? Now she was offering to wait on him. Did her unsettled job situation have her so off-kilter that she’d grasp at anything that made her feel useful?

  Once Jon rounded the corner of the house to the patio, Autumn yanked her door open and stomped across her living room. She poured a couple of dollops of fat-free half-and-half in her cup, picked up the coffeepot and walked out to the patio as the calm, sane person she usually was.

  Jon stood at the far edge of the patio looking up at the roof. “I didn’t notice the solar panels when the Realtor showed me the place. Photovoltaic?”

  “Yes. Dad put the system in last summer when he and Grandpa decided to divide the house into a two-family.” Autumn placed the coffeepot and her mug on the round wooden table.

  “By himself?” Jon’s voice held a note of awe.

  “More or less. It’s what he does.” Autumn sat on the circular bench and topped up her drink. While she knew her father’s limitations, growing up as the only child of a teenage single father, she’d never completely outgrown her feeling that “Daddy could do anything” and was often surprised when people commented on his work.

  Jon joined her and refilled his mug. “He owns a solar energy company or a construction company?”

  For some reason, Jon’s assumption that her father owned a company rankled. “Neither. He’s a self-employed electrician, but he does hookups for several companies throughout the Northeast. It’s Anne, my stepmother, who’s the corporate tycoon of the family. She’s the chair of the board of directors of GreenSpaces and heads the environmental studies program at the college in Ticonderoga.”

  Autumn sipped her coffee while she waited for the name of Anne’s international environmental engineering company to register with Jon and tried to figure out what she was doing. She didn’t have to prove anything to Jon just because he came from a prominent old-money family.

  He looked at her blankly over the edge of his coffee mug. “That’s the community college I passed on State Route 74?”

  Her coffee tasted bitter in her mouth. She should have brought the honey out. “Yes, North Country Community College. That’s where I got my RN degree.”

  “You didn’t go away to school? I couldn’t wait to leave.”

  “I had an academic scholarship to Trinity College in Chicago. My other grandfather was a professor there. But I just wasn’t ready to leave home yet then. I never knew my mother, and I’m not that close to him and my grandmother.” She clamped her forefinger over her mouth. He didn’t need—or, probably, want—her family history, particularly since he wasn’t sharing any of his.

  Jon ran his gaze over the weathered shake siding of the house behind her, pausing at the drooping gutter knocked loose from the windstorm the week before last.

  She glanced from the gutter to Jon and pressed her lips together. With his work getting the cabins ready for Camp Sonrise to open, Grandpa hadn’t had a chance to repair the gutter. “A lot of the kids I went to high school with couldn’t wait to leave, but I like it here at Paradox Lake. And it was a kick going to college with Dad. His electrician business had fallen off while he was serving in Afghanistan with the National Guard, so he took some environmental studies courses at NCCC while I was there. That’s how he met Anne.”

  A warm gust of wind from the lake blew the gutter against the house with a thud, drawing Jon’s gaze back to it.

  Did he think it was going to fall on them? Or that Dad couldn’t afford to hire someone to repair the gutter, hadn’t had the money for her to go away to a big school? Autumn glanced from her empty mug to his newly refilled one to the drained coffeepot and wished she’d just given him his coffee and gone back inside to have hers.

  No. She was being ridiculous, letting Jon push buttons she didn’t even know she had. Maybe she hadn’t had the privileged childhood that Jon must have, but she and Dad had done okay. She’d had as much as her friends.

  He broke the silence. “It is beautiful up here. Relaxing. I can see why you came back after you finished your clinicals at Samaritan for your certification.”

  “That and family. We’re close. And there’s a need here for midwives, for almost any medical practitioner.”

  “True. The area is underserved.”

  “So that’s what brought you up here?”

  “Partly. But more the opportunity.”

  His reply jarred her. She’d thought she’d hit on something they had in common: a professional desire to serve where their skills were needed.

  “There aren’t a lot of places where someone my age can get the level of administrative experience that Adirondack Medical Center is offering me at the birthing center.”

  Maybe Jon had more in common with their last director than she’d thought yesterday. The center’s former director had leveraged his experience at the birthing center into a cushy administrative position at a big medical center downstate.

  Autumn shifted her weight on the bench. Jon could be grooming himself to take over his grandfather’s health-care corporation. The strains of a hit song by the local Christian country band Resurrection Light broke the growing silence.

  “Excuse me.” Jon pulled his cell phone from his pocket. His face lit when he saw the caller ID.

  She pushed the bench back, ready to give him some privacy.

  “Nana.” Jon waved Autumn down as she started to rise. “Yes, we’re on for dinner. I got the message.” He frowned. “You don’t have to apologize. See you then.” He hunkered down over the phone. “Love you, too.”

  He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “My grandparents are going to be in Lake George Tuesday.”

  “Are they here on vacation?” Autumn remembered Liza, the medical center administrator, saying something yesterday about his grandparents vacationing in Lake George.

  “No,” he said brusquely. “Grandfather is coming up for a business meeting near Syracuse.”

  “Do you see them often?” After she’d babbled on about her family, it was only fair that he take his turn.

  “No.”

  “Oh, I thought they might have lived near you. When you said coming up I assumed you meant from the New York City, Westchester area.”

  He stared at her.

  “That’s where you’re from, right, Westchester County?” From the gossip at Samaritan, she knew his father headed up the cardiology department at one of the medical centers there.

  “Yes.” He avoided eye contact. “I’d better get back to the movers.” He stood and motioned toward the table. “Do you need any help carrying the stuff in?”

  “No, thanks, I can handle it.” So much for learning anything personal about Dr. Hanlon. Since as neighbors, they’d be seeing a lot of each other, she’d hoped he’d share something that might help her get past what he’d done to Kate and the cold way he’d treated his fellow hospital staff members afterward. She picked up the mugs and coffeepot and walked with him to her door.

  “I’ll see you Monday.”

  She nodded and watched him cross the yard to the moving van before she went inside. Working with Jon and having him as her next-door neighbor was going to be interesting. The trouble was that, given their past history and the conversation they’d just had, Autumn had a sinking feeling it might not be a good kind of interesting.

  Chapter Three

  “Hello!” Jamie Payton’s voice rang through the house to the kitchen.

  Autumn put the clean coffeepot i
n the dish drainer and dried her hands with a dish towel. “Hi, come in.”

  “I already am,” Jamie said from the doorway. “Who was that I passed on my way in? Tall, dark and handsome, talking with the moving guys.” Autumn’s friend and delivery nurse sighed.

  “I thought you were more partial to the tall, fair-haired and handsome type,” Autumn teased.

  “Don’t tell the colonel,” Jamie said of her new husband, Eli.

  “Your secret’s safe with me. How’d you manage to slip out of the house alone?” Except for work, Autumn rarely saw Jamie without Eli or one of the kids.

  “Myles is at the camp.”

  “That’s right. He’s a counselor this summer.”

  “Rose slept over at a friend’s, and Eli took Opal with him to the hardware store in Ticonderoga to buy new tile for the kitchen floor. But you’re evading my question.”

  “The mystery man you saw on your way in is my new neighbor and boss, Dr. Jonathan Hanlon.”

  Jamie tilted her head. “Boss?”

  “The new director at the birthing center. Technically, not our boss, but something tells me he’s going to be a lot more hands-on with the actual care than Dr. Ostertag was. I worked with Jon at Samaritan when I was doing my master’s degree for my midwife certification.”

  “I see.” Jamie’s eyes twinkled.

  “You see nothing. Just because I know him doesn’t mean I like him.”

  “So you don’t like him?”

  Autumn threw up her hands and laughed. “I didn’t say that, exactly. I don’t know him that well.” Nor did it look like he’d be an easy person to get to know.

  “It’s been a couple of months since Rod was reassigned.”

  Autumn shook her head. “I know you’d like everyone to be as happy and in love as you and Eli are, but my time hasn’t come yet. Now, you must have had a reason for stopping by, other than trying to fix me up with Jon—especially since you didn’t even know about him until you got here.”

  “You’re not going to go for it, then?”

  “I’m not going to go for it.”

  Jamie released an exaggerated sigh. “I know you’re helping out at the camp today, too. So I stopped in to see if you want to walk to the lake with me.” She patted her slightly rounded belly. “My midwife says that I need to get some more exercise. Apparently, chasing the other three kids around isn’t enough.”

  “Using my words against me?” Even though Autumn wasn’t taking on any obstetric patients, when Jamie had found out she was pregnant, she’d insisted on seeing Autumn for her prenatal care. Their friendship went back a long time to when Autumn was a high school student and used to babysit Jamie’s older kids.

  “Come on, you weren’t planning on driving down. You walk everywhere.”

  “You’re right. I was going to walk.” But she’d planned on having the morning to herself. Autumn kicked off her sandals and picked up her sneakers from the rug by the door. “Let me change my shoes and we can go.”

  “Sure, and while I’m thinking of it, my cousin who I texted you about would be happy to fill in at the office for the summer. She’s still working on getting a teaching position for the fall and has to be out of her apartment in Syracuse by the end of the week. She really doesn’t want to go back to her father’s in Buffalo.”

  Autumn looked up from tying her shoes.

  “They get along great. But Uncle Steve recently remarried, and Lexi, short for Alexandra, thinks her father and stepmother have enough with her new teenage stepbrothers there.”

  “I can relate to that.” Autumn stood.

  “I thought you could.” Jamie grinned.

  “Do you think Lexi would be interested in the singles group at church? Our ranks have thinned since all of you newlyweds morphed the singles-plus group into a couples group and we remaining singles split off into our own group.”

  While the larger singles-plus group had been fun, Autumn had found it kind of weird belonging to the group with her father and Anne. She swallowed hard. And with her friends Jack and Suzy Hill after the problems delivering their daughter.

  “Maybe. I’ll ask her. Is that a prerequisite for the job?”

  “Of course not. I was just thinking we need to get the group pumped up. We don’t have nearly as many members as the couples group.”

  “It’s not a competition,” Jamie said. “And you all are welcome to join us again.”

  “Your guys are all taken, and I need some kind of social life again. One that doesn’t include my father.”

  “I can understand that.” Jamie cocked her head to the side. “So, does Lexi have the job?”

  Autumn thought about the hours she’d spent yesterday evening entering all of the billing into the computer. “I’ll have to talk with Kelly, but I think she’ll trust your recommendation.”

  “She’d better be able to. Seriously, I think you’ll like Lexi a lot. And back to the singles group. What about your new neighbor?”

  “What about him?” Autumn asked, even though she knew exactly what Jamie was asking.

  “Would he be interested in joining your group? You’re down one on the male members since Rod left.”

  Autumn shrugged. “As I said, I don’t know him that well.” Besides, when had it become her group? And, even if the singles group did need members, particularly male members, she had enough qualms about her and Jon getting along working together and as neighbors without adding him to the only regular social life she had.

  * * *

  Jon shook his head and put his helmet back on. No one had been home at either of the Hazard family houses. He’d even swallowed his pride and tried Autumn’s. How could he have locked his house key in the duplex? He didn’t do things like that. But the movers had been trying right from the start, getting there early. And his grandmother’s call and Autumn’s questions about his family had unsettled him. He understood that she was only making conversation. But he didn’t talk about his family. Didn’t think about them if he could avoid it, except for Nana.

  He settled himself on his Sportster and revved it up to drive down to the lake. Hopefully, he could search out Autumn’s grandfather or stepmother for a key and not have to share his stupidity with her. Although why should it matter? It wasn’t like he was out to impress her or anything. Jon gunned the engine and gravel flew out from the rear tire, causing the bike to fishtail. He slowed down and reached the camp at a more sedate pace.

  As he drove under the sign welcoming him to Camp Sonrise, a group of high-school and college-age kids crossing the parking lot with mops, buckets and other cleaning items stopped and stared. He rolled to a stop and kicked down the stand. By the time he’d pulled off his helmet, a couple of the boys were beside him.

  “Nice ride,” the dark-haired one said.

  “Yeah,” his companion echoed.

  “I’m Myles Glasser, one of the camp counselors. You need directions or something?”

  “I’m looking for Anne Hazard or her father-in-law.”

  “Mr. Hazard just left for the store. He probably passed you on the road.”

  Jon nodded. A pickup had gone by him.

  “I’m not sure where Anne is, but I’ll get Autumn, her stepdaughter. She can probably help you.”

  “That’s okay.” He lifted his helmet to put it back on. He didn’t have Mr. Hazard’s phone number, but he could leave Anne a message at the number he’d called this morning. Then he could kill some time at his office in the birthing center preparing for the staff meeting next week. “I’ll catch up with Mr. or Mrs. Hazard later.”

  “It’s no problem. Autumn’s right over there on the lodge porch.”

  He followed Myles’s outstretched arm to the large log building next to the parking lot, where Autumn was walking down the stairs. Jon weighed which was more a
sinine, his insisting on not talking to Autumn or his reluctance to tell her he’d locked himself out.

  Myles relieved him of the decision. “Hey, Autumn, this guy needs to talk to you.”

  Autumn turned quickly, causing her almost-waist-length ponytail to swing over her shoulder. She waved an acknowledgment.

  A feeling of protectiveness waved over him as she walked over. He turned to the boys. “I know you’re trying to help, but you don’t know who I am.”

  They looked at him blankly. “Should we?” Myles’s friend asked.

  Was he that clueless when he was a teen? Probably. “I could be anyone. You don’t know that Autumn knows me.”

  “Hi, Jon.”

  The teen looked from him to Autumn. “But she does.”

  “Never mind, and thanks for the help.”

  “What was that about?” Autumn asked.

  “I was looking for your grandfather or stepmother, and the dark-haired one, Myles, immediately volunteered to get you, without asking who I was or what I wanted.”

  “They’re fifteen. They were probably too interested in your bike to remember their elementary school stranger-danger training.”

  Jon didn’t know why her blithely dismissing his concern irritated him. What did it matter?

  “You were looking for Grandpa or Anne. Is there a problem at the house?”

  “Kind of.” He dropped his gaze and tapped his helmet against his thigh. “I seem to have locked myself out.”

  Autumn made a soft choking sound and he looked up to see her lips twitch as she tried to contain her smile.

  “I don’t suppose you have a key to my side of the house.”

  Her smile broke through. “No, I don’t. Anne probably does at the house. Come on, I’ll take you to her. You can leave your helmet. It’ll be fine. I’ll tell Myles to keep an eye on it and your bike. They’re done cleaning the campers’ cabins.”

  He surveyed the forest surrounding the parking lot and the kids milling around the camp and held on to the helmet.

  A towheaded boy of about three charged at them when they entered the lodge. “Aunt Autumn. You came back.”