A Second Chance for the Single Dad Read online

  Rachel nodded. “Albert was the last PA who applied.”

  This was not shaping up to be particularly encouraging. But then, if this didn’t work out, she would be no worse off than she was right now. Besides, she had a ton of her mother’s things to go through and if worse came to worse, that would take up a good amount of her time. At least she would stay busy until she was able to find a job.

  “Wait right here,” Rachel said, about to leave the room. “Dr. Dolan will be with you as soon as he finishes up with his patient,” she assured her.

  The moment she said the words, Rachel suddenly turned rather pale. “Omigod, I forgot he asked me to bring the last X-rays for Mr. Mulroney.” She began to rush out of the room, pausing only to toss a few last words over her shoulder. “I really hope you get this job.”

  The corners of Kayley’s mouth curved ever so slightly as she watched the other woman dash out. “Me too, Rachel,” she said, knowing that the PA was no longer in earshot. “Me too.”

  Kayley sat back in her chair and waited.

  And waited.

  After twenty minutes, she started to grow rather restless. She also started to think that very possibly, she had gotten lost in the shuffle. When she’d come in, she had noticed that there were probably more than two dozen people sitting outside in the waiting room. And although there appeared to be about ten or eleven physicians presently in the building, she could see how she might have just gotten overlooked or even fallen through the cracks.

  For the next five minutes, Kayley debated between waiting in the room quietly and going out to see if perhaps her theory was right and she had been forgotten about.

  Since she wasn’t the type to simply sit on her hands, choice number two won.

  Picking up her shoulder bag, Kayley got up and went to the door. She pulled it open with the intention of heading back to the reception desk to find out what was going on.

  It all happened so fast her brain almost went numb.

  She got as far as taking one step out of the exam room when she walked straight into a tall athletic man in a white lab coat. The scent of musky aftershave immediately filled her senses.

  It was the same man she had shared the elevator with, she realized.

  The man wasn’t a patient. He was a doctor.

  Was he her doctor? she couldn’t help wondering, still trying to get her bearings.

  “Hey, slow down,” he cautioned, catching hold of her by her shoulders to steady her. “You create quite a jolt when you walk into a person.”

  Startled, Kayley tried to back up. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to walk into you.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” he commented drolly. Dropping his hands to his sides, he said, “Rachel tells me that you’re here to talk about the physician’s assistant opening in the staff.”

  As subtly as she could, she drew in a breath and then answered, “Yes, I am.”

  Nodding, the doctor gestured toward the chair. “Please, sit down.”

  Kayley turned and went back into the room, feeling as if she were moving in slow motion. She took a seat as he’d instructed.

  Looking up, she saw that the doctor had followed her in and sat down on a stool, the seat she assumed he would have taken when talking with a patient.

  He skimmed the résumé that she’d sent via email and that he’d printed up. “I see that all of your experience has been in San Francisco.” Setting the paper down, he stared at her. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile in his expression. “Why did you leave your last place of employment?”

  “I had to,” she told him simply.

  “Had to?” Luke repeated. The first thing that occurred to him was that she had been asked to leave. “Were you terminated?”

  His question jolted her. “Oh no, I wasn’t fired. I found out that my mother had cancer and I came back to take care of her.”

  He gave no indication of what he was thinking when he began to ask, “Did she—”

  “Make it?” Kayley supplied, guessing at what the doctor was about to ask. She shook her head. “No, she didn’t.”

  “Oh.” That wasn’t what he’d been expecting to hear. Over the last nine months, he felt as if everyone had gone on with their lives and he was the only one to have faced such a glaring loss.

  The situation felt awkward and for a moment, he had no idea what to say. Finally, he told her, “Well, at least you got to be with her before she passed on.” With all his heart, he wished that he had had that same good fortune. There were so many things that had been left unsaid. He would have given anything to have had even just one last day with Jill.

  But that simply wasn’t in the cards.

  “Yes, I did,” Kayley replied. What else could she have said? she thought, shifting in her seat.

  “So, why are you looking for a position in Bedford?” he asked her bluntly. “Why not just go back to the Bay Area?”

  No small talk here. The man’s bedside manner really needed work. But then, she wasn’t looking for a friend, Kayley reminded herself. She was looking for an employer.

  “Well, I’m originally from around here. Staying in Bedford just seemed like the right thing to do. To be honest, I like living in Southern California a lot more than living up in San Francisco. I find that the people are friendlier—and the weather is certainly better,” she ended with a smile.

  There wasn’t a single shred of emotion on his face as he said, “I see.”

  She could see that her answer had made the man thoughtful and she couldn’t imagine why it would have that kind of an effect on him. She wasn’t certain exactly what sort of an answer the doctor wanted. All that she could do was be honest.

  “And, when you get right down to it, this is home,” she added, hoping to move the interview along past what was clearly a sticking point for the doctor for some reason.

  Luke nodded. Her response had reminded him that he hadn’t been able to get back for Jill’s last breath, her last moments.

  Realizing that he’d been silent longer than he’d intended, Luke picked up her résumé again and took a breath.

  “I’m going to have to check these references out,” he informed her.

  She’d been braced for a rejection, and she instantly perked up. “Of course.” He sounded as if he was about to get up and leave the room. “Is there anything you want to ask me while I’m here?”

  “Yes.” He looked into her eyes, trying not to get lost in them. “Why a physician’s assistant? Why not a doctor?”

  “Frankly, there wasn’t enough money for me to go to medical school for the length of time it would take me to become a doctor. I was working part-time already and I didn’t want to incur a staggering debt that was going to follow me around for the next thirty or so years.” She smiled as she added, “Becoming a physician’s assistant was as close to becoming a doctor as I could get. And I was always interested in helping people. In healing them.”

  For a long moment, the doctor merely stared at her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking and she wondered if she had talked too much.

  Mentally, Kayley crossed her fingers.

  Chapter Three

  There was a knock on the exam room door and the next moment, Rachel stuck her head in.

  “I’m really sorry to interrupt, Doctor, but your next patient is getting very restless. Mr. Jeffers says he has an appointment with his lawyer right after he sees you and he’s worried that he’s going to be late. His lawyer charges by the quarter of the hour—whether he’s there or not.”

  Having delivered her message, Rachel flashed an apologetic look in Kayley’s direction.

  Luke rose from his stool. “Tell Mr. Jeffers I’ll be right with him.” Turning back to Kayley, he told her, “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Quartermain. I’ll be in touch.”

>   Her heart sank a little. Kayley knew what that meant: Don’t hold your breath.

  Still, she wasn’t about to be rude. There was protocol to follow. Kayley forced a smile to her lips and went through the motions.

  “I’ll look forward to your call, Doctor,” she told him—or rather his back because Dr. Dolan was already walking out the door and on his way to his impatient patient.

  “Well, I tried,” she murmured, sticking her hands into her pockets. Her right hand touched the penny she’d found right outside the office. “I guess this wasn’t our lucky day after all, Mom,” she whispered just before she walked out of the exam room.

  * * *

  Giving in to impulse, Kayley stopped at the supermarket and picked up a consoling pint of rum raisin ice cream. She was tempted to buy two, but she knew that she had absolutely no willpower when she felt this disappointed. That meant that if she bought two pints, she would wind up eating two pints—in one sitting.

  Keeping this in mind, Kayley restrained herself, took only the single pint to the checkout counter and then hurried out of the store before she weakened and went back for another one.

  With the supermarket doors closing behind her, she stepped off the curb—and saw yet another penny.

  “Nice try, Mom,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. “But I’m not buying it.”

  Kayley walked right by the lone penny and was halfway to her car when her desire to think the best of every situation got the better of her. She stopped, turned around and retraced her steps until she was looking down at the penny again.

  Picking the coin up, she found that unlike the shiny one she’d found earlier in front of the medical building, this one was old, worn and sticky. Apparently, some sort of gummy substance had been spilled on it.

  Still, now that she’d picked it up, she couldn’t just toss it aside. Holding on to the coin, she headed back to where she had parked her car.

  “Okay, so sue me. I’m an idiot and I have to believe in something,” she muttered as she opened her car. “I have to believe it’s going to be all right.”

  Leaning over in her seat, she put the pint of ice cream on the passenger-side floor. Then she buckled up and drove home planning her evening: consuming a pint of rum raisin ice cream and watching an old movie on one of the classic-movie channels.

  * * *

  Her landline was ringing when she walked in.

  Hoping against hope, Kayley dropped her purse on the floor next to the door and, still carrying the bag of ice cream, she quickly made her way over to the phone that was sitting on one of the two side tables bracketing the sofa.

  Kayley grabbed the receiver and uttered a breathless “Hello?”

  “How did it go?” the cheerful, maternal voice on the other end of the line asked.

  Kayley suppressed the sigh that rose to her lips. It was her fairy godmother, calling to check on her. She should have guessed.

  “I don’t know yet,” she told Maizie, temporarily sinking down on the sofa. She tried not to sound as dejected as she felt when she added, “Dr. Dolan said they’d be in touch.”

  “Yes, but how did it go?” Maizie repeated with a touch of eagerness in her voice. “You must have some sort of impression about the way the interview with Dr. Dolan went.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, I do,” Kayley answered. “It went fast.”

  There was a pause on Maizie’s end. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said.

  “The doctor squeezed my interview between seeing two patients. That didn’t exactly give him much time to talk to me,” Kayley explained. Then, because Maizie had gone out of her way to arrange this interview for her, Kayley decided that it was only right to give her godmother a few more details. “He came in, looked over the copy of my résumé that he’d printed out and asked a couple of questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” Maizie asked.

  She told her godmother the first thing that she remembered. “Dr. Dolan wanted to know why I left San Francisco.”

  It was obvious by the tone of Maizie’s response that the woman thought this was a good thing. There was almost excitement in the older woman’s voice as she asked, “And did you tell him that it was to nurse your poor sick mother?”

  “Yes, I did, Aunt Maizie,” Kayley replied dutifully, smiling at the question.

  There was a time when she would have resented being treated like a child, but now that her mother was gone, she had to admit she rather liked it. It took her back to when she was younger and was still someone’s little girl. Something that she was never going to be again, she thought sadly.

  “And what did he say?”

  “Something strange, actually,” Kayley answered. “I’m paraphrasing but he said that at least I was lucky enough to be able to be there to share some time with my mother before she died.”

  “That’s because he was serving overseas when his wife was killed,” Maizie told her.

  Kayley was surprised that Maizie knew that. But then again, Maizie always seemed to know everything.

  “The physician’s assistant he’s sharing with another doctor told me something about that,” Kayley admitted.

  Maizie’s tone brightened a little as she asked, “And then what did he say?”

  “He didn’t,” Kayley told her. “He became very quiet and just stared at my résumé. Then the physician’s assistant stuck her head in to tell him that his next patient was becoming restless. That’s when Dr. Dolan thanked me for coming in and told me that he would be in touch.” Kayley sighed deeply. She was feeling rather dejected. This was the first interview she’d landed since her mother had died and it hadn’t gone very well. “Doesn’t sound very hopeful, does it, Aunt Maizie?” she asked.

  “Oh, on the contrary, dear. It sounds very hopeful,” Maizie assured her. “Just remember, not everyone jumps into things the way you and I do,” she told her goddaughter. “Some people are quite slow and deliberate. They need to think things over before they make a decision.”

  Kayley really wanted to believe that, but she didn’t quite see it that way. “The other physician’s assistant told me that Dr. Dolan had already interviewed five other candidates for the position and he’d turned each one of them down.”

  “Did she happen to tell you why?” Maizie asked.

  Kayley sighed again, feeling more and more certain that she was never going to hear from the doctor again—or if she did, it was going to be because he was turning her down and he didn’t like leaving any loose ends.

  “No, she hadn’t a clue.”

  As was her custom—because she had always been such an optimist—Maizie took the information in stride. “Well, you’ll get the job, dear. He rejected the first five applicants. Six is your lucky number.”

  Kayley couldn’t help but laugh at Maizie’s unorthodox reasoning. “Since when?”

  “Why, since right now, of course, dear. I’m sure of it. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Well, if your bones feel it, then it’s bound to happen,” Kayley said, humoring the woman although she was definitely not optimistic about the outcome. Still, she loved Maizie for trying to bolster her self-confidence this way.

  “Listen, Kayley, I have to show a house to a client in half an hour, but I’m free afterward. Why don’t you come over for dinner, say at about six thirty? I could use the company.”

  Kayley knew that her godmother was constantly on the go. She had a busy social life as well as a family consisting of her daughter, her son-in-law and a number of grandchildren she was quite proud of. Aunt Maizie didn’t need company. If anything, she needed an occasional moment of solitude. She was proposing the get-together for her sake.

  “Thank you, Aunt Maizie, but I’m fine, really,” Kayley told her, begging off. “I’ve got some correspondence to catch up on and there’s a
pint of ice cream that’s been calling my name since I walked in the door.”

  Maizie wasn’t one to force her will on someone else, even when she meant well. “Well, if you’re sure,” she said, her voice trailing off.

  “I’m sure,” Kayley assured her. Then, for good measure, because she could almost hear the hesitance in her godmother’s voice, she added what she hoped was an emphatic “Really.”

  She heard the small resigned sigh that escaped from her godmother before Aunt Maizie said, “Call me the minute you get the job.”

  Thanks for the positive pep talk, but I’m pretty sure I’m not getting the job, Aunt Maizie.

  Out loud, Kayley cheerfully promised her, “I will. Now, I’ve got to go, Aunt Maizie. The ice cream’s melting and it really tastes much better if I use a spoon to eat it, not a straw.”

  “I’ll let you go, then,” Maizie said. “I’ve got that house to show. Think positive, Kayley. Good things happen when you’re positive,” she advised just before she hung up.

  “I am thinking positive,” Kayley said to the receiver as she replaced it in the cradle. “I’m positive he’s not going to call.”

  Turning away from the phone, Kayley grabbed the bag with the ice cream in it and hurried into the kitchen with it. She could tell that the ice cream was already getting soft.

  After taking a spoon out of the drawer, she crossed to the kitchen table and removed the pint out of the bag. She’d bypassed using the ice-cream scoop and a bowl. There was no reason to get either dirty. She intended to eat the whole thing in one sitting anyway.

  “C’mon, rum raisin, you and I are going to make beautiful music together. Console me,” she said to the container as she took the lid off and dug her spoon in the cream-colored semisoft surface.

  Kayley closed her eyes, savoring the first bite as she slid it between her lips.

  Although it tasted delicious as always, it didn’t assuage the gaping disappointment she felt burrowing deep into her chest.

  She needed a job.

  Maybe not this very minute, but soon.

  Very soon.

  Some people would have eagerly jumped at having so much free time stretching before them, using it to catch up on their reading, watch movies they hadn’t gotten around to seeing and in general just enjoy themselves. But she had never been any good at kicking back and doing nothing. The way she saw it, free time didn’t mean anything if that was all there was. It was precious only if it was very limited and doled out a tiny bit at a time.