“Don’t be silly, dear,” Maizie dismissed the protest. “Sterling’s is closed on Sundays,” she reminded her daughter, mentioning the printer she’d been bringing her business to for the last ten years. “I’d have to wait until at least Monday.”
The awful thing was, her mother was only half kidding. If that much. “How about until Hell freezes over?”
She heard her mother groan in earnest. “Oh, please tell me you’ll be married before then, Nicole.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you again, Mother.” And then she relented. Just a fraction. “What will be will be, remember?” Her mother used to tell her that whenever she would ask about the future as a little girl.
“Yes. It’s a nice song by Doris Day. From some classic Hitchcock movie as I remember,” Maizie said dismissively. “However—”
“No ‘however,’ Mom. Oops, there’s a call coming in,” Nikki announced suddenly. “Gotta go. Love you.”
And with that, Nikki terminated the call. There was no other phone call coming in, but she knew her mother wouldn’t give up until she gave up Lucas’s name. And while she’d exaggerated what her mother would do with it, she knew that giving her mother a name would make everything that much more real for the woman. And there was nothing to make “real.” It was just dinner with a grateful parent, that was all.
A grateful parent who just might be able to fix her laptop.
Maizie looked at the receiver in her hand and smiled. Broadly.
So far, so good.
She wondered if it was against some basic, ancient rule if she drove down to the Mission at San Juan Capistrano and lit a few candles at the altar tomorrow morning, given that she wasn’t Catholic.
Thinking it over for a moment, Maizie decided it wouldn’t hurt to cover all bases.
“If you would like to make a call—” the metallic voice emerging out of the receiver began.
“Yes, but you don’t have a service that goes directly to God,” Maizie murmured, hanging up.
Mission San Juan Capistrano it was.
Chapter Seven
Nikki doubled back to her house a total of three times before she finally managed to make it out of her development. Once because she’d forgotten her car keys, once because she’d left behind the dessert she was bringing—a rum-flavored Bundt cake that Theresa had insisted on making for her when the woman had heard, via her mother, that she was having dinner at someone’s house—and once because she’d driven away without packing the laptop and had only realized it five minutes into her trip.
She knew if she decided not to go back for the laptop, Lucas would insist on coming by to pick it up himself. Judging by the tension in her stomach, this was already feeling more like a date than just a casual get-together. Having Lucas stop by her house, or even the office without needing to see her as his baby’s pediatrician, would feel much too personal.
Would? a small voice inside her head questioned. Newsflash. It already did.
Nikki wasn’t up on Freudian theory in general, but she recalled that the pioneering psychiatrist had maintained that there were no such things as accidents. That meant that she was trying to tell herself something by “accidentally” forgetting her keys, and then her dessert, and finally, her laptop.
Maybe she should just stay home. She could call Lucas and use the excuse that something had come up so she had to rush off to the hospital. Sorry about that.
That wasn’t going to work.
Lucas already knew she wasn’t on call. He’d mentioned the fact that she might be called away when he’d phoned this morning to run the “menu” by her. He wanted to be sure that she didn’t have any food allergies or that he hadn’t picked the “one thing you hate to eat” to prepare tonight.
When she’d commented that he was far more sensitive and careful than the usual father she came across in her practice, he’d laughed it off, saying, “I’ve got half a dozen books on baby care and how to raise a healthy kid on my shelves. Reading them has made me a great deal more aware of a lot of things,” he’d told her. “Oh, and don’t worry if you suddenly have to take off for the hospital. I promise I won’t take it personally.”
For a second, she’d thought he was making a joke about her not liking his cooking, then realized that Lucas was talking about her being on call.
“I won’t be running off,” she’d answered. “I’m not on call this weekend.” The words were out before she’d realized that she’d just walked all over the perfect excuse to call off dinner.
Because she didn’t really want to.
And why should she? How often did she get to enjoy the company of a decent, good-looking man without having to worry that the evening might wind up leading her on to thin ice? That she’d be on her way to a place where decisions were going to have to be made down the line?
There was blissfully no pressure here. Lucas was too devoted to his daughter, too wrapped up around her welfare and his career to leave any room for sexual tension. Tonight would just be about two people enjoying each other’s company and the company of his daughter over dinner. No matter how she sliced it, it was a win-win situation.
She had to learn to relax.
There were no ulterior motives to worry about, no holding up her guard in case the man decided to come on strong. He wouldn’t. She could literally feel it in her bones.
What could go wrong in a situation like that?
Plenty, it turned out. Just nothing she would have anticipated.
Her first clue came as she parked her car in the driveway and walked up to the front door. Picking up a noise, Nikki cocked her head to listen. She thought she heard Heather crying.
And then she definitely heard something. The sound of a pot or a pan loudly crashing on to a tiled floor jarred her teeth.
Slightly nervous about what she might find, Nikki rang the doorbell. Three times. She waited to the count of ten between each interval, but she might as well have waited to the count of a thousand. The door didn’t move and there was no response.
The problem, she thought, was that the doorbell chimes were much too soft to compete with all the other noises that were going on.
Taking out her cell phone, Nikki pressed seven numbers on the keypad.
“Please, Heather, not now,” Lucas pleaded as he ran cold water full blast over his stinging hands. He was trying to minimize the burning sensation he felt, maybe even decrease the blisters that he knew were forming.
On the floor near his feet was the nine-by-twelve pan—now half empty—that he’d just taken out of the oven. It hadn’t been half empty when he’d put it in, but when smoke had started seeping out of the stove, he’d thrown open the oven door and made a grab for the pan before he had a possible fire on his hands.
Unfortunately, he’d neglected to perform the operation using oven mitts.
The jolting contact with the hot pan caused him to drop it, which in turn sent half the burnt vegetables racing through the kitchen as if they, too, were trying to escape the smoking oven. The smoke alarm was already announcing its displeasure, the pitch high enough to loosen his teeth.
Heather’s crying on top of everything else was almost enough to push him over the edge. He knew it was useless, but he tried reasoning with her as if she was older and could understand him.
“I promise I’ll get to you in a few minutes. I just need to figure out what other vegetables I can serve.” Rushing to the window over the sink, he threw it open, hoping that was enough to get rid of the smell before the doctor got there.
Lucas knew it was futile. Heather’s doctor was due at any minute. There just wasn’t enough time to clear the air, much less start a new side dish, or whatever the hell they call these things in those cooking shows he sometimes kept on in the background for company while he worked.
Actually, it wasn’t even the cooking shows he kept on. He’d switch on any morning show on one of the major channels just to hear the sound of people’s voices in conversation. When Heather
napped, the house became much too silent. As a rule, he didn’t do his best work in silence.
On those occasions that Heather napped while he was working and he wasn’t on a conference call, Lucas tended to feel like a hermit.
An inept hermit, he thought in disgust, still running the water over his throbbing fingers.
He didn’t know where to start first. Did he clean up the floor, open more windows, start another vegetable—if he even found another vegetable to start—or see what was bothering Heather this time?
Outnumbered and overwhelmed, Lucas did none of the above. Instead, Lucas glared at the landline as it began to ring, adding to the cacophony.
Now what? He wasn’t exactly in the mood to be sociable.
Leaning over, he yanked the receiver from its cradle with one hand. The next second, he was grabbing hold of the edge of the sink with his other hand to keep from slipping on the grease that had spilled on the floor along with the vegetables. His arm felt as if he’d pulled it out of the socket.
“Yes?” he barked into the receiver.
“Lucas?” the female voice on the other end asked uncertainly.
Oh, God, it was her. Heather’s doctor. The woman was early.
No, he realized, glancing at the kitchen clock, she was right on time. He was late. An hour late by his calculation.
How had that happened? He used to be so organized….
He should have just sent out for pizza, not tried to whip up something of his own, he upbraided himself.
“Hi,” he said, trying his best to sound chipper and not as if he was about to have a major breakdown. “Where are you?”
Mentally, he crossed his fingers, hoping that she was calling to say she hadn’t left her house yet. Or, better yet, that she’d had to put in an appearance at the hospital because one of her patients had suddenly been admitted and she estimated that she wouldn’t be over for an hour.
An hour would give him enough time to air out the house and perform a minor miracle.
Hopes for a miracle, minor or otherwise, died abruptly when she answered his question. “I’m standing at your front door.”
He looked in the direction of the front of the house as if he’d suddenly been given the gift of X-ray vision and could see through the door.
“Why didn’t you ring?” Before hurrying over to open the door, he opened the belt that had been holding Heather in her high chair. She’d been sitting there, observing the fiasco he’d unintentionally created, until she’d decided to be part of the noise. Now Heather appeared to be more curious than cranky. The phone tucked against his ear and neck, Lucas lifted Heather up out of the high chair.
“I did,” Nikki answered. “Three times.” Impatient to come in, she asked, “Lucas, is there any reason why we’re conducting a telephone conversation when we’re about twenty yards apart?” Why wasn’t he letting her in? “Is something wrong?”
Now there was an understatement. Out loud, he was quick to voice a denial. “No, no, nothing’s wrong.”
He did his best to sound confident and innocent as he hurried to the door now, holding Heather on his hip with one hand, the phone with the other.
“Is that Heather crying in the background?” Nikki asked a beat before the door opened, still speaking into the phone. In response, she heard a garbled noise.
And then the door opened. The first thing she saw was Heather.
About to utter a greeting, Nikki wound up coughing as the smoke from inside the house came out to embrace her, wrapping itself around her like an old friend at a college reunion.
“Oh, my God,” Nikki cried in between coughing and trying to catch her breath. Wide-eyed, she looked at him. “Was there a fire?”
“Not exactly,” Lucas answered, feeling as if he was the owner of three left hands in a strictly right-handed world.
Not exactly. Nikki’s eyes began to smart. “Well, if that’s your new air freshener, I’d go back to the store and get my money back if I were you.”
Making her way into the house, Nikki found the smoke growing increasingly thicker. She began to open windows on her way to the kitchen. Once there, she saw the haphazardly scattered vegetables on the floor. Quartered potatoes, diced asparagus and string beans, tiny carrots and mushrooms all tossed—really tossed—with olive oil and a powdery substance she took to be some kind of cheese, or maybe flour.
She slanted a look in Lucas’s direction. “I take it you were planning to be informal.”
“Not that informal,” he answered. It was obvious that he was really annoyed with himself for being caught like this.
She surveyed the vegetables more closely. They looked fairly well done—that nice, crispy look where the vegetables were not too crunchy, not too soft.
“Well, if it’s any consolation to you,” she told him, “what you were making looks as if it would have been very tasty.”
“It was—until the oil spilled on to the bottom of the oven and started smoking,” he told her. “I took the pan out immediately so I could try to clean up the oil before it filled the whole room—”
Nikki looked at the floor and the vegetables. A picture began to emerge. “Let me guess, you forgot to use pot holders and dropped the pan.”
Lucas sighed. “That about covers it,” he admitted with a nod.
“Why don’t you put Heather into her high chair and we’ll get started on cleaning up the floor?” she suggested gently.
He looked at the baby. “She’s still crying.” Although she did sound as if that was abating. “You don’t think she’s getting sick again, do you?”
Nikki brushed her hand against the baby’s forehead. It was cool, and the baby was settling down.
“I think the loud noise scared her more than anything else,” she guessed. With that, she looked around the room, glancing toward the corners. “Where do you keep your mop and your broom?” she asked. Turning around to face him, she saw Lucas wince as he put the baby back into her high chair. He withdrew his hands from his daughter somewhat awkwardly. “Let me see that,” she ordered.
“See what?” he asked, dropping his hands to his sides as if to try to divert attention from them.
“Your hands.” She looked at him knowingly. “You burned them, didn’t you?”
Lucas shrugged his shoulders, deliberately looking away and ignoring her request. He would have slid them into his pockets if doing so wouldn’t have hurt like hell. “They’re okay.”
“No, they’re not,” she countered. When he looked at her, about to open his mouth in protest, she cut him off with, “Who’s the one with a medical degree here?”
“You.”
“Exactly.” She put her hand out expectantly. “Now let me see them.”
She waited, giving no indication that she was about to give up until she saw his hands. With a reluctant sigh, he held them out and turned them over, palms up, for her to examine.
Looking at his hands, it was Nikki’s turn to wince as she anticipated the initial pain he had to be experiencing.
“Oh, God, that must smart.”
Lucas frowned in self-disgust. He wasn’t ordinarily this inept or this clumsy. Why had he had to pick tonight to start?
“It’s probably the only part of me that is,” he muttered under his breath.
Nikki laughed softly as she quickly scanned the damage. It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought at first glance. Very gently, she lowered his hands to his sides.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Lucas,” she said. And then she nodded toward the door. “I’m going to go out to my car—”
“To make good your escape?” he guessed. He wouldn’t blame her if she did.
“No, I have something for burns in the trunk of my car and I’m going to go get it. I like to keep a first aid kit handy at all times.” She glanced down at the hand closest to her. “You never know when you might need it. Be right back,” she promised.
A couple of minutes later, she was. Opening up a small, see-through box she dipped a
cotton ball into its contents and then liberally dabbed a yellowish powder to his fingers.
Bracing himself for more pain, Lucas was surprised when he felt next to none. The powder had taken away a major part of the sting immediately.
“What is that stuff?” he asked, eyeing it curiously as Nikki applied a second layer. “It looks like fairy dust.”
She laughed. Fairy dust. She rather liked that. Calling it fairy dust would make it a lot easier to apply to children’s skinned hands and knees when it was necessary.
“You’ve been reading too many fairy tales to Heather. This is just a little compound the doctor I trained under when I was an intern shared with me. There’s cornstarch in it and a few other ingredients you can get over the counter at any pharmacy.” She regarded the yellowish powder still in the container. “Not impressive-looking, I’ll agree, but it really works.” She’d used it herself so she could vouch for its effectiveness firsthand. “You should be almost as good as new in a few hours.”
Realizing she was still holding one of his hands in hers, Nikki released it, doing her best to appear nonchalant. She didn’t want the man thinking she was guilty of holding his hand for no reason.
“The good news is, you really didn’t do that much damage to your hands.”
Lucas nodded, still feeling like an idiot. He looked his hands over, marveling, “They’re not hurting as much as before.” He raised his eyes to hers. “I keep saying thank-you.”
“You can stop anytime now,” she told him with a smile. Nikki closed the little container and then handed it to him. “If it starts to sting again, apply another layer. Better safe than sorry,” she added when he looked at her quizzically.
“Don’t you need it?” he asked.
“I have more,” she told him. “Don’t worry, it’s not like it’s made out of a magic root that only grows once every fifty years.”
Snapping the first aid kit shut, Nikki slid off the stool. Heather, fascinated by what was going on, had completely stopped fussing and watched everything now with her huge blue eyes.
Doctoring the Single Dad Page 8
