“And I’m taller,” the one Dinah believed was Paige said. “By half an inch.”
“Only when you’re standing on your tiptoes,” Pippa argued.
“Do not,” Paige protested.
“Do, too,” Pippa countered.
“And so goes the Ramsey family,” Eric said, laughing. “Oh, and, Dinah. I’d like you to meet my
sister,
Janice Laughlin. The girls and I live with her, and she watches them when I’m working.”
Eric lived with his sister? Suddenly the heat of embarrassment began its creep from her neck, up her throat, to her cheeks. “Hello,” she said, almost choking over the single word.
“But Daddy’s going to get us a great big house of our own soon, where we can have a dog and…” Paige started.
“A cat,” Pippa finished.
Dinah chanced a glance at Eric, whose expression was an odd one, caught between pain and amusement. He wanted to laugh, or cry. She couldn’t tell which. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Look, it’s nice to meet all of you…Janice, Paige, Pippa. But I’ve really got to go and find my sister.”
“Can we go see the baby?” Pippa cried. “Please?”
“Pretty please?” Paige joined in.
“Not right now,” Eric said, trying to take a firm hand. “He’s not feeling very well. But maybe in a few days.”
But Eric wasn’t very good at that firm hand, and it showed. Even to a casual observer such as herself, Dinah saw that he was just plain gooey when it came to his little girls. They had him wrapped around their little fingers, and he enjoyed every bit of it. He would be a very indulgent father, Dinah decided. And a very good one. Something also told her that Eric wasn’t a man cheating on his wife. He was a man getting over something painful, for which she felt very bad. So bad, in fact, that she turned away
without saying another word, and practically ran into the room where Angela was sitting, waiting for Gabby to return from seeing her baby. “Tell me about Eric,” she whispered to Angela.
“What do you want to know?”
“Is he married?”
“W
HY
, I do believe you’re flustered, Dinah.” A smile crept to Angela’s face as Dinah paced back and forth in the tiny hospital waiting room. “He is handsome, though, isn’t he? Nice man. Smart. Good doctor, too.”
“But is he married?”
“Oh, my…I guess you wouldn’t know, would you?”
“Know what?”
“That he’s a widower. I don’t know the circumstances, except that it happened a long time ago, before he moved to White Elk.”
Horror heaped on humiliation. She’d kissed him then accused him of something terrible. “He wears a wedding ring.”
Her sister raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “I guess it’s hard for him to let go. Is there something you want to tell me, Dinah?”
She shook her head, too upset to speak. From the moment he’d run into her on the road until now, nothing had been right between them except, perhaps, the way they’d worked together. Admittedly, that had been brilliant. A perfect medical union. Rare, especially for two strangers.
The kiss had been perfect, too. More perfect than she’d
known a kiss could be. But she couldn’t tell her sister because that kiss had been a huge mistake. Had meant nothing. After all, she’d been kissed before, and no kiss in her life had ever meant a thing. So, why should this one?
“Well, for what it’s worth,” Angela said, breaking into Dinah’s thoughts, “I’ve hardly ever seen him come up to Pine Ridge, so once you’re settled in there, and working, you probably won’t run into him again.
If that’s what you want.
At least, until I have my baby and you have to come to the hospital and visit me. And maybe you can work that out so you won’t be here when he is.” She laughed, and a wide grin spread over her face. “Unless you want to be where he is.”
“I’m not interested,” Dinah insisted.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But that’s what you were thinking.”
“What I was thinking was that you’re a little too…” She faked a frown, pretended to think. “What’s the word I’m looking for? Is it…preoccupied? You’re a little too preoccupied by the man. Or obsessed.”
“Am not!” Dinah argued as yet another good, firm, and very telling blush spread over her cheeks on account of Eric.
“Whatever you say.”
“I say I’m not preoccupied. And I’m not obsessed, either.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I said I’m not!” Dinah protested again, yet the heat kept rising in her, along with the timbre of her voice. OK, so she’d never been a very good liar. As a child, that little trait had been the bane of her existence, like when she’d tried to explain away the missing candy from the bowl on her grandmother’s coffee table, or when she’d been late to school. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Even
though, avoidance was a good plan. If she avoided Eric, there would be no more hostilities, no more humiliation. No more kisses. The problem was, she wanted to see him. Bad problem. Bad,
bad
problem. Because she didn’t know why. Which caused the heat in her cheeks to positively flame.
What the hell had that been about? Eric kicked the trash can next to his desk, knocking it over, spilling out the paper contents. It had been about a kiss, that’s what. And now he felt as guilty as hell. Sure, he was a red-blooded man. He hadn’t been without certain desires all this time. But desiring and acting on those desires were two different things, and he wasn’t ready to act on them. Had never come close to acting on them, and suddenly, that was the only thing on his mind.
Five years was a long time—a lifetime of feeling married yet not having his wife here. But that’s what his life had turned into. And he didn’t regret it, because he truly wasn’t ready to change things. The girls needed their mother’s memory kept alive, and he was the only one who could do that. They were so young, and all they knew were the things he told them, so how could it be time to move past that point?
Swallowing hard, Eric looked at Patricia’s picture on his desk. God, he missed her. His friends, even Janice kept telling him it was time to get on with his life, but he didn’t feel like it was time. He was waiting for…well, he wasn’t sure. Maybe a sign? Or, a push?
But not a kiss. That had been a mistake. Still, it had been a nice kiss, one that had reaffirmed the fact that he still had passions, albeit buried pretty deeply. Big mistake, though, because the feelings that had come immediately after…Then practically being accused of cheating on his
wife when, in fact, that’s exactly what he felt like, pounded him hard. He hadn’t kissed a woman other than Patricia for ten years. Hadn’t ever wanted to. So what was it about Dinah that had caused that to happen? And make no mistake, he’d been the one to step up to her and pull her into his arms. His initiative, his kiss.
He felt like hell for it. Pure hell.
What’s more, he didn’t trust himself not to do it again.
Bending down, he righted the trash can, then stood back up and studied it for a moment. Then kicked it again.
“You’re stirring that sauce like a woman possessed.”
Dinah spun away from the stove and almost bumped into Eric. She’d thought about him a thousand times these past few days, thought about the kiss, too, and would have called him, ostensibly to check on Bryce, even though she’d been kept up to date with the baby’s progress via her sister. Which left her no reason to call Eric and stir things up between them again, except she did want to apologize for what she’d said. She’d even considered driving down to White Elk to set things straight with him. But how could she face him when she’d practically accused him of being a liar and a cheat?
Avoidance was easier, she decided. She and Eric didn’t have any kind of relationship going, they owed each other nothing, had no expectations. So, for her, this was the best thing to do. She was good at it, had had a lifetime of practice. “You’re not supposed to be in the kitchen. Didn’t you see the sign on the door?”
“I did.” He stepped a little closer, looking into the saucier on the stovetop. “Hollandaise sauce?”
“Bordelaise. And you can’t be in here, looking at my Bordelaise.”
“Actually, I can. I’m one of the on-call county health
inspectors. It gets me into pretty much any place I want to go. Including your kitchen.”
His brown eyes twinkled so brightly she had to avert her eyes, stare at loaves of bread she’d pulled out of the oven just a while ago. “So this is an inspection?” Whirling back to the stove, she returned her wobbly attention to the thickening sauce, trying to ignore the fact that he was standing so close to her. “Aren’t you supposed to notify us when you’re going to do that?”
“No. That defeats the purpose of trying to find infractions. If you know I’m coming, you hide things.”
She picked up a long-handled spoon and began to stir, only to find that her sauce was already sticking to the bottom of the saucier. Curdled beyond repair and sticking to the pan. He had been there less than two minutes and she’d managed to ruin the Bordelaise, so what was it about Eric Ramsey that did that to her? The high humiliation factor? Because she certainly seemed to humiliate herself every time she was near him. “So, inspect. Help yourself. Check the pantry, the cold storage. And don’t forget the freezer. Or the grease traps.” She set aside the ruined sauce, and decided not to start over until he was gone. Bordelaise could be delicate and she didn’t want to mess up another one.
“You can’t use that, can you?” he asked pointing to the saucier. “Any way to resurrect it?”
“Is insulting my culinary skills part of your duty as inspector?” she snapped. Why didn’t he leave? Why did he make her hands shake?
She looked down at her trembling hands, and jammed them into to her pants pockets before he noticed.
“Your cooking skills looked pretty good. Not as good as your nursing skills, though.”
“Former nursing skills,” she insisted, feeling the bite of nostalgia already.
“Well, whatever you’re calling yourself these days, I wanted to tell you that Bryce was sent up to Salt Lake City, he’s had his second surgery, and he’s doing fine. Came through beautifully.”
“You could have phoned.”
“I could have, but then I wouldn’t have been able to give you these.”
He jiggled a bag. She heard the paper crinkle, but she wasn’t sensing what could be in the bag, and it was quite clear that he wasn’t about to tell her. In other words, it was her move. If she wanted to find out, she’d have to turn around and look…look at what was in the bag. Look at him. Look into his eyes. “What?” she asked, without giving in.
“These.” He jiggled the bag again, teasing her.
OK, so now her interest was piqued. She turned. Studied the brown bag for a moment. Thrust out her hand to take it. Inside were six cookies, chocolate chip. Misshapen, a little overdone. And quite obviously a gift from his daughters. “You’ve taken up baking?” she asked, trying to sound disinterested as she pulled out a cookie and headed straight to the fridge for milk.
“The only thing I bake is a frozen dinner, in the microwave, and technically I don’t think that’s even considered baking, is it?”
Dinah poured two mugs of milk and handed one to Eric. “Chocolate-chip cookies always have to have milk.”
“Do you dunk?” he asked.
“Of course I dunk! Is there any other way to eat a chocolate-chip cookie?”
Eric pulled a cookie from the bag and was the first one to dunk. Dinah followed suit, took a bite, and swallowed. Politely. Trying not to make the face Eric was making. “They lack a little in refinement,” he said. “But they’re getting better.”
At five, she and Angela had been baking cookies like pros. With help from their mother, of course. But Pippa and Paige didn’t have a mother, and suddenly, she felt sad for them, sad for the things Eric’s little girls were missing. Dinah knew how it felt having a parent missing from her life, but her parent had left by choice. He hadn’t wanted daughters, or a woman capable of giving him only daughters. Pippa and Paige’s situation was so different, so tragic. “Maybe I could give them a lesson or two. If you don’t mind?” The offer was genuine, although she didn’t know where it had come from. Dinah instantly regretted it because helping the girls would keep her in closer contact with Eric. That was something she didn’t want, and could ill afford.
“You’d do that? Teach the girls to cook? Janice has been supervising them in the kitchen, but her skills are, well, not much better than theirs. But if you could spend a little time with the girls…” He dunked his cookie, and studied it for a moment. “They love cooking, and doing so many of the little-girl things I can’t do with them. So, if you really want to do this, I’d appreciate it, because I’ve got a lot of years ahead of me, eating these things.” He popped the last of his cookie into his mouth and washed it down with the milk. Big gulps of milk.
They agreed that the following afternoon would be good for the first cookie lesson then Dinah returned to her dinner preparation. But Eric didn’t leave right away. He simply stood back, watching her, which made her nervous. Finally, after she fumbled her way through adding too much vinegar to a vinaigrette then having to compensate for her mistake, she confronted him. “Look, Eric. You can’t stay here. If you’re going to inspect the kitchen, or any part of the restaurant, do it. If not, please leave. I’m not a very organized cook yet, as you can tell, and you’re
distracting me. And I’ve got to get dinner service up and going within the next hour.”
“I had dinner here last night. You’re pretty good.”
“You did?” That surprised her. But she never looked into the dining room, so she wouldn’t have known.
“I was curious to see how you were doing. Janice and my niece, Debbi, took the girls out for pizza and a movie. I had an evening off. So I decided to come and see for myself.”
“And?”
“It was good. Better than that thing I was going to throw into the microwave.”
Dinah laughed. “That’s high praise, coming from an obvious gastronome such as yourself.”
“OK, so I’d just as soon eat a cheese sandwich as the Filet Oscar I had last night. Over the years, I’ve gotten used to less-than-polished meals. But as meals go, I’d say yours was pretty polished. In fact, I might eat here again some time. Might even ask you to come and be a nurse in my trauma department again some time. Our nurse practitioner, Fallon O’Gara, is going away on a short holiday, and I thought…”
“You thought wrong!” she snapped, spinning away from him and heading straight into the walk-in pantry. Once inside, she felt like closing the door behind her and turning off the light. Maybe that would make him go away. Or maybe all the bad thoughts would disappear in the dark, vanish into some little black crevice and never return.
“Dinah!” he called through the door.
“I’m busy!” she yelled back. It hurt, and she knew it showed. She didn’t want him to see, didn’t want him to know that one little kiss had turned her already-confused situation into more confusion than she was able to deal with. “Please, just let me do my work.”
He opened the door, but didn’t enter. Didn’t turn on the light either. “Why did you leave nursing, Dinah? What happened? Because I took the liberty of checking your credentials, and—”
“You what?” she sputtered, flying out of the pantry and slamming the pouches of gravy starter she’d grabbed from a shelf down on the counter. “How…how could you do that?”
“I was curious. You’re too insistent that you don’t want to be a nurse, yet you’re so passionate about it. Since I had every intention of offering you a temporary job, I checked.”
“Well, good for you. Now you know.” And she wanted to crawl off somewhere and be alone.
“I was told that you were competent. Competent, that’s all. Which doesn’t make any sense, because I saw you work. Saw how good you are.”
“It’s none of your business!” she snapped.
“It became my business when you stepped into my operating room to assist me.”
“Which wasn’t exactly my choice, if you recall. You were the one who wanted me there.”
“And I don’t regret that because I saw what you can do. Saw your passion. Which is why I don’t understand what I was told.”
“Well, believe it. It’s true. I was competent. That’s all there is to say, except I’m not looking for a nursing job. So you can leave now.” She marched over to the hanging rack above the center prep island, grabbed a large copper pot down off its hook and slammed it down on the stove top. When it didn’t slam hard enough to satisfy her, Dinah picked up the pan and slammed it again, harder this time. “What gives you the right?” she cried, spinning to face him. “I came here to cook, and to be left alone. Not to have someone like you dig into my past.”