LITMIR.BIZ

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not asking you to rush any of your appointments, but I also don’t approve of patients sitting in the waiting room for too long,” she said, all starchy and nose-in-the-air. She was very much on her high horse again, no hint of the incandescent smile he’d witnessed earlier, no softening of her professional demeanor. The humorless and by-the-book Dr. Layman had returned.

      “Neither do I.”

      “Good, then we do agree on something.” It wasn’t quite a question but he chose to respond as if it was.

      “Yes, Dr. Layman, I guess we do.”

      * * *

      “HI, DAD, WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” Callie looked up from the chart she was attempting to decipher. The White Pine Lake Community Health Center had not yet gone digital in its record keeping. Zach Gibson might not be entitled to an M.D. after his name but he sure had the chicken-scratch handwriting that usually accompanied the title.

      “Ezra Colliflower asked me to sit in on the electrical inspector’s walk-through. He’ll be gone all day delivering a load of lumber to the mill in Gaylord.”

      “Good. I’d rather have you here than Ezra. He’s scared me ever since he caught me and Gerry Forrester mushroom hunting in the woods out by his place and threatened to come after us with his chain saw. I still say we were on the other side of his property line, but he acted as if we were stealing his family jewels or something.”

      “You did have a heck of a bag of morels,” J.R. reminded her. “I’ve never tasted better. Worth their weight in gold.”

      Callie sighed, remembering her haul of succulent fungi. “Hmm. Maybe he did have a reason to be angry, but I still say we were on the right side of the line on state ground. Twenty years hasn’t mellowed him, either.He’s still bad-tempered and cranky.”

      “He wouldn’t be Ezra if he changed his habits,” J.R. said with a grin. Her father was a handsome man, just under six feet tall, with a full head of steel-gray hair and skin permanently bronzed by years of exposure to wind and sun and the cold temperatures of long northern winters.

      “Rudy and his gang finished the subfloor in the lab section this morning. Hopefully they’ll have the new laminate flooring installed as soon as the electrical inspector gives the okay on the additional wiring. Bonnie and Leola are thrilled by the layout for the new electrical outlets. They’re tired of running extension cords all over the place whenever we get a new piece of equipment.”

      “I’m glad you brought it to my attention. Zach said he’d intended to bring the subject up himself but you beat him to it.”

      Zach hadn’t mentioned any of that to her. But to be fair she hadn’t spoken to him about her conversations with the female staff. She should have. They were on the same team, after all. Something she had difficulty remembering whenever she was in the same room with him.

      J.R. crossed his ankle over his knee. He was dressed in jeans and a green White Pine polo, so she guessed he was taking the early shift behind the bar today. The middle of summer wasn’t a busy time for his CPA business but it was for the bar and grill. It usually worked out well for him, but today he seemed tired and there were new lines around his hazel eyes, the same color as hers. She wondered briefly if the new baby would share their eye color, Ginger’s blue-gray or a shade unique and entirely his own? “How are you and Zach getting along?” J.R. asked before she could start her own line of questioning about his health.

      “Fine,” she said automatically.

      “Hmm,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “So not very smoothly, huh?” He knew her too well.

      Callie cut her eyes to the open door. Her new office had been doing double duty as a storage area since the sprinkler malfunction, although she couldn’t complain; she only had the occasional interruption to deal with, not patients funneling in and out for blood tests and weights and measurements as Zach did. “He’s good at his job,” she said, determined to put the best face on it. “We have different styles of interacting with our patients, that’s all.”

      “Coming from the military, he’s had a lot of responsibility thrust on him from a young age. He’s used to being his own boss,” J.R. said. “But I’m confident you two will work it out.”

      “Of course we will. We’re both professionals.”

      “I know it hasn’t helped that you’re in the other half of the duplex,” J.R. said with a frown. “It’s just...well, things are complicated right now. I didn’t plan far enough ahead. All those years of the two of us rattling around alone at the White Pine, I never realized it could get overcrowded, but it has. Becca’s too old to share a room with her brother, and I assured Ginger I was fine with the baby being in our room, but—”

      “It’s a huge improvement over the mini-suite at the Commodore.” She gave an exaggerated mock shudder and was rewarded with a quick smile from her father. “But it’s as much my fault as yours. I should have planned where I’d be staying before I ever got here,” Callie said. “Dad, is everything all right between you and Ginger?” She waited, not quite sure how he would react to such a direct personal question from her. Her father was a very private man.

      “It’s not easy getting used to the idea of being a new father when you’re staring your fiftieth birthday in the eye,” he said candidly. He shook his head ruefully, one side of his mouth lifting in a grin.

      “Or being a sister when you’re twenty-nine,” Callie admitted, returning the smile. She waited but he didn’t add anything further. “We’ll figure this blended-family thing out together. Deal?”

      “Deal,” he said. “Your mother has plenty of room out at her place if it gets too uncomfortable being in such close proximity to Zach Gibson day and night.”

      “The prospect of moving in with Mom and the goats and the chickens should be all the incentive I require to come to a truce with my PA.”

      She’d made peace with her mother over the years, accepting the reality that Karen could only be happy marching to the beat of her own drummer. J.R., however, had never come to that same acceptance. He might have forgiven Karen for leaving him and their marriage, but never for abandoning Callie. Her parents were civil to each other these days but by no means friendly. Juggling birthdays and holidays without causing hard feelings was stressful for Callie—for all of them, really. Deep down she had to admit that continuing animosity between her parents was the biggest reason she hadn’t come home as often as she could have these past few years.

      “That’s settled, then.” J.R. relaxed in his chair, but she knew him too well not to notice that the tension hadn’t completely left him.

      “You are okay with the new baby, aren’t you?” Overcoming a lifetime of reticence on her dad’s part—and on hers—wasn’t going to happen overnight, she realized.

      “Sure,” he said a little too quickly. “Especially if I get another great little girl like you.”

      “Come on, Dad. You can admit you really want a boy.”

      He dropped his foot to the floor, not reacting to her smile. “Either one is fine with me as long as he or she and Ginger are both fine.” He stood up. “I’m going to go check in with Rudy and the inspector and see what’s going on. Want to come along?”

      “I don’t know anything about electricity, and I don’t want to know any more than it hides in the wall and comes out when you plug something into a socket. Don’t you dare tell anyone I said that. Especially Zach.” She stood up and straightened her shoulders. “But when duty calls, we Laymans step up to the plate.” J.R. opened his mouth and Callie was afraid he might broach the subject of her staying longer than the three months she’d agreed to. “While we’re at it, I could use another receptacle or two in here.”

      J.R. took the hint. “We don’t have an unlimited budget, remember. Especially not until we find out how much the insurance company is going to pay for the water damage.”

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