The Doctor Next Door

As if Charlie knew that Faith had just crossed Boone’s mind, the dog nudged against his side in what felt like a criticizing elbow-jab that made him think about Faith and their encounter the day before.

“Yeah, I know, I should have my ass kicked for the way I acted yesterday,” he admitted to her dog.

And he didn’t even have a good reason for how he’d treated Charlie’s mom.

“I’m really not a jerk, you know,” he told Charlie.

But what he didn’t confide—even to the animal—was what had been behind his behavior. It was something he’d never told anyone. Ever. Something that made him flinch just remembering it.

The first crush he’d had on a girl had been on Faith Perry.

And he could hardly stand thinking about it.

It hadn’t been some macho, I’m-the-man kind of crush. If it had, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But he hadn’t been an I’m-the-man kind of kid.

He’d had bad skin and braces on his teeth. He’d been barely five and a half feet tall, stocky, backward, awkward and immature at seventeen when—from out of nowhere—the late bloomer who had spent more time with animals than people had discovered he couldn’t think about anything but Faith Perry.

And the crush itself? That had been a doe-eyed, tongue-tied, trip-over-his-own-feet, blushing, can’t-control-his-body’s-reaction crush. The kind of crush that he would have been ridiculed for if anyone had known. The kind that was completely hopeless and had just made him feel all the more inadequate.

Especially because it had been on someone who was almost unaware that he was alive and had never made a secret of the fact that she couldn’t wait to get out of this one-horse town and away from everything and everyone in it to have a cultured life with classier people. Blue bloods, that’s what she’d aspired to, hobknobbing with blue bloods.

And every time he’d gotten anywhere near her, every time he’d picked up a book or a pencil she’d dropped, offered her notes from a class she’d missed or any of the other million things he’d done just to be near her, she’d looked at him the way she had when he’d first faced her in front of his office yesterday—as though he were the prime example of the backwater hicks she’d wanted to rise above.

So he’d slumped his way through those last two years of high school feeling rejected and resentful and inept.

As much as he’d worshipped her, he’d hated her.

And yesterday he’d punished her for it.

Okay, maybe I am a jerk.…

On the other hand, he also didn’t think much of people who believed they were better than others and, particularly, people who believed they were too good for his hometown and the lifestyle and the values that went with it.

But that still didn’t excuse his behavior.

It wasn’t how he’d planned to act in anticipation of making contact with her again.

He didn’t know why, but just the thought of Faith Perry had made him uncomfortable since his crush had died a natural death years and years ago. He supposed she reminded him of something he’d rather forget: a miserable, agony-filled adolescent phase he wished he’d never gone through. A phase that embarrassed him now even if he had managed to avoid embarrassing himself—on the whole—back then. So, since she’d left, whenever he’d heard through the grapevine that Faith was coming to town to visit family, he’d avoided places where he might run into her.

The problem recently, though, had become weddings.

Earlier this year there was the wedding of his brother, Cam, and her sister, Eden. Now it was her cousin Jared, marrying his sister, Mara.

For Cam’s and Eden’s wedding Faith only came to town for the day. He’d known that totally avoiding her was not going to be possible, but he’d planned to keep his distance. To stay across any room they were in together. To observe nothing but scant courtesies and go his own way.

Then he’d ended up being called to an emergency surgery that had kept him from attending the entire event. Problem solved.

For Mara’s wedding he’d figured he’d just activate that former plan—avoidance and distance.

But then he’d answered his cell phone yesterday and she’d been on the other end of the line and it had set something off in him from that long-ago silent humiliation.

He’d tried to pull in the reins on it and he’d thought he’d done a pretty good job until he’d stepped out of his truck and watched her majesty recoil at that first look at him.

That’s right, he’d wanted to say to her, I’m covered in dirt and I’m still a hayseed in the land of hayseeds you didn’t want any part of.

And she was still Miss Priss, sitting there on his bench all stiff and prim and proper, her hair and her clothes making her look like some stereotype of a spinster librarian.

Not that she hadn’t looked good. Faith the woman was even better-looking than Faith the girl had been, and he’d thought she was the prettiest girl in town then. Now she was full-out, hands-down beautiful.

Even trussed-up, her hair had glistened in the sunlight. It was the burnished sienna color of the mole sauce he ate on enchiladas.

Her face hadn’t aged, it had grown refined and delicate, with skin as smooth and pale and flawless as the cream that rose to the top of fresh milk.

Her mouth just had to taste sweet—that was what he’d thought before he’d left his truck, when he’d had his first glimpse of her. It curved up at the corners and dipped low in the center to form a sort of languid heart shape that was the shade of pale pink rosebuds.

And before she’d skewered him with that repulsed glare, he’d thought that even the color of her eyes was more intense—some combination of purple and blue—though still as sparkling as morning dew in the meadow.

He’d steeled himself before getting out of the truck, worrying that one look from those eyes might make him stumble or fall just the way it would have done when he was seventeen. But then she’d helped him avoid that with the instant revulsion he’d seen on her face and it had been like a bucket of cold water dumped over his head.

Yeah, sure, she’d covered it up in a hurry. She’d apologized for bringing him in on his day off, for bothering him. She’d thanked him for coming and hadn’t treated him like a lowlife. But by then it was too late. He’d known what she was thinking even before she’d made it to her feet. And he just hadn’t been able to be nice.

Of course he had been able to notice the rest of her when she’d stood. To register that there was nothing bad about the body, either. At least as far as he could tell through those shapeless clothes she’d had on. There was a little sway to hips that were just the right width as she’d gone into the office ahead of him, and enough behind the buttons of that boring blouse Charlie was snuggled up to on the countertop to let it be known she wasn’t flat-chested—to make him wonder if he should have untucked his shirt before he’d left home.

But despite how she looked, despite her cover-up courtesy, he’d still been on his worst behavior.

So I proved I can be as big a clod as she thinks I am….

Actually, what was it she’d said when she’d thought he was out of earshot? That the only thing worse than a hayseed was a rude, nasty hayseed.

Miss Priss could bark back after all.

That had to go against the dictates of her highfalutin ways now, didn’t it?

But even though she’d been insulting him, it made him smile to think that he’d gotten a rise out of her.

Still, the way things had gone the day before were not how he wanted things to be at his sister’s wedding. Mara didn’t deserve that. Hell, if push came to shove, he had to admit that Faith Perry didn’t deserve it, either. She’d never actually done anything to him. So what if he—and the rest of Northbridge—didn’t live up to her standards? That was her problem. Her loss.

But when it came to him and who he was, he didn’t want to be a jerk. Not even to someone who thought she was better than he was.

In fact, he might go so far as to prove he was the bigger person and apologize for the way he’d treated her.

“What would your mom think of that, Charlie?” he asked the pooch at his side. Then he answered his own question, “She’d probably just think she had it coming, huh?”

Charlie sighed and nuzzled his hand to make him pet her once more. Boone did, wondering if the dog spent every night sleeping with Faith. Right beside her in bed where her hair would be free and so would her body under some filmy little nightgown….

Jealousy? Was he actually feeling even a tiny pinch envious of a dog?

Oh, no, uh-uh, he told himself.

She might be beautiful, but she wasn’t getting to him. Not a chance in hell. He’d never set himself up for that now. No way.

Not when he’d been so vividly reminded yesterday that it was only blue blood that impressed her.

And his was as red as it came.

“Do we have a verdict yet?”

Faith had stopped by her sister Eden’s house late Monday afternoon on her way to the vet’s office. It was such a beautiful spring day that Eden was sitting outside on her front porch steps when Faith arrived. Faith had an ulterior motive for the visit but was in no hurry, so she’d accepted her sister’s invitation to join her.

“A verdict?” Faith asked in response to Eden’s question after she’d perched beside her sister on the top porch step. “About what?”

“Northbridge—if you’re staying forever or for a while, or if you’re already thinking about leaving as soon as cousin Jared’s wedding is over.”

“I just got here Saturday night,” Faith reminded.

“And did you bring your whole wardrobe or only enough for a quick trip?”

Faith knew what her sister was getting at. “I brought enough for a while but not everything I own. The rest is still at the apartment in New Haven that Shu bought as part of the divorce settlement—”

“So you’re keeping the apartment?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Then there’s the chance that you’ll actually live there?”

Faith heard her sister’s disappointment. Now that Eden had moved back to Northbridge and married a local cop—Boone Pratt’s brother, Cam—Eden and their other sister, Eve, who also lived in Northbridge, were hoping that Faith would make her home in the small town, too. They’d been trying to persuade Faith for months now and Faith knew Eden was fishing for a sign she had made her decision. But Faith hadn’t and so couldn’t give Eden the answer she was looking for. Or any answer at all, really.

“I still don’t know what I’m going to do,” Faith said. “There is the apartment in Connecticut and I have an offer to go back to work full-time there if I want to—”

“With the same party and event planners you were working for when you met Shu—isn’t that what Eve said?”

“Yes. The Fosters wouldn’t hear of me working when I was married. That wasn’t my role as Shu’s wife. But I just had some dealings with my old cohorts over the plans for the opening of Nedra’s gallery and they said there was a spot for me if I wanted a job.” Nedra was Nedra Carpenter, an old college friend of Faith’s whom Eden had met several times during her visits to Connecticut.

“But you don’t have to work,” Eden reminded.

Faith shrugged. “No, I don’t have to. The settlement was beefed up substantially to keep me quiet. But I also don’t know what I’ll do with myself it I don’t work. That’s the problem—I don’t know what I want any more than I know what I’m going to do. I’m hoping to sort through it all here, remember? It was your idea when I visited in January for me to come back, bask in the peace and quiet and see if I could get my bearings again.”

Faith had come to Northbridge at the start of the year for just a day to Eden’s wedding to briefly touch base with her family when they were in turmoil over the revelation that the grandmother they’d all believed to have run off with a bank robber more than forty years ago had secretly returned to work as a clerk at the dry cleaners. Because Faith had been packing up and leaving her in-laws’ house, one day was all she’d been able to spare. But Eden and Eve had persuaded her to spend some time in Northbridge to regroup once the last loose ends of her divorce were tied up. And the upcoming wedding was the perfect time to do just that.

“And you haven’t come any closer to getting those bearings between January and now?” Eden asked.

Faith shrugged again. “It isn’t easy when I find myself questioning everything I’ve been so sure of my whole life. You had the rug pulled out from under you when Alika was killed in the line of duty in Hawaii, you had trouble being able to accept that Cam was a cop, too, and in similar kinds of danger on the job—”

“That almost seems silly now that I’ve really settled into Northbridge. Sometimes I wonder why we even need cops around here.”

“Still, as bad as it was to lose Alika, and as hard as it was to get over your fear so you could be with Cam, you never had to doubt your choice of Alika as a husband or doubt the life you two had together. You didn’t have to look back and see that what you thought was real wasn’t and ask yourself if you were blind or stupid or if you’d gone after the wrong thing in the first place. Alika’s death left you afraid of being with another cop, not wondering if you were an idiot who couldn’t see what was right in front of your face for years. But me… I have to wonder if, somehow, I asked for what I got.”

“Oh, Faith, how could you have asked for what you got?”

Faith shrugged a third time. “I got what I asked for and the rest came with it.”

“But what came with it was not what anyone would have asked for or could have expected.”

“Maybe not—”

“No maybe about it.”

“The bottom line, Eden, is that on the surface I got exactly what I wanted. What I’d always wanted. And it turned out so badly that now… Now I just don’t know.”

“So you can stay here and figure it out,” Eden concluded.

“Or I can stay here until I figure it out,” Faith said, not wanting to commit to more than that when it came to Northbridge.

It seemed like a good time to change the subject so she opted to embark on her ulterior motive. “What are you up to for the next hour or so?” she asked her sister.

Eden held up a cell phone. “I’m waiting for a call to tell me whether the last fairy sketches are all right.”

Eden had ended her career as a forensic artist and was now illustrating a children’s book.

“You could take your phone with you and help me out,” Faith proposed hopefully.

“Help you out with what?”

“Your brother-in-law. According to his receptionist, he’s keeping Charlie another night. I guess Charlie still isn’t eating or drinking and he needs to watch her. But I wanted to at least visit her. The receptionist put me on hold to ask if that would be all right. He okayed it but the receptionist said his schedule today was full, so would I come after the last appointment. As if my being at the office would interfere with anything.”

Eden either didn’t notice the derisive note in Faith’s voice or she chose not to mention it. Instead she said, “What does that have to do with me?”

“I don’t particularly want to go alone. Your brother-in-law is a creep.”

“Boone?” Eden said with a laugh. “You have to be kidding. Boone’s a pussycat.”

“He is not. He’s rude and obnoxious and we sort of had a fight yesterday. I was hoping I could pick up Charlie this morning and not even see him, but now not only don’t I get to take Charlie home, I’m sure I’ll have to see bad-news Boone while I’m visiting my dog.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same person? The tall, hunky guy who resembles my husband except he has longer, darker hair and lighter eyes and when he smiles he gets those creases down his cheeks?”

“I wouldn’t know what happens when he smiles because I didn’t see anything that came close to a smile. But yes, longer, darker hair—at least I think it’s darker underneath the layer of dirt that was covering him from head to toe.”

“Dirt?”

“He said something about coming straight from saddlebreaking a horse.”

“That would probably get him pretty dirty.”

“But he’s in the medical profession. No medical professional should—”

“Didn’t you have to call him in on his day off? In an emergency? Seems to me you take what you get under those conditions.”

“Still. He didn’t even apologize for it or explain it until late in the game. And dirty or not, he was awful.”

“To Charlie?”

“No, he was fine to Charlie. He was awful to me.”

“Seriously?”

“Why would I make this up?” Faith asked. “He called me high-and-mighty and nose-in-the-air. He brought up something I guess I said in high school about Northbridge being the land of the hayseeds and then he said some weird stuff about how he couldn’t care less about me or about anything to do with me.”

“Boone?” Eden repeated with more disbelief.

“I asked him if I’d done something to make him mad. He said no—that was the part about how he couldn’t care less—but he acted mad. He acted as if he hated me.”

“Why would he hate you?”

“Good question. As far as I know, I haven’t seen him since high school. Not even when I’ve come to Northbridge to visit. Have I turned into some snooty bitch who goes around offending people without realizing it?”

“You, a snooty bitch?” Eden repeated with a laugh at how ridiculous that sounded. “You’re the one who was in trouble with your mother-in-law for not being snooty enough. Didn’t you get your wrists slapped for buying birthday and Christmas gifts for the house staff, and letting them call you by your first name? But Boone? Honestly, since coming back to Northbridge and hanging around with the Pratt family I’ve never seen him be anything but nice and even-tempered and calm. I’ve certainly never seen him be a creep. It just doesn’t sound like Boone.”

“Well, unless he has an evil twin, it was Boone.”

“Did you do something to him when we were kids?”

“I thought about it all night and most of today, but I can’t think of anything. I mean, I remember him being short and kind of pudgy. I remember that he almost never talked and I think sometimes he had wildlife in his pockets—”

Eden laughed. “Wildlife?”

“Like frogs or toads or turtles or lizardy things—the kind of things little boys might have in their pockets—but we were in high school. I remember him always turning red, too. As if he was embarrassed even when there wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. But I never made fun of him or anything. I never really had much to do with him beyond sitting in front of him in classes where seating was alphabetical.”

“Maybe that’s what rubbed him wrong—that you didn’t have anything to do with him,” Eden suggested.

“That I didn’t say hi to him in homeroom over a decade ago?”

“That does seem far-fetched.”

“So what’s up with him?”

Eden shrugged this time. “I couldn’t tell you.”

“So will you go with me to visit Charlie and save me from more of his bad attitude?”

“I really can’t, Faith. This call is important and Cam should be home any minute and we need to—”

“You’re just going to throw me to the wolf?”

“Give him another chance. Maybe he had a bad day yesterday and he’ll be nice today.”

“That would be an even bigger change than the change in his looks,” Faith said as she stood to leave, wishing all the while she was saying goodbye to her sister that Boone Pratt’s looks hadn’t changed.

Because maybe if they hadn’t she might have been able to stop thinking about the way he looked.

Which was something she hadn’t quite managed. Over the past twenty-four hours the image of him had stayed in her mind’s eye no matter what she’d done to switch channels.

* * *

When Faith arrived at the veterinarian’s office, Boone Pratt’s truck and another car were parked in front of the building, which was shaded by a semicircle of tall pine trees. She had no idea if the other car belonged to a pet owner or to one of Boone Pratt’s employees. Not wanting to set him off by going inside if he was still involved in his last appointment, she waited until a woman came out and got into the other car. Only then did Faith leave her own vehicle, not appreciating how on-edge she felt at the prospect of having to go through an ogre to get to her pet.

Inside, the office was quiet. Boone Pratt must have heard the door open and close because from somewhere in back came his deep voice. “Is that you, Faith?”

That didn’t sound ogreish. Or as abrasive as the previous day. But not even a more amiable tone made her feel any better as she answered. “Yes, it’s me.”

“We’ll be right out.”

Was there going to be some courtesy today? That was a change.

Faith sat on the cushioned bench seat built into the wall across from the receptionist’s station. She flicked a piece of lint off the skirt that was very much like the ankle-length A-line she’d worn the day before except that it was brown. On top she had on another blouse—this one also white but with a tan fleck that distinguished it from what she’d worn on Sunday.

Her hair was tied at her nape with a scarf and while she’d felt overdressed when she’d been sitting on her sister’s step—with Eden in jeans and a T-shirt—she didn’t think she was overdressed now.

At least she didn’t until Boone Pratt brought Charlie out into the waiting area.

Boone was clean today. Perfectly. His dark wavy hair, his extravagantly handsome face, his hands and nails, even his cowboy boots showed not a speck of the dust of the day before. His clothes were spotless, too, but beneath the long white lab coat that gave him a professional air were jeans and a chambray shirt. And it occurred to Faith only then that maybe she should find some more casual attire for Northbridge.

But her dog was following behind him as he joined her and she turned her focus there.

“Oh, my poor baby! Are you sick?” she asked the dog without greeting Boone Pratt.

Charlie wagged her tail, obviously happy to see Faith.

“She’s feeling pretty sorry for herself,” Boone said as Faith scooped up her pet to hold in her lap.

A section of Charlie’s front paw was shaved but other than that she, too, was cleaner than she had been the previous day and she smelled like she’d been given a bath.

“We just got her to eat a little food and take a few laps of water,” Boone Pratt was saying despite the fact that Faith had yet to address him and was looking only at her schnauzer. “If she can finally hold that down and maybe take in a little more later tonight she can go home tomorrow.”

“What made her so sick?” Faith asked, still not taking her eyes off of Charlie.

“Some dogs just don’t tolerate the anesthetic or the pain medication as well as others. There’s nothing to worry about. She had enough pep this afternoon to hop onto my desk chair. Then she barked like crazy at the cat that was in here half an hour ago, so she’s really fine. She just needs to get up to speed again and I think she’ll be there tomorrow. The extraction went well and there’s no infection. When her appetite comes back and she’s rehydrated she’ll be good as new.”

Boone Pratt moved from where he’d been standing in front of Faith.

Feeling as if the coast was clear, Faith glanced up from Charlie to see what Boone was doing.

He was behind the reception counter removing his lab coat, rolling it up and tossing it somewhere Faith couldn’t see.

Then he returned to the waiting area.

Faith looked down at Charlie once more but out of the corner of her eye she saw Boone lean against the wall. He folded his arms across his chest, placed one ankle over the other and seemed to settle in to watch her.