Mary J. - First-Time Valentine

Until she returned to him.

She headed down the hallway, convinced danger was spelled J.D.

Except for the octogenarian dozing at the tiny desk near the door, the hospital library was empty at three in the afternoon.

Dressed in a blue terry robe and using the crutches the physiotherapist prescribed, J.D. quietly thumped his way across the hardwood floor. The library was elementary-sized. Ten inner shelves were stacked with fiction and two walls held reference, research and an assortment of current magazines.

Situated in the northwest corner of the hospital’s ground floor, the library had a cozy nook facing two corner windows where patients could enjoy the hospital gardens now under three feet of snow.

Gingerly, he sank into a cushiony chair. Beyond the glass, a variety of trees—elm, oak and maple, New England’s finest—were scattered across the gardens. He’d read about them in a brochure at the information desk four hours before he busted up his knee. Which at the moment throbbed like an insane drum behind the brace.

Too much damn walking , he thought. Hadn’t she told him not to overdo it? Mercy, but he wanted out of here. He wanted to get back to his job, back to New York. He wanted out of Walnut River.

Barely loud enough to be discerned, the PA system called “Dr. Ella Wilder, recovery three. Dr. Ella Wilder, recovery three.”

He pictured her hurrying to the patient, her pink Nikes quick and quiet on the tiled floor, a worry line between her fine dark brows. He imagined her slim hands on the patient’s forehead, taking his pulse, her voice—the one with smoke and sex rolled into its vowels—a balm to distressed nerves.

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.