“Good morning.” Dressed in a new-looking white shirt and khakis, his sandy hair still damp from his shower, Mitch greeted her with a crooked smile that crinkled the corners of his clear blue eyes.
“Good morning, Dr. Baker.” She removed the muffins from the oven with a potholder, setting the pan on a trivet. “I hope you like turkey bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast. I wasn’t sure if you’d have to report to the hospital this morning, so I thought I’d have breakfast ready just in case.”
He studied the food with almost visible eagerness. “Looks delicious, but you didn’t have to cook for me.”
Having expected that comment, she shrugged lightly. “I was going to make some for myself anyway. Have a seat at the breakfast table. Do you drink coffee? Would you like orange juice to go with it? I have fresh-squeezed.”
“You certainly don’t have to wait on me. I’ll get my own coffee.” Moving to the coffeemaker, he poured a cup and carried it to the table.
Jacqui set a well-filled plate in front of him when he took his seat. “There’s homemade jam and apple butter in those little crocks. Help yourself if you want some for your muffin.”
Mitch picked up his fork, then raised his eyebrows when she didn’t immediately join him at the table. “Aren’t you eating?”
“I’m going to wash a load of cleaning cloths and then feed Waldo,” she answered lightly. “Go ahead and eat. I’ll have something when I’ve finished those things.”
Mitch set down his fork. “I’ll wait.”
“Don’t be silly, Dr. Baker. Your food will get cold.”
“So will yours.”
“I won’t be long.”
“Then it won’t be a problem for me to wait, will it?” Leaning back in his chair, he picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, looking prepared to sit there all morning.
“Fine.” Foiled in her plan to eat alone when he’d finished, she placed a spoonful of eggs and a muffin on a plate for herself and carried it to the table, setting it at the opposite end from Mitch. She retrieved her coffee mug from the counter, then took her seat.
Looking satisfied, he picked up a strip of bacon. “Just so we’re straight—you work for my sister, not for me. I don’t expect you to serve me or to wait until I’ve finished eating to have your own meal. Nor to address me as Dr. Baker. I answer to Mitch or Mitchell. I don’t think my sister or her husband ask those things of you, either, for that matter. I’ve heard you call them Meagan and Seth, and I suspect you’ve shared a few meals with them.”
“Well, yes,” she admitted, stabbing her fork into her eggs to avoid looking at him. “But you’re a guest.”
“Hardly a stranger. We’ve known each other more than a year. And you’re pretty much a member of my sister’s family. There’s no need for formality between us.”
She spread a little jam on her muffin, busying herself with the task to avoid having to answer.
The table faced a sliding-glass door, on the other side of which lay a rock patio and beyond that, an inground pool. Mitch nodded toward the grinning yellow dog watching them through the glass, tail sweeping the air behind him. “Waldo didn’t prove to be much of a watchdog last night. He never even barked when I parked outside and came into the house.”
Following his glance toward Alice’s beloved pet, Jacqui smiled. “As sweet as that dog is, I would never depend on him to guard the place. If he did catch someone sneaking in, he’d probably just bring up one of his toys and beg to play. I’ve always heard Labs are very territorial and protective, but Waldo … not so much.”
“Maybe he’d react differently if someone were threatening a member of the family.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed some spirit then. Especially if it were Alice being threatened. Waldo does love Alice.”
“Can’t blame him. She’s a great kid.” He reached for his coffee. “Anyway, if Waldo were any kind of a guard dog, I wouldn’t have taken you completely by surprise last night. Of course, that suitcase of yours did make a fairly effective warning system.”
The corner of her mouth twitched at the memory of him sprawled at her feet, staring warily at the brass candlestick in her hand. It hadn’t been funny at the time. She could still feel her heart pounding when she’d woken with the awareness that someone was in the room with her. But now she could see the wry humor in the situation. The way his eyes twinkled made her suspect he was struggling not to laugh.
Her humor evaporated when she remembered what had brought him there. “I’m sorry about your house. Alice and your mom told me it burned completely.”
“To the ground. It was a rental, a duplex. My neighbor in the other half is a few fries short of a kid’s meal. No one who’s ever met her was surprised that she caused the fire.”
She couldn’t help being a little amused by the analogy despite the gravity of the situation. “She really left candles burning when she left the house?”
He shrugged. “That’s what she said, and the fire marshal concurred it was the cause of the fire.”
“Was it a furnished duplex?” Because she’d spent so much of her life moving from place to place, Jacqui hadn’t collected many personal possessions. She always rented a fully furnished apartment. She looked forward to finally owning a home of her own that she could decorate with carefully chosen furnishings and maybe even a few nice pieces of art. Someday.
Mitch shook his head. “No, the furniture was all mine. Nothing too fancy. I’d lived there since my first year of residency and just gathered up what I needed to get by, but there were a few items I’ll really miss.”
“I’m sorry.”
Although she could see the regret on his face, he downplayed his loss. “I had renter’s insurance. I’d been considering moving to a somewhat larger place, anyway, now that I’ve finished my residency, but I didn’t have to sign a lease there and I liked that. All I had to do was give a month’s notice and I was free to leave at any time. Not many places let you do that.”
“Not many rental places, no,” she agreed, thinking of the one-year lease she’d recently renewed on her no-frills apartment. It was the first time ever that she’d stayed in one place long enough to actually renew a lease.
Recalling that Mitch had recently completed his surgical residency, she asked, “Will you buy a house now?”
He shrugged. “Haven’t had time to think about it. I’m not sure I want to commit to buying right now. I’ve considered working another year or so here in Little Rock and then maybe going somewhere else for a while.”
“Really?” She recognized the restless look in his eyes all too well, having seen that same wanderlust in her father throughout her first seventeen years. Still, she was a little startled that one of the seemingly tightly knit Baker clan was considering a move away.
“Because of school and family obligations, I’ve never lived anywhere else,” he admitted, scooping the last of his eggs onto his fork. “I’m not saying I will move, but it’s nice to have options.”
He’d leave. In her experience, once a man got an itch to roam, there wasn’t much that would hold him in one place. As for herself, if she made the kind of money surgeons and lawyers made, she would buy a nice house with a tidy yard and settle down contentedly for the rest of her life. She’d had more than enough of drifting from place to place.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asked, nodding toward his nearly empty plate. “Another muffin? More coffee?”
He grinned, and she almost blinked in response to the brightness