Family Practice. Marisa Carroll

and straddle the seat beside her so he could watch her eat. He wouldn’t scold her for not calling to say she was coming a day early, but she would apologize anyway because she had caused Ginger distress. He would tell her not to worry, that it was okay. It’s good to have you home, Callie girl, he would say. And that would be all she needed to hear. She would be home, and everything would be right with the world, because J.R. Layman could make it so.

      At least, it had seemed that way to her when she was a child. But she wasn’t a child any longer, and J.R. had new responsibilities and a new family to keep safe from the big, bad world. She was on her own now, and that was the way it should be. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt to be the outsider in this new family grouping—it did hurt—but that didn’t mean she intended to stand aside and do nothing to improve the situation, if for no other reason than to make things easier on her dad. She would do what she could to make them all a family.

      “C’mon, Becca, you’re on the clock until nine, remember.” Her stepmother’s strained voice brought her back to the moment at hand. Ginger held out her arms, attempting to gather her daughter close. Becca sidestepped the embrace. Ginger hesitated a moment, her arms still outstretched, and then she dropped them to her side. “We really are happy to welcome you home, Callie.” Her smile didn’t falter but her eyes were bleak. So, the unhappy vibe Callie had picked up on when Becca had told her about switching bedrooms hadn’t been her imagination. There was some tension between mother and daughter over the new baby’s arrival, and perhaps between her father and his new wife, too?

      Suddenly all the insecurity she’d been experiencing since she’d agreed to take the position at the clinic returned in a rush, almost overwhelming her determination to help her family. Developing relationships with her stepmother and stepsiblings and finding her own place in a new blended family was yet another complication to add to the weight of uncertainty over her sojourn to White Pine Lake. At least she had options if she couldn’t stay.

      It was going to be a very long summer.

      CHAPTER THREE

      THUNDER RUMBLED OVERHEAD and Zach swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands, staring down at the scarred pine floor. It was barely daybreak but he wouldn’t be sleeping any more. Something about the long, rolling rumble of a storm coming in off the big lake reminded him of Afghanistan. There weren’t a lot of thunderstorms in that far-off, arid country, but there was a lot of gunfire. The one aspect he didn’t like of living near a big body of water was the really loud thunderstorms. Occasionally, they still triggered a bout of PTSD, and he didn’t want that happening with his brand-new roommate just on the other side of the wall.

      He’d grown up on the edge of the California desert, shuffled from one foster home to another. He had no idea who his parents were, his people, but he suspected somewhere in his lineage there had been at least one sailor. He’d been fascinated by the sea as a child, and now as an adult by the great inland seas so nearby. The day after he graduated from high school, he’d left the last foster home he’d been placed in and joined the navy. He’d thought he’d spend the next four years surrounded by water, maybe even assigned to an aircraft carrier, but instead he’d ended up in Afghanistan. Twice.

      In White Pine Lake there was water everywhere he looked, exactly as he’d envisioned as a child, but he still didn’t like thunderstorms.

      He pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Rudy had advised him early on not to wander around in his skivvies while he was living in White Pine Lake, and his old Marine buddy had been right. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to come knocking on his front door at any hour of the day or night for free medical advice. He wondered how his new neighbor, the uptight Dr. Layman, would handle that aspect of a small-town practice. Not well, he’d guess. He wondered what she was doing here at all.

      Actually, the answer to that one was easy enough. She was a Layman. Knowing J.R., hearing the praises of J.R.’s father and—from the old-timers who remembered that far back—his father sung throughout the town, it was because of an overdeveloped sense of duty, not because practicing medicine in a small town was what she wanted most in life.

      Well, it was what he wanted, and he intended to hang on to this job with both hands, even if it meant butting heads with her at every turn.

      He’d been willing to make amends after their less-than-stellar first meeting when he’d heard her Jeep pull into the parking space behind the duplex that first night. He’d gotten up off the couch, even though he was bone tired, and walked out into the cool, humid night to greet her and offer a hand to help unload her Jeep. He could hear a radio playing in a nearby cottage, and traffic sounds from Lake Street intermittently drowned out the chirping of crickets and the eerie wail of a loon calling for its absent mate. A small tingle of uneasiness prowled at the edge of his consciousness. A motorcycle going by had masked his footsteps on the gravel, so she whirled in surprise when he spoke, hitting him in the thigh with a big overstuffed duffel bag as she swung around.

      “Oof,” he said.

      “Good heavens, you scared the life out of me. What are you doing here?” She dropped the duffel with a thud, barely missing his foot in the process.

      “I was coming to offer my help unloading your Jeep.”

      They were standing under a streetlight. He could see her face clearly. Surprise at his appearance had widened her eyes momentarily. Now they narrowed with suspicion. “Where exactly did you come from?”

      He hooked his thumb over his shoulder toward the duplex. “Didn’t your dad explain? We’re neighbors. Real close neighbors.”

      “No.” Her lips thinned. “He did not. He just said he knew the cabin was my favorite place and since it had become available—” She put her hands on her hips. “This isn’t acceptable,” she said.

      “Why not? You just said how much you like the place.”

      “What I am worried about is what people will think of us living so close. It’s...it’s not professional.”

      “Come off it, Dr. Layman. This isn’t the Middle Ages. You’re not giving your friends and neighbors enough credit. Why should they care?” She had a point, though. There would be some small-minded people who would raise their eyebrows and wag their tongues—there always were in a town this size. “It’s no different from a coed dorm. Are you saying you’ve never lived in close proximity to a man?”

      “I...” she sputtered. “Of course I have.”

      Did that mean she’d been in a serious relationship? Did she still have a boyfriend? Somehow he didn’t like that idea, although he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. He didn’t pursue the topic, however, for the same reason he hadn’t elaborated on town gossips. Now that she was here, he didn’t want to scare her off. “Do you believe your dad would have sent you down here if he didn’t trust me to behave myself?” He was beginning to enjoy this. She was so easy to rattle.

      “Don’t be silly,” she said, but she sounded as if the fight had gone out of her. For the first time he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the droop to her shoulders. She’d had as long and as hard a day as he had. He ought to be ashamed of himself for goading her. “Good. Then that’s settled. You’re staying. It’s late. We can work out some ground rules for sharing the place in the morning so we can both have our privacy.”

      He bent to pick up the duffel and so did she. They both straightened with a hand on a strap. He tugged and she had the grace to let go without a struggle. “I don’t need ground rules,” she said. “I just believe it’s better if I find another place. We’ll be together quite enough during office hours.” She didn’t give up easily; she’d hold her ground in an argument or a fight.

      “Whatever you say, Dr. Layman,” he replied as formally. “But don’t count on finding anything better. It’s high season. The town’s booked solid. No landlord in his right mind will accept the stipend the Physician’s Committee’s willing to pay, except for that old coot at the Commodore.