way she said that made it sound as if he could do anything. And no one knew better than he did how wrong that was. Pain sliced through him like a razor. Easy. Devastating. He slapped the flat of his hand against the porch post. “Dammit. Lady, I may not know much about you, but you obviously don’t know me at all.”
She looked to the side as if he’d embarrassed her. Maybe he had. Tact wasn’t his strong suit. And frankly, he didn’t care.
“We need a doctor,” she said. “I work part-time in Dr. Cooper’s office. He’s moving to California to be near his son, and then there’ll be no one. And the clinic, if you want to call a two-room building with an examination room the size of a closet a clinic, is crumbling.”
“I’ve heard that it’s slightly outdated.” But only in passing when Wes, his foreman, had gone in for some minor treatment.
“It’s more than outdated. It’s inadequate, and once Dr. Cooper leaves, we’re never going to be able to lure another doctor here to work in such a tumbledown facility.”
“I see. But Austin is only forty miles away and there are doctors there.”
She crossed her arms. It made her ample breasts more noticeable, and also emphasized her heavily rounded belly. She was a pretty woman, a delicate one, and her pregnancy only seemed to emphasize that delicate beauty. He could have slapped himself for noticing any of those things. “In an emergency, forty miles might as well be four hundred,” she pointed out.
“I see, Ms. Ellis. You’re concerned about the trip to the hospital.” He did his best not to think of another situation, another pregnant woman. Anger, dark and reckless, filled his soul.
“Stop that,” she said. “Stop pretending you don’t know my name. And this isn’t for me. I’m due to deliver in a matter of weeks. By the time the clinic is built … if it’s built,” she emphasized, turning those big, plaintive eyes on him, “I’ll be long gone.”
That got his attention. “Let me get this straight. You want to build a clinic in a town you don’t even intend to live in. Why?”
“I have my reasons. They don’t matter. They’re not the point.”
And she clearly wasn’t going to share them. That was okay. A man like him who never shared his innermost thoughts couldn’t blame someone else for holding back. Still, now that they’d slid past the topic of her pregnancy, he could deal with reality. He wasn’t the answer to anyone’s prayers and he never had been. Head down, he ran the ranch and he did it well. He did what was necessary. But he never strayed beyond that. He couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he said. And a part of him meant that most sincerely. “But it’s not happening. I’ve been away from the ranch for too long.” For reasons he wasn’t prepared to discuss. “And despite the fact that I have a top-notch foreman and crew, there’s a truckload of work to be done. I’m not who you need, and I don’t have the time, the inclination or the ability to help you.”
“Not even if we’re talking life or death?” she asked, emphasizing that fact again. Something in her eyes told him that he’d disappointed her. Well, nothing new there. He was an excellent rancher, but he was also a master at disappointing people who expected him to care too much.
“You’ve been led astray if you were told to expect this kind of help from me,” he said. “I confine myself to small favors, to the doable. I’m no miracle worker.”
He stared coldly into her eyes, doing his best to ignore the fear and pain there, the slide of something—a tiny foot, a hand?—across her belly or how she automatically placed her palm over that place.
Her gray eyes pleaded with him, but she said nothing. A sudden, vague memory of a young girl looking at him as if she expected him to answer all her prayers flashed across his memory and was just as quickly gone.
His phone rang, and he deliberately put it on speakerphone. Anything to fill the silence. His foreman, Wes, said, “Holt, that cow with bloat needs seeing to or we’re going to lose her. The vet’s in the next county and you’re the best one to handle something this complicated.”
“I’ll be there in five.” Holt clicked off. He turned to Kathryn. “I have to go,” he said. Not I’m sorry, or Excuse me. The sudden defeat in her eyes made him want to say those words, but that might have given her hope for some-thing thatjust wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t the savior she had hoped he would be, and he wouldn’t pretend otherwise.
Her shoulders slumped. She turned toward her rusting car, then turned back. “Off to work a miracle, Holt?” she asked, throwing his “I’m no miracle worker” comment back at him.
“Off to do what I know how to do,” he said. “I don’t promise what I can’t deliver. Ever.”
And miracles of any kind were well outside his realm. As he had learned only too well.
Not waiting for her to leave, he strode to his truck. As he drove away in a cloud of dust, a pair of gray, hopeful eyes taunted him.
This time he didn’t hold back. He let loose with a string of blue language. Ms. Kathryn Ellis didn’t know how lucky she was. Women who got involved with an unbending, emotionally stingy man like him lived to regret it. As he’d been told before.
CHAPTER TWO
OKAY, dealing with Holt wasn’t going to be simple, Kathryn thought, back at home. If there was anyone else … But the mayor was adamant that he was the only one in a town this size who had the kind of influence she needed. The Double Bar C was known nationwide. The Calhouns had their fingers in many pies, and Holt was the one who oversaw all of that.
None of that would mean a thing, though, if the man didn’t agree to lend a hand. What to do? What to do? And why did it matter so much?
Because she was determined to turn her life completely around and this was the first step. I came back to my parents’ empty house despite the bad memories because I had no money or work, Kathryn reminded herself. Most of her life had been like that, running from one bad situation and one place to another. But with a baby on the way, she had to do more, to take a stand and become the kind of person a child could depend on. The next time she left somewhere she was going to do it the right way, having left something good behind her, because there was something good ahead of her.
Helping to build this clinic offered her a chance to leave this place on a positive note. On a more major note, it would allow her to use her heretofore useless deg in urban planning and beef up her skimpy résumé. Overseeing the project was the kind of thing that might put a gleam in an employer’s eye and finally help her provide a secure future for her and Baby Ellis.
But there was one more big reason. Despite her intent to slip quietly in and out of Larkville, she’d found that with her parents gone, the town was rather charming. She’d made a few friends, some of them her patients. She cared about them, worried about them and understood how scared they were at the prospect of losing their medical care. How could she not try to help? Still, even the best urban planner needed good people helping her. In this case, she had to get Holt’s help. How?
Butter him up, she thought. Flatter him. Play to his weaknesses. Everyone had weaknesses, didn’t they?
Kathryn splayed her hands across her belly as if communing with
