The M.d. Courts His Nurse

He cut her off in midsentence with almost the same caustic retort she had recently flung at him. “I doubt it will leave me a broken man.”

And to think she had wasted time feeling sorry for such an overbearing brute. The absolute creep, she fumed as she drove home in the aging but reliable Bronco her father had turned over to her as a high school graduation present. He was so like Brian. His spitting image exactly, she told herself, self-justification in every word.

Even thoughts of her upcoming date tonight with Rick Collins could not crowd irksome images of John Saville from her mind.

By the time she finished a long and relaxing bath, the light of late afternoon was taking on the mellow richness just before sunset. Wearing a snug terry cloth robe, her long hair wrapped in a towel, she watched the copper blaze of sunset from her bedroom window.

Feeling calmer, she dressed in a hunter green merino wool skirt and a black silk blouse, digging a good pair of black leather pumps out of her closet. She left her hair unrestrained, just combing it out and spritzing it back a little in front, letting it cascade down her back and over her shoulders.

“A very sexy little package,” she approved as she checked herself out in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. “Play your cards right, Mr. Collins, and who knows? This girl is in the mood.”

She hummed pop tunes while she added a finishing touch, a pair of delicate cameo pierced earrings that had belonged to her mother. But while she slipped the delicate French wires through her ears, again she saw John Saville’s face closing against her, the intense cobalt eyes accusing.

A little guilt, and plenty of anger, knotted her stomach, already pinched with hunger.

He was the last man she wanted on her mind tonight.

Noticing it was almost seven o’clock, she quickly opened her compact and lightly brushed her cheeks with blush, trying to get in the right mindset to enjoy a date, John Saville be damned.

Rick Collins rang her doorbell at 7:00 p.m., prompt as a wake-up call and looking quite dapper in a dark evening suit. His blond hair was shorter and neater than she recalled, and he was a little stouter than she had imagined him. Nonetheless, he made a good first impression when Rebecca opened the door.

The smile was still as sexy as she remembered it being. Definitely movie-star teeth.

She was a little put off, however, when he escorted her out to his vehicle: a glittering gold SUV that rode incredibly high off the ground on huge, oversize tires.

“Not quite a monster truck.” Rick seemed to apologize as he helped her in.

She felt as if she was climbing up into a military assault vehicle. This is Montana, she reminded herself. People drive weird trucks out here.

But from that point on, the date rapidly became a fiasco.

During the drive to the restaurant, he rebuffed her every attempt at conversation because, as she quickly learned, he was obsessed with reciting trivial facts. Batting averages, team mascots, per capita consumption of chocolate, the cures for diphtheria in Colonial America, an endless, random recitation of pointless facts proving he had a photographic memory but no other apparent intelligence. Hazel was right to call him a big reader, but she failed to mention he read nothing but books on trivia.

Before long she had also noticed something quite irritating about Rick’s “pleasant voice”—it was oddly uniform in tone, seldom varying much. He might as well be reading out loud from a phone book to pass time. The monotony of it had quickly begun to grate on her.

The date officially tanked by the time the Hathaway House loomed into view. She was practically clawing at her window to escape. He hadn’t shut up once.

“No kidding,” his monotone voice droned on like a weed-eater idling, “Charles Bronson was actually named Charles Buchinsky before he changed his name.”

“Is that right?” she muttered.

“Yeah, and John Denver was Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. And you know what Eric Clapton’s real name was?”

“You tell me.”

He laughed for the first time. “Eric Clap. No kidding, it really was.”

When she said nothing, he pressed on. “Don’t you get—”

“I get it,” she answered, wondering how she was going to get through the interminable two hours of dinner.

The modern exterior of the Hathaway House, with its elegant marble walls, seemed a deliberate contrast to the old-time intimacy of the interior. Candles burned in sconces along the walls, and two-branched gilt candlesticks illuminated each table.

But tonight it was all wasted on Rebecca. The double line of full-length windows opening onto a scrolled-iron balcony, the tables bright and fragrant with fresh bouquets of spring—all wasted.

In fact even as a pallid and bored maître d’ escorted them to their tables, it was all she could do to restrain herself from bolting. She still smarted with humiliation from their arrival—she had actually required a valet’s help to climb down out of Rick’s truck.

“Hopalong Cassidy’s horse was Topper,” Rick’s voice hammered on, beating at her ears by now. “Dale Evans rode Buttermilk, the Cisco Kid was on Diablo, Gene Autry rode—”

I dared to dream, Rebecca thought with self-lacerating sarcasm that made her smile. Unfortunately she was looking right at Rick when she did it. His next remark proved he misread her ironic smile as some sort of romantic green light.

“I thought maybe after dinner,” he confided in a near whisper so others wouldn’t hear, “we might take a little ride out to Turk Road.”

He couldn’t be serious. Cold revulsion made her shudder. Turk Road used to be a local lovers’ lane until huge feed-lots were built on both sides of it. Either he hadn’t parked there in a long time or he didn’t care about the smell.

“You’re joking, right?” she blurted out. “That area smells like a leaking sewer.”

“Oh, not when the wind’s out of the north,” he assured her with a solemn face. “Like it is tonight. We can just keep the windows rolled up.”

They were seated, and immediately the wine steward hovered at Rick’s elbow while he ordered some white zinfandel she had no intention of drinking.

A brief image of Rick groping her in his almost-monster truck, windows steamed over, cows bellowing on all sides, had killed her earlier appetite.

“Take me home,” she blurted out suddenly. “I don’t feel well.”

“What? But we—”

“I really don’t feel well,” she insisted in a tone that quashed any further resistance from him. To underline her determination she stood up and gathered her purse and sweater.

“Man, oh, man!” he exclaimed in frustration. “Hazel didn’t tell me you were such a dingbat.”

Well at least he gets angry, she thought as the two of them walked quickly outside, scrutinized by curious eyes.

“The gold truck,” Rick snapped to the valet, and the latter trotted around to the side lot. The teen returned a minute later, shaking his head at them.

“Bad news, sir. Your right rear tire is completely flat. If you’ve got a jack that’s big enough, we’ll change it for you.”

Rebecca’s heart sank at this stroke of rotten luck, and Rick cursed. “No, it’ll have to be towed to a hoist. Or at least lifted by a tow-truck winch.”

He looked at Rebecca as if it were all her fault. “I’ll have to call a tow. Looks like it’ll be a while before you get home.”

The date from hell, she thought, as she watched him walk away with the valet to inspect the damage.

Four

Oh, great, Rebecca groaned inwardly while her date dug the phone number for his tow service out of his wallet. Mystery Valley had virtually no cab service, just a shuttle bus service for the airport at Helena, so she couldn’t get home that way.

Hazel…her place wasn’t all that far, or maybe Lois—