The M.D. Courts His Nurse

by Meagan Mckinney

  She flicked a toggle switch mounted on a panel, and the big front doors slid open on their greased tracks. The smell of cows and sweet new hay wafted to her nostrils. Mellow sunlight flooded inside, making tiny dust motes glitter like galaxies and revealing a long, twin row of stalls.

  “Hello, Marie,” she called out, stopping beside one of the stalls.

  The cow watching her from placid, pretty brown eyes had been given a French name in honor of her breed, the cream-colored French Charolais, popular for crossbreeding since the 1930s. Hazel’s first ancestors had bred only the tough and self-sufficient longhorn cattle, driven north from deep in Texas and first brought to America by Spanish explorers. Later had come the shorthorn, the white-faced Hereford, the black Aberdeen Angus and several others. Hazel was trying every possible crossbreeding combination to produce heartier animals and better-quality meat.

  “Well, the bull has done his job, Mama,” she said, patting the animal’s broad brow. “Now you’re preggers, and Hazel’s gonna be with you all the way. We’re going to deliver a healthy calf, and I’ll be there at your side when you lick its eyes open.”

  Most people assumed cows were stupid, but Hazel had seen how they learned to bond with humans. When her line riders came down from summer pasture and separated from the herd after four months with them, the critters just stood there and bawled for hours, they missed the cowboys so. And a few honest cowboys even admitted they missed the cows, too.

  “I can make a cow love a cowboy,” she thought aloud, “but I’m having six sorts of trouble pairing Becky with John. Maybe I’ve lost my touch as a master matchmaker, Marie.”

  As she turned to go back outside, however, Hazel’s glance fell on the tack-room door at the far end of the barn. And suddenly, just like that, the rough outline of a plan sprang into her mind—followed by a wide, mischievous grin on her weather-seamed face and a canny twinkling in her Prussian-blue eyes.

  “It’ll have to be my last-ditch effort,” she told herself. “But if all else fails, I’ll give it a shot.”

  Those two stubborn, hard-headed youngsters belonged together, she was still sure of it. They just didn’t know it yet, was all. And after all, hadn’t she succeeded in the difficult case of rodeo champ A. J. Clayburn and Southern socialite Jacquelyn Rousseaux? Those two got along like cats fighting, at first. Now they were expecting their second child and still acted like newlyweds on their honeymoon.

  And she’d played Cupid to her dear friend Connie Adams. She sure hadn’t expected to snare her a renegade lawman, but all in all Quinn Loudon made Connie a mightly fine match, and Hazel liked to think she had a reining hand in that happiness, too.

  These thoughts reminded her the workday was over and that John Saville might be at home by now.

  Think I’ll give him a call, she decided, and see if he’ll give me a ride in that fancy race car of his. That handsome young fool needed another lesson in how to spark a woman, and she meant to tutor him until he got it right.

  Besides that, she had a question to ask him about something very curious she had just learned today.

  “So how are you feeling, Hazel?” John asked, holding the Alfa Romeo’s passenger door open for her.

  “I’m right as the mail,” she assured him, spryly lowering herself into the brown leather seat. “It’s mighty nice of you to agree to give me a ride in this beauty. I’ve been wanting to ever since I first laid eyes on her.”

  “Heck, you can drive if you want.”

  “Thanks, but this way I can look around more. It’s a beautiful day.”

  “Well, you don’t need to thank me. I was glad you called—I can use a relaxing drive myself.”

  He closed her door, crossed to his side and got in, then fired the old race car’s engine to rumbling life.

  “Got a lot on your mind?” she inquired with seemingly casual interest as they followed the Lazy M’s long, meandering driveway. Hazel, her hair restrained by a scarf of poppy-colored silk sewn with sequins, waved at a few hands who had stepped out of the bunkhouse to admire the gleaming red classic auto.

  John’s cobalt eyes glanced at her for a moment before he answered.

  “Professionally speaking, not really. But personally speaking,” he admitted, “I sure have plenty on my mind.”

  “Now, now, Doctor, I don’t like that tone. Might get you sick.”

  “Get a horse, Doc!” one of the cowboys shouted as they drove past, and John tooted the horn at him.

  They were out on the main road now, and he raised his voice above the throbbing roar of the exhausts. “Hey, who’s the doctor here?” he objected playfully.

  “You’re the medical doctor. But you’re only thirty and I’m…well, a woman of a certain age. That makes me the doctor of philosophy.”

  His strong white teeth flashed in a grin. “I guess it does, at that. And don’t play coy with me, I know your age exactly. You told me yourself you were born the same year this car rolled off the assembly line. And you’re running just as strong.”

  “If you take Canyon Drive,” she suggested, “we’ll be able to see the entire valley at sunset. The view takes your breath away. I haven’t seen it for years from up in the mountains.”

  “Then Canyon Drive it is.” John downshifted and turned left onto a smaller asphalt road that ascended into the nearby granite peaks in a series of looping switchbacks.

  Hazel knew, of course, that it was Rebecca who weighed on the young man’s mind. But she also knew that men, unlike women, were not as comfortable discussing those feelings closest to their hearts. So she decided to come at her real topic indirectly.

  “I found out something very interesting today,” she remarked casually. “You see, one of my favorite charities is the Montana State Native American Scholarship Fund. They just sent me a wonderful letter thanking me for my annual contribution. And lo and behold, among the names on the letterhead, the honorary board members, I see a Dr. John Saville.”

  He nodded. “Yep. I’ve been on the board for five years now.”

  “Well, good for you. It’s a wonderful organization. Native Americans in Montana haven’t prospered as well as some tribes elsewhere. The McCallums, you know, inter-married with the Northern Cheyenne, and I’m one-eighth Indian myself. In fact, that’s where I get my stunning good looks. Do you have Indian blood, too?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I might as well have. I have strong childhood ties to the Blackfoot Tribe in the Bitterroot Valley. My dad spent the last years of his Army career at the fort near the reservation, then he retired in the area. I lived there from the time I turned ten years old until I went off to college. Most of my friends in school were from the reservation.”

  Hazel watched a cloud seem to cross his face as he alluded to those days. It’s not his friends he doesn’t like to talk about, she realized. He had mentioned his connection to the tribe with real pride in his voice. But he sure never volunteers any information about that father of his, she thought sympathetically. Children from happy families were usually eager to talk about their parents.

  By now Canyon Road had leveled out high above the verdant valley. Near at hand they could see canyon walls marked with striation; farther below, the valley meadows were brilliant with blue columbine and white Queen Anne’s lace.

  “Does Becky,” Hazel inquired with an exaggerated lack of guile, “know anything about your background?”

  “She knows my dad was career military.”

  “Is that all you’ve told her?”

  The peaceful look instantly deserted John’s handsome face, replaced by a resentful frown. “You kidding? If I told her much more, she’d run. She has a pretty high opinion of herself, and she isn’t shy about keeping me at a distance.”

  Hazel shook her head in amazement at this younger generation. “Oh, land love us. You two take the cake.”

  “Hell, she doesn’t have to worry about me. I’ll be happy to go out of my way to leave her precious freedom alone,” he insisted, angry hurt wor
king into his tone.

  “Maybe that’s your mistake,” Hazel put in mildly.

  But by now he was getting too worked up to notice.

  “Pretty girls are a dime a dozen,” he stormed on. “She doesn’t have to act like she’s the Hope Diamond or something. Serious, down-to-earth men like me are probably just too boring for—”

  “John,” Hazel cut in sharply.

  “Huh?”

  “Quit flapping your gums, would you, and listen for a minute?”

  A sheepish color touched his cheeks. “Yeah. I guess I’m getting a little carried away, aren’t I?”

  They’ve made love, Hazel gloated, knowing without having to ask. There’s a good chance here, after all, if I can just get these two young fools to shake off their blinders.

  “First of all,” she told him firmly, “all you’re doing right now is blowing off a lot of hot air. You don’t understand Becky any more than you understand a high-strung horse. And she doesn’t understand you. Second of all, you’re the man and you need to start acting like it. This is no time to go puny and be on the defensive. When it comes to love, rearguard actions won’t get it done. Not with a lass like Becky. You know the old saying—faint heart never won fair lady. And Becky is definitely a fair lady, wouldn’t you agree?”

  John mustered a woebegone smile. “‘The fairest flower in all the fields,’” he conceded.

  “Well, instead of quoting Shakespeare to me, lay the sweet nothings on her.”

  One of his hands balled into a fist on the steering wheel. “It’s more complicated than that, Hazel, she—”

  “Oh, complicate a cat’s tail, you gorgeous idiot. When you’re neither up the well nor down, you must make a move. Fight or show yellow, young man.”

  “Maybe I’m just yellow, then,” he confessed coldly.

  “Uh-huh, sure you are. I s’pose the man who carried that injured schoolteacher up the side of Copper Mountain was a coward?”

  “That was different.”

  “How? It showed what kind of mettle you have in you when push comes to shove. As my great-granddad Jake McCallum would’ve put it, you’ll do to take along.”

  By now the day was waning, and a copper sunset flared in the west. They were headed back down into the valley.

  “Hazel,” John said after a few minutes of reflective silence, “you are a doctor of philosophy. I’ll be thinking about what you’ve said. I don’t disagree with you. It’s just…things are always simpler in theory than they are in fact.”

  Hazel nodded. “I know that,” she conceded. “A cattle drive is easy to plot on the map but a hell-buster on the trail. But you have to ask yourself one question and only one—Is she worth the effort? When you have the answer to that one, you can go forward.”

  He was silent. His jaw tightened as they turned into the driveway of the Lazy M in the gathering twilight.

  “Thank you for the ride,” she said as John hopped out and went around to open her door.

  “Be patient with Becky,” she counseled him by way of a parting injunction. “She has a streak of Irish temper, so take her unpleasant comments with a grain of salt.”

  “Tell me, Dr. McCallum,” John quipped, “do I take that grain of salt on an empty or full stomach?”

  They both shared a smile as Hazel opened the side door of her sprawling ranch house. She planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

  “Just try to relax and be as warmly humorous around her as you are with me,” she assured him. “Open up a little and let her know you aren’t who and what she thinks you are.”

  “I will try,” he promised. “But I’m not optimistic.”

  “There are always other fillies in the field, Doc. It’s you who has to decide. Is she worth it? Answer that, and the rest is easy.”

  He nodded. The look in his eyes grew pensive, then hardened into an emotion that looked to Hazel very much like resolve.

  Eleven

  Rebecca had spent much of Wednesday evening fretting about the brief fragment of phone conversation she’d heard outside John’s office door: Look, sure I can make it this weekend. No problem. But please don’t call me at the office. You’ve got my home number, haven’t you?

  Barbara Wallant’s talk about a celebration in Deer Lodge last weekend; John’s worn-out appearance on Monday morning; his secret weekends; and now the overheard phone call twisted her heart dry. That he’d made love to her after a hedonistic weekend with Louise—or anyone else—left her torn between sheer outrage and emotional devastation.

  Plagued by visions of withered spinsterhood, she had finally drifted off to sleep long after midnight. But her sleep was troubled by unpleasant dreams. The one that disturbed her most took place in the office.

  In her dream, O’Neil was once again taking their photo for the Gazette. Only this time when Rebecca glanced up at the X-ray on the screen, it turned into a torrid photo of John and Louise, naked, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  With the dream still plaguing her thoughts, she drove to work on Thursday morning in a foul mood, ready for a clash with her employer. Instead, to her surprise and relief, John’s manner and behavior toward her—even in front of Lois—was affectionate, respectful, even deferential.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he greeted both of them cheerfully the very moment he showed up at 8:30 a.m.

  Instead of going right back into his private office, as he usually did, to read medical journals and await the day’s first patient, he remained up front to chat with them.

  “Which one of you picked these?” he inquired, nodding toward the wicker baskets brimming with fresh pink-and-white azaleas.

  “Becky,” Lois answered promptly. “Hazel calls her the flower girl because she’s always got to have them close by. She always leaves a little early to pick the flowers for the office.”

  “They come from Hazel’s meadows,” Rebecca put in. “I asked her if it’s okay.”

  His smile and sexy, intensely blue eyes, seemed to drink her in. She had worn a rose silk blouse with a deep slit skirt that revealed a shapely calf—shapely in her employer’s opinion, judging from his prolonged glance.

  “Thank you, Becky, they’re beautiful,” he assured her, still holding that charming, warm smile. “Not that this office is lacking for beauty.”

  She flushed at the unexpected compliment. It was probably just banal lip service from the mouth of a gigolo, but still, her thirsty soul cried out for his flirtations.

  “Well, now,” commented an equally surprised Lois after their boss went back to his office. “What was that all about?”

  “Better ask him,” Rebecca said, deflecting the question. She was busy at her computer station, calling up medical histories on all of the day’s appointments. It gave her an excuse to avoid Lois’s scrutiny. But in fact she still felt so rattled by John’s charm just now that she could hardly focus on the screen.

  “I don’t need to ask him,” Lois declared with assurance. “I know all about boys, remember? I’m surrounded by them. You ask me, our brilliant young surgeon has either won the lottery or he’s in love.”

  “You can conclude that from one kind remark?” Rebecca challenged, her skepticism genuine.

  “No, it was more in the look he gave you, Becky. You know, the famous look that speaks volumes.”

  “You’re just an incurable romantic,” Rebecca scoffed. “And considering the kind of guy you’re married to, I can see why. You two just celebrated your twentieth anniversary, and Merrill still treats you as if you guys just started dating. Candy, flowers, holds the door for you.”

  “I’ll keep him around,” Lois agreed. But Rebecca’s obvious diversion had not fooled her. “Tuesday,” she added, “when you two took the day off—did you perhaps spend it together?”

  “Ask me no questions,” Rebecca demurred, “and I’ll tell you no lies.”

  A wide smile divided the older woman’s pleasant face. “Oh, I think my question’s been adequately answered, thank you.”

  A few m
inutes later, however, Rebecca felt her new, improved mood back-pedaling a bit. She had just noticed who today’s 2:00 p.m. appointment was—Janet Longchamps, a familiar and unwelcome name from her high school days.

  Janet and Louise Wallant were both seniors when Rebecca was a junior, the two of them tight as ticks. Like Louise, Janet came from a wealthy family, her father being one of the state’s real estate mandarins. Janet had gone off to an exclusive college back East, earning her MRS. degree when she married a wealthy product-liability lawyer. Divorced after only one year of marriage, childless, she had returned to Mystery Valley to lead whatever social scene there was in cattle country.

  There was no file under her name on the computer menu, Rebecca quickly verified. Meaning that this was her first appointment with John.

  “Did Janet Longchamps say what her problem was when she made an appointment?” she asked Lois. “Her curable problem, I mean?”

  “Nary a peep. Just requested a consultation. Maybe she wants her nose lifted higher into the air,” Lois joked. “Or her nose cones.”

  They both laughed, for Janet’s trademark combination of low-cut bodice and push-up bra left little to the imagination.

  But Janet’s crassness aside, the appointment niggled at Rebecca. John was neither a G.P. nor a gynecologist, but an expensive surgeon. Yet, it sure seemed as if plenty of young, healthy, rich women suddenly wanted to “consult” with him.

  That’s not his fault, she reminded herself. He’s rich and good-looking, so naturally some of the available women are drawn to him like flies to syrup. The woman who marries him will have to have the patience of a martyr.

  The woman who marries him. Those words now troubled her more than she wanted to admit. She had assumed, upon first meeting him, that he would make some woman a fine husband when he finally met the woman he wanted.

  Unfortunately for her, it wouldn’t be her. She still had to remain cool and unentangled. His charm today flared her secret hopes. Nonetheless, she lectured herself sternly, you can’t start expecting miracles every time he smiles sweetly at you. And you definitely can’t freak out every time some willowy socialite like Janet requests a “consultation.” He’s single, she told herself again and again. You have no hold on him whatsoever.