what aren’t you telling me?” There was always a catch, wasn’t there? That little hidden bit of information that didn’t come out until after the fact. Like a husband who enjoyed beating his wife but hadn’t shown the proclivity until after they were married.
“Nothing that I can think of.”
She looked hard into Rick’s eyes, studied them for a moment, then nodded. “OK, then …” She saw no guile there. Saw no mean spirit. “With the provision that there will be a day-care program, I’ll take the job.” And just like that, she was committed. Also excited.
“Done deal, then.”
“That’s too easy,” she quipped.
“It was meant to be. I realized somewhere between your second and third refusal that we had to figure your daughter into the equation. I have a great housekeeper and nanny looking after Chris, but if I didn’t, I’d want him here, with me. So I put myself in your position and saw that someone to care for Alyssa was probably the only thing stopping you from accepting.”
“That’s being overly optimistic, don’t you think?” Or extremely observant.
“Maybe. But the gamble paid off, didn’t it? I’ve done the preliminary work toward getting the day-care center off the ground, and you’ve accepted the job.”
“I’m not really that easy,” she said, feeling flattered, and a little awkward about how well he could anticipate her.
“Not easy at all. You’ve caused me to lose sleep, Summer.”
“Let me guess. You lay awake at night, trying to figure out what it would take to persuade me to accept the position. Right?”
He grinned. “Something like that.”
“Well, then …” She stood, not sure what else to do at this point. “I’ll start tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow. Oh, and day care will be open. I hired someone to watch the children until we’re fully functional and have a real staff in place.”
“Qualified?”
“Eminently. She was my third-grade teacher. Retired now. I’ve put her in charge, temporarily, with the option of staying on to head the program, if she’s as good as I think she’ll be.”
A new job, a place where Alyssa would be safe … Just like that, her life had changed yet again. But it was a good change. This time. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself all the way home.
Jess Corbett plopped down in the chair across the desk from Rick. “You look like you just opened a whole bunch of Christmas presents,” he said, smiling. “All of them good.”
“In a way, I did,” Rick said. “Summer’s finally consented to being head nurse in Pediatrics.”
“Well. I’ll be damned. It only took you, what? Three months? Julie said she wasn’t sure Summer would ever do it, but I figured if you wanted her bad enough, you’d figure out a way to get her. So, what did it take?” Jess stretched out his long legs and leaned back in the chair, cupping his hands behind his head. “And is this going to be a long story? Because I’ve got to go see a patient on my way out, go home and have breakfast with my lovely wife, then teach a class on CPR.”
Rick was beginning to like Jess. Not completely there yet, but working on it and trying hard to get over that last hurdle of trust. They had history, most of it pretty bad. Jess and his older brother, Rafe, had been the bullies, and he their favorite victim, when they were kids. Kids’ stuff, most of it, but pretty hurtful at times, since his mother’s livelihood had depended on their father employing her. Which meant he himself had had to sit back and take it. And they had known how to dish it out, Rafe physically, Jess verbally, all of it owing to the abuse they’d suffered at the hands of their father. When he’d been a kid, Rick hadn’t known the whole psychological profile of how abuses often begat abuses. All he’d known had been that Rafe and Jess had come at him whenever they’d had a chance, and he’d hated them for it.
Well, it was all in the past now. They were adults. Rafe and Jess had apologized many times over. More than that, their earnestness came through in their actions toward Rick. They owned the hospital, but had turned it over to him to run the medical aspects of it. More than that, he had equal weight in all the decisions. They treated him fairly. “Not so long as it is complicated. And it only took me two months, not three.”
Jess chuckled. “Isn’t that always the way when a beautiful woman’s involved? I mean, look what happened to me when I got involved with my beautiful woman. All the things I swore I’d never do … well, I’m doing them. And I’m very happy with my life since I met Julie. So tell me, what’s your beautiful lady got you caught up in?”
Rick shook his head, conjuring up a quick flash of Summer when she’d flounced out his door. And flouncing it had been. Or maybe he’d wanted her to flounce, fantasized her flouncing. Whatever … “Well, she’s not mine, not going to be mine. Did that once, and my ex was beautiful, but I’m not going to let my head be turned like that again with anybody else. My marriage woes aside, though, this particular beautiful woman wanted a little extra incentive to come and work here.”
Jess arched amused eyebrows. “Let me guess. A day-care center for hospital staff? Julie’s mentioned that to me a time or two and, so you’ll know, she’s pretty well lined up with Summer on this one. She wants a day-care program, too, for when we get started on the family situation.”
“So you knew this was going to happen?”
“You want Summer. We all want Summer. And Summer’s all about her little girl. According to Julie, she has the worst separation anxiety she’s ever seen. It’s so bad she nearly has panic attacks when Alyssa is out of her sight. Plus, she’s got a pretty short list of people she trusts to watch Alyssa when she’s working. So, yes, I figured it was going to happen sooner or later. You know, give a little, get a lot.”
“But it’s a good move for the entire staff, too,” Rick explained. “Not just Summer, and not just for Summer. As we expand our services, we’ll be bringing in more people to work. To get the best-qualified people we can, we’ve got to offer them the perks that other hospitals our size don’t. Salary and nice facilities aside, it has to be about the human touch … our day-care program, for starters. Then other quality-of-life issues. And before you tell me this is something I should have discussed with you and Rafe …”
Jess thrust out his hand to stop him. “Your decision, Rick. If you think we need it, then we’ll do it. You don’t need our permission to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. OK? And for what it’s worth, I’m with you on it. Rafe will be too, although he’s probably too tied up with Edie right now to care about much of anything going on around here. He’s taking these last days of pregnancy much harder than his wife is. But he’ll be behind you when he’s not so distracted, because he’ll understand the benefits of this, too.”
You don’t need our permission … That was the part of his job he was still getting used to, the part where he had all the authority. The Rafe and Jess Corbett he’d spent half his growing-up years fighting and hating trusted him implicitly with their hospital. They’d even mentioned bringing him on as a full partner at some point, an idea he couldn’t quite wrap his psyche around because sometimes it still felt like he was treading on eggshells, waiting for them to resort to their old selves. They were the ones who were past all that, though. Which made
