“Why would any man in his right mind want to get away from you?”
“Just preoccupied, I think. He’s heading up our family practice clinic here. He’s also a war vet and a single father. I just...just expected him to be a little more open, or friendly.”
“Well, we all have our stories, don’t we?” He shifted in his chair, and glanced away from the monitor for a moment. Then back at her. “Our secrets, our excuses. So just allow the man his privacy, babe. I’m sure he needs it, for whatever reason.”
Eric was right, of course. Whatever had caused Caleb to be the way he was, it was none of her business. In fact, the only thing that was her business was if he’d be suitable to head the hospital. “I asked him to take over here. Dad says he’s qualified, and that would certainly be a great solution for me.”
He grinned knowingly, arching sexy eyebrows. “It would get you back here to me quicker. I don’t know how I’m going to go three months without you, even if we do get to meet in the middle from time to time, as we’d planned.”
“Like next weekend?” Their first planned get-together. She’d made reservations at a quaint little bed-and-breakfast, and if things well...
“Afraid I’ve got to change that. I’m going to cover for one of the doctors here who needs the time off.”
“But you need the time off, too,” she protested.
“I do. But this comes with the job.”
“Well, then, darn the job,” she said, not even trying to hide her disappointment. “What about the weekend after?”
“Not sure yet. I may have to represent the hospital at a conference, and if I can’t get someone to go in my place, I’ll be running down to Portland to do it myself. But maybe the second weekend of next month?”
“That’s four weeks, Eric! I thought we were going to do better than that.”
“Schedules happen, babe. You know that.”
Yes, she did. And they always seemed to happen with Eric. A lot. “So, in the meantime...”
“Send me sexy selfies.”
She forced a laugh. “What would the good people of Marrell think, if they knew?”
“That your man misses you in ways they’ve probably never even thought of.”
* * *
It had been three days since Leanne had asked him to take charge of the hospital, and he’d been successful in avoiding any thought of it as the clinic had suddenly turned busy. Good excuse for putting it out of his mind, he decided while he escorted Mrs. Gentry down the hall to the reception area to schedule her next appointment. “Like I told you, it’s not serious—yet. It’s poison ivy, and the shot I’ve given you should start to clear it up, plus the pills I’ve prescribed will finish that. But you’ve got to take those pills,” he warned the woman, fighting to hold his concentration. This past hour, Leanne had crept into his thoughts more than he was comfortable with. Her changes. His trust issues. Especially way she looked... And while his patient’s condition was annoying to her, it just wasn’t enough to hold his undivided attention. “Do you understand me? Your poison ivy is close to spreading to your eyes, and if that happens, it will turn into a serious situation.”
“I’ll do my best, Caleb,” she told him, then reached up and patted him on the cheek. “You’ve grown up to be such a nice, polite boy. I always thought you had it in you to do good things. Even when you were acting out the way you did.”
Sally Gentry was his grandmother’s next-door neighbor. He’d played in her yard, eaten her homemade cookies, drunk her lemonade. Now he was her doctor, and she’d brought him cookies and lemonade today. “Just take care of yourself. Promise me?” It was tough treating old friends, knowing things about them that their doctor didn’t have a right to know. He wondered how Henry had done that for the past forty years, how he’d separated the doctor from the friend or neighbor. Wondered if he could. Or if the town would let him, considering how most of them remembered him, remembered what he’d done.
“Ruth and I are cooking together tonight, if you’d like to come over for dinner.” Ruth Carsten was his grandmother, and she and Sally spent a lot of time together now that they were both widows. “We’re fixing your favorite fried chicken.”
“I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Gentry, but Matthew and I have other plans.” Actually, they didn’t. But a night spent with two octogenarians fussing over him wouldn’t sit well with Matthew, especially when all he wanted to do with his evenings right now was learn Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu, Opus 66, for his upcoming audition with Hans Schilling. Caleb didn’t want to interrupt his son’s regular habits any more than they’d been disrupted by moving here. “Send my love to my grandmother, though, and tell her Matthew and I will drop by in a couple of days.”
Patients came and went for the next couple of hours, and Caleb kept himself busy, all the while trying not to think about the jerk he’d made of himself with Leanne. And make no mistake about it, he’d been a real jerk. Rude. Almost hostile. He’d known their meeting would be inevitable, and difficult, but he’d reckoned he’d put away some of his teenage feelings for her a long time ago. Had hoped that he wouldn’t react to her the way he had the last time they’d seen each other—the day when he’d been hauled out of Marrell in handcuffs, in the back of a police car.
But no. One look at her, and he’d turned right back into that hurt teenager who’d let himself become the object of some serious bullying. And her plaything. Good old Caleb, there when she’d needed him, rejected when she hadn’t. Made fun of in all those times in-between. Apparently, where Leanne was concerned, he hadn’t moved too far away from the boy who’d been too hurt and confused to know how to respond. He wasn’t sure he knew how, even now.
What surprised him most, though—totally shocked him—were the other feelings coming to surface. Ones where all he’d wanted was her attention. Ones that had carried him from a little-boy crush into a teenage heartbreak over a love he couldn’t have. He’d hated her for what she’d done to him, but he couldn’t help loving her at the same time. And some of those feelings were churning up in him now. Not that he loved her anymore, because he didn’t. But the memories of that young love were surprisingly vivid, and stirring.
“I’m out of here,” he told Betty, his secretary, on his way through the door, still trying to shake off all images of Leanne. He needed to concentrate on Matthew now. Not her. “Have a good evening.”
“You, too, Caleb.”
He smiled at her use of his name. Everyone in town knew him or his family, and everybody called him Caleb. He didn’t mind, but then again, he wondered about Henry, who had the same familiarity in town but was never addressed as anything but Doctor. Maybe it was the age difference; more age equaled more respect. Or maybe the town still saw him as Martha and Tom’s embarrassment. Well, that was Marrell, wasn’t it?
“Headed home?” Leanne asked, catching up with Caleb in the parking lot.
He drew in a deep breath, promised himself he would be civil, and caught himself being fascinated by the way the late-day sun danced with the auburn of her hair. Too fascinated. He immediately went into standoff mode. Took a step back from her. “Going to go get Matthew first. My folks watch him during the day,” he said, forcing his stare to the black asphalt beneath his feet, a much safer place to stare.
“Any plans for dinner? Because Dad and Dora have been fishing all afternoon again, and since you turned me down for the last fish fry, I thought the two of you might like to join us.”
It was a tempting offer, and he appreciated that Leanne hadn’t been so put off by him the other day that she was extending this invitation, but he still wasn’t easy with it. He’d never been one to give much credence to people who claimed they needed closure,