A LITTLE HELP—AND A LOT OF LOVE

Ever since her mother died, nurse practitioner Kayley Quartermain has been searching for somewhere to belong. She wants that somewhere to be her hometown of Bedford, but first she needs a job. Thankfully, her matchmaking godmother offers a solution: a career match—and hopefully a romantic one, too—assisting recently widowed Dr. Luke Dolan at his clinic.

Still adjusting to life as a single dad, Luke is reluctant to accept Kayley’s help. Sure, she’s great at her job, and five-year-old Lily adores her, but Luke’s developing strong feelings for Kayley, too. For Lily’s sake, he needs to be careful about whom he lets in. But with Kayley fitting in so perfectly as they rebuild their lives, could she be the one piece they’ve been missing?

Just as she was about to turn toward her vehicle, which was parked in his driveway, Kayley glanced down.

And that was when she saw it. There was a bright, shiny new penny right in her path.

Without giving it a second thought, Kayley quickly bent down to pick it up. She’d stopped abruptly without giving Luke any warning, making him walk right into her as she stooped over the coin.

The unexpected contact almost caused her to pitch forward, and she would have done just that had Luke not grabbed for her, pulling her to her feet and throwing her off balance. Her body hit his. Air whooshed out of her and she found herself looking right up at him with less than half an inch between them.

Temptation, fast and furious, appeared out of nowhere, taking control while his brain went on temporary hiatus for about ten seconds.

Before he realized what he was doing—and the consequences that would come with it—Luke found himself kissing Kayley.

* * *

Matchmaking Mamas:

Playing Cupid. Arranging dates.

What are mothers for?

A Second Chance for the Single Dad

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and seventy-five books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Dr. Johnson,

Dr. Younger,

Dr. Kang

And all the others who

Worked hard to put me back together

This year

Thank you

I now know what Humpty Dumpty

Felt like

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

One moment the blond-haired, attractive woman with the kind blue eyes wasn’t there; the next moment, she was. Her very presence seemed to dominate the real estate office, an office devoted to a business that Maizie Sommers had taken such pride in building up over the years.

The only business that Maizie took even more pride in was the one that she and her two lifelong best friends, Theresa Manetti and Cecilia Parnell, conducted unofficially. A business that yielded no monetary rewards. However, the rewards that it did yield were far richer than any dollar amount.

And it was as if the woman standing before her now sensed that fact despite that they had never really talked about it.

“Maizie,” the woman said in a soft voice, “you need to help Kayley find someone. I don’t want her spending the rest of her life alone. It’s not right. She has so much love to give and no one to give it to. I’d find her someone myself, but I can’t do that now. And she is your goddaughter,” Karen Quartermain added pointedly. “Help her, Maizie. Please.”

The woman’s quietly worded request seemed to fill up every single space within the room.

Gasping, Maizie bolted upright. She wasn’t in her office—she was in her bed.

Her bedroom was dark, except for the ray of moonlight intruding like a laser through the window. It was shining on something on the rug. Something small and round.

Blowing out a long breath, Maizie ran her hand along her forehead.

A dream. It was only a dream.

Her brain should have realized that even though every detail had seemed so incredibly vivid and real. Her office had looked just like her office. And her friend had looked just like her friend. Except that Karen had looked the way she had a year ago, before she became ill.

Why in heaven’s name was she dreaming about Karen Quartermain, Maizie silently asked herself. She’d never dreamed about Karen, even when she was alive. Why now, two months after her friend had died?

With a sigh, Maizie lay back down. It was still very early. Turning on her side, she faced the window. She inhaled deeply and willed herself to get back to sleep.

Vivid or not, it was just a dream, nothing more. Nothing—

What was that on her rug?

The moonlight made her light gray rug appear pale even as it highlighted something on it.

Whatever it was looked as if it were winking at her.

Maizie sighed again. She was going to drive herself crazy guessing.

She wouldn’t have any peace until she found out what was on the rug. Throwing off her covers, Maizie got up and went to see exactly what the moonlight was shining on.

It was a penny.

What was a penny doing on her rug? The only explanation she could think of was that it must have fallen out of her pocket when she had gotten undressed for bed last night. But why had it been in her pocket in the first place? She never kept change in her pocket.

After picking it up, she sat down on the edge of her bed, staring at the coin. She was certain she hadn’t put it into her pocket. Any pennies she acquired went into a glass jar in her office and she hadn’t acquired any in a while.

“Karen?” she finally said uneasily, glancing around her bedroom. “Is this from you? Is this your way of giving me a sign?”

She knew it would have seemed silly to a great many people, thinking that the penny had just mysteriously appeared, a sign from a world that had no physical boundaries. But she and Karen Quartermain went back a long way. Karen had once jokingly said that if she died before Maizie and ever wanted to communicate, she’d drop a penny in her path so that she would know that she was trying to send a message, that Karen wanted something from her.

Karen had said the same thing to her daughter. Then she’d laughed, saying that was all pennies were good for these days—communication—since it took too many to buy anything.

Maizie closed her fingers around the penny, holding it as tightly as she had once held her friend’s hand as Karen was slipping away.

“That was you, wasn’t it?” Maizie whispered into the darkness. “That was you, asking me to find someone for Kayley.”

It was no longer a question. It was, Maizie thought, an assignment. One she felt honor bound to take on.

“Okay, Karen,” she said, completely awake now. “I’ll see what the girls and I can do.”

Chapter One

“If you don’t mind my saying so, Dr. Dolan, you look a little lost. Is there anything I can do for you?” Cecilia Parnell asked kindly.

As was her habit since she’d begun her housecleaning service—long before she had the large staff of excellent workers that she had now—Cilia would come by and personally check in with her clients once a month to make sure everything was more than satisfactory as far as the service went. Ordinarily, her clients had nothing but praise for the women in Cilia’s employ.

But this admittedly was not an ordinary situation.

Cilia had taken a special interest in Dr. Lucas Dolan ever since he had abruptly returned from serving his country overseas. A highly respected orthopedic surgeon who was also a reservist, he had selflessly done two tours of duty in the Middle East, seeing to the needs of not only wounded US soldiers but the native population, as well, many of whom had never even been to a doctor.

And then a call had come nine months ago that changed everything.

His wife, Jill, was driving their four-year-old daughter, Lily, home from preschool when she was broadsided by a driver texting to her boyfriend. Jill and Lily were rushed to the hospital. Luke flew home immediately, praying all the way. But Jill died before he could reach her bedside.

Lily had sustained cuts and bruises and was shaken up by the accident, but apart from being very confused and frightened, she was all right.

“Lost?” Luke repeated, glancing at the woman whose services Jill had engaged the week that they had moved into their house as a husband and wife.

Sitting in his living room, Luke struggled not to allow the sadness that had become his constant companion to overwhelm him.

Yes, he was lost, Luke thought. Lost because his high school sweetheart, the woman he had come to rely on for absolutely everything, was gone. Jill had generously freed him up so that he could concentrate on being the best surgeon he could be.

And now she’d been ripped out of his life without warning, leaving him not just to cope with all those details she had been so good at attending to, not just to cope with the emptiness that her absence had created, but also to cope with the prospect of being a single father to a little girl he hardly knew.

Sometimes it was almost too much for him to bear.

Lily was two when his reserve platoon had been called up and sent overseas. She was four when he came back into her life.

Now she was five, and things were somewhat better between them. But, like a blind man, Luke was still trying to find his way around in a world that was totally unknown to him.

He forced himself to smile at Cilia, knowing that the older woman was only trying to be kind. But as far as her question went, he couldn’t open up to her any more than he could open up to his mother-in-law. Barbara Baxter had moved in to help bridge the gap for Lily after her only daughter had died. Barbara was still there, taking care of Lily since he’d gone back to work.

Because Cilia appeared to be waiting for more of a response from him, he grasped at the first thing that came to mind.

“I’m just a little stressed out, I guess,” he told her. “I went back to my old orthopedic medical group recently and so far, I’ve been sharing the services of a physician’s assistant with another one of the surgeons. But I can see it’s exhausting for her, trying to be accommodating to my patients as well as his. I’ve been looking into hiring a physician’s assistant of my own, but finding the right person has turned out to be more challenging than I thought.”

“Really?” Cilia said sympathetically. “Well, I have the occasion to interact with a lot of people in my line of work, not to mention that my two closest friends have their own businesses, as well, and they come in contact with an even larger variety of people than I do. I’ll tell them to keep an eye out for a possible candidate for you to interview. I’m sure that between the three of us, we’ll have you set up with someone more than suitable for your needs in no time,” Cilia promised with a warm, motherly smile.

“I’m looking for a physician’s assistant,” Luke emphasized, wanting to be absolutely clear that she understood what he needed.

Cilia’s smile widened. “But of course—I understand completely,” she told him. “I’ll let you know the moment one of my friends or I find one,” she promised. “Always a pleasure talking to you, Doctor.”

She nodded at Luke’s mother-in-law as she passed the woman on her way out.

Barbara had filled her in on her son-in-law’s story, sharing with her that she was worried about Luke. He was like a fish out of water without Jill in his life, she’d told Cilia. It was obvious that Barbara grieved for the loss of her daughter, but Cilia could tell that the woman also grieved for Luke and for Lily. She and Barbara were in agreement that Luke needed a wife and Lily needed a mother, and Barbara was unselfish enough to realize that.

Aware of what she and her two friends did on the side, Barbara had called and spoken to Cilia earlier today, appealing to her as a mother—and a grandmother. Quite blatantly, Barbara had asked Cilia for her help.

It was what had prompted Cilia’s visit today, since Barbara had told her that her son-in-law had taken the day off.

Cilia had wanted to feel Luke out for herself. Looking into the handsome thirty-eight-year-old’s eyes and exchanging a minimum of words, Cilia had decided that the young doctor was definitely someone she and her friends could help.

Indeed, they needed to help the man who had suffered such a terrible loss while he’d been nobly serving his country.

Leaving the doctor’s house, Cilia couldn’t wait to talk to her friends. She called Maizie and Theresa from her car before she even started it, suggesting they get together that evening to play cards, which had become their euphemism for undertaking the very challenging task of matchmaking.

* * *

“I’ve got a candidate for us!” Cilia declared as she crossed the threshold later that evening, walking into Maizie’s living room.

“We’re in here,” Theresa called out to her from the family room.

The moment Cilia entered the family room, where all their card games took place, Maizie told her, “Cilia, you took the words right out of my mouth.”

Slightly puzzled, Cilia looked at her friend. “I was the one who called for a meeting,” she reminded Maizie.

“Only because I haven’t had a chance to,” Maizie answered. “I was busy meeting with our next matchmaking candidate.”

Cilia was accustomed to Maizie being the unofficial leader of their group. She always had been. But this one time, she decided to dig in her heels. “I think my candidate needs our attention first.”

Maizie wasn’t used to arguing, but she stuck to her guns—because this was personal. “Mine’s my goddaughter.”

One of the reasons they had remained such close friends over the decades, weathering good times and bad, was that none of them pulled rank or disregarded the other two. Because it sounded as if this match Maizie had brought up was so important to her, Cilia inclined her head in agreement.

Sitting down at the card table where they did all their best brainstorming, Cilia said, “All right, it’s your house, Maizie. You go first.”

As she began to tell Theresa and Cilia about what had inspired her to take on this match, she wondered if her friends were going to think she had gone over the deep end.

She looked from Theresa to Cilia. “You two remember my friend Karen Quartermain, don’t you?”

Theresa’s response was an animated “Of course.”

Cilia looked momentarily saddened as she told Maizie, “Karen was much too young when she died.”

Maizie nodded. “Agreed. Karen always said that if she died first and ever needed to get me to do something, she’d find a way to drop a penny in my path so I’d know she was trying to communicate with me.”

She gazed at the two women she’d been friends with since the third grade. She was fairly certain that they would understand what she was about to say next, but she wasn’t 100 percent convinced. Mentally crossing her fingers, she continued.

“I dreamed about her last night. It was a very vivid, very real dream. She asked me to find someone for her daughter, Kayley. When I woke up, there was a penny on my carpet. I have no idea how it got there, but I know it wasn’t there when I went to bed.”

Cilia studied her closely. “Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely,” Maizie answered with feeling. “Kayley is a wonderful girl. She gave up her job at a medical clinic in San Francisco to come home and nurse her mother through her final stages of bone cancer.”

The words medical clinic instantly caught Cilia’s attention. “What did she do at the medical clinic?” Cilia asked.

“Kayley’s a physician’s assistant. I can’t tell you what a comfort she was to her mother—What?” Maizie asked, seeing the wide smile on Cilia’s face.

Cilia suppressed a laugh. “I think that you just came up with the perfect solution for both of us,” she told Maizie.

It was Maizie’s turn to be confused. “Come again?” she asked uncertainly.

Cilia’s face was a wreath of smiles as she happily said, “Trust me, I have the perfect guy for your goddaughter.”

* * *

Kayley Quartermain glanced at the address on the piece of paper that her godmother, Maizie Sommers, had given her.

After her college graduation, Kayley hadn’t seen the woman she called Aunt Maizie for several years. Then Maizie had visited a week before her mother died. Maizie had been upset that she hadn’t heard about Karen being sick until the cancer had reached stage four. It was Aunt Maizie who had kept Kayley from going to pieces. She’d also been the one to help her with her mother’s funeral arrangements.

Looking back now, Kayley had to admit that she didn’t know what she would have done without her godmother’s help.

She laughed softly to herself as she pulled into the medical building’s parking lot. Aunt Maizie was more like a fairy godmother than just a run-of-the-mill godmother, Kayley thought. Not only had she helped to get her through what had to be the worst point in her life, but just last night, Aunt Maizie had called her to say that she thought she had found a possible position for her. She had a friend who knew a surgeon reestablishing his practice and he needed—wait for it, she mused with a smile—a physician’s assistant.

Maybe life was taking a turn for the better after all, Kayley thought, pulling her car into the first space she found.

It was a tight fit, requiring her to pay close attention to both sides of her vehicle as she pulled into the spot. Getting out of the car, she found she had to inch her way out slowly in order to keep from pushing her car door into the other vehicle.

Being extra careful, she eased her door closed and fervently hoped that the owner of the car next to hers would be gone by the time she was finished with her job interview.

She moved away from her door, backed out gingerly, then turned to make her way to the entrance of the two-story medical building.

Which was when she saw it.

There, right in front of her just as she was about to walk to the entrance of the building, was a bright, shiny new penny.

She stared at it for a moment, thinking she was imagining it.

Ever since her mother had died, she’d been on the lookout for pennies, even though she told herself she was being foolish because only a fool would really believe that her late mother would be sending her a sign from heaven.

But there it was, a penny so new that it looked as if it had never been used.

Unable to help herself, Kayley smiled as she stooped down to pick up the coin.

She was also unable to keep herself from wondering, Does this mean I’m going to get the job, Mom? That you somehow arranged all this for me?

Even as the question darted across her mind, she knew it was silly to think like this. Logically, she knew that the departed couldn’t intervene on the behalf of the people they had left behind.

She was letting her loss get to her.

And yet...

And yet here was a penny, right in her path. And now right in the middle of her hand.

Was it an omen, a sign from her mother that this—and everything else—was going to work out well for her?

She really wanted to believe that.

Kayley caught her lower lip between her teeth and looked at the penny again.

“Nothing wrong in thinking of it as a good-luck piece, right?” she murmured under her breath, tucking the coin into her purse.

Lots of people believed in luck. They had lucky socks they wore whenever they played ball, lucky rabbits’ feet tucked away somewhere on their bodies when they took tests.

They believed that luck—and objects representing that luck—simply tipped the scales in their favor.

Nothing wrong with that, Kayley told herself again.

Thinking of the penny in her purse, she squared her shoulders and walked up to the entrance of the medical building.

The electronic doors pulled apart, allowing her to walk in. The entrance, she realized, opened automatically to accommodate people who might have trouble pulling open a heavy door because of conditions that brought them to an orthopedic surgeon in the first place.

Once inside the building, Kayley moved aside, away from the electronic door sensors. She needed to gather herself together in order to focus. She was good at what she did, very good, but she knew that she could still wind up tripping herself up.

You want me to get this job, don’t you, Mom? You brought Aunt Maizie back into my life because you knew I was going to need her to get through this. And then, because you were always worried about me, you had her call me about this job opening.

Suddenly wanting to take another look at the penny, Kayley opened her purse and gazed down at it.

You’re still looking out for me, aren’t you? Kayley silently asked, although, in her heart, she knew the answer to that.

The elevator was just right of the entrance. The elevator doors opened as she walked up to them.

Another good omen? she wondered, trying to convince herself that she was a shoo-in for the job.

The elevator car was empty.

The nerves that usually began to act up each time she had to take on something new—a job interview, an admission exam, anything out of the ordinary—seemed oddly dormant this time.

Kayley smiled to herself. She had a feeling—irrational though it might be—that she wasn’t going to be facing this interview by herself. Even so, she did experience a fleeting sensation of butterflies—large ones—preparing to take flight. And quickly.

“It’s going to be all right,” she promised herself in a low whisper since no one else was in the elevator with her. “Nothing to be afraid of. You’re going to be fine. The job’s yours.”

Just as the doors were about to close again, a tall athletic-looking man with wayward dark blond hair put his hand in.

The doors still closed, then immediately sprang open again, receding back to their corners and allowing him to walk in.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” he asked, looking straight at her, his head slightly cocked as if he couldn’t decide if he’d overheard something he shouldn’t have.

“Not a word,” Kayley answered brightly.

It was a lie, but she wasn’t about to admit to a perfect stranger—and he really was perfect—that she was giving herself a pep talk. It would have made him think that he was sharing the elevator with a mildly deranged woman.

That was how rumors got started, she thought, smiling at the man.

He didn’t return the smile.

Chapter Two

The Orthopedic Surgeons Medical Building was a square white building that had only two floors. The bottom floor housed an outpatient operating facility as well as an area where MRIs and other diagnostic scans were taken. The front of the second floor was a communal reception area where patients could sign in and then wait to be taken through the double doors to the myriad of rooms that honeycombed the rear of the floor. That was where a variety of orthopedic doctors, each with his or her own specialty, would see them.

When the elevator doors opened on the second floor, the solemn-looking man riding up with her put his hand out again, this time to assure that the car’s doors would remain open. Then he stared at her, waiting.

“Oh.” Kayley had been lost in thought, but now she came alive, realizing that the strikingly handsome man was holding the doors open for her. “Thank you,” she told him quickly, hurrying out of the elevator.

“Don’t mention it,” the man murmured in a deep voice that seemed to surround her even though there was all this wide-open space around her.

As she tried to orient herself, the first thing Kayley saw was a long dark teak reception desk. There were currently three women seated there, each incredibly perky looking and each busily engaged, typing on computer keyboards.

Kayley waited until one of them was free and then walked up her. It was a petite brunette with lively green eyes.

Giving her a cursory glance, the brunette asked, “Name?”

It had been several years since she’d had to go through the interview process. Kayley felt the tips of her fingers grow icy as she answered, “Kayley Quartermain.”

The receptionist skimmed a list she pulled up on her screen. Frowning, she looked up again and asked, “And you’re here to see...?”

She’d memorized everything on the piece of paper Aunt Maizie had handed her, but she still looked down at it before answering.

“Dr. Dolan.” It felt as if the man’s name was sticking to the roof of her mouth.

The receptionist pulled up a new list, this one apparently highlighting that particular doctor’s schedule for the day. If anything, the frown on her lips deepened.

“Are you sure you have an appointment?” the woman asked. “I don’t see you on Dr. Dolan’s list.”

“I’m sure,” Kayley told her. “I called your office to verify the appointment yesterday afternoon.”

The receptionist shrugged and reached toward a shelf where two sets of forms were stacked. “New patient or follow-up?” she asked.

“Oh.” It dawned on Kayley that the receptionist was making a mistake. “Neither.”

Confusion creased the young woman’s high forehead. “Well, then, I’m afraid that you can’t—”

“No, you don’t understand,” Kayley said, cutting her short. “I’m applying for the position of Dr. Dolan’s physician’s assistant,” she explained. “I was told he was looking for one.” Then, to back up her claim, she added, “I emailed him my résumé.”

The receptionist instantly became friendlier. “Boy, is Rachel going to be happy to see you,” she said with enthusiasm.

“Rachel?” Kayley asked uncertainly, not sure what the receptionist was telling her.

“That’s Dr. Barrett’s physician’s assistant,” the receptionist explained. “She’s helping Dr. Dolan out until he finds his own PA. But she’s also working for Dr. Barrett and between the two, she can hardly draw two breaths consecutively.” The receptionist lowered her voice. “The poor thing’s worn out,” she confided.

Kayley nodded sympathetically. “Hopefully, she’ll be able to draw a lot of consecutive breathes shortly.”

“Yes.” The receptionist offered her a quick one-size-fits-all smile and then told her, “Please take a seat in the waiting room. Someone will be with you very shortly.”

The “someone” turned out to be the physician’s assistant who was currently juggling patients for both Dr. Dolan and Dr. Barrett.

Young and undoubtedly vibrant, Rachel Mathews fairly burst through the double doors that led to the back offices.

After a brief word with the receptionist, the beleaguered physician’s assistant made eye contact with her and immediately broke out in a huge relieved smile. Rather than standing and waiting by the door to the back rooms, Rachel swiftly came up to her and put her hand out as she asked hopefully, “You’re the one here about the opening for a physician’s assistant?”

“Yes, that’s—”

Rachel wouldn’t even let her finish her sentence. Judging by the young woman’s expression, Kayley had the feeling that Rachel was fighting the urge to throw her arms around her.

As it was, Rachel cried, “Thank God! I don’t think I could have taken one more week of doing double duty.” She shook her hand vigorously. Again, the woman seemed as if she was on the verge of embracing her.

Had she already landed the position? Kayley asked herself. Granted, she was very proud of her medical skills and what she had learned during the last round of courses she had taken to improve upon her degree, but there was no way that this Rachel person could know that. For all she knew, Kayley could have fabricated everything on her résumé.

“Come with me,” Rachel told her. “I’ll take you to the back and you can tell me about yourself.”

“It’s all there, in my résumé,” Kayley told the back of Rachel’s head as the PA led the way through a maze that eventually brought them to a room in the extreme rear.

“It’s always good to get the feel of a person,” Rachel said. “Looking into a person’s eyes tells me more than the words on any résumé.”

Taking her into what was clearly an exam room, complete with a monitor that highlighted X-ray films, Rachel gestured for her to take a seat.

“You can sit on either the chair or the exam table, whatever makes you feel the most comfortable.” It was obvious by her mechanical tone that she recited those words to anyone she brought into either of the two doctors’ exam rooms.

“I’ll take the chair,” Kayley told her. Sitting on the table would make her feel too vulnerable. As it was, she could feel her fingertips getting cold again.

She handed the woman a copy of the résumé she’d sent the doctor by email and then braced herself for a shower of questions.

The shower didn’t come.

Instead, Rachel just began to talk to her. “Dr. Dolan is a really nice man. But the poor man’s sad. Very sad. He’s going through a rough patch. You shouldn’t take that as any kind of reflection on you,” Rachel warned.

After having given up a rather lucrative, promising position for a prominent doctor to come back home and nurse her mother, she couldn’t afford to be overly picky. Her mother had left her a little bit of money in her will, so there was no need to sell her soul—not until the end of next month, at any rate.

“Is there a reason why he’s so sad?” Kayley asked, wondering if there was something that she should know ahead of time. She didn’t want to inadvertently make a tactless remark.

“An excellent reason,” Rachel told her. “The doctor’s wife was in a car accident and died. His four-year-old daughter was in the car at the time, too, although she’s all right now—at least that’s what I’ve heard,” Rachel said in a lowered voice. “If you ask me,” she continued in an even lower voice, “the doctor blames himself for not being there when it happened.”

“There probably wasn’t anything he could have done at the time, anyway,” Kayley said, thinking of her mother and how hard she’d tried to find a way to get that awful disease to go into remission.

“You’re probably right,” Rachel agreed. “But word has it that’s not the way he feels, which is all that counts. Anyway—” the physician’s assistant shifted her focus and skimmed over the copy of the résumé that Kayley had just handed her “—everything looks in order and I, for one, would love to have you on board,” she said with a great deal of enthusiastic sincerity. “But you understand, the doctor has to have the final say.”

“Of course,” Kayley concurred. She expected nothing less. “To be honest, I thought he’d be the one conducting the interview.”

“He’s still with his patient, but he’ll be here,” Rachel promised. “He’ll probably ask you a couple of things,” the young woman told her. “And, just so that you know, for some reason he turned down the other five applicants.”

That didn’t sound promising, Kayley thought, her uneasiness growing, although she managed to keep it from Rachel.

“Was there a reason?” she asked, wanting to know what she was up against. If she knew, she might be able to be more in line with what the surgeon was seeking.

But Rachel shook her head. She seemed really disappointed that she couldn’t offer anything helpful. “Not that he said. He just shook his head after each of the people he interviewed had left and murmured, ‘Not the one.’ I thought for sure he clicked with Albert,” Rachel told her, and then sighed, “but I was wrong.”

“Albert?” she asked.

At least the doctor had no preconceived notions about the person he was looking for to fill the position. If he had, he wouldn’t have interviewed a man for it—or if he had set notions, he might have only interviewed men for the job.

Rachel nodded. “Albert was the last PA who applied.”

This was not shaping up to be particularly encouraging. But then, if this didn’t work out, she would be no worse off than she was right now. Besides, she had a ton of her mother’s things to go through and if worse came to worse, that would take up a good amount of her time. At least she would stay busy until she was able to find a job.

“Wait right here,” Rachel said, about to leave the room. “Dr. Dolan will be with you as soon as he finishes up with his patient,” she assured her.

The moment she said the words, Rachel suddenly turned rather pale. “Omigod, I forgot he asked me to bring the last X-rays for Mr. Mulroney.” She began to rush out of the room, pausing only to toss a few last words over her shoulder. “I really hope you get this job.”

The corners of Kayley’s mouth curved ever so slightly as she watched the other woman dash out. “Me too, Rachel,” she said, knowing that the PA was no longer in earshot. “Me too.”

Kayley sat back in her chair and waited.

And waited.

After twenty minutes, she started to grow rather restless. She also started to think that very possibly, she had gotten lost in the shuffle. When she’d come in, she had noticed that there were probably more than two dozen people sitting outside in the waiting room. And although there appeared to be about ten or eleven physicians presently in the building, she could see how she might have just gotten overlooked or even fallen through the cracks.

For the next five minutes, Kayley debated between waiting in the room quietly and going out to see if perhaps her theory was right and she had been forgotten about.

Since she wasn’t the type to simply sit on her hands, choice number two won.

Picking up her shoulder bag, Kayley got up and went to the door. She pulled it open with the intention of heading back to the reception desk to find out what was going on.

It all happened so fast her brain almost went numb.

She got as far as taking one step out of the exam room when she walked straight into a tall athletic man in a white lab coat. The scent of musky aftershave immediately filled her senses.

It was the same man she had shared the elevator with, she realized.

The man wasn’t a patient. He was a doctor.

Was he her doctor? she couldn’t help wondering, still trying to get her bearings.

“Hey, slow down,” he cautioned, catching hold of her by her shoulders to steady her. “You create quite a jolt when you walk into a person.”

Startled, Kayley tried to back up. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to walk into you.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” he commented drolly. Dropping his hands to his sides, he said, “Rachel tells me that you’re here to talk about the physician’s assistant opening in the staff.”

As subtly as she could, she drew in a breath and then answered, “Yes, I am.”

Nodding, the doctor gestured toward the chair. “Please, sit down.”

Kayley turned and went back into the room, feeling as if she were moving in slow motion. She took a seat as he’d instructed.

Looking up, she saw that the doctor had followed her in and sat down on a stool, the seat she assumed he would have taken when talking with a patient.

He skimmed the résumé that she’d sent via email and that he’d printed up. “I see that all of your experience has been in San Francisco.” Setting the paper down, he stared at her. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile in his expression. “Why did you leave your last place of employment?”

“I had to,” she told him simply.

“Had to?” Luke repeated. The first thing that occurred to him was that she had been asked to leave. “Were you terminated?”

His question jolted her. “Oh no, I wasn’t fired. I found out that my mother had cancer and I came back to take care of her.”

He gave no indication of what he was thinking when he began to ask, “Did she—”

“Make it?” Kayley supplied, guessing at what the doctor was about to ask. She shook her head. “No, she didn’t.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t what he’d been expecting to hear. Over the last nine months, he felt as if everyone had gone on with their lives and he was the only one to have faced such a glaring loss.

The situation felt awkward and for a moment, he had no idea what to say. Finally, he told her, “Well, at least you got to be with her before she passed on.” With all his heart, he wished that he had had that same good fortune. There were so many things that had been left unsaid. He would have given anything to have had even just one last day with Jill.

But that simply wasn’t in the cards.

“Yes, I did,” Kayley replied. What else could she have said? she thought, shifting in her seat.

“So, why are you looking for a position in Bedford?” he asked her bluntly. “Why not just go back to the Bay Area?”

No small talk here. The man’s bedside manner really needed work. But then, she wasn’t looking for a friend, Kayley reminded herself. She was looking for an employer.

“Well, I’m originally from around here. Staying in Bedford just seemed like the right thing to do. To be honest, I like living in Southern California a lot more than living up in San Francisco. I find that the people are friendlier—and the weather is certainly better,” she ended with a smile.

There wasn’t a single shred of emotion on his face as he said, “I see.”

She could see that her answer had made the man thoughtful and she couldn’t imagine why it would have that kind of an effect on him. She wasn’t certain exactly what sort of an answer the doctor wanted. All that she could do was be honest.

“And, when you get right down to it, this is home,” she added, hoping to move the interview along past what was clearly a sticking point for the doctor for some reason.

Luke nodded. Her response had reminded him that he hadn’t been able to get back for Jill’s last breath, her last moments.

Realizing that he’d been silent longer than he’d intended, Luke picked up her résumé again and took a breath.

“I’m going to have to check these references out,” he informed her.

She’d been braced for a rejection, and she instantly perked up. “Of course.” He sounded as if he was about to get up and leave the room. “Is there anything you want to ask me while I’m here?”

“Yes.” He looked into her eyes, trying not to get lost in them. “Why a physician’s assistant? Why not a doctor?”

“Frankly, there wasn’t enough money for me to go to medical school for the length of time it would take me to become a doctor. I was working part-time already and I didn’t want to incur a staggering debt that was going to follow me around for the next thirty or so years.” She smiled as she added, “Becoming a physician’s assistant was as close to becoming a doctor as I could get. And I was always interested in helping people. In healing them.”

For a long moment, the doctor merely stared at her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking and she wondered if she had talked too much.

Mentally, Kayley crossed her fingers.

Chapter Three

There was a knock on the exam room door and the next moment, Rachel stuck her head in.

“I’m really sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but your next patient is getting very restless. Mr. Jeffers says he has an appointment with his lawyer right after he sees you and he’s worried that he’s going to be late. His lawyer charges by the quarter of the hour—whether he’s there or not.”

Having delivered her message, Rachel flashed an apologetic look in Kayley’s direction.

Luke rose from his stool. “Tell Mr. Jeffers I’ll be right with him.” Turning back to Kayley, he told her, “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Quartermain. I’ll be in touch.”

Her heart sank a little. Kayley knew what that meant: Don’t hold your breath.

Still, she wasn’t about to be rude. There was protocol to follow. Kayley forced a smile to her lips and went through the motions.

“I’ll look forward to your call, Doctor,” she told him—or rather his back because Dr. Dolan was already walking out the door and on his way to his impatient patient.

“Well, I tried,” she murmured, sticking her hands into her pockets. Her right hand touched the penny she’d found right outside the office. “I guess this wasn’t our lucky day after all, Mom,” she whispered just before she walked out of the exam room.

* * *

Giving in to impulse, Kayley stopped at the supermarket and picked up a consoling pint of rum raisin ice cream. She was tempted to buy two, but she knew that she had absolutely no willpower when she felt this disappointed. That meant that if she bought two pints, she would wind up eating two pints—in one sitting.

Keeping this in mind, Kayley restrained herself, took only the single pint to the checkout counter and then hurried out of the store before she weakened and went back for another one.

With the supermarket doors closing behind her, she stepped off the curb—and saw yet another penny.

“Nice try, Mom,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. “But I’m not buying it.”

Kayley walked right by the lone penny and was halfway to her car when her desire to think the best of every situation got the better of her. She stopped, turned around and retraced her steps until she was looking down at the penny again.

Picking the coin up, she found that unlike the shiny one she’d found earlier in front of the medical building, this one was old, worn and sticky. Apparently, some sort of gummy substance had been spilled on it.

Still, now that she’d picked it up, she couldn’t just toss it aside. Holding on to the coin, she headed back to where she had parked her car.

“Okay, so sue me. I’m an idiot and I have to believe in something,” she muttered as she opened her car. “I have to believe it’s going to be all right.”

Leaning over in her seat, she put the pint of ice cream on the passenger-side floor. Then she buckled up and drove home planning her evening: consuming a pint of rum raisin ice cream and watching an old movie on one of the classic-movie channels.

* * *

Her landline was ringing when she walked in.

Hoping against hope, Kayley dropped her purse on the floor next to the door and, still carrying the bag of ice cream, she quickly made her way over to the phone that was sitting on one of the two side tables bracketing the sofa.

Kayley grabbed the receiver and uttered a breathless “Hello?”

“How did it go?” the cheerful, maternal voice on the other end of the line asked.

Kayley suppressed the sigh that rose to her lips. It was her fairy godmother, calling to check on her. She should have guessed.

“I don’t know yet,” she told Maizie, temporarily sinking down on the sofa. She tried not to sound as dejected as she felt when she added, “Dr. Dolan said they’d be in touch.”

“Yes, but how did it go?” Maizie repeated with a touch of eagerness in her voice. “You must have some sort of impression about the way the interview with Dr. Dolan went.”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I do,” Kayley answered. “It went fast.”

There was a pause on Maizie’s end. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said.

“The doctor squeezed my interview between seeing two patients. That didn’t exactly give him much time to talk to me,” Kayley explained. Then, because Maizie had gone out of her way to arrange this interview for her, Kayley decided that it was only right to give her godmother a few more details. “He came in, looked over the copy of my résumé that he’d printed out and asked a couple of questions.”

“What kind of questions?” Maizie asked.

She told her godmother the first thing that she remembered. “Dr. Dolan wanted to know why I left San Francisco.”

It was obvious by the tone of Maizie’s response that the woman thought this was a good thing. There was almost excitement in the older woman’s voice as she asked, “And did you tell him that it was to nurse your poor sick mother?”

“Yes, I did, Aunt Maizie,” Kayley replied dutifully, smiling at the question.

There was a time when she would have resented being treated like a child, but now that her mother was gone, she had to admit she rather liked it. It took her back to when she was younger and was still someone’s little girl. Something that she was never going to be again, she thought sadly.

“And what did he say?”

“Something strange, actually,” Kayley answered. “I’m paraphrasing but he said that at least I was lucky enough to be able to be there to share some time with my mother before she died.”

“That’s because he was serving overseas when his wife was killed,” Maizie told her.

Kayley was surprised that Maizie knew that. But then again, Maizie always seemed to know everything.

“The physician’s assistant he’s sharing with another doctor told me something about that,” Kayley admitted.

Maizie’s tone brightened a little as she asked, “And then what did he say?”

“He didn’t,” Kayley told her. “He became very quiet and just stared at my résumé. Then the physician’s assistant stuck her head in to tell him that his next patient was becoming restless. That’s when Dr. Dolan thanked me for coming in and told me that he would be in touch.” Kayley sighed deeply. She was feeling rather dejected. This was the first interview she’d landed since her mother had died and it hadn’t gone very well. “Doesn’t sound very hopeful, does it, Aunt Maizie?” she asked.

“Oh, on the contrary, dear. It sounds very hopeful,” Maizie assured her. “Just remember, not everyone jumps into things the way you and I do,” she told her goddaughter. “Some people are quite slow and deliberate. They need to think things over before they make a decision.”

Kayley really wanted to believe that, but she didn’t quite see it that way. “The other physician’s assistant told me that Dr. Dolan had already interviewed five other candidates for the position and he’d turned each one of them down.”

“Did she happen to tell you why?” Maizie asked.

Kayley sighed again, feeling more and more certain that she was never going to hear from the doctor again—or if she did, it was going to be because he was turning her down and he didn’t like leaving any loose ends.

“No, she hadn’t a clue.”

As was her custom—because she had always been such an optimist—Maizie took the information in stride. “Well, you’ll get the job, dear. He rejected the first five applicants. Six is your lucky number.”

Kayley couldn’t help but laugh at Maizie’s unorthodox reasoning. “Since when?”

“Why, since right now, of course, dear. I’m sure of it. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Well, if your bones feel it, then it’s bound to happen,” Kayley said, humoring the woman although she was definitely not optimistic about the outcome. Still, she loved Maizie for trying to bolster her self-confidence this way.

“Listen, Kayley, I have to show a house to a client in half an hour, but I’m free afterward. Why don’t you come over for dinner, say at about six thirty? I could use the company.”

Kayley knew that her godmother was constantly on the go. She had a busy social life as well as a family consisting of her daughter, her son-in-law and a number of grandchildren she was quite proud of. Aunt Maizie didn’t need company. If anything, she needed an occasional moment of solitude. She was proposing the get-together for her sake.

“Thank you, Aunt Maizie, but I’m fine, really,” Kayley told her, begging off. “I’ve got some correspondence to catch up on and there’s a pint of ice cream that’s been calling my name since I walked in the door.”

Maizie wasn’t one to force her will on someone else, even when she meant well. “Well, if you’re sure,” she said, her voice trailing off.

“I’m sure,” Kayley assured her. Then, for good measure, because she could almost hear the hesitance in her godmother’s voice, she added what she hoped was an emphatic “Really.”

She heard the small resigned sigh that escaped from her godmother before Aunt Maizie said, “Call me the minute you get the job.”

Thanks for the positive pep talk, but I’m pretty sure I’m not getting the job, Aunt Maizie.

Out loud, Kayley cheerfully promised her, “I will. Now, I’ve got to go, Aunt Maizie. The ice cream’s melting and it really tastes much better if I use a spoon to eat it, not a straw.”

“I’ll let you go, then,” Maizie said. “I’ve got that house to show. Think positive, Kayley. Good things happen when you’re positive,” she advised just before she hung up.

“I am thinking positive,” Kayley said to the receiver as she replaced it in the cradle. “I’m positive he’s not going to call.”

Turning away from the phone, Kayley grabbed the bag with the ice cream in it and hurried into the kitchen with it. She could tell that the ice cream was already getting soft.

After taking a spoon out of the drawer, she crossed to the kitchen table and removed the pint out of the bag. She’d bypassed using the ice-cream scoop and a bowl. There was no reason to get either dirty. She intended to eat the whole thing in one sitting anyway.

“C’mon, rum raisin, you and I are going to make beautiful music together. Console me,” she said to the container as she took the lid off and dug her spoon in the cream-colored semisoft surface.

Kayley closed her eyes, savoring the first bite as she slid it between her lips.

Although it tasted delicious as always, it didn’t assuage the gaping disappointment she felt burrowing deep into her chest.

She needed a job.

Maybe not this very minute, but soon.

Very soon.

Some people would have eagerly jumped at having so much free time stretching before them, using it to catch up on their reading, watch movies they hadn’t gotten around to seeing and in general just enjoy themselves. But she had never been any good at kicking back and doing nothing. The way she saw it, free time didn’t mean anything if that was all there was. It was precious only if it was very limited and doled out a tiny bit at a time.

She took another mouthful of ice cream, hoping it would console her. But it didn’t.

“Wonderful,” she murmured, licking the spoon clean before sinking it into the container again. “Thirty-two years old and I’m sitting in the middle of my kitchen swallowing empty calories, getting fat and spouting philosophy to a pint of rum raisin ice cream,” she said critically, shaking her head. “I really hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.”

Just then the phone rang again. Turning her head toward the sound, she debated letting the answering machine pick up the caller. She just knew it was her godmother calling her back with another suggestion. She really wasn’t in the mood for another pep talk.

It was the kind of thing that Maizie did. Her godmother wouldn’t rest until she got Kayley to either agree to come over or invite Maizie to come to her mother’s house.

Her house now, Kayley corrected. Lord, it was hard to think of it that way.

The phone continued to ring.

Kayley pressed her lips together, frustrated. But ignoring the phone and letting the machine pick up was rude and she knew it. And the last person she wanted to be rude to was her godmother since Aunt Maizie had been so good to her. Most kids lost contact with their godmothers by the time they were five or six but Maizie had always been there for her, one way or another. Being rude was no way to pay Maizie back and the woman knew she was home right now.

With a sigh, Kayley momentarily abandoned the dwindling pint of ice cream, leaving it on the kitchen table as she hurried over to the phone.

“Really, I’m fine, Aunt Maizie,” she told her godmother the moment she picked up the receiver. “You don’t need to keep calling to check up on me.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and then she heard a distant-sounding male voice say, “I’m not Aunt Maizie, but I’m glad you’re fine.”

Dr. Dolan? It couldn’t be.

And yet...

Her fingers had gone slack and the receiver almost slipped out of her hand. Getting a better grip on it, Kayley fumbled with an apology. “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else—”

There was just the slightest hint of a laugh. Or maybe it qualified as only a dismissive chuckle.

“Obviously,” the deep voice said.

Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird.

“Who is this?” she asked uncertainly, although a part of her thought she already knew who it was—but that was probably just wishful thinking on her part.

Nobody called back this fast—unless it was to put her out of her misery by delivering the bad news quickly and cleanly.

Was he calling to do that?

“I’m sorry—let’s start over,” the man on the other end of the line said. “This is Dr. Dolan. I’m calling to speak to a Ms. Kayley Quartermain. Is this a number where I can reach her? I’ve already tried the cell phone number on her résumé, but I can’t get through to leave a message on her voice mail.”

Kayley closed her eyes.

Idiot!

She had to remember to recharge her phone. The battery kept draining and this had to be the third time this week that this had happened, she thought, flustered that she’d committed such a birdbrained oversight.

“Oh, Dr. Dolan, I’m so sorry. This is Kayley Quartermain. My cell phone’s old and it has trouble holding a charge for more than a couple of hours. It probably died, which is why you couldn’t get through.”

To her relief, the surgeon took the information in stride. “If that’s the case, you might want to look into getting a new cell phone.”

“I will,” she quickly agreed. “But I’ve been kind of busy with other things.” When he didn’t say anything to that, she asked, “Um, is there anything I can help you with?”

He’d probably thought of another question he wanted to ask her. There was no reason for her to get her hopes up. If they were up, they only had that much farther to fall.

Even so, she caught herself crossing her fingers as she waited for the doctor to say something.

“As a matter of fact, there is. How soon can you come in?”

“For another interview?” she asked, not knowing what to make of this.

“You’re not being vetted to run for president, Ms. Quartermain,” he informed her. “I don’t need to conduct another interview. I made a call and talked to the last doctor you worked with. He told me he was very pleased with your work and he wanted to know if there was any way you’d consider coming back.” And then he caught her completely by surprise by asking, “Is there?”

“No,” Kayley answered, trying to be diplomatic. “I enjoyed my time there and Dr. Andrews was great to work with, but as I told you, Bedford is home and right now I need to feel like I’m home.” She paused for a moment. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. You still haven’t answered my first question,” he told her. “How soon can you come in? And I mean to work.”

The hummingbirds began to crash into one another in her chest. “Is now too soon?”

“We’re closed now,” he said.

“Tomorrow, then.” She saw no point in attempting to hide her eagerness.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed. “Come in at eight. We’ll go over the rules and there’s paperwork to fill out.” And with that, he hung up.

“Yay!” With a laugh, Kayley threw out what was now incredibly soupy rum raisin, then went to call Maizie with the good news.

Chapter Four

Since returning to the Orthopedic Medical Group, Luke had taken to being the first one in each morning.

Although no specific arrangements had been made regarding this practice, he became the one who usually unlocked the office doors. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to get a jump start on the day as he was there to avoid being at home with Lily.

Not that he didn’t love his daughter. He loved her a great deal. But he had no idea how to talk to her or how to relate to someone who came up to his belt buckle and with whom he had nothing in common except for the blood that ran through their veins.

He used work as his excuse for getting away. Work was also his excuse for not dealing with the terrible hollow emptiness he felt because Jill was no longer there to act as his go-between.

In addition, being the first in and opening up the office at that time guaranteed Luke at least twenty, possibly thirty, minutes alone. Because his field of expertise ran in a different direction, when he came in, he couldn’t get the coffee machine up and running to provide that vital first cup of coffee in the morning. But there was a coffee shop half a block from the medical building and he stopped there first for his daily strong shot of caffeine.

After walking in through the electronic doors, he took the elevator up the single floor and got out. He wasn’t prepared to find anyone standing by the locked double doors, waiting.

But there she was, bright eyed and smiling, the woman he had hired the day before. The woman he wasn’t 100 percent certain he should have hired the day before. But he’d been without a physician’s assistant of his own since he’d rejoined the medical group, and while he had a tendency to be oblivious to certain kinds of day-to-day details, even he noticed that Rachel, the physician’s assistant he was presently sharing with one of his colleagues, looked a little worn around the edges.

As a rule, Luke valued punctuality, but turning up at this hour went far beyond that.

He nodded at his new PA in acknowledgment. “You’re here early,” he commented as he took out his keys and unlocked the main office doors. “I thought we agreed that you’d be here at eight.”

Holding the doors open, he waited for her to walk in first.

“We did,” Kayley replied, entering the office. The large reception area was almost eerily quiet. “But I didn’t want to take a chance on the morning traffic being heavy and making me late for my first day.”

Well, he supposed that was admirable. “What time did you get here?” he asked.

She thought of saying that she wasn’t sure, but that would be lying. So she told him the truth, even though it would probably make her seem neurotic in his eyes. “Seven.”

Luke glanced at his watch, although he more or less knew what time it was. Seven thirty. So much for his half hour of solitude, he thought, switching the lights on for the entire floor.

“You’re going to have to wait for the office manager to get in,” he told her. “She’s the one who knows which papers you need to fill out.”

“That’s fine—I understand,” she said cheerfully. “I can wait. Is there anything you’d like me to do while I’m waiting?”

Luke hadn’t a clue what she was implying, but his mind had a propensity to suggest the worst-case scenario. “Like what?”

She thought of her old office. First thing in the morning, life had been clustered around the coffee machine.

“If you have a coffee machine, I can get the coffee going, if you’d like,” she offered.

Luke looked down at the container he had gotten at the coffee shop. “I brought my own,” he told her. “But I usually drink more than one cup. And I’m sure everyone else would appreciate starting their day with some hot coffee.”

She smiled at him in response. Despite his natural inclination to keep barriers between himself and anyone he interacted with, Luke couldn’t help noticing that she had the same kind of smile his daughter had. It was the kind that seemed to light up everything around her.

“Sounds good,” Kayley said. “Point me to the coffeemaker.”

He paused right outside his own office, which was still closed. “Go straight down that hallway, then turn right at the first opening. The coffeemaker is in the break room. By the time you finish with it, Delia should be in.”

She was unfamiliar with the name, since she had met with only him and Rachel, the physician’s assistant who had looked so relieved that she was interviewing for the job. “Is that the office manager?”

Luke nodded. “Delia Chin,” he said, mentioning the woman’s last name as an afterthought.

About to follow the directions he’d just given her to the break room, Kayley abruptly stopped for a second. “Dr. Dolan?”

Luke looked at her over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

There was that smile again, he observed. The next moment, his brow furrowed. “For telling you where the coffee machine is?”

“For hiring me. You won’t regret it,” she told him, and then hurried off to the break room to get the coffee started before everyone else began arriving.

Luke inserted his key into the lock and opened the door to his private office. “We’ll see, Ms. Quartermain,” he murmured under his breath. “We’ll see.”

* * *

Kayley could well understand why Rachel had looked so frazzled when they’d met, juggling a full schedule for not just one but two doctors. Handling the peripheral details for Dr. Dolan’s patients was challenging enough. It had been only eight hours and Kayley already felt as if she had run two 5K marathons.

She was sitting in the exam room vacated by the doctor’s last patient, reviewing what had been entered on the computer, when she felt that someone was standing in the doorway, observing her.

Looking up, Kayley expected to see the doctor with some sort of end-of-day instructions. Instead, it was Rachel.

“So how was your first day?” the other woman asked. It was obvious to Kayley that Rachel was checking in on “the new girl” before she went home.

Kayley paused briefly, wanting to choose exactly the right word. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful or to say something that could be misconstrued as a complaint. “It was educational,” she finally answered.

Rachel laughed. “Well, I’ve certainly never heard it referred to as that before. Is Dr. Dolan too much for you?” she asked knowingly. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being overheard, the physician’s assistant confided in a lowered voice, “He can be a bit demanding at times.”

“Oh no, no. He wasn’t too much at all. It just takes some getting used to, that’s all. The terminology,” she explained. “The last doctor I worked for was a primary physician. Dr. Andrews started his practice long before they had computers in the office. He was a lovely man—kind of like in the mold of an old-fashioned country doctor. If his patients had anything complicated, he usually wound up referring them to other physicians. And he was very laid-back in his approach to his patients. He spent as long as he needed to talking to them—and even more important, listening to them,” she added, “so he could get to the bottom of what was bothering them and why they had come to see him.”

Kayley smiled fondly, remembering. “He was really challenged having to input everything that transpired during an exam into the computer, so I usually wound up being in the room with him, doing his typing for him. Otherwise, I think he would have seen only one patient an hour.”

Rachel nodded sympathetically. “Sounds like you miss him.”

“In a way,” Kayley admitted, turning back to the computer. “Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy working here. It’s just very different. Everything here moves so breathtakingly fast.”

“Here one day and you already have a list of suggestions?”

Startled, Kayley froze for a moment, then swiveled the stool she was sitting on around to see that Dr. Dolan was standing behind her.

“Not a list of suggestions, just observations,” she told him quickly. She noticed that Rachel had vacated the area, ducking out when Dr. Dolan had appeared. She wished the woman would have given her a warning.

“I see a lot of patients because I want to help a lot of patients. I see no need to linger and talk to them about their hobbies and what baseball team they’re rooting for. That kind of thing is just taking time away from another patient I could be helping.”

“I realize that, Doctor,” she replied. She debated just letting it go at that, but at heart, that wasn’t the kind of person she was. She wanted him to understand why she believed in what she’d said. “But taking a couple of minutes just to talk to a patient, to set his or her mind at ease, makes them feel that they’re something more than just a case file to you.”

Luke could feel his temper starting to rise, something that had begun to happen only since he’d lost Jill. It took him a second to get it under control before he spoke.

“Not that I need to justify myself to my new physician’s assistant on her first day of work,” he emphasized, “but I graduated first in my class at Johns Hopkins. I worked hard for that. People come to me not because they want good conversation, but because they want me to put them together when they feel like they’re never going to feel whole again. Some other doctor might make them feel all warm and toasty, but I’m the one who’s going to put them together, or keep working at it until I’m satisfied that I’ve done the very best that can be done. My very best. If you have a problem with that, then maybe you’d feel better working for someone else.”

She surprised him with the enthusiasm in her voice as she answered, “No, I wouldn’t.” And then she further surprised him with her offer. “I’ll take care of the feel-good stuff, and you take care of making them feel whole,” Kayley concluded.

Maybe she didn’t realize that she had come across as being critical of him. He did a swift review of the day in his mind. She had needed next to no cues from him.

“Well, you did keep things flowing smoothly,” he allowed reluctantly, “so we’ll give it another day.” There was, however, a warning note in his voice.

Kayley heard it and pretended not to. Instead, she smiled as if they were both in agreement. “Thank you, Doctor. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he repeated, making it sound as if it represented her last chance to get things right.

* * *

When Luke stepped off the elevator the following morning, he was only moderately surprised to find Kayley waiting by the office door. Maybe she was afraid that her comment at the end of the day had put her in danger of being fired and she was trying to make up for it.

To support that theory, she had a coffee container in one hand and a large pink box that smelled of something warm and tempting in the other.

“Still attempting to outrun possible traffic?” he asked.

Instead of saying yes or no, she told him, “I hate being late.”

He unlocked the main door. “It’s an admirable quality, but don’t you spend a lot of time waiting around for other people to show up this way?”

She nodded. “But that’s still better than being late.”

Having unlocked the double doors, he opened one and stepped back to let her enter first.

“Have it your way.” And then he nodded at the box Kayley was holding. “What is that, by the way?”

“I brought doughnuts for the office,” she told him, heading for the break room.

That seemed a little excessive to him. “How many other people did you offend yesterday?”

His question caught her completely off guard. “Nobody.”

“Except for me,” Luke pointed out.

She hadn’t thought he was really offended. Clearly she’d been mistaken. She quickly rallied. “That was purely unintentional, Doctor—do you like doughnuts?” she asked hopefully.

“No, I don’t,” he answered sternly. Seeing the disappointment on her face, he relented. “But my daughter does.”

“What kind?” Kayley asked. She had picked up a wide variety at the bakery.

Luke shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“Then how do you know she likes doughnuts?” Kayley asked innocently.

“My mother-in-law told me.” His eyes all but bored into hers. “Any other questions?”

“No, but maybe you should ask your mother-in-law what kind of doughnuts your daughter likes so you could surprise her with them. If you still keep in touch with your mother-in-law,” she added, thinking that perhaps, since his wife had died, the man had severed his ties with the older woman.

“Hard not to,” he commented as he began to walk away. He had a full day to prepare for and he couldn’t do it standing here and talking about doughnuts with Pollyanna. “She lives in my house.”

“Oh,” was all Kayley said as she went to the break room.

He’d give her one more day, Luke promised himself. And if she continued meddling in his life and his approach to his patients, as well as offering her fortune-cookie pieces of advice, then he’d just have to tell her that her services were no longer needed.

* * *

“I hear you finally have your own physician’s assistant,” Barbara Baxter said to her son-in-law late that evening, when he finally walked in the door.

He was surprised to find her waiting up for him. He wondered if something was wrong. In addition, her comment caught him entirely off guard. He hadn’t mentioned anything about the change at work.

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