The M.d. Courts His Nurse

“You can’t possibly conclude—”

She caught herself in the nick of time before exploding. If this was just a fishing expedition, a search for things to throw in her face, she had no intention of taking his hook.

“Look,” she told him, her hands balled into fists on her hips, “you know that it’s the nurse in any office who uses most of the disposable medical supplies. Dr. Winthrop always trusted me—”

“Yeah, right, I know the riff by now,” he said, cutting her off impatiently. “Paul Winthrop is God Almighty, and I’m the heartless outsider. The spawn of Satan.”

His rather childish outburst surprised her. His tone had sounded almost human. She might even have felt some sympathy for him if she hadn’t still felt the sting of his “your behavior last Friday” remark.

Not that it was any of his damn business, she fumed. Why not just call her the office slut and at least be a man about it instead of dropping smug hints like some little schoolyard snitch?

“I’m sorry,” she told him archly, “that you feel so persecuted in Mystery, Doctor. I suppose we hayseed types must seem a bit quaint to sophisticated outsiders.”

Her tone heaped extra emphasis on the last two words.

He wanted to laugh out loud. Staring at her, he thought, you beautiful, hotheaded little fool, you are so wrong it’s even funny. Sophisticated? He almost snorted. What would she think if she knew he grew up living in a broken-down trailer, or that pretty girls just like her used to mock him in school because of his family’s poverty? Medical school had been the only way out. The only way. And he’d grasped it like a lifebuoy.

But it hardly mattered what he thought. She didn’t give him a chance to slip a word in.

“I am the office nurse, after all,” she said, pushing right on in spite of his closed, angry glower. “It’s my job to order medical supplies. But if you have some specific complaint about Rocky Moun—”

“No, it’s fine, what the hell,” he cut in sarcastically. “I’m only the doctor around here, don’t let me interfere with your plans for the office.”

“I said if you want, I’ll order—”

“Order it from a Hong Kong clearing house for all I care,” he snapped, his tone brusquely dismissive. “You’re right, it’s your job, not mine. Thanks for your time.”

He sat down behind his desk and flipped open the current issue of Surgical Medicine Quarterly. His rude behavior was meant to be her dismissal.

But Rebecca saw how his eyes were not really reading. Anger flicked in his gaze like light reflected off midnight ice, darkening the blue and tightening his lips and facial muscles.

The feeling is mutual, her own angry eyes assured him right back as she turned away, resenting him to the point of pure hatred.

“One last thing, Miss O’Reilly.”

His voice behind her stopped her like a firm grip on her shoulders.

She turned to watch him from the doorway of the office. “Yes?”

“Concerning what I witnessed last Friday—your, uh, personal intrigues are of course your own business. But professionals don’t mix business with pleasure for this very reason we see now—it causes unnecessary problems. Try to keep your love life out of the workplace.”

His presumptions and false assumptions made anger surge up within her, anger tinged with bewilderment. Why should she care if he had a false impression of her involvement with a would-be adultering creep? She refused to let Saville get that personal with her, right or wrong in his assumptions. His nose wasn’t just out of joint—it was also way too long.

The scornful twist of her mouth was meant to insult him more than any words could. Nonetheless, she flung a few at him for good measure.

“Despite your obvious belief that you are above everyone else,” she snipped, “this is not the Middle Ages, and you do not own your employees. I am a nurse, not a serf. My private life is my business and my business alone. Furthermore, as far as I see it, you have no right to make ridiculous observations like you have just now. In fact, you don’t have the right to even speak to me about my love life.”

Or lack thereof, she finished silently to herself with a twist of irony.

In the ensuing silence, her eyes refused to flee from his. Defiance edged every feature as she stared back at him.

His gaze turned toward the window and the view outside as if in surrender, but he still took up the gauntlet.

“If I did own you,” he assured her, “I’d see if I could swap you for an angry grizzly. Might make the office more pleasant.”

Down-home humor, she thought. Just what Mystery needed in a doctor from Chicago.

She turned and left the office. She didn’t make note of his angry stare or how it drilled into her. Burning. Burning.

By the time Hazel McCallum left for her 10:00 a.m. appointment with John Saville, not even a sweater was required, and the main yard and corral were teeming with horse wranglers and cow punchers.

Weather-rawed men wearing range clothes and neckerchiefs waved as her cinnamon-and-black Fleetwood wound through the crushed-stone driveway of the front yard. Some of the older hands refused to wave, considering that gesture beneath their dignity and Hazel’s status as the last living McCallum. Instead they touched their hats in a respectful “salute to the brand,” a gesture that never ceased to make Hazel feel pride in the cattleman’s traditions.

Those corporate boys in the big cities only talk about teamwork, she thought. One old-fashioned cattle drive would teach them the real meaning of pulling together.

She slowed for the asphalt road that led due east into town. Beyond the Lazy M’s far-flung corrals and pastures, blue sky curved down to meet green grass in a vista as wide as the eye could see. And rising majestically beyond the verdant floor of Mystery Valley, the hard granite peaks of the Rockies.

Even the stunning view, however, couldn’t quite keep her from remembering her daily horoscope, which she always consulted over morning coffee. She smiled, pleased but not at all surprised, as she recalled the advice to “make some connections that appear illogical on the surface.”

Illogical? It was worse than that—Hazel knew Rebecca O’Reilly and John Saville might be her most challenging match yet. But at age seventy-five she was one of the last true mavericks in the American West. Oil money had subdued most of the cattle hierarchy, but the Lazy M brand had survived, even thrived, under her astute management.

And she thrived on a challenge—life was too flat without long shots and lost causes.

She wound through a curve, swooped across a little stone bridge, and now came in sight of the white-painted fence where her land gave way on its east border to John Saville’s recently purchased property. She still thought of it as the Papenhagen place even though Tilly’s husband had passed away last year and she had sold out, moving to South Florida to join the condo-and-blue-rinse set.

Hazel had always liked the big fieldstone house with its indestructible slate roof and windows with leaded panes. The place is too big, though, for a bachelor, she thought yet again. It needed a wife, some dogs and cats, a few or a bunch of kids. If there were too many, she’d gladly handle the overflow, for Hazel missed having young neighbors around all the time as Rebecca and her school friends used to be, bless their hearts. If only kids wouldn’t grow up so fast.

Seeing the house reminded her: Rebecca was wrong about the young surgeon’s personality. Hazel was sure of that already, despite the fact he was not one to volunteer much about his past.

But she also knew that telling Rebecca about her mistake would be pointless. The girl was too headstrong, too young and independent. She would need to make the discovery on her own—with some guidance, of course, Hazel admitted to herself, from the area’s best matchmaking operative. For she was nearly convinced, even this early on, that newcomer John Saville and hometown girl Rebecca were an ideal match. If only each could survive the mutual shell shock of their first impressions.

“Lord,” Hazel said under her breath, “I’d be a hypocrite if I called matchmaking my burden. It’s too much fun. I’ve never been bashful about meddling.”

After all, she had some right to meddle. Her ancestors had been the first to settle in Mystery Valley; now she was determined to save as much of its traditional character as she could. That meant the careful pairing of natives with outsiders, forming bonds of real community. Bonds of real love.

John Saville’s classic Alfa Romeo Gran Sport, painted bloodred in the Italian racing tradition, sat in his reserved spot beside the clinic. The very sight of it stirred Hazel’s blood, for it had all the grace and power of a fine Thoroughbred. She parked in the spot beside it, admiring the graceful roadster body with its tan leather driver’s seat mounted almost over the rear axle.

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.”