Her chin came up. “I am a primary care provider. I do see patients. If you mean am I seeing obstetrical patients, the answer is no. I haven’t been since Harold left. Edna Nissley is sixty-nine. She’s here for a blood pressure check and to have lab work drawn.”
“I see.” His glower lightened.
“People knew Harold was going to be gone, so our schedule has been light. Those patients outside my scope of practice have been sent to a physician in a neighboring town.”
“Plus, we painted all the rooms except Harold’s office and had the carpets cleaned,” Wilma added brightly.
Amber continued to study Phillip. He was a hard man to read. “Someone had to be here to refer patients and fax charts to other doctors. We haven’t exactly been on vacation. We’ve both traveled a lot of miles letting people know what has happened.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Wouldn’t a few phone calls have been easier?”
Smiling with artificial sweetness, Amber said, “It would if our patients had phones. The majority of our clients are Amish, remember?”
“Edna is waiting in room one,” Wilma interjected.
Amber started to walk past Phillip but stopped. She pressed the bag of coffee into his midsection. “I take cream and one sugar. Just leave it on my desk.”
Phillip took the bag. “I’ll let you get to work, Miss Bradley, but there will be changes around here that you and I need to discuss. Come to my office when you’re done.”
Amber didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit.
Chapter Two
Phillip watched Amber’s stunning blue-green eyes narrow. She was right to worry. He wasn’t looking forward to the coming conversation. He’d rather see the charming smile she’d greeted him with earlier than the wary expression on her face at the moment.
She was pretty in a small-town-girl kind of way. Her pink cheeks and slightly sunburned nose gave her a wholesome look. She wasn’t tall, but she had a shapely figure he admired. He knew from his grandfather that she wasn’t married. Seeing her, he had to wonder why.
Phillip had listened to his grandfather singing the praises of Nurse-Midwife Bradley for the past year but this woman was nothing like he’d imagined. He had pictured a plump, gray-haired matron, not a pretty, petite woman who didn’t look a day over twenty-five.
Her honey-blond hair was wound into a thick bun at the nape of her neck. How long was it? What would it look like when she wore it down?
Intrigued as he was by the thought, it was her blue-green eyes that drew and held his attention. They were the color of the sea he loved. A calm sea, the kind that made a man want to spend a lifetime gazing over it and soaking in the beauty.
Such romantic musings had to be a by-product of his jet lag. He forced his attention back to the matter at hand. He was going to be working with Miss Bradley. He had no intention of setting up a workplace flirtation. Besides, he’d be lucky if she was still speaking to him by the end of the day.
He didn’t believe in home deliveries. In his opinion, they were too risky. She wasn’t going to be happy when she learned his stance on the subject.
He hefted the coffee bag. Perhaps it was best to give her this small victory before the confrontation. “Cream with one sugar. Got it.”
He left her to see her patient and retreated to the small refreshment room beside his grandfather’s office. Making coffee took only a few minutes. As he waited for the pot to fill, he studied the array of mugs hanging from hooks beneath the cabinet. Which one belonged to Amber?
He ruled out the white one that said World’s Greatest Grandma in neon pink letters. Beside it hung two plain black mugs, one with a chipped lip. Somehow he knew those belonged to his grandfather. That left either the white cup with yellow daises around the rim or the sky blue mug with 1 John 3:18 printed in dark blue letters.
1 John 3:18. He pulled down the mug. He didn’t know his Bible well enough to hazard a guess at the meaning of the passage, but he filed it away to look up later.
Studying medicine, working as a resident and then setting up a practice had consumed his life. All of which left him time to eat or maybe sleep, but rarely both. Even his surfing time had dropped to almost nothing. Bible study had fallen by the wayside, but it looked as if he’d have some free time now. How busy could he be in a small town like this? The next two months stretched before him like an eternity.
He’d do his best while he was here. He knew how much this place meant to his grandfather. Taking over until things were settled was the least he could do. After all, it was his fault Harold wasn’t here.
Putting aside that painful memory, Phillip carried the blue mug to the coffee dispenser. If this wasn’t Amber’s cup, at least it was clean. He filled it, then added the creamer and sugar. Taking down the grandmother mug, he filled it, too. After stuffing a couple of sugar and creamer packages in his pocket, he carried the cups to the front desk.
Wilma was on the phone, so he set her cup on the corner and held up the condiments in a silent query. She shook her head and mouthed the words, “Just black.” She reached for the mug, took a quick sip, then continued her conversation. That left him with Amber’s cup in hand.
He’d already discovered the clinic layout when he’d arrived early that morning. He knew Amber’s office was the one beside his grandfather’s, while two exam rooms occupied the opposite side of the short hallway.
Entering her office, he took note of the plain white walls devoid of pictures or mementos. The starkness didn’t seem to fit her vibrant personality. Her furniture was another story.
Her desk was a simple-yet-graceful cherrywood piece with curved legs and a delicately carved matching chair. Her computer sat on a small stand beside the desk, as if she couldn’t bear to put something so modern on such a classic piece. Everything about the room was neat and tidy. He liked that.
After setting her cup on a coaster at the edge of her desk, he returned to his grandfather’s office. Nothing in it remotely hinted at neat or tidy.
Stacks of medical journals, books and file folders sat on every flat surface. Some had meandered to the floor around his grandfather’s chair. The tall bookcases on the back wall were crammed full of textbooks. A number of them had pieces of paper sticking out the tops as if to mark important places.
Harold’s computer sat squarely in the middle of his large oak desk. On either side of the monitor were two pictures. Phillip reached past the photo of himself standing by his surfboard to pick up a framed portrait of a young man in a marine dress uniform.
He’d seen this picture before. One like it hung in his grandfather’s house where he’d spent the night last night. A third copy sat in a box at the back of his mother’s closet. The young marine was the father he never knew.
Phillip searched the face that looked so much like his own. All his life he’d aspired to be a person his father would have been proud of. He got good grades, played baseball, learned to surf, things his mother told him his father had done or wanted to do. His dad was even the reason he’d become a physician.
As a child he’d hungered for any crumb of information his mother would share about his dad. Those crumbs were all too rare. Whenever he would ask questions about his father, her reply was always the same: it was too painful to talk about that time of her life.
He could understand that. Much of his early life was painful to talk about, too.
Engrossed in the past, he didn’t hear the door open. He thought he was alone until Amber spoke. “You look like him.”
He set the picture back in its place. “So I’ve been told.”
Amber moved to stand at his side. “I