"Do you think I"ll regret this?"
"Yes," she said honestly. Her eyes were clear and very bright. "But you shouldn"t.
You"ve had a rough day and the memories must be pretty terrible from time to time. You778.179.
acted like any other human being who was hurting and needed someone to hold on to, just for a little while. As you said, it was nice to be held and comforted. I enjoyed it, too, but you needn"t worry that I"m going to go all soppy and start getting ideas about my place in your life."
He folded his arms across his chest and studied her curiously. "You"re blunt."
"I grew up with a soldier. He taught me never to tell lies. Well, I wouldn"t tell Nurse Turner that orange lipstick made her look like a dried-up lemon, but that"s not exactly lying," she amended.
He chuckled. "Neither would I. She has boxes of needles," he murmured with a conspiratorial smile.
She smiled back, and he thought that he"d never realized until now how much he enjoyed watching her smile. They seemed to have reached a new level of comfort with each other.
"I don"t want wild s.e.x or another wife," he replied after a minute, with equal honesty, "but I have to admit, being hugged could be habit-forming."
"You"re sure about the wild s.e.x part?" she asked with wide eyes. "Because if you ever change your mind, here I am.""Have you ever had wild s.e.x with a man?" he teased.
She shrugged. "I"ve never had s.e.x, period, but I"m long overdue for a feverish initiation. Just so you know," she added with a grin. "But give me plenty of warning, because I just know I"ll be a fanatic about prevention."
He burst out laughing, and she blushed.
"Get out of here and go home!" he roared, choking on mirth. "For G.o.d"s sake, have you no shame? Propositioning your own boss!"
"If you don"t want to be propositioned, don"t make pa.s.ses at me," she returned with mock hauteur and twinkling eyes. "Now, I"m going home."
"The Coltrains said I could bring you along."
She wanted to go with him, but she forced herself to shake her head nonchalantly. "Thanks all the same." She hesitated. "Thanks for...being concerned about me, too. I"ll deep-six the perfume. And next time I"ll be careful what I put on. Good night."
He wondered why she"d refused to go to dinner with him. But he smiled casually and opened the door for her, and then walked her to her car after he"d locked up. He stood there watching her drive away, aware that she was180grinding gears like mad. He wondered if he was losing his mind. She was only his receptionist.
Chapter 3.
The Coltrains noticed a difference in Drew, and it wasn"t because he was grieving. He seemed oddly thoughtful, and when Jeb mentioned Kitty, his hand jumped, as if just the sound of her name startled him.
Jeb and Lou were much too cagey to come right out and ask questions. They kept the conversation on work right through the main course. But over dessert, they probed a little.
"How"s your receptionist working out, now that you"ve had her around for almost a year?"
"She"s doing fine," Drew said without looking up from his cheesecake. "At least, as752long as she stays away from perfumes with a woodsy tone," he added thoughtfully, and described the asthma that had surfaced with the wearing of her new perfume.
"A lot of our patients don"t connect perfume with asthma attacks or severe headaches," Lou mused, smiling. "It isn"t something you consciously think about."
"She"ll think about it now," he reflected.
"Do she and Nurse Turner get along well?" Lou probed.
He chuckled. "They conspire," he murmured. "Tonight they drew straws to see who got to leave first. Kitty lost the draw." He sighed and shook his head. "I"d been pure h.e.l.l to get along with all day, but she didn"t say a word."
"What did she do?" Jeb asked curiously.
"She put both her hands straight up over her head and I burst out laughing."
"She"s a doll," Jeb chuckled. "I remember her as a little girl, trotting along behind her dad when they went to the store together. He had her marching like a proper soldier. I felt sorry for her. He was badly wounded in Vietnam, you know, and had to take a discharge that he didn"t want. They offered him a job at the Pentagon, but he was too proud to take it. So he stayed here in town, reliving past glories 183.
and making his wife and daughter suffer for his losses."
"He didn"t hurt her?" Drew asked before he took time to think what he was saying.
"Not at all," Jeb a.s.sured him. "He wasn"t a cruel man, but he was domineering and demanding. Kitty never had boyfriends. n.o.body got past the old man, even when she graduated from high school and started taking those business courses. He intimidated the young men."
"I"ll bet he did," Drew mused, thinking privately that he"d have given the old buzzard a run for his money. He moved his cheesecake around on the plate. "She must have had at least one steady boyfriend," he said probingly.
"Nope," Jeb returned. "No chance of that. The old man went down with a stroke the year she enrolled in business college. She had to nurse him and work to supplement his government pension." He shook his head. "In between, she spent a lot of time in the emergency room with what she thought was coughing fits until they diagnosed her as asthmatic. It took a while to get her medicines set to contain them, too. It"s better now, but she has fits when the gra.s.ses start blooming."
"I"ll keep a close check on her," Drew promised.
"She could use one," Jeb replied grimly.184.185.
"Kitty"s had no fun at all. That"s why I suggested that you might bring her along tonight," he added with a rueful grin. "I wasn"t trying to matchmake. She works for you and I like her, that"s all."
"I"m sorry," Drew said, and genuinely was, now. "If I"d realized that..."
"We know better than to try to pair you off with anyone," Lou affirmed, smiling. "Least of all, Kitty."
He frowned slightly. "Why do you say that?" he murmured curiously.
"Well, she"s not your type, is she?" Lou asked, averting her eyes to the table. "She"s unsophisticated and unworldly. She"d rather tend her garden than go to a c.o.c.ktail party, and she doesn"t have a clue how to dress properly."
He wondered for a minute if Lou was making digs at his receptionist, but he realized almost at once that she wasn"t. She seemed to genuinely like Kitty.
"She"ll never get a boyfriend, the way she looks," Lou continued sadly. "Drew, couldn"t you do something, point her to right sort of clothes, get her to a hairdresser? Guy Fenton is still interested in her, but she"s just not the sort of girl a man wants to show off. You know what I mean?""You mean that she doesn"t dress like a young and attractive woman looking for a soul mate," he translated.
"That"s exactly what I mean."
"Why don"t you take her in hand?" he asked Lou.
"How would I go about it, without making her look stupid?" she asked honestly. "She doesn"t really know me."
"She only works for me," Drew replied.
"But she looks up to you. You know, sort of as a father figure." She looked down so that her eyes wouldn"t reflect her delight at the way that remark made Drew tauten and look irritated.
"I"m not old enough to be her father," he said shortly.
Coltrain cleared his throat to choke back helpless laughter. "Lou didn"t mean it that way. But she does look up to you. What would it hurt to help her change her image? Married receptionists never quit their jobs."
"She can do better than Guy Fenton," he said, remembering vividly how Fenton had already treated her. "As I recall, she dressed up for him, and he ditched her in the middle of a date."
"Her idea of dressing up is a new s.h.i.+rtwaist186.187.
dress," Lou muttered. "And she never lets that hair down."
Drew tried not to think about all that hair. He had frequent longings to start tearing pins out of it, just to see how it looked when it was loose.
"She needs someone besides Guy Fenton," Jeb remarked coolly. "Guy keeps dark secrets, and he drinks too much. But there are plenty of eligible men in town. Matt Caldwell, for instance."
Matt was rugged and outlandish, but he was also single and well-to-do. Drew didn"t like the idea of him. He didn"t like the idea of any man, actually. And because he didn"t, he agreed to Lou"s proposal. He wasn"t going to get involved with Kitty. Getting her involved with another man was the ideal way to protect himself.
"Jeb and I are on the orphanage committee here in town," Lou reminded him, "and we"re hosting a Summer Charity Ball to raise money to build a new wing onto the orphanage. I"d like you to come. You could bring Kitty-and then I can introduce her to the eligible men."
Drew frowned.
"All you have to do is bring her, Drew," Lou persisted, "not propose to her. You canhave her meet you there if you don"t want to be seen with her."
"Oh, for G.o.d"s sake, I don"t mind asking her," he grumbled.
"Good," Lou replied, smiling at him. "And if you can get her refurbished in time, there"s no telling what might happen."
"Matt likes her-" Jeb put his two cents worth in "-and they"ve got a lot in common."
"Was he afraid of her father?" Drew asked curiously.
"Not at all," Jeb mused, grinning so that his freckles stood out. "In fact, they came to blows over Operation Desert Storm-Matt"s reserve unit was called up during it, you know. He laid the colonel out in the middle of the local McDonald"s and poured a milkshake over him. I don"t think the colonel ever got over it."
Drew chuckled. "What did Kitty say?"
"Nothing. She didn"t dare. But you used to be able to just say the word "milkshake" to her, and she"d collapse laughing."
Drew found the idea amusing. He"d have to try that one day. He toyed with his fork. "All right, I"ll take her to the ball. When is it?"
She told him. "And it"s formal. Very formal."188.189.
"I"ll wear a dinner jacket," he said reluctantly. "I guess Kitty can come up with a dress."
"Help her find one," Lou suggested. "And you might point her toward the cosmetic counter and a hairstylist and contact lenses. She"d be pretty if she worked at it."
He waited until she came to work the following Monday, and when Nurse Turner went out to lunch, he asked Kitty to come into his office.
She"d spent an uneasy weekend remembering what they"d done together and her lack of sleep was evident in the dark circles under her eyes. She noticed that he looked tired as well, but considering how hard he worked, she couldn"t attribute it to anything other than his job. She didn"t know that he"d spent his share of sleepless nights trying to decide how to put the experience out of his mind.
"Are you still sweet on Guy Fenton?" he asked bluntly.
She didn"t ask why he was probing into her private life. She moved restlessly in the chair. "I used to like him. I still do. But I don"t want to go out with him anymore."
"I don"t blame you. How about Matt Cald-well, then?""Matt doesn"t know me from a peanut," she informed him. "He and my father never got along at all."
"Neither do he and I from time to time, but he"s coming to the Summer Charity Ball at the country club and I thought you might like to go with me," he added, not looking at her.
She looked at the wall and wondered if she was having delusions. Perhaps that gla.s.s of wine she"d consumed with her dinner Sat.u.r.day night had had a delayed reaction...
"Could you repeat that?" she asked. "I think I may be in the midst of a drunken stupor."
"On what, coffee?" he asked, diverted.
"I had a gla.s.s of wine Sat.u.r.day night," she volunteered.
His mouth curled up. "Did I drive you to drink?" he chided, and then felt guilty when she blushed. "Never mind. I asked you to go to the Summer Charity Ball with me. Lou"s hosting it with Jeb, and they"re inviting all the single men and women in town, including Matt and Guy." He glanced at his hands. "The Coltrains particularly wanted you to come."
Kitty studied his face uncertainly. He sounded as if he hated the idea of asking her at all, and she knew without being told that it 190.191.
was the Coltrains who"d put him up to this. Funny how disappointing that was, although she couldn"t deny that she knew how he still felt about his late wife. She must have been temporarily out of her mind to think that he"d asked her for his own sake; or to allow herself to build one kiss into a future.
"I don"t really think I want to..." she began politely.
He looked up, his dark eyes so intent that they stopped her protest before she could get it out of her mouth. "I want you to come," he said deliberately.
Of course he didn"t. But her stubborn refusal irritated him. She was young and sweet and she had a lot to offer. Matt or Guy would be lucky to have such a woman find them attractive. She deserved a little happiness.
She misunderstood his determination, and she smiled warmly. "Really?" she asked breathlessly.
He turned away from that bright-eyed surprise. "Sure."
"Well, I guess I could."
"You"ll need a dress," he continued, toying with a sheet of paper on the desk. "Something pretty and formal."
"I"ll...I"ll have to buy one," she faltered.
"And you could have your hair done."She touched the bun defensively. "Cut it?"
"No!" He caught himself before he sounded even more of a fool. "I meant, you could have it put in one of those complicated styles. Cut it?" He looked absolutely shocked. "It would be a crime to cut hair like that." His eyes reluctantly slid over it, confined as usual in a huge bun behind her nape. "It must fall all the way to your waist when it"s down."
She smiled self-consciously. "A little farther than that," she confided. "I don"t ever wear it down anymore."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "My father said I looked like "Alice in Wonderland.""
"Bull," he muttered.