From Neighbors...to Newlyweds?

“My apologies, Miss Hampton,” he said, not sounding the least bit apologetic.

Brittney Hampton was his former sister-in-law’s only child and a student helping out in the E.R.—a co-op placement for which she’d applied without his knowledge, determined to secure the position on the basis of her interview and not because her uncle was a doctor on staff at the hospital. She was loving the experience, and he was pleased to see that she was so intently focused on the pursuit of her goals.

“Are you on a break?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Dr. Layton said I should take one now, while there’s a lull in the E.R.”

“A lull never lasts long,” Matt agreed. “If you’re heading to the cafeteria, can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

She made a face. “I hate coffee.”

He smiled. “Hot chocolate? Coke?”

“Vitamin water?”

“Sold.”

They settled at one of the tables by the window with their beverages.

“How was your morning?” Brittney asked him.

“In addition to the usual hip replacements, I put a plate and five screws in the ankle of a kid who took an awkward tumble on the soccer field.”

She winced. “Sounds painful.”

“Nah, we put him under so he didn’t feel a thing.”

She rolled her eyes. “I meant the tumble.”

“I imagine it was,” he agreed. “How was your morning?”

“I had a test on molecular genetics,” she said.

“And?” he prompted.

She shrugged. “I think I did okay.”

“So no worries that Northeastern is going to rescind their offer?” he teased.

“Not yet.”

“Is Brayden going to Northeastern, too?”

“Brayden is old news,” she told him.

“Oh. I’m … sorry?” Truthfully, he was relieved. On the few occasions that he’d met her boyfriend, he’d seemed like a nice enough kid but Matt had worried that the relationship with Brayden would distract Brittney from her studies and her ultimate goal of becoming a doctor like her uncle.

She smiled, at least a little. “It was a mutual decision.”

“Then your heart isn’t broken?”

“Not even bruised.”

“Glad to hear it,” he said.

“How’s your heart?” she countered.

His brows lifted. “Do they have you working in cardiology now?”

She smiled again, but her eyes—when they met his—showed her concern. “Mom told me that Aunt Lindsay is having another baby.”

“Yes, she is,” he acknowledged, pleased that his voice remained level, betraying none of the emotions that churned inside of him whenever he thought about the family that his ex-wife now had with her new husband. He didn’t resent the fact that Lindsay had everything he’d ever wanted, but he was painfully aware of how empty his own life was in contrast.

“You should get married again, too,” Brittney said.

“Don’t worry about me—I’m doing okay,” he said. And it was true. Because he suddenly realized that, since moving in next door to Georgia Reed and her family, his life didn’t seem quite so empty anymore.

“You need a family.”

“I haven’t given up on that possibility just yet.”

“Mom was telling Grandma that you need a woman who can appreciate you for all of your good qualities,” Brittney continued, “so I’ve been keeping my eyes open for—”

“I appreciate the thought, but the last thing I need is my sixteen-year-old ni—”

“Seventeen,” she interjected. “Remember? You came by for cake and ice cream for my birthday last month.”

“I remember,” he assured her. In fact, he hadn’t missed a single one of her birthdays in the past three years, and he was grateful that Brittney’s mother had continued to include him in family events after the divorce. Of course, it probably helped that he and Kelsey had been friends long before he married her sister. “But the last thing I need is my seventeen-year-old niece trying to set me up.”

“Well, I haven’t found any candidates yet,” she admitted. “Aside from my friend, Nina, who thinks you’re really hot. But even I know how inappropriate that would be.”

“And on that note,” Matt said, pushing back his chair, “I think I should check in on my patient.”

Brittney rose with him. “And I need to get back to the E.R.”

But before she turned away, she gave him a quick hug.

He was as pleased as he was surprised by the impulsive gesture of affection. But it was the words she spoke—”You’ll find someone, Uncle Matt”—that somehow shifted his thoughts to the beautiful widow living next door with her three children and made him wonder if maybe he already had.

Georgia didn’t have a lot of experience with her kids and emergency rooms—thank God for small favors—but she knew that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” was an adage that applied in hospitals as much as anywhere else. And when she finally managed to maneuver her family through the sliding doors, with Pippa fussing, Shane crying (and trying to hold a bag of now partially thawed frozen peas against his wrist), and Quinn shouting “Don’t let him die!”, she didn’t even try to shush them. Or maybe she knew her efforts would be futile anyway.

After she gave the basic details of the incident and handed over her insurance information to the bored-looking clerk behind the desk, she was told—with a vague gesture toward the mostly empty seating area—to wait. But she didn’t even have a chance to direct Quinn to an empty chair when a dark-haired girl in teddy-bear scrubs appeared with a wheelchair for Shane. Though the tag on the lanyard around her neck identified her as “Brittney” and confirmed that she was a member of the hospital staff, she didn’t look to Georgia like she was old enough to be out of high school.

“I’m just going to take you for a walk down the hall to X-ray so that we can get some pictures of your arm,” Brittney explained to Shane.

His panicked gaze flew to his mother. Georgia brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead and tried not to let her own worry show.

“It’s okay if your mom and your brother and sister want to come along, too,” Brittney assured him. “Would that be better?”

Shane nodded.

Quinn shook his head vehemently. “I don’t want Shane to get a X-ray. I wanna go home.”

“We can’t go home until a doctor looks at your brother’s arm,” Georgia reminded her son, holding on to her fraying patience by a mere thread. “And the doctor can’t see what’s inside his arm without an X-ray.”

“You can make it better,” Quinn insisted. “Kiss it and make it better, Mommy.”

Georgia felt her throat tighten because her son trusted that it could be that simple, that she had the power to make it better because she’d always tried to do so. But they weren’t babies anymore and Shane’s injury wasn’t going to be healed by a brush of her lips and a Band-Aid.

Just like when their father had died, there was nothing she could do to ease their pain. Nothing she could do to give them back what they’d lost or fill the enormous void that had been left in all of their lives.

“Unfortunately, that’s not going to fix what’s wrong this time,” she told him.

“Does a X-ray … hurt?” Shane asked.

Brittney squatted down so that she was at eye level with the boy in the chair. “It might hurt a little when the tech positions your arm to take the picture,” she admitted. “But it’s the best way to figure out what to do next to make your arm stop hurting.”

After a brief hesitation, Shane nodded. “Okay.”

She smiled at him, then turned to Quinn and sized him up. “How old are you?”

“Four.” He held up the requisite number of fingers proudly.

“Hmm.” She paused, as if considering a matter of great importance. “I’m not sure if this will work.”

“If what will work?” he immediately demanded.

“Well, hospital policy states that no one under the age of five is allowed to drive a wheelchair without a special license,” she confided. “Do you have a license?”

Quinn shook his head.

Brittney rummaged in the pockets of her shirt and finally pulled out a small square of blue paper. “I have a temporary one here,” she told him, and Georgia saw that the words TEMPORARY WHEELCHAIR LICENSE were printed in bold letters across the top of the paper. “And I can give it to you if you think you can steer the chair slowly and carefully all the way down the corridor to X-ray.”

“I can do it,” he assured her.

She looked to Georgia, who nodded her permission.

“Okay, then. But first I have to put your name on here—”

“Quinn Reed.”

She uncapped a pen and carefully printed his name. “And the date?”

He looked to his mother for guidance on that one.

“May twenty-second,” she supplied.

Brittney filled in the date, then recapped the pen and handed the “license” to Quinn. He studied the paper reverently for a moment before tucking it carefully into the pocket of his jeans and reaching up to take the handles of the chair.

“Just one warning,” Brittney told him. “If you bump into anything or anybody, I’ll have to revoke that license.”

He nodded his understanding, and they set off toward the X-ray department.

Twenty minutes later, Brittney directed them into a vacant exam room with a promise that “Dr. Layton will be in shortly.”

But one minute turned into two, and then five turned into ten. And Pippa, already overdue for a feeding, made it clear—at the top of her lungs—that she would not be put off any longer.

Thankfully, Quinn seemed to have finally accepted that his brother wasn’t in any immediate danger of dying, and he crawled up onto the hospital cot and closed his eyes. Shane was still crying, though there was only an occasional sob to remind her of the tears that ran down his cheeks. So Georgia eased Pippa out of the carrier and settled in a hard plastic chair to nurse the baby.

She tried to drape a receiving blanket over her shoulder, to maintain some degree of modesty, but Pippa was having none of it. Every time she tried to cover herself, her daughter curled her little fingers around the edge of the fabric and tugged it away, until Georgia gave up. Besides, she didn’t imagine a nursing mother was either an unusual or scandalous sight in a hospital.

Of course, that was before Matt Garrett walked in.

In the few moments that Matt had taken to review the digital images before he tracked down the patient, he didn’t manage to figure out why the name Shane Reed seemed familiar. Then he walked into exam room four and saw one little boy on the bed and an almost mirror image in the wheelchair parked beside it, and he realized Shane Reed was one half of the adorable twin sons belonging to his gorgeous neighbor. And sure enough, Georgia was seated beside the bed, nursing her baby girl.

The baby’s tiny hand was curled into a fist and pressed against the creamy slope of her mother’s breast, and her big blue eyes were wide and intent while she suckled hungrily. It was one of the most beautiful sights Matt had ever witnessed. And incredibly arousing.

“Mommy.” It was Shane who saw him first, and he tapped his mother with his uninjured hand. “Mr. Matt’s here.”

Georgia’s gaze shifted, locked with his and her pale cheeks filled with color.

“You’re not Dr. Layton,” she said inanely.

“Things are a little chaotic in the E.R. right now, so Dr. Layton asked me to take a look at Shane’s X-ray.”

Quinn sat up. “Are you a doctor, too?”

Matt nodded.

“You don’t look like a doctor,” he said accusingly.

“Quinn,” his mother admonished.

But Matt was intrigued. “How does a doctor look?”

The little boy studied him for a minute. “Older,” he decided. “With gray hair and glasses.”

“I’m older than you,” Matt pointed out.

“You still don’t look like a doctor.”

“Actually, I’m an orthopedist,” he explained.

“See?” Quinn said triumphantly to his mother.

“An orthopedist is a doctor,” she told him.

The boy looked to Matt for confirmation.

He nodded. “An orthopedist is a doctor who specializes in fixing broken bones.”

“Is Shane—” Quinn swallowed “—broken?”

He managed to hold back a smile. “No, your brother isn’t broken, but a bone in his arm is.”

“I falled out of your tree house,” Shane said quietly.

Matt winced. “All the way from the top?”

The little boy shook his head. “I missed a step on the ladder.”

“And reached out with his arms to break his fall,” Georgia finished.

He noted that she’d shifted Pippa to nurse from her other breast, and he quickly refocused his gaze on his patient. “And broke your arm, too,” Matt told Shane. “Do you want to see the picture of your arm that shows the break?”

Shane sniffled, nodded.

Matt sat down in front of a laptop on the counter and tapped a few keys.

“This here is your radius—” he pointed with the tip of a pencil to the picture on the screen “—and this is your ulna.”

Though the occasional tear slid down the boy’s cheeks, his gaze tracked the movement of the pencil and he nodded his understanding.

“Do you see anything different about the two bones?”

“I do,” Quinn immediately replied, as Shane nodded again.

“Well, since it’s Shane’s arm, I think we should let Shane tell us what’s different,” Matt said.

Quinn pouted but remained silent.

“What do you see, Shane?”

“The ra-di—” he faltered.

“Radius?” Matt prompted.

“It has a line in it.”

“That line is the break, called a distal radius fracture.”

“It hurts,” Shane said, in a soft voice that was somehow both wounded and brave.

“I know it does,” Matt agreed.

“Can you fix it?” Quinn asked. “You said you can fix broken bones.”

He nodded. “Yes, I can, and I will.”

Georgia tried to concentrate on what Matt was saying, but her mind was still reeling from the realization that her new neighbor wasn’t just gorgeous and charming but a doctor, too. She couldn’t have said why the information surprised her so much or what she’d expected.

While he was occupied with Shane, she took a closer look at him, her gaze skimming from his neatly combed hair to the polished loafers on his feet. This man certainly didn’t bear any resemblance to the sexy gardener who had tended to her overgrown yard. If she’d taken a guess as to his occupation that day, she probably would have said that he was employed in some kind of physically demanding field, like construction work or firefighting. She certainly wouldn’t have guessed that he was an M.D.

Maybe the Mercedes in his driveway should have been her first clue, though she’d never met a doctor who hadn’t managed to reveal his profession within the first five minutes of an introduction. And she’d been living next door to the man for more than three weeks without him giving even a hint of his occupation. But as she watched Dr. Garrett now, she could see that he was completely in his element here.

As he explained the process of casting a broken bone, he used simple words that the boys could understand. Despite his careful explanation, though, Quinn remained wary.

“Is Shane going to die?” he asked, obviously terrified about his brother’s potential fate.

Though Georgia instinctively flinched at the question, the doctor didn’t even bat an eye.

“Not from a broken arm,” he assured him.

Shane looked up, his dark eyes somber. “Do you promise?”

She felt her own eyes fill with tears when she realized that the question wasn’t directed to her but to Matt. Which made perfect sense, since he was the doctor. But it was the first time since Phillip had died that either of the twins had sought reassurance from anyone but their mother, and emotionally, it cut her to the quick.

“I absolutely promise,” he said.

And Shane’s hesitant nod confirmed that he’d accepted the man’s word.

“Can I ask you a question now?” Matt asked.

Shane nodded again.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue.”

“Then we’ll put a blue cast on your arm,” the doctor announced, and earned a small smile from his patient.

He left the room for a few minutes, then came back with Brittney and an older woman. The gray-haired nurse helped lift and maneuver Shane’s arm while the doctor applied the cast and Brittney looked on, observing and providing a running commentary of the process to entertain the twins. When it was done, Matt tied a sling over Shane’s shoulder and explained that it would help keep the arm comfortable and in place.

“Do you use your right hand or your left hand when you eat?” Brittney asked Shane.

“This one,” he said, lifting his uninjured hand.

“Do you think you could handle an ice cream sundae?”

Shane nodded shyly, then looked to his mother for permission.

“They would love ice cream,” she admitted to Brittney, reaching for her purse.

The girl waved a hand. “It’s on Dr. Garrett—part of the service.”

Matt passed her a twenty-dollar bill without protest.

“Does my wheelchair driver still have his license?”

Quinn pulled the paper out of his pocket.

“Then let’s go get ice cream.”

“Thanks, Britt,” said Matt with a smile.

Georgia had mixed feelings as she watched her boys head out with the young nurse. They were growing up so fast, but they would always be her babies as much as the little one still in her arms.

“She’s been wonderful,” she said to Matt now. “I don’t know that I would have survived this ordeal without screaming if she hadn’t been able to engage the boys.”

“It can’t be easy, juggling three kids on your own on even a normal day.”

“What is a normal day?”

He smiled at that. “I’m not sure I would know, but I’m sure it’s not strapping three kids into car seats for a trip to the hospital.”

“Mrs. Dunford did offer to look after Pippa and Quinn so I didn’t have to bring them along but—” She knew there was no reason to feel embarrassed talking to a doctor about a perfectly natural biological function that women had been performing since the beginning of time, but that knowledge didn’t prevent a warm flush of color from rising in her cheeks again. “But the baby was almost due for a feeding and Quinn was absolutely terrified at the thought of his brother going to the hospital.”

“He has a phobia about hospitals?” he asked.

“They both do,” she admitted.

“Any particular reason?”

She nodded. “Because their father—my husband—was in the hospital when he died.”

“That would do it,” he agreed.

“It was a heart attack,” she explained. “He recognized the symptoms and called 9-1-1, but the damage was too severe. All the boys know is that he was alive when they put him in the ambulance and dead at the hospital.”

“Now they think anyone who goes to the hospital is going to die,” he guessed.

She nodded again. “I’ve tried to explain that it wasn’t the doctor’s fault—that it wasn’t anybody’s fault—but they don’t seem to believe me.”

“Which one is Mrs. Dunford?”

She smiled. “Across the street. Always outside at 7:00 a.m. in her housecoat, watering her flowers. She has a magic touch with geraniums.”

“And gingersnap cookies,” he said.

“She baked you cookies?”

“She wanted to welcome me to the neighborhood.”

“More likely she wanted to set you up with her granddaughter.”

“Then she should have gone for chocolate chip—they’re my absolute favorite.”

“I’ll be sure to let her know.”

He shook his head. “I’d prefer to get my own dates—although even Brittney thinks I need some help in that regard.”

“Brittney—the nurse who looks like she’s fifteen?”

“She’s seventeen.”

“Then she’s not a nurse?”

He laughed. “More like pre-pre-med. Actually, Brittney’s a high school co-op student who also happens to be my niece.”

“She’s been fabulous with the boys.”

“She plans to specialize in pediatric medicine.”

“That’s quite an ambition.”

“She’s very determined. And she’s one of the most sought-after babysitters in town.”

“I’ll keep that in mind if I ever find myself in need of one,” she promised, certain Brittney would have graduated from medical school before that would ever happen.

So she was more than a little surprised when Matt said, “How about Friday night so I can take you out to dinner?”

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