Meagan McKinney – The M.d. Courts His Nurse (страница 2)

She nodded. Even now, after two weeks of working with him, his imperious, autocratic manner struck her as more appropriate to a dictator than a doctor. Especially since she’d already had plenty of experience with men who treated her like a lump of gravel on their launch pads.

My word, she thought, we’ve been working together day in and day out, and he’s still “Doctor,” his office nurse still “Miss O’Reilly.” All the stilted formality made him seem intent on reminding others of their subordinate place in life. And, oh how she hated it.

She stood, sorely missing retired Paul Winthrop’s old-world charm and easy smile. He never made her or anyone else feel as if they belonged to an inferior caste.

“Of course, Doctor,” she replied, knowing full well what was coming. She watched his ramrod-straight back retreat down the hall toward his private office at the rear.

“Sorry, Becky,” Lois told her, keeping her voice down. “I should’ve saved the joke for lunchtime.”

“Oh, baloney,” she assured the office manager. “We weren’t doing anything wrong. Laughter is good medicine, right? I’m sick of the way he acts as if this place is a funeral home. Cover my phone for me, Lo?”

Lois nodded. She was in her late thirties with stiffly sculpted blond hair and a pleasant face. “Now remember you’ve got that hair-trigger Irish temper,” she cautioned her younger co-worker. “He’s still new, we’ll have to break him in gradually.”

Rebecca stood up, smoothing her skirt with both hands.

John Saville had left the door open for her. He stood poker rigid in front of his neat desk, arms folded over his chest.

For an absurd moment she felt as if she was back in high school, reporting to the principal’s office. Except that Mr. McNulty wasn’t a bronzed hunk and a half who wore hand-sewn silk ties and Bond Street jackets.

“Yes, Doctor?” she said from the doorway.

His stern visage seemed to rearrange itself in surprise as his gaze took in this full-frontal view of her in the soft, indirect lighting. Unlike hospital nurses, she was not required to wear a uniform, and for a few moments he studied her plum-colored V-neck dress with its wide, flowing skirt. As usual, her long, chestnut hair was combed back and held in place with barrettes. The hairstyle only highlighted her brow, now furrowed in irritation, and eyes that were once called “snapping-blue.”

“You wanted to see me?” she prompted again.

“Yes, right—of course.” He seemed to collect himself, and the stiff formality was back. “Please come in.”

She did, but he remained standing so she did, too.

The window beside his double row of file cabinets was cracked open a few inches. It was early May, and though the nights still had a nip to them, the days were sunny and growing warmer. Outside, the box elders and dogwoods that grew throughout Mystery were budding into leaf.

“Miss O’Reilly,” he began again, gathering steam now, “would it be at all possible for you and Mrs. Brubaker to practice a bit more…professional decorum on the job?”

She remembered Lois’s warning—and even with her heart speeding up, she admitted she really did have a temper.

But beneath all the anger was a tightly coiled spring of hurt and rejection. It hadn’t been quite six months since Brian had finished his medical internship and dropped her like a bad habit.

It took conscious self-control when she replied, “I’m not sure what you mean, Dr. Saville, by professional decorum.”

“What I mean,” he said tightly, “is that you both need to be more professional about your work. Is that clear enough?”

His tone instantly made her combative. But she remembered to let the first flush of anger pass before she answered. “Is there some problem with my competence as a nurse? Or Lo’s as office manager?”

“Competence?” he repeated. That deep crease between his eyebrows was back as he frowned at her question.

“Yes. I mean, are there problems with medical mistakes? Or have any patients complained about my manner?”

“Well…no. It’s nothing like that. Just as Dr. Winthrop assured me, you are quite efficient and knowledgeable. You and Mrs. Brubaker both. It’s just…”

“Just what, Doctor?”

His glance touched her and quickly slid away. Now, as he finally remembered his specific grievance, a little irritation seeped into his tone.

“Frankly, the walls in this building are not all that thick. Even when you lower your voices,” he added significantly. “And tell…off-color jokes.”

Now it was her turn to flush, although she almost laughed outright at the same time. He must have heard the “plugged-in” joke Lois told her.

But so what, it was harmless. The effort to control her smile alerted him that she’d caught on to his reference.

He spoke up quickly. “It gets difficult at times to concentrate on my patients with—well, with all this loud laughter and chatter. You and Mrs. Brubaker seem to forget this is not a sorority house.”

“It’s Lois, not Mrs. Brubaker,” she retorted irritably. “And I was a full-time working student in nursing school, so I’d know nothing about sorority life.”

As I’m sure you do, golden boy, she almost added, barely catching herself in time.

Her comment, and tone of hurt dignity, forced him into momentary silence.

She felt anger hammer at her temples. Just like all the other male doctors she knew, he was a buttoned-down, wind-up medical doll who could shatter a person’s self-esteem just as effortlessly as tie up a suture. Was he up twenty minutes early this morning to pick those damned lilacs in the waiting room? But he acted as if such things just happened by magic, not even a polite thank-you. Humor was her only “perk” around here—and only a jerk would begrudge it to her.

But she cooled off a bit during his silence. “Lois and I like to have a little harmless fun,” she informed him with cold precision. “The time passes faster that way.”

Obviously hearing the rough bristles in her tone, he arched his eyebrows. His mouth set itself in a grim, straight line of disapproval.

“Having fun,” he lectured her, “isn’t the point of this clinic. We’re supposed to be health professionals. Frankly, I worry what the patients think about our staff.”

“Dr. Saville, I realize you completed your medical studies and residency in Chicago. But this is Mystery, Montana, population four thousand. Your patients are my neighbors, folks I’ve grown up with all my life. They like the staff.”

If a voice could frown, his did now. “I have a solid grasp of my location, Miss O’Reilly—I deliberately picked this town, I didn’t just stick a pin in the map.”

“I confess I can’t see why it appealed to you,” she told him boldly. But she didn’t quite have the courage to add, After all, we’re not royalty here.

“Look, no offense intended—”

“Well, plenty is taken,” she assured him, feeling the warmth of anger in her face and scalp. “You’ve made your point, Doctor. I’ve duly noted the fact that laughter and smiles irritate you. Now, unless you have more complaints I’d like to finish my inventory of the medical supplies.”

For a moment there Rebecca would have sworn his ultracontrolled face showed a flicker of angry animation. If so, the chiseled-coin image was immediately back in place.

“The other complaints can wait,” he assured her.

Dr. Dry-As-Dust. That’s what Lois had nicknamed their stiffly choreographed boss. But all that disappeared, Rebecca reminded herself, the moment some sleek socialite in a fox jacket cape showed up. Then suddenly he became the essence of charm and joie de vivre.

She stepped out of his office, shutting the door harder than necessary, and immediately made eye contact with Lois, just then turning away from the reception window with the day’s mail.

Rebecca waited until she was a few safe steps from the rear office. Then she made a fist and smote her head in jest. Close enough to Lois now that she knew Dr. Saville couldn’t hear her from his office, she said in a stage whisper, “Forgive me, Doctor, for I have sinned.”

Immediately Lois looked horrified, and Rebecca remembered too late how quietly his door opened. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder and saw him only five feet behind her, staring with eyes like hard blue gems. Obviously he overheard her wisecrack.

Miraculously she was reprieved by the telephone on her desk.

“I’ll get it, Lo,” she called too eagerly at Lois. Even as she hurried to her desk, face flaming, John Saville turned on his heel and retreated into his office again, slamming the door even more loudly than Rebecca had.

“Doctor Saville’s office,” she answered the phone somewhat breathlessly. “Rebecca O’Reilly speaking.”

“What’s going on, pecan?” a throaty voice greeted her.

“Hazel, hi.”

“You sound as if you’ve been jogging.”

“I ran to the phone,” she explained. Looking at the closed door, she rolled her eyes. “And I’m sure glad you called.”

“Why? Don’t tell me you’re actually hoping I need a doctor?”

Rebecca’s voice turned serious. “You don’t, do you?”

“Honey, since my surgery I’m fit as a fiddle,” the notorious cattle baroness assured her. “I just called to shoot the breeze.”

Rebecca felt a weight lift from her. Her mother had died from a brain tumor while Rebecca was still in junior high school. With her father’s job as a freelance security consultant keeping him on the road constantly, Hazel had practically adopted her, even insisting that she stay out at the ranch when her father was gone. She still missed her mother fiercely, and the thought of anything happening to Hazel was like a cold hand wrapping her heart.