.

do you want me?” he asked Wallace.

      Wallace gestured toward the chair beside Bethany. “Why don’t you take the empty seat next to Ms. Holloway?” And then the chairman smiled at Bethany as if they were both in on a secret joke. “I guess you’re going to have to relinquish your title as the newest member of the board, Ms. Holloway.”

      “Gladly,” Bethany replied.

      Wallace waited until Peter took his seat and then, running his fingers along the gavel he refrained from striking, the newly appointed chairman called the meeting to order and addressed the group.

      “Because this is an impromptu meeting and we all have other places we need to be, I’m going to dispense with the reading of the minutes today and get right down to the heart of the matter.” His small, brown eyes rested on Peter for a long moment. “Or matters, as the case might be,” he corrected himself.

      “First of all, we, the board and I—” Wallace gestured grandly around the table before continuing, and it struck Peter that the man was a born showman who was given to dramatic pauses “—would like to offer the position of chief of staff to you, Dr. Wilder.”

      For a moment, Peter didn’t know what to say. Chief of Staff had been his father’s position. In his later years, James Wilder juggled that and being chairman of the board. Both were full-time jobs. It never ceased to amaze him how his father managed to do justice to both, but he had. In the end, it had probably taken a toll on his health.

      That notwithstanding, Peter was flattered by the offer, but he knew his limitations. With a self-deprecating smile, he shook his head. “Thank you, all of you, but I don’t believe I’m experienced enough to take that on.”

      Wallace laughed at the refusal. “Modest. You’re your father’s son all right. Actually, we’re asking you to take the position on temporarily, just until we find a suitable candidate. Your father left very big shoes to fill. It’s going to take us a while before we find someone who comes close to his caliber. Until then, we would consider it an honor, as well as a huge favor, to have a Wilder in that position for a little while longer.” Wallace paused just long enough to allow the words sink in. “You’d really be bailing us out.”

      Very adroitly, the new chairman of the board had maneuvered him until his back was against the wall. Peter knew he had no choice but to agree. It helped somewhat knowing that it was only for a little while.

      “Well, put that way, I don’t think I can turn it down.”

      “Wonderful. Then it’s settled. Peter Wilder is the new temporary chief of staff.” Wallace grew somber, as if the next topic could only be spoken about with the utmost respect and gravity. “As for the second reason for this meeting, I think we’re all aware of what that is, but I’ll be the one to say it out loud. Northeastern Healthcare has expressed a great interest in acquiring our little hospital and I believe that their offer is worth discussing at length.”

      Peter could feel his stomach tightening. “As long as our final answer is no,” he commented.

      Wallace shot him a look as if he’d just violated some sort of sacred procedure.

      He probably had, Peter thought. He wasn’t up on the intricacies of parliamentary procedure and the kind of pomp and ceremony that went with conducting meetings properly. It had never aroused the slightest bit of interest in him.

      What did interest him were people—patients—who needed his care, his skills. He couldn’t help wondering how his father, a very simple man at bottom, had been able to put up with all of this.

      Wallace narrowed his eyes as he continued to look at him. “Excuse me?”

      Now that he was in the potential fray, he might as well speak his mind, Peter thought. “Well, you can’t seriously be thinking about accepting their offer, Wallace.”

      Wallace frowned. “You haven’t even heard the amount yet.”

      Peter laughed shortly. “I don’t need to hear the amount. You can’t put a price on what we do here.”

      “I’m sure that would come as a surprise to the insurance companies, Dr. Wilder,” Bethany said. She saw the incredulous look on the doctor’s face and quickly continued. She needed to make this man understand why he was wrong. “Patients pay for their care, that’s the whole point. And if that care can come about more efficiently, more quickly, it’s a win-win situation for us and for them.” Her voice grew more impassioned as she continued. “Besides, we’re just a simple hospital. One huge lawsuit could ruin us and force us to close our doors.”

      “There’s never been a lawsuit against the hospital,” Peter said, in case she was ignorant of the fact.

      “That doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be,” Bethany pointed out. “People are a great deal more litigation-crazy than they were when your father joined the staff here. With a conglomerate like NHC taking Walnut River General under its protective wing, we’re all but invulnerable.”

      The other board members in the room faded into the background. One attempted to say something, but Peter ignored him. Because Walnut River General meant so much to his father, to him, this had suddenly become personal.

      “And where does the patient fit in with all this?” Peter wanted to know. How could someone who looked like an angel be so cold?

      “The patient is the one who benefits,” Bethany insisted. She clearly thought he was oblivious to that. “NHC puts us on the map, makes us eligible to receive grants, updates our equipment, perhaps even gets us state-of-the-art equipment. You can’t possibly ignore that.”

      “No,” Peter agreed. “Updated equipment is extremely important, but that’s what we have fund-raisers for. And so far, they’ve done pretty well by us.”

      The man just wasn’t getting the big picture. He thought too small. “Personal donations,” she said. “Think how much more we could do with allotments from a conglomerate with bottomless pockets.”

      He wondered if she was actually that naive, or if it was a matter of her being heartless. He preferred thinking it was the former, but he had a feeling he was wrong. “Isn’t that a little like selling our souls for thirty pieces of silver?”

      Wallace cleared his throat, getting them to both look in his direction for a moment and breaking the growing tension.

      “Aren’t you being a little dramatic, Peter?” Wallace asked.

      “No, I’m being pragmatic,” he responded. “I didn’t go to medical school to practice assembly-line medicine.” His main focus wasn’t Wallace, it was Bethany. He wanted to make her understand, to see the flaw in the way she thought. “The doctors here treat the whole patient, they don’t deal with him or her piecemeal. I don’t want some accounting analyst holding a stopwatch and looking over my shoulder, telling me that I need to move faster or I’ll wind up pulling the hospital’s batting average down.”

      “There’s nothing wrong with seeing more patients,” Bethany insisted.

      “There is if you wind up shortchanging them because you have a quota to meet or a schedule to live up to. Can’t you see that?”

      Bethany’s eyes flashed angrily. Was he accusing her of being obtuse? She’d never reacted well to criticism. She’d had to put up with a lot of it while she’d been growing up. She didn’t have to anymore.

      “You’re ignoring all the benefits that being part of an organization like Northeastern Healthcare can provide for the hospital. They have access to far more facilities than we do.”

      “Looks like someone has done their homework,” Wallace said. There was no missing the admiration in his voice or the approving look on the chairman’s face as he looked at Bethany.

      Was Wallace for the takeover, or was he just trying to score points with Bethany? Peter wondered in mounting frustration.

      He