Paige appeared through the opening door and she turned to the other woman. “Leslie, cut it out.”
Suddenly, it was all business. The cuff was wrapped around my arm. Over my shirt. The pink-haired woman—Leslie, I guessed—grinned at me and shrugged. “Was just checking things out.”
I looked up at Paige, feeling a little confused about the way this appointment had gone so far. Color was climbing her cheeks and she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Vitals normal?” she asked Leslie. So far, she hadn’t actually said hello. Of course, neither had I.
“Quite impressive,” Leslie said with a less than clinical smile.
“Stop it,” Paige hissed.
Leslie left the room and Paige stood still for a moment, rubbing her forehead with a hand. Then she took a breath and looked up at me. “I owe you an apology. I’m really sorry about all that.”
I wasn’t totally sure what she was talking about, but figured ‘all that’ was Leslie. “Just doing her job, right?”
Paige’s blush drained. “Actually no. Leslie isn’t the nurse, she’s a PA—my partner here. And the only reason she was in here with you was because I made the very dire mistake of telling her about …” Paige trailed off and dropped my gaze.
“About?” I offered helpfully. There were a few things she might say here, but the glimmer of hopefulness I’d been feeling the night before had returned, and I wanted to keep her on the spot for a minute.
“About things,” she said, blowing out a breath and running a hand through her hair, pulling a bit forward, as if to hide her face. “About the kiss,” she whispered this last part. “And she’s my best friend, and she just got a little excited because it’s been a while since I’ve been, you know, interested in anyone. I mean, not interested, but since I’ve kissed anyone or had any kind of encounter or whatever—not that we had an encounter exactly—oh god, that wasn’t the right word, but hopefully you know what I mean?”
A smile had begun to creep across my mouth as she’d stammered and babbled, and now I couldn’t help the grin I was giving her. “Sure, I know what you mean.”
“Anyway, she’s just totally inappropriate, and I’d totally understand if you were to file a malpractice claim or some kind of ethics complaint or something against us. She’s really a good practitioner, just over involved in my life, maybe, and I’m really sorry about that. I hope she didn’t embarrass you.”
“Paige. It’s fine.” I did wonder what Paige had told her best friend that had the woman wanting to strip off my shirt, though. Was it supposed to be some kind of evaluation of the goods? Did she want to approve me for Paige? I thought I could measure up. I worked hard to stay in shape.
“It’s really not. I’m totally embarrassed. First I attack you last night, and now Leslie tries to get you to strip …”
“In fairness, I kind of attacked you. And also, I think she just wanted to see my arms.”
“If she could have figured out a way to get your pants off, she would have. That’s how she met her husband.”
I laughed. “Her husband was a patient?”
She nodded.
“Was she evaluating him on your behalf too?”
“No,” she said, her voice lighter now. “That was all on her own.”
“Wow,” I said. “I guess it’s good it worked out for them or you might’ve had one of those lawsuits, huh?”
“I guess so.” Paige went to the tray at the side of the room and picked up the syringe. “I am sorry about last night though, Cormac. I shouldn’t have done that.”
I wanted to leap off the exam table and cross the small room, pull her into my arms and assure her it hadn’t been one-sided. But what would be the point? She was leaving. And if it was hard to be around her now, it would be much harder if I let things progress at all. So I stayed still. “You didn’t do anything, Paige. We are both adults. We were both there.”
She glanced at me and then tested the syringe, squirting a drop from the tip as she held it in her hand. “Well, that’s nice of you to say.” She approached me with the syringe. “Ready?”
“Sure.” I clamped my teeth as she gave me the shot. And then she was putting the syringe away and moving toward the door.
“Well,” she said, maintaining a distance, both professionally and physically. “I guess I’ll see you next week.”
I knew it was very likely we’d be seeing each other sooner than that around the neighborhood, but it seemed important to her to keep the veneer of professionalism in place now. “See you next week,” I agreed.
Leslie waggled her eyebrows at me as I emerged from the room to leave, and I heard Paige hissing at her, “quit that!”
I told myself none of it meant anything, and forced down the little swirl of excitement that was trying to come to life inside me.
Unethical Shirtlessness
Paige
Seeing Cormac at my office had been … well, it would have been hard enough even if Leslie hadn’t posed as our nurse and decided that taking his vitals should mean exploring his vital equipment on my behalf. I was just glad I’d gotten in there when I had. Cormac was probably smart enough to figure out he didn’t need to strip to his boxers just to have his temperature taken, but he was also a nice enough guy that he might just have done it because Leslie asked him to.
As it was, I’d stood outside the exam room door for a few seconds trying to swallow down the embarrassment I felt over having kissed him and then run away the night before, and trying to combat the nerves bouncing around inside me at the thought of seeing him now.
He was a patient. That had to be all.
And he’d been perfectly nice during the administration of the shot. Perfectly understanding. Perfectly … god, he was perfect. I’d tried so hard not to look into those beautiful glowing eyes, not to remember what the soft scruff of his face had felt like against mine, the way his kiss had melted everything inside me and thawed the years-old ice caps that had grown over everything feminine or sexual I possessed.
I liked everything about him.
What I didn’t like was the way one kiss had me questioning things I already knew were true. I needed a bigger place, more opportunity. My sister Addy had known it since we were kids—Singletree was a dead end. When I’d married Adam, I’d thought small town was just who I was. But being a full-fledged adult and still painfully single in the same tiny town where you grew up brought reality into glaring focus. Whatever I needed in my life, whatever I was meant to find … it wasn’t here.
But Cormac was.
Still, I couldn’t second-guess all my carefully built plans for a guy who told me flat out he wasn’t available. No matter how his eyes twinkled when he talked to me, and no matter how my insides clenched up and burned for him.
“I managed to make four rounds today,” I told my mother on the phone as I stood in my front window looking out at the evening street, the scent of just-baked cakes floating around me. “I whipped them up as soon as I got home from work.”
“From scratch, right, Paigey? My name will be on those cakes.”
I eyed the Betty Crocker boxes peeking out of the trash can in the corner of the kitchen. “Of course, Mom.” Who had time for scratch baking? “I’ll bring them over tomorrow to put in the freezer.”
“Good, good,” she said. She went on about something else, something about the auction and the cake walk, but my attention was no longer on my mother’s voice.
Cormac, the girls, and Luke were all out in the front yard. The girls were running from one side of the yard to the other, with Luke leaping happily at their sides, and Cormac was … convulsing? He was just in front of the house on the walkway, his hands to his face, and his body shaking. Was it a seizure? Was he in trouble? Adrenaline shot through me.
“Mom, I have to go.” I hung up on my mother—something I’d surely hear about later, and bolted out the front door, Bobo on my heels and my practitioner’s concern at the front of my mind. But even before I’d left my own si
de of the street, I realized my mistake. He wasn’t having a medical emergency. He was sneezing.
Over and over again.
I thought about turning around, hoping he hadn’t seen me flying toward him. But Bobo was already there, greeting Luke with tails wagging and noses touching. And the girls were waving at me. Well, Maddie was. I had the sense Taylor wasn’t my biggest fan.
As I approached, Cormac kept right on sneezing, eventually lowering himself to the front steps of his house. He glanced up at me with watery eyes, and then sneezed again.
“Hi girls,” I called, crossing to stand in front of Cormac. “You okay?”
He sneezed. “Not really.”
“Not getting better, are they?”
He sneezed. “You could say that.”
We both waited for the next sneeze, but it seemed like maybe he was done for the time being. He wiped his face with a Kleenex and stuffed it into his jeans. “Man,” he said, under his breath. “Any chance these shots are going to kick in like tomorrow?”
The girls were now sitting in the middle of the yard, both dogs galloping around them as they laughed and shrieked. I wanted to tell him yes, that a miracle would arrive in the form of allergy relief. But it wasn’t likely. “I doubt it, Cormac.” I didn’t want to say it because I knew what this was leading to.
“I can barely be in my own house,” he said, his voice full of regret.
I dropped down to sit next to him and tilted my head his way. “You thinking you need to give Luke back?” I kept my voice low so the girls wouldn’t hear.
He dropped my gaze, staring at the pavement between his feet as his elbows rested on his knees. “Shit. This will devastate them.”
I watched the girls playing with the dogs. He was right. Their happiness was so clear it almost felt like I could reach up over their heads and snatch a piece of that joy for myself. “Maybe there’s another way,” I said, having no idea what I was about to suggest.
“I don’t know,” Cormac said. He looked across the lawn at his daughters. “It feels like I just have no hope of giving them what they need. This is the first time they’ve really seemed like happy little girls—the way they should be—in years. They love that damned dog. And I’m about to rip him out of their lives just because I can’t seem to stop sneezing.” He dropped his eyes again, his hands going to his face. “Fuck. I’m fucking this all up.”
My heart squeezed in my chest, and before I could think better of it, I laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not,” I said, my voice low as my hand rested against the solid warmth of him. I wished I could take the clear pain he was feeling away somehow. Not just because I was trained to do exactly that as a doctor, but because I found I cared about this man. I wanted to see him happy. “You’re doing a great job, but the girls have to respect that your job is to take care of all of you. Yourself too.”
“By taking away their best friend.”
I watched Luke and Bobo gallop around the yard together, stopping now and then to play wrestle. “Hey,” I said, an idea coming into my head. “I have a thought that might work.”
He dropped his hands and turned his head to look at me. I realized my hand was still on his shoulder, and I quickly pulled it back to my own lap. “I’m all ears. How can I avoid making them hate me?”
“What if Luke stayed with me?”
He frowned.
“The girls can come over and see him whenever they want, or I’ll bring him over every night to play in the yard.”
“That’s ridiculous, you have enough responsibilities.” He shook his head.
“I don’t, actually,” I said, feeling like I was about to admit something grave and humiliating. “All I’m really responsible for is myself. Well, and Bobo. My nights are open, my weekends are empty. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I don’t have a hell of a lot going on.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re leaving though,” he said, addressing the big fact that made my plan less ideal.
I sighed. Right. I was leaving. “Yeah, but not for a month or so. That might give the shots time to kick in. Maybe by the time I go, you’ll tolerate Luke better.”
“Maybe,” he said, gazing at the girls again. He turned his head back to me, assessing me with those startling eyes. “You sure about this?”
“It would be my pleasure,” I assured him, a little flip of excitement turning over inside me at the thought of Cormac having a reason to come see me every day, of being part of his life. I tried to stamp that feeling out, knowing I was being ridiculous, but the sparks of feeling were spreading like flames.
“Okay,” he said. “Can I bring him over later, after the girls go to bed? I’ll explain it to them tonight and let them say goodbye.”
“Or I can come get him,” I said lightly, trying to keep the sparks from igniting into a full blown excitement inferno. “It’d be hard for you to leave the house once the girls are in bed, I’m sure.”
“Right,” Cormac said, and he smiled at me with such gratitude that I found it hard to breathe.
I. Was. Leaving. I tried to remind myself of that. And Cormac didn’t want anything anyway.
I stood up. “I’ll be home baking thirty thousand cakes. Come over whenever.”
“Cake?” Cormac looked oddly intrigued.
“Do you like cake?” I asked him, smiling as he got to his feet.
“Depends. What kind of cake?”
“Boring vanilla. I’m just helping my mom bake the actual cake so she can do all the magic with her fancy frosting and decorations for the cakewalk at the festival.”
“You don’t have any plans for lemon cake, though, right?” He looked hopeful, his face tilting up slightly like an eager little kid.
I shouldn’t. I was leaving and he didn’t want anything more, and baking a cake for him was definitely in the realm of more. I was pretty sure that was written somewhere in some desperate girls dating guide or something. “I could make plans for a lemon cake,” I said, my voice lower than I’d intended it to be.
“Never mind,” he said, and then cleared his throat. He sneezed a couple times, turning away from me. “Pretend I didn’t mention it. I get a little distracted when I think about lemon cake.”
“And kangaroos,” Maddie said, having stepped up close enough to hear this last statement.
“Kangaroos?” I asked, unsure where this was heading.
“Why are you here again?” Taylor asked me, taking up her father’s other side. Her tone was not completely friendly. Or actually, not friendly at all. I almost mentioned the plan for Luke as a defense strategy, but realized it was definitely not my place to tell them about that.
“I … uh,” a seven-year-old girl had me feeling very flustered and out of place.
“Taylor,” Cormac said, his voice harsh. “That’s very rude.”
“She’s always coming over here, doesn’t she have a house?” Taylor seemed dedicated to making me feel out of place, and it was working like a charm.
“I was just heading home, actually,” I said.
“Here,” Cormac said, holding out his phone. “Let me get your number.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, texting myself from his outstretched phone. I was too distracted by Taylor’s evil eye to let myself think about what it meant to give him my number. “Thanks for letting Bobo play.” I didn’t wait to be told off again, so I lifted a hand to say goodbye and walked across the lawn to slip my fingers under Bobo’s collar and led him home.
Despite Taylor’s less than welcoming words, I already knew I was going to be up late… baking a lemon cake. Maybe I’d make some sugar cookies too. I had a dog-shaped cookie cutter somewhere.
As I got busy in the kitchen, channeling my mother as best I could, I pushed away the thoughts roving through my mind, questioning my intentions. Was I really trying to win an entire family’s affection with sugar?
Certainly not.
Except … yeah, maybe I was.
Turtles Suck
Cormac
&nbs
p; As I put the girls to bed that night, it was hard to focus as my mind raced around things it had no business considering.
Paige.
Her legs in her running tights.
The way she’d looked at her office, all that thick hair pulled up into a slick ponytail, her white coat inspiring some fantasies I didn’t even know I’d had.
Her offer to help with Luke.
Was I getting in too deep? Was letting Paige take Luke going to entwine our lives in a way that would make it even more painful when she left? This family already knew what it was to lose a mother—a wife, a partner. And while I wasn’t fooling myself into thinking that letting Paige foster my dog was akin to marriage, I had two little people with somewhat less evolved emotions to worry about.
And Maddie fell in love fast. I wondered if she got that from me. Taylor’s suspicion and skepticism had certainly come from Linda, who was always cautious and careful with her emotions. It had taken me almost a year to convince her to go out with me. By then, of course, I was already completely in love with her.
Still, I didn’t see another solution for the allergy issue. I couldn’t live like this anymore, and I couldn’t rip this dog away from my girls. Not now.
I sat on the end of Taylor’s bed where both girls were snuggled together on the pillows, their sleepy eyes and rosy cheeks tugging at every single heartstring I had.
“Story,” Taylor said, clearly having had enough of me sitting quietly trying to figure out what to say.
I cleared my throat, holding the Fancy Nancy book in my hands. “We’ll have a story, definitely,” I said. “But I wanted to talk to you guys about something first.”
Taylor’s eyebrows rose, her eyes narrowing. She looked so much like Linda I almost broke down right there.
Maddie just continued looking sleepy, though somewhat more interested.
I put the book down and scooted closer, almost afraid my news might send them bolting out of the bed.
“You guys know I’ve been having a tough time since Luke came to live with us, right?”
Second Chance Spring Page 8
