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  “Better,” Callie said, grinning. Karen ate little meat. Callie had nothing against vegetables but she preferred some protein mixed in with them.

  “And I have a strawberry-rhubarb pie in the freezer. I’ll bake that for dessert.”

  “I’ll bring ice cream from Kilroy’s. I might not be able to get here early enough to make our own.”

  “Wonderful.” Karen shooed the chickens back toward their enclosure. They went, tails high and fluffed, ships under sail. “Call and let me know what day is good for you.”

  “I will, I promise. But it will probably be later in the week. Everything’s still pretty hectic at the clinic, and since I’ll be seeing regular patients for the first time, the visits will take longer than usual. I’ll probably be running behind schedule the first few days.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.

  “Good luck with your negotiations with Doc Hottie,” Karen said with a little half smile that could be interpreted in all kinds of ways. Callie chose not to notice the open-ended comment.

  “Thanks. Love you.” She let Karen enfold her in a quick hug and then headed for her car before her mother could say anything else.

  * * *

  THE OTHER HALF of her family, she discovered, wasn’t averse to asking her questions about Zach Gibson, either; they were just a little slower getting to the subject. The five of them were eating at the cook’s table in the restaurant kitchen instead of upstairs. Ginger had no problem admitting she couldn’t hold a candle to Mac’s cooking and wasn’t about to try.

  “I helped Mac prep the vegetables today,” Brandon announced, proudly indicating the sautéed fresh green beans on Callie’s plate. He had evidently decided a grown-up stepsister was preferable to a new baby in the family and had attached himself to Callie as soon as she walked through the door, even offering to help her with chores around the cottage to earn money for a new computer game. Becca, however, had kept her distance. “Mac won’t let me use a knife until I’m thirteen, but I’m thinking I might be a chef someday,” Brandon chatted on.

  Becca snorted. “Last week you wanted to be a fireman. The week before that you were going to be a professional gamer and make a billion dollars designing computer games.” Callie noticed the girl had eaten two servings of the green beans and most of her fish, but hadn’t touched the fresh-baked rolls dipped in honey butter or the sweet-potato casserole.

  “I changed my mind,” Brandon responded. “The good chefs make a lot of money, too, and write books and have their own TV shows and everything.”

  “You’ll be a good chef if you listen to Mac,” Callie said. Mac had given her a solid grounding in the culinary basics when she was barely older than Brandon and Becca, but she hadn’t had much opportunity to put what she’d learned to practical use after she entered medical school.

  She’d enjoy cooking again. Maybe it was something she could do with the twins, or at least with her stepbrother.

  Callie pulled her thoughts up short. There was a very real chance she wasn’t going to be here that long. And if the position she’d been offered just days before she left Ann Arbor came through, she’d have all her meals provided for.

  “Did you have a nice visit with your mom?” Ginger asked politely, pushing green beans around on her plate. She’d eaten very little and Callie noticed her fingers were puffy as though she were retaining water, not an unusual occurrence for a woman seven months pregnant in warm weather, but something to keep under observation. Her stepmother appeared tired, too. When Callie met with Zach tomorrow, she would ask him his opinion of Ginger’s overall health. There was nothing out of line in that.

  “Yes,” Callie responded equally politely. “She showed me her goats and we had lemonade with Miss Fancy Pants and Evangeline.”

  “Those are funny names,” Brandon said, pausing with a forkful of green beans halfway to his mouth. His round face wrinkled up in a frown. “Are they old ladies? Who has names like that?”

  “They’re chickens,” Callie said, smiling at him across the Formica tabletop. “My mom raises chickens and Angora goats.”

  “I’ve never seen a goat up close. Can you take me to visit them someday?” He shoved the green beans into his mouth and chewed lustily while spearing a piece of whitefish for his next bite.

  “I suppose,” Callie said. She appealed to her father for guidance. J.R. looked at his wife. Callie moved immediately to reinforce Ginger’s authority. “If it’s all right with your mother, that is.”

  “How nice of you,” Ginger said pleasantly, although her expression was troubled. “But please don’t feel obligated to entertain Brandon.”

  “Oh, no,” Callie assured her. “My mother loves to show off her animals. All the chickens have names, and the goats, too. And she’d be happy to demonstrate to Brandon...and Becca, too, if she’s interested...how she spins the fiber. I’m just not sure how soon I’ll have a free day. There is so much to do at the clinic.”

  “Weird,” Becca muttered. “Who names chickens?”

  “My mother, I guess. She’s a little odd that way.”

  “How can you name something you’re going to eat?”

  “She says it’s a sign of respect and affection to a noble breed of bird,” Callie said with a grin. Her dad snorted but didn’t raise his eyes from his plate.

  “It’s creepy,” Becca said and put her fork down with a clatter. “But I suppose I might be interested in how she does that spinning thing.” She didn’t sound overly excited by the prospect of a trip to the farm, but Callie took even her lukewarm interest as a hopeful sign.

  “We’ll plan a trip as soon as I can work it into my schedule.”

  Becca shrugged. “Okay, but I said maybe, remember. I’m finished eating, Mom. Can I leave the table?”

  “May I leave the table,” Brandon said in a superior tone. “Can I leave the table is bad English, right, Mom?”

  “May I leave the table,” Becca shot back with a look that boded ill for her twin when they were alone.

  “Don’t you want dessert?” Ginger asked.

  “No. I’m stuffed.” Becca folded her thin arms across her chest. “I don’t want anything sweet. I’ll get an apple or a banana later. Fruit is better for you than a bunch of stuff made with refined sugar.”

  “Mac’s desserts are very good.”

  “We’d all be better off with the fruit,” she said stubbornly. “You’re a doctor, Callie. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “I approve of eating fruit,” Callie said diplomatically. “But I love Mac’s desserts. As long as you don’t have them at every meal—”

  The art of diplomacy was wasted on Becca. “I still just want an apple.”

  Ginger broke the awkward little silence. “Then, yes, you may leave the table.”

  Becca left the kitchen without another word.

  “Sorry, I apologize for my daughter’s bad manners,” Ginger said, color staining her cheeks.

  “She’s practicing to be a teenager a couple of years earlier than normal,” J.R. said with a rueful shake of his head.

  “It’s nothing,” Callie said.

  “What is for dessert?” Brandon asked above the clatter of a tray full of dirty dishes being loaded into the dishwasher behind them.

  “Whatever’s on the menu. You know that.” Ginger began fanning herself with her hand. “It’s so warm in here.”

  “Why don’t I commandeer us a table on the porch?” J.R. suggested, taking Ginger’s barely touched plate and stacking it on his own. “We can have orange sherbet and chocolate cookies out there. Mac baked a batch today when I told her Callie was coming for supper. It was always Callie’s favorite dessert when she was the twins’ age.”

  “It’s still pretty high on my list.”

  Callie was tired and would have preferred to go back to the cotta
ge to be alone for a while, but this was more or less her official welcome-home dinner, so she had to do her best to make it as much of a real family occasion as she could. In the old days, she and J.R. would have taken their cookies up to the cupola room at the top of the building and eaten them while they “spied” on the tourists and townspeople unsuspectingly going about their business on the street below. Now that wasn’t an option. The cupola room had been off-limits since a big storm a few years earlier had damaged the floor. And anyway, it wasn’t just her and her dad anymore. The realization was bittersweet.

  “Great, sherbet and cookies all around, then. I’ll ask Mac—”

  “I heard!” the older woman hollered from her station behind the grill, where a trio of steaks sizzled and flared. “Orange sherbets and chocolate cookies coming up,” she said, never taking her eyes off the steaks as she moved them off the heat for a short rest before plating.

  “Thanks, Mac.” Callie whisked across the kitchen and planted a kiss on her old friend’s cheek. “It’s good to be home.”

  Mac brushed off the sentiment with a wave of her spatula. “It’s good to have you home, too, Callie. Really good. The town needs you and so does your dad.” She moved away and began berating the hapless college student who was serving as her sous-chef before Callie could ask her what she meant by that last part of her statement.

  “C’mon, Callie,” her dad said, sticking his head around the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the rear of the dining room. “Brandon says there’s a two-top open on the porch. It’ll be a squeeze but we’d better snag it while we can.”

  “Coming.” Callie called goodbye to Mac and headed toward the door. She wished they had had a chance to talk before this, but no opportunity had presented itself. Soon, though, she would get her friend’s insights on how things were going between J.R. and Ginger.

  “I’ll grab an extra chair,” J.R. said, “and when we’re settled you can fill us in on how you’re getting clinic schedules worked out with Zach.”

  * * *

  THE SUN WAS GONE, the long midsummer twilight fading into night along the eastern shore of the lake. Zach heard the call of the little pond frogs start up along the marshy strip of shoreline just outside the business district. Music spilled out of the open doors of the White Pine, filtered by some quirk of atmospherics over the rooftops of the motel and cottages on the water’s edge out to where he was fishing. A country song, all guitars and bass. He couldn’t make out the words; it was more sensation than sound, anyway, far less of a disturbance than the trio of Jet Skis returning to the marina dock a quarter mile away.

  He shut the lid on his tackle box, secured the hook on his pole, laid it across the seats and unshipped the oars. The bluegills had quit biting and the mosquitoes had started up. Time to call it a night, Zach decided as he freed the anchor of weeds and started rowing toward the dock. He’d been fishing the secret hole J.R. had told him about in the spring. Formed by an underground spring bubbling up from the sandy bottom of the lake, it attracted bluegills and pumpkinseeds of truly awesome size, but he hadn’t kept any fish this time. Too late to start cleaning them tonight.

  He could have used the motor on his boat, too, but the exertion and the pull of the oars through the dark water felt good. He hadn’t been getting enough exercise lately. Maybe that was why he wasn’t sleeping as well as he usually did. If he was smart he’d row the full length of the lake, work out the kinks and make himself good and tired, but he didn’t have lights on the little boat, so that option wasn’t going to work tonight.

  Instead, he figured he’d better get himself home to the cottage and into the shower before Callie returned from dinner with her family. He knew that was where she was because Brandon had tracked him down a couple of hours earlier with a message from Mac. The cook had been running short of bluegill fillets and had been willing to pay fifteen bucks a pound if he had any in the freezer of his refrigerator. He did have a couple of bags and he’d told Brandon he’d trade them for a steak dinner or a couple of burgers some night when he didn’t feel like being by himself. Or when the duplex walls seemed to be closing in on him.

  That seemed to be happening more often lately, and it wasn’t because of the PTSD. It was because of Callie. He’d thought the soundproofing was pretty good. The two or three short-term renters earlier in the summer hadn’t disturbed his rest, or his peace of mind. But the new resident sure did. He swore he could even smell her shampoo through the bathroom wall if he put his mind to it when he stepped into the shower in the morning.

  He pulled deeper on the oars and the boat shot over the water, skirting the lily pads that grew within fifty feet or so of the dock. They were closed for the night, their white and yellow petals furled over their waxy hearts, waiting for the touch of morning sunlight to open again.

  Yep, he’d make it an early night. He understood the physician in charge well enough now to realize he’d need all his wits about him in tomorrow’s early-morning face-off with Dr. Callista Layman.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “IS IT NECESSARY to keep two appointment spaces available in the morning and the afternoon for unscheduled cases? We only left one open in the clinic where I worked during my residency.”

  “You probably did—but I bet there were several doc-in-a-box clinics and hospital emergency rooms close by, right? And how many of you were there on staff?”

  “There were three physicians and two nurse practitioners on staff.”

  “And here there’s just the two of us,” Zach pointed out, spreading his hands. “When there are a lot of tourists in town, even that block of time gets used up fast. Usually it’s just sniffles or a sunburn or poison ivy, but no one wants to be sick on vacation in the first place, so to spend half a day driving to Petoskey or Traverse City to the emergency room just makes it worse.”

  “Point taken,” she said. And another point lost in their latest sparring match. She bet he was keeping score. She shouldn’t have tried to equate her experience at a busy urban clinic with what went on in White Pine Lake.

  “Did you ever consider setting up practice here, I mean before your dad’s SOS brought you back?”

  The question caught Callie off guard. “Sure,” she said. “Once I settled on family practice as my specialty, it seemed the logical thing to do, but then, as time went on I realized there were other opportunities out there I wanted to explore.” And by then she had been away from home so long it seemed less familiar and more intimidating.

  “For instance?”

  He was sitting across from her at the little table positioned by the front window of her half of the duplex, and he seemed to take up a lot of space in the small room. She’d had to stop herself from scooting backward in her chair when he’d sat down twenty minutes earlier, and she still felt as though he was encroaching on her space.

  Doc Hottie. She wished her mother hadn’t called him that. It was far too close to the truth. Maybe if she had been able to keep a bit more distance between them she would stop noticing that he smelled like pine soap and fresh air and a hint of some kind of masculine aftershave that she couldn’t name.

  “Well, traveling, for one.” She took a quick breath. She was going to have to start telling people sooner or later. “I’ve got an offer for a two-year contract with a cruise line. They sail the Caribbean in the winter and Mediterranean and Europe in the summer. The salary is minimal, but if I agree to a two-year commitment, they’ll retire almost half my student-loan debt.”

  He whistled softly. “That would be a sweet gig.”

  “Yes, it would, though I haven’t accepted it yet.”

  “Have you mentioned the offer to your dad?”

  “No, I haven’t. Not yet, and I’d appreciate it if you keep the information to yourself.” The question struck a nerve; it was just another indication of how her relationship with J.R. had changed s
ince Ginger had arrived on the scene. Before, she would have been on the phone to him the moment she had hung up on the cruise-line headhunter. Instead she had kept it to herself to spare him another thing to worry about, because having her halfway around the world for the next two years would definitely cause him stress.

  “I won’t mention it. You’d be a fool not to accept it, though.”

  “That’s what everyone says.”

  He cocked his head and regarded her with unblinking eyes. “Not sure you’d be advancing your career sailing around the Med for two years in a floating hotel?”

  More as if she wasn’t sure she could handle the responsibility alone; she hadn’t done such a great job with the clinic or with her family. Not that she’d admit that to him. She took the opening gratefully. “Possibly. I’m not sure overseeing the aches and pains of overweight, overindulged and overfed tourists is what I put myself through eleven years of medical school for.”

  “Ouch,” he said. “Pretty much sums up what I’ve been doing since I got to White Pine Lake?”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” Callie hadn’t meant to sound so condescending and dismissive. She was only trying to protect herself. She, too, had trained for this kind of a family practice; if not in White Pine Lake, then somewhere else. Was that why she hadn’t jumped at the cruise-line offer the moment her application was accepted? Was that what she really wanted—a rootless, uncommitted lifestyle that didn’t put her skills to the test?

  She chose her next words with care. “It isn’t the same at all. What you do here at the clinic is completely different. You treat the whole individual and build a rapport with them and do your best to help them live a long and healthy life.”

  “Apology accepted.” His expression was set, though. He didn’t look as if he’d forgiven her tactlessness.

  “Would you care for another cup of coffee?” she asked to change the subject.

  “Thanks,” he said, standing up, making her even more aware of how completely he dominated the space around him. “I’ll get it myself. Stay sitting.” He took his time pouring a mug from the French press coffeemaker he’d helped her carry in that first night.