Healing Her Boss's Heart. Dianne Drake

      “What do we do when we get there? How do we get her out, since we can barely get in?” she asked, hoping he didn’t notice the smidgen of wobbliness in her voice.

      “I’ve got a couple of volunteers coming in behind us, about an hour out, if we’re lucky, and they’ll help us get her back to the truck. After that...” He paused, turned to shine the light on her face. “She’s my grandmother. I’ve got an airlift on standby if she’s too bad to keep at Sinclair. Which makes her one of the lucky ones, because I can afford to do it. But there are hundreds of people living out here who don’t get that benefit. Which is why we need to get in to them better than we’re able to do now. Give them a quicker response, an earlier intervention.”

      “Your grandmother lives out here alone?” That surprised her, as she’d never known anyone who lived so remotely. Even in her worst days, living in alley doorways, she’d been surrounded by civilization. But to live so far out... It wasn’t exactly an unappealing idea. A scary one, but one she might have to get used to if Jack hired her after the program was finished.

      “Always has. She homesteaded the area with my grandfather, and stayed on after he died. Won’t leave. Stubborn, like you are.”

      “But she gets to Marrell occasionally?”

      “When she wants, which isn’t very often. She lives life on her own terms, and nothing’s going to change that.”

      Like Jack? she wondered. Because he, too, seemed like he lived life on his own terms. “So, what’s the plan after we get there?” she asked, fighting hard to keep up with him as he turned back to the trail and doubled his pace. He was strong. Had huge hiking skills, the likes of which she’d never seen before. And, for the first time, she got a good sense of what he wanted out of his program. Saw the vital necessity of it.

      “We’re going to stabilize her for transport. That’s all we’re equipped for right now. Get an IV going, get her on oxygen, give her cardiac meds if she needs them, and kick the wall and curse because we can’t do more.” He slowed just slightly. Not enough to make much of a difference, but enough so it gave Carrie a chance to almost catch up to him. But before she did completely, he started off again as fast and furiously as before. “And feed her cats. She’s got a bunch of them, and she’s more worried about them than she is about herself. Hope your dog is OK with cats.”

      “Her name is Bella and, yes, she’s fine with cats.”

      On hearing her name, Bella bounded in front of Carrie on the trail, leaving Carrie the last in line, feeling like a real slacker. Even though she prided herself on being physically fit, she had nothing on Jack Hanson, and it was easy to see that she was going to have to do better. Back in Chicago, she’d been proud of being the fittest one on her team. Here, in Marrell, she wondered if she even amounted to average.

      “Well, she stays outside once we get there. I don’t want her getting in the way,” he said as he veered off the main path to the left, and totally disappeared in the dark for a moment.

      “Dr. Hanson?” Carrie called out, not so much from being afraid of the dark, or being lost in it, but from the uncertainty of which way to go.

      He spun around and flashed the light directly in her eyes. “Name’s Jack. Nobody’s very formal in Marrell.”

      “And when we’re in class?” she asked, finally catching all the way up to him.

      “Sir will be fine,” he said, taking hold of her arm and leading her off the path entirely.

      Despite herself, she laughed. “You don’t have an inflated opinion of yourself, do you?” Up ahead, beyond a dense thicket of early-winter undergrowth, she could see the glowing lights from the cabin she assumed to be their destination. The house didn’t appear large, but it seemed...cozy. Something she’d always wanted for herself at some point in her life. Far, far down the line, if ever, she supposed.

      “Of course I don’t,” he said, his voice full of a humor that was impossible to see in the dark. But was there, nonetheless. “But in my case, if I did, my opinion would be justified.”

      Carrie laughed again, as they finally made it out of the trees and picked up speed across a lawn that was littered with snow-dusted gnomes and elves and flamingos she assumed to be pink. “You don’t bring your crown on house calls, do you?”

      “My crown is always implied,” he said, as he stepped up onto the front porch, its wooden planks swathed in a dim yellow light. “As you’ll soon come to realize.” Then he opened the door. “Priscilla,” he called out, to which six or seven cats responded with a variety of meows.

      She liked his sarcastic humor. It was...sexy, in an offbeat way. Kept her on her toes, made her think. She liked the way his niceness slipped in when he was trying so hard to keep it out, too. Trying so hard to be a grump. But he wasn’t grumpy. Not really. A little preoccupied, often totally focused, sometimes distracted. That really wasn’t grumpy, though. More like concerned or concentrated. Not fond of being interrupted in the moment. The way she was, come to think of it. Sometimes she would ignore someone or snap when someone interrupted her, but that wasn’t grumpy, the way Jack wasn’t grumpy when he did the same. Then there was his competence—it radiated from him. He was very calculated in what he did, didn’t waste time or effort, but he was methodical. And to her even that was sexy. In fact, the whole aura surrounding him was sexy. He was perverse, intense, maybe a little dark at times, but there was nothing wrong with that. Not personally. Not professionally. All in all, Carrie liked Jack Hanson. Not for a deeply personal relationship, since he was giving off absolutely no vibes in that direction, but maybe in a situation she would loosely define as a casual friendship. And the thought of him as her friend while she was here in Marrell—she liked that. It could work. If his crown didn’t get in the way.

      * * *

      Priscilla Anderson was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking like she was ready for a hike down the mountain. Probably something well north of seventy, she looked twenty years younger, all decked out in jeans and a red plaid jacket, with her long white hair pulled back into a ponytail. “Just let me get my boots on and I’ll be ready to go back down with you,” she said.

      “How?” Jack asked, as Carrie sprang to action, checking the woman’s vital signs. “Your road’s icing over, and I’m going to be lucky to get volunteers in, let alone get you out of this damned isolated shack.”

      “It may be a shack, Jackie Hanson, but it’s all mine. Which is more than I can say for that shack you’re living in. Willard Mason’s old run-down piece of trash. No running water, no toilet...”

      “It has water, it has plumbing. And electricity. All the modern conveniences...”

      “Which you had to pay to have put in.”

      “Because I bought the place.” He bent to give his grandmother an affectionate peck on the cheek, then shoved one of her cats aside so he could sit next to her. “So, when did the pain start?”

      “It’s not exactly a pain. More like a heavy sensation. And it started three hours ago. I’d have called you sooner, but I was hoping it was indigestion and it would go away.”

      “Well, it didn’t.” He took hold of Priscilla’s wrist to take her pulse. Then looked up at Carrie. “Fast, but not thready.” Then he looked into his grandmother’s eyes, took out his stethoscope, listened to her lungs. When he went for her chest, though, she swatted away his hand.

      “Let her do that,” she snapped, nodding to Carrie. “Don’t want you touching me so privately. Not respectable for a grandson to be doing that.”

      “When did you become such a prude, old woman?” Jack said, standing up and stepping back from the bed, which allowed Carrie to get closer, check Priscilla’s heart and take her blood pressure.

      “The day I heard you were taking over here as a doctor.” She looked up at Jack, and actually winked. “Scary stuff, Jackie, for an old woman who used to powder your behind.”

      “Blood