Joan Kilby - Child of Her Dreams

Behind her glasses, Gran’s pale-blue eyes misted.

BEN GLANCED AROUND the Hainesville Medical Clinic with satisfaction. With two examining rooms, a small lab, office, reception area and waiting room, the clinic was positively luxurious compared with what he’d been used to in Guatemala.

The only glitch was that he hadn’t been in his new job a week before the nurse-receptionist who had worked for Dr. Cameron had been called to the sickbed of her elderly mother in Florida. Ben contacted an employment agency and was promised a temporary replacement in a couple of days.

Meantime, he took the loss in his stride; he’d coped with far more calamitous events in Guatemala. However, his patients were less sanguine than he about mixed-up appointments and general administrative confusion. Nor were they content to sit and wait for hours on a first-come, first-serve basis like his stoical villagers.

“You can’t run this clinic the way you ran that place in Central America,” a pinched-faced woman with tight gray curls told him after he’d inadvertently double booked her with the mayor. The mayor, Mr. Gribble, had won on the basis of having to attend an important meeting with the bank manager. Strangely enough, when Ben glanced out the window afterward, he’d seen Mr. Gribble heading for the river, with a fishing rod propped in the back of his Cadillac.

“Why not, Mrs. Vogler?” He began to scan the long medical history in her file to bring himself up to speed on her background.

“It’s Miss Vogler. We’re not a bunch of Mayan Indians, you know.”

More’s the pity.

“Dr. Cameron never did things this way. And where’s your white coat?” Greta Vogler added with an accusing glance at his Guatemalan shirtsleeves and clean khaki pants. “If it wasn’t for that stethoscope around your neck, no one would know you were a doctor.”

“Unless they happened to notice the diplomas hanging on the wall,” Ben said pleasantly, still reading. He came to an entry and paused. “It says here you had a hysterectomy in nineteen-seventy-six.” He gazed at her, mentally calculating. She would have been in her midtwenties at the time. “Could this date be a mistake?”

“There’s no mistake,” she said frostily, looking away. “But what that has to do with the migraines I came to see you about, I don’t know.”

“My apologies,” he murmured, and decided to skip the rest of the history. “Tell me about the headaches,” he said, and went on to deal with that.

That was yesterday. Today, he’d hit upon the idea of stacking patients’ files in the order in which they had phoned in for an appointment. When he got a call, he located the appropriate file from the filing cabinet and placed it at the bottom of the growing stack. He gave people a rough estimate of when they would see him, knowing no one ever expected to get in to see the doctor exactly on time. Simple yet effective.

Midmorning, Ben strode to the reception desk and leaned across it to pick off the top file so he could call in his next patient. But his eyes were on his watch instead of what he was doing, and he misjudged the distance. The entire stack of manila folders went slithering to the floor while the waiting patients watched in dismay.

Ben muttered a mild Mayan imprecation and crouched to pick up the files. A moment later a young woman with chin-length auburn hair left her seat to help him.

“You need an assistant,” she said, stacking manila folders randomly in the crook of her arm.

“I know I do. I registered with an employment agency, but so far they haven’t found anyone suitable.”

“Then maybe you should look for someone unsuitable.”

The smile in her voice made him glance up, into deep blue eyes that tilted, almond shaped, at the corners. Too slender for his taste, she was nevertheless undeniably attractive.

She was also vaguely familiar. “Have we met?”

She held his gaze with a bemused expression. “I would have remembered if I’d met you.”

“I never forget a face,” he persisted. “I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere.”

She shrugged, glanced at the files in her arm and rearranged them. Then she placed her files atop his. Ben rose and held his hand out to help her to her feet. Her height surprised him. She had to be five-ten in her stockings, and the heels she wore put them on eye level.

He looked around the room, reading the name off the top file. “Geena Hanson?”

“That would be me,” said the blue-eyed woman, smiling, and she sauntered gracefully ahead of him to the examining room.

“Used to getting our own way, are we?” he said as he shut the door. Her clothes, her perfume, her very demeanor, shrieked wealth and sophistication. For some reason he thought of Penny, his British nurse, caring for peasants in jeans and T-shirt.

Geena Hanson took a chair and crossed one very long leg over the other. “I was next.”

“I see.” He opened her file and began to read the contents. “So, what seems to be the trouble?”

“Nothing, as far as I’m concerned.”

Ben ignored her blasé answer and perused her recent medical history. His frown deepened as he read about her collapse in Italy and the two minutes during which her heart had stopped. A memory of newspaper headlines clicked in his brain. “You’re that supermodel. What are you doing in Hainesville?”

“This is my hometown. I’m recuperating. Is that a Texas accent?” she inquired.

“I’m from a small town outside Austin.” Ben went on reading, shaking his head at the recorded cocktail of pills she’d been taking and at her weight. His first impression was confirmed; she was unhealthily thin. And in denial about her problems.

Hands steepled over her file, he eyed her appraisingly. “If there’s nothing wrong, why are you here?”

She inspected her perfectly manicured nails. “My sisters and my grandmother insisted I get a follow-up examination.”

“Are you still taking these tablets?”

“No. I quit smoking, too.”

“Sleeping okay?”

“Could be better. But without five a.m. starts and late nights I’m getting by.”

“Any significant events following your collapse?” he asked, jotting notes with his fountain pen.

She didn’t answer right away, and he glanced up to see an odd light in her eyes. She leaned forward, clutching her Gucci handbag. “What exactly do you mean?”

Instinct told him something important was in the air, but he had no idea what. “Palpitations, dizziness, chest pain…”

“Oh.” She leaned back, seemingly disappointed. “I get a little dizzy sometimes first thing in the morning.”

Ben waited, giving her a chance to elaborate. When she didn’t add anything, he asked, “The dizziness—do you get it before breakfast or after?”

“I don’t eat breakfast.”

All the advantages of money and position and not a lick of sense. He sent her a stern cold look. “It’s time you started. You’re significantly underweight.” He rose and came around his desk. “Hop onto the examining table.”

He checked her blood pressure, pulse and reflexes. He peered into her ears, shone a light in her eyes and felt the glands below her jaw. As his examination progressed he became increasingly aware of her as a woman, something that was not supposed to happen. But his senses could no more exclude the elusive scent of expensive perfume and the porcelain texture of her skin than they could miss the beat of her pulse beneath his fingertips.

Perspiration dampened his armpits as he slipped his stethoscope beneath the scoop neck of her silk dress. What should have been routine had become mildly erotic. She went very still, as if she was aware of him, too.