An Honorable Man

“Great.” The lawyer left Sierra with a smile, then immediately picked up her pace, no doubt eager to rejoin her fiancé. Sierra wondered if Sara served Michael Donahue coffee in bed and had a pang that she’d passed up the chance to do the same for Ben Nash.

Ben Nash, who was passing through town and who she’d probably never see again.

Before regret could take hold, she focused on the morning ahead. Unlike many other family physicians, she and Ryan didn’t start the morning with hospital rounds. Because of time and distance constraints, it made more sense to use hospitalists—specialists who provided care to patients while they were in the hospital. She let herself into the medical practice through the back entrance and was shrugging into her lab coat when Missy Cromartie rushed down the hall.

“Dr. Sierra, am I glad you’re here!” Missy was short and slight with large eyes that nearly overwhelmed her pretty, elfin face. Her dramatic coloring, black hair and blue eyes set in pale skin, suited her personality. “When I got to work ten minutes ago, a man was waiting outside to see Dr. Ryan. I told him to come back at nine when we opened, but he wanted to come in and wait.”

“You did fine, Missy.” Sierra gentled her voice to calm the excitable receptionist. “It’s okay if he waits inside.”

“You don’t understand.” If possible, Missy’s light-colored eyes grew larger and rounder. Her shoulder-length hair shook along with her head. “He doesn’t have an appointment.”

“I’m sure you can squeeze him in.”

“But he’s not sick! I tried telling him how busy it gets on Saturdays, but he said he’ll wait as long as it takes. I don’t know what to do with him.”

Sierra started to tell Missy to handle the problem the best she could, then thought better of it. That’s what the old Sierra would say. The new Sierra met challenges head-on…if she didn’t count her reluctance to join the festival committee.

“Would you like me to talk to him?” Sierra asked.

“That’d be great!” Missy’s relief was out of proportion to the offer. “Just great!”

Sierra plastered on a professional smile, walked purposefully toward the waiting room and froze. Her heart did a leap worthy of the basketball players she liked to watch on television. The man sitting in the middle of a bank of chairs against the serene backdrop of a blue wall wasn’t just any man.

It was Ben Nash.

“Ben!” she cried.

His eyes lifted from the pages of Newsweek, his face reflecting none of the surprise she felt certain was on her own. Her mind darted in a dozen directions while her heart pounded. She shouldn’t be happy to see him, not when he was nothing more than a passing distraction. Yet she was.

He stood up. “Hello, Sierra.”

He was even better-looking this morning, the cream color of his long-sleeve shirt contrasting with his olive skin, his eyes clear. She’d found out last night they were brown, to match his hair. It still appeared as though he hadn’t shaved in three days, which must be his usual look. She’d never been partial to facial hair on men, but his stubble added to his rugged good looks.

She advanced, trying to slow down her steps. Missy must have heard him wrong. Ben Nash wasn’t waiting to see Sierra’s brother: he was here to see her. She felt her smile break free.

“This is a surprise.” She stemmed the desire to walk into his arms and stopped a few feet shy of him. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“I’m sorry I gave you that impression.”

That was a strange thing to say. Did he honestly believe she’d hold it against him that he’d been secretly planning to seek her out? But how had he found her? “I know I didn’t tell you I was a doctor.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said. “In a town this small, people talk.”

For one of the first times in her life, she was glad gossip was a favorite pastime among the locals in Indigo Springs. Otherwise, she might not have had the pleasure of seeing Ben again. Or the chance to find out where what they’d started last night would lead.

“I won’t get off work until about one o’clock.” She couldn’t ask Ryan to take her patient load. They were far too busy on Saturday mornings for one doctor. “Then I’m completely free for the rest of the day.”

“I might not be. I’m here on business,” he said, something else that didn’t make sense.

“Business?” She cocked her head, regarding him quizzically. “What kind of business?”

“I’m a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune.” He cleared his throat, the strong column contracting. “I have reason to believe Dr. Ryan Whitmore can help me with a story.”

Missy hadn’t misunderstood why Ben had showed up in the office this morning.

Sierra had.

The knowledge slammed into her at the same time the front door swung open to admit her brother, who almost never used the back entrance. He stopped his tuneless whistling, ran a hand through his fair head of wind-tousled hair and gave them an eye-crinkling smile. Since Ryan had married Annie in February, he did a lot of smiling.

“Good morning, sis.” A born extrovert, he strode across the room, stretching out a hand to Ben. “Ryan Whitmore. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Sierra heard Ben’s quick intake of breath before he stood and shook her brother’s hand. “Ben Nash from the Pittsburgh Tribune.”

Sierra choked back her disappointment. “Ben’s here to talk to you.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Ben was gazing at Ryan with open skepticism. “I was expecting Ryan Whitmore to be a much older man.”

“I was named after our father,” Ryan said. “He died two years ago.”

Ben rubbed the back of his neck as Sierra tried to figure out what was going on. Why had a Pittsburgh reporter come to Indigo Springs to talk to a dead man? And why hadn’t he told her who he was last night?

“What is this about?” Ryan asked before she could form the question.

“I’m following up on a lead that your father might have information about a woman who died in Indigo Springs,” he said.

Yet Ben had failed to tell her any of this the night before. Their “chance” meeting and his invitation to get together suddenly didn’t seem accidental. She crossed her arms over her heaving stomach.

The door swung open again. Art Czerbiak, who always insisted on the first appointment of the morning, shuffled through. What was left of the elderly man’s gray hair was in disarray from the April wind. He muttered a gruff good-morning and took a seat at the far end of the room, then regarded them with interest. Missy was also watching them closely, not even trying to disguise her stares.

“The waiting room isn’t the best place to have this conversation,” Ben said quietly.

“No.” Sierra directed her comment to Ben in an equally soft voice. “The best time would have been last night when you were trying to pull one over on me.”

“That’s not what I did,” Ben protested.

Ryan looked from Sierra to Ben, a puzzled expression on his face, then placed a hand at the small of Sierra’s back. She wondered if he could feel her shaking.

“Ben’s right,” Ryan said. “We should take this to my office.”

Sierra pivoted and led the way, determinedly keeping her head high and her chin up, the pleasure leaking out of a morning that had started with such promise.

This was exactly why she took so few chances.

The ones she did take tended to backfire.

THE WHITMORE SIBLINGS regarded Ben with widely different expressions after the three of them retreated to a generic room at the end of a long hall. Curiosity emanated from Ryan while Sierra’s lips had flatlined and her eyes had gone steely. Her brother leaned against the edge of a sleek, black desk, his legs crossed at the ankles. Sierra remained standing.

“Now tell us what this is all about,” she demanded. The hair she’d worn long and loose the night before was tied back from her face. A shapeless white lab coat covered her clothes. It was as though the soft, vulnerable woman he’d kissed had never existed.