A Doctor for Keeps

Her mom must have kept those times to herself because in Desi’s memory they lived hand to mouth most of their years on the road. But then, out of the blue five years ago when Ester first got sick, they were able to buy a small house. The home they’d always dreamed and talked about. The timing was perfect, since her mother couldn’t keep up with traveling and chemo. Had her mom been saving Gerda’s money, or had Gerda helped out, as she’d previously suspected?

There was a reprieve from the cancer and Ester was able to take a few playing jobs here and there, but the cancer came back. Even then, Ester stayed away from Heartlandia.

“Why didn’t we ever visit?” Desi asked. It was an honest question that her mom had always evaded.

“It wasn’t because I didn’t invite you. Please know that. Your mother—” Gerda hung her head again. “She just didn’t want anything more to do with her home, I guess.”

Desi’s heart tightened. It must have been hard for Gerda to be rejected time and again by her daughter. Deciding they’d shared enough heartache for one morning, she went back to playing another simple song and soon Gerda, accepting the quiet reprieve, joined her.

After a few more duets and small talk, they went their separate ways, Gerda to spend some time at city hall and Desi to shower and dress.

She did some laundry and took a walk around the backyard, trying to figure out why her mother had been so stubborn, insisting on keeping her to herself despite the invitations to come home.

An abundance of rosebushes in assorted colors filled the air with a strong fragrance. A huge white hibiscus bush in the far corner seemed no less than twelve feet high. The Victorian-style house hadn’t looked nearly as bright yellow in the dark of night. Trimmed in green, with a pitched roof and a third-story dormer with a fanlight window, the house looked like something out of an old movie. Desi circled the perimeter of the house and noticed a partially covered balcony at the front and a second balcony on the side. What a gorgeous place...the home her mother had run away from.

Returning to the scene of the crime of last night—the gated side yard with overgrown bushes and shrubs—she glanced next door at another Victorian. It was painted completely white with a small bay window at the front, the only color in sight an aqua-blue door at the side entrance. Kent’s house almost looked medicinal. Churchlike. She wandered toward his house, noticing the artful subtleties of the architecture. But white? Really? It seemed such a waste.

Soon growing bored with trying to figure out why the big guy had the blandest house on the block, Desi’s gaze drifted to the imposing Columbia River several blocks away, down by the railroad tracks and the docks. The water twinkled beneath the strengthening sun. In the distance, the longest bridge she’d ever seen arched from this side of Oregon far across to what she assumed must be Washington State.

Though June, the brisk air brought gooseflesh to her arms even through her light sweater. She turned to go back inside. On the hillsides behind her stood dozens and dozens of more modest but brightly painted Victorians overlooking the jagged riverbank. Scattered among the Victorians were dwellings of half timber wood–half brick foundations with tall sloping roofs, reminding her of her Scandinavian heritage.

Her surname, Rask, was Danish, but according to her mother, she’d come from a place filled with Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Icelanders along with the original Chinook peoples. When Ester rarely did talk about “home,” to Desi’s ears it sounded like a mythical place, perhaps a figment of her mother’s dreams, someplace she embellished to feed the imagination of her young daughter. This vista seemed to prove the point. It did almost look mythical.

Her mother had run away from an idyllic, lost-in-time town called Heartlandia. Or Hjartalanda, as the welcome sign at the edge of town said. She’d scoffed when she’d read the slogan beneath: Find Your Home in Heartlandia.

Was it possible? Could a quaint town fill up that huge hole inside her?

She headed up the stairs to her room. Seeing her grandmother again was only half of the reason for this trip to Oregon. The other half was her father.

A couple of hours later, after doing research on her laptop, Desi’s stomach growled. She wandered down to the kitchen, searching for food, but instead found Gerda home and fumbling with a rubber opener and a stubborn jar.

“Let me get that for you,” she said.

With a look of defeat in her eyes, Gerda handed over the jar. “My arthritis is giving me fits today.” She rubbed her hands and grimaced. “Guess I better start making phone calls and cancel tomorrow’s piano lessons.”

“How many students do you have lined up?”

“Four. I give lessons from two to six on Tuesdays and Thursdays since I do the part-time mayoral work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“All kids?”

Gerda nodded while searching the cupboard, looking at medicine bottles one by one until she found what she wanted.

“Any advanced students?”

“Oh, heavens, no. They’re all beginners in book one or two.” She shook out a couple of pills into the palm of her hand. “The next generation of great talent, as I tell their parents.”

“Why don’t you let me take over for you?”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said, filling a small glass with water and popping the pills into her mouth.

“I’m offering. It’s the least I can do since you’re letting me stay here as long as I want.”

Gerda folded her arms, her eyes nearly twinkling. “That would be wonderful.”

* * *

At five o’clock the next afternoon, a timid tap at the front door let Desi know the last student had shown up. Gerda had been so impressed with Desi’s teaching style, she’d dropped out of sight after the beginning of the four-o’clock lesson. Desi suspected it was to take a nap, as she’d been yawning throughout most of the last lesson.

Desi opened the door and found a towheaded boy with bright blue eyes, who was a little chunky around the middle. “Hi! Are you Steven?”

He nodded hesitantly. “Is Mrs. Rask here? It’s time for my lesson.” He waved three piano primer books like a fan.

“I’m substituting for Mrs. Rask today. She’s my grandmother.”

His eyes grew to the size of quarters. “You are? Wow. You don’t look like her. You’re pretty.”

She laughed. The boy was already a charmer. Looked as though that Kent guy needed to take a few lessons from his son.

Last night Gerda had filled in Desi on all of the students. Steven was eight and showed potential, but he didn’t put in enough effort to make much progress. Her job would be to light a fire in him for the joy of music. Tall order for a substitute.

The boy seemed tall for his age, and remembering his gigantic father, she understood why. Soon, when the growth spurts started, Steven would probably outgrow his chubbiness as she had when she was around that age.

Desi walked Steven to the piano, pulled out the bench and placed one candy where the boy could see it. “That’s for after you show me your written theory homework.”

He gulped. “Uh.” He screwed up his face, making a bundle of tiny lines crisscross over his tiny nose. “I think I forgot to do it.”

She bit back her smile, not wanting to let his cuteness get him off the hook. She subtly moved the candy back to the bowl and opened his book. “Well, then we’ll work on it together, okay?”

The fill-in questions for note names and the staffs to practice making treble and bass clefs went by quickly with her guidance, and he brightened up. She put two shiny stickers on the pages, and he grinned.

Desi took the same piece of candy from the bowl and returned it to the prior spot. “Are you ready to play for me?”

He nodded, opened his book and dug right in. Clunky and uneven, he banged out the simple notes, but Desi could tell he’d put a lot of effort into his playing. Even to the point of grunting and muttering “uh-oh” or “dang it, I keep messing up.”

She loved looking down at his silky white-blond hair and thought for a boy he smelled pretty good, too. Gerda had been right—Steven showed potential, but he just needed to be nudged. She patiently worked with him, curving his fingers just so, straightening his wrists and gently prodding his spine so he’d sit straighter. When he repeated his slouched posture over and over again, Desi realized he must have liked the way it felt when she walked her fingertips up his spine to get him to sit straight.

“That tickles,” he said after the third reminder, smiling up at her, and her strict teacher persona melted around the edges.

When she explained some of the tricky parts of the song and showed him how to play it, she noticed his head had come to rest on her upper arm. The sweetie liked this attention. Maybe she could use that to make a piano player out of him.

“Would you like to learn a different kind of song?”

“Yeah, this one seems kinda dorky.”

She played a simple basic blues song that used the bottom notes to make it sound snazzy. Steven sat right up, immediately interested in the piece. She found the page in the book so he could see the notes and showed him how to play the first few bars. He obviously liked the rhythm and soon his shoulders moved to the beat. She’d found it—his kind of song.

“I tell you what,” she said. “You live next door, right?”

He nodded, making a serious face, exaggerating his already-deep dimples.

“If you want to come over here after school a couple days during the week, I’ll let you practice on this piano, okay?”

“Will you be here?”

“Sure. I’ll even help you practice if you want.”

“Okay!”

The moment she’d finished carefully writing out his homework, the doorbell rang, and she jumped up to open it. The Norseman stood on the other side, overbearing in stature, first drilling a glance through her then peering inside the house. She’d forgotten how big Kent was. In daylight, his finely carved features and cutting blue eyes almost took her breath away. Too bad he chose to look so serious all the time. He wore a navy blue polo shirt, but the sleeves barely fit around his arms. The standard jeans fit very, very well, indeed.

She smiled a simple superficial greeting, while odd tingles threaded along her skin. “Come in,” she said. “We just finished.”

“Hi, Dad!”

“Hey, son.”

Steven gathered his piano books and rushed toward his father. “Ms. Desi is a really cool teacher!” They hugged, and Desi could see the honest-to-goodness love they shared. It was the same kind of you and me against the world love that she and her mom used to have, and the display touched her deep inside. Maybe she’d cut the big guy some slack.

“That’s great,” he said to his son, then looked at Desi with near alarm in his glance. “Are you taking over for Mrs. Rask?”

“Just today. Her arthritis is flaring up.”

“Won’t you be my teacher next week?” Disappointment poured out of Steven’s voice.

“We’ll see how Gerda feels, okay?” She walked back to the piano and picked up the wrapped candy, then came back to Steven and handed it to him. “I promised to help you practice, remember?”

He took the treat as if he’d gotten the biggest present in the world. “Gee, thanks!” Throwing his arms around her hips, he hugged her and squeezed, his cheek flat against her stomach. Such a sweet boy. She couldn’t say he was attention starved, not by the way his dad watched over him, but Steven sure liked being around her. It made her wonder where his mother was.

Midhug, she glanced up at Kent, her grin quickly shifting to a more serious expression. Though he tried to hide it, caution and warning flashed in his azure eyes, and the hair on the back of her neck alerted her to let go of Steven and back off.

She’d reacted instinctively to the boy and must have crossed over a deeply engraved line. She didn’t have a clue why she’d tripped the alarm, but she’d respect Kent’s nonverbal message. He watched steadily as she stepped away, and when they’d said their necessary goodbyes, all she could do was wonder what she’d done wrong.

Chapter Two

“Dad. Dad!” Steven pulled Kent’s arm as he unlocked the front door, drawing him out of his thoughts. “Ms. Desi’s the coolest piano teacher ever!”

“Mayor Rask is your piano teacher. Ms. Desi is just filling in.” He wanted to set that straight, right off.

Steven charged for the electric keyboard in the corner of the dining room the second they’d hit the front door. As he turned it on, the excitement in his bright blue eyes was almost contagious. Kent held firm, refusing to get swept up in his son’s enthusiasm. It wouldn’t be a good idea to let Steven get attached to every woman who was kind to him. And that had been his pattern since his mother had left.

No one could fill the void his son must feel.

Steven had his music book opened and seemed raring to go before the keyboard was even warmed up. Transformed before Kent’s eyes, the boy was the embodiment of eagerness—this from the kid who normally had to be dragged to piano lessons and who forced Kent’s patience to get him to practice. Steven pounded out a simple song that had definite blues overtones, and it wasn’t half-bad. The infectious smile on his face forced Kent to grin as he leaned against the wall, arms folded, listening. He loved seeing his son happy, especially after the rough couple of years they’d been through.

Blast it. The last thing he needed was for his son to have a crush on his substitute piano teacher—the woman who showed up in the dead of night and who might take off the same way. He couldn’t bear to see any more disappointment in Steven’s eyes.

How in hell was a child supposed to get over the heartbreak of his mother walking out at such a tender age, with not so much as a phone call on his eighth birthday?

If Kent had his way, Steven would have a couple of siblings by now, but that was the last thing Diana had wanted. Born and raised in Heartlandia, just like him, she wanted to move to a big city where she could spread her cosmopolitan wings and play wife to a doctor who made a staggering salary. She wanted parties and designer shopping sprees. She did not want to be married to a guy running his own urgent-care facility and having to be both businessman and doctor rolled into one. A guy who couldn’t predict which side of the red line they’d land on at the end of each month.

She’d thought being married to a doctor meant she’d be home free, rolling in dough. What with staff salaries to pay, the never-ending need for supplies or new equipment, liability insurance up to his ears and the lease on that overgrown building, some months he had to take a rain check on his own salary. Good thing he lived in the same house he grew up in, the one his parents practically gave away when they sold it to him and moved to Bend, Oregon, to enjoy their retirement.

Bottom line, Diana had wanted out. She’d wanted to be far away. She’d wanted San Francisco, not Heartlandia. She’d wanted to be single again. Single without a child hampering her whims.

“See, Dad? I can almost play all the notes.”

“That’s great.” He applauded. “If you practice every day, maybe you’ll have it memorized by next week.”

“Yeah! That would be the coolest. I could surprise her.”

“Now don’t go getting ahead of yourself. She’s only substituting for Mayor Rask. She may not even be here next week.” Kent went into the kitchen to throw some food together for dinner. Steven tagged along, practically on his heels.

“Can we invite Ms. Desi to the festival this weekend, huh?”

Kent didn’t want to speak for someone else, but he was quite sure Desi would be bored senseless at their hokey small-town Scandinavian festival. Wasn’t that what Diana used to call it? “I don’t know.”

“I could buy her some aebleskiver with my allowance. I just know she’d love them.”

Kent wanted to wrap his arms around the boy and hold him close, tell him to be careful about getting his hopes up where women were concerned. Instead, he pulled open the cupboard and rustled around the canned foods for some baked beans. He hoped to change the subject with food, one of Steven’s favorite topics. He’d grill some chicken and steam some broccoli, and pretend he didn’t hear Steven tell him “for the gazillion-millionth time” that he hated broccoli.

“Dad? Dad! Can we?”

Kent quit opening the can, inhaled and closed his eyes. “We’ll see.”

“Please, please, please?”

“I’ll think about it. Okay?” Feeling a major cave coming on, Kent went the diversion route. “Now go wash your hands.”

Already having his father pegged, Steven triumphantly pumped the air with his fist. “Yes!”

The never-say-die kid sure knew how to work his old man. Kent quietly smiled and went back to cooking.

After dinner and a lopsided conversation with Steven talking about life on the school playground and one quick confession that he thought Ms. Desi smelled like his favorite candy—tropical-flavored SweeTarts—Kent mentally relented. Why allow his lousy attitude about women to get in the way of his son enjoying himself? Besides, when Kent was a kid he had a new crush every week. Steven would soon forget “Ms. Desi” and all would be back to normal.

After he cleaned up the kitchen he’d take a walk next door and ask Desi if she’d like to come along on Saturday. He wouldn’t say a word to Steven, though, so the kid wouldn’t feel the sting if she said thanks but no.

An hour later, Steven was showered and in his pajamas and planted in front of the TV in the family room.

Kent stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, wondering why in hell he felt compelled to brush his teeth and gargle before heading next door. He cursed under his breath as he headed downstairs toward the door. If he didn’t watch it, next he’d be picking posies from the yard for the substitute teacher.

Nothing made sense about asking the new lady in town along just because his son wanted her to come. One thing was painfully clear, though. He’d been hanging out with eight-year-old boys too much lately. Then one last thought wafted up as he crossed his lawn, heading for Gerda’s place—even an eight-year-old could see Desi was easy on the eyes.

* * *

Desi sat on a wicker glider on the large front porch behind the second arch, the huge living room window behind her. She’d thrown one of Gerda’s warm shawls over her shoulders to ward off the chill from the night air. Under the dim porch light she was barely able to make out the print in the Music Today magazine she’d surprisingly found on her grandmother’s coffee table.

Soon she’d have to switch to her eReader and that novel she’d started before she’d left home if she wanted to stay outside. And she did want to stay outdoors to give herself and Gerda some space. There’d been too many extended silences, too many bitten back questions from Desi and started but abruptly ended sentences from Gerda. So much to ask. So much to say. So hard to begin.

Tonight her grandmother seemed preoccupied with mayoral work, and Desi felt out of place. She stared at her scuffed brown boots, wishing she knew how to broach the subject of her mother. What was she like as a kid? Did she always love chili cheeseburgers? What made her think she had to run away when she got pregnant instead of telling her parents and working things out? But people were tricky. You couldn’t always get right to the heart of the matter without first building trust, and her grandmother was obviously holding back the details.

She looked around the large, homey porch and inhaled the night air, even detected a hint of that jasmine from the side of the house. She twitched her nose. Something about this old house calmed her down, as if it had reached inside and said, Hey, you might just belong here. This is where your mother grew up; these rooms, scents, colors, textures and sounds are your roots.

Soles scuffing up the walkway averted her attention from her thoughts. Her gaze darted to the tall blond man from the bland house next door—the overprotective father with some sort of grudge—Kent.

An unnatural expression smacking of chagrin eclipsed his handsome face. It lowered his brows and projected caution from those heavy-lidded eyes. The sight of him set off a pop of tension in her palms.

He cleared his throat, and she closed the magazine. “Nice night, huh?”

One corner of her mouth twitched with amusement over his awkward opening. “Seems kind of cold to me.”

“That’s Oregon for you.”

She smiled, deciding to toss the poor man a lifeline. “Is it?” When was the last time he’d talked socially with a woman?

“Yup. Unpredictable, except for rain.” He came closer to the porch but not all the way up, one foot two steps higher than the other. He put his palms on his knee and leaned on them, an earnest expression humbling his drop-dead looks. “Listen, I want to apologize in case I came off cranky this afternoon.”

She sputtered a laugh. “Cranky? My grandmother might get cranky, but you, well, you seemed bothered. Yeah, that’s the word—bothered.”

He scratched one of those lowered brows. “Sorry.”

“I was just being nice to your son, not planning on snatching him. Making him feel good about his progress, that’s all.”

“Yeah, and he couldn’t stop talking about what a great teacher you are when we got home, too.”

She smiled and magnanimously nodded her head. Yes, I am a good piano teacher, thank you very much. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not hardly.”

As he got closer, the tension in her palms spread to her shoulders, and she needed to stretch. Couldn’t help it.

He watched with interest. “So anyway,” he said, “this time every June we have this thing called the Summer Solstice Scandinavian Festival. Maybe your grandmother already told you about it?”

She shook her head.

“But as mayor pro tem she starts off the parade,” he said.

“She hasn’t said a word about it to me.”

Gerda hadn’t been feeling well tonight, and she’d seemed distracted after a hushed phone conversation. During dinner, Desi had talked about the piano students, even though a big question loomed in her mind. Why couldn’t you and Mom ever patch things up?

“Really?” He seemed surprised.

During dinner, Desi couldn’t bring herself to broach the subject about how bad their mother-daughter relationship must have been. Still, every indication—from the way her grandmother had opened the home to her to the way Desi caught her sneaking loving looks at her—suggested she was wanted. Yet that feeling of not belonging prevailed, along with the thought that Gerda was simply doing her duty out of guilt.

She shook her head at Kent. “The subject of an annual festival never came up.”

“Well, the thing is, Steven would really like you to go with us to the parade and festival on Saturday.”

Desi liked seeing the big man so completely out of his comfort zone and sat straighter. “So he sent you over to ask me out?”

Finally, a smile. Well, half of a smile. “Not exactly.”

“He doesn’t know you’re asking, and you’d rather die than ask a tall, dark stranger to come along, so you snuck over behind his back to ask me to say no?”

The look he shot her seemed to ask, Are you a mind reader? Or she could be reading into it, just a wee bit.

“Not it at all. And, man, you’ve got quite an imagination.” So much for her theory. He shook his head with slow intent. “I was thinking more that you’d rather pull weeds than be stuck with me for an afternoon. But Steven... He’s a kick. He wants to spend his allowance on you.”

She tilted her head, charmed by her young absentee suitor. “Not every day a male wants to spend his allowance on me. How can I refuse?”

Kent scratched the corner of his mouth. “You were right—I didn’t tell him I was asking you in case you didn’t want to come with us.”

“How thoughtful of you, protecting Steven.” Maybe he wasn’t as bad as the vibes he gave off. “And thanks for giving me an out...but I’d like to go.” Sorry to disappoint.