red and hurt. Mommy had to pour this stuff on—”
“Hydrogen peroxide,” Courtney said when Janie glanced at her for clarification.
“Then she put on cream and I got a Band-Aid.”
“Your mom did just the right thing,” David said.
Courtney felt the power of his praise course through her but that made no sense. Why should it make any difference to her whether or not he approved? And yet it did. How irritating was that? The good news was that Janie had been successfully distracted.
“You’ll heal faster if these cuts don’t get any germs in them,” he explained.
“You have to sew up my boo-boo?” she asked.
He thought for a moment. “I have to pull the edges together so it heals neatly.”
“Are you gonna use a big needle? Like the one my mommy uses to fix my jeans?”
His face was intensely serious as he answered the question. “I’m not sure what your mom uses for that,” he said, “but for what I’m going to do we need everything as small as possible.”
“’Cuz I’m small?”
Courtney’s throat tightened with emotion. Her child was too small to go through this, she thought. She knew she should say something, but couldn’t get anything past the lump in her throat. Some pillar of strength she was.
David’s sharp-eyed gaze seemed to pick up on her state of mind. “Janie, even if you were as big as Shrek I would use very tiny stuff.”
“How come?”
“Because tiny stuff will make the scar almost invisible.”
“So that stuff is magic?”
“In the right hands it is.”
Courtney looked at his long, elegant gloved fingers. “Are your hands magic?”
“Yes.” He smiled.
His tone wasn’t arrogant, just matter-of-fact. There was nothing even remotely sensual or suggestive in his response or the way he looked at her, but Courtney felt that smile dance over her skin and touch her everywhere. She swore she felt tingles and considering her opinion of this man, he wielded some kind of powerful magic.
“You said ‘almost’ invisible. That means a little bit visible,” she said, glancing at Janie.
“It does.” He glanced at Janie, too, gauging her reaction. “Believe it or not, there’s some good news.”
“I could sure use some of that,” Courtney answered, and she’d never meant anything more in her entire life.
With a gloved finger, he pointed to the long gash on her chin. “Because this is on the jawline, it will be practically unnoticeable under her chin. Her ear, while exceptionally lovely and delicate, has creases and folds.”
“Like Mr. Potato Head?” Janie asked.
David laughed. “You’re much prettier than he is. But here’s the thing, ears have lots of places to hide the sutures. And so does your eye—a natural fold between your eyelid and brow bone. It’s a matter of using what nature gave you for camouflage. All of that makes my job easier.”
Courtney was relieved to hear that, but wondered if he took the easy way out in his personal life, too. It was as if he was all about how things appeared on the outside. He’d come home for his mother’s funeral, then his father’s. But nothing in between. She’d known James Wilder pretty well. For some reason the man had taken an interest in her and Janie and his passing left a big hole in her life. But while his father was still alive, David never came to visit. It wasn’t a stretch to conclude that he didn’t take after the elder Dr. Wilder who’d cared more about the inside of people than the outside.
“Okay, Janie, I’m going to start. Are you ready to hold still again?”
“You don’t need a nurse?” Courtney asked.
He shook his head. “I’m used to working alone, and they’re busy.”
“Is it okay if I shut my eyes?” Janie said.
“If you want.”
Courtney wished she could shut her eyes too, but from where she was sitting in the chair, she couldn’t really see much anyway. Just the slow, methodical way his elegant hands moved. The suture material was so fine it was barely visible and he held it with forceps. Between the pain medication she’d received and being physically drained from what she’d been through, Janie actually drifted off while David worked.
He might not be much like his father, but he was really good with her daughter. It seemed natural, something she wouldn’t have expected. “Where did you learn to get along with kids?”
His gaze met hers briefly. “I was one once.”
So was she. About a million years ago. On second thought, she didn’t actually remember being a kid. It seemed as if she’d always been the grown-up, handling one crisis after another when her father was too drunk even to take care of himself.
But if David had taken a course in med school on how to charm children, apparently he’d aced it. The man was putting sutures in Janie’s chin and she trusted him enough to fall asleep. The ability to do that didn’t mesh with what little Courtney knew about him.
“But you’re not a kid now,” she said. That was the understatement of the century. He was a man who sprinkled sex appeal like fairy dust wherever he went, if tabloid stories linking him to models and actresses were anything to go by. “And you didn’t talk down to her.”
“Kids know when you do that. They don’t like it.”
She actually laughed. “That’s true.”
Who’d have thought anyone could make her laugh under the circumstances? Maybe he was magic. That thought made her uneasy and when she was uneasy it was time to fall back on defenses.
“So why did you agree to look at Janie?” she asked.
He glanced at her. “Because my sister called.”
“But you’re not helping your sister. Janie and I are total strangers to you.” And from what she gathered, his family wasn’t too much more to him. Yet he was here because Ella called. By any definition that was a nice thing. Men who did nice things usually wanted something and she wasn’t comfortable with that kind of balance sheet.
“Let’s just say this is the least I can do for the widow and daughter of a war hero,” he said.
Courtney cringed at his words. It was what everyone thought, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. The anger welled up and after a day like today she didn’t have the emotional reserves to bite her tongue.
“Joining the army wasn’t about truth, justice and the American way for Joe. My husband was a lot of things, but noble wasn’t one of them.”
David’s
