Craving Her Rough Diamond Doc

She didn’t talk like a nurse. They were usually a little more cautious and obliging than this one. She really didn’t like being told no. That was tough. “Find a job in Piketon if you’re sticking around.” He got the log close to the cabin then used rope to muscle it into position.

“They don’t need me in Piketon. Like it or not, you do.” she moved into his line of sight again and propped her hands on her hips, looking more confident and at home on his mountain than she had any right to. “You can’t run your practice by yourself, and Amanda’s made it clear how uncertain its future is. Funding in jeopardy and all that business. She wants her job back when she’s able, and that means there needs to be a job for her to go back to.”

The cuteness was starting to wear off.

Wyatt dropped the rope and looked at her, keeping the bus at his back. Winter would be here before he knew it, and the cabin needed to be roofed before then or he might be staying in the blasted bus. That couldn’t happen, and wouldn’t if she’d go away. “Kicking up a fuss won’t win me over. Glad you came to help Amanda out, but you aren’t working for me.”

He briefly considered paying her to leave, anything to make her stop looking at the bus. Damn, that thing needed to be gone.

The fingers on her hips dug in and she looked from his chest to his neck, to his eyes, then off to the side. She was tall. Tall enough that even with his height and the additional elevation where he stood, she still came up to his chin. Must scrape six foot, this one. For some reason it pleased him to find her struggling with where to look at him.

“You’re not even going to give me a chance?” Her body language screamed discomfort, but she wasn’t backing down. Something else he didn’t want to like about her.

Maybe if she stuck around, in a couple weeks—after he hired someone—he’d visit and make amends. No matter how bad a fit, anyone who’d drop everything to run to the side of a friend in need deserved respect at least. “There’s no chance of this working.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. I’ve seen this scenario play out many times when out-of-town medical professionals with good intentions come to help the backwoods mountain folk. I know you mean well…” Even when they’d spoken jargon they’d mistakenly assumed a child wouldn’t understand, he’d known they’d meant well. And he’d known how sick his brother had been. Good intentions never saved anyone.

“I do mean well.” She pushed her hands into her hair, dragging it back from her face as she finally looked back to his eyes. “Give me a chance. If I fail, fire me spectacularly and smooth over any feathers I inadvertently ruffle. I can give you references. I have more accreditations than you’d believe. I’ve worked in all kinds of different places. I can adapt.”

He shook his head once more and his answer finally took. With much muttering to herself, she stomped off down the hill. There wasn’t much he could make out, but the word “ass” came through loud and clear.

Probably fair. He heard the car door slam and the engine roar to life, and glimpsed her purple car before losing it in a cloud of dust that told him She was tearing down his mountain faster than was safe.

Purple four-by-four. Pink hair. She should work in some upscale cosmetic surgery center, not in a mobile clinic traveling through the neediest, most remote communities in the Appalachians. Sure, she might spend a couple weeks there doing charity work, especially if there was a mine explosion or some natural disaster, but she’d always go home before long.

Imogen definitely wouldn’t fit in, and she couldn’t even if she tried.

It was too bad. She looked fun to play with. At least, when she stopped talking.

Finding a place to turn around took forever. It was a good half hour before Imogen made it back up the fool’s mountain. She shouldn’t have let him run her off. Failure was not an option.

She marched straight for Wyatt and the look he gave her was a mixture of irritation and surprise. But his shirt was back on, thank God. It helped her keep the steam she’d built up in her aborted departure.

He opened his mouth to say something. She shushed him preemptively. “You just listen. I’m going to help you today. The only way you’re getting me off this mountain is by calling the cops. I’ll wear you down. I’m like…” She blanked, blinked, and hurried past it. “Something that wears people down.” Analogy failure wouldn’t stop her either. Imogen waved her gloves at him.

“Got my tire-changing gloves. Put on my boots.” She turned her foot out to show him those too. “If at the end of the day you can still say I’ll be no help, I’ll leave you alone.” And just as she got to the end of her tirade the analogy crystallized and she blurted out, “Water! I’m water. I’m so water, and I can move mountains if I keep at it. And you’re just like a mountain. All tall…and unmoving.”

“Okay, Water. It’s a nice offer, but—”

“But I can’t help you. You said that already,” Imogen cut in, trying to keep the shoulder-tensing frustration out of her voice. “Do you always make snap judgments about people?”

“I listen to my instincts.”

“And your instinct says?” She gestured impatiently for him to spit it out.

“Friendly. Cute. Unreliable. Insubstantial.”

Maybe she gestured too impatiently.

“Insubstantial? Good grief.” She retrieved a hairband from her pocket with such a rough touch it snapped her knuckles, the sharp sting wrecking her impulse-control efforts. People usually kept their masks polite, but Wyatt came at it backwards. If his mask was this surly and unpleasant, did it hide something worse?

Focus. His opinion only mattered as far as it affected her ability to cover Amanda’s leave. In six months she’d be gone and he wouldn’t matter anymore.

“Okay, give me a chance to prove I’m substantial enough to get the job done and then—as much as I think it’s ridiculous for a man to play with chainsaws all by himself in an area with no cellphone coverage—I’ll leave you in peace at the site of your future, accidental amputation.” Okay, so maybe she should’ve been trying harder to keep the frustration out of her words and been less worried about her tone.

“No.” Wyatt stepped over the stumpy wall and made for the logs again. “And no standing within fifty feet of the cabin.”

“You should wear gloves. Don’t you know doctors are supposed to have soft hands?” She thrust her gloves at him, refusing to abide by his fifty-foot decree. “Want mine? They aren’t seeing any use now.”

“I’m fine.”

With a grunt and a shake of her head Imogen dragged the gloves on and followed him. “I’ll help you by dragging the logs to the cabin, and you won’t have to wait so long to run your beloved chainsaw. Give me the rope.”

“No.”

Hadn’t the man figured out yet that she wasn’t going to leave until he said yes?

“It’s hard work. You’ll hurt yourself,” Wyatt added.

“The last place I worked was at a pediatrics unit.” She dropped her gloved hands to her hips, instantly aware of how stiff the gloves were. “Want to know what I learned there?”

“No.”

“Too bad! I’m telling you anyway.” Ass.

“You really don’t like being told no, do you?”

Wyatt actually chuckled a little then, but it was the kind of mirthless, superior man noise she noticed happening at those times the little woman tried to do man’s work—like learning to change spark plugs. Or move logs. Having drinks and passing the time with this man no longer sounded like much fun.

In fact, the urge to hurt him nearly overwhelmed her already limping impulse control. “I learned that if you want something and you’re told no, you should do other stuff that they don’t want you to do. Worse stuff. Until they reconsider your first, sensible request. Or you should just keep asking until they give up from exhaustion.”

He tied the rope around the notched end of the log and straightened, giving her a weird, almost amused look. “How often that work for you?”

“I’d say about three out of four times. People don’t like confrontation.” She amended, “Most people.”

“There’s nothing you can do on the mountain that will bother me enough to change my mind.” He looked at her a long moment then turned, pulling the rope over one shoulder to drag the former tree down to his cabin.

The man clearly had no idea how annoying she could be if she set her mind to it. She almost regretted him putting his shirt back on. Pine cones and prickly seedpods from the sycamores would be great for proving to him and his stupid amazing back how irritating she could be.

Imogen followed, barely resisting the urge to pelt him with prickly tree bits, her mind in a mad scramble for another way to handle him. Amanda didn’t want someone getting comfy in her job while she was away, and Imogen was the pit bull she’d chosen to turn loose on the problem.

But maybe she’d set this up wrong from the start when she’d made it sound like a request. He was under the illusion she was the one who would eventually give up from exhaustion. Or maybe firm but sensible would work where bratty and frustrated had failed.

“Please?” Please should help, at least a little. “I’m invested in this working,” She tried to keep her voice as level as possible—no easy task considering she was one of the people who generally avoided confrontation. Confrontation meant getting involved in subjects that caused big feelings and crossed lines she didn’t like to cross. “Give me a chance to prove myself. Or say yes. I’ll leave and see you tomorrow for work, Dr. Beechum.”

“So…” Wyatt looked her fully in the eyes, somehow making her feel short for once. A little intimidated. That’s the reason people liked to avoid confrontation. Uncomfortable. “Your offer to help move logs is to annoy me into saying yes to hiring you for the practice?”