“Frankly, the walls in this building are not all that thick. Even when you lower your voices,” he added significantly. “And tell…off-color jokes.”
Now it was her turn to flush, although she almost laughed outright at the same time. He must have heard the “plugged-in” joke Lois told her.
But so what, it was harmless. The effort to control her smile alerted him that she’d caught on to his reference.
He spoke up quickly. “It gets difficult at times to concentrate on my patients with—well, with all this loud laughter and chatter. You and Mrs. Brubaker seem to forget this is not a sorority house.”
“It’s Lois, not Mrs. Brubaker,” she retorted irritably. “And I was a full-time working student in nursing school, so I’d know nothing about sorority life.”
As I’m sure you do, golden boy, she almost added, barely catching herself in time.
Her comment, and tone of hurt dignity, forced him into momentary silence.
She felt anger hammer at her temples. Just like all the other male doctors she knew, he was a buttoned-down, wind-up medical doll who could shatter a person’s self-esteem just as effortlessly as tie up a suture. Was he up twenty minutes early this morning to pick those damned lilacs in the waiting room? But he acted as if such things just happened by magic, not even a polite thank-you. Humor was her only “perk” around here—and only a jerk would begrudge it to her.
But she cooled off a bit during his silence. “Lois and I like to have a little harmless fun,” she informed him with cold precision. “The time passes faster that way.”
Obviously hearing the rough bristles in her tone, he arched his eyebrows. His mouth set itself in a grim, straight line of disapproval.
“Having fun,” he lectured her, “isn’t the point of this clinic. We’re supposed to be health professionals. Frankly, I worry what the patients think about our staff.”
“Dr. Saville, I realize you completed your medical studies and residency in Chicago. But this is Mystery, Montana, population four thousand. Your patients are my neighbors, folks I’ve grown up with all my life. They like the staff.”
If a voice could frown, his did now. “I have a solid grasp of my location, Miss O’Reilly—I deliberately picked this town, I didn’t just stick a pin in the map.”
“I confess I can’t see why it appealed to you,” she told him boldly. But she didn’t quite have the courage to add, After all, we’re not royalty here.
“Look, no offense intended—”
“Well, plenty is taken,” she assured him, feeling the warmth of anger in her face and scalp. “You’ve made your point, Doctor. I’ve duly noted the fact that laughter and smiles irritate you. Now, unless you have more complaints I’d like to finish my inventory of the medical supplies.”
For a moment there Rebecca would have sworn his ultracontrolled face showed a flicker of angry animation. If so, the chiseled-coin image was immediately back in place.
“The other complaints can wait,” he assured her.
Dr. Dry-As-Dust. That’s what Lois had nicknamed their stiffly choreographed boss. But all that disappeared, Rebecca reminded herself, the moment some sleek socialite in a fox jacket cape showed up. Then suddenly he became the essence of charm and joie de vivre.
She stepped out of his office, shutting the door harder than necessary, and immediately made eye contact with Lois, just then turning away from the reception window with the day’s mail.
Rebecca waited until she was a few safe steps from the rear office. Then she made a fist and smote her head in jest. Close enough to Lois now that she knew Dr. Saville couldn’t hear her from his office, she said in a stage whisper, “Forgive me, Doctor, for I have sinned.”
Immediately Lois looked horrified, and Rebecca remembered too late how quietly his door opened. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder and saw him only five feet behind her, staring with eyes like hard blue gems. Obviously he overheard her wisecrack.
Miraculously she was reprieved by the telephone on her desk.
“I’ll get it, Lo,” she called too eagerly at Lois. Even as she hurried to her desk, face flaming, John Saville turned on his heel and retreated into his office again, slamming the door even more loudly than Rebecca had.
“Doctor Saville’s office,” she answered the phone somewhat breathlessly. “Rebecca O’Reilly speaking.”
“What’s going on, pecan?” a throaty voice greeted her.
“Hazel, hi.”
“You sound as if you’ve been jogging.”
“I ran to the phone,” she explained. Looking at the closed door, she rolled her eyes. “And I’m sure glad you called.”
“Why? Don’t tell me you’re actually hoping I need a doctor?”
Rebecca’s voice turned serious. “You don’t, do you?”
“Honey, since my surgery I’m fit as a fiddle,” the notorious cattle baroness assured her. “I just called to shoot the breeze.”
Rebecca felt a weight lift from her. Her mother had died from a brain tumor while Rebecca was still in junior high school. With her father’s job as a freelance security consultant keeping him on the road constantly, Hazel had practically adopted her, even insisting that she stay out at the ranch when her father was gone. She still missed her mother fiercely, and the thought of anything happening to Hazel was like a cold hand wrapping her heart.
“Actually,” Hazel confessed, “I’m curious as the dickens to know how your love life is getting on. Did that good-looking sales rep fellow ever ask you out? The blond who drives the Town Car?”
“No, and he’d better not. His flirting was all a smoke screen.”
“No fire behind the smoke, you mean?”
“No, a wife behind the smoke, I mean. Last time he was here he forgot to take his wedding band off the way he usually does. Horny creep.”
Hazel sighed at her end. “It’s true, isn’t it? The real hunks are either married, gay or cowboys.”
Or snobs suffering from a bad case of “It’s all about me!” Rebecca added inwardly, her glance sliding toward John Saville’s closed door. Still pouting in his office, she told herself. At least she knew this conversation was safe from his sonar ears—her private line was separate from his.
“So how do you like your new boss?” Hazel probed as if plucking Rebecca’s thoughts from her mind.
“I don’t. For such a young man, he’s sure an old sobersides. At least with his co-workers. Or should I say, with his servant staff. It’s funny. I mean, he replaced Dr. Winthrop, but he seems even older. And, heavens, cranky? He’s always got his nose out of joint about something.”
“Well, I met him briefly at the reception Dottie Bryce hosted for him. I didn’t get that
