LITMIR.BIZ

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to tend to, so why get swept up in a remote and mysterious doctor’s gaze?

      There was just no point.

      Jared sat at the corner desk in the clinic office, typing his electronic chart entry, when Kasey reappeared. Fortunately, she left him alone to go about his business while she shuffled reports and folders at the adjacent desk. There was nothing worse than being interrupted by a chatty person while trying to concentrate. He cast a furtive glance at her from across the room. Dressed in scrubs and a lab coat, there was no telling what kind of shape she had.

      “Since you need to see this patient again next week,” she said, ruining his hopes of blessed silence, “why don’t we send out a flyer to the neighborhood?”

      He stopped typing in mid-word. “A what?”

      “A flyer. We can do a one-day surgical clinic.”

      He leveled her a look similar to that he gave his his son when he got out of line. Apparently it didn’t register.

      “You know, since you have to come back to follow up with Laurette’s stitches?”

      His dead stare stopped her for a moment. Ah, peace. He went back to the second half of that word in the report.

      She cleared her throat. He tried to ignore it.

      “You said yourself she has to come back in four to five days to have the stitches removed. What if there’s a problem? Do you want to leave that woman scarred?” He hadn’t sustained a dead stare this long since the last time his kids had ganged up on him about flying to a theme park in Florida. “Why not set up an open clinic for the local residents on Tuesday as you’ll have to be here anyway?”

      He slowly lifted his eyes, sending her another warning glance.

      “Did you know there’s a huge need for the underserved and minimally insured population in this area?” she said, undeterred. “And also, on the brighter side, you could chip away at some of the required hours for your month-long clinic rotation.”

      He didn’t give a damn how good a saleswoman she was, he just wanted her to shut up so he could finish his report and get back to the hospital. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you one whole day to see your clinic walk-in patients. There. You happy now?” May as well take up her suggestion and get this volunteer time out of the way as quickly as possible. Now maybe she’d be quiet.

      She tossed him a don’t-do-us-any-favors look before she commenced rushed clicking and clacking on the keyboard.

      Yeah, he’d said the words, and they had seriously lacked enthusiasm, but he’d already gathered she was a smart cookie and wasn’t about to let an opportunity like this slip by. Now maybe he could finish this consult and head out.

      “I’ll print up a flyer and hire some of the local boys to distribute them to the houses and on cars in the area.”

      “Great. Whatever. Now, could you let me finish my report?” That got a rise in her brows, and more speedy typing, as he’d hopelessly lost his train of thought about the wording in the report.

      His concentration thrown out of the window, he recalled on his drive through the neighborhood that the boulevard was lined with red-brick and mortar storefronts, and had an eclectic assortment of businesses. Many looked rundown. The place probably could use a day-long walk-in surgery clinic, and the sooner he got his volunteer hours done the sooner he could get back to focusing fully on plastic surgery.

      “Maybe you should post flyers in the local business windows, too,” he said. “Though you may want to skip all the mortuaries—don’t want to send the wrong message.”

      Quick to forgive, she laughed, and it sounded nice, low and husky. Almost made him smile.

      “What’s up with that anyway?”

      “The overabundance of mortuaries?” she said. “I think it must have something to do with having a hospital in the area since the late eighteen hundreds and the odds of folks making it out alive.” Unlike him, she could multitask, and never missed a beat typing and staring at the computer screen. “I guess the morticians went where they were guaranteed business. Though it does seem like overkill these days, pardon the pun.”

      He nodded, stretching his lips into a straight line rather than a smile, and grudgingly admitted he liked her dry wit and Boston accent. Pah-din. “Yeah, so I figure if I’m volunteering time for the month, like you said, I may as well make it worth everyone’s while.” Code for get it over with ASAP. That’s what he was all about these days—meet his obligations as quickly as possible and move on. In another year he’d get his life back and begin his own private practice back home in California. Besides, he hated it when he ran out of things to do, preferring to work until he could pass out and sleep. Then work more. Anything to keep his mind occupied.

      He scratched his jaw. “So I’ll come at nine and work until seven—that way folks can stop by after they get off work,” he said.

      “Then why not make it eight p.m.? Would that work? With long commutes, some people don’t get home from work until after seven.”

      Sure, squeeze an extra hour out of me, lady. “Fine,” he said, staring at the last dangling sentence in his report.

      Truth was, unless he moonlighted, he had nothing better to do with his time most nights. He sublet a basement bachelor apartment near Beacon Hill, with rented furniture and noisy pipes, paid through his nose for the privilege to live there, and after a year had yet to meet a single neighbor.

      “That way you’d get half of your required volunteer hours out of the way in one day,” she said.

      He wanted to protest, say that wasn’t the reason he’d agreed to do the all-day clinic, but she’d seen right through his tidy little plan. He cleared his throat. “Good point.”

      Her fingers clacked over the keyboard again. His concentration shot, he stood, crossed the room and looked over her shoulder at the screen. Within a couple of minutes she’d produced a first-rate flyer, complete with clip art of a stethoscope and all the pertinent information, clear and concise.

      “What do you think?” She glanced up, their gazes connected. Up close he was struck by how green her eyes were, and that she was a natural blonde, and he wondered why it registered.

      “Looks great,” he said, leaning away while she pressed “Print” and stood.

      She walked across the small and cluttered office to the antiquated printer to snag the first flyer. Holding the goldenrod paper like a picture for him to see, she smiled. “Not bad.”

      He looked her up and down before looking at the flyer. Yeah, not bad. “Guess I can’t weasel out of it now.”

      She rewarded his honesty with a smile, a very nice smile. “Nope. I’m going to hold you to your word. We’ll put one of these by the receptionist’s window right now and start handing them out after lunch.”

      As she breezed across the room toward the connecting front office in her oversized lab coat and scrubs, he caught a scent of no frills soap and enjoyed the clean smell, then discovered there was something else he favored about her. Unlike so many of his patients—size four with forty-inch chests—she wasn’t skinny trim. She was sturdy and healthy looking, not like the lettuce-and-cilantro-eating women he saw in the plastic surgery clinics.

      “Look,” he said, needing to get away before he discovered anything else he liked about her, or before she bamboozled him into working there the entire month. “I’ve got to run back to the hospital. I’ll see you next Tuesday.”

      Kasey hopped off the bus on her street, the rich smell of fresh pizza from the corner ma and pa shop making her instantly hungry. She strode briskly against the chill and drizzle toward her house, eager to take off her shoes and relax. In a neighborhood lined with hundred-year-old two-story houses, most divided into two units, she lived amongst an interesting mix of people: the working class; families and seniors; immigrants; and Bostonians who could trace their American

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