First-Time Valentine

J.D. smiled. Oh, yeah. Sex. She’d read him well this morning. She, with the keen mind, perceptive eyes and beautiful face. Ella Wilder had a sensuality that shot a man’s testosterone sky-high.

Unfortunately, such women were out of his league. The type he attracted was brash and bold. Women who knew how to have a good time, if not for a long time. Women who knew how to let him take what he needed, what he wanted. Without frills. Without obligations and assurances and emotional morasses.

A deep disillusionment crept in. Out over the gardens a soft fall of snow had begun and he felt it burying what he’d always known. No matter how hard he scraped and clawed his way through the maze of life, the ghosts of his blue-collar past would forever haze his heels.

And a woman like Ella Wilder, with her culture and sophistication, with her background smacking of old money, heritage and long lines of tradition would see him as a mere speck on her chart.

Well, dammit, maybe it was time to make some alterations to that speck. And maybe, just maybe, it was time for him to be a different kind of man.

One the good doctor would appreciate.

Chapter Three

Whenever she could, Ella took lunch at home. The quiet of those sixty minutes helped her reenergize and refocus. Today was one of those days. She hadn’t been able to get J.D. out of her head. The man dominated her thoughts during every lapsed moment. When she took a ten-minute water break. When she changed her scrubs from one surgery to the next. Thank God, the second she began scrubbing in her mind zeroed on her task.

This afternoon she had a single surgery scheduled. Eighty-year-old Mrs. Shipmen needed the radial head on her right elbow repaired. Ella looked forward to the surgery. She did not look forward to its completion. The afternoon would leave too much room for thoughts of J. D. Sumner.

Molly greeted her at the back door, purring happily as she twined around Ella’s ankles.

She was standing at the window over the sink, eating the tomato and chicken salad sandwich she’d thrown together and musing about the snow she needed to clear from her walkway before dark, when her neighbor across the alley stepped out of his house and began sweeping his back stoop.

And suddenly it struck.

Jared Sumner. Best known for his gardening skills around Walnut River. Not only had he maintained the hospital’s gardens, last summer she’d hired him to care for and nurture her property.

Six months before, she’d observed him limping around his backyard with a cane, so she had gone across the alley to inquire about his health. The old man had shrugged off her questions—until unbearable pain drove him to see her.

Last October she replaced his left hip. And asked about the birthmark on his inner thigh.

The S-shaped birthmark she queried J.D. about this morning.

Who gave you the birthmark?

Probably some ancient ancestor.

And then he’d felt pain. In a spot that should not have been painful. Surely, it hadn’t been a ruse to sidetrack her?

Over the sink, she brushed the crumbs from her hands. “Wait here, Molly-girl. I’ll be right back.”

Ella shrugged into her coat, then headed out the back door. The cold air bit her lungs as she half-ran, half-strode, coat flying behind her, across the alley, through Mr. Sumner’s back gate and across his tiny yard, a yard that in summer was an Eden.

A yard J.D. had played in—if the man on the stoop with the bristly outdoors broom was whom she believed.

The old gent raised his head as she came up the walkway he had yet to clear. “Hello, Mr. Sumner,” she called.

“Doc.” He straightened to his full height, a height equaling J.D.’s. and, leaning on the broom’s handle, waited for her to halt below the stoop’s four narrow steps. “Ya done for the day?” he asked, his Boston accent thick as the snow in his yard.

“I go back in about twenty minutes.” She glanced at the broom. “Thought one of the high school kids was clearing your walks and steps.” If she sounded exasperated it was because she could well imagine the old guy flying off those steps, arms and legs windmilling.

Like J.D. had.

“Huh,” he grunted. “Damn kid doesn’t know what the hell he’s doin’ half the time. Leaves the snow piled so close to the walk, all it does is slide back down.”

She went up the stairs. “Give me that broom, please, and go on inside where I know you won’t fall on your keester.”

“Don’t you mean my ass?” he grumped, though a smile lay in his voice.

“Whatever.” She took the broom, and waved him toward the door. “I’ll see you shortly.”

“What for?”

“I have some questions to ask. Now, are you going to let me finish this or are you going to stand in the way?”

“Huh,” he said again. “I’ve a mind to lock you out. Don’t need a li’l mite like you naggin’ my head off.”

“I don’t nag. It’s called TLC. But you wouldn’t know what that means, would you?”

“Fresh-mouthed doctor, is what you are,” he griped, shutting the door in her face.

She swept the stoop and stairs, then grabbed the snow shovel parked against the house and tackled the walkway.

The door opened. “Do a good job—or I won’t let you do it again.” The door slammed shut.

Old coot, she thought, unable to resist the affectionate laugh that erupted. He’d been her neighbor since she moved into her grandmother’s house a week after she finished her residency last year. After her grandmother’s death three years before, renters had lived in the place—and neglected the property.

Mr. Sumner Senior had jumped at the chance to fix up her “pig sty,” as he termed it. His labor didn’t come cheap, but then a first-class groundskeeper was worth every penny she put in his pocket.

Finished with the walkway, she set the shovel in its spot and climbed the steps. She had all of five minutes.

After brushing the snow from the hem of her long woolen coat, she knocked once. As though he’d been waiting on the other side, he flung open the door.

“Thank you.” Ella strode in. The kitchen’s warmth stung her cold cheeks. She looked past the man to the interior and saw a small tidy room. He was as meticulous here as he was with the outdoors.

“I thought you had people to dice,” he grumped, gripping his carved wooden cane. “You’re takin’ up my afternoon.”

“And you’re welcome for the walkway.”

A grunt.

She shoved her cold hands into the deep pockets of her coat and studied him a moment. Except for his height and thick silver hair, he looked nothing like J.D. Could she be mistaken? Oh, she understood that by asking specific questions she’d be digging into a part of their lives that was not her business. She was both men’s doctor. Not their priest, psychologist or social worker.

But there was that birthmark.

And the last name—as well as the first—marking father to son.

She stared into the old man’s blue eyes. “I’ll make this short, Mr. Sumner. Do you have family?”

He was taken aback. “What the hell concern is that of yours? First you come here bitchin’ about my shovelin’, then you storm into my house and now you’re askin’ questions that got nothin’ to do with patient care.”

She wouldn’t back down. “Do you?”

“If you’re askin’ if I have kids the answer is no.”

“No children?”

“Ya deaf, Doc?”

The tension ran from her shoulders and settled in her gut. The old man was lying. “I have a patient in the hospital right now. His name is J. D. Sumner from New York City—”

“Don’t know nobody in New Yawk.” Cane in hand, he turned away and shuffled to the kitchen table, a small sixties chrome-and-Formica affair with two red vinyl chairs.

Had J.D. sat there once?

Hanging the cane over the back of a chair, the old gent lowered himself into the one facing the window that overlooked his backyard, and it startled Ella that her own kitchen table mirrored an identical arrangement.

He said, “Go back to your hospital, Doc. I’m gonna take a nap, if you don’t mind.” Staring out at his snowy world, he began massaging his hip.

She stepped forward. “Are you in pain?”

“Nothin’ I can’t handle.”

J.D.’s words.

“You’re due for another checkup next week. I’ll expect to see you in my office.”

He turned suspicious eyes on her; eyes that had her thinking of J.D. when he lay on the stretcher in Emerge and asked what she planned for his knee.

“If I need pills, I’ll call you.”

Stubborn old cuss. “You do that,” she said. She should leave well enough alone. But she couldn’t. Her heart could not stand by without trying. “And if you’re curious about my other patient…he’s mid-thirties, has dark auburn hair. And,” she said, pausing for effect, “brown eyes.”

No reaction. The old gent continued his vigilance on the yard.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll go now.” However, as she opened the door she heard him whisper a word. Had it been green? She slanted a look over her shoulder to be sure, but he sat in profile, his jaw pointing toward the winter landscape, his lashes unblinking.

Ella released a small sigh. “See you later, Mr. Sumner.”

He remained motionless.

Stepping outside, she softly shut the door, and smiled.

In profile, Jared Sumner was the image of his son.

J.D.’s skin was on fire one minute, the next like he’d been dunked in the North Atlantic, his teeth chattered so hard. What the hell was going on with his body? He’d done the exercises the therapist told him to do and he’d walked the corridor most of the day, resting whenever the pain got a little touchy.

He glanced at the plate the dinner staff had brought, the chicken congealing in the gravy. It smelled good ten minutes ago, before a wave of heat swept his body and a migraine set up camp in his brain.

Pulling the covers to his neck, he let his eyes drift shut. Maybe if he slept for a bit he’d be okay.

Another shudder shook his body. Dammit. What the hell was the matter with him? All he’d done was a little damage to his knee, for Christ’s sake. Nothing major.

Except his body had switched into betrayal mode.

A stickler for health—he watched what he ate, exercised daily, drank in moderation, had sex regularly—the fact he had no control over his anatomy’s behavior at the moment did not endear J.D. to the hospital. Had she made an error during surgery? The way that quack doctor had with his mom? Had Dr. Ella gone into the wrong area? Used an unsterilized scalpel? He’d read of such things.

Your imagination is running amuck, J.D. You know she did her job. The incision was neat and tidy. Hadn’t he viewed that thin, red line each time she redressed it?

Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough. Tomorrow he was leaving, whether she liked it or not. He couldn’t recall ever staying more than a couple of hours in a hospital. Now here he was again, heading toward his second day with his temperature a rising tide.

Maybe he should call a nurse.

Where was the call button?

God, he was cold….

“Dr. Ella Wilder, line one, Dr. Ella Wilder, line one.”

She punched her office intercom.

“It’s Lindsey from floor two, doctor.”

The night nurse began her shift at five o’clock. Ella glanced at the slim-banded watch on her wrist. Six-thirteen. She’d been at her desk almost an hour and a half. No wonder her shoulders ached.

Lindsey continued, “Mr. Sumner in 239 has a mild fever again. Fluctuates between chills and sweats. My guess is he worked the leg too much today, but he won’t admit it.”

“Swelling?”

“There’s some distension and redness. Temperature’s one hundred. He’s asking for you.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Put the leg on pillows and pack the area in ice. Also, increase the antibiotics by ten milligrams. Has he eaten?”

“Said he wasn’t hungry.”

“Let’s get the fever down. Then we’ll get some food into him. Thanks, Lindsey.”

“Anytime, Doctor. Um…” Pause. “He’s quite adamant about seeing you.”

Her heart kicked. “Did he say why?”

“No. He just seems a little agitated, like he’s nervous about being here.”

“Here, or hospitals in general?”

“He didn’t say.”

“All right, I’ll finish ASAP and come down.”

Ella ended the call. It wasn’t that often a patient of hers ran a fever that high. She’d bet he’d gone overboard with the exercising. Routinely, at noon and four o’clock, if she wasn’t in surgery, she checked with the nurses’ station to see how her patients fared. J.D., she knew, was determined to leave tonight after her rounds.

Well, J.D. It seems you’ll be with me another night.

The thought had no more entered her mind than she glanced around her office as though she’d spoken aloud. Lord, she needed to go home, soak in a hot bath and—

Oh, Ella. You can’t win with those double entendres. Grabbing another patient file, she set to work. Fifteen minutes later, she took the stairwell down to the second floor; stopped at the desk.

“Is he sleeping, Lindsey?” she asked the nurse.

“No, but he’s adamant about speaking with you.” A glint entered the woman’s eyes. “I think he has a crush on you.”

Ella sighed. “It’s the meds.”

“Maybe we should cut back, considering the number of questions he asks about you.” She winked.

One thing about hospitals, Ella realized early in her career, their gossip mills loved information about their medical personnel. Her brother Peter had been fighting off rumors since he and Bethany butted heads and then locked lips.

That gossip mill was why Ella chose a counselor who practiced in Springfield, twenty miles away. The last thing she needed was her past—those dreaded few days during her years of internship in Boston—sifting down WRG’s corridors. Not even her family knew of the deep-seated guilt Ella harbored due to that one incident, or of the nightmares that still galloped into her sleep. Yes, she understood the fault of the incident was not hers. That the scrub nurse with her in the O.R. had been an alcoholic, had neglected to sanitize one of the instruments. And, yes, the woman lost her job over the whole awful situation.

But a little boy nearly died as a result of that nurse’s disregard—a child under Ella’s care, and on whom she’d operated with an instrument she trusted and believed to be sterile.

And though she still fought to regain the confidence she’d once possessed as a doctor, it was returning, growing stronger day by day within the walls of her beloved Walnut River General.

Picking up J.D.’ s chart and ignoring Lindsey’s comments, Ella headed for 239.

His glassy green eyes fastened on her the instant she stepped around the door. “Finally,” he said.

Taking the ophthalmoscope from her pocket, she went to his side, turned his face toward her, checked his pupils. “You’re not my only patient, J.D.”

“You called me J.D. again.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“There’s a lot I want.”

She ignored his look as she reached for the blood-pressure cuff hooked on the wall above his head.

“And,” he added, voice indistinct with fever, “I usually get it.”

Ella pumped the cuff. “Not all of us are so lucky.”

A corner of his mouth worked. “We talking about the same thing, Doc?”

Oh, she understood precisely what he meant. What surprised her was his ability to tease while a fever warred inside his body. He was a determined man. “Well, there’s one thing you won’t get,” she said, releasing the cuff.

“You?”

“Since you’ve elevated your blood pressure and contracted a second fever, there will be no discharge until tomorrow.”

His mouth sobered. “You’re keeping me another night?”

Ella curled her hands around the guardrail and pulled it up. “How many times did you exercise today?”

“A few.”

“More than the physiotherapist’s recommendation?”

He looked askance; she noticed his chapped lips. “J.D.,” she said, offering the bottle of ice water to him, “do you know what it means to rest?”

“’Course. I do that at night.”

“Not just at night. During the day, too. After any surgery your body needs time to heal, to redefine itself, so to speak. There’s a lot going on inside you that requires your patience—and rest. In other words, I want you to empty your mind of work and whatever else is on your BlackBerry. While exercising prevents clots—” his eyes, she noticed, sharpened “—going beyond the recommended sessions has aggravated your injury. It’s not going to get you back to your office quicker. And while your fever isn’t off the charts, it is high enough to tell me your body has put up a red flag. So, until we get it down and stabilized for at least twenty-four hours, I can’t discharge you.”

During her speech, he sipped the water.

“Do you understand?” she asked.

He handed her the bottle. “I understand.”

“Good.” She set the water on the table and picked up the lip balm. “Keep your lips lubricated,” she said, handing him the tube.

Fevered as his eyes were, the lightheartedness returned.

“To keep them from bleeding,” she informed him, removing the ice packs. The swelling was there, more than she liked, but not as bad as she’d envisioned. By morning, he should be on the mend.

She assessed his circulation on the arch of his long narrow foot, and behind his anklebone where his skin was hairless and smooth and vulnerable.

“What’s the rate?” he asked when she was done.

“Eighty-eight—normal with a fever.”

“My resting pulse is fifty-four,” he lamented.

“It’ll be back once your temp decreases and you’re healing.” She gave him a smile. “You’re in excellent shape.” And he was. His calves were defined, his shoulders broad and solid. She’d noted the muscles in his forearms and biceps. No doubt another gym advocate. Juice monkey was Peter’s description.

“Are you a member of a gym?” she asked.

“Hate gyms. I run, hike and row in the summer, snowshoe in the winter.” He frowned at his leg. “I’d hoped to do some trails around here, maybe follow the river a few miles.”

“No other sport injuries?”

“Nope.” His eyes kept hers. “Maybe I should sue,” he added, smearing his lips with the balm she’d given him. “For lack of viable fitness and fresh air—never mind my more, um, basic needs—all of which I’ll sorely miss this month.” His brows jumped twice and Ella suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

“You are one predictable patient, Mr. Sumner.”

He hissed. “Doc, Doc. How’m I to rescue my self-esteem after that comment?”

“I’m sure your self-esteem will hold out. I’ll get Lindsey to change these ice packs in thirty minutes and then redress your leg.”

From a narrow cupboard in the corner of the room, she retrieved a fresh, plump pillow.

“Meanwhile, I’ll send up some soup so you’ll have something in your stomach for the night. Lift up on your elbows.” When he did, she removed the old pillow and tucked in the laundered one. “Better?” she asked when he’d resettled.

Something grazed his expression—like a butterfly’s fleeting touch to a flower—and it curled around her heart the way the pillow she held wrapped his body’s warmth around her hands. “I’ll see you in the morning, J.D.”

“Ella.” Her name was soft on his chapped lips. “Thank you.”

She touched the big hand resting on his chest. “You’re welcome.” Before she could draw away he gripped her fingers. “Can I see you?”

She pretended to misunderstand. “I need to finish my rounds.”

“I meant after. Once I’ve left the hospital.”

Carefully, she withdrew her hand from his clasp. “I seldom go to New York.”

“I’ll be staying in Walnut River for a couple weeks.” “Oh? So you do have family here?” Would he admit it now?

“Trying to get me offtrack, Doc? I’m asking if you’ll have dinner with me once I’m discharged.”

“Not offtrack. We just want to ensure—”

“Will you?” he asked, his throat so raspy she handed him the water bottle again.

“Let me think about it.”

“Better than no, I suppose.” He took a sip of liquid, eyed her. “I’ll call you tonight.” He flashed a smile. “You’re in the phone book. I checked.”

She shook her head. “I wonder how many other female nurses and doctors you’ve wooed.” For NHC.

He didn’t blink. “Not a one.”

She huffed a laugh. “And I’ll bet not for lack of trying.”

“Don’t have to try, Doc.”

“Ah. Women drop like flies at your feet, then?”

A wicked grin. “Something like that.”

“Good to know. Well, then.” She lifted her chin. “Don’t let me get in their way.”

His laughter followed her out the door.

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