dimples were back on the receptionist. “It could be worse—it’s only two in the afternoon.”
“I know.” He touched the brim of his hat and headed back out to his truck. It stuck out like a sore thumb there, parked among the sleek Jaguars and shiny sports cars of all sorts. But he’d had his truck since high school. It’d outlasted college, marriage and his wife’s death. He wasn’t about to get a new vehicle to meet someone else’s preconceived notions of what a multimillionaire business owner should drive.
Because, most days, Josh didn’t feel like a multimillionaire business owner. Most days he was up by four checking on the cattle in the milking operations of the Calhoun Creamery farm. He got crap on his boots and broke a sweat nearly every day. The only break he got was times like now. He’d been on his way home from Washington, DC, after meeting with a lobbyist for the National Dairy Council about what regulations they wanted to see included in the FDA’s new organic standards.
As the owner of one of the largest dairies in the country and the CEO of the Calhoun Creamery, Josh’s word carried some weight in those discussions. It was the only time he left the dairy farm.
Sighing heavily, Josh fired up the old truck and merged back into the hell that was Chicago traffic. He hoped the Newport boys appreciated the sacrifices he was making. And he was thankful that the traffic was just bad enough that he had to really pay attention. People in Iowa did not run lights like they did in Chicago. There, when the light turned red, people stopped. Here, when the light turned red, people sped up. He almost got rear-ended three separate times because he couldn’t make himself run the red.
Finally, the new children’s hospital work site came into view. It didn’t look much like a children’s hospital at this point—half of the exterior didn’t even have walls. Josh studied his directions and saw that the receptionist had made a note that he was to pull down a side street and park in the back. She was a good receptionist. He almost wished that he’d been able to feel something for her. If he was going to be stuck in Chicago, a little distraction could go a long way.
He parked in the construction zone and there, at least, his truck blended in a little better. Josh made himself a promise. He would only stay in Chicago as long as it took to help the Newport boys get some of their issues sorted out. The moment he stopped being useful, he was out of there.
He’d worked too damned hard for a sense of equilibrium after Sydney’s death. He knew better than to tempt fate again, and he simply did not have the mental energy to let himself fall into another deep depression.
If it were anyone but the Newports, he wouldn’t be there.
But he was already there. So he better get this over with.
* * *
“But you understand that he’s not dead yet,” Dr. Lucinda Wilde said, trying her very best to keep a grip on her temper. She rarely got mad at patients—it was a waste of time and emotional energy. “I can only prolong his life if he stays in the hospital, under constant care. You do see that?”
Carson Newport stood to the doctor’s left, his hands on his hips and a determined set to his eyes. On the doctor’s right, Eve Winchester was glaring at Lucinda, her arms crossed and her brow furrowed with anger. All around them, the sounds of construction filled the air—as did dust. So much dust. She was going to have to shower before she went on her rounds again.
Lucinda had to hope that the construction materials being used here at the new children’s hospital weren’t carcinogenic. She vastly preferred her own hospital, where everything was already hospital-sterile. And she was not happy about having to leave her patients to trek halfway across town to mediate yet another dispute between the Newports and the Winchesters about her patient, Sutton Winchester.
Lucinda sighed and pushed her glasses back up her nose. She would have a better chance convincing a pack of wild dogs than Sutton Winchester’s children that the scion of the Winchester fortune needed to stay in the hospital.
Never in her nine years as a practicing oncologist had she run into such a stubborn set of relatives. She adored her job and Chicago, but days like these had her muttering “city folk” to herself and longing for the wide-open spaces of Cedar Point, Iowa. Even cows were more reasonable than this.
“I understand that you’re not interested in doing your job,” Eve Winchester said in a tight voice.
“There’s no need to be rude,” Carson Newport snapped. “The good doctor is doing her job. No one lives forever—especially not bitter old men.”
Eve wheeled on Carson and most likely would have demolished him in a verbal barrage of slings and arrows, but a voice interrupted them. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Lucinda froze. Absolutely, completely froze as a voice out of her past floated up from out of nowhere and made her blood run hot and cold at the same time.
It couldn’t be. It simply wasn’t possible that she’d heard him. Not after all this time. Not right now, when she was barely keeping herself together in the face of one of her most challenging cases yet.
But then Carson turned and said, “Josh!”
And a little bit of Lucinda died because she wasn’t imagining this. She couldn’t be. Josh Calhoun himself had walked out of her nightmares and into her line of sight.
Oh, God. Her breath caught in her throat as Josh approached. He looked exactly the same as he had the last time she’d seen him. He was wearing jeans and a red plaid shirt. His longish brown hair stuck out around the base of his ratty-looking ball cap that looked exactly like the one he’d worn every single day back in school.
No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be.
Josh Calhoun—a ghost from her past that she never wanted to face again—smiled widely at their small group.
Until his gaze landed on her.
Lucinda wasn’t surprised when that good-time grin of his died on the vine. After all, they hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms when Lucinda had made an absolute fool of herself on the worst day of her life and Josh had turned her down flat.
They stared at each other and Lucinda was at least a little relieved that he was just as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
And then everything got worse. Because Josh Calhoun, the boy who’d shattered her already broken heart, lifted one corner of his mouth in what she knew all too well was his real smile.
Oh. Oh, my. Something about him had changed. He was a little taller and a heck of a lot more broad in the shoulders. His chin was sharper now and his eyes...
Josh Calhoun had grown up.
Lucinda did not allow herself to feel a rush of instant attraction. Lust had no place in her life. It was an inconvenient emotion at best, and she only had so much emotional energy to spare after spending her days as the head of the oncology department at Midwest Regional Medical Center. She couldn’t waste a bit of it, certainly not on the likes of Josh Calhoun, the last person she had allowed herself to lust over.
But watching Josh’s lips curve into that real smile instead of the big one he used when he was befriending every single person in the room? Lust hit her low and hard, and she wasn’t ready for it. She wasn’t ready for him. Not now, not ever.
But
