you heard?” she asked, her gaze on her knitting. “Gillian Bates saved a little boy’s life just last week. He was chokin’ and she just squeezed him and he spit the toy truck right on out. The boy was blue, they say. Two hairs from gone over.”
“That’s very impressive,” he said, nodding again at Gillian. “That Heimlich maneuver can be tricky. I’m glad to know it worked out so well.”
“Yep,” the blonde said. “She’s a real live heroine, and we’re givin’ her a dinner dance and a parade to mark it.”
“Sounds exciting,” he said. “Like something I shouldn’t miss.”
Gillian looked at him funny as he leaned in toward her.
“Of course I don’t know anyone here,” he said, trying not to scare her. “But maybe you don’t have an escort yet?”
Her eyes practically popped out of her head. “Me?”
He nodded. “I noticed you like bingo,” he said, racking his brain for something logical to say. “And cats.”
“That I do,” she said, and he thought she might be smiling, but he couldn’t be sure.
“I admire cats,” he said. “And I used to play bingo when I was at summer camp.”
“I see,” she said. “So that’s why you want to take me to the dinner dance?”
His own smile faltered a little. “Well, sure. Why not?”
“Uh, Doc,” the blonde said, her smile wide enough to show her dental work, “you—”
“Hush up, Shirley. I’m trying to think.”
“But—”
“Shhh,” Suspenders hissed. He was grinning, too.
Gillian looked around the table, then back at him. “Why not, Doc? I don’t have any prior commitments.”
He sighed his relief. One down, and now he didn’t even have to take her out on a date first. With any luck, he wouldn’t even have to see her until the dance.
Gillian looked up, past his head, to something behind him. He turned to face a beautiful young woman. She had long blond hair, big blue eyes that gleamed with humor, and a lovely pink mouth turned up into a bright smile.
“Hello,” he said as his gaze moved down in a quick once-over. The rest of her was as attractive as her face.
“Hello,” she said in a voice that made him think of spun sugar.
“This here’s Doc Malloy,” the blonde said. “He’s coming to the dinner dance.”
“So I heard,” the woman said. “That’s lovely.”
“He’s my date,” Gillian announced.
“I heard that, too. That’s wonderful. I know you’ll both have a terrific time.” Then she held her hand out to him, and he saw her fingernails were painted pink. “I’m Gillian Bates,” she said.
Chapter Four
Gillian kept smiling at the doctor even though he stared at her with a baffling look of utter dismay. Of course, she was surprised that he’d asked Helen Kane to the dinner dance, but who was she to judge a man’s taste?
She pulled out the chair next to Conner Malloy and sat down to begin the evening’s chat, but her concentration wasn’t on her book. Not only was she still disquieted by the good doctor’s expression, but also by the good doctor himself. When Felicia had said he was nice-looking, Gillian hadn’t taken her very seriously. Felicia had some odd ideas of handsome. But this time, she’d hit the nail on the head. He was gorgeous. Wonderfully expressive eyes, thick dark hair, great cheekbones. She wished she could see him smile.
Really, it was so peculiar. His asking Helen to the dance. Not that she didn’t like Helen, but the woman was in her early fifties, and the doctor looked like he was in his early thirties. But it was none of her business. She turned to the group. “So, what did everybody think of Smilla?”
No one answered her, which was highly unusual. The participants in her readers’ group were nothing if not opinionated. She often thought the session should be called Arguments Are Us and be done with it. On the other hand, the books they’d read had been illuminating and wonderful. Sometimes disturbing and sometimes funny. It was worth the disagreements.
“I liked it,” Henry Fraley finally stated. He pushed his thumbs behind his suspenders and stretched them out. “I thought it was real interesting. The stuff about the Inuits and all that.”
“Good, Henry,” she said, then turned to Shirley. “What about you?”
“I don’t know,” Shirley said, her eyes on her knitting. “She wasn’t very nice, was she? I mean, she could be awful mean when she wanted to. I didn’t like her at all.”
That opened the floodgates, and everyone jumped into the fray. Even Helen, who usually categorically dismissed anything that wasn’t by Danielle Steele, joined in. But Gillian didn’t really listen. Her focus had turned back to Dr. Malloy.
He stared at her unabashedly. No disguise, no pretense. Just a thorough appraisal that made her wish she’d done more with her hair and that she’d worn makeup. But she lost her self-consciousness as she did her own assessment.
He’d come to look at medical antiques, that much she knew. But now he’d decided to stay on. Why? Did he know Helen from somewhere else? Perhaps they had a mutual friend? She needed to understand. Why would a man like him want to stay in a town like this even a day longer than necessary? Why had he joined their little readers’ group? And why he was looking at her with such…such…hunger?
She felt her cheeks heat a bit, and it occurred to her that it had been years since she’d blushed. Nothing embarrassed her anymore, it seemed. Not even the incessant matchmaking that had plagued her since the day she’d arrived in town.
Yet his unwavering dark eyes made her flush with heat. She squirmed a little on her chair, glanced away, then met his gaze once more. Those eyes. They looked at her as no one had before. Ever. With curiosity, with interest, but more than that, with wonder. As if he’d seen something he’d been searching for but never expected to find.
It made her think of the time when she’d been a young girl in her early teens, on the verge of becoming a woman. Walking in her skimpy bathing suit at Venice Beach, watching the boys watching her. Sensing her own power even though she hardly knew what to do with it. It had been heady and glorious, but scary, too.
That’s how she felt now. Glorious and scared. Afraid to move, afraid to stay. Those eyes of his, with those long lashes, and the way they seemed to look inside her. He surely could see her loneliness. Her determination. The scars around her heart.
“Gillian?”
She heard her name as if in a dream, then realized it was the colonel’s voice. She jerked her gaze away from the stranger. “Yes?”
“About
