at the officers’ quarters near the base hospital.”
“You work too hard, Sug,” Freckles said, rubbing her niece’s shoulder. Julia, who normally tried to remain as reserved as possible, had difficulty not leaning in to the comforting motion. “And you gotta eat sometime. In those blue hospital scrubs and that cardigan, you look like you haven’t got a curve to your name. Isn’t there a nice doctor or admiral or someone you could go out to dinner with?”
“I don’t need a man to take me to dinner.”
“Hmph.” Had her aunt just snorted? “I don’t know if I mentioned this yet, but the town of Sugar Falls puts on a big to-do at the end of the year to raise money for the hospital. Since you’re one of the new surgeons and an official resident of Sugar Falls, the committee is going to expect you to be there as a guest of honor. With a plus-one, if you know what I’m saying?”
Guest of honor? A plus-one? Julia’s stomach twisted and her forehead grew damp, despite the fact that the early November sun still hadn’t peeked out of the clouds. She was pretty sure her aunt was suggesting she’d need to find a date, which was much easier said than done. Besides, Julia never wanted to show her face in the town of Sugar Falls again.
“Oh, look,” Freckles continued. “Here comes Kane now. Smile and try not to look so dang serious.”
Julia’s insides felt tighter than a newly strung cello as she turned around to await the contractor who would be doing the remodeling work on her new home—if his estimate was reasonable. Yet before she could formulate her plan to refrain from shoveling out piles of her inheritance to someone in order to avoid the hassle of negotiating, she recognized the familiar gray flannel shirt, and her heart dropped.
Oh no. Please, no. This can’t be happening to me.
The man hadn’t seemed quite as tall when he’d been sitting in that booth back at the Cowgirl Up Café, but his broad shoulders and chest looked just as muscular as they’d felt twenty minutes ago. He moved with long, purposeful strides that ate up the sidewalk, and Julia didn’t know whether she should meet him halfway and beg him not to mention the choking incident to Freckles, or whether she should hide in the overgrown azalea bush.
In the end, she was too mortified to do either. Her aunt motioned the man up the uneven cement path and onto the porch. “Kane Chatterson, meet my favorite grandniece, Dr. and Captain Julia Fitzgerald.”
The pride in her aunt’s voice blossomed inside Julia’s chest, nearly shadowing the lingering shame. Or was that just her elevated heartbeat?
“I’m your only niece,” Julia said, trying to lighten things up with a joke, but she succeeded only in making her nerves feel more weighed down. She cleared her throat and looked at Kane. “We weren’t formally introduced earlier.”
God, she hoped this man didn’t spill the beans to her aunt. His sunglasses shaded his eyes, and he certainly wasn’t smirking now, making it impossible for Julia to figure out if he was annoyed, amused or biding his time until Freckles left and he could tell her that she and her contracting job weren’t worth the trouble.
But Kane Chatterson simply gave her a brief, unsmiling nod before asking, “Do I call you Doctor or Captain?”
“Call me just Julia. Please.” She reached out her hand to shake his, and he gripped her fingers quickly, his warm calluses leaving an imprint on her palms. As a medical professional, she had no rational or scientific explanation for the shiver that vibrated down her spine. As a woman, her only explanation was that this new sensation was most likely the result of her aunt’s fresh lecture on dating. And possibly the fact that she hadn’t been this attracted to a man since...ever.
“Just Julia,” he replied. But still no smile.
She looked at her watch. She’d be out of here in ten minutes. Surely, she could pretend to be a normal, successful woman for another ten minutes.
“What do you mean, you weren’t formally introduced earlier?” Damn. Aunt Freckles didn’t miss a thing.
“We, uh, spoke briefly at the Cowgirl Up Café when our orders got mixed up this morning,” Kane told her aunt. The faint dusting of copper-colored stubble on his square jaw made it too difficult to tell if the man was actually blushing.
“Yeah, I figured the new waitress I hired wasn’t quite ready for me to leave her on her own,” Freckles replied, then turned to Julia and gave her a wink. “Seems like lots of people are getting stuff wrong this morning.”
“Here.” Julia handed the cell phone to her aunt, determined to prove that she hadn’t made a mistake. Or at least two of them. “It says right here on my calendar app that we were supposed to meet at the café.”
Since Freckles was busy tapping on the screen and Mr. Chatterson’s attention was on the yellow paint chipping off the wood siding of the house, Julia stole another look at his dour face. She’d been trying to save his life back at the café. Surely he couldn’t be irritated with her over that—unless the laughter she’d heard as she left the restaurant was directed at him. Maybe the guy’s ego had taken a hit. Or maybe his feet were cold and tired from walking all this way from the restaurant.
Julia glanced down at the scuffed cowboy boots. No, that sturdy, worn leather looked like they’d been walked in quite a lot. So his stiff demeanor most likely wasn’t the result of sore feet. She allowed her gaze to travel up his jeans-clad legs, past his untucked shirt and all the way to his green cap with the words Patterson’s Dairy embroidered in yellow on the front.
That funny tingling made its way down her spine again.
What was wrong with her? She didn’t stare at unsuspecting men or allow her body to get all jumbled full of hormones, no matter how good-looking they were. Julia reached up and tightened the elastic band in her hair, hoping he wouldn’t look over and catch her checking him out.
“Sug,” Aunt Freckles said, holding up the smartphone. “Somehow you managed to program the Cowgirl Up Café as the location for everything in your calendar this month—including five surgeries, two staff meetings, a seminar on neurological disorders and the Boise Philharmonic’s String Quintet.”
“Oh. Well, I haven’t had time to go over the new software update. Yet.” Julia waved her hand dismissively before powering off her screen. That wasn’t a real mistake. She had much more important things to accomplish than mastering some stupid scheduling app—like getting this tour underway if she wanted to report for duty on time. She pulled a key from the pocket of her cardigan sweater, the one Aunt Freckles said did nothing for her coloring or her figure, and asked Mr. Chatterson, “Would you like me to show you around inside?”
“I could probably figure it out on my own,” he said, then used the top step to wipe his boots as she unlocked the door. “But it wouldn’t hurt for you to tell me some of your ideas for the place.”
Well, wasn’t he being generous?
“Shouldn’t you grab a notepad?” Julia gestured toward his run-down truck-vehicle thing.
“Why?”
“So that you can take notes?”
“Don’t need to.”
“What about measurements? Surely you won’t be able to remember every little dimension.”
“No,
