Instant Gratification
Page 14

He had to laugh. “You ever slow down and smell the roses, Doc?”
“I’m not a roses kind of woman.”
“How about relaxing?” he asked, thinking he figured he knew the answer. She wasn’t much into that either.
“Relaxing bores me.”
“How about fun. Do you ever have fun?”
“Yes,” she said. “But not when I’m three thousand miles from home, in a town that pays in cholesterol-laden casseroles and looks at me like I’m an alien.”
An uptight, anal, sleeping lion, with teeth. “I don’t look at you like you’re an alien,” he said.
“Yes, but you don’t count.”
“Why don’t I count?”
She hesitated. “Because you look at me in a different way.”
“Like?”
“Like…” Interestingly enough, she blushed.
“Like I’m attracted to you?” he pressed, amused.
Her eyes met his. “Yes. Like that.”
“Because I am. Very much.”
She eyed him a long beat before hopping up into his truck without a word. Not exactly a glowing recommendation but she hadn’t slammed the door on that admitted attraction either, a fact he decided meant good things.
Or so he hoped.
Chapter 5
Emma’s dad had called her twice, and she’d missed both calls, so that night she hopped into his spare truck to go visit him.
His small, remote cabin was outside of town, about ten miles up a dirt road on the shores of Jackson Lake, where he spent his days rehabbing by fly-fishing to his heart’s content.
The problem wasn’t the dirt road, or the ten miles.
Okay, that was the problem. As was the fact that she drove like shit.
She didn’t drive in New York, though she did have her license. She actually liked to drive, but she didn’t have much opportunity to do so.
Until she’d come here. First of all, the truck was huge. And crotchety. And not exactly easy to handle. She held her breath each of the ten miles, but luckily it was a dry day and she managed only one or two near misses with wayward branches, and that one kamikaze squirrel, but they’d both survived.
By the time she arrived, she was sweating buckets and her father was just coming in from fishing. He was medium built, with only a slight pudge to belie his years. He had a full head of curly gray hair that stuck straight up, whether from its own mind or lack of a brush, she had no idea. “You called. Twice.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to…connect. See if you were doing okay.”
“That was my question for you.”
“I’m doing good. The clinic driving you crazy?”
“No.” A lie.
He just looked at her, patient. Understanding. And she caved. “Yes.”
He smiled sympathetically. “Sorry. I know it’s a different pace than you’re used to. I guess I was hoping you’d enjoy it.”
“Jury is still out,” she said kindly. No use in telling him how restless she felt. “I brought more casseroles. The healthy ones.”
“I like the unhealthy ones better.” He had laughing eyes and an easy smile, but she didn’t find this funny.
“No fat,” she said, and he sighed.
“Your medical records?” she asked, as she did every visit.
“I forgot. Next time,” he said as he did every visit.
After the initial pleasantries, they stood inside his cabin, him in his fishing vest, she in the doctor coat she’d forgotten to remove, staring awkwardly at each other.
She wondered, as she did every single day—why had she come?
Because for better or worse, they were all each other had. In spite of being all work and no play, that meant something to her.
He meant something to her.
They had nothing in common, nothing to talk about, and he didn’t have cable, but they were family.
That didn’t mean that they actually liked each other. Truthfully, he looked just as grateful as she felt when she left.
She sweated off another two pounds on the way back, and then stayed up late reading some medical journals and eating a mystery casserole from the freezer. It was one that had looked like maybe it was too high in fat content for her father, and as she chewed she could feel her arteries clog up as she gained back her two pounds.
Damn, she needed something to do other than eat, but Wishful tended to roll up its collective sidewalks at sunset. The baby delivery today had been great, but that had been the only exciting thing to happen to her in days. Weeks.
Two months.
Already she was drowning in boredom again, as in head under, going down for the count, drowning.
She didn’t want to resent her father for this, she really didn’t. It wasn’t his fault he’d had a heart attack, that he needed help to keep this place going until he made a full recovery.
Or that they were all each other had left, which essentially meant he was as stuck with her as she was with him.
Nope, she didn’t blame him. She just wished things were different. Wished she could look at his records and make sure he was recouping okay, or if there was something—anything—she could do to expedite it.
She had far too much time to obsess over that. Too much time for everything, especially at night when she had nothing left to do except watch the one channel she got—which ran nothing but screwball romantic comedies.
Her mom would be pestering her to get the hell out. God, she missed that noisy, pushy, bossy woman with her whole heart. Sandy wouldn’t be happy to know Emma was here, not one little bit.