Seaside Romance
Page 19
Autumn pushed away from the desk, knocking a coffee mug of pens off the edge. Considering his reputation with women, he probably didn’t remember any of it. But she did.
* * *
Jon unlocked the door and stepped into the front hall of the bed-and-breakfast in Crown Point where he was staying. He stretched the kinks out of his back as he climbed the stairs. What had been a pleasant hour’s drive from Ticonderoga to Saranac Lake in the bright summer evening hours had seemed interminable on the drive back in the dark. The distances people here in the Adirondacks had to travel for medical care were unbelievable compared to what he was used to downstate. And Liza had told him that Autumn and her partner’s practice served a large part of the sixty-mile distance between the birthing center and the hospital in Saranac, as well as some of the areas south of Ticonderoga.
He let himself into his room. Liza’s comment had kept Autumn in his mind as he wound his way back to Crown Point. Thoughts of her traveling the steep narrow side roads he’d passed to deliver babies in homes set up on the mountainside alternated with visions of Autumn this afternoon, her delicate-featured face framed by wisps of flaxen hair escaping the silver clip that pinned the rest up.
As he slipped off his suit coat, he noticed the message light flashing on the phone. He was tempted to ignore it. Morning would be here all too soon, and he had to be up to meet the moving van at the duplex at eight. That’s it. It could be the movers. He’d given the number here at the bed-and-breakfast as an alternate number where he could be reached.
Jon lifted the receiver and pressed the message button.
“Jay.” His grandfather used the family nickname he’d dropped in middle school. “It’s your grandfather. I’ll be upstate next week, and your grandmother insists on coming with me and having dinner with you. I’ve made reservations for Wednesday at six-thirty at the Sagamore in Lake George.”
The message clicked off with no goodbye. Typical of Grandfather. Bark an order and leave, fully expecting it to be obeyed without question. Jon dropped the receiver back in place. He should ignore it. Nothing he did pleased his family anyway. But he couldn’t do that to Nana. Not after all she’d done for him. She’d provided the love his career-and stature-driven parents hadn’t. She’d grieved and prayed with him when Angela, his favorite cousin and close friend, had died in childbirth in Haiti, where she’d been serving at a mission.
His parents’ brief acknowledgment of his sorrow had been tinged with an undercurrent that it was punishment for Angie having conceived before she and her fiancé had married. Angie had gone through a wild period at college. But after she and her fiancé had learned of the baby, they’d both reembraced the Christian faith they’d been raised with.
Jon jerked off his loosened tie. Despite what the family might think, Angie and Brad’s Haitian missionary work after they married had been more than enough to atone for their indiscretion. Angie hadn’t had to... His throat clogged. Jon was finding it harder and harder to accept the tenet of a vengeful God that he’d been raised with in his parents’ church. His thoughts went to Brad, now raising their little boy alone, and how Brad’s faith in a loving Savior had given him strength. Jon had had only anger that grew into a need, a calling, to use his medical training and technology to do everything he could to protect other women, families, from the same tragedy.
The directorship of the Ticonderoga Birthing Center was the perfect first step toward doing just that—maybe even more so now that he’d learned about some of the center’s current practices. In his opinion, home births weren’t something to be encouraged. Too many things could go wrong without emergency equipment on hand.
He tossed the tie on the dresser. Tightening up birthing center procedures shouldn’t be too difficult. Part of the reason for the home births might be cost. Essex County had its share of lower-income and uninsured people. That shouldn’t mean mothers and babies received less-than-optimal care. He’d check the center’s financial records and work on Autumn and her partner, showing them his reasoning for technology-oriented treatment.
Back at Samaritan, he and Autumn had been friends of a sort, until Kate had alienated her and half the other staff by making her version of their breakup public—very public. Kate had known all along he wasn’t serious about their relationship and, as far as he knew, she wasn’t, either. The dissension she’d caused among the members of the medical team had been unacceptable.
He’d ignored the fracas as much as possible. And he’d done what he’d always done. Moved on. If he wanted conflict, he could visit his family.
Copyright © 2014 by Jean Chelikowsky Gordon
ISBN: 978 1 472 07222 1
SEASIDE ROMANCE
© 2014 Mia Ross
Published in Great Britain 2014
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ®are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk