Just What the Doctor Ordered Read online

  “Matt says he’s not going to eat with us. He says you’re not supposed to fix his lunch on Sunday.”

  “Nonsense. Tell him if he’s not at the table in ten minutes, I’ll turn both of you loose on him.”

  Rebecca pounded up the stairs, anxious to deliver Liz’s message. Liz went to her room to change her clothes and mull over all the ways she might torture Josie Woodhouse.

  “I hope you didn’t let everybody’s determination to get you over to their house scare you out of going to church again,” Liz said after the kids had finished their lunch and gone out to play. Matt had remained at the table to finish his iced tea.

  “I’m not much on parties and visiting people,” Matt said.

  “I know. A doctor shouldn’t get to know his patients. He should—”

  “It’s not just that,” Matt explained.

  He looked up from his tea, his face a mask of irritation. Yet Liz saw something else. He had withdrawn into a shell. This one looked impenetrable.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” Liz said, remembering his reaction that first day to her question about his family. “It’s none of my business.”

  “It’s probably in that damned computer somewhere.”

  “There’s nothing there except your degrees, honors, scholarships, doctors you’ve worked with, stuff like that.”

  “Well you might as well know. I don’t have any family. I was a foster child.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that. Several people in Iron Springs are—”

  “My mother arrived in Gull’s Landing on a bus. No one knows where she came from or where she was going. She had me an hour later, gave me my name, then died. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and she didn’t tell anyone my father’s name. I’m a bastard.”

  Liz didn’t know what to say. Nothing like this had ever occurred to her. She’d just thought he was a very private person who felt uncomfortable with strangers asking him personal questions.

  “That’s not your fault.” It was a lame response. People got damned all the time for things that weren’t their fault. “There’s no reason anybody has to know, but they wouldn’t hold it against you.”

  “Do you have any illegitimate kids in Iron Springs?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Any women who had children out of wedlock?”

  “No.”

  “People who follow the rules don’t like those who don’t. I know. I was passed from home to home because nobody wanted me. Even my adoptive parents gave me back. Everybody in Gull’s Landing was delighted when I got a scholarship and left.”

  “Okay, so they were narrow-minded and stupid,” Liz said. “People in Iron Springs aren’t like that.”

  “What makes you think they’re different from everybody else?”

  “Because I don’t think many people are like the people in Gull’s Landing. You may not know your father’s name, but you’ve made something of yourself. You’re a doctor with a brilliant career ahead of you. People respect that.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Of course they do. They like you.”

  “Why should they?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you like Rebecca and Ben or Salome?”

  “I don’t like Salome. She—”

  “Of course you do. You wouldn’t let her call you Beefcake if you didn’t.”

  “Could I stop her?”

  “Of course.”

  “How?”

  “Speak to her the way you spoke to me that first day.”

  He looked startled.

  “Salome might wear lipstick bright enough to blind you, but she likes you. To paraphrase one of her remarks into repeatable form, you’re sexy as hell with a body to die for.”

  Liz couldn’t believe her eyes. Unless she was badly mistaken, Matt Dennis actually blushed. How could a man who looked good enough to give Don Juan a race for his money appear embarrassed at being called sexy? Now, that was truly intriguing.

  “A man likes to be wanted for more than his body.”

  Liz would apologize for laughing when she had time to catch her breath, but she’d never thought to hear that complaint come out of a man’s mouth.

  “You find that funny?” Matt asked.

  “I find it nearly hysterical. Do you know how many times—?”

  “Millions.”

  “A conservative estimate.”

  “Okay, a billion.”

  “Closer.”

  “Okay, men are pigs. We’re the enemy.”

  “Yes, but such charming pigs, such a lovable enemy.”

  “Are you ever serious?”

  “Yes, and never more than right now. David was charming and lovable, but he is a prizewinning pig.”

  “David?”

  “My ex-husband, but I didn’t mean to talk about him. We’re talking about you and the fact people in Iron Springs will continue to like and respect you, regardless of your origins. I tell you what, why don’t you come to the firemen’s picnic?”

  “Why, so you can introduce me as the local bastard?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Or self-pitying.”

  Now she had really made him mad.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, but that’s how you sound. ‘Poor me, the orphan boy. Nobody likes me.’ I know things must have been terrible to have made you so bitter, but that’s just the breaks. You’ve got to get over it.”

  “I am over it. I just don’t intend to put my head on the chopping block again.”

  “So you’re going to hide behind your degrees and your professional relationships.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “Of course you are. I bet you don’t even want a wife and family. And if you do break down and bless some woman by letting her marry you, she’ll have to be a professional who’s just as cold and detached as you want to be. You’ll both hide in your plush offices behind your big desks and your very efficient secretaries and never take a human breath in your life.”

  “Where do you get off telling me what I’ll do?”

  “I’m one of those nosy old biddies who inhabits tiny mountain villages, pries out every bit of gossip I can sniff out and turns up my nose at people whose birth isn’t as good as mine. We specialize at ferreting out and holding up to public ridicule any child whose parents didn’t have the foresight to get married before his conception. No, birth. We do have a few who weren’t too careful about the conception date.”

  “Okay, so I may have been too severe.”

  “My, aren’t you magnanimous.”

  “What do you want, blood?”

  “No. I want an apology.”

  “Okay, I apologize.”

  “Not in words. I want you to go to the picnic. Ethan is taking me and the children. I can introduce you to everybody.”

  “No.”

  “Coward. Everybody will be there. You can announce your terrible secret and let everybody revile you. It ought to make for a fun afternoon. Come to think of it, it’s quite selfish of you to refuse. We haven’t had a good public reviling in a long time.”

  “Okay, dammit, I’ll go.”

  “Good, but now that I think about it, I think you’d better not announce your guilty secret just yet. This is the fire department’s big day. I don’t think they’d appreciate being upstaged.”

  Matt stalked back and forth in his room, too agitated to concentrate on his work. He was going to strangle Liz and leave her body in the street as a warning. He didn’t want to go socializing with every female who asked. He still thought it was best for a doctor to keep his distance from his or her patients. It made things rather lonely sometimes, but fortunately he was a person who didn’t need other people.

  He particularly didn’t need people poking and probing into his background, his innermost thoughts, his love life—which happened to be nonexistent at the moment. Everybody in Iron Springs could tell every secret they knew, chew over every scandal until it was threadbare, whisper over back fences un
til their dinners burned to crisps, but they wouldn’t be talking about him.

  He had a right to privacy. His life was his own, and he didn’t intend to hand it over to every Joan and Jennifer to gossip about. More likely, every Beulah Mae and Anna Belle. Or Prudence and Charity. They did give women the damnedest names in this place.

  But it was Liz he was angriest at. She was the one who’d taunted and baited him until he agreed to go to that damned picnic. She was the one he was fool enough to trust with his secret, who accused him of indulging in self-pity.

  She ought to have tried growing up in Gull’s Landing. She ought to have heard all the taunts when no adult was around, seen the looks when they were. Even the kind ones couldn’t forget he was illegitimate. He wasn’t indulging in self-pity. He knew how people reacted.

  He had no intention of putting himself through that again.

  But he’d agreed to go to that picnic. He could back out, but Liz would call him a coward again. And he would be. He might not like to have to fend off curiosity seekers, but he could do it. And he would.

  But he would get even with Liz. He didn’t know how just yet, but it was beginning to look like he would have a full year. That would give him plenty of time to think of something truly diabolical.

  Chapter Nine

  “David, why are you doing this to me? You never cared about the children before.”

  Her ex-husband had called for the second time in two weeks to insist that she send the children up to New York. This time he’d called Liz at the office, upsetting her routine and the composure she needed to handle her job properly.

  “I always did, but I never had the time until now.”

  “I can’t let you work your way back into the children’s lives, let them start to depend on you, then have you forget them when things get a little rough.”

  “I’ll never be late with the check again.”

  “It’s not about money, David. I can support them.”

  “How, with your little job in the clinic?”

  David always belittled anyone who didn’t aim for the top.

  “I’m talking about your children learning to love you, David. They may be only three and four, but they have feelings. They can be hurt.”

  “I told you. I’ve changed.”

  “So you’ve said. But let a crisis rear its ugly head, and you’ll forget all about them.”

  “No, I won’t. And if I did, my wife would look after them.”

  Liz didn’t know why that should shock her so much. She had expected David to remarry. He’d played around with enough women to have a wide choice.

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t figure you wanted to be invited to the wedding.”

  “No, but I would like to have known.”

  “Well, now you do.”

  That was David. Sensitive to the core.

  “Who did you marry?”

  “You don’t know her. I met her on a business trip about a year ago. We got married two months ago.”

  “You can’t expect me to turn my children over to a woman I’ve never met.”

  “Look, Liz, I mean to see my kids. Next time I call, I want to know when they can come up so I can send plane tickets.”

  “David, you can’t—”

  He hung up on her, didn’t even say goodbye. It made her so angry she wanted to slam the phone down. But that would only break the phone, and she’d have to pay for it. She thought of the check David had sent. She could buy a lot of phones with that. She could buy a new car, replace the furnace, recarpet the downstairs and a few other things. It would serve him right if she spent it all on clothes for herself.

  But she’d put it in the children’s college fund. She didn’t know how long David’s benevolent mood would last, and college for the children was one of her biggest worries.

  She walked to the front screen door and looked out. She had to think of something. She couldn’t just turn Ben and Rebecca over to a strange woman for two weeks.

  “I won’t do it,” she said aloud as she stepped out onto the porch. “David can scream all he wants, but I won’t do it.”

  “I don’t know what you won’t do, but if David screams even once in this town, it’ll set everybody on their ears.”

  Liz’s heart jumped into her throat. She turned to find Matt dozing in the porch swing. She hadn’t known he was there.

  “Sorry, I was thinking out loud.”

  “The bright pink of your ears tells me those thoughts weren’t for my ears. If I remember correctly, David is your ex-husband.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he still in New York?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then don’t do it. He can scream all he wants, and nobody down here will hear him.”

  Liz smiled in spite of herself. “It’s not that simple.”

  “It never is.”

  The invitation to tell him was there. He wasn’t going to say anything. He wasn’t that kind of man, but he would listen, and she needed to tell someone. She’d thought first of Aunt Marian, but Matt might be better. He’d never met David, and he didn’t know much about her. He was more impartial.

  “You don’t want to hear my sad tale,” Liz said. “You like to keep your distance, remember?”

  “That’s from patients.”

  She hesitated a moment, then settled into a rocking chair next to the swing. “David wants me to send the children for a visit. He’s remarried, so he’s got somebody to take care of them if he gets tied up in the office and forgets about them.”

  “Anything else in his favor?”

  “He sent their child support.”

  “A big plus.”

  “This is the first time ever.”

  “A big minus. Any more?”

  “Yes. David’s whole life is tied up in his business. For years he never had time for any of us. If he gets tied up again, he’ll forget all about them again. I don’t want them to get hurt.”

  “How attached can they get in two weeks a couple of times a year? If his wife takes them to the movies, restaurants and a theme park, they won’t even know he’s not there.”

  “There’s no point in sending them to New York to spend their time with a baby-sitter.”

  “Agreed. But if he has visitation privileges, you don’t have much choice.”

  “He hasn’t wanted to see them in three years. Why should he want to see them now?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d changed.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s one way to find out.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Go up with the children. Rent a motel room for two whole weeks if necessary.”

  “I’d end up seeing more of his wife than I would of him.” He didn’t say anything, but she knew he had something to say. “Out with it.”

  “You don’t like his wife?”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  “But you don’t like her.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he rejected me for her. He told me he didn’t meet her until after I’d left him, but it doesn’t make any difference. He threw me out because I wasn’t any good. He married her because she was.”

  “But you divorced him.”

  “I know.”

  “So you rejected him.”

  “I swallowed my pride to stay with him and try to make our marriage work. I didn’t leave until it became painfully clear none of us meant anything to him.”

  “So you’re still angry at him.”

  “Yes.” She hadn’t admitted that before, probably wouldn’t have if David hadn’t remarried without telling her.

  “That won’t do you any good in dealing with David.”

  “I know, but I can’t help it.”

  They rocked in silence for a moment.

  “Okay,” she said when she couldn’t wait any longer, “what do you
think I ought to do? I can see you’ve got an idea.”

  “I shouldn’t be giving advice.”

  “Why not? Everyone else will.”

  “You won’t like what I have to say.”

  “Neither of us ever likes what the other has to say. Go ahead.”

  “I think you ought to let the children see their father,” Matt said. “Hear me out before you cut my throat.”

  She didn’t have anything that severe in mind, but she was considering dumping him out of the swing. She hadn’t expected him to be her ally, but she hadn’t expected him to stab her in the back.

  “Unless David is mean and abusive, I think it’s crucial for your children to know their father. I didn’t have one, and I know what it did to me.”

  “I don’t think he really wants them. I think it’s just for his wife.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of David or his wife. I was thinking of Ben and Rebecca. I can’t tell you how tough it is for a kid without a father. It’s like you don’t belong, you don’t have a membership card.”

  “They’ve got one. He’s just a lousy father.”

  “They’ll realize that with time, but it’s important for them to know he wants them. There’s nothing quite so horrible as knowing you’re not wanted.”

  Liz was caught between sympathy for what Matt must have suffered and irritation at him for recommending she do exactly what she didn’t want to do.

  “I don’t want them to have anything to do with David.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have gotten married and had children.”

  “I wasn’t expecting my marriage to end in divorce.”

  “Nobody ever does. Relationships are like that. The more people you have in your life, the less control you have over it.”

  “So you decided to sit out the game.”

  “You could look at it that way.”

  “What other way can I look at it? You’re not married, not dating, not even interested as far as I can see. You even avoid social contact. That might make you a good doctor, but as a person you’re dead.”

  “Do you always act this way when people give you advice you don’t like?”

  “No. Sometimes I lose my temper.”

  His smile was sudden and spontaneous. “Remind me to get out of the way when you do.”