Daddy To Be Determined. Muriel Jensen

they just thought you were asleep.” He placed a knee on the edge of the floor and managed to lift her off the seat and out of the van.

      “Well…I’m sorry.”

      “You can stop saying that.” He bounced her once in his arms to firm his grip on her, then carried her inside. “If it’s anyone’s fault that you fell, it’s mine.”

      “I’m not talking about falling.” She lowered her voice as they walked into the cool, quiet office. “I’m talking about…”

      “You’re talking too much.” He whispered the last two words as a woman in a lab coat came out from an inner office.

      She took one look at Natalie’s ankle and waved him back into one of only three examining rooms.

      Dr. Greg Fortuna, a man about Ben’s age who’d given the girls their back-to-school inoculations, bustled into the room, frowning solicitously over Natalie’s injury.

      He’d been in Dancer’s Beach less than a year, but he was well liked and respected. Ben had worked with him on a volunteer committee for the men’s mission and considered him a friend. Vanessa thought he looked like Antonio Sabato, Jr.

      “Greg Fortuna,” he said, shaking Natalie’s hand. “Hi, Ben. Did you mow this poor woman down?”

      “I fell over a two-by-four,” Natalie explained.

      “Oh. You working with Ben?”

      “No, this was in his living room,” she replied. Then she seemed to doubt the wisdom of admitting that—as though thinking that Ben expected discretion—and she turned to him, looking stricken.

      He wondered absently what her life had been like that she second-guessed every word and every move. It was clear from what she’d said and from the newspaper article that the last two weeks had been difficult, but this self-doubt seemed to be of long standing.

      “She’s visiting from Philadelphia,” Ben said. “She stayed at Mom’s, then Mom ran out of room, so the girls invited her to stay overnight with us.”

      Natalie looked grateful for the slightly fictitious intervention.

      “Looks like just a sprain,” Greg said, “but we’ll x-ray it to be sure. Just sit tight, Natalie, and we’ll wheel you right into the lab.” He turned to Ben, uncertain of their relationship despite his careful explanation. “You coming?”

      Ben picked up a copy of Popular Mechanics from a small table in the corner. “I’ll wait right here.”

      “Good enough.”

      Ben was just getting into an article about winterizing outdoor pipes when his cell phone rang.

      “Bijou Development,” he answered, tapping his pockets for a pen.

      “Henrietta Caldwell said she saw you carrying a woman into the van!” his mother said, not bothering with a greeting. “Is Natalie Browning still asleep?”

      Henrietta Caldwell lived across the road and was one of his mother’s church cronies. He suspected she’d reported on him before.

      “And how did Mrs. Caldwell happen to observe this?” he asked, closing the magazine.

      “It was perfectly innocent,” his mother replied defensively. “Her husband has this telescope set up in the attic….”

      “Yeah. And there are so many stars out at eight-thirty in the morning.”

      There was a huff of dismay, then a testy, “Are you going to tell me if she’s all right or not?”

      “She’s going to be fine,” he replied, tossing the magazine back on the table, knowing his momentary respite from the women in his life was over. “But she did fall in the living room and sprain her ankle. At least Greg thinks it’s just a sprain.”

      “Are you at the clinic?”

      “Yes.”

      “I’ll be right over.”

      “Mom…”

      “Breakfast is over and all my guests have scattered. I’ll be right there.”

      She hung up without giving him another chance to protest.

      She arrived before Greg returned with Natalie from the lab. Lulu was wearing fuchsia and looked as though she belonged on the cover of some fashion magazine for senior women.

      “If you were any kind of gentleman,” she accused, taking the doctor’s chair from behind the small desk and rolling it beside his, “you’d have caught her before she fell.”

      “I was taking the girls to school,” he replied calmly, determined not to let her exasperate him. She usually did it so successfully.

      “Did she trip?”

      “Over a two-by-four.”

      “You couldn’t have bought a house that was already fixed?”

      “I’m a builder, Mom. Fixing houses and buildings or putting them up is what I do.”

      “And now you’ve probably broken the leg of the woman God dropped in your lap.”

      “It’s sprained, not broken,” he said evenly. “And you dropped her, not God. Not the fates. You.”

      “Why didn’t you call me?”

      “Because it just happened. I rushed her right over here, but I’d have called you when I got home.”

      “With a little warning I could have brought a casserole.”

      “For what? To use as a poultice? Greg’s taking good care of her.”

      She gave him a lethal look. “So that you don’t have to cook tonight. You’ll have enough on your hands with an invalid.”

      He’d opened his mouth to repeat that it was probably just a sprain and that the invalid was very determined to go home when Greg wheeled Natalie back into the examining room. On Natalie’s left leg was a fat Ace bandage wrapped under her foot and around her leg. On top of it was an ice pack.

      “Always pays to be sure,” Greg said. “It’s just a sprain. She should stay off it for a couple of days. The thing to remember is RICE.”

      Ben blinked at him. “Pardon me?”

      “RICE,” Greg repeated, ticking the items off on his fingers. “Rest. Ice. Compression—that’s the bandage. Elevation. Keep it up.”

      Ben nodded. “Got you.”

      To someone else, Natalie might have looked cheerful and in control, but Ben knew what it was like to feel one thing and project another for the comfort of those around you. Under the facade, she was on the brink of tears.

      “Don’t worry,” she said to him, with a smiling glance at his mother. “I’m sure I can find someone to drive me to the airport.”