ask me,” she continued in an even lower voice, “the doctor blames himself for not being there when it happened.”
“There probably wasn’t anything he could have done at the time, anyway,” Kayley said, thinking of her mother and how hard she’d tried to find a way to get that awful disease to go into remission.
“You’re probably right,” Rachel agreed. “But word has it that’s not the way he feels, which is all that counts. Anyway—” the physician’s assistant shifted her focus and skimmed over the copy of the résumé that Kayley had just handed her “—everything looks in order and I, for one, would love to have you on board,” she said with a great deal of enthusiastic sincerity. “But you understand, the doctor has to have the final say.”
“Of course,” Kayley concurred. She expected nothing less. “To be honest, I thought he’d be the one conducting the interview.”
“He’s still with his patient, but he’ll be here,” Rachel promised. “He’ll probably ask you a couple of things,” the young woman told her. “And, just so that you know, for some reason he turned down the other five applicants.”
That didn’t sound promising, Kayley thought, her uneasiness growing, although she managed to keep it from Rachel.
“Was there a reason?” she asked, wanting to know what she was up against. If she knew, she might be able to be more in line with what the surgeon was seeking.
But Rachel shook her head. She seemed really disappointed that she couldn’t offer anything helpful. “Not that he said. He just shook his head after each of the people he interviewed had left and murmured, ‘Not the one.’ I thought for sure he clicked with Albert,” Rachel told her, and then sighed, “but I was wrong.”
“Albert?” she asked.
At least the doctor had no preconceived notions about the person he was looking for to fill the position. If he had, he wouldn’t have interviewed a man for it—or if he had set notions, he might have only interviewed men for the job.
Rachel nodded. “Albert was the last PA who applied.”
This was not shaping up to be particularly encouraging. But then, if this didn’t work out, she would be no worse off than she was right now. Besides, she had a ton of her mother’s things to go through and if worse came to worse, that would take up a good amount of her time. At least she would stay busy until she was able to find a job.
“Wait right here,” Rachel said, about to leave the room. “Dr. Dolan will be with you as soon as he finishes up with his patient,” she assured her.
The moment she said the words, Rachel suddenly turned rather pale. “Omigod, I forgot he asked me to bring the last X-rays for Mr. Mulroney.” She began to rush out of the room, pausing only to toss a few last words over her shoulder. “I really hope you get this job.”
The corners of Kayley’s mouth curved ever so slightly as she watched the other woman dash out. “Me too, Rachel,” she said, knowing that the PA was no longer in earshot. “Me too.”
Kayley sat back in her chair and waited.
And waited.
After twenty minutes, she started to grow rather restless. She also started to think that very possibly, she had gotten lost in the shuffle. When she’d come in, she had noticed that there were probably more than two dozen people sitting outside in the waiting room. And although there appeared to be about ten or eleven physicians presently in the building, she could see how she might have just gotten overlooked or even fallen through the cracks.
For the next five minutes, Kayley debated between waiting in the room quietly and going out to see if perhaps her theory was right and she had been forgotten about.
Since she wasn’t the type to simply sit on her hands, choice number two won.
Picking up her shoulder bag, Kayley got up and went to the door. She pulled it open with the intention of heading back to the reception desk to find out what was going on.
It all happened so fast her brain almost went numb.
She got as far as taking one step out of the exam room when she walked straight into a tall athletic man in a white lab coat. The scent of musky aftershave immediately filled her senses.
It was the same man she had shared the elevator with, she realized.
The man wasn’t a patient. He was a doctor.
Was he her doctor? she couldn’t help wondering, still trying to get her bearings.
“Hey, slow down,” he cautioned, catching hold of her by her shoulders to steady her. “You create quite a jolt when you walk into a person.”
Startled, Kayley tried to back up. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to walk into you.”
“Well, that’s comforting,” he commented drolly. Dropping his hands to his sides, he said, “Rachel tells me that you’re here to talk about the physician’s assistant opening in the staff.”
As subtly as she could, she drew in a breath and then answered, “Yes, I am.”
Nodding, the doctor gestured toward the chair. “Please, sit down.”
Kayley turned and went back into the room, feeling as if she were moving in slow motion. She took a seat as he’d instructed.
Looking up, she saw that the doctor had followed her in and sat down on a stool, the seat she assumed he would have taken when talking with a patient.
He skimmed the résumé that she’d sent via email and that he’d printed up. “I see that all of your experience has been in San Francisco.” Setting the paper down, he stared at her. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile in his expression. “Why did you leave your last place of employment?”
“I had to,” she told him simply.
“Had to?” Luke repeated. The first thing that occurred to him was that she had been asked to leave. “Were you terminated?”
His question jolted her. “Oh no, I wasn’t fired. I found out that my mother had cancer and I came back to take care of her.”
He gave no indication of what he was thinking when he began to ask, “Did she—”
“Make it?” Kayley supplied, guessing at what the doctor was about to ask. She shook her head. “No, she didn’t.”
“Oh.” That wasn’t what he’d been expecting to hear. Over the last nine months, he felt as if everyone had gone on with their lives and he was the only one to have faced such a glaring loss.
The situation felt awkward and for a moment, he had no idea what to say. Finally, he told her, “Well, at least you got to be with her before she passed on.” With all his heart, he wished that he had had that same good fortune. There were so many things that had been left unsaid. He would have given anything to have had even just one last day with Jill.
But that simply wasn’t in the cards.
“Yes, I did,” Kayley replied. What else could she have said? she
