Not the car of choice for an “old sobersides,” she thought as she followed a cobblestone walk toward the glassed-in foyer.
“Sorry if I’m late, ladies,” Hazel announced as she entered the waiting room. “I spent too much time gawking at the tourists downtown. My land, where do they learn to dress like they do? They must have one of those whatchamajiggers, a chat room for it on the Internet.”
All three of them usually poked harmless fun at the warm-weather influx of visitors, which grew larger every year. This morning, however, only Lois laughed with her. Rebecca was in one of her little snits that Hazel recognized well. Her pretty smile was in place, as usual, dazzling enough to fool most people. But the normally gentle and pleasing brow was now furled from pent-up anger. And that vein in her temple was pulsing, a sure sign.
Sensing Rebecca’s mood, Lois took over. “Hi, Hazel. You can come right on back if you want. I’ve got Becky’s station set up.”
Instead of heading right to examination room A, Hazel paused between the two women’s desks. “You and your new boss getting along any better?” she inquired bluntly of Rebecca.
“Oh, hey, better watch what you say,” she replied in a sarcastic warning tone. “The walls have ears, you know. Maybe even bugs planted in them.”
“I take it that’s a no?”
“A big, loud, resounding no. Frankly, I think there’re some people who took their toilet training way too seriously.”
“Takes one to know one,” Hazel suggested sweetly.
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. You’ll see. Don’t be surprised if I’m reading the Help Wanted ads soon. I’m glad this guy doesn’t wear a ring or we’d all have to kiss it.”
“Ahh-hemm.” Lois, busy opening mail, cleared her throat, warning Rebecca to hold her voice down. But she was still smarting from her earlier encounter with the doctor and didn’t much care what he overheard. Besides, in her mind Hazel was family, not a patient.
Hazel knew this headstrong side of her friend, had even encouraged it after a fashion when she saw how her mother’s death left the poor girl faltering in her self-confidence. So Hazel also knew that the only way to handle the lass was with reverse psychology.
In short, she decided with a perverse little grin, maybe Becky needed a date from hell to remind the haughty princess what it’s like “out there.” And then John Saville might start to look a tad better to her.
“What are you smiling about?” Rebecca challenged her as she led her patient into the examination room.
“Oh, I’m just building castles in the air,” Hazel confessed as she rolled up the sleeve of her blouse. “And even populating them.”
“Hmm,” was Rebecca’s only comment. Anger still distracted her.
She checked Hazel’s blood pressure and heart rate and recorded them on the chart in her clipboard. Next she took her temperature, then weighed her on the same old but reliable triple-beam scale Doc Winthrop had used for decades.
“Hazel,” she remarked, impressed as usual, “you never vary by an ounce, do you?”
“Wouldn’t know,” Hazel admitted. “We McCallums never kept a scale around. What for? Your horse is the only one needs to worry about your weight.”
A moment later John Saville appeared in the doorway, trim and handsome in gray slacks and a light-blue dress shirt with a navy rep tie, loosened but not sloppy. Rebecca handed him the clipboard and then stepped out, closing the door behind her and never once meeting his eyes.
“How’ve you been doing, Hazel?” he greeted her, friendly but somewhat distracted in his manner—just as Rebecca had been.
They’ve been at each other’s throats, all right, the matriarch mused. No good romance should have bland beginnings.
“Feisty as ever,” she assured him, “thanks to my talented young surgeon.”
John pinched the creases of his trousers and tugged them up a fraction, taking over Rebecca’s still-warm chair.
Before he could ask her anything else, Hazel demanded, “What year’s your Alfa? I’m guessing it’s a ’27?”
His face changed immediately, the stern features softening, and enthusiasm lifted his tone. “Hey, you’re pretty close. Nineteen twenty-five Gran Sport 1750,” he boasted like a proud papa. “It’s a classic and then some. That model won every road race of its day. She’s got a super-charged motor, all original. Even today I can push her up close to ninety-five.”
“A 1925, huh?” Hazel winked at him. “Made the same year I was born.”
He glanced briefly at her chart, then smiled. “Yeah, right. And both of you appear to be in excellent running order,” he remarked, holding those intensely blue eyes steady on her—more curious than suspicious, she decided. “I see you take only one medication?”
She nodded. “Nitroglycerin tablets. I only take them occasionally for mild angina pain.”
“But didn’t you mention to Miss O’Reilly—”
Her laugh cut him off. “Is it too hard to say Rebecca?”
“—to Rebecca that you had some questions about your diet since the surgery? Has there been some problem?”
“You know, I recall that I did mention something like that,” she confessed, “but here’s a better question just popped into my head—have you ever watched a cat sitting beside a gopher hole?”
The crease between his eyebrows deepened in a surprised frown. “Can’t say that I have. I was a military brat, lived all over the world. Including near gopher holes. Don’t remember any cats sitting beside them, though.”
“Well, come on out to my place sometime, I’ve got cats and gopher holes,” she assured him. “It’s well worth watching. You’ll soon learn that the cat’s patience is surpassed only by one thing—its confidence that the wait is worth it.”
He met her sparkling gaze for at least five seconds, and he suddenly realized, full force, that he was in the company of an extraordinarily perceptive person.
“There’s a lesson for me in that, right?”
Indeed there was, but Hazel knew she had to give the good doctor his medicine in doses. He wouldn’t admit it yet because he was still in the throes of denial. But he was “gone” on Rebecca, all right. Or not yet gone, she corrected herself, but he was going, going…and soon would be gone.
Right now he was still too irritated at her, baffled by her, his confidence thwarted because she was new to his experience. So during this visit, Hazel settled for merely planting a seed. She could water it later. Her secret garden of love.
“A lesson?” she finally responded, her tone innocent of any guile. “Why, Dr. Saville, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but no one ever has much trouble getting my point, if you’ll excuse the pun. Well, my goodness!”
She glanced at her watch, then stood up.
John Saville hastily rose, too.
“I’ve got yard work to do,” she explained. “The trees are still winter mulched, can you believe my lazy bones? And today I have to help pick out breed stock. Thanks for the wonderful advice.”
“What advice? I didn’t give you any.”
“Well had you, I’m sure it would have been excellent advice.”
“But,