The Single Dad Finds a Wife

Spring nodded.

“I wanna go to our real house,” Jeremy added. “Not the hotel.”

Spring bit her lip. Her heart ached for them. This father and son needed help, the kind that Common Ground offered, but the man bristled each time she tried to assure him that it wasn’t a handout but a help up that the ministry provided.

She had had the training offered to every volunteer and knew she couldn’t foist assistance on them. She was on the board of directors and had been one of the people who’d insisted that sensitivity training be a requirement of all Common Ground volunteers. People wanted and needed to maintain their dignity, especially when they found themselves in critical situations.

“You’ll be feeling like your normal self in a few days, Jeremy,” she told the boy. “Your father is going to give you some medicine to take. Will you promise me you’ll be a good trouper and take it?”

The boy nodded.

“Good,” she said, smiling at him. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pen and a small card. She scribbled something on the back and handed it to the boy. “If your tummy hurts again, have your dad call me at this number.” Spring patted Jeremy’s leg and then glanced up at his father. “Have a good evening, Mr. Camden.”

Spring left them then, but she overheard the child’s question. “Daddy, is she a spring angel?”

Her smile was wry as she made her way to the physicians’ office.

It took her just a few minutes to log her new patient notes, shed her lab coat, pack up her bag and grab her keys. Shelby would be ready to go, as well, as soon as Mr. Camden and his son checked out.

“There has to be some mistake,” she heard the man say a few minutes later as she reached the front reception area. “I must have left my wallet at the hotel. I do have insurance.”

She started to turn and go out the back way, but the boy, in his father’s arm and peering over his shoulder, had seen her.

“Dr. Spring.”

She waved at him. Uncertain about how Mr. Camden might take her overhearing his financial problems, Spring hastened toward the door.

“Mr. Camden, don’t worry about it. Really. We don’t need an insurance card or payment,” Shelby said. “All you have to do is take this to the pharmacy. They’ll fill it no questions asked. Here are the directions to an all-night drugstore.”

“But...”

Spring’s heart broke for them. She’d heard plenty of hard-luck stories in her time volunteering with Common Ground. She had also learned that she couldn’t make people’s problems disappear the way she could with an illness. A bandage, shot or lollipop could not and did not solve the troubles the clinic’s patients faced once they left Common Ground.

Not able to bear hearing any more, she hurried out the doors toward her car.

They obviously needed help, and she was glad she’d used the ploy of giving the Common Ground business card to the child. Handing it to a child patient eased any potential embarrassment of the parent while still getting the necessary contact information into the parent’s hands.

Because in addition to a toll-free after-hours clinic number, the contact numbers for both the soup kitchen and homeless shelter were on there. She hoped Mr. Camden wouldn’t be too proud to seek the assistance he obviously needed.

She sat in her car for a moment, tears inexplicably welling in her eyes.

She had been blessed with so much. And there were people like Mr. Camden and Jeremy who were just struggling to make it. The News & Observer, the daily newspaper out of Raleigh and Durham, was filled with stories about families who’d lost everything in the recession, who were victims of layoffs or downsizing. Of others forced into foreclosures or short sales on their homes. She wondered again what category the Camdens fell in, what had happened to them that put their stability in jeopardy.

I wanna go to our real house.

“Not a hotel,” Spring said, sadness seeping into her bones.

She started the car, a sensible and dependable late-model Volvo.

At least Jeremy had a hotel room to sleep in, she thought. That meant they weren’t living in a car like so many of the region’s homeless population were.

Suddenly not feeling much like an indulgent six-or seven-course gourmet dinner with her friends, Spring pressed a button on her dash panel and told the car phone system to “Call Cecelia.”

She’d cancel on the Magnolia Supper Club tonight and just go home. A bowl of soup, some tea and a good book would suit her just fine.

As she drove out of the parking lot, she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Mr. Camden emerge from the clinic holding Jeremy in one arm, the Common Ground Free Clinic tote in the other.

Seeing that made her feel a little better.

Shelby had somehow gotten him to take the bag of supplies, samples, coupons and information that every new client received.

The car’s remote phone system connected. “This is Cecelia Jeffries,” a husky voice said.

“Hey there, Cecelia. It’s Spring.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” her friend said. “You’re calling from that car phone again. I didn’t recognize the number and thought one of my students had somehow gotten my personal cell. What’s up, girl?”

Spring smiled, her friend’s voice lifting her spirits. “I’m going to have to cancel on the supper club tonight.”

“Cancel? It’s already canceled. Didn’t you get the messages?”

“Messages? No, I’ve been at the clinic. We had a late walk-in.”

“There was a break-in at the store. Gerald is falling apart.”

“Is he okay?” Spring asked, alarmed. Gerald Murphy did not do well with deviations from the norm. “I can head over there right now.” Spring turned toward Main Street instead of the street that would lead to her house across town.

“He’s fine,” Cecelia said. “You know how he is. Richard has been dealing with the police.”

Spring made the left onto Main Street and the downtown district where Step Back in Time Antiques was located.

“I see the police squad car in front of the store,” she reported.

“Come over when you leave there,” Cecelia said. “I’m making a quick chicken potpie, so at least you’ll have a hot meal since you probably just had a protein bar for lunch.”

Spring chuckled. “You know me too well.”

“Girl, forget saving calories. Life was meant to enjoy—and that means enjoying good food.”

“Everything in moderation,” Spring said.

Cecelia snorted at that.

After promising that she would stop by after checking on Gerald and Richard, Spring disconnected the call and pulled into a spot on the street behind the Cedar Springs Police Department cruiser.

As she got out of the car and headed toward the door of the shop, a train display in the window of Step Back in Time Antiques caught her eye. She wondered if Jeremy Camden liked trains. She realized that if Mr. Camden was living with his young son in one of the city’s low cost extended-stay hotels populated by some of the homeless, the last thing that would be on his mind would be splurging on an antique train set, no matter how fetching.

She couldn’t help the sadness she felt knowing that Jeremy wouldn’t—couldn’t—have something as simple as a train set.

Chapter Three

The only thing on David Camden’s mind was picking up that prescription, getting Jeremy settled in bed and then figuring out a way to show Dr. Spring Darling that he wasn’t the sort who took an unneeded handout. She had to have overheard that fiasco at the front desk.

After that, he would figure out how he was going to make the meetings in the morning with first the public safety officials and then the mayor and planning officials. That his priorities were turned topsy-turvy didn’t at all surprise him the way it should have. His son and securing the deal with the City of Cedar Springs should have been his only two concerns. Yet here he was disturbed and wondering about the impression he’d made on a woman he’d just met.

He’d seen her as a woman, someone he could be interested in and that hadn’t happened in a long time.

“Focus, Camden,” he coached himself.

He had work to do and none of it involved a tall blue-eyed blonde.

David forced his attention to his current dilemma.

He couldn’t take Jeremy with him to the meetings, and he couldn’t afford to blow this deal. The opportunity for his company, Carolina Land Associates, was too great, and, in a way, Jeremy’s future depended on his sealing the contract.

He also wondered if Dr. Spring Darling was the Darling he’d read about in the online edition of the Cedar Springs Gazette—the Darling so vocally opposed to and leading the effort to squelch the very notion of development in the city. But before he could investigate any of that, he needed to make sure Jeremy was all right. A glance over his shoulder and to the backseat of the sport utility vehicle confirmed that his little slugger was still knocked out.

He’d fallen asleep almost as soon as David got him buckled into the child safety seat.

After a quick dash into his hotel room to retrieve the wallet he’d left on the dresser next to the television’s remote control, he got a quart of orange juice and the medicine. David insisted on paying cash for the prescription—despite the pharmacist’s assurance that it was free. The last thing he wanted to do was take away a resource from someone who actually needed it.

He roused Jeremy long enough to get him undressed, to the bathroom and back into the big bed. When they’d first checked in, the boy had loved the idea that he would get to sleep in a big bed like Daddy’s. Jeremy had jumped on both double beds and giggled as he hopped from one to the other. But David knew he’d soon want to climb back into his own bed at home, the one decked out like a Formula One race car.

David stared down at his sleeping son as a concept that would enhance his presentation to city officials began unfolding in his mind.

Jeremy’s bedroom furniture and the children’s waiting room at the clinic had given him an idea. He picked up his sketchbook and settled on the sofa to make a few preliminary sketches. Liking where it was going, David fired up his computer and worked on a design for a green space that would meld nicely with a concept he had for a play on the old-style garden apartments that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s. He wrote nouveau retro in the margin on the sketchpad page, then created a computer file with the same name as the design ideas tumbled over each other.

Buzzing disturbed his train of thought.

David looked around, trying to determine the source of the noise. The television was on mute; a guy surrounded by fruits and vegetables and a perky blonde assistant hawked what, had the sound been up, he would have heard was the best juicer ever created on planet Earth.

Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

The radio on the nightstand between the beds glowed 11:20 p.m. He’d been working for a couple of hours and hadn’t realized it.

Bzzz.

No sound came from the radio.

Jeremy had flung the light blanket off and was turned practically upside down on his bed, the sheets in a twist.

Then it dawned on him. The phone. He’d had it on vibrate and it was...where? He cast his gaze around the hotel room, wondering how he could lose something in a space the size of a studio apartment. Then he remembered. The counter in the bathroom. He’d put the phone down when they’d come in and gone straight to the toilet.

He padded his way over and decided to take the call there so Jeremy wouldn’t be disturbed. He grabbed the phone before it fell to the floor after buzzing its way to the edge of the sink counter.

“Camden here.”

“That’s no way to answer the telephone. I’ve told you that at least a hundred times, dear.”

David breathed a sigh that was both relief and exasperation. Charlotte Camden, his missing-in-action mother, had decided to check in. He’d left a couple of messages for her earlier in the day and hadn’t heard a peep from her.

“Mom, where are you?”

“I’m at Becky’s. She sends her love.”

David rolled his eyes. The only thing his aunt Becky would send would be an order form for cookies or magazines or overpriced gift wraps and bows from one of the thousand civic group fund-raisers she always seemed to be in charge of. There were only so many peanuts and church cookbooks and happy cat calendars that a person could buy or tolerate.

“We had a lovely girls’ day out,” his mother said. “We went to a new spa here in Greensboro and had facials, and then we ate lunch at a cute little bistro...”

David leaned against the sink, rubbed his temple and sighed.

Here he was thinking she was having some sort of existential or menopausal crisis, and instead she was just hanging out with her sister.

“...and he asked me out to dinner. Imagine that!”

His eyes popped open, and he stood up. “What was that, Mom? Who? Dinner?”

A schoolgirl-sounding trill came through the mobile phone.

“He’s in charge of the school district’s transportation department. We’re going to dinner and a movie. Isn’t that nice?”

David shuddered and tried not to sigh again.

The thought of his mother dating gave him the heebie-jeebies. He knew it was unreasonable to expect that she would be alone the rest of her life. Charlotte Camden was not yet sixty years old and had already been a widow for almost a decade.

She didn’t know that David thoroughly vetted the gentlemen friends she expressed interest in. And he’d confronted more than one who was after something other than the companionship of a lady of a certain age.

He knew he was overprotective when it came to his mother. Charlotte wasn’t what might be called rich, but a trust left for her by his father in addition to a hefty insurance settlement after he’d died ensured that she would have no financial worries, and enough wealth to attract the sort looking for a gravy train.

“Yeah, lovely,” he said of her dinner-date news.

What sounded like a moan from the other room drew his attention. He pulled the bathroom door open a bit and listened.

“Daddy.”

“I’m right here, buddy,” he said, making his way to the beds.

“Is that Jeremy?” Charlotte asked. “What in the world is he doing up at this hour? David, you spoil him.”

“He’s sick, Mom. Can you hold on for a sec?”

He put the phone on his bed and sat on Jeremy’s.

The boy crawled into his lap and moaned. His forehead was burning up.

David’s heart started racing.

“Oh, boy.”

“David! David!” The tinny voice floated from the phone.

He leaned over and snatched it up, cradling the phone in the crook of his neck. “Mom, I’ve got to go. I need to find a doctor.”

“Find a doctor? What do you mean find a doctor? Call Dr. Johnson.”

“Dr. Johnson is in Charlotte, mom. We’re in Cedar Springs.”

David eased Jeremy from his lap and back onto the bed, then dashed to the bathroom for a cool washcloth. He returned just a moment later with both the washcloth to press to his son’s head and a glass of water.

“Cedar Springs? What in the...? Oh no! Oh, David, I’m so sorry. Was that this week? I thought you were going there next week.”

Retching sounds were coming from Jeremy.

“Mom, I need to go.”

He disengaged the phone and dashed for the wastebasket near the desk. He got back to Jeremy a second too late.

The boy started to cry. David didn’t know if the tears were because his stomach hurt or because he’d just soiled his favorite Winnie the Pooh pajamas.

“It’s gonna be okay, buddy.”

David prayed that it would be as he comforted his son.

It was eleven thirty at night. He had two options. He could call 9-1-1 or he could call the doctor from the clinic. She’d written a number on the back of the business card she’d given Jeremy.

He put the wastebasket on the floor at the edge of the bed and cradled his son in one arm. With the other, he dug into his pocket and pulled out Dr. Spring Darling’s business card.

* * *

Spring had just closed the book she’d been reading, turned off the bedside lamp, fluffed her pillows and settled in bed when her mobile phone chirped.

“Gerald, I am not giving you a prescription for Valium,” she muttered as she rolled over and reached for the telephone on the bedside table.

The burglars at Step Back in Time Antiques weren’t after whatever they could grab. They’d come with a shopping list. Small but extremely valuable pieces were the only things missing from the antiques shop. If it hadn’t been for a broken vase that Richard’s wife had come across, they may not have even discovered the break-in for a day or two. She’d gotten the story from Gerald, the high-strung co-owner of the shop, while Richard, the more level-headed business partner, talked to police, then called their insurance company.

After checking on her friends, she’d driven to Cecelia’s, where she’d stayed entirely too long for someone who had early morning rounds at the hospital. Gerald had already phoned twice asking for something to calm his nerves.

She didn’t even glance at the caller ID on the phone. “Gerald, for the last time, I am not giving you a script for Valium. Drink some chamomile tea and go to bed.”

“Uh, hello?”

Spring sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

That rich baritone was definitely not Gerald Murphy on the line. It sounded like the man with the little boy who’d been at the clinic—the man she’d spent too much time talking about with Cecelia, the man whose voice did unreasonable things to her.

She turned on the light, then put on her professional voice. “I’m so sorry,” she told her caller. “I thought it was a friend. This is Dr. Darling. To whom am I speaking?”

“I’m sorry for calling so late, doctor. It’s David. David Camden. I brought my son in to see you earlier this evening.”

Spring ran a hand through hair that tumbled in her face. She opened the bedside table drawer and pulled out a hair tie to tame it.

Putting the phone on speaker, she gathered up her hair and tugged it into a ponytail. “Is Jeremy all right?” she asked him.

“No.”

She heard the panic in the man’s voice and was up and headed to her closet for clothes to wear to either the clinic or the hospital.

“What are his symptoms?” she asked as she grabbed a pair of jeans and a white button-down shirt.

“He’s burning up and throwing up. Hold on, please.”

She stared at the phone for a moment. When she heard retching, her mind started running through what besides stomach flu might be wrong with the cute little boy. Spring pulled on the jeans and slipped into a pair of loafers.

“Dr. Darling? I’m back. He says his stomach hurts a lot. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Where are you?”

When he told her, she was a bit surprised to hear that someone with financial troubles was living in that rather expensive hotel. There were several more economical options around town. But she said nothing about that. It wasn’t her business. A sick child was her concern.

“I want you to take Jeremy to the hospital. To Cedar Springs General Hospital. I’ll meet you there. Do you have something to write with? I can give you directions from where you are. It will take you less than ten minutes to get there.”

She gave David the directions, shrugged on and buttoned her shirt and was about to grab her keys when she paused at the mirror. She made a quick detour to her large bathroom and applied a touch of powder and a bit of blush to her cheeks. She picked up a tube of lipstick, then frowned and put it back on the tray that held her makeup.

“It’s a medical emergency, not a date,” she said.

With her keys in hand, she grabbed her phone, the wallet clutch that held the essentials and the lanyard with her hospital IDs.

Outside, as she made her way to the garage, she noticed the lights were still on at her mother’s house. Spring’s home was actually a separate wing of her mother’s large estate. They shared the four-car garage on the property. Lovie Darling was a consummate entertainer, and the two cars in the drive, vehicles Spring didn’t recognize, were proof of that.

In her Volvo car, Spring placed her hands on the steering wheel, closed her eyes and prayed for Jeremy Camden and his father.

Then she headed to the hospital. She hated that it was under these circumstances, but she found herself pleased at the prospect of seeing David Camden again.

Hot on the heels of that came the realization that her thoughts were inappropriate on so many levels. Chief among them was that there was most likely a Mrs. Camden who loved him and that precious little boy. But the doctor’s suddenly sweaty hands and that little flutter in her gut gave evidence to another diagnosis—one of a far more personal nature.

For the first time in a long, long time, Spring found herself intrigued by a man, curious about his impression of her...and she fervently hoped there was no Mrs. Camden.

Chapter Four

Spring headed straight to the emergency department at Cedar Springs General Hospital. As one of the staff physicians at the medical center, she had a designated parking space and was able to bypass the entry used by other hospital employees.

On weekends, the emergency department—typically called an emergency room by the public, as if there was just one room to it—bustled with acute trauma cases, mostly of the do-it-yourself-home-improvement variety like broken arms and legs or fractures. Then there were the asthma attacks and bee stings, as well as the usual mix of possible heart attacks, allergic reactions to everything from peanuts to shellfish and the occasional car crash victim. Severe trauma patients who needed advanced care were airlifted to Durham, where specialists at Duke University’s emergency trauma hospital and facilities could handle burns, gunshot victims and the like. Thankfully, those cases were rare at Cedar Springs General.

Spring looked around but didn’t see either David or Jeremy Camden in the emergency department’s waiting room. This evening there was just a handful of people in the waiting area. Three people huddled together with a man who kept saying, “I’m not gonna let them touch me. I’m not gonna let them touch me.” And an elderly woman in a light blue pantsuit sat erect in one of the chairs facing the receptionist’s desk. The woman clutched her purse as if someone might try to snatch it from her grip.

The televisions were on; one wall-mounted plasma set displayed a cable news channel, while its twin depicted a late-night talk show host yukking it up with a celebrity guest.

“Hi, Dr. Darling,” a man said from behind her. “What are you doing here this time of night?”

Spring turned to see Joseph Bradshaw, one of the physician assistants. Dressed in green scrubs, the uniform of most of the emergency department staff, he held a chart and was making his way toward one of the bays.

“Hi, Joseph. I got a call from the father of a patient. Acute abdominal pain that’s gotten worse. They’re supposed to meet me here.”

“It’s been pretty quiet tonight,” Joseph said. “I haven’t seen—”

Just then the automatic doors whooshed open and David Camden rushed in, almost running, with his son in his arms. The panic in his eyes and his bearing arrested Spring. He spotted her almost immediately.

“Dr. Darling!”

“Joseph, I’m going to need a bed.”

“On it, Doc,” he said, heading toward the emergency bays.

“He woke up doubled over,” David said, approaching Spring. “And he threw up again.”

“All right,” Spring said as several emergency department aides rushed to take the boy.

“Daddy, my stomach hurts a lot,” Jeremy said. Adding emphasis to just how much, the boy moaned and burrowed in closer to David’s chest, instinctively seeking the protection of his father rather than the strangers with outstretched hands.