Cowboy M.D.

YOU WON’T even know I’m here.

Ha. No such luck.

The sexy sound of her soft laughter was clearly audible over the dinner conversation. He’d been hoping she’d skip dinner in favor of a jet-lagged nap. The moment he slid open the dining room’s double doors, he’d spotted her, blond hair loose around her shoulders, a wide smile on her face.

“Nick. There you are,” his mother said from her usual spot at the head of the table. About twelve people sat around her, mostly adults, although two dark-haired kids sat at the end. Nick nodded to the guests he’d been introduced to already. There were a few new faces, but then, it was always like that. The guests came and went, some of them eating with the family, others content to do their own cooking in their cabins.

“Nick, there’s an empty seat next to Ali,” his mom added.

“Why am I not surprised?” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” his mother asked.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, taking a seat next to Ali.

She looked different.

Well, he supposed most people looked different when they weren’t dressed in a buttoned-down business suit. The white cotton blouse and blue jeans suited her.

“Good evening, Doctor,” she said softly, her eyes more blue than gray this evening.

“Doctor?” one of the guests asked, a balding man with a bright red scalp. Obviously he’d forgotten to apply his sunscreen today. “You’re a doctor?”

Yeah, want a prescription for some sunscreen?

“Graduated at the top of his class from Harvard Medical School,” his mother answered.

“Harvard?” the man asked in obvious surprise. “You went to Harvard?”

He said the words like, “You went to the moon?”

“He was offered a Rhodes Scholarship,” Ms. Forester provided.

“Really?”

“But he turned it down,” she said, “so he could graduate from Harvard.”

And from the end of the table, his mother looked at Alison as though she’d offered her ovaries to him on a platter. Nick almost groaned.

“Nick has an IQ of 162,” his mother said to the crowd at large, but to one individual in particular—as if Alison didn’t already know that. He would bet the woman knew his shoe size.

“He was in the top one percent when he took his Medical College Admission Test.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” he said, noticing that the table had gone quiet, most of his mother’s guests looking at him in either surprise or approval, though a young girl and boy at the opposite end of the table exchanged disinterested glances. “The guests don’t care about me, Mom. I want to know how everyone’s day was today?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alison said before anybody had a chance to reply. “As your future wife, I’d like to find out whatever I can about you.”

“You’re engaged?” an elderly lady asked, her eyes lighting up as if she were the mother of the bride-to-be. “How wonderful.”

“Actually,” Alison said, “we just met today.”

“You…what?” the woman asked, befuddled.

“But Nick here is convinced his mom only invited me to the ranch so she could set us up. Frankly, I’m not so sure.”

Okay, that did it—

“She sounded nice on the phone,” his mother said to her guests, smiling around the table.

“Mother,” Nick rasped.

“Well…she did.”

Alison laughed, which started his mother laughing, too. That was the third time today he’d heard his mother laugh, which made it the most she’d laughed in months.

“Hey,” Alison said, leaning in to him. “If your mom’s set on marrying us off, do you think I could have a peek at your mouth? My family has a long history of perfect teeth and I hate to mess up the gene pool.”

He shook his head, unwilling to play along.

“C’mon,” she said. “Open up.” She even picked up a fork as though she meant to poke at his molars with it.

“You better stop,” he said, “or you’ll really start my mom on a crusade. You’re exactly the type of woman she likes.”

Alison dropped her fork. Actually he was reasonably certain she only set it down because Besse had come in with the first platter of chicken.

“And what kind of woman is that?” Alison asked sotto voce.

Smart. Witty. Good-looking. He picked up his napkin and lay it in his lap. “Young, healthy…of childbearing age.”

He peered down at her just in time to see her eyes widen as she tipped back her head and laughed. Just as he expected, his mom was looking at them with an expression of delight.

“Stop laughing,” he murmured. “You’re giving her reason to hope.”

That made her chuckle more. “Maybe we should pretend an engagement. That way she’d leave you alone.”

“Are you kidding? She’d have the local preacher over here in the morning. And the Red Cross to do our blood work.”

“Is she really that bad?”

But his mom’s smile eliminated whatever pique he might feel. It was good to see her smile.

“She can be,” he said. “But I wouldn’t trade her for the world.”

“You’re lucky to have her,” Alison said before turning to the guest next to her.

Nick felt surprisingly disappointed, especially when the guest turned out to be a single dad whose two kids, the boy and girl, Kimberly and Sam, sat at the end of the table. Their dad, Jim, was flirting with Alison as if there was no tomorrow.

Well, good. Maybe that would get matchmaking ideas out of his mom’s head.