his patient, so he couldn’t excuse his curiosity about her as a way to better tend her needs. Even if she had been a patient, his interest went light-years beyond the professional. Yet he wasn’t about to fully acknowledge the inexplicable pull he felt toward her. He was already involved with someone. He had been for two years. Unlike the other men in his family, he would not cheat on a woman—even if he was having serious second thoughts about the relationship.
A familiar tension started creeping through him. Colliding with that struggle were all the problems he’d acquired since his father died. Not a week had gone by in the past few months that the mail hadn’t brought a new batch of documents, receipts and queries he didn’t want to deal with. He’d gotten to where he’d hated to see Smiley coming, and had finally asked his attorney to hold on to everything until he could get to Boston to take care of whatever needed to be done. His attorney had now taken to e-mailing him, wanting to know when that would be.
He shoved down the resentment, buried it as he so often did lately. Between the estate and Elizabeth, the last thing he needed was another problem, and Jenny Baker clearly had plenty of her own, but the clinic needed a competent office manager who could double as a receptionist. That should be all he considered right now.
“Is working at the diner what you really want to do? I’m not saying there’s a thing wrong with being a waitress,” he explained, dead certain she was in need of help herself. “But wouldn’t you rather have a job that used your skills and paid more than minimum wage and tips?”
Jenny was okay with omission. A little less comfortable with evasion. But there was no way she could look him in the eye and lie.
“I didn’t think so,” he said, when her only response was to glance away.
“Look.” The faint breeze chased a leaf across the porch. “We need an office manager. I trust Bess’s judgment, so I’m more than willing to listen to her when it comes to decisions about staffing. But you’re hiding something,” he told her, wondering if fear had driven her here, hoping for her sake that it hadn’t. “Or running from it.”
He held up his hand, cutting her off when she started to protest. “I don’t like owing anyone, Jenny. And after what I put you through last night, I owe you. Something isn’t right here.” His glance swept her face, quietly searching. “If you’re in trouble, I might be able to help.”
Jenny had no idea why he didn’t care to be obligated to anyone. She didn’t get a chance to wonder about it, though. The thought that he wanted to help caught her as unprepared as the quick pang of need she felt to let him. She had never felt as alone as she had in the past month, as alone as she had last night curled up in the dark. Unfortunately, dealing with the mess she’d made of her life was something she would have to do on her own.
Suddenly tired herself, she sank to the top step and motioned for him to help himself to a stair. Boards groaned beneath his weight as he tugged at the knees of his khakis and sat down a yard away. With his big body taking up more than his half of the space, he planted his feet wide on the step below.
The yellow dots on his brown socks were tiny ducks. Had she not felt so miserable she would have smiled at that totally unexpected bit of whimsy. The kids in the pictures in his office would have to love a guy who wore something like that.
“Thank you,” she said, genuinely moved by his offer. “But there isn’t anything you can do. Except for the job,” she conceded, almost afraid to think of how far a real salary could go. “The job really would make things easier.”
Something like regret entered his tone. He could help, but there were strings. “I can’t give you the job until I know what’s going on. I have Bess and my patients to consider.”
Her shoulders fell. “You don’t think I was mugged,” she said flatly.
“Honestly?” he asked, pinning her with his deceptively undemanding gaze. “I don’t know what to think.”
His bluntness she could handle. It was the way he had of looking at her, looking into her, that had her wanting to shy away. There was kindness in his darkly lashed eyes, but there was a lot of doubt and suspicion, too. “I wasn’t abused and I’m not hiding from anyone,” she insisted, making herself hold his glance. She was nothing if not honest. She wasn’t about to have him think otherwise. “What happened yesterday morning happened just as I told you. No one is going to follow me here and cause a problem, if that’s what you’re worried about. I promise. Bess and your patients are safe.”
The insistence faded from her voice. “I made a bad choice that led to an even worse situation. It will never, ever happen again. Can we please just let it go at that?”
The masculine lines carved in his cheeks deepened with the pinch of his mouth. Seeing nothing promising in Greg’s expression, Jenny’s glance finally faltered. She blinked at the board between her white canvas shoes. The blue paint that had once made the porch look so bright and cheerful had been weathered and worn to little more than flecks and streaks on the splintering wood. Waiting for Greg to make his decision, she felt like that herself, exposed and worn, and were she to dig too deep, fully capable of breaking into dozens of tiny pieces.
“What about the detectives. You said something about having been cleared, but you never said what you’d been charged with.”
Her focus stayed on the boards. “I was never formally charged.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I was never guilty, so there’s no…”
“Jenny.”
From the corner of her eyes, she caught the motion of his hand a moment before she felt his finger curve under her chin.
His deep voice was as gentle as the brush of his thumb along her jaw. “I keep my word,” he promised. “Anything you say to me goes no further.”
For a moment she said nothing. She just studied the strong lines of his face while her mind absorbed his quiet assurance and her battered heart his quiet strength. In the past month she had grown reluctant to confide anything to anyone. It had come to the point where she honestly hadn’t known who she could trust anymore. Authorities who’d appeared to want only to help her had wanted only to find a way to trip her up so she would confess to a crime she had known nothing about. Friends she’d thought she could count on had turned their backs on her. She couldn’t even trust her own judgment.
Yet, this man had nothing to gain from her that wouldn’t help her, too.
His glance dropped to follow the motion of his thumb. As if he only now realized he was still touching her, he pulled a deep breath and eased his hand away.
It puzzled her that she hadn’t questioned the contact herself. What puzzled her more was what she’d felt in his touch, the quiet assurance that by trusting him, maybe things could be all right.
“I really wasn’t charged with anything. Just suspected and questioned,” she told him, still hesitating to mention exactly what she’d been suspected of doing. The words embezzlement and theft could immediately shade a person’s opinion. She’d learned the hard way that it was far easier to get a person to listen to her if he didn’t have a lot of preconceived notions.
“There is an explanation.” She hesitated. “I’m just not sure where to start.”
He rested the elbow nearest her on his thigh. With his hand dangling
