A Home for the M.D.

“Fifteen states? Wow. For someone as young as you are, that’s a lot of moving around. Especially since you’ve been working for my sister’s family for a year.”

“A little over a year, actually. I worked for another man in Arkansas—in Hot Springs Village—for almost a year before that, so I’ve been back in this state for a while. As for my age, most people think I’m younger than I really am. I’m twenty-nine.”

“Do your parents still move often?”

She nodded. “I can’t imagine my father ever staying in one place for long, and my mother seems content to follow him around the country.”

The last she’d heard, they’d been in Arizona. But it had been a couple months since she’d talked with her mother, so they could very well have drifted someplace else since then. For the past dozen years, especially, they’d been unable to settle anywhere for long. During those twelve years, they had traveled on their own while Jacqui followed a different path.

“Do you have any siblings?”

The question still made a hard lump form in her chest, even after all this time. “I had a sister. She died.”

Although she wasn’t looking at him, she sensed Mitch searching her face. She wondered if he’d heard the guilt that always swamped her when she thought of Olivia.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“Thanks.” She reached for her purse. “If you’re finished with your lunch, we really should get the groceries. I’m supposed to pick up Alice at four.”

“I’m done.” He swallowed one last gulp of his tea and then stood.

Jacqui moved toward the exit without looking back to see if he followed.

Mental note to self. Don’t ask Jacqui personal questions.

Mitch glanced sideways at the woman in his passenger seat as he drove toward the supermarket she said she preferred. He couldn’t help being curious about her, despite her reticence about her past. Or, just as likely, because of it.

Although he wouldn’t have called her chatty, their conversation had been going pretty well during lunch until he’d started asking questions about her family.

He had definitely hit some raw nerves there. Her relationship with her parents was obviously strained, and her old pain from losing her sister had been almost palpable.

What had it been like for her, growing up without strong roots to either a place or her family? So strongly connected to his own mother and sisters, and to the memory of the father he had loved deeply, and never having lived anywhere but central Arkansas, Mitch couldn’t really identify with her experiences, but he would have liked to hear about them. Not that her past was any of his business, of course. Although circumstances had brought them under the same roof for the next couple of weeks, they were merely acquaintances, nothing more. Maybe by the time he moved on, they could at least claim to be casual friends.

It was her suggestion that they stop at a sporting goods store they passed on the way to the supermarket. “If you’re going to play football with your friends tomorrow, you’ll need clothes,” she said.

Stopped at a red light, he looked at the store, thinking how convenient it would be to save at least one extra shopping trip. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course not.” She motioned for him to turn into the shopping center in which the sporting goods store was located.

“I won’t be long,” he promised. “Just need a few things.”

“No reason to rush. We have a couple of hours to shop before Alice gets home.”

The casual assurance made him realize that her hurry to leave the lunch table had been more related to their conversation than her schedule for the remainder of the day. No surprise.

“Kind of warm for a football game, isn’t it?” she asked, glancing at the blazing sun in the cloudless sky.

He shrugged as he pulled into a parking space and killed the engine. “We dress cool, drink plenty of water. We don’t start until six, so even though it’s still hot, the sun has gone down some. By the way, Scott was serious about you being welcome to join us, if you like. The games are co-ed, and we have several women who show up regularly to play.”

“Since it’s co-ed, I take it you play flag football? Not tackle?”

He realized only then that she was under a misconception about the invitation his friend had extended. “Wrong game.”

She caught on before he had the chance to explain. “Not American football. Soccer.”

“Yeah. Scott was being pretentious, I guess.”

She shrugged and reached to open her door. “The rest of the world calls it that.”

“But in this country, it’s reasonable to assume he was talking about our football. Scott likes to catch people in that assumption and correct them with a worldly indulgence toward their naiveté.”

“Sounds kind of jerky.”

Amused by her blunt assessment, he nodded. “He can be. But he’s okay, on the whole.”

Jacqui didn’t look mollified. “I don’t like it when people try to make other people look stupid. Your sister and brother-in-law would never do that, and they’re pretty much the smartest people I know.”

He hoped she didn’t think he’d been having fun at her expense. “No, they wouldn’t. And I—”

But she was already out of the car, the door snapping shut behind her. Mitch sighed.

Forty-five minutes later, he tagged behind Jacqui as she wielded a shopping cart through the Saturday-crowded supermarket aisles. She selected her groceries with even more care than he’d used in grabbing supplies at the sporting goods store while she’d browsed the sneakers collection.

She seemed to have no trouble being friendly with other people. Apparently, she knew quite a few employees of the supermarket. Several of them greeted her with obvious recognition and Jacqui responded with friendly smiles.

“How’s the new baby?” she asked a young woman arranging roses in the floral department.

“He’s doing great,” the woman replied, beaming. “You wouldn’t believe how fast he’s growing. He loves the little stuffed bear you knitted for him. It’s so soft and cuddly, and he always smiles when I give it to him.”

“I’m glad he’s enjoying it.”

The florist eyed Mitch surreptitiously as she asked Jacqui, “Need any flowers today? We got some pretty lilies in this morning.”

“No, not today, thanks, Latricia. Maybe next time.”

A portly man behind the deli counter grinned broadly when Jacqui approached a few minutes later. “Well, hello there, sunshine. The little missy isn’t with you today?”

“She had other plans today, Gus.” She glanced at Mitch. “Alice likes to come shopping with me sometimes.”

“That little girl does love her cheese,” Gus commented with a chuckle. “What can I get for you today?”

Mitch stood back and watched as Jacqui placed her order. He was struck by her attention to detail even with simple luncheon meats. She’d been the same way with the other groceries now stacked in the cart, reading ingredients, comparing prices, making each choice with a frown of concentration. He enjoyed watching her at work—and she was very much on the job.

If only she could relax with him as she did with the store employees. Surely she wasn’t intimidated by him? He could think of no reason at all for that to be true.

Maybe she just didn’t like him? His ego twinged at the possibility. Was he really so conceited that he assumed everyone should like him? He believed most people liked him well enough, with a few exceptions he didn’t much like either. But maybe there was something about him that rubbed Jacqui the wrong way.

He’d just have to see if he could manage to rub her the right way.

That errant thought made him shift his weight uncomfortably. He studied her from the corner of his eye as she took a smiling leave of the man in the deli.

He would be on his best behavior for the next few days, he promised himself. Whatever he might have done to annoy her, he would do his best to change her mind. He wouldn’t mind having Jacqui smile at him the way she smiled at her friends here in the supermarket.

If Alice hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before, it didn’t show during dinner that night. She chattered nonstop to her uncle throughout the meal, continued to talk while she helped Jacqui clean up afterward, then babbled even more when they joined Mitch in the family room a few minutes later. Jacqui settled in a chair in the corner beneath a bright reading lamp and pulled out the knitting bag she always kept nearby while Mitch and Alice surfed the TV channels for something they both enjoyed.

Mitch glanced Jacqui’s way during a momentary lull in Alice’s monologue. “What are you working on?”

Figuring he was trying to be polite and include her in the conversation, she lifted her project to show the ruffle-edged black scarf she was halfway through. “It’s a scarf.”

“Nice. Is this for your friend’s store? Meagan mentioned you sell your knitted stuff at a boutique,” he added.

She nodded. “A friend in Santa Fe sells handmade accessories in her shop. I met her when I lived there a few years back and I’ve been sending her stuff ever since. Mostly scarves, although occasionally she asks for baby blankets or hats or fingerless gloves, which are popular right now.”

“How long have you been knitting?”

“Since I was a kid.” A friendly neighbor had taught her the basics when her family had settled briefly in a trailer park in Utah. The woman had tried to teach Olivia, too, but Olivia hadn’t been interested. Jacqui, however, had loved the hobby, something portable she could take with her wherever they went. She had guarded the needles that sweet lady had given her as if they were made of gold and had hoarded the yarn she’d purchased with odd jobs money or the occasional allowance from her parents.

The hobby had long since paid for itself. She would never get rich selling her handcrafted wares in the boutique and on the internet, but she kept herself in yarn and needles and rarely purchased gifts when she could make them herself. She made her own sweaters, scarves, gloves and hats and even made shopping bags, dishcloths and socks.

She was delighted that Alice had been knitting for almost a year. Alice had begged Jacqui to teach her last summer and she’d gotten quite good at it since. Jacqui enjoyed sharing her knowledge, the way that nice neighbor had done with her all those years ago. Alice liked knitting soft little stuffed animals in pastel yarns, which she then donated to the local children’s hospital. The same hospital where her uncle Mitch worked, Jacqui thought, glancing at the pediatric orthopedic surgeon on the couch.

“Everything on TV is boring, Uncle Mitch. You want to play a game?” Alice asked hopefully.

“Sure, that sounds like fun,” he said, looking as if he meant it. “What have you got?”

She jumped up eagerly and retrieved a stack of games from a cabinet under a built-in bookcase, setting them on the well-used game table in one corner of the comfortable family room. Generally eschewing the video games most kids her age loved, Alice was instead a fiend for board games, nagging anyone available into playing with her. Jacqui was roped into games fairly often, especially with Alice out of school for the summer.

Alice and Mitch selected a game, sat at the table and then both looked expectantly toward Jacqui.

“Can I get you anything to drink during your game?” she asked, motioning with her knitting toward the doorway.

“Come play with us, Jacqui,” Alice urged, patting an empty chair at the table.

“Oh, I—”

Alice gave her a pleading, puppy-dog-eyes look that would have put Waldo to shame. “Please. Games are more fun with three.”

“I wonder if I should resent that,” Mitch mused aloud.

Both women ignored him. Conceding to Alice’s expression, Jacqui set aside her project. “All right. But just for a little while.”

Two hours later, they still sat around the game table. Empty soda cans sat beside Alice and Mitch, and Jacqui had just finished her second cup of hot tea. Crumbs were the only thing remaining on the plate of cookies Jacqui had brought out earlier. Scribbled score pads documented individual victories in the games they’d played that evening.

She was startled to realize how much time had passed when she glanced at the clock on the mantel. Those two hours had flown by in a blur of rolling dice and laughter. Mitch and Alice were cute together. A stranger observing them would never have believed they’d known each other only a little longer than a year, that Mitch had not known his niece-by-marriage all her life. He teased her and chatted with her with an ease that proclaimed family bonds. At least the type of family bonds Jacqui had observed while working in this household. Not so much in her own.

How might her life have been different, she wondered idly, if her own family had spent time around a table, laughing over a board game? Or even just chatting over dinner? How might she have been different?

A memory popped into her head, dimming her smile. She and Olivia sat cross-legged on the floor of a cheap motel room, playing Monopoly with a battered, salvaged set. They’d replaced the missing game tokens with different-colored pebbles and had made their own deeds and play money with scraps of paper. They’d had a few little plastic houses and hotels and enough instruction cards to make it possible for them to play. She’d been maybe twelve at the time, which would have made Olivia ten.

She remembered the wistfulness in Olivia’s smile when she’d earned enough scrap-paper money to buy a house.

“Don’t you wish it was real?” Olivia had asked, studying the little green plastic house in her hand. “Don’t you wish we could really buy a house and live in it forever?”

“Not likely,” Jacqui had answered with a brusqueness designed to hide her own old longings. “Dad would be ready to move on before we even mowed the grass the first time.”

“I’d like to mow grass.” Olivia set the little plastic house carefully into position on the game board. “When I grow up, I’m going to have a house with a big yard and I’ll mow the grass and plant flowers. Maybe I’ll have a garden and grow peaches. I love peaches.”

“You don’t grow peaches in a garden. You grow them in an orchard,” Jacqui had corrected with the wisdom of her additional two years.

“Then I’ll have an orchard,” Olivia had replied, unperturbed.

Jacqui snapped back into the present when Alice demanded her attention.

“Let’s play Monopoly now!” the teen suggested with an eager look at the stack of games they hadn’t already played.

Because there were only a few games left in that stack, Jacqui found no particular significance in Alice’s choice, despite the coincidence. Still, her throat clenched enough that she had to clear it silently before replying. “That’s all for me tonight, Alice. It’s getting late, and I have a few things to do before bedtime.”

Alice sighed, but didn’t argue, to Jacqui’s relief. When Mitch announced that he had early hospital rounds to make the next morning, Alice accepted that game night was over and began to put away the supplies.

Mitch helped Jacqui clear away the remains of their snacks. Carrying empty soda cans to the recycling bin in the kitchen, he smiled down at her when they almost bumped into each other as he reached around her to drop the cans in the bin. “Sorry.”

This usually roomy kitchen had never felt as small as it did at that moment, with Mitch standing right in front of her and the kitchen counter at her back. All she’d have to do was take one small step forward and she’d be in his arms, plastered against him. Not that she intended to do anything of the sort, of course. It was strictly an observation.

Mitch studied her face for a moment, making her wonder what he might see in the expression she tried to keep carefully blank. And then he moved back a few steps. She drew in air, realizing she’d held her breath while he stood so close. What was it about this man that flustered her so much?

He moved toward the doorway. “I’m going to do some paperwork in my room, then turn in. I need to be at the hospital by six in the morning for a breakfast meeting with a partner. Told my mom I’d have lunch with her and Madison and our aunts, then I’m heading to the mall to buy a few things. Tomorrow evening I’ll be playing soccer with the guys, so I won’t be around here much.”

She nodded, telling herself she should be relieved he wouldn’t be underfoot the next day.

“Good night, Jacqui.”

“Good night.” He didn’t seem to like it when she called him Dr. Baker, but she wasn’t quite comfortable using his name yet, so she tended to avoid calling him anything.

He didn’t look back when he left the room. She knew that because she watched him until he was out of her sight.

Two more weeks, max, under the same roof. She could do this. She assumed the novelty of him would wear off after a couple days of proximity. At least she hoped it would. She wasn’t sure how much she could take of having her pulse race this way every time Mitch stood close to her.

As he climbed into the guest bed that night, Mitch wondered what it was about a suggestion of playing Monopoly that had made Jacqui’s dark eyes go so bleak it had made his heart hurt for her. The most obvious explanation was that it had something to do with her late sister. Childhood memories, perhaps?

She hadn’t said how long her sister had been gone, but it was apparent that the loss was still raw. He imagined what it would be like to lose one of his own sisters, and the pain was so immediate and so piercing that he put the thought quickly out of his mind. He didn’t even want to consider the possibility. Losing his possessions was a minor inconvenience; losing members of his family—well, that was very hard for him to handle. He’d already lost one parent, his beloved dad, and that had been a horrible time for his whole family. It had been difficult enough saying goodbye to his grandmother last year, and they had all been braced for months for her death.

He didn’t like seeing pain in anyone’s eyes, but for some reason it had especially bothered him to see Jacqui looking so unhappy, even momentarily. That sadness had been in such stark contrast with her laughter only moments before whatever memory had assaulted her.

She’d seemed to have fun during their game session with Alice. She’d teased along with him and his niece, and he’d been struck by her soft, rich laughter. For those two hours, she had even lost some of the reserve she usually showed around him—and that he still couldn’t understand. He’d found himself having to make an effort to concentrate on the games rather than the glint of pleasure in her pretty, dark eyes.

Lying on his back in the darkened room, he stared upward, seeing Jacqui’s face rather than the shadowed ceiling. Despite her obvious and bewildering wariness of him, he still found himself drawn to her.

He’d been intrigued by her from the first time he’d met her. He’d been surprised that the housekeeper his sister and her new family had raved so much about had been a rather gamine young woman rather than the stereotypically sturdy matron he’d vaguely envisioned. He’d admired her big, dark eyes, pointed little chin and soft, nicely shaped mouth, and although he usually was attracted to long, wavy hair, he’d liked her tousled pixie cut. It suited her.

As busy as he’d been the past year, and as awkward as it would have been to pursue his sister’s employee, he’d done nothing about his initial tug of attraction to Jacqui. But now that they were under the same roof and spending more time together, the fascination was only growing harder to ignore. He was still busy, and it was still awkward—not to mention that she’d given him no encouragement at all—but maybe they could at least be friends by the time he moved into a new place. Maybe in the future she would smile warmly when she saw him, rather than that politely distanced expression she usually wore when he was around.

He’d like that.

Chapter Three

Jacqui had no intention of attending Mitch’s soccer game. She knew very little about soccer, and she still winced at the way she’d reacted to Mitch’s pretentious friend’s affectations. She doubted she’d have much in common with a bunch of highly educated soccer enthusiasts—or football, as Scott had referred to it. To her, football would always involve pads and helmets and “Hail Mary” passes and touchdowns, but whatever.

She hadn’t counted on Alice wanting very much to go.

“Mitch said there are usually some other kids my age hanging around to watch,” Alice explained. “They don’t let anyone younger than sixteen play because they’re afraid the kids might get hurt playing with adults, but sometimes there’s a kids’ game on the next field. And sometimes they need help with carrying water and chasing soccer balls and stuff like that. Besides, I want to watch Mitch play. I bet he’s really good.”

“It’s going to be pretty hot at the park today,” Jacqui warned. “In the mid-nineties, according to the weather forecast.”

Alice shrugged. “It’s always hot in July,” she said pragmatically. “Can we go, please?”

“Well, um—”

“You could just drop me off if you don’t want to stay. Mitch can bring me home.”

Jacqui envisioned Alice wandering around the crowded park alone while her uncle was engrossed in his game. Although Alice was fourteen and fairly levelheaded for her age, Jacqui didn’t like the thought of her being entirely on her own in such a public place. And what if Mitch wanted to go out for beers or something with his friends after the game?

“I thought maybe you and I could go to a movie this afternoon,” she suggested in a weak bait-and-switch attempt.

Alice wasn’t falling for it. She shook her head. “There’s nothing I really want to see right now. I’d rather watch Mitch’s soccer game.”

Jacqui sighed heavily. “Fine. I’ll take you.”

Had she conceded too easily? Was her capitulation entirely a result of not wanting to disappoint Alice? Was it possible she secretly wanted to see Mitch at play, herself?

Frowning, she pushed a hand impatiently through her hair. “We don’t have to stay for the whole game if it gets too hot or if you get bored.”

“Okay.” But Alice was grinning broadly in anticipation, seemingly undaunted by the risks of heat or boredom. Jacqui resigned herself to a long stay at the soccer field.

“Can we take Waldo? I’d keep him on the leash.”

“No.” Jacqui had no intention of backing down on that issue, even if Alice begged. Waldo was a sweet dog, but he was rambunctious when he got excited. Alice walked him around the neighborhood on his leash nearly every day and Jacqui drove them occasionally to the nearest dog park, but any new environment sent him into a frenzy of hyperactive exploration despite his obedience training. Because Alice wanted to watch the game, that meant Jacqui would be stuck at the end of Waldo’s leash. “Not this time.”

Alice seemed to consider arguing for a moment, then she must have decided to quit while she was ahead. “Okay, maybe next time. I’m going up to decide what to wear.”

Studying Alice’s pink-and-white-striped T-shirt and denim shorts, Jacqui asked, “What’s wrong with what you’re wearing?”

Alice rolled her eyes. “I just said there could be kids my age there.”

That was supposed to be an explanation? Jacqui shook her head in bemusement as Alice dashed toward the stairs. She glanced down at the ultra-casual oversize T-shirt and leggings she’d worn for the light housework she’d done that morning. She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to change. Not because she cared about trying to impress anyone, but because this rather heavy fabric could be uncomfortable in the heat. And if she chose an outfit that was a bit more figure-flattering—well, one should always try to look one’s best when in public, right?

When they left the house half an hour later Jacqui wore a sleeveless yellow shirt of thin, cool cotton paired with khaki capris and leather flip-flops. She was still casual, but the soft yellow looked good with her dark hair and eyes, she decided.