LITMIR.BIZ

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her daughter’s clothes. “I’ve used the same one since she was born.”

      “I noticed the rash is only where her clothing touches,” he explained.

      Everyone looked at the child, nodding to agree with his comment.

      “Actually, Stu’s been doing the laundry this week,” Karen said thoughtfully, looking toward her husband. “I’ve been busy with other things. Stu?”

      Turning from the smoking grill, her husband asked, “You need something, honey?”

      “You’ve been using the regular laundry detergent this week, haven’t you?”

      “Sure. Same kind we’ve always used,” he replied.

      Virginia sighed in disappointment that their guest had been proven wrong.

      “It was only a guess,” James said with a slight shrug. “I’m afraid I don’t know what’s causing the—”

      “I did change fabric softeners, though,” Stu called out. “We ran out and another brand was on sale. Smelled good, so I thought I’d try it.”

      Virginia beamed at James. “Well, there you go. She’s allergic to the fabric softener.”

      “A sensitivity to it, perhaps. Probably not a true allergy,” he said.

      Caitlin had already dashed off to play with her siblings and cousins again, her fun unimpeded by the rash that had concerned the adults.

      “That was very clever of you,” Lois said to James, patting his shoulder approvingly. “Are you sure you can’t prescribe my little pills?”

      “I’m sure, Mrs. Gambill.”

      “Oh, call her Lois,” Virginia ordered. “And I’m Virginia. If you say Mrs. Gambill, Lois and Karen and I are all likely to answer.”

      “Meat’s ready,” Hollis announced, setting a huge tray of steaming burgers and franks in the center of the table. “Stacy, you and Karen go ahead and fix the kids’ plates and let them start eating so the rest of us can enjoy our dinners.”

      “Sit by your guest, Shannon,” her mother ordered, motioning toward the bench beside James. “You’re in the way here.”

      Shannon heaved a sigh and moved to slide onto the bench beside him. “You’re in for it now,” she warned him in a low voice, her smile both mischievous and contagious. “Not only are you the hero who saved my nephew, you’re a doctor. I should warn you that the whole family will try to fix us up during the meal.”

      “Fix us up?” he repeated.

      “Yeah. They’ve been trying for months to match me up with someone. After all, I had my twenty-fifth birthday last spring, and I’m single and unattached—which, you can probably tell, is unheard of in this family of early breeders. You must look like a prize stud to them.”

      Her blunt phrasing took him aback for a moment, but then she laughed. Her green eyes sparkled with humor and her grin was an invitation to share a secret joke with her.

      It was an offer he couldn’t resist. He laughed, too, earning them approving smiles from Shannon’s mother and aunt. This, of course, only made them laugh harder.

      James couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d laughed out loud like this. It felt pretty damned good, he decided, still smiling when he turned to the heaping plate of food his hosts nudged encouragingly toward him.

      Chapter Two

      It was, to say the least, an interesting meal. The Gambill clan was as colorful as their hair. They talked a lot, and everyone at once, so it was sometimes hard to follow all the conversations going on around him. He tried to keep them all straight—the men talked about baseball, Karen and Stacy chatted about their kids, Virginia and Lois seemed determined to learn everything there was to know about James, Shannon kept up a running beneath-her-breath commentary, and the kids interrupted every few moments with requests, tattling and other bids for attention.

      “What type of medicine do you want to practice, James?” Virginia asked, cutting off a sports comment from her husband.

      “I’m considering pediatric infectious disease, though I find pulmonology intriguing, too.”

      He saw no need to mention that he had a younger cousin with cystic fibrosis, which perhaps explained his interest in pulmonology. Watching Kelly’s lifelong battle with the disease and hearing about the excellent care she had received from the doctors at the children’s hospital had probably been part of what had influenced him to enter medical school after receiving his advanced science degree, despite his parents’ displeasure that he’d chosen to leave academia. His parents were more interested in theory than practice in almost all disciplines, expounding that the true geniuses developed science while those of lesser intelligence and imagination put it to everyday use.

      “Lou has a touch of emphysema,” Lois said eagerly, drawing James’s thoughts away from his parents’ affectations. “Maybe you could listen to his lungs later.”

      “I’m afraid I don’t have a stethoscope with me,” he replied.

      Virginia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Lois. You’ve been after poor James for free prescriptions and exams ever since you found out he’s a medical student.”

      Lois huffed. “Aren’t you the one who asked him to look at your granddaughter’s rash?”

      “That’s different. I was simply asking for an opinion, not drugs.”

      “I didn’t ask him to prescribe anything for Lou. I just thought he might want to listen.”

      “Why would he want to do that?” Virginia demanded with a shake of her head.

      “They’ve been arguing like that for more than sixty years,” Shannon informed James quietly, leaning toward him so he could hear her better over the noise of all the others. Her shoulder brushed his as they sat side by side on the bench.

      A bit too keenly aware of that point of contact, he tried to concentrate on what she had said. “So they knew each other before they married brothers.”

      “They’re first cousins. They were raised almost like sisters. Makes the family tree a little complicated.”

      “I see. And you all live in this area?”

      “I live in Little Rock, and so do Stu and Karen. Stacy and J.P. live in Bryant. Uncle Lou and Aunt Lois are visiting from St. Louis and staying for a few days with my parents in Sherwood. They have two daughters and five grandchildren of their own back in Missouri. Needless to say, it’s pretty crazy when both families get together on occasion.”

      “Are you from this area, James?” Virginia asked.

      Swallowing a bite of his juicy, perfectly grilled burger, James wiped his mouth on a paper napkin before replying. “I’m from northwest Arkansas. Fayetteville. My parents moved there from Tennessee when I was twelve. They’re both professors at the university.”

      “Got my degree there,” Stu commented as he scooped potato salad onto a plastic fork. “Karen and I met at a music club on Dickson Street when I was a senior and she was a junior.”

      “You’d have been a student there after Stu and Karen,” Lois commented, looking James over assessingly. “Stu’s thirty-eight. You’re—what—thirty?”

      “I will be on October fifth. But I didn’t get my degree at Fayetteville. I went to Vanderbilt.”

      Several of the people around him frowned and he could tell he’d just lost a few Arkie points.

      “I’m still a Razorbacks fan, though,” he assured them. “Uh—woo, Pigs.”

      The frowns turned to chuckles and conversation moved to the prospects for the next SEC football season.

      “Nice

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