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if it might have helped his father.

      Already Mandy’s project mattered to him. He wanted to be useful, not a distraction for her. Maybe if she could put the past aside and see how sincere he was in wanting to help, they could pull this project off. But if their being thrown together felt one- tenth as hard for her as it did for him, he knew it wouldn’t be easy.

      Maria tapped on his door and, with Sophie contentedly resting on her hip, handed him his first afternoon appointment chart. She should be getting double salary for helping out, but after today he’d be out of the clinic until the Mending Hearts Club study was over, and she’d be working for Dr. Jimenez.

      Fifteen minutes later, Hunter palpated his patient’s left lower quadrant and determined that he no longer had tenderness from his diverticulitis flare-up. Last week the same patient had been doubled over in pain and begging to be hospitalized. A forty- eight-hour clear liquid diet and two different antibiotics had helped his condition miraculously in one short week.

      He glanced at the patient’s wife. She’d accompanied her husband last week for the visit, but Hunter had been totally preoccupied with his sick patient. He squinted, and looked at her again.

      “Are you aware your thyroid is enlarged?” Why hadn’t he noticed that slight asymmetry before?

      Her hand flew to her neck, as if to check for herself.

      “You can get dressed now,” Hunter said to the man. “But take every single pill until they’re gone, in order not to have rebound diverticulitis or to develop a drug-resistant strain of infection.”

      The patient nodded.

      Hunter washed his hands. “Let me take a look,” he said, turning to the wife.

      Using his fingertips, he lightly palpated the area overlying her larynx and found a small but firm nodule. “Does this hurt?”

      She shook her head, but alarm registered in her stare.

      “Swallow?”

      She complied. The nodule was fixed to the right lobe of the thyroid.

      He felt for nearby enlarged lymph nodes, but didn’t find any. A good sign. “Have you been feeling any different?”

      “No.”

      “I’m going to order some lab work today, and a thyroid scan as soon as possible.”

      “What’s wrong with me?”

      “You have a small mass on your thyroid. It could be nothing, but it’s best to check it out. I’ll be out of the clinic for the next few weeks, but my colleague, Dr. Jimenez, will follow up on the lab results. If anything shows up on the scan, I’ll be in touch ASAP, and we’ll go from there.”

      He ordered the lab tests and thyroid scan via the portable laptop computer in the exam room. He should instruct Maria to add the extra patient visit to his schedule, in order to charge for it, but the numbers game had never mattered to him. As long as Mrs. Peters got the medical attention she needed he’d be satisfied.

      Hunter glanced at his watch. He was already a half hour behind schedule and he had only just started his clinic. It would be a long afternoon.

      He rushed back into his office to find Sophie sound asleep in her portable bed. She looked so vulnerable, and she deserved better than this, but his sister had insisted he was the only person she trusted with her baby. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why.

      Maria appeared at his door, handing him another chart. Starting tomorrow, to make life easier for Sophie, he might have to find somewhere closer to Serena Vista to stay. Maybe one of those extended-stay hotels during the week, and then he could go home on the weekends. Didn’t nine-month-old babies need to crawl and explore, not sit in a car half the day? If it was just him making the commute, he could handle it, but guilt over his sorely lacking parenting skills had him promising he wouldn’t let little Sophie suffer another day.

      * * *

      The next morning Amanda lifted her gaze from the EKG she’d been analyzing at her desk. She quickly scribbled NSR by the patient’s name on the list. Normal sinus rhythm.

      Hunter appeared in the office doorway thirty minutes late. Again. Sophie gnawed on his chin as he held her in his arms. “I have an idea,” he said.

      “You’re late,” Amanda replied with a no-nonsense glance.

      He briskly entered the room and unloaded Sophie’s belongings onto his desk. “Sorry. Traffic’s a nightmare.”

      She felt a guilty twinge about being annoyed, but refused to let on.

      “Sophie’s been a grump all morning, too,” he said.

      Mandy bristled at his underhanded comment on her mood, but again didn’t react.

      The sturdy baby sucked on two fingers and looked innocently up at him. “You’ve been grumpy, haven’t you, kid?” He crossed his eyes and made a muffled elephant sound with his lips, which got a giggle out of her. She swatted at his mouth with her slippery fingers. He repeated the goofy process several more times, nibbling her fingertips in between, until she latched onto his chin again and gummed him up something fierce. “I don’t have a clue why she likes this, but I’ve discovered she does, and if it keeps her from crying, my chin is hers.”

      Amanda fought off a pang of regret for giving him such a hard time. Being a stand-in father had to be a shock for him. But from the looks of things it was becoming second nature, whether he realized it or not.

      “You said you had an idea?” she asked.

      He plopped Sophie down into her playpen and wiped the drool off his face and jacket. “Music therapy.”

      “Music what?”

      “You know—soothing music to help our patients release stress.”

      Our patients? He’d definitely come on board with her project. “You mean like with meditation?”

      “Exactly. We could assign them ten to fifteen minutes of quiet music meditation every morning. It might help bring down their blood pressure.”

      She thought for a moment. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

      “Great,” he said, practically straightening his collar and preening. “I’ll put together a list of composers and burn twenty CDs.”

      “Sounds good.”

      Sophie glanced up from her playpen and squealed a hello, obviously glad to see Mandy.

      “What’s up, Soph?” The baby made a series of gurgles, blew some bubbles, and ended by giving Amanda a raspberry.

      “I think she wants you to pick her up,” Hunter said with a smile.

      She didn’t take the challenge.

      There he was, standing too close again, looking handsome in his white doctor’s coat and a piercing silver-blue tie. He’d styled his thick brown hair so that it stood up on the top of his head. It gave him a whimsical appeal—until she glanced into his dark, sexy eyes and suddenly remembered he could also be dangerous. She didn’t linger there. She couldn’t.

      He’d shaved close, except for a small patch just beneath his lower lip—had she noticed that before? She had an unwanted desire to touch it. What would he think if he knew she’d resorted to all but wearing his brand of cologne after he’d moved out to help her feel less lonely?

      He inclined his head the slightest bit, studying her, sizing her up, as he’d used to when they were married. He lifted a brow. “Am I making you nervous?” A look of satisfaction stretched across his face.

      She brushed him off. When had he become an expert at reading body language? “Not at all.” She turned and flipped the desk calendar to today’s date—once again all business. “All we have to do today is collect the halter monitor data and analyze it.”

      She

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