Jean Gordon - Small-Town Midwife

“That and family. We’re close. And there’s a need here for midwives, for almost any medical practitioner.”

“True. The area is underserved.”

“So that’s what brought you up here?”

“Partly. But more the opportunity.”

His reply jarred her. She’d thought she’d hit on something they had in common: a professional desire to serve where their skills were needed.

“There aren’t a lot of places where someone my age can get the level of administrative experience that Adirondack Medical Center is offering me at the birthing center.”

Maybe Jon had more in common with their last director than she’d thought yesterday. The center’s former director had leveraged his experience at the birthing center into a cushy administrative position at a big medical center downstate.

Autumn shifted her weight on the bench. Jon could be grooming himself to take over his grandfather’s health-care corporation. The strains of a hit song by the local Christian country band Resurrection Light broke the growing silence.

“Excuse me.” Jon pulled his cell phone from his pocket. His face lit when he saw the caller ID.

She pushed the bench back, ready to give him some privacy.

“Nana.” Jon waved Autumn down as she started to rise. “Yes, we’re on for dinner. I got the message.” He frowned. “You don’t have to apologize. See you then.” He hunkered down over the phone. “Love you, too.”

He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “My grandparents are going to be in Lake George Tuesday.”

“Are they here on vacation?” Autumn remembered Liza, the medical center administrator, saying something yesterday about his grandparents vacationing in Lake George.

“No,” he said brusquely. “Grandfather is coming up for a business meeting near Syracuse.”

“Do you see them often?” After she’d babbled on about her family, it was only fair that he take his turn.

“No.”

“Oh, I thought they might have lived near you. When you said coming up I assumed you meant from the New York City, Westchester area.”

He stared at her.

“That’s where you’re from, right, Westchester County?” From the gossip at Samaritan, she knew his father headed up the cardiology department at one of the medical centers there.

“Yes.” He avoided eye contact. “I’d better get back to the movers.” He stood and motioned toward the table. “Do you need any help carrying the stuff in?”

“No, thanks, I can handle it.” So much for learning anything personal about Dr. Hanlon. Since as neighbors, they’d be seeing a lot of each other, she’d hoped he’d share something that might help her get past what he’d done to Kate and the cold way he’d treated his fellow hospital staff members afterward. She picked up the mugs and coffeepot and walked with him to her door.

“I’ll see you Monday.”

She nodded and watched him cross the yard to the moving van before she went inside. Working with Jon and having him as her next-door neighbor was going to be interesting. The trouble was that, given their past history and the conversation they’d just had, Autumn had a sinking feeling it might not be a good kind of interesting.

Chapter Three

“Hello!” Jamie Payton’s voice rang through the house to the kitchen.

Autumn put the clean coffeepot in the dish drainer and dried her hands with a dish towel. “Hi, come in.”

“I already am,” Jamie said from the doorway. “Who was that I passed on my way in? Tall, dark and handsome, talking with the moving guys.” Autumn’s friend and delivery nurse sighed.

“I thought you were more partial to the tall, fair-haired and handsome type,” Autumn teased.

“Don’t tell the colonel,” Jamie said of her new husband, Eli.

“Your secret’s safe with me. How’d you manage to slip out of the house alone?” Except for work, Autumn rarely saw Jamie without Eli or one of the kids.

“Myles is at the camp.”

“That’s right. He’s a counselor this summer.”

“Rose slept over at a friend’s, and Eli took Opal with him to the hardware store in Ticonderoga to buy new tile for the kitchen floor. But you’re evading my question.”

“The mystery man you saw on your way in is my new neighbor and boss, Dr. Jonathan Hanlon.”

Jamie tilted her head. “Boss?”

“The new director at the birthing center. Technically, not our boss, but something tells me he’s going to be a lot more hands-on with the actual care than Dr. Ostertag was. I worked with Jon at Samaritan when I was doing my master’s degree for my midwife certification.”

“I see.” Jamie’s eyes twinkled.

“You see nothing. Just because I know him doesn’t mean I like him.”

“So you don’t like him?”

Autumn threw up her hands and laughed. “I didn’t say that, exactly. I don’t know him that well.” Nor did it look like he’d be an easy person to get to know.

“It’s been a couple of months since Rod was reassigned.”

Autumn shook her head. “I know you’d like everyone to be as happy and in love as you and Eli are, but my time hasn’t come yet. Now, you must have had a reason for stopping by, other than trying to fix me up with Jon—especially since you didn’t even know about him until you got here.”

“You’re not going to go for it, then?”

“I’m not going to go for it.”

Jamie released an exaggerated sigh. “I know you’re helping out at the camp today, too. So I stopped in to see if you want to walk to the lake with me.” She patted her slightly rounded belly. “My midwife says that I need to get some more exercise. Apparently, chasing the other three kids around isn’t enough.”

“Using my words against me?” Even though Autumn wasn’t taking on any obstetric patients, when Jamie had found out she was pregnant, she’d insisted on seeing Autumn for her prenatal care. Their friendship went back a long time to when Autumn was a high school student and used to babysit Jamie’s older kids.

“Come on, you weren’t planning on driving down. You walk everywhere.”

“You’re right. I was going to walk.” But she’d planned on having the morning to herself. Autumn kicked off her sandals and picked up her sneakers from the rug by the door. “Let me change my shoes and we can go.”

“Sure, and while I’m thinking of it, my cousin who I texted you about would be happy to fill in at the office for the summer. She’s still working on getting a teaching position for the fall and has to be out of her apartment in Syracuse by the end of the week. She really doesn’t want to go back to her father’s in Buffalo.”

Autumn looked up from tying her shoes.

“They get along great. But Uncle Steve recently remarried, and Lexi, short for Alexandra, thinks her father and stepmother have enough with her new teenage stepbrothers there.”

“I can relate to that.” Autumn stood.

“I thought you could.” Jamie grinned.

“Do you think Lexi would be interested in the singles group at church? Our ranks have thinned since all of you newlyweds morphed the singles-plus group into a couples group and we remaining singles split off into our own group.”

While the larger singles-plus group had been fun, Autumn had found it kind of weird belonging to the group with her father and Anne. She swallowed hard. And with her friends Jack and Suzy Hill after the problems delivering their daughter.

“Maybe. I’ll ask her. Is that a prerequisite for the job?”

“Of course not. I was just thinking we need to get the group pumped up. We don’t have nearly as many members as the couples group.”

“It’s not a competition,” Jamie said. “And you all are welcome to join us again.”

“Your guys are all taken, and I need some kind of social life again. One that doesn’t include my father.”