on her goal … get through college, get through medical school, now this. Her life hadn’t afforded her the luxury of having more than one goal at a time because there had been so many times when even a single goal had been a struggle. So now she had a single goal to achieve, the most important one of her life, and she wouldn’t allow herself to think in terms of anything more.
“Dad, you know I’m not looking right now,” she told him.
“One of my big regrets, Erin, is that I have raised such a serious daughter. You were brought up in an old man’s world, I’m afraid, and you don’t know how to have fun.”
Her father was older, yes. But fun … her life had been filled with fun, filled with so many wonderful things. And this was her father’s standard argument, the one he used to make her feel guilty. “It’s not going to work,” she teased.
“What’s not going to work?” he asked, laughter just on the edge of his voice.
“You know what I’m talking about. And there’ll be plenty of time for grandchildren, if I ever do find the right man.”
“If you ever start looking.”
Oh, she’d looked. Come close to finding, actually. Then been jilted because a slight illness had brought up a cancer scare, which had scared a man she might have been serious about right out the door. And he had run so hard and fast he hadn’t even made the promise that he’d call, or see her again, or they’d work it out. He’d told her he loved her one week, then bolted the next. Like her high school sweetheart had when the cancer actually had returned. Or her childhood best friend had when the chemotherapy had claimed her hair. Oh, gross, Erin. You’re, like, going bald. That’s so disgusting. So, no more looking, no more expectations. Emotionally, it was easier that way. “On that note, I’m going to say goodnight. Love you, Dad.”
“Love you, too, Erin. Even if you are stubborn and too serious for your own good.”
He clicked off before she could get to her next comeback. And for a while after the phone call she sat with her feet propped up on the porch rail, enjoying the gentle, hot breeze, still listening to the strains of happy music wafting in. Thinking of Adam Coulson, not of her dad. Harvard education and without a decent stethoscope. On impulse, she dialed her dad back. “One more thing,” she said. “Could you send me a stethoscope?”
It was a small gesture, and she kept telling herself that it was for Tyjon, and anybody else needing treatment here. Not for Coulson.
“So, let’s just get this over with.” A voice came at her from out of the dark a while later.
Startled by Coulson’s intrusion into her pleasant solitude, Erin jumped. “Do you always sneak up on people that way?”
“I wasn’t sneaking.”
“And you didn’t exactly announce yourself either, did you?”
“Actually, I did. I said, ‘Let’s just get this over with.'”
Straightening in the chair and pulling her feet off the porch rail, she was a little sad to have her evening ended so abruptly. It was nice to relax for a while. The ambiance suited her, made her feel mellow. Lately, she hadn’t had time to relax, and who knew how long it had been since she’d felt mellow. “I agree,” she said, standing. “Let’s get this over with. Do you have my deed?”
He handed it over, without saying a word.
She didn’t look at it, though. He wouldn’t cheat her on this, and to look would be to insult him. No need to do that. No need to rub salt in what was obviously a very open, very raw wound. “Thank you,” she said, tucking the paper into her pocket.
“Just like that,” he said, almost under his breath.
“Like what?”
“Like in a split second, it’s gone.” He shrugged. “So that makes us neighbors now, doesn’t it?”
“In proximity, yes, I suppose it does. But we don’t have to be neighborly. I know you didn’t want to sell your land, and I know you resent me for buying it. So it’s OK with me if we’re not friends, not even neighbors who wave.”
“And you think that makes it better for me?”
“I don’t know what makes it better for you, Coulson. I’m just making an offer. I’ll stay away from you, leave you alone, won’t even come to Trinique’s, if it’s better for you that way.” It wasn’t much of a gesture, considering the circumstances. But it was the best she could do.
“What’s better for me is getting my property back, but that’s not going to happen. You need it for whatever reason you may have, and I wanted it for whatever reason I had.
But in the end, my reason wasn’t going to happen. Don’t know if yours will or not.”
“What was your reason?” she asked him.
“To use it as it was intended … as a hospital. But as you can see, I barely manage a clinic, so the hospital was a …”
“A dream?”
“A long way off. Money talks. You had it, I need it, and now one of us is happy while the other is better off. Fair trade, although I hate it to hell.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m going to open a children’s hospital.”
“Now, there’s an impractical idea if ever I’ve heard one.”
“You think a children’s hospital is impractical?” she practically growled, she was so angry.
“Not in the right setting. Which is someplace accessible, a place people can get to easily, where they’ll want to take their children. We’re not accessible here. You already know that. And nobody in their right mind will bring their children to a place where the only way in or out is on a rutted road. Put the hospital someplace where people can use it. Not here!”
“But here is perfect.” And her hospital wasn’t going to be just any ordinary hospital. It was going to be everything she hadn’t had when she’d spent so much time in various hospitals. It was going to be a place where being sick wasn’t the focus, but being normal was.
“Shows what you know about setting up a hospital. At least, when I wanted to start a hospital here, I had enough sense to know that the area would support a very small general hospital. General hospital, not a specialty facility.”
She tamped back her anger to face his challenge. With Adam Coulson, she had an idea that anger could turn into a steady diet, and she simply didn’t want to bristle then strike every time they met. So now was as good a time as any to start reining herself in. Because she wasn’t going anywhere. This was home. He was her shouting-distance neighbor. She didn’t want the strife on a lingering basis. Gritting her teeth, she smiled up at him. “Then I guess it’s up to me to prove you wrong, isn’t it?”
“Or the other way around.”
“Not going to happen, Coulson. I know what I’m doing.”
“The thing is, so do I, and I also know it’s a bad idea.”
“You’ll
