A Second Chance for the Single Dad Read online

  And then he thought of the drawing in his briefcase. He’d almost made up his mind not to give it to Kayley. Why forge another link in a chain between them that he had no interest in creating? But he had an uneasy feeling that either Lily or his mother-in-law might call Kayley and ask her if she liked the picture that Lily had drawn. He had no desire to be on the receiving end of an inquisition conducted by all two and a half of the women.

  “Come to my office,” Luke instructed her in what amounted to a gruff voice—at least, that was what it sounded like to Kayley.

  Squaring her shoulders, she followed Luke into his office. But the moment they got there, she closed the door.

  “Why did you just do that?” he asked, not sure what to anticipate.

  He wasn’t all that experienced when it came to women. Jill had captured his heart in high school and she had been his only serious girlfriend. Had he insulted Kayley by kissing her Saturday? Was she going to threaten to report him for inappropriate behavior or give him some sort of other ultimatum?

  “Because I want to clear the air between us,” Kayley answered.

  Luke still didn’t know if he could believe her. “By saying what?” he asked suspiciously.

  “That I had a really great time on Saturday. I think that your former mother-in-law is a great hostess and your little girl is nothing short of adorable. If I were you, I’d make sure to be home every night to read her bedtime stories.”

  He waited, but nothing more came. “And that’s it?” he asked.

  Kayley’s eyes met his. “That’s it,” she replied without a hint of waffling or indecision.

  “And what happened—” Luke began, trying to find the right way to mention what had occurred when he walked her to her car.

  But Kayley cut him short. “That’s it,” she repeated firmly, obliquely letting him know that she had no intention of bringing up the kiss they’d shared. It had happened and now it was in the past. End of story.

  At least, that was what she assumed he wanted it to be.

  Luke was simultaneously relieved and perplexed regarding the same issue. Why wasn’t Kayley saying anything about the elephant that was very clearly in the room?

  The next moment, he told himself to leave well enough alone.

  Kayley reached for the doorknob, about to turn it and let herself out of his office.

  “Wait a second.” Luke put his briefcase on his desk, then snapped opened the locks.

  Now what? Kayley wondered, eyeing the briefcase. “You want me to sign a statement to that effect in blood? That there’s nothing else?” she guessed.

  “No,” he answered, then added wryly, “although that might be interesting.”

  Luke stared down at the drawing lying on top of the folders. He had a strong feeling that he was about to do something that, once done, he couldn’t undo. But that was undoubtedly the paranoia talking, he told himself. It was, he had come to realize, a holdover from his time overseas, where every moment was spent worrying that something might suddenly go wrong and life as he knew it would be forever changed.

  Except that he had thought it would be because of some injury that he received.

  He had received an injury, he reminded himself. It hadn’t been a physical one. His injury had been one of the soul. If he hadn’t been deployed, if he’d been there with Jill, maybe the car accident would have never happened.

  If—

  “Doctor, are you all right?” Kayley asked, peering closely at him. “You have a very strange look on your face.”

  Rousing himself, he told her crisply, “I’m fine.”

  And then he realized that despite the fact that they were standing in his office with the door closed and were alone for all intents and purposes—definitely out of anyone’s earshot—she had called him Doctor. Not Luke, but Doctor. Another concern averted. She wasn’t about to be personal at work even after Saturday.

  He cleared his throat and told her why he’d brought her into his office.

  “Lily stopped me on my way out this morning. She wanted me to give you this.” He removed the drawing from his briefcase and handed it to Kayley.

  The normally talkative physician’s assistant took the drawing from him without a word. He did hear a small intake of breath, but no other sound emerged from her mouth.

  Was she trying to find a polite way of saying that the drawing was very nice when in fact it was a mass of very bold colors and just barely recognizable for what it was supposed to depict?

  “She said to tell you that it’s the two of you, with you reading her a storybook while she’s in bed,” he explained.

  “I know what it is,” Kayley told him in what had to be the smallest voice he had ever heard her use.

  And then, when she raised her eyes to his, he understood why she sounded so different. She was crying. At least, he assumed that those were tears shimmering in her eyes.

  And then one slid free and slipped down her cheek, so he knew he was right.

  “It’s not that bad, is it?” he asked, trying to figure out why she was crying.

  “Bad?” she echoed, stunned that he would use that word to describe what she was holding in her hands. “This drawing isn’t bad—it’s beautiful. It has to be one of the most beautiful things that anyone has ever given me.”

  “Don’t get out much, do you?” he quipped before he could stop himself.

  “No, actually, I don’t,” she admitted with a smile he could describe only as shy curving her mouth. “Saturday was the first time I wasn’t either working or sitting at home trying to get my mother’s things in order since I moved back to Bedford. All the friends I had when I was growing up are scattered and gone,” she said in a wistful voice, “and the friends I have now are all up in San Francisco.”

  “No new friends down here?” Since he’d returned, he’d cut off all ties to everyone except for his mother-in-law, but he had to admit, given Kayley’s personality, what she had just said surprised him.

  “Not yet,” Kayley answered. “Unless you count a certain little blond-haired artist,” she added, gazing down at the drawing he’d just handed her. Kayley pressed her lips together and looked up at him. “Thank you for this.”

  “Not my doing,” he told her just in case Kayley thought he had put his daughter up to drawing it. “Lily drew it and she wanted you to have it.”

  She understood all that. She also understood that he wasn’t anxious to promote any extra ties between them. She suspected that kiss had frightened him more than he was willing to let on. Maybe because it made him realize that he could have feelings—in a minor way—for a person other than his late wife.

  “But you didn’t have to give it to me,” she pointed out.

  “That would be withholding property that wasn’t mine,” he replied.

  She studied him briefly. She wasn’t sure if Luke was being serious or just pulling her leg. “Are you really that honest?”

  “To a fault,” he confessed.

  He was being serious. “Honesty is never a fault.”

  Her comment brought back memories. Luke laughed drily. “Tell that to some of the interns and residents that I ticked off along the way.”

  She was surprised that he would reveal something like that to her. Maybe they had come a little further along than she’d initially thought. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, there are always two ways to say anything.”

  “The right way and the wrong way?” he guessed at the standard answer.

  But Kayley shook her head. “I was thinking more along the lines of the harsh way and the more thoughtful, delicate way.”

  Her Pollyanna attitude amused him. “And how would you suggest what the delicate, thoughtful way of saying ‘You’re the last doctor on ea
rth who should be treating a patient’ is?” he challenged.

  “Definitely not that way,” she answered, then told him, “Doctor, I think for the sake of your daughter and your relationship with your daughter, you need a little help in finding a way to let the nicer you finally come out.”

  She was really barking up the wrong tree. “There is no nicer me.”

  Kayley was not about to accept that. “At the risk of irritating the ‘unnice’ you, I beg to differ. I glimpsed the nicer you on Saturday when you were helping your daughter set a ‘trap’ for a leprechaun. And just now, when you gave me the picture that Lily drew. You could have just as easily left it in your briefcase and I wouldn’t have been the wiser, you know.”

  Luke snapped his fingers. “Damn, I guess I missed my chance.”

  She smiled then, and again, he noticed that her eyes seemed to light up each time she did that. The sight fascinated him even though he knew it shouldn’t.

  “Yes, you did,” she told him.

  He found himself battling a strong urge to repeat Saturday’s mistake.

  Chapter Twelve

  For a very intense second, Kayley sensed the electricity in the air, the pull between them. But this wasn’t the time or the place for it, even if there was no one else in the entire suite of offices.

  Kayley had the sensation that she was standing on quicksand and needed to move before it was too late for her to do anything but give in to this attraction—and there would be consequences if she did that.

  “I’d better get to work,” she told the doctor, trying her best to sound upbeat.

  The next moment, she opened the door and made a quick exit from Luke’s office.

  Luke sank down in the chair behind his desk, staring at the space where Kayley had just been.

  He blew out a breath. Maybe he was just overthinking this, making too much of the whole thing. Kayley seemed to be unaffected by what had happened between them on Saturday, so he really shouldn’t have to worry about it having any adverse effects on their relationship at work. And their relationship at work, he insisted, was all he was worried about, because he didn’t have any room in his life for other relationships.

  He had all he could handle. He had his surgical practice and he had his daughter. His plate, as the old saying went, was full.

  But what about his life? a small voice in his head asked. In the wee hours of the night, when he was alone in his bed, his life felt incredibly empty somehow.

  Luke shook his head, as if to shake that thought loose and out of his brain. He was getting carried away, he told himself. He wasn’t looking for anyone or anything more than what he had.

  And yet...

  * * *

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Kayley burst into his office. “Doctor, you’re wanted in the ER. One of your former patients was just brought in by ambulance and he’s asking for you.”

  “I’ve got a full schedule today,” he protested, glancing at the computer monitor on his desk.

  “But the ER said he was specifically asking for you,” Kayley stressed. She couldn’t see how he could just ignore a plea for help like that.

  Reluctantly, Luke relented. He supposed that she did have a point. “Call the ER back and ask them the nature of the emergency and who the patient is.”

  Kayley didn’t have to make another call to the ER. She already had all the information he was asking for. “It’s a motorcycle accident right along Pacific Coast Highway. Kyle Brubaker broke his left leg in two places and possibly shattered his knee, as well. He insisted that the ambulance bring him here, to Bedford Memorial Hospital.”

  “That qualifies as an emergency, all right,” Luke agreed. “All right, call them back—tell them we’re on our way.”

  That caught her off guard. Had he just made a mistake? “We?” she questioned.

  “Yes, you’re coming with me,” he told her.

  She was convinced she wasn’t hearing the doctor correctly. “Excuse me?”

  He sighed, stopping for a moment. “You’re a physician’s assistant, right?”

  “Right,” she answered, still somewhat mystified as to what was going on. Was he trying to teach her some kind of lesson for butting into his life?

  “Well, I’m asking you to come and ‘assist’ me. What is so confusing about that?” he asked.

  Kayley looked at him, stunned. He’d given her no indication that he felt he could rely on her this way. She’d stepped in for the last doctor she’d worked for, but Luke had been rather hard-nosed about things up until now.

  “Wouldn’t you be better off with another full-fledged surgeon assisting you? Kyle Brubaker sounds like he’s going to need surgery on that leg.”

  “If I wanted another ‘full-fledged surgeon’ assisting me, I would have told you to stay here.” He scrutinized her for a moment. “Your résumé says that you’ve had surgical training, Are you afraid you won’t come through in a pinch?”

  It was all the challenge she needed. She had performed procedures more than once for the doctor she had worked for prior to Dolan. “Watch me.”

  “Oh, I fully intend to,” Luke promised.

  There were now several administrative assistants at the front desk as they passed it on their way out. Luke paused long enough to leave instructions with the woman sitting closest to him.

  “Sheila, reschedule my morning patients. Tell them I was called away to an emergency.”

  Sheila looked from the doctor to the woman leaving with him. “Yes, Doctor,” she murmured.

  “We’ll be at Bedford Memorial,” Kayley added as they were on their way to the elevator.

  The receptionist’s knowing expression faded just a little.

  Pressing for the first floor, he glanced at Kayley. It was an unguarded moment and she looked a little uneasy, in his opinion. “What’s the matter?”

  She welcomed the opportunity, but she gave him one last chance to change his mind. She didn’t want him taking her with him for the wrong reasons and then regretting it. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Do what? Play God while I’m putting together some twentysomething’s leg because he’s a daredevil who takes too many chances?” His shrug told her that he had no choice. “That’s what I signed on for.”

  “No, I meant taking me with you to assist in Brubaker’s surgery.”

  There was almost the barest hint of a smile on his lips. He was daring her. And himself.

  “It’s time to see what you’re made of, Ms. Quartermain. Unless, of course,” he said as they got off on the first floor, “the sight of blood makes you feel queasy.”

  “As long as it’s not my own, I can handle it,” she replied flippantly. “I just thought you’d want someone at your side who you’re used to working with in the OR, that’s all.”

  Luke paused at the street corner directly across from the hospital’s emergency entrance and pressed the switch for the crossing light to turn green.

  “There’s always a first time before there’s a ‘used to,’” he told her.

  The light turned green and they both hurried across the street and entered the hospital’s compound. Kayley laughed. “I guess in an odd sort of way, that makes sense,” she responded.

  “So does that mean you’re up for this?” he asked, rather certain of her answer.

  “I’m up for this,” she replied. Kayley just didn’t tell him that her heart had moved up in her throat, where it was probably liable to remain until Dolan’s patient was moved to the recovery room.

  * * *

  Her heart did not remain in her throat. It couldn’t, because it was racing too hard all during Kyle Brubaker’s leg-and-knee reconstructive surgery to stay lodged there. As the surgery progressed and her mettle was challenged, she realized that this was as close to
an out-of-body experience as she felt she was ever likely to have. She could almost watch herself competently assisting Luke during the surgery.

  When they’d gone in, part of her had assumed that he was just bandying terms around and that he only wanted her to watch him and some other surgeon work on the patient.

  But she wasn’t just passively watching; she was right there in the thick of the surgery with him. Being awed by his expertise and by the fact that she could keep up, doing everything that he needed her to do in order to help make the final outcome of the surgery a success. Not for him or for her, but for the patient.

  An eternity later, when the operation was finally over, Kayley didn’t know that she could feel this wiped out and still be standing upright.

  In her opinion, the patient was wheeled out to the recovery room not one second too soon. She felt as if her knees could no longer support her.

  She took small, careful steps out of the operating room, then collapsed into the first chair she came across. The chair was one of several lined up along the wall next to the OR and was meant for patients’ relatives waiting to hear how the surgery had gone.

  From the looks of it, she thought, scanning the area, Kyle Brubaker’s parents hadn’t been able to get to the hospital yet.

  Luke pulled off his surgical mask and took the seat beside hers. To her surprise, he turned his attention to her. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Like somebody used my body to wipe the decks of the Titanic.” She shifted to face him. “And yet I feel oddly exhilarated, as well,” she confessed.

  He laughed quietly under his breath. “Never quite heard it described that way before,” he said. “Welcome to the world of orthopedic surgery,” he told her in a completely emotionless voice, and then went on to say, “You did good in there.”

  The compliment caught her utterly off guard. She definitely hadn’t been expecting it. “I did?”

  He didn’t think of her as being capable of false modesty, so her reaction had to be genuine. “Don’t look so surprised. I knew you had it in you even if you didn’t.”

  “I’m not surprised that I came through,” she told him honestly. “That’s what I’m supposed to do.” And although he made her somewhat uneasy, she did have a clear understanding of her abilities. “I’m just surprised that you’d tell me I did.”