time of the year, had made the visit even more painful.
Still, she had to get used to being around preteens and babies. Not only because she had stepsiblings and a new half brother or sister on the way, but because in less than forty-eight hours she would begin practice at White Pine Lake Community Health Center, and that meant treating everyone, young and old, who walked through its doors. Whether she felt ready for the challenge or not.
And Callie truly had no idea what she was walking into. Gail Wilberforce, the fiftysomething veteran certified nurse practitioner at the clinic, had up and eloped with a golf pro and moved with him to North Carolina. So a physician’s assistant she’d never met was staffing the clinic—one Zach Gibson, former navy combat medic.
Her dad said Zach was one heck of a nice guy, but the practice required more than just one PA. They needed a doctor—they needed Callie.
Since Callie had the summer off—her first ever, she thought with a pang—and since the clinic was dedicated to her grandparents, who had worked for years to see it built and staffed, and since her dad was now the president of the Physician’s Committee, she couldn’t say no. Even though it was the last place in the world she wanted to start her professional life.
But she was a Layman. There had been Laymans in White Pine Lake for a hundred years, and all of them had done whatever they could for the town. So here she was, a freshly minted M.D. with no real-world experience to speak of, about to step into the most frightening situation she could imagine—being responsible for the health and well-being of people she’d known all her life on top of being thrust into partnership with a man the whole town considered a bona fide war hero.
Describing Zachary Gibson as battle hardened wasn’t a cliché. It was the plain, unvarnished truth. After two tours of duty in Afghanistan and an honorable discharge from the military, he’d moved to Petoskey and begun working with one of the staff surgeons at the hospital there. He had military decorations and commendations and a 4.0 grade-point average during his medical training, as well as glowing recommendations from his boss, a hotshot neurosurgeon.
Her dad had told her all of this, proudly believing such a résumé would sweeten the deal for Callie to take over as the clinic’s doctor. Unfortunately, it only added to her insecurity. On paper, at least, she was the physician in charge, the boss, but deep down inside where it really mattered she wasn’t so sure of herself. She was the rookie, the one with no street smarts and little small-town-practice experience. She was afraid it wouldn’t take long for her combat-tested PA to figure out he was the one really running the show.
* * *
ZACH GIBSON WONDERED what the hell else could go wrong today. It was Saturday. He was supposed to be out on the lake in the small aluminum boat that came with the tiny, amenity-scarce cottage he rented, watching the sunset, swatting mosquitoes, hoping to latch onto a keeper walleye or a couple of nice bluegill and perch to fry up for his dinner. Fishing usually put him in a great mood, let him concentrate on his thoughts, and this afternoon’s outing was supposed to have given him a chance to make a game plan for Monday morning. Should he show up for work in khakis and a nice shirt to impress the new boss, or stay with his usual T-shirt and fatigues beneath his white coat, silently making a stand for doing his own thing right from the start?
Instead he was ankle-deep in water in the middle of the clinic lab, wielding the hose of an industrial vacuum cleaner in hopes of keeping the floor tiles from buckling, ready to duck and cover if the ceiling caved in. From the size of the increasing bulge in the tiles above his head, his buddy Rudy Koslowski hadn’t yet found the leak in the sprinkler system that had caused the damage in the first place and shut it down.
So much for making a gonzo first impression on the new M.D. He’d be lucky now if they could even open the clinic for regular hours Monday morning. Mercifully the plastic cover they used to keep dust off the X-ray machine had saved it, but the computer system was gone and all the supplies in the lower cupboards were waterlogged and probably ruined. They would have lost all the temperature-sensitive medications and vaccines stored in the ten-year-old fridge as well if he hadn’t decided to come check on a few things before he went fishing. And he didn’t even want to think about what kind of mess they’d be in if the water had gotten high enough to reach the shelves of patient records stored in the room next to where he was standing. Thankfully, only the oldest records, the ones waiting to be purged and shredded, had gotten wet, and then only the plastic containers that they’d been stored in. Still, the containers would have to be checked to make sure there weren’t any cracks in the plastic or partially opened lids that had let water get inside.
Any plans he had of spending the rest of the weekend fishing sank like a stone tossed into the waters of White Pine Lake.
When he’d come in and discovered the flooding, he’d shut off the electricity and the propane supply and called Rudy. That was four hours ago. He’d been on damage control ever since.
Cold water began dripping on his head. He flipped the switch on the shop vac and took a prudent step to one side, wondering how much the exam rooms would have to be dried out. The emergency shutoff system seemed to have done its job in that part of the L-shaped building, and hopefully Burt Abrahms from the hardware store would show up soon with some extra extension cords and a couple big fans to hurry along the process. If the ceiling didn’t collapse first.
“Rudy,” he yelled. “Why the heck isn’t the water off? The ceiling’s ready to cave in. It’s looking like the last few minutes of the Titanic in here.”
“Good heavens,” a shocked female voice responded—not his handyman’s. “What happened?”
Zach didn’t make the mistake of thinking she was a tourist who had wandered inside. Though they’d never been introduced, he’d noticed her picture on the wall in the White Pine Lake Bar and Grill, and most recently on the front page of the White Pine Lake Flag in an article announcing her graduation from the University of Michigan Medical School.
Dr. Callie Layman, M.D., wasn’t supposed to arrive in town until tomorrow. But here she was.
He’d been wondering what else could go wrong. Now he had his answer.
“Broken water line in the sprinkler system, ma’am,” he said, eight years of military protocol kicking in. “Situation’s under control.”
She raised one hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the harsh emergency lighting and gave him a skeptical look. “It doesn’t appear to be under control at all, as far as I can see.”
Something in her cool, detached tone and her equally cool, detached appearance—despite the fact that she had apparently just driven over three hundred miles in hot July weather—rankled, but Zach stopped himself from snapping his reply. “We’ll be open for business by Monday morning. I give you my word, Dr. Layman.”
She gave him another sharp glance. “Have we met?”
“No,” he admitted. No reason to be churlish. He held out his hand after wiping it dry on his shorts. “I’m Zach Gibson, your PA. Welcome back to White Pine Lake.”
She wasn’t as tall as he was, but she wasn’t a short woman, either. He guessed about five foot seven or eight, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds. Her mouth was thinner than he preferred on a woman, but a rounded chin and a nose that could only be called “pert” softened the overall contours of her face, framed by cinnamon-brown hair. Her eyes were hazel, big and fringed with long, gold-tipped lashes, and saved her from being plain. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous. Many wouldn’t even call her pretty, but for some reason he’d found her face interesting in photographs—at least in the
