The Doctor's Forever Family Read online

  Walking through the diner, she hurried to the back before the tempting aroma of apple pie got to her and she stopped to have a piece. Nobody made apple pies like Miss Joan.

  “Hey, wait up,” Miss Joan called out just before she managed to reach the rear of the diner and the small, cluttered room that Miss Joan referred to as her “official” office.

  Stopping, Tina turned around and glanced toward the owner of the diner. Miss Joan beckoned for her to come over, which she did.

  “Where are you going?” Miss Joan asked.

  Puzzled, Tina answered, “Your office. To do the books. The way I always do every Wednesday. Why?” She looked around again and spotted her sister and Rick at the far end of the diner. “Is something wrong?”

  Rather than answer her question, Miss Joan responded with one of her own. “Did you forget?” The knowing look on the woman’s face told her that she already had the answer to that one.

  Tina thought for a moment, but couldn’t come up with anything. “What is it that I forgot?” Tina asked.

  Miss Joan gestured around toward the other occupants of the diner. The place got progressively crowded. It was three o’clock and although she always did a healthy business around lunchtime, this was past the normal lunch hour. At three the crowd should have thinned out considerably, remaining that way until business picked up again for dinner. But right now, there were no empty seats except one at the counter that Miss Joan had placed her own marker on, reserving it for someone.

  Otherwise, the place was packed. The way it was whenever Miss Joan decided to throw a party and celebrate.

  Was that what was going on?

  It had been a hectic morning and for a second, Tina drew a complete blank. And then, just like that, it came back to her, a conversation she’d had with Miss Joan just last week. With her ninety-mile-an-hour life, she’d lost track of things again.

  “Oh, that’s right. The town’s finally getting a doctor. Was that today?” Tina asked as she looked around the place again. She made eye contact with several people, who nodded in response.

  Miss Joan came around from behind the counter and slipped a deceptively thin but strong arm around her shoulders.

  “That’s today,” she confirmed, then clucked as she shook her head. “You’ve got too much on your mind these days, Baby Girl,” the woman told her affectionately. “Being a mom to that handsome boy of yours, helping out your sister, doing the books for half the businesses in town. Pitching in here whenever one of the girls calls in sick and I’m shorthanded. Not to mention working on that accounting degree. You don’t have time to sleep, much less have a little fun. No wonder that brain of yours is so overloaded. There’s hardly any room in there for a new thought,” Miss Joan lamented.

  “You’ve gotta slow down before you burn the candle not just at both ends but down the middle, too,” Miss Joan went on. “You don’t have to do everything all at once. Learn how to kick back once in a while,” the older woman advised.

  “Now, sit yourself down,” she coaxed, holding on to Tina’s hand and leading her over to the stool she’d placed her sweater on earlier. She swept it off the seat, leaving it on the counter. “Have a little something to eat. Stay for the party.” Miss Joan leveled a penetrating look at her, second-guessing the thoughts that were going through her head. “Those books in my office aren’t going anywhere,” she promised. “They’ll still be there for you to go over in a couple of hours from now. Or even tomorrow if you can’t get to them today.”

  The diner was her last stop of the day. It was here that Miss Joan and the waitresses took turns looking after her son while she worked. She felt good about that. Bobby certainly didn’t lack for attention and she had no concerns about leaving him here. But in the end, the little boy was her responsibility and she needed to finish the books in order to be able to take care of him by the end of the day.

  “But Bobby—”

  “—is very happy where he is,” Miss Joan assured her. To prove her point, she gestured toward the far end of the diner.

  Bobby was playing with two of the waitresses. The women all took turns playing with him during their breaks and when there was a lull in business. Miss Joan pretended to look the other way. When it got busy, she took over caring for the boy. She made it seem completely effortless. It didn’t hurt that the boy had taken to her from day one.

  Any further protests that Tina might have had to offer were curtailed because, just then, the front door opened and Joe Lone Wolf walked in. He was followed in by another man.

  Another man who was, just possibly, the most handsome-looking man Tina had ever seen in her life.

  “Maybe I will stay for a few minutes,” she heard herself telling Miss Joan as she sank down onto the last empty stool.

  Her eyes were riveted on the town’s first doctor in over three decades.

  It took her a second to realize that her breath had backed up in her lungs.

  Chapter Two

  Dan silently scanned the interior of the diner. It was standing room only from what he could see. He couldn’t help wondering if the entire town had piled into the aged, tarnished, silver railroad dining car wannabe, or if there were a few stray citizens who’d shown a little individuality, opted not to imitate sardines and had stayed away.

  Despite how crowded it was, there were fewer people here than there had been in the last nightclub he’d been to. The last place he and Warren had been to, he amended, feeling the same sudden sharp pain in his gut that he did every time he thought of his late brother, which was still very, very often. He wondered if that would ever change, or at least get easier to bear.

  Right now, from where he stood, he had serious doubts that it ever would.

  Dan turned toward the deputy who had brought him to this place. “Is this everybody?” he asked, mildly curious.

  His question brought a hint of amusement to the deputy’s otherwise solemn face. “Just how little do you think Forever is?”

  “Small,” was all Dan said before he found himself on the receiving end of a surprisingly strong handshake delivered by a thin, ginger-haired woman of indeterminable age who had literally elbowed the deputy out of the way to get to him.

  The woman had hazel eyes that seemed to go right through him, as deeply penetrating as any X-ray machine he’d ever encountered.

  “Hello, I’m Joan Randall. Everyone around here just calls me Miss Joan.” She made no attempt to hide the fact that she was looking him up and down as if he was a piece of merchandise. “So you’re the new doctor,” Miss Joan declared in a voice that was one part gravel, two parts aged Kentucky bourbon.

  There was that word again, he thought. New. He banked down the urge to ask about the “old” doctor. They’d think he was being antagonistic, and he didn’t mean to be. Ever since the fatal cab accident, he was having trouble finding a comfortable zone for his emotions. They kept flaring, bouncing all over the place, taking him with them.

  He’d shift from sarcastic to contrite to cynical to humble. And sad, always sad, no matter what kind of front he put up. Coming here had been a duty, a responsibility he knew he had to shoulder. But wanting to be here was a whole different matter.

  The woman who’d introduced herself as Miss Joan smiled at him. Her X-ray eyes smiled, as well. “Dr. Warren Davenport, right?” The X-ray eyes crinkled. “Welcome to Forever.”

  “It’s Daniel,” Dan corrected her. “Dr. Daniel Davenport.”

  A slight confused frown edged away the smile on the woman’s thin lips. “I thought for sure they told me your first name was Warren,” she said, referring to the people she’d spoken to on the phone in her quest to secure a physician for Forever.

  It was through her efforts, as she relentlessly bombarded the American Medical Association with requests for a doctor, that Forever’s situation, she’d been told, had come to Warren Davenport’s attention. He’d been looking for some place where he could make a difference and Forever needed a dedicated doctor.

&
nbsp; “Was there a mistake in the paperwork?” she now asked the young man before her.

  The people in the diner seemed to tighten the circle around them. Dan doubted that it was just his imagination at work. Good thing for him that he wasn’t claustrophobic, he thought.

  “No, no mistake, Warren was supposed to be here. But there was an accident.” He tried his best to sound detached as the words slowly left his lips. He had no intention of sharing his pain with anyone, least of all a town full of strangers.

  “Was he badly hurt?” Miss Joan asked, concerned. He noticed that she still hadn’t released his hand, although she had stopped pumping it.

  His throat felt dry, scratchy, as he stoically replied, “He was killed.”

  “Oh.” Miss Joan appeared genuinely stunned. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He felt her squeeze his hand in what he assumed was a comforting gesture. “You’ve got the same last name. Was he a relative of yours?”

  “He was my brother.” Dan congratulated himself for not choking on his reply.

  The woman’s hazel eyes filled with compassion. The same look was mirrored in the eyes and faces of the people standing closest around him. For a moment, he was caught off guard.

  Were they all pretending to be sympathetic?

  After all, neither he nor his brother were anything to these people. Other than the obvious, that Warren was supposed to have come here to open up his practice, why would any of these people even care that he’d died? They’d never met Warren and as for him, well, they didn’t know him from Adam. How could they pretend to know or feel his pain? “I’m really sorry to hear that,” Miss Joan murmured.

  She sounded so sincere, he could almost believe that she meant it—if it didn’t seem so impossible to him. She splayed her bony hand against her chest to emphasize what she was about to tell him.

  “I’m the one who wrote to your brother. Actually,” she amended, “I called and wrote letters to the AMA. They finally referred me to your brother.” Her eyes met his and again, he had the eerie feeling that she could look right into him. “We only spoke the one time. But even then, he seemed like a very nice young man to me. Compassionate and caring,” she added.

  That described his brother to a T, Dan thought. Warren had been the good brother, he had been the wild one. And now, he thought heavily, he was the only brother. “He was.”

  Disappointment entered Miss Joan’s voice. “You didn’t have to come in person to deliver this news. I—we—would have understood.”

  Just for a second, Dan saw his way out of this prospective prison sentence. He could just nod, go along with the woman’s interpretation of the situation and leave this speck of a place. Her assumption was his ticket back to New York. No one would be the wiser.

  No one but him.

  He’d made a promise. A promise to Warren that he would take his place until someone else more suitable could be found. Sure, he’d made the promise silently in his heart because Warren had been killed instantly when the taxi they were in had been slammed into by that swerving SUV.

  But he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror each morning if he broke this promise to his dead brother.

  Getting through each day was hard enough for him as it was. He couldn’t shake off the mantle of blame for this, for Warren’s death. If he hadn’t prevailed on Warren and dragged him out—

  This wasn’t the time, Dan silently upbraided himself. The woman with the X-ray eyes would pick up on what he was thinking.

  “I realize that,” he said to the diner owner. “But I didn’t come to tell you about my brother’s untimely death. I came to Forever to take his place. Warren would have wanted me to,” he felt obligated to add. He didn’t want any of the people in town to be grateful to him. He didn’t deserve gratitude.

  The solemn mood that had begun to descend over the diner when they heard about Warren’s death suddenly evaporated as Dan’s words sank in.

  Not one to leave anything to chance or misinterpretation, Miss Joan asked, “Then you’re going to be our doctor?”

  “Yes.” He wanted to add that it was just until another substitute could be found, thereby giving himself the escape hatch he so badly needed. But something prevented him. Maybe he didn’t want to leave himself open to endless attempts to persuade him to think otherwise. Or maybe, since they looked so happy to finally have a physician in their midst, he didn’t want to be the one to rain on their parade.

  Whatever the reason, for the time being he kept his qualifying phrase to himself.

  The moment Miss Joan heard the word yes, the redhead’s porcelain-fair face broke out in a huge smile that overtook her entire countenance.

  “I see that selflessness runs in your family,” she pronounced.

  The last thing Dan wanted was to be regarded in the same light as Warren. They were nothing alike. Warren was the good one, the saint. The one who had entered medicine only with the thought of easing pain and giving back.

  Dan began to deny Miss Joan’s assumption—and to ask for the use of his hand back—but he never got the opportunity to do either.

  Releasing her grip, the ginger-haired woman in the light gray and white waitress uniform managed to surprise him again by throwing her arms around him and enveloping him in a fierce bear hug.

  “Welcome to Forever, Doc,” she declared, a slight catch in her voice.

  If he didn’t know better, he would have said that he’d just crossed over to the other side, a place from which there was no return. As it was, an uneasy feeling rippled through him as Miss Joan continued to hug him, effectively pinning his arms to his sides. He didn’t like being put up on a pedestal. It only made it that much easier for him to fall.

  To his surprise, Miss Joan whispered something against his ear. “Any time you get the urge to just talk, feel free to come on by—day or night,” she invited sympathetically.

  For a moment he thought that this animated woman could sense that he didn’t have anyone to talk to about Warren. At this point in their lives, he and his brother had no more family left. Uncle Jason had died two years ago, leaving his rather considerable bank accounts to them so that they could continue to fund their educations. Jason Davenport, their father’s older brother, had taken them in when their parents had died in a plane crash fifteen years ago.

  Now there was no family. And no girlfriend, neither his nor Warren’s, in the wings ready to murmur sympathetic words. Warren had been so focused on becoming the best doctor he could, he never made time for a social life. As for him, he’d been too busy going from woman to woman to try to create even a semidecent relationship. Sure, he’d had a boatload of friends in college and during his residency, but the only one he had ever been remotely close to, really close to, was Warren.

  Without commenting on Miss Joan’s hushed offer, Dan separated himself from the woman only to find himself besieged by the people who had begun to close in on him when Miss Joan had first approached him. Without advanced warning, introductions suddenly came from all sides. People saying names he hadn’t a prayer of remembering.

  But he offered a perfunctory smile and nodded as if absorbing each and every one of them. In his place, he was certain that Warren would have remembered every single one. His brother had been like that. Warren had a knack for names and faces. Not only that, but he could zero in on the individuality of each person he came across.

  As for him, well, he was better at remembering pretty women. And even then, it wasn’t always a sure thing.

  But this time, as names and greetings swirled around his head like bees swarming around a hive, while various people pumped his hand, Daniel found himself becoming progressively aware of the blonde in the background. She appeared to be quietly watching her friends and neighbors swirl around him. She seemed to have no desire to join in the swarming.

  He was surprised that it had taken him this long to notice her. Rather than joining in the throng around him, she was perched on a stool at the counter, her body turned in his dire
ction as if a detached observer to this little show.

  Questions sprang up in his head even as he went on making automatic responses to the people around him.

  Was she from around here?

  He couldn’t put his finger on it, but Dan had a feeling that maybe she wasn’t.

  Which brought up another question. Why would someone who wasn’t born here willingly come to this little burg? Was it a matter of penance, the way it was for him? Or was there another reason the blonde had been transplanted?

  As far as he could ascertain, there was no military base in the area, so she wasn’t some serviceman’s wife forced to temporarily call this forgotten part of the state her home.

  What was her story?

  As he pondered the question and debated how best to work his way over to the blonde, Dan suddenly found himself looking into the face of a man who had the easy air of assumed authority about him. The man had on the same kind of uniform as the deputy who had brought him to this place. Something told him that this man wasn’t just another deputy.

  And he was right. “I’m Sheriff Rick Santiago,” the dark-haired man told him as he shook his hand. “You need anything, have any questions, come see me and I’ll try to get you the answers and whatever else you might feel you need.”

  The offer was a friendly one, sincerely tendered. There was no false air of bravado. What the sheriff said to him next cemented Dan’s initial impression.

  “Nobody expects you to remember all these names,” Rick assured him. “It’ll all come together for you after a while.”

  Dan forced a smile to his lips. He knew the sheriff meant well, but he had his doubts that he would remember half these names no matter how long he stayed here. And once he was back in New York, not just the names but the people as well would all become a vague blur to him in less than a week.

  All except for the blonde, he amended.

  The blonde had the kind of face and body that lingered on a man’s mind long after she was physically gone from the room. That would be especially true if they interacted before he left Forever.