The talk means absolutely nothing to me, of course, she assured herself. It’s just morbid curiosity. A lover’s tryst twice a month…perhaps Louise would even have some other lover, too, for the doctor’s off weeks. But Rebecca suspected twice a month just might be sufficient for a disciplined man like Dr. Saville.
And just how would you know, she chided herself, how much sex would be sufficient for anyone. Better to ask a duck about survival in the desert.
Across the hall the door to the examination room swung open.
“Mother always wanted me to be a model.” Lauren was boasting as Dr. Saville escorted her out. “I won several most-beautiful-baby contests, you know.”
Rebecca aimed a covert glance at her employer.
As usual he was fully attentive to his patient, even though Lauren’s egocentric jabbering and constant fishing for compliments could vex a saint. Lois was right, she decided. He does look a bit bedraggled this morning. Or as Rebecca used to mispronounce the word for years: bed-raggled. His normally neat hair was slightly tousled, as if he’d just run his hand through it and not bothered with the comb. Also, there was a heaviness to his eyelids, a rather sexy heaviness that drew Rebecca in at first glance.
She couldn’t get the thought out of her head that that was how Dr. John Saville would look in the morning after a long night of lovemaking. That was how his lover would see him when she first opened her eyes, the tousled dark hair, the sleep-heavy gaze, and then his mouth that would…
She startled herself out of the reverie. Going down that road was insane, and she would not do it. Never. Absolutely never.
Worried, she knelt down to count bottles of medicine stored on a low shelf.
Preoccupied, she didn’t hear Lauren leave, nor did she realize John Saville stood in the doorway watching her.
For a moment, seeing her, he completely forgot what he meant to say. Rebecca’s cotton velour skirt had slid up high on her thighs when she knelt. She had gorgeous legs, well formed and nicely muscled. And at this angle her V-neck blouse gave him a tantalizing view of her breasts.
Abruptly he became aroused by the unexpected sight. And just his luck, she chose that same moment to glance up and catch him ogling her.
Way to go, Saville, he berated himself. You give the woman stern lectures on professionalism, now here you stand before her with a tent in your trousers.
It brought back all the memories of being called to the blackboard in high school right in the middle of erotic fantasies.
He lowered the patient chart in his hand, hoping she didn’t notice what he was hiding.
Rebecca quickly stood up, smoothing her skirt.
“Is there something you need, Doctor?” she inquired.
The irony of her words made him feel like a thief caught in the act. This woman was wonderful with the patients, he thought. She was confident, intelligent and warm. With him, however, she always had a cold manner. Her frostiness toward him belied the red in her hair and the pearly allure of her complexion.
“Yes, Doctor?” she repeated, and her haughty tone plus his consternation at being caught scoping her out made him defensive.
“I just wanted to say,” he practically barked at her, “that I accept the apology you tried to make on Friday night.”
He had intended to be more gracious about it. Now his good intentions backfired. He watched red splotches of anger leap into her cheeks.
“Well, thank you very much,” she replied coldly. “It’s so nice to be forgiven.”
The deep, frowning crease was back between his eyebrows. “Fine,” he snapped back, his insides churning like molten metal.
He disappeared, and moments later his office door shut with a resounding slam.
Lois now ventured back from the front of the office. She looked in at Rebecca, who was still flushed with anger, and shook her head.
“You two are going at it already?” she asked her friend.
Rebecca fumed. “There are other jobs, you know.”
“Simmer down, hon,” Lois soothed. “That vein over your temple looks like a hyperventillating worm.”
“I can’t help it, Lo. He gets me so agitated.”
A faint smile lifted one corner of Lois’s mouth.
“Yes,” she agreed with a knowing little glimmer in her eyes. “He certainly does, doesn’t he?”
Rebecca’s eyebrows arched in surprise when, toward the middle of the afternoon, Hazel arrived unannounced requesting a drop-by appointment with Dr. Saville.
“You were just here last week,” she reminded the older woman.
“Honey, I’m not quite senile yet. I know that.”
“What’s the problem?”
Hazel poked a hand inside her big raffia tote and produced a brown bottle. “It’s these new vitamins I want to try,” she explained. “Mitty Ames swears by them. I want the doctor to look at the label and tell me what he thinks.”
“Hazel,” Rebecca said suspiciously, “you’re practically an expert on vitamins. Dr. Winthrop used to send patients to you for advice.”
“Well, my lands,” Hazel complained. “Is this Russia? I come with a simple request, and I get the third degree. Is a drop-by a problem? If he’s too busy…”
“No,” Rebecca assured her, eyes cutting to the monthly appointment planner on Lois’s desk. “I think he’ll see you, Hazel. He’ll be finishing up with a patient in a few minutes, and there’s no one else scheduled today because he has to go to the hospital later for two surgeries. I’ll ask him.”
“Thank you, sweet love,” Hazel replied, unperturbed by Rebecca’s searching gaze.
Five minutes later Hazel and John Saville were once again alone in the examination room.
“Well, young lady,” he said, his eyes nearly as curious as Rebecca’s had been, “what’s this about vitami—”
“Oh, never mind the vitamins,” she said impatiently. “That was just a fib to get me past Rebecca. What is it you youngsters require nowadays—an electric cattle prod?”
He blinked as if she had spoken in Chinese. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, excuse a cat’s tail, you hunka-hunka burning love. Just tell me straight up—John, are you attracted to Rebecca O’Reilly?”
He actually gaped in astonishment, unused to having his authority ripped right out from under him. “I, uh…that is…”
“Just spit it out,” she urged him. “Yes or no?”
He scrubbed his face with his hands and slacked into the chair beside her.
“I’ll take that as a definite, unequivocal yes,” she told him.
He watched her, his handsome face a study in cloaking his emotions.
“So what are you waiting for, an embossed invitation?”
He smiled a bitter smile. “If you’re thinking that Miss O’Reilly and I might hit it off one day, you can forget it. For starters,” he assured her, “she despises me down deep in her bones. Hell if I know why.”
“She’s had her heart broken by your kind.”
He snorted. “What do you mean, by my kind? I may not have grown up in Mystery, but let me assure all of the townsfolk, I am the exact same species you are.”
Hazel shook her head at the folly of this younger generation. “You just remind her of the wounds she’s had to lick. That’s all.”
“We’ve all been wounded, one way or another. I can’t make her heal,” he stated in a monotone. His dismissal was to Hazel like blood to a hound.
“Maybe she’s not the one to heal,” Hazel said, her eyes narrowing. “Maybe it’s the doctor who must heal thyself.”
He ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. The Matriarch of Mystery was way too close to the truth. Rebecca was out of his scope. She was too unpredictable and dismissive for him to approach her. The shallow socialites he’d been involved with in the past few years were just his type. Mercenary. He knew all about that. Too many beatings from a bitter father obsessed with never failing had taught him nothing about love but more than he needed to know ab
out mercenaries.
“Young man, I’ll tell you no lies,” Hazel said quietly. “What you see now as obstacles are really only speed bumps on the road to true love. You and Rebecca are a perfect couple.”
“Perfect couple? Frankly, Hazel, that’s a little over the top for me. I can’t even begin to fathom her mind, what she—”
Hazel waved his speech aside as if she were shooing a fly. “That’s all your college and medical training confusing you. Don’t waste time analyzing Rebecca. Trying to figure out a woman’s mind is like trying to figure out what came before once-upon-a-time. Accept what she is and enjoy it. She’s an amazing creature.”
He greeted this with a long, fluming sigh. “I don’t dispute you there. It’s just…I mean, I don’t…”
“I know what the problem is,” Hazel insisted, “you look at her and see all that red in her hair and you think, Fire. All red blazing fire. But deep inside, you believe there’s nothing but ice inside you. She’s so different from you that you can’t even imagine the two of you ever getting along. Erotic fantasies, sure, but you can’t imagine actually coexisting outside of bed. Am I right?”
He said nothing, damning himself with silence.
“I’m used to being right,” she said shamelessly. “You just take it from an old rancher and equestrian. Love is no different from learning to ride a horse. First you walk, then you trot, then you lope, then you canter, and then you gallop. One step at a time, and before you know it, you’re there.”
Hazel rose.
John rose, too, watching her with a look of baffled amazement. She had cut to the deepest matters of his heart with the same surgical speed and precision he prided himself on.
“Hang in there like the man I know you are, and she’ll crater,” Hazel insisted, using an old miner’s term for caving in. “And don’t ever worry about a woman being too ‘different’ from you. That’s why we’re called the opposite sex, get it?”
He saw that she had pulled her checkbook out, and he waved it aside. “Put that back in your purse. If anything, you should send me the bill for today’s visit.”
Hazel grinned. “No, I’ll pay. You want Rebecca to think we’re conspiring against her? You will have troubles then. Tell you what. Just give me a long ride in that beautiful car of yours sometime, and we’ll call it even.”
“Deal,” he agreed.
“Hang in there,” she repeated. “And good luck. You know, Rebecca’s a little like a fine sports car herself. She’s temperamental and a little complicated. But, mister, once you get her purring, I’ll bet you’re in for the ride of your life.”
Six
Rebecca’s interaction with her employer in the supply room left her in a foul mood for much of the day. At first, catching him staring at her had been flattering—even a little bit of a turn-on. But then it had all blown to kingdom come with their chilly exchange of words.
Hazel’s frustrating secrecy hadn’t helped her mood any, either. As the disastrous date with Rick Collins proved, Hazel’s good intentions could become a major pain. Rebecca still suspected Hazel was behind the strange events of the date with Rick. No way could Hazel ever have believed she and Rick would get along. Too, Hazel’s cowboys were intensely loyal, and it would have been simple for one of them to have deflated Rick’s tire in the parking lot.
And evidently the canny old matchmaker hadn’t emptied her bag of tricks just yet.
The splendid spring day waiting for her outside after work was a tonic to Rebecca’s mood. The short drive from Mystery to her apartment near Valley General took her across some of the prettiest country in the valley. The area’s magnificent silver spruces were swollen with new sap and budding into leaf, the meadows and pastures dotted with bright-red Indian paintbrush.
At one point she passed the outlying pastures of the Lazy M. She backed her foot off the gas pedal, slowing down to watch a six-year-old sorrel stud Hazel had named King Solomon.
Drunk on spring sunshine, the stallion raced along beside her in the huge pasture. His muscular quarters gleamed with the power and length of his stride; the breathtaking speed increased as the bunched muscles contracted and released like tightly wound springs exploding, thrusting and again thrusting, powerful and forceful….
Again she saw John Saville athletically leaping out of his roadster, again she felt his hand brushing her calf with charged force….
Rebecca realized she was breathing more quickly, her heart thumping loudly in her ears.
“Girl,” she muttered out loud, “forget about that disaster with Rick Collins. You do need another date.”
There was a certain growing priority that she needed to take care of, and that wasn’t about to happen without an eligible guy. Not necessarily Mr. Right. Maybe Mr. Right-Now would do.
Feeling like a confirmed old maid already, Rebecca passed an uneventful evening reading and then watching an old Bogart movie on cable until bedtime. Not too long after she opened out the studio couch into her bed and fell asleep, the telephone on the end table startled her awake.
“Huh?’ was all she could manage when she first answered the phone, speaking through clinging cobwebs of sleep. The ruby-red numerals on the digital clock showed it was just past 2:00 a.m.
“Becky, hon, wake up, it’s Lois. There’s been a terrible accident.”
Lois’s words had the force of cold water in the face.
Rebecca shot up to a sitting position, suddenly wide awake.
An accident. She thought instantly of her father, who spent most of his life driving. The consummate travelling salesman. Then logic assured her that that news would not be coming from Lois. No sooner did the fear pass, however, when another possibility seemed to make her blood turn in her veins: Hazel.
“Do you have any idea,” Lois pressed on before she could ask her anything, “where Dr. Saville might be?”
“Isn’t he at home? But how would I—Lois, what happened?”
“Oh, Becky, it sounds just awful. A crowded bus lost its brakes on the interstate. It overturned on the western slope of Copper Mountain and went over the embankment.”
“Copper Mountain.” Ice encased Rebecca’s spine. “Lois, that stretch is almost all cliffs, not just an embankment.”
“We’ve been monitoring it at home on Merrill’s police-band radio. It’s pure chaos right now, Becky. There are several fatalities and a whole lot of serious injuries. Trouble is it’s impossible to get to the seriously wounded until a special evacuation team with the right equipment can arrive from Fort Mackenzie.”
Rebecca, trapping the cordless phone between her ear and her shoulder to free her hands, was already hurriedly stepping into a pair of jeans.
“State troopers have been able to lower two doctors and a nurse from Lutheran Hospital down on ropes,” Lois continued. “They’ve set up a triage, but they still desperately need surgeons to do emergency intervention for a few of the badly injured who can’t hold out much longer. Just to stop internal bleeding until they can get them out of there.”
“Oh, my God,” Rebecca breathed as the real shock of it started to settle in. Lois was talking about the most difficult kind of medical care imaginable—surgery at the trauma scene itself. But this was Mystery Valley, a quiet, uneventful place where little besides routine accidents ever stressed the medical community. They simply weren’t ready for this.
“I’ve tried Dr. Saville’s house and the office,” Lois lamented. “Repeatedly. But it’s no use. I get the message machine both places. It just doesn’t make sense. I mean, he’s not exactly a party animal—not during the week, anyway. Besides, he had back-to-back surgeries this afternoon. He should’ve gone home tired long ago.”
“Yeah, that’s right, he had surgery,” Rebecca chimed in, moving the phone so she could tug on a warm pullover. “I know where he might be. One morning when I was early at work, I found him asleep on that big couch in his office. He told me he sleeps there sometimes when he’s working late on his journal articles or tired after
surgery. It’s lots closer than going out to his place.”
“That makes sense, all right, especially with the phone on his desk,” Lois added. “It only rings on low volume, remember? Loud ringing always startled Dr. Winthrop, he had that crazy theory that every startle reflex takes one day off the heart. So he set it on low volume, then broke the selector off.”
“Sure, we both teased him about it. Well, keep dialing the number,” Rebecca implored her. “I’ll drive to the office right now. If he’s not there, I’m going to the accident scene on my own. They may need more nurses.”
“Last I heard, they do. You be careful, babe, and good luck. I’ll keep trying the office.”
The old Bronco was no speed demon, but with the nighttime roads empty, Rebecca floored it. She made it to the clinic in Mystery in less than ten minutes.
“Thank God,” she murmured aloud as she wheeled into the asphalt parking lot, and the headlights revealed the doctor’s long, low-slung Alfa Romeo parked close to the building.
She unlocked the glass double doors and slapped at the master light switch, filling the entire suite with soft, indirect lighting. Even as she raced back toward the private office at the end of the hall, she heard the low, insistent chirring of his phone as Lois dialed.
She flung open his door and saw a supine form stretched out on the couch even before she switched on the lights.
“Dr. Saville! Doctor, wake up!”
In the few seconds before he responded, she got a strong impression of the slumbering man. A gray exhaustion was evident in the handsome face, the cumulative toll of his secret weekend plus a grueling session in surgery.
Despite her urgency, however, she couldn’t help appreciating the fact that his shirt was off. His pectorals were hard and sloping, his abs and lats like taut steel bands. A fine mat of dark hair formed a silky vee on his chest. His stomach was flat and hard, and for a moment she couldn’t help wishing he’d taken his trousers off, too.
The M.D. Courts His Nurse Page 6
