“Are you still hung up on this near-death thing?” Ben said

“It’s not a hang-up. After reading about other people’s experiences, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s real. So don’t tell me I’m talking rubbish,” Geena shot back.

“I wouldn’t dare, but there are facts you should be aware of…. Apparently when the brain is starved for oxygen the neurons that deal with vision fire at random, creating the sensation of bright light. Because more neurons are at the center of our visual field and fewer at the edges, you get a tunneling effect.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“I’m trying to help you understand. All these so-called paranormal incidents can be explained scientifically.”

She slung her bag over her shoulder. “Science doesn’t have all the answers, Dr. Ben Matthews. Open your mind. You might be surprised at what flows in.”

And then she was gone, hurrying around the corner. Ben gazed after her, shaking his head. Just when he thought he was beginning to know her, just when they were beginning to connect, some damn thing would blow up in their faces. If it wasn’t her modeling, it was her near-death experience. Baby-sitting for a relative stranger, believing in the paranormal…studying algebra?

Who the hell was Geena Hanson, anyway?

Dear Reader,

Tales of near-death experiences have long fascinated me. Whether you believe they are a spiritual journey or merely the result of a lack of oxygen to the brain, there is no doubt that for many who undergo this profound experience, it is life altering. Among other things, love, in all its forms, becomes a reason for existence. As a romance writer, this seems to me only natural.

When supermodel Geena Hanson experiences near death after collapsing on a runway during a fashion show, she’s no longer content with her materialistic lifestyle. Change is difficult and scary, but her newfound reverence for life helps her grow. When she falls in love with Dr. Ben Matthews, their opposing beliefs cause them to challenge each other on every level. Their conflict comes to a head over a young boy with cancer, whom they’ve both grown to love.

Child of Her Dreams is the second of three linked books about the Hanson sisters of Hainesville, Washington. Previously readers met Geena’s eldest sister, Erin, in Child of His Heart.

I love to hear from readers. Please write me at P.O. Box 234, Point Roberts, Washington 98281-0234, or send me an e-mail at www.superauthors.com.

Joan Kilby

Child of Her Dreams
Joan Kilby

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While researching Child of Her Dreams I read, watched and listened to everything I could find on near-death experiences. Two items were particularly helpful: the book Transformed by the Light: Life after Near-Death Experiences by Cherie Sutherland, and the BBC series The Human Body, done by Robert Winston.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

“BREATHE IN, signorina.”

Geena sucked in her stomach, and the Italian seamstress wielded needle and thread to take a tuck at the waist of her ivory silk creation. Holding her breath made Geena feel even fainter; she hadn’t eaten for two days in preparation for the launch of a new collection of Milan’s hottest designer.

Throbbing techno music swirled through the dressing room as models returned from the catwalk, hurriedly stripping off one set of clothes in exchange for another. Geena’s tightly strung nerves jittered with the warring effects of too many pills and too little food and sleep. She reached for another cigarette.

Lydia, her agent, glided over and ran a hand down Geena’s back, pinching as though testing for flab. Penciled eyebrows lowered under a fringe of jet-black hair. “You look…fabulous, darling.”

Geena tweaked the strands of her waifish coif and shook her head in self-disgust. “I need to lose five pounds before the Paris show.”

“You seem on edge, Geena.” Lydia eased the cigarette from between Geena’s fingers and took a drag. “I’ve got plenty of girls for Paris if you want some time off at a Swiss spa.”

Geena’s heart raced at the thinly veiled suggestion that she wasn’t needed. “I’m fine. Honestly.”

“Think about it,” Lydia said, blowing smoke over her shoulder as she drifted off to another client.

Geena’s worried gaze followed her agent in the mirror. If Lydia wasn’t insisting on her coming to Paris, if Lydia wanted her to take time out to go to a spa, Geena must be overweight. Maybe even on her way out.

Glancing at her image, she saw haunted blue eyes shrouded in gray and purple eyeshadow. Maybe Lydia wanted to replace her with some dewy-skinned teenager. At twenty-eight Geena was getting old to be a supermodel.

She was aware suddenly that her breathing was shallow and her rapidly beating heart had taken on an irregular rhythm. Please, no, not palpitations now; she was due on the runway in seconds.

She gulped air, trying to fill her lungs, scrabbled in her tote bag for a vial of pills and swallowed two with a gulp of mineral water. This was crazy. Forget Paris; after Milan she needed a break. After pushing her feet into a pair of four-inch heels, she made her way to the stage entrance.

The master of ceremonies detained her with a hand on her arm. “You okay, signorina? Your face, she is blanca—white.”

Geena ignored the spinning in her head and gave him a brilliant false smile. “I’m fine.”

She willed herself forward with an exaggerated sway of her hips and emerged into a blaze of klieg lights and popping camera flashes. Beneath the music and blinding lights she was uneasily aware of her erratic heart. For whole seconds she couldn’t feel a beat. Then, just when she was sure she was about to die, blood thundered through the chambers as her heart raced to make up time.

She wanted to turn around right then, but the designer had paid big money for her to make an appearance. Smile, Gee. You can do it.

Midway down the catwalk, she faltered as pain traveled along both arms and a massive hand seemed to reach into her chest to squeeze her heart. She stopped dead and half turned, as if to go back to the dressing room. The next instant, everything went black.

Geena drifted upward, confusedly wondering where she was, what was happening. Below, a model lay facedown on the catwalk, long limbs sprawled awkwardly. A crowd had gathered around her, and people were shouting, gesticulating. Someone rolled the model over. With a jolt, Geena saw her own face staring unseeingly at her.

She was high above the room, floating among the klieg lights. Odd, she couldn’t feel their heat. With detached interest she contemplated the hysterical urgency of the people trying to revive her. Some of the other models were crying. Excited shouts for a doctor yielded a small man in a black suit pushing his way through the crowd. Help was on its way, but it was too late.

She was dead.

The babble of voices formed a wall of sound that she turned away from, wanting peace. A tunnel appeared before her, and she went into the cavernous darkness, marveling at the soft, warm atmosphere. Then she was moving, traveling faster and faster through the darkness amid strange whooshing noises that came from nowhere. A pinprick of brilliant white light came into view. As she came closer the light grew larger and brighter, like the light of a trillion suns.

The light was good; she yearned toward it and eagerly allowed herself to be drawn in, for the light was love. Love and joy transcendent, bliss greater than anything she’d ever known. She felt incandescent, glowing with love and peace like the filament of a million-watt lightbulb. Was this a dream? Had doctors pumped some reviving drug into her veins? Perhaps any second she would wake up.

The light vanished.

She was in a small room with pale-green walls. Brown vinyl settees stood catercorner to an end table strewn with magazines and comic books. On one wall was a poster of a giant tooth being scrubbed by a cartoon dolphin, and in another corner stood an empty coatrack.

Geena looked again, and on one settee sat a woman reading a tattered copy of Good Housekeeping. She had long straight honey-blond hair parted in the middle, and her slim figure was clad in a seventies-style lime-green pantsuit.

The woman shut the magazine. Eyes glistening, she rose and reached out. “Geena. My baby.”

“Mom?” Tears came to Geena as she was folded in loving arms. She was only three years old when Sonja Hanson had died, but deep in Geena’s heart and mind was the indelible memory of her mother’s scent, the loving timbre of her voice, the safety of her embrace. “Mom, is it really you?”

“It’s really me.” Sonja wiped away the moisture below each shadowed eye with a gentle swipe of her thumb. “Look at you, all grown up. You’re so beautiful.”

“Oh, Mom, we missed you so much—” Her voice broke. “All those years…”

Tears bled from her mother’s eyes. “I missed you, too. You and your sisters. Don’t cry, darling. Your father and I went to a better place. Truly.”

Drawing back a little, Geena glanced dubiously around the little room. “Is this Heaven? It looks like a dentist’s waiting room.”

Sonja laughed softly. “No, it isn’t Heaven.”

“Then…oh, no, I’ve gone to the other place! Was it the pills? I swear I was going to get off them right after the Paris season.”

Her mother shook her head, smiling sadly. “The pills helped send you to me, but we’re not in the other place, as you put it. It doesn’t exist.”

“Limbo, then?”

Sonja smiled and took her by the hand. “Come, sit down and we’ll talk.”

Geena realized then that although they were communicating, no words had been uttered. She sat with her mother on the settee, hands linked with Sonja’s, and let her thoughts flow outward. “Where’s Dad? When can I see him?”

“I’m sorry, darling, that won’t be possible. It’s not your time.”

“What do you mean? Aren’t I staying here with you?” Now that she’d found her mother after being without her for so many years, losing her again seemed unbearable.

“I’m sorry,” Sonja repeated. “You have important work left to do in life.”

“Modeling?” Geena said bitterly. “It killed me.”

Sonja brushed her fingers through Geena’s wispy auburn bangs, as if she couldn’t help touching her child. “A little glamour can lift people’s spirits if not taken to extremes, but I didn’t mean modeling.”

Before her mother could say what she did mean, Geena had to ask the question that had preyed on her mind her whole life, even though she flinched from the painful memories of her parents’ deaths and the aftermath of that dreadful night. “Mom, there’s something I’ve always wondered about. Was Dad…drunk the night of the crash?”

“No,” Sonja said firmly. “A dog leaped in front of the car. Your father swerved to avoid it and hit a patch of black ice. We skidded and crashed into a tree.”

“I knew it. I mean, not about the dog, but we— Kelly, Erin, Gran and I—knew she couldn’t be telling the truth.” Sonja lifted her eyebrows, and Geena explained. “Greta Vogler planted the idea in everyone’s mind that Dad went off the road because he was drunk.”

Sonja let out a deep sigh and squeezed Geena’s hands. “Try not to let Greta bother you. Forgive her if you can.”

“But how, when she—”

“Trust me, Geena, darling.”

Geena couldn’t understand her mother’s forbearance, but neither did she want to waste precious time talking about Greta Vogler. Heaven was simply being reunited with her mother. Geena could still hardly believe she was here, talking together as if they were sisters.

“I’m afraid it’s time for you to leave,” Sonja told her, as if aware of Geena’s thoughts. “You should go back to Hainesville.”

“Hainesville? What on earth would I do there?” Yet even as she scoffed, the thought of returning to her childhood home filled her soul with a promise of peace. “Maybe a visit would do me good.”

“Live there. People need you.”

Geena laughed. “Me?”

“You have a talent for helping others. When you were little, you took in every stray that came your way.”

“Mom, that was long ago. Besides, I’m dead. How can I help anyone? I want to stay here with you. I really want to see Dad. And Gramps.”

“It’s not your time, Geena.” Her mother hugged her again, then rose. “You must go back.”

“No!” Geena panicked as she realized her mother really meant it. “Mom! Where are you going?”

Sonja opened a door on the far side of the room. Through the crack Geena glimpsed a rambling flower garden crisscrossed with swaths of lush green grass. In the fragrant center, a fountain burbled.

“Mom, take me with you. Don’t leave me!” Geena sobbed, as desperate as a three-year-old watching a coffin being lowered into the ground. “Mommy!”

Her mother returned to wrap her once more in her warm embrace. The light surrounded them both. Love, ineffable and infinite, poured through Geena as she clung to her mother.

“Geena, sweetheart, be brave. We will be together again someday, but for now you must go back.” Sonja’s voice was gentle, but again firm. “A child needs you. You’re going to be a mother.”

For the first time since Geena had arrived in this place, she felt utter disbelief. “I can’t have a baby. I haven’t had a period in over a year.”

“Goodbye, darling,” Sonja said, slowly backing away. “Tell Gran that Gramps misses her. But he doesn’t mind the wait. He has all the time in the universe.” With that, she went through the door and disappeared around a cluster of flowering shrubs.

Geena found herself moving through the tunnel at dizzying speed, away from the light. The light faded to a pinprick. Once again, everything went black.

CHAPTER ONE

IN A SMALL VILLAGE in the western highlands of Guatemala, Dr. Ben Matthews listened to the agitated outpouring of a Mayan Indian woman who clutched her ailing baby boy to her breast. Ben understood only a few words of her native language, but the source of her worry was unmistakable. “I’ll have a look at him.”

He rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt, gently took the child from the mother’s arms and laid him on the examining table. The baby’s hot, dry skin, sunken eyes and dry mouth all pointed to severe dehydration. Using a combination of sign language, formal Spanish and a smattering of the local dialect, Ben questioned the mother. She confirmed his suspicions; the child had vomiting and diarrhea.

“Dysentery,” Ben explained. “He needs fluids.”

The mother nodded mutely, then watched anxiously as Ben prepared an electrolytic solution and hooked up an IV to let it drip into the baby. The poor tyke was too sick to cry at the needle or to laugh when Ben tickled him under the chin. Ben’s heart clenched. Two years of treating people ravaged by disease, malnutrition and poverty had not inured him to the heartbreak of a high infant mortality rate. This little boy had a chance, at least.

Ben gave the mother several packets of electrolytic solution. “Mix with boiled water,” he said, miming what she was meant to do with them. “Baby drink.”

She nodded again, then wrapped her baby and placed him in a colorful woven sling across her back. With a grateful smile that needed no words to be understood, she took her leave. From the doorway Ben watched her bare feet squelch through mud till she got to the hard-packed dirt road on a journey of perhaps many miles to her village.

Turning, he glanced at his watch, and his spirits lifted when he saw that the bus from Guatemala City would arrive soon. Eddie, his younger brother, had just finished his internship and at Ben’s urging was going to replace him here at the clinic funded by International Médicos.

Ben strolled through the narrow streets lined with two-story adobe houses to meet the bus, greeting villagers with a smile and a wave, sometimes pausing to ask after a sick relative. Underlying his eagerness to return to the United States was a sense of loss at the prospect of leaving the town and its people behind.

The gray clouds building overhead distracted him from the excitement of seeing Eddie. July was smack in the middle of the rainy season, and this year had been unusually wet. Ben’s main concern was the mosquitoes the river bred and the diseases they carried—malaria and dengue fever. But there were other dangers. The river was already high and threatening to flood its banks.

The bus arrived in a festive blare of marimba music spilling through open windows and lurched to a halt outside the cantina. Passengers spilled out. Ben searched the assemblage—Mayan Indians, Ladinos, backpacking travelers—and the odd goat—for his brother.

Eddie stepped off at last, dazed, his arms wrapped around a duffel bag and a backpack slung over his shoulders. His blond hair was mussed and his clothes wrinkled, as though he’d slept in them, which Ben knew he probably had.

“Eddie, over here,” Ben called, striding toward him.

Eddie saw him and dropped his duffel bag in the dirt so that Ben could embrace him in a fierce hug.

“Great to see you, buddy,” Ben said, leaving one arm draped over his brother’s shoulder. “How was the trip?”

“Interesting.” Eddie pulled a downy chicken feather from his hair. He looked at it, then at Ben, and grinned. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

“Believe it, bro.” He ruffled his brother’s hair. “Better cut that mop or you’ll find worse than chicken feathers in there.”

“Oh, yeah?” Eddie punched him in the ribs. “What’s with the face rug? Wait’ll Mom sees that.”

Ben stroked his carefully clipped mustache-and-goatee combo, smiling through his fingers. “I kind of like it. Gives me a certain polish, don’t you think?”

He picked up the duffel bag and started walking to the clinic, weaving through rusted-out cars, bicycles, mule-drawn carts and pedestrians. “How are Mom and Dad? Did you get to Austin to see them before you left?”

“Yep. They send their love. They’re looking forward to having you Stateside again, but aren’t too happy with you for dragging me down to this mountain wilderness.”

Ben gazed around him, at the Spanish colonial architecture, the Mayans in their colorful native dress, the pine-covered Sierra Madre. “I’ll never forget my stint here. It’s been a fantastic experience that I wanted to share with you.”

“I’m not complaining,” Eddie said. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“Dr. Ben! Dr. Ben!” A ragged group of five or six children ran alongside the two men as they moved through the crowd.

“Hey, kids.” Ben broke his stride and gestured to his brother. “Dr. Eddie,” he said, then added a few words in the local dialect.

“Dr. Eddie!” The children crowded around him, touching his hand or his sleeve. Then they laughed wildly and ran away down the street, scrawny dogs chasing at their heels.

“What did you tell them?” Eddie asked with a wary grin.

“That you were my brother.”

“That’s obviously a recommendation. I hope I can live up to your reputation.”

Ben eyed him with affection. He almost wished he hadn’t urged Eddie to come here; he’d missed him, and now their separation would be prolonged further. “I’ve gotten attached to these people, especially the kids, but I feel better knowing they’ll be in good hands.”

“Thanks.” Eddie looked beyond the rooftops into the distance, at the cone-shaped mountain rising above the plain. “That a volcano?”

Ben nodded. “Volcán Santa Maria. It’s considered active. The region is also prone to earthquakes. We’ve had a couple of mild quakes during my time here but nothing to write home about.”

Ben stopped in front of the clinic, a low whitewashed adobe building with chickens pecking in the yard. A sign beside the door displayed a large red cross and the words International Médicos.

“Here we are.” Ben pushed open the door. “Clinic out front, residence in back. It’s simple, but it’s home.”

Eddie wandered through the clinic, surveying the meager shelves of medical supplies, the primitive equipment. “It’s a change from a big-city hospital,” he admitted in massive understatement. “What are some of the health issues you deal with?”

Ben perched on the edge of the small desk in the corner. “Oh, God, where to start. There’s dysentery, insect-borne diseases, outbreaks of cholera and hepatitis. Malnutrition is a big problem, especially among the children. I spend most of my stipend providing food for hungry kids.” He shook his head. “Infant mortality is high. No matter how hard you try there’s so much to battle—disease, poverty, ignorance.” As he thought of some of the little ones he’d lost, his voice became unsteady. “I hate it when the children die.”

He pushed off the desk and moved across the room. “There are bright spots, reasons for optimism. I’ve set up a vaccination program, one for oral hygiene, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I travel to the more remote villages and treat those who can’t come to me.

“Come and see where you’ll be living.” Ben pushed aside a curtain of woven fabric in deep blues and reds and led the way into his private quarters. One end of the room was fitted with a hot plate, fridge and sink, while the other end held a single bed that doubled as a couch, a bookshelf crammed with paperbacks and, Ben’s pride and joy, a turntable and speakers he’d picked up in Guatemala City to play his record collection. He put on Harry Connick, Jr.

“Man, our musical tastes never did coincide,” Eddie complained. “Don’t you have any Shaggy or New Radicals?”

Ben wrapped him in a headlock. “No, but I’ve got a cold beer. Want it? Say uncle.”

“Piss off.” Eddie hooked a foot behind Ben’s ankle in an attempt to bring him down, but he was laughing too hard.

Ben released him and went to the fridge, a relic of the fifties, and reached past shelves of medicines for a couple of long-necked brown bottles of Guatemalan beer. He flipped the caps off and handed one to Eddie. “Luckily for us, doctors have to store medicine. Refrigeration is a perk of the job.”

“Is that a fridge benefit?” Eddie asked, raising an eyebrow wryly. He unstrapped his backpack and pulled out a bottle of duty-free Jack Daniels and a newspaper. “Care for a taste of home?”

Avid for news, Ben bypassed the bourbon to pick up the recent copy of USA Today. The headline story blared in inch-high black print: Supermodel Collapses on Milan Runway—Miraculous Return From the Dead.

A photo, obviously taken before the model’s collapse, showed her draped in designer clothing and glittering with diamonds against a backdrop of an Italian palazzo.

“Will you look at that?” Ben said, shaking his head in disgust. Evidence of excess always raised his ire on behalf of his poverty-stricken patients. “That dress alone would likely supply vaccine for the whole western highland. Look how thin she is. No wonder she collapsed. I’ll bet she pops diet pills as if they were candy, then lets men take her to expensive restaurants and doesn’t eat. Meanwhile, kids here are literally starving.”

Eddie glanced over his shoulder at the newspaper. “She doesn’t look too good now.”

It was true. Below the first photo was an after shot of the woman in a hospital gown whose voluminous folds accentuated her prominent bones and gaunt features.

Like death warmed over, Ben judged grimly, and felt a spark of compassion. As ill as she looked, her beauty shone through, ghostlike and fragile, and something about her face compelled his attention. The farseeing expression in her tilted blue eyes seemed to hint at some profound knowledge. Life, the universe and everything, to quote a favorite author from his med-school days.

Losing interest, Eddie went to sprawl on the couch. “What else can you tell me about the place?” he asked, sipping his beer.

Ben tossed the paper aside, dismissing his ruminations as fanciful. A woman like that probably didn’t have two ideas to rub together, let alone any magic answers.

“Let’s see…” He sat on a wooden chair and tilted back at a precarious angle, sipping his beer. “Quezaltenango is the nearest big town—most Anglos around here refer to it as Quez. There are quite a few ex-pats scattered over this general area, a French doctor a couple of villages away, some nurses, teachers, agricultural aid workers, missionaries. You won’t lack companionship.”

“Hey, you don’t need to sell it to me. If you like it so much, how come you’re leaving?” Eddie asked.

“For one thing, International Médicos stipulates a maximum two-year contract, which you should know having just signed on. For another thing…”

Ben pushed to his feet and stood before the window. “I had a thing going with this British nurse, Penny. She was only here for a year. We both knew from the beginning it wasn’t going to last.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Ben shrugged and faced Eddie. “I’m tired of moving around, tired of temporary liaisons. I’m thirty-five. I’m ready to settle down.”

“Will you go back to Texas?”

“No, I’ve arranged a temporary job through a guy I went to med school with. He’s at Seattle City Hospital now and knows a GP in a small town north of there who’s looking for someone to take over his practice while he goes on sabbatical. Hainesville. Ever heard of it?”

Eddie thought for a moment then shook his head. “It’s probably just a dot on the map.”

Ben laughed. “As opposed to this bustling metropolis. The first thing I’m going to do when I get back is buy myself a hamburger with everything on it and a great big chocolate milk shake.” He turned to the window, filled with yearning for the good ol’ U.S. of A. “I don’t know why, but I have a feeling Hainesville will suit me just fine.”

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you, happy birthday to you…”

Geena basked in the glow of the candlelit faces around Gran’s kitchen table as her sisters and their families helped her celebrate her twenty-ninth birthday. There were Kelly and Max and their four daughters, and Erin and Nick with Erin’s baby son and Nick’s teenage daughter. And of course Gran, looking smaller than Geena remembered, in her full gray wig and oversize blue plastic glasses but fighting fit despite her seventy-six years.

A month had passed since Geena’s collapse. She’d spent a week in the Milan hospital, followed by two weeks in a Swiss convalescent home, then a week in New York to pack her things and sublet her apartment. Finally, she was home, and it felt good.

Geena made a wish and blew out the candles. Everyone cheered. Kelly gave Geena an impromptu hug, her shiny brown hair swinging around her shoulders. “It’s good to have you with us, Gee, especially for your birthday.”

“What did you wish for, Auntie Geena?” asked Beth, Kelly’s eight-year-old daughter.

“Can’t tell, or it won’t come true,” Geena said, smiling as she cut the cake and passed it around. Gran opened the curtains, and afternoon sun poured in. Erin tucked her long blond hair behind her ears and attempted to dish out ice cream one handed while holding the baby.

“Let me take Erik,” Geena said, and reached for her nephew. She cuddled the baby in the crook of her arm and stroked the back of her finger down one soft cheek. “Hello, gorgeous.”

Magazine publishers paid thousands for Geena’s smile, but to her, Erik’s toothless grin was priceless. His innocent blue eyes, so trusting and sweet, stirred her maternal instincts. Would her wish—and her mother’s prediction—come true?

“Do you want chocolate or vanilla ice cream with your cake, Geena?” Erin asked, holding the scoop poised above the tubs of Sara Lee.

“Nothing for me, thanks.” She’d already pigged out on green salad and half a grilled chicken breast.

“What? Not even cake?”

“I’m going back to modeling once I’ve recovered completely. I can’t afford to gain weight.”

“But, Geena,” three-year-old Tammy said. “You’re skinnier than a Halloween skeleton.”

Kelly, who’d taken over serving the cake, frowned across the table at Tammy. “Shh, honey, that’s not polite.”

“It’s okay, Kel. She only wanted to make me feel better. Didn’t you, sweetie?” she said, stroking the girl’s long blond hair.

Geena saw her sisters exchange glances, and an awkward silence fell over the group. What the heck was bugging everyone?

Nick swallowed the last of his cake and pushed back from the table. “Hey, Max, want to go shoot a few hoops?”

“Sure thing.” Max, Kelly’s husband, set aside his empty plate. “It’s been a while since I whupped your ass.”

“Take your cake outside to the picnic table, girls,” Kelly said, shooing her brood through the back door.

Miranda, Erin’s stepdaughter, hovered in the doorway. At thirteen she often got lumped with the other kids when she wanted to be one of the women. She had auburn hair and a tiny stud in her nose.

“Come and sit down,” Geena said, patting the chair next to her.

Miranda, who was into clothes and adored her supermodel aunt, threw her a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

Erin set Erik in his car carrier seat and found a rattle to amuse him. Gran took up her knitting from the sideboard, and Kelly, never one to sit still for long, started to clear away dishes.

“Relax, Kelly,” Geena said. “I’ll do that later.”

“I don’t mind,” Kelly said, stacking plates in the dishwasher while the water ran in the sink for the pots from their barbecue lunch. Geena, realizing that Kelly wouldn’t sit down, got up to help.

“Have you seen the doctor yet, Geena?” Erin asked, spooning up the last blob of chocolate ice cream from her plate.

Geena searched the drawers for a tea towel. “No, I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Cameron tomorrow.”

“Dr. Cameron’s in Australia till Christmas,” Miranda informed her dolefully.

“Dr. Cameron’s son, Oliver, is a good friend of Miranda’s,” Erin explained to Geena. “She misses him.”

“Just don’t get too serious, too soon,” Kelly warned Miranda over her shoulder as she vigorously scrubbed the potato pot. “Or before you know it, you’ll have kids and you’ll wonder where your girlhood went.”

“We’re just friends,” Miranda protested. “Anyway, you and Uncle Max were childhood sweethearts.”

“Exactly.” Kelly rinsed the pot and handed it to Geena. “I hear the new doctor is quite a hunk. Indiana Jones with a stethoscope.”

Miranda snorted disparagingly. “Dr. Matthews is way better looking than Harrison Ford.”

“I’ve spent enough time around doctors lately, thanks very much,” Geena said. “Not that I’m not grateful to them for saving my life.”

“What actually happened to you in Italy, Gee?” Erin asked. “You’ve hardly told us anything. It was a heart attack, right?”

Geena wiped the pot dry, marveling that she could take pleasure in mundane chores. “My heart stopped. Apparently I was clinically dead for two minutes.” Laughing, she rapped her skull with her knuckles. “No brain damage—at least, not that I can tell.”

Kelly shivered. “It must have been awful.”

“Not entirely,” Geena said slowly, looking from Kelly to Erin to Gran. She hadn’t told them about her near-death experience. She wasn’t sure what their reactions would be. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. The experience had changed her in ways so subtle she hadn’t yet fully grasped their significance. Every morning she woke up with a great gladness to be alive. And sometimes she stopped in the middle of whatever she was doing and looked, really looked, at what was around her. As if the world was brand-new. Or she was.

But something in her voice had captured the others’ attention, and now all eyes were on her. Geena took a deep breath. She might as well tell them. “I had a near-death experience. I went to the other side and came back.”

“What!” Erin and Kelly exclaimed together.

At the abrupt sound, Erik awoke with a jerk, one hand flung quivering in the air. Miranda’s eyes went round. Gran’s eyebrows rose above the wide plastic frames of her glasses, and the click of needles fell silent as she paused, yarn looped around her index finger.

Erin picked up her baby. “Don’t cry, honey,” she cooed, then turned to Geena. “Do you mean, as in flying through a tunnel toward a bright light?”

“Yes! It was so amazing I can hardly describe it.” Words tumbled from her lips at the relief of finally sharing her experience. “I didn’t know what was happening at first, not until I saw my body lying below me. There was darkness and I was moving through a tunnel toward a light. Everything—past, present and future—was there in the tunnel. All around me was a noise, a kind of icy sizzle, like moonbeams hitting water, if you know what I mean.”

Their blank stares told her they didn’t. Geena frowned, frustrated at the effort of describing something that couldn’t be described in words. “The light was brighter than any sun,” she went on. “As I got closer to the light I experienced an intense feeling of peace and love, joy and rapture and gladness and…” Her arms were uplifted when she ran out of breath. “Bliss. Pure bliss.”

“Were you…on anything at the time?” Erin asked carefully.

Geena dropped her arms. “What do you mean?”

“Were you taking any…medication?”

“I’d been on diet pills,” Geena admitted. “I use sleeping pills occasionally. And sometimes pills to wake me up.”

“Pills to make you feel good?”

Geena crossed her arms over her chest. “No. I didn’t have this experience because I was drugged.”

Gran tugged some yarn loose from the ball on the floor, and her cat, Chloe, a blur of blue-gray fur, leaped from behind a chair to attack it. “I read an article once about a woman who had a near-death experience during heart surgery,” Gran said. “Sounded pretty similar.”

“Thank you, Gran.” Geena relaxed her fists.

“Geena, honey, we love you. We didn’t mean to imply anything,” Erin said. Kelly nodded in silent agreement.

But Geena could see they were still skeptical.

“Anyway, I’m off all those pills. I quit smoking, too. The doctors made me go cold turkey in the hospital.” She sighed as she looked at herself. “I’ve been gaining weight ever since.”

“It’s good you quit smoking.” Erin paused. “But as far as your size goes, Tammy was right, you’ve lost weight. You weren’t even this thin two months ago at my wedding.”

Geena did not want to get sidetracked into discussing her weight. She adored her sisters, but they didn’t understand the pressures a model was under. Besides, she still had the most important part of her story to tell.

“I saw Mom,” she said, almost defiantly. “She said to give her love to all of you.”

“Geena, when you say you saw Mom, you mean as in a dream, right?” Erin said. Erik stirred in her arms, and she reached under her blouse to unhook her nursing bra.

Geena watched her sister adjust Erik at her breast, and her heart clenched with longing. She wanted to tell them about the baby Mom promised she would have, but then Erin and Kelly would think she was completely nuts. Sometimes when she thought of the baby, even she wondered if she hadn’t imagined the whole experience.

“It was as real as being here with you today. She told me it wasn’t my time and that I had to go back. Well, she didn’t actually speak. It was more like telepathic communication.”

“Telepathic,” Kelly repeated skeptically.

“She also said Dad wasn’t drunk the night they died,” Geena said, ignoring her. “They swerved to avoid a dog.”

“That’s the first we’ve heard of a dog,” Erin said. “It’s plausible, but impossible to prove.”

Geena blinked. “Do I have to prove this happened?”

“Of course not. But you’ve got to admit, it’s a bit far-fetched. You’ve been under a lot of pressure. It would be natural for your mind to play tricks on you,” Erin said. “Maybe you should talk to the doctor, see what he says.”

“I might just do that.” A doctor was bound to have patients who had experienced near death and lived to tell about it. A doctor would reassure her she wasn’t imagining things.

“How long are you staying?” Erin asked, raising Erik to her shoulder to pat his back. “I hope you’re not going to flit off too quickly. We miss you.”

“I’ll be around for a few months. I told my agent not to accept any new jobs until I’ve fully recovered.” The truth was, she felt a little confused about her future direction, but the fashion industry was all she knew.

Kelly drained the sink and dried her hands on a towel as she glanced at the kitchen shelf clock Erin had left behind for Gran when she’d married Nick. “Gosh, look at the time. I’d better get my kids home. Geena, come over for dinner real soon. My lasagna will put some meat back on your bones.”

Geena hugged her sister, knowing she meant well. “Thanks, Kel.”

Erin carefully lifted her drowsy baby against her shoulder and gave Geena a one-armed hug. “I’d better go, too. Erik always sleeps better in his own crib. Take care of yourself, Gee. We’ve been so worried about you. We want you to get completely well.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

Geena walked them to the door and waited until Erin and Kelly had rounded up their families, bundled all the children into their respective cars and driven away. After they left, she sat on the painted wooden steps of Gran’s big old Victorian home, the home she and her sisters had grown up in after their parents had died.

Scents of late summer wafted on a warm breeze—roses; mown grass; a whiff of salt from the river telling her the tide was in. The heavy crimson head of a poppy drooped through the railing, and she stroked a silken petal with her fingertip, lost in admiration of its beauty.

Hearing a sound behind her, she glanced over her shoulder to see Gran coming through the open door.

Gran lowered herself to the top step, her knees creaking a little in her track pants. “Tell me more about your mom. Did she seem happy?”

Thank God for Gran. “She’s happy. So is Dad. Mom sent a message from Gramps that he’ll wait for you forever.”

Behind her glasses, Gran’s pale-blue eyes misted.

CHAPTER TWO

BEN GLANCED AROUND the Hainesville Medical Clinic with satisfaction. With two examining rooms, a small lab, office, reception area and waiting room, the clinic was positively luxurious compared with what he’d been used to in Guatemala.

The only glitch was that he hadn’t been in his new job a week before the nurse-receptionist who had worked for Dr. Cameron had been called to the sickbed of her elderly mother in Florida. Ben contacted an employment agency and was promised a temporary replacement in a couple of days.

Meantime, he took the loss in his stride; he’d coped with far more calamitous events in Guatemala. However, his patients were less sanguine than he about mixed-up appointments and general administrative confusion. Nor were they content to sit and wait for hours on a first-come, first-serve basis like his stoical villagers.

“You can’t run this clinic the way you ran that place in Central America,” a pinched-faced woman with tight gray curls told him after he’d inadvertently double booked her with the mayor. The mayor, Mr. Gribble, had won on the basis of having to attend an important meeting with the bank manager. Strangely enough, when Ben glanced out the window afterward, he’d seen Mr. Gribble heading for the river, with a fishing rod propped in the back of his Cadillac.

“Why not, Mrs. Vogler?” He began to scan the long medical history in her file to bring himself up to speed on her background.

“It’s Miss Vogler. We’re not a bunch of Mayan Indians, you know.”

More’s the pity.

“Dr. Cameron never did things this way. And where’s your white coat?” Greta Vogler added with an accusing glance at his Guatemalan shirtsleeves and clean khaki pants. “If it wasn’t for that stethoscope around your neck, no one would know you were a doctor.”

“Unless they happened to notice the diplomas hanging on the wall,” Ben said pleasantly, still reading. He came to an entry and paused. “It says here you had a hysterectomy in nineteen-seventy-six.” He gazed at her, mentally calculating. She would have been in her midtwenties at the time. “Could this date be a mistake?”

“There’s no mistake,” she said frostily, looking away. “But what that has to do with the migraines I came to see you about, I don’t know.”

“My apologies,” he murmured, and decided to skip the rest of the history. “Tell me about the headaches,” he said, and went on to deal with that.

That was yesterday. Today, he’d hit upon the idea of stacking patients’ files in the order in which they had phoned in for an appointment. When he got a call, he located the appropriate file from the filing cabinet and placed it at the bottom of the growing stack. He gave people a rough estimate of when they would see him, knowing no one ever expected to get in to see the doctor exactly on time. Simple yet effective.

Midmorning, Ben strode to the reception desk and leaned across it to pick off the top file so he could call in his next patient. But his eyes were on his watch instead of what he was doing, and he misjudged the distance. The entire stack of manila folders went slithering to the floor while the waiting patients watched in dismay.

Ben muttered a mild Mayan imprecation and crouched to pick up the files. A moment later a young woman with chin-length auburn hair left her seat to help him.

“You need an assistant,” she said, stacking manila folders randomly in the crook of her arm.

“I know I do. I registered with an employment agency, but so far they haven’t found anyone suitable.”

“Then maybe you should look for someone unsuitable.”

The smile in her voice made him glance up, into deep blue eyes that tilted, almond shaped, at the corners. Too slender for his taste, she was nevertheless undeniably attractive.

She was also vaguely familiar. “Have we met?”

She held his gaze with a bemused expression. “I would have remembered if I’d met you.”

“I never forget a face,” he persisted. “I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere.”

She shrugged, glanced at the files in her arm and rearranged them. Then she placed her files atop his. Ben rose and held his hand out to help her to her feet. Her height surprised him. She had to be five-ten in her stockings, and the heels she wore put them on eye level.

He looked around the room, reading the name off the top file. “Geena Hanson?”

“That would be me,” said the blue-eyed woman, smiling, and she sauntered gracefully ahead of him to the examining room.

“Used to getting our own way, are we?” he said as he shut the door. Her clothes, her perfume, her very demeanor, shrieked wealth and sophistication. For some reason he thought of Penny, his British nurse, caring for peasants in jeans and T-shirt.

Geena Hanson took a chair and crossed one very long leg over the other. “I was next.”

“I see.” He opened her file and began to read the contents. “So, what seems to be the trouble?”

“Nothing, as far as I’m concerned.”

Ben ignored her blasé answer and perused her recent medical history. His frown deepened as he read about her collapse in Italy and the two minutes during which her heart had stopped. A memory of newspaper headlines clicked in his brain. “You’re that supermodel. What are you doing in Hainesville?”

“This is my hometown. I’m recuperating. Is that a Texas accent?” she inquired.

“I’m from a small town outside Austin.” Ben went on reading, shaking his head at the recorded cocktail of pills she’d been taking and at her weight. His first impression was confirmed; she was unhealthily thin. And in denial about her problems.

Hands steepled over her file, he eyed her appraisingly. “If there’s nothing wrong, why are you here?”

She inspected her perfectly manicured nails. “My sisters and my grandmother insisted I get a follow-up examination.”

“Are you still taking these tablets?”

“No. I quit smoking, too.”

“Sleeping okay?”

“Could be better. But without five a.m. starts and late nights I’m getting by.”

“Any significant events following your collapse?” he asked, jotting notes with his fountain pen.

She didn’t answer right away, and he glanced up to see an odd light in her eyes. She leaned forward, clutching her Gucci handbag. “What exactly do you mean?”

Instinct told him something important was in the air, but he had no idea what. “Palpitations, dizziness, chest pain…”

“Oh.” She leaned back, seemingly disappointed. “I get a little dizzy sometimes first thing in the morning.”

Ben waited, giving her a chance to elaborate. When she didn’t add anything, he asked, “The dizziness—do you get it before breakfast or after?”

“I don’t eat breakfast.”

All the advantages of money and position and not a lick of sense. He sent her a stern cold look. “It’s time you started. You’re significantly underweight.” He rose and came around his desk. “Hop onto the examining table.”

He checked her blood pressure, pulse and reflexes. He peered into her ears, shone a light in her eyes and felt the glands below her jaw. As his examination progressed he became increasingly aware of her as a woman, something that was not supposed to happen. But his senses could no more exclude the elusive scent of expensive perfume and the porcelain texture of her skin than they could miss the beat of her pulse beneath his fingertips.

Perspiration dampened his armpits as he slipped his stethoscope beneath the scoop neck of her silk dress. What should have been routine had become mildly erotic. She went very still, as if she was aware of him, too.

“Your, uh, heart rate’s a little fast.” This was crazy; she was not his kind of woman.

“White-coat syndrome?” she suggested with a whimsical lift of her eyebrows. She’d brushed them upward, and their lushness emphasized the deep lapis blue of her eyes and the delicate bridge of her long straight nose.

“I’m ordering some follow-up blood work,” he said briskly, retreating to his desk to uncap his fountain pen and fill out the correct form. “I understand the hospital down the road in Simcoe handles that. While you’re there, you should make an appointment with the nutritionist.”

“Okay.”

He glanced up sharply. Her agreement was too casual, too ready to be true. He bet she had no intention of following a nutritionist’s regime, even supposing she kept the appointment. “I’m serious, Ms. Hanson,” he said, writing her referral. “Your job isn’t conducive to a healthy lifestyle, as amply shown by your collapse. From what I’ve heard, models play hard—”

“And work hard,” she protested.

He tried to keep the skepticism out of his expression. “The point is, you need to take care of yourself.”

“Doctor…” She hesitated before going on. “Have you ever had a patient who’s died and come back? Someone who had a near-death experience?”

“No, I haven’t.” He tore the referral note from the pad, folded it and put it in an envelope. “But I know that near-death experiences are hallucinations brought on by a lack of oxygen to the brain when the heart stops pumping blood.”

“You know that, do you?” she said, her face troubled.

“It’s the accepted medical explanation. Why? Do you think you had a near-death experience?”

“Yes, and it was no hallucination,” she said earnestly. “When I was in the hospital in Milan someone brought in an English newspaper. In it was an article about a Dutch study that monitored the vital signs of patients who reported near-death experiences. One man even described the doctors removing his dentures before putting a tube down his throat to revive him. All this while he had no pulse and no detectable brain activity. What do you think of that?”

“Unconvincing. I read the original article written up in the British medical journal Lancet. There’re plenty of other studies that prove the experiences are generated by the brain as it faces the trauma of death. In my opinion the Dutch study doesn’t prove there’s life after death.”

“But I met my m—” She broke off abruptly and, to Ben’s relief, waved away the topic of conversation. “Never mind.” Then she noticed the framed photo on his desk of him and Eddie standing on the stone steps of a ruined Mayan temple. “That must be your brother. He’s a doctor, too, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” He handed her the referral envelope. “How did you know?”

Geena Hanson grinned, and the sophisticated model turned into a mischievous girl. “This is a small town. By the end of the week I’ll know your brand of toothpaste.”

Her grin charmed him even more than her beauty, but he was careful not to let it show. “Be sure to see the nutritionist. And I’d like to see you again in a couple months for a follow-up examination.”

She lingered in the doorway, her gaze roving over him. “What brings you to Hainesville, Doctor?”

He found himself standing closer to her than necessary, drinking in the blue of her eyes while her perfume continued to befuddle his senses. Her smile invited flirtation, and he lost the struggle to maintain a strictly professional manner. “When you find out,” he drawled, “let me know.”

She laughed, a spontaneous guffaw at odds with her elegance. “I’ll do that,” she said, and glided away.

“Next,” Ben called. But the waiting room had filled while he’d been seeing Geena, and the patients didn’t know any better than he did whose turn it was. The batch of mixed-up files was no help. A mother with a crying child, an elderly man, a teenage boy in a cast and a middle-aged woman stared blankly at him. Then they all began talking at once, claiming priority.

Geena paused at the exit, one hand on the door-knob, and studied the situation. Ben Matthews, competent doctor though he was, was clearly out of his depth. Her first instinct was to go to his assistance. But, she argued with herself, she knew nothing about being a receptionist in a medical clinic. The old Geena would have walked; the new Geena saw a person in need. The woman in her mentally hugged herself. For a while longer she would enjoy the company of this delicious man with the intelligent eyes and the air of adventure still clinging to his woven shirt.

She strode to the reception desk and picked up the stack of patient files before scanning the room. She’d never done this sort of work before, but how hard could it be? She knew most of the folks here. Add a little common sense and a lot of compassion…

The little girl crying and twisting in her mother’s lap while she clutched at her ear was clearly in pain.

“Laura,” Geena called, recognizing the mom as one of Erin’s high school friends. “You go next.”

“Thanks. She’s got an ear infection.” With obvious relief, Laura carried her sick daughter past Ben into the examining room.

Geena felt a hand on her arm, and Ben pulled her to one side. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Calmly disregarding his annoyed tone, she said, “I expect your patients could use some help organizing themselves. Not everyone is as enterprising as I am.”

“Indeed.” Beneath his mustache, his compressed lips curved a little. Then he glanced at the waiting room, where his patients had settled back to their magazines with resigned acceptance. Eyebrows raised, Ben shrugged. “Okay.”

Geena seated herself at the reception desk and began to arrange the files in the order in which she thought best. When Laura and her little girl were through, she helped Mr. Marshall to his feet, then handed the elderly gentleman his cane.

Ben paused beside the reception desk to pick up Mr. Marshall’s file. “I take it you’re staying awhile?”

“I don’t know,” she said, pretending to consider the matter. “I’ve got a lot to do today.” Touch up her nail polish, read the latest issue of Vogue, yawn a couple of dozen times from boredom. She’d barely been home a week and already she was going crazy. “But since you asked so nicely…all right.”

She leaned across the desk and added in an undertone, “Mr. Marshall has gout in his big toe, has had for years. But he’s sensitive about his feet. Be nice.”

One side of his mouth curled up. “I’m always nice.”

Geena was sure he was, in spite of his lack of understanding about near-death experiences. Certainly, he wasn’t like other men she knew, European playboys and New York stockbrokers, men with no one’s interests at heart but their own. Despite his obvious disapproval of her, Ben Matthews struck her as a very caring man. And an attractive one. While he’d been reading her file, she’d studied him. She liked his tall, solid body and his wry smile. She liked his long tapered fingers that held a fountain pen instead of an ordinary ballpoint. She liked the slight wave in his dark hair and the faint color that had appeared in his cheeks when he’d listened to her heart. But it was his Texas drawl that made her insides weak.

Ben escorted Mr. Marshall to the examining room, and Geena tackled the accumulated fliers from medical supply and pharmaceutical companies cluttering the desk, finding unexpected satisfaction in putting the office in order. The outside door opened, and she turned to see who had come in.

“Geena Hanson, is that you?” the woman shrieked.

Geena let out a yell. “Linda Thirsk! I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen you in years.” She hurried around the desk to hug her high school friend.

Laughing, the two women stepped apart to look at each other. “You’re so skinny I hate you,” Linda said. Linda had become comfortably plump over the years, but somehow the extra pounds suited her, and her buttercup yellow dress was a flattering cut.

“You look great,” Geena declared. “So, did you ever make it to Greenwich Village to write satirical novels?”

Linda laughed. “I got as far as Spokane before my car broke down. Toby O’Conner heard about it from my mom and drove his tow truck all the way out to get me. We’ve been together ever since. Three kids, all under eight.”

“Lucky you. What about your writing?”

Linda gave her an odd, sly smile. “Oh, I do the church newsletter and other bits and pieces. Hey, we’re having our tenth high school reunion in October. You’ve got to come.”

Geena’s smile faded, and her cheeks burned with embarrassment. “I…I don’t know if I can. Don’t you remember? I left high school after grade eleven to take a modeling contract. How can I go to the reunion when I never graduated?”

“No one will care about that,” Linda insisted. “You’ve got to come.”

Easy for Linda to say. She’d been top of their class, and despite their friendship, Geena had always felt slightly intimidated by her brainpower, even if Linda hadn’t made it to New York. “I’ll have to let you know.”

Geena went to the desk. “Did you have an appointment?”

“For two o’clock. Are you working here?”

“Just for today. The receptionist is away, and Dr. Matthews hasn’t got a new one yet.” Geena glanced from right to left, then whispered, “I’m having so much fun playing receptionist—you have no idea. But things are a little disorganized. You might have to wait a few minutes.”

“That’s okay.” Linda lifted a laptop computer. “I’ll just take a seat and get caught up on my, uh, newsletter.”

“Talk to you later.”

The examining room door opened and out came a man in his late forties with unnaturally black hair and a pale-blue suit jacket over his arm. Geena recognized Ray Ronstadt, Kelly’s real estate boss. According to Kelly, he was newly divorced and on the prowl.

“Thanks, Doc,” Ray said, rolling down his sleeve. “When will you have the results?”

“Wednesday morning. Give me a call.” Ben cast a questioning glance at Geena. “Next?”

“Mrs. Chan.” She reached for the chart and with a nod indicated an elderly patient. Before Geena could hand the chart to Ben, Ray swaggered to the desk.

“Hey, Geena,” he said, buttoning his cuff with a nearsighted squint. “Kelly told me you were back in town. If you get bored with this one-horse burg you can always take a ride on the wild side with yours truly.”

Ben, still waiting for the chart and for Mrs. Chan to shuffle across the waiting room, frowned.

“Gosh, Ray, that sounds like too much excitement for me,” she said, smiling blandly. “Dr. Matthews says I’ve got to take it easy after my collapse.”

Ray appeared taken aback. “Oh, yeah. Sorry to hear about that.” He stuck out his neck as he adjusted his tie. “You look damn fine to me.”

“That’s very kind.” She tilted her head to one side, pen poised. “Did you need another appointment?”

“Nah. I’ll call for the results of my blood test in a few days.” He smoothed his hair with both hands. “A single guy who gets a bit of action has to be careful these days. It’s the least I can do for my lady friends.”

“How thoughtful of you.” Gross! Geena heard Linda’s suppressed giggle and was careful not to catch her eye.

“So how about dinner?” Ray went on undeterred. “The steak house in Simcoe has a two-for-one deal on Tuesdays.”

“Uh, thanks, Ray, but I’m really busy on Tuesday.” She rose and walked toward the exit.

He followed like a lamb. “I guess a gal like you gets lots of invitations.”

“Hundreds. Thousands. More than I can accommodate.” She opened the door and ushered him through. “Bye now.”

Geena handed Ben the chart just as Mrs. Chan made it to the examining room doorway.

“Very smooth,” Ben murmured to Geena. “Maybe we should get another appointment book for all your invitations. Maybe your own secretary.”

She slanted him a glance. “I don’t need a book to remember the invitations I accept.”

To her disappointment, he didn’t take the hint. Just escorted Mrs. Chan into the examining room. Geena shrugged and returned to the desk.

Late in the afternoon, long after Linda had seen the doctor and left, the door opened, and a woman came in with a baby in her arms and a young boy by the hand. The woman’s long, dark hair was pulled into a straggly ponytail, and she wore a beaded muslin blouse, which Geena recognized as vintage 1960s, over a long flowing skirt.

“Hi, I’m Carrie Wakefield,” she said. “My son, Tod, has an appointment.” She pushed the boy forward and shifted a runny-nosed baby to her other hip. “Sorry we’re late.”

“That’s okay.” Geena looked at the boy, who had a cowlick and was wearing striped pants and cowboy boots. “Hi, Tod.”

Tod regarded her solemnly out of round brown eyes. His face was thin and too pale for a boy off school for the summer. “When a pig is sick, what kind of medicine do you use?”

Geena frowned. Did the boy mistake this for a veterinary clinic? “Gosh, Tod, I don’t know. What’s wrong with the pig?”

His face crinkled in an impish grin. “You use oinkment! Get it?”

Geena laughed. “That’s cute. How old are you, Tod?”

“Nine and a quarter. Why don’t hippos play basketball?”

“Um…they’re not tall enough?”

“They don’t look good in shorts.” Tod gave a deprecating shrug. “That one’s not very good—hippos don’t even wear shorts.” Then he informed her, “I’ve got monster glue at home.”

“Come and sit down, Tod, and don’t bother the lady.” Carrie Wakefield looked worn-out and out of patience as she jiggled her crying baby in her arms.

“I’m not bothering her.” Tod turned to Geena. “Am I?”

“Not at all.” Geena rose from the desk. “Come with me, Tod.” She led him to a small table in a corner of the waiting room with toys and books for children. “Do you want to play with the trucks?”

“I want you to read to me.” He shoved his hands in his pants pockets.

“Tod,” his weary mother remonstrated. To Geena, she said, “He’s going into grade four and is perfectly capable of reading for himself.”

“That’s okay.” Geena studied the boy. His expression was half defiant, half needy, as if he was starved for attention and used to getting short-changed. She wondered what was wrong with him besides having a baby brother who required a lot of his mother’s time.

“I’d love to read to you, Tod. How about this one,” she said, showing him a collection of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.

Tod’s face lit. “I wish I had a pet tiger.”

“Me, too.” She patted the bench beside her.

Tod leaned unselfconsciously against her side, and she was agreeably aware of his small body snuggling up to her. This is what having a child would feel like, she thought as she opened the book. Ten minutes later they were giggling at Calvin’s outrageous antics when she sensed someone watching them. Geena looked up to see Ben in the doorway, his dark eyes thoughtful.

“It’s time for you to see the doctor,” she said, closing the book.

“We haven’t finished,” Tod protested.

“Come, Tod.” Carrie rose, her baby asleep in her arms.

When they’d all trooped into the examining room, Geena tidied the magazines and toys in the waiting room. Tod was Ben’s last patient, and though she was tired, she also acknowledged that this was the most satisfying day she’d had all week. She’d enjoyed playing with the children and reminiscing with the elderly. What was she going to do tomorrow?

Maybe, she thought, as she watered the potted plants, Ben would decide she’d done such a wonderful job today he would hire her. The tasks were so different from what she was used to and so relatively stress-free that working here would seem like a holiday. As a bonus, she’d get to know Ben Matthews.

And if he got to know her, he’d see she wasn’t the irresponsible, self-indulgent person he obviously considered her to be. Okay, maybe she used to be that way, but she’d been given a new slate, so to speak, to write on as she would. All she had to do was figure out who she was and what she wanted to do with her life.

She was gazing out the window of the empty waiting room, watering can forgotten in her hands, when Tod and his mother emerged. Carrie Wakefield’s face looked pinched and white, and Tod was very quiet.

“Bye, Tod.” Geena put down the watering can and walked them to the door, holding it open as the little family filed through. “Bye, Carrie.”

She watched them from the window as they climbed into a battered Honda Civic and drove away.

Ben came and stood behind her. “Tod has acute lymphocytic leukemia.”

“Oh, no.” Geena made a soft sound of remorse in her throat. “That sweet little boy. How bad is it? Is it treatable?”

“Pretty bad, but yes, it’s treatable. He’s going into the hospital for chemotherapy tomorrow.” Ben sounded detached, but Geena could see in his eyes that he was deeply distressed. “He was diagnosed early. With treatment, he’ll be fine. Just fine.”

She wanted to believe him. She did believe him.

“You were a big help today,” he said, turning to her. “An amazing help. Thank you.”

Geena shrugged, ridiculously pleased at his praise. Would her little fantasy come true? “I enjoyed it. In fact, I could come in again tomorrow if you want me to.”

“Ah.” Ben grimaced. “I appreciate your offer, but I’m after a qualified RN to act as a nurse receptionist. With such a small practice I need someone who can take blood samples, tend to small wounds, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, of course.” Blood rushed to her cheeks. What was she thinking? Of course he’d want someone qualified. Not her, whose only talent was looking beautiful.

“I’ll pay you for today, of course,” he said quickly.

As if this was about money. She gave him a brilliant smile. “Absolutely not necessary. As I said, I enjoyed it.”

Moving past him, she returned the watering can to the kitchenette and got her purse out of the desk drawer.

“Don’t forget to get those blood samples taken and make an appointment with the nutritionist,” he said.

“I won’t.” She paused at the exit to give him a cheery wave and another smile. “Ciao.”

She kept her head high until she was around the corner from the clinic, then, despite all her training in deportment, she couldn’t help but let her shoulders slump.

That she’d saved enough to enjoy a wealthy lifestyle for the rest of her life, even if she never worked again, made no difference. That hundreds of men at one time or another had vied for her attention made no difference. Ben Matthews wasn’t impressed by beauty or money or fame.

And face it, if you took away those things, what did she have? Nothing.

Deep inside, she knew she was somebody, but no one besides her family ever bothered to look past the surface to see the real her. Especially not intelligent, educated men like Ben.

CHAPTER THREE

“HAVE ANOTHER chocolate doughnut,” Edna said, pushing the plate toward Ben.

Edna Thompson, the elderly woman who owned the bed and breakfast where Ben was staying until his rental house became available, had coffee and doughnuts waiting for him every day when he got back from work. She loved to talk about her health, or lack of it.

“Did I mention I have a pain here, in my left hip?” She slapped the bony buttock beneath her floral cotton shift, just in case Ben had missed that anatomy lesson. “What do you suppose it is?”

“Possibly referred pain from your lower spine,” Ben said around a mouthful of doughnut. “Come into the clinic tomorrow, and I’ll check it out.”

“Maybe I will. It’s a pity you’re moving next week. Having a doctor in the house is nice—kind of like having my own personal physician.” Edna got up from the table and went to the fridge.

Ben reached for the copy of the Hainesville Herald Edna had left on the table and skimmed the headlines. Hot debate raged over whether the town needed a traffic light at the corner of Main and Dakota.

“I heard Geena Hanson was helping you out in the clinic today,” Edna said, busily placing frozen sausage rolls from a commercial package onto a foil-lined baking tray. “That girl is skin and bones. Ruth—that’s her grandmother and my best friend—tells me she just pushes her food around her plate. Can’t you do anything for her?”

“I’m trying. She needs to recognize she has a problem before she can fix it.”

He was still puzzled by Geena’s disappointment—which all the smiles in the world couldn’t hide—at not being given a job at the clinic. Although probably she found life in Hainesville slow and simple after the jet-set scene. The town was a culture shock to him, too, but for the opposite reason. Paved streets, abundant consumer goods…heck, even electricity in every home was a big step up from where he’d been. People in small towns were pretty much the same the world over, though, friendly, a little nosy, but always willing to help their neighbor.

Edna shook her white head. “It’s not healthy for anyone to be that thin. Did I mention I had another gall bladder attack?”

“Maybe you should have it out.”

Edna glanced up. “You think so?”

“I could do it right now, if you like,” Ben suggested, straight-faced. “I used to operate in far more primitive circumstances in Guatemala. I’ll just go get my bag with my scalpel.”

Edna jerked back. “No way are you cutting me open on my kitchen table—” She broke into laughter as his mouth began to twitch. “You wicked boy!”

“Sorry, Edna,” he said, chuckling along with her. He rose and put his arm around her shoulder. “How about letting me buy you dinner at the Burger Shack tonight?”

Every Friday night he treated himself to a Humungoburger, onion rings and chocolate milk shake. A large chocolate milk shake. A dinner like that was probably murder on his cholesterol count, but what the heck, that was why he jogged.

“Why, thank you, Ben. But Friday night is my regular bridge night with the girls. We all bring a little something to snack on while we play.” She crumpled the sausage roll package and threw it in the trash. “Say, you won’t tell anyone these aren’t homemade, will you?”

“My lips are sealed.” Who would he tell? Although he liked the town and its people well enough, he hadn’t yet made friends.

“The other gals are good cooks, but me—I don’t have the knack. I tell them the sausage rolls are my grandmother’s recipe.” She grinned evilly. “But I buy them in Simcoe.”

Outside, a car horn beeped. “That’ll be Martha,” Edna said. “She’s still got her license.”

Edna took up her cane, but before she could reach for the tray of sausage rolls Ben said, “Allow me,” and carried them to Martha’s car. The early-model Volvo was in pristine condition. Ben speculated that Martha had been driving it since it rolled off the production line in 1958.

After Edna and Martha drove off, Ben sat in the wooden deck chair on the porch, savoring the balmy evening and the sweet scent of virburnum growing in big pots by the steps. The light hadn’t yet begun to fade and children were playing scrub baseball in the vacant lot down the street. An older couple out for an evening stroll waved to him from across the street. Ben waved back and realized suddenly what he liked so much about Hainesville. It was roughly the same size as the small Texas town he’d grown up in.

The phone in the kitchen rang, and he went inside to answer it. “Hello?”

“Ben?”

Through the static, Ben recognized his brother’s voice. “Eddie! I was wondering when you’d find a moment to call. How’s it going there? Are you finding your way around?”

“Everything’s fine,” Eddie said. “Except for the rain. It’s been pouring for days now.”

“Did I neglect to mention the rainy season?”

“Mostly it’s interesting,” Eddie went on in a lighter tone. “Today I was given a live chicken in lieu of payment. The fool thing is pecking apart my kitchen as we speak.”

Picturing it, Ben laughed. “You’re supposed to eat the bird, not keep it as a pet.”

“I was afraid of that, but I can’t bring myself to wring the poor thing’s neck. How is Hainesville? Are you enjoying being back in civilization?”

Ben took the cordless phone and went outside. “Hainesville is a treat. It’s got one stoplight, a mayor who goes fishing with the bank manager in the middle of the workday and the best hamburgers in the country. Right now I’m sitting on the front porch, breathing in the summer evening and watching the world stroll by.”

“Sounds idyllic. I can almost hear you slapping the paint on your white picket fence. Found yourself a wife yet?”

“Give me a day or two, would you? Oh, you’ll never guess…remember that model who collapsed in Milan, the one whose picture was in the newspaper you brought the day you arrived? She’s here. She grew up in Hainesville and has come home to recuperate.”

“And you’re her GP.” Eddie laughed. “Just deserts, big brother, just deserts.”

“Oh, she’s dessert, all right. But man cannot live on cake and ice cream alone.” Then he felt bad joking about Geena. She had helped him out. “Actually, she’s okay.”

“If you like that sort of thing,” Eddie said dryly.

“Which I don’t.” Sure, he found her attractive in a glamorous, superficial sort of way, but the idea of him getting involved with her was laughable. Geena Hanson was about as much his type as prissy Greta Vogler.

“Are you taking your malaria pills?” he said, as much to change the subject as because he couldn’t help looking after his little brother.

“Yes, Mom. Oh, hey, I’d better go. A couple of teachers from the next village are meeting me at the cantina.”

As Eddie spoke, Ben could almost hear the sound of marimba music, and he experienced a pang of homesickness for the village. “Have a cerveza for me, bro. And keep in touch.”

“Will do. How about we make this a regular time for me to call every week?”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll give you my number at the clinic, too, in case I’m working late.” He recited the phone number to Eddie, then signed off. “Talk to you next week, little buddy.”

THE NEXT DAY the heat woke Geena early. When she saw it was ten a.m. she kicked off the ivory damask bedspread, leaving her naked body covered only by an Egyptian cotton sheet, and snuggled deeper into the mound of rose-patterned pillows. With no reason to get up, she let her imagination flow in a fantasy of herself and Ben Matthews in a delicious, if implausible, scenario involving a stethoscope and an examining bed.

At noon, she dragged herself out of bed, dressed in a simple linen sheath and dabbed on perfume from a crystal bottle. Then she wandered down to the kitchen, wondering what she was going to do with herself for the next few months. Picking an apple out of the fruit bowl, she put her nose to the rosy skin and inhaled the sweet-tart scent. Reluctantly, she put the fruit in the bowl. She was hungry, but then, she was always hungry. Denying herself food had become a habit.

Steps sounded on the back porch, and Gran came in, breathing heavily and wiping perspiration from her brow. “Man, is it hot out there. But I had a heck of a workout,” she panted. “I met Marvin Taylor outside the Knit ’n Kneedles and we racewalked all the way up Linden Street.”

“Are you sure you’re not overdoing it, Gran?” Geena asked, noting the damp patches on her grandmother’s sweatshirt. Since recovering from her minor heart attack a year ago, Gran was taking her exercise very seriously.

“I’m in training for the seniors’ fun run,” Gran said. “Of course, at my age, run is a misnomer, and it stops being fun after the first mile. But we’re raising money for a new maternity wing on the Hainesville Hospital. Greta Vogler just won’t let that project go. The woman’s like a bull terrier.”

Greta Vogler. The woman who had branded her father a drunk driver, tarnishing his memory and Geena and her sisters’ lives growing up. Geena went to the fridge for a bottle of mineral water. “Does Miss Vogler still teach at the high school?”

Gran balanced a hand on the kitchen countertop and stretched her quads. “She’s vice principal now. Which reminds me—Linda Thirsk called. She wants to know if you’ve decided about your high school reunion.”

Geena shrugged and sipped her water. “I can’t believe she married Tubby O’Conner.”

Gran moved on to her hamstrings. “Linda’s phone number is on the pad on the counter. She’s probably home now. Why not give her a call?” When Geena made no move to pick up the phone, Gran stopped stretching. “You are going, aren’t you?”

Geena drained her bottle and put it beside the sink. The high school reunion, Ben… Everything conspired to remind her of her deficiencies.

“How can I?” she said, and was dismayed to hear her voice waver. “I never graduated.”

“Does it matter? You’ve become such a big success.” Behind her large-framed plastic glasses, Gran’s eyes showed regret, sympathy and a trace of guilt, none of which eased Geena’s self-doubt.

“Such a success I nearly killed myself. I’m going for a walk,” she said. “I’ll see you later.” With no idea where she was headed, she took off down the hall and out the front door.

“Geena,” Gran called after her. “Will you be back for lunch?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Geena’s restless footsteps carried her into town on sidewalks shimmering with the late-summer heat. Past Blackwell’s Drugstore, past the bank where Erin had been assistant manager until she had the baby, past Orville’s Barber Shop…

She hadn’t spoken to Orville since she’d been back and she knew he’d like her to drop in. A close friend of her father’s, he’d been like a favorite uncle while she’d been growing up. She peered in the barbershop window. Orville had his back to her, busy cutting someone’s hair.

The bell above the door sounded as she pushed through to the cool interior that held the familiar mingled scents of Old Spice and hair products. “Hi, Orville.”

Orville, a dapper man in his fifties, was dressed as always in neatly pressed slacks and a cashmere sweater. At the sound of her voice he turned with a wide smile and came forward to greet her. “Geena! How’s my best girl?”

“If I’m your best girl, who do you take out on Saturday night?” she teased. Geena had always thought it a waste that Orville, who had been widowed young, had never remarried. “I’m fine. How are you?”

“Same as usual,” he said good-naturedly. “One step behind the tax man, one step ahead of the Grim Reaper.”

Then he moved to one side, and through the mirror Geena glimpsed the face of the man in the chair. Ben. Surprise and pleasure tinged with embarrassment flowed through her. Embarrassment because it wasn’t every day a man turned her down—for any reason.

Orville returned to his work with a flourish of comb and scissors. Geena sauntered to the counter and perched on the edge, facing Ben. The only way to get over embarrassment was to meet it head-on. “Hi, there.”

“Hi, yourself.” His warm gaze traveled over her. “All of Hainesville is wilting in the heat, and yet you manage to look like the proverbial cucumber.”

“It’s an illusion, cultivated by years spent in front of klieg lights,” Geena said lightly. She turned to the barber. “So, Orville, what hair magic are you working on the doctor? A quiff? A coif?”

“Just a trim,” Orville said, snipping carefully around Ben’s ears. “Right, Doc?”

Ben nodded. Geena wriggled farther onto the counter. “Orville used to cut my hair, too.”

“Until at the very grown-up age of six you decided you required a stylist and made your grandmother take you to the beauty salon in Simcoe,” Orville elaborated.

“That was before Wendy opened up shop here.” Geena eyed Ben, her head tilted to one side. “With that goatee and mustache, and draped in that black hairdresser’s cape, you look a little like Zorro.”

Ben’s right eyebrow rose, giving him a wicked, humorous expression. “You like, señorita?”

“It’s rather nineties,” she teased, meaning the goatee. “But I guess you can get away with it in Hainesville.”

“Are you suggesting this isn’t the fashion capital of the Pacific northwest?” Orville demanded, reaching for hair gel. “That everything’s not up-to-date in Kansas City?”

“Hainesville isn’t on the fashion map,” Ben replied for her. “I daresay it’s not even on the same planet as Paris or Milan.” He held up a copy of the magazine in his lap, which, to Geena’s surprise, turned out to be Vogue—with her photo on the cover. “As you can see, I’m studying up on the matter.”

Geena glanced down—and saw a two-page spread of herself at a New York fashion show three seasons ago. “Ugh. I was so fat back then. Orville, what are you doing with Vogue in your waiting room? You used to have nothing but Rod and Gun and Readers’ Digest.”

“Kelly dropped them off—she said she was distributing her old copies around town rather than throwing them away. You’d be surprised how many men pick them up.”

The bell over the door sounded, and a man Geena didn’t know came in. Orville excused himself and went to the desk to make the newcomer an appointment.

Ben continued to peruse the photos of Geena. “The extra weight looked good on you.”

“I was hideous. Flip the page.” She began arranging Orville’s brushes and combs, spreading them out in a fan on the counter. She didn’t know what was worse—Ben seeing her that way or Ben admiring her that way.

Ben’s voice was quiet but penetrating. “You’re beautiful, Geena. Why you don’t like yourself?”

A jolt ran through her. Her gaze jerked up to meet his in the mirror. “What are you talking about? Of course I like myself.” Then she realized she was being too intense and shrugged, adding lightly, “After that show some young thang from Georgia took over top billing. I had to do something to get my mojo back.”

Ben said nothing, just slowly shook his head. The silence worked on her, conjuring conflicting voices.

People told her she was beautiful all the time. It meant nothing.

He wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it.

Ben was a doctor, concerned about the health effects of low body weight.

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