me about it,” she murmured under her breath as Jake moved back into his cubicle.
She had no idea what Dave’s number was, but she assumed that, as an M.D., he had to be listed somewhere. Starting out in the most obvious place, she did a people search through the white pages. The effort took several tries, but ultimately, she came away a winner.
Dialing the phone quickly, she was connected to Dave’s office in less than a minute. And then she got to listen to an answering machine. He wasn’t in, which only made sense since she’d just seen him at the clinic. His message said his office was closed today.
“Better than nothing,” she murmured under her breath with far less enthusiasm than usual as she waited for the outgoing message to end.
If Dave didn’t call her back by tonight, she was fairly sure she could find his private number using some creative methods on her laptop at home.
The beep sounded in her ear and she started talking. “Hi, Dave, it’s Kara. Remember I said that I’d take that favor out in trade? Well, trading time just arrived. We need to talk. Call me.” She rattled off both her cell phone number and the number to her landline in her apartment.
Hanging up, Kara smiled to herself, relishing her plan. Once it got rolling, it would be just what the doctor ordered, she thought, feeling very confident about the outcome. This was going to teach her mother—and possibly Dave’s—never to even think about matchmaking again.
Dave was more than a little surprised, when he picked up his messages that evening, to find Kara’s among them. Not only was it the only phone message that didn’t describe some symptom in depth, but he and she hadn’t had any contact in—what, eighteen?—years, and now twice in one day?
Exactly what was up and why did he feel so uneasy about it?
Dropping his mail onto the coffee table, Dave made his way over to the phone on the kitchen wall.
“Only one way to find out,” he said aloud. But even so, he didn’t begin dialing immediately.
It wasn’t that he wanted to renege on the unofficial agreement to reciprocate when she asked. After all, Kara had produced the much sought after game. Then again, how hard could it be for her? She did work for the company that put it out.
Still, she didn’t have to deliver it herself—or even give him the game in the first place. Once upon a time, he would have bet his last dime that she wouldn’t have given him the time of day, much less gone out of her way, to bring him something he needed.
He also wouldn’t have thought that there was a kind bone in her excessively skinny little body. But her treatment of Gary in the waiting room showed him he’d been wrong in his assessment of her. Or at least the “new” her.
No, none of that was holding him back from immediately keeping his word. What was stopping him was the hour. He’d just walked in and it was after eleven. Added to that, he was bone tired.
He had no one to blame for that but himself, he thought. Himself and the endless line of sick people who just kept on coming. Clarice had finally closed the doors two hours later than the clinic’s official closing time. And he’d gone on treating patients until there was no one left in the stale-smelling waiting room.
Now, two steps beyond dead tired, he was too exhausted to even get anything to eat out of the refrigerator. One way to lose weight, he mused. That sandwich Kara had pulled out of her magic bag was practically the only solid thing he had to eat all day until Clarice had called her grandson to bring some food from the Thai takeout place in her neighborhood. He hadn’t really recognized what he’d eaten, but whatever it was had substance to it and ultimately had helped to keep him going, which was what counted.
His mind came back full circle to Kara. Okay, she’d given him a game and her sandwich. If nothing else, that meant he needed to return her phone call.
And if, God willing, she didn’t answer, well, at least he was on record for trying. Recorded record. He punched out her numbers on the keypad and crossed his fingers that she didn’t answer, but he might as well have saved himself the trouble. Kara picked up her phone on the second ring.
“Hello?”
Her voice sounded a bit sleepy, he thought. An image of Kara in bed, wearing nothing but the moonlight breaking through her window, suddenly popped up in his head.
He really needed that social life he was sorely missing out on.
“Hello?” he heard her say again.
He dove in. “Kara, it’s Dave. You called.”
At the sound of his voice, Kara dragged herself up into a sitting position. She’d fallen asleep on her sofa, playing a portable version of the game that was bedeviling her and the staff she supervised. She struggled to clear the fog from her brain. She didn’t even remember shutting her eyes.
Squinting, she tried to make out the time on the cable box across the room. The numbers swam around, and she gave up.
“Right. I called,” she murmured, dragging her hand through her hair, trying to figuratively drag her thoughts together at the same time.
“About anything in particular?” Dave pressed. She sounded sluggish. He thought back and couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t going ninety miles an hour. “Because if this can wait, or you just called to yank my chain, it’s been a really long day and I’ve got an early call tomorrow in the hospital—”
She wasn’t about to give him a chance to hang up. From the sound of it, she was going to have to make an appointment to talk to him on the phone if she didn’t speak up quickly. So she did. “Our mothers are trying to set us up.”
“What? With who?” he asked incredulously.
Was he kidding? “What do you mean, with who? With each other. At least,” she amended, backtracking just a step, “I know mine is, and whatever mine does, yours usually does, too.”
When did this happen? It wasn’t making any sense. She must have made a mistake. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.
She took a breath and explained how she’d come to this conclusion. “After I came back from your clinic, my mother called me at work to see if I’d given you the game.”
“She obviously knows how dependable you are,” he observed dryly.
Her back instantly went up. “I’ll have you know that I am—Never mind.”
This wasn’t the time to allow herself to get into an argument with him. They were both tired. Things could be said that couldn’t be retracted. The best way to prevent that was not to start anything at all. Besides, she had a far more important point to get to. She couldn’t allow herself to get sidetracked.
“Anyway, she wanted to know how you looked. More accurately, she wanted to know what I thought of the way you looked.”
So far, he wasn’t hearing anything that should have set off any whirling red lights for her. “Natural question,” he commented. “We haven’t seen each other in almost two decades.”
She stopped her narrative, struggling
