A Doctor for Keeps Read online

  At four o’clock Desi set the table for six, as instructed, assuming she had a couple of cousins she’d be meeting, too, then she joined her grandmother in the kitchen to watch a master at work on the main dish.

  Gerda already had the barley cooked and waiting in a grainy mountain inside a stainless-steel dish.

  “Chop this for me, would you?” Gerda handed Desi a pile of green leaves.

  “What’s this?”

  “Kale. It’s good for you.”

  Of all of the ingredients, this large, thick-veined leaf looked the least appetizing.

  Meanwhile, Gerda minced onion and garlic like a TV chef, tossing it into a huge pan to brown.

  “So what does Uncle Erik do?”

  “He works for a big internet company in the insurance department, and they’ve sent him all over the world. You would have met him before now, but he and his wife just got back from Japan.”

  “And my cousins?”

  “Oh, they’re all grown and living across the country. Anni lives in Maine. She teaches school, and Christoffer lives in Washington, near the Canadian border. He’s a journalist for an online newspaper.”

  “Wow, and they came this far just to meet me?”

  “Oh, no, sorry—Anni and Chris won’t be here tonight.”

  “But I set the table for six.”

  Gerda turned back to the counter and chopped a pile of brown mushrooms as if she were being timed. “I invited Kent and Steven.”

  Desi’s blossoming appetite vanished, her stomach tightening. Kent? How was she supposed to face him over dinner and not be reminded of their kiss? And how in the world was she supposed to honor his request to back off from Steven, when they kept being thrown together?

  Why had he even accepted Gerda’s offer?

  She was nervous enough about meeting long-lost relatives, and now the thought of sharing a meal with family and a sexy new neighbor seemed impossible.

  Before she could worry another second, the doorbell rang.

  Chapter Five

  From the kitchen, Desi ran her suddenly moist hands down the front of her skirt and crossed beside the dining table and through the living room to answer the door. Seeming as nervous as Desi was, Gerda followed right on her heels.

  When Desi opened the door, it wasn’t Kent and Steven as she’d thought, but her uncle and aunt. Immediately, her butterflies shifted into another kind of jitters.

  “Erik,” Gerda cooed. “It’s so good to see you. Come in. Come in.” The tall, thin man, with blond hair morphing into silver, ducked to hug and kiss his mother—the family resemblance unmistakable.

  A heavyset brunette waited her turn to say hello, and Gerda kissed her daughter-in-law’s cheek. “Helena, you look beautiful as always.” The woman’s red-lipstick smile made Desi grin.

  “And I know you’ve both been eager to meet our Desdemona.” Gerda nudged Desi forward, since she’d been hanging back, feeling a little shy.

  Erik and Helena both gave her polite hugs of welcome, genuine smiles on their faces. Moisture brimmed in Erik’s eyes and she could tell hers were doing the same. No doubt her mother’s running away had left many hearts and minds hurt and confused for years and years. Desi was probably bringing all of those feelings and memories back. Her heart was heavy from trying to understand her mother’s choice to never come home.

  No sooner had they taken seats in the living room than a firm triple knock drew everyone’s attention. With butterflies back in full force, Desi started to stand.

  Gerda jumped up first. “I’ll get it.”

  Desi sat, crossed one leg over the other and tried to look unfazed but suspected she was doing a horrible job. When Gerda ushered in Kent and Steven, both her aunt and uncle stood to say hello, so she did, too.

  There they both were, shower-fresh, dressed for Sunday dinner, Steven looking adorable and Kent looking scrumptious. How was she supposed to ignore Kent with his damp hair curling at his neck?

  Once again, Desi hung back, nervous about seeing Kent again, letting her uncle and aunt get first greetings, but finally it couldn’t be avoided.

  Gerda turned to Desi. “And here’s my Desi.”

  Kent dipped his head in a subtle greeting.

  “Hi, Ms. Desi!” Steven shot over to her side as if he hadn’t seen her in a month. “I brung these for you.” Steven handed her two yellow roses surrounded by Queen Anne’s lace. “Look, they match your top.”

  “Thank you so much.” Desi bent to get eye to eye with Steven. Even with her heels on, the boy seemed to grow more every time she saw him, just like the pretty white weeds surrounding her roses. “I’ll get a vase.” She needed time to gather her nerves and threaten them into submission. No way did she want to let on how anxious she felt being around Kent again.

  While she was in the kitchen fussing with the flowers and vase, Gerda breezed in and picked up the tray of appetizers. “Bring the iced tea when you come, please.” All business, in her blue top with white lace trim and matching slacks, hair parted in the middle and pulled back into her signature loose bun. Gerda acted more like a caterer than the matriarch of the family, and she made it clear the dinner party had officially begun.

  Desi composed herself and got down six glasses, filled five of them with iced tea, deciding to wait to see what Steven wanted, placed them on a tray and brought it into the living room. She handed out the drinks, and when she got to Kent, their eyes met and he didn’t look away. It wasn’t the iced glasses that gave her a chill.

  “Thanks” was all he said, leaving her wondering if he planned to treat her like a stranger all night or the woman he’d kissed as if he’d meant it. So far he was going the mildly acquainted route.

  She got back to business, handing out drinks. “Steven, would you like apple juice or lemonade?”

  “Milk, please. I’m a growing boy.”

  Gerda laughed. “You certainly are.”

  As the others enjoyed their drinks and conversation, Gerda grilled the potato pancakes, thin enough to roll each one up, and Desi got the warm serving dish of barley, mushrooms and kale and placed the already-grilled lamb chops in a circle around the top. The rich and rangy aroma of lamb overcame her jittery stomach, and boy, was she ready to eat.

  “Put some of that chopped mint on it,” Gerda said just before they made their way into the dining room. “Dinner’s served.”

  Without any official seat assignments, Steven rushed to sit next to Desi. She glanced at Kent, who sat directly across from her and next to her aunt at the head of the table. She gave him a hint of a shrug. I can’t help it if your kid loves me. Why’d you accept the invitation if you didn’t want him around me?

  Then it dawned on her that maybe he was the one who wanted to see her, and Steven was along for the ride. She stopped short of batting her eyes at him to test out her theory.

  Other than Kent’s stoic silence, dinner conversation flowed easily as plates of food were passed around. She discovered she had the same birthday as one of her cousins, and Erik insisted her voice sounded just like her mother’s. A plethora of questions about his long-lost sister followed. Had she ever married? Had she been a talented musician? How in the world had the two of them survived? He mentioned how being five years older, he’d always thought of her as a pest, and he offered regret that they hadn’t been closer before he left for college.

  Only when Helena put her hand on his arm did he get the picture and forgo his grilling.

  Her uncle seemed like a kind man with sympathetic steel-blue eyes, and she wished with all of her heart that her mother hadn’t cut off every last family tie. She had a vague memory of Grandma Gerda being at her fifth birthday, and maybe her tenth, but after that she hadn’t seen her until her mother was dying.

  Though the potato pancake was delicious, it went down like a brown paper bag when the bitter thought struck that maybe her mother had been ashamed of Desi. But her mother had always seemed so proud of her—that couldn’t have been the reason for her mother’s
staying away. Though the meeting was strained at first due to the circumstances, Desi had felt completely accepted by her grandmother from the moment she’d shown up last year in the hospital. It only made sense that their getting reacquainted here in Heartlandia had been a bit tough at first. She’d never felt for one second it was because of her being biracial.

  Once she decided to concentrate on the food instead of her insecurity, everything tasted fantastic. Her stomach, however, was still uneasy what with Kent staring at her from across the bountifully filled table. She got the distinct impression he wanted to talk to her.

  For distraction, she glanced around as everyone enjoyed their meal. So this was how a family dinner went. Despite her preoccupation with Kent, Desi liked the feel of this gathering. She liked these people, even the aunt and uncle she’d only just met, and the man who’d recently shaken her world with a kiss straight from heaven, but who didn’t want to be involved with her. Plus Steven, who currently rested his head on her arm—gosh, he must miss his mommy—and Gerda at the head of the table, the sweet yet stern and endearing grandmother she wished she’d gotten to know better when she’d been a kid.

  Desi served Steven another lamb chop and lefse. “I miss my mom’s cooking,” he whispered for only Desi to hear.

  She put her arm around him and gathered him to her side, choosing not to follow Kent’s rules because this child needed some lady love. She wanted to tell Steven he could eat with her and Gerda any night he wanted but knew Kent wouldn’t like that, so she just squeezed him. Her heart melted for the pining boy, and right now she didn’t care if Kent wanted her to back off or not.

  “You probably get told you look like Beyoncé all the time, don’t you?” Helena asked, a bite of barley halfway to her mouth.

  Shocked that anyone would compare her to someone as beautiful as the popular singer, Desi’s eyes went wide. “Never, but thank you.” Her gaze met Kent’s.

  His lips twitched in a fleeting smile. “I can see the resemblance.”

  Not wanting to look away from him, as it was the first time this evening he’d engaged her in any kind of conversation, she paused over his gaze.

  “Who’s Beyoncé?” No sooner had Gerda asked than Steven filled her in.

  Desi didn’t want things to get awkward with Kent and shortly switched her line of vision to Helena. “All I can say is, I wish.”

  After dinner, Uncle Erik and Helena engaged Gerda in a heated conversation about local politics and what she should do as the acting mayor. Desi worried that everyone in town might be doing the same thing, and if so, how could the poor woman please everyone? Before she could fret further, Steven invited her outside.

  After a challenging game of three-way Frisbee in the front yard between Desi, Kent and Steven, the boy got engrossed in a handheld video game and they all went back inside. Acting on her earlier hunch that Kent might want to talk to her, Desi sought him out in the living room. He was partially listening to the ongoing conversation between her uncle and grandmother when she appeared, a mug of coffee in each hand.

  Her stomach fluttered before she spoke. “Would you like to go out on the porch with me?”

  “Sure,” he said, rising, immediately rattling Desi, and relieving her of one of the cups.

  She sat on the slider love seat. He kept his distance and took the matching wicker chair beside it with the paisley-patterned pillow. Okay, so he didn’t want to get close; he’d sent the message loud and clear.

  “I owe you an explanation,” he said, right off. “I’ve been bossing you around, telling you to leave my kid alone, and then he practically throws himself at you whenever he sees you. You’re probably wondering why.”

  “You could say that.” Since her conversation with her grandmother, she knew about Kent’s wife leaving him, but she didn’t let on. His earnest expression told her she was about to find out.

  “His mother walked out a year ago as if she didn’t give a damn about him.” He tossed her a steely stare. “It broke his heart.” He leaned forward, rested his forearms on his thighs, holding the coffee mug between his hands, and kept his voice down. “I can understand if she wanted to walk out on me, but Steven? I thought I knew her. We were married seven years and had gone steady practically since grammar school.”

  He stared at his coffee before taking a long drink. Desi took in his comments, sensing something special happening between them. He was opening up to her, like she had the other night with him. But Kent couldn’t look more serious if he were pronouncing someone dead. If his wife’s leaving had broken Steven’s heart, what about Kent’s?

  “She wanted me to sell the Urgent Care and join this exclusive clinic in San Francisco. Said she was sick of Heartlandia, couldn’t live here another day.” He glanced up, an incredulous look on his face. “She didn’t respect my business or me. I wasn’t making enough money. Anyway, I refused to move. Who would want to buy the clinic? And how would Heartlandians get medical care if I shut it down? She gave me an ultimatum, and when I didn’t budge, she left. Just like that. Like we didn’t mean dirt to her.”

  Hurt and concern for both Kent and Steven wrapped her like a shawl. She felt compelled to say something, no matter how lame. “I can only imagine…”

  “Looking back, I should have seen it coming. And now when I see how Steven’s eyes light up every time he sees you, well, it scares me, you know? I can’t ever let a woman break his heart like that again.”

  What about Kent’s heart? Would he ever let a woman get close again?

  Since Gerda had told her why Kent was so moody and overprotective of his son, she’d had time to think about the situation. And Grandma was right—he was scared.

  “I can see why you’d feel that way, Kent, but sometimes we can’t control everything and we have to let life play out and see. Besides, I’m not his mom, just a substitute piano teacher. It’s a whole different thing.”

  “You’re a hell of a lot more than that, Desi.”

  If her tongue wasn’t stuck to the roof of her mouth, she’d try to say something. She was a lot more than that? To whom—Kent or Steven? Desi found the sudden need to speed up the sliding rocker but stopped herself. Kent had just blown her mind a second time, and this time it wasn’t with a kiss, but words.

  Get ahold of yourself. Don’t make a big deal out of it. Maybe he only meant she was a hell of a lot more than a substitute piano teacher?

  Kent stood and sat next to her, his long arm resting along the top of the love seat behind her. “Don’t you realize how much you have to offer?”

  Only her mother had ever spoken to her like that—never a man. His words landed like a sucker punch to her solar plexus. She could hardly breathe as her mother’s voice sounded clear as ever in her mind. You have so much to offer the world. Get out there. Stop sticking around for me. Her mom’s prematurely aged face during those last few months before she’d died slammed into her memory and made her cry.

  Kent looked horrified.

  “I’m sorry. All this talk about mothers leaving got me thinking about my mom.” She wiped her nose and sipped her coffee to get a grip.

  “I’m here if you want to talk about it. Hell, it’s the least I can do after everything I just said.”

  At first, she didn’t want to talk about it, but Kent seemed so genuinely interested, and he had known her mother, even if when only a young boy. She’d had precious few people to tell about everything her mom had gone through. “She suffered so much at the end, fighting to breathe. And the pain. God, nothing was strong enough to stop the pain when that damn lung cancer got into her bones. Sometimes I had to give her so much morphine, I was afraid I’d kill her. Ironic, huh?” She wiped her eyes, embarrassed she’d fallen apart so easily. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It hurts me to hear how she suffered, too. Anytime you want to talk about it—” Was this Kent the sensitive man or the doctor talking?

  He’d opened up to her about his situation, and now she had an opportunity to share her d
eepest, darkest feelings. Why not give it a try? Besides, he’d asked for it.

  “Sometimes I used to hope that she’d drift away after the morphine. That she wouldn’t wake up. Why should she? Why suffer like that? But whenever she was conscious, she looked at me like I was the most wonderful gift in the world, and she’d tell me how she loved me and how much I had to offer. And I loved her so much I never wanted to lose her. Never.” She gave an ironic shake of her head. “I was so busy taking care of her, I didn’t think about what I wanted to do with my life, let alone what I had to offer. It didn’t seem that important.”

  His arm came off the back of the love seat, settling on her shoulders, rubbing them. The hint of pine and the outdoors came from Kent’s aftershave instead of the fresh night air. His touch was tender and warm, and if she wasn’t crying, she would have melted into his hold.

  “How can I have so much to offer when I don’t even know who half of me is? You know?”

  She glanced at Kent, thinking how easily they’d opened up to each other. Even his silhouetted profile was gorgeous, and being so close, she couldn’t deny for another second that she had a major crush on him. He pulled her toward his chest, and she rested her head on his shoulder. She’d hardly been able to think straight since he’d sprung that amazing kiss on her, and now he was holding her again. It felt snug and heavenly.

  But how was she supposed to keep the distance with his son and get closer to Kent at the same time? Besides, she’d been homeschooled by her mother and had never gone on to college. He was a doctor. She and Kent were completely mismatched on so many levels.

  The man let his marriage end over refusing to move to San Francisco. He was evidently stubborn and controlling. She’d been a vagabond, yet someone who’d never had the chance to explore life on her own. As soon as she figured out where to find her father, she’d be there in a heartbeat. Finding him was the main reason she’d come back to Oregon. That and spending some time with Gerda. After a while longer here, she planned to move on.