Second Chance Spring Page 5

  “I guess I should also ask how long I’d need to do this.” Cormac lifted a dark eyebrow in question.

  “The buildup phase is three months. We’ll continue maintenance shots for a year or two.”

  “A year?” Both eyebrows shot up now. “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, Dr. Tanner.”

  A little thrill rushed through me at his words, but I brushed it away quickly. He was a patient. And I was leaving town soon. “Right,” I said, stepping back and putting a hand on the door. “Let us know if you have any kind of reaction there, and …”

  “We’ll see you around the neighborhood,” he said.

  I smiled, and didn’t give voice to the thought in my head as I left the room. I hope so. I really hope so.

  Thoughts of Kangaroos

  Cormac

  I hadn’t necessarily gone to see Paige strictly because of my allergies. Or because Lottie was actually a little scary and I doubted she’d allow me to remain working at my corner table (and sneezing constantly) once she’d handed me her daughter’s card if I hadn’t gone.

  I went, in part, because since we’d seen my neighbor at the animal shelter, all adorably disheveled and embarrassed, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. It wasn’t something I was feeling proud about, either. Linda was still very much a part of my life, thanks to the little girls she’d left behind, and I spent long days and nights hearing her echoes around the house, brushing shoulders with her ghost as I did my best to raise our daughters.

  But the thing about ghosts was that they made shitty partners. When I talked to her, she didn’t answer. And when I was angry with her for leaving us, she never showed up to take my anger and tell me it would be okay. Sometimes I didn’t actually think it would be.

  The worst thing about it all was the guilt I felt constantly. Guilt that I got to see the girls and she didn’t. Guilt that maybe there was something I could have done that morning to keep it from happening. Guilt that now and then I felt myself smiling—not forgetting, but managing a moment of happiness, even though she was gone.

  And this? This new prick of interest I felt whenever the front door at Paige Turner’s house opened while I was around to see it? This was a double-decker guilt sandwich with pickles. Because if I was really honest with myself—like the kind of honest I got after three glasses of scotch—I liked her. Liked liked her. And I wasn’t sure that was okay. I was actually pretty certain it wasn’t.

  “Yuke!” Maddie called as she came tearing around the front of the house from the backyard. Taylor was right behind her, laughing hysterically.

  We’d had dinner, and I’d hoped for a quiet evening—I’d actually just figured I’d fall into bed early again, since I was still taking allergy meds, even though they weren’t working.

  “Slow down,” I called, as Luke came galloping into the front yard. “Oh girls, this poor dog.” Luke pulled to a stop in front of me and looked up, tongue hanging from his tired mouth. My dog was wearing a tutu around his middle and had a tiara strapped onto his head.

  “He’s the sugar plum fairy,” Taylor said, laughing and pointing at Luke, who sat down heavily at my feet and sent me a look of resignation, as if he was saying, “it is what it is.”

  I bent down to pet the guy as the girls came over to adjust his costume, Luke’s big dark eyes meeting mine with an expression that assured me this was all fine. Luke and I were both at the mercy of the most adorably irrational humans on the planet. I was squatting in front of him, facing the street, when a certain long-legged runner jogged to a stop on the opposite sidewalk, ponytail flying behind her and sleek dark dog at her side.

  Though I was petting the dog, suddenly all of my attention was on the way Paige’s legs looked in her running pants, all sinew and muscle. They molded to a very tight, very round ass, and though I felt like I should definitely not be staring, it was impossible to stop. Especially when she turned and waved at us, a broad smile lighting the face beneath the baseball cap.

  I lifted a hand and waved back, pulling Maddie and Taylor’s attention around.

  “Who is that?” Taylor sounded strangely annoyed as Paige pulled her earbuds from her ears and crossed the street, heading our way with her dog in tow.

  “Hey neighbor,” Paige called, stepping onto the sidewalk in front of our house.

  Luke turned his head at her voice and then pulled out of our little circle, trotting over to greet her and meet the other dog. I tensed, a little worried there might be growling or even fighting, but the dogs nosed each other a bit and seemed content.

  “Hey big guy,” she crooned, squatting to pet him and nuzzle his ears. “How are things going with Luke?”

  The girls and I crossed the lawn to greet her, and I found I had to work very hard to keep my eyes from scanning down the length of her body. The tight pants were just the beginning—her toned arms warranted some investigation too, but especially interesting was the way her tank top pulled against the workout bra she wore beneath it, leaving just the tiniest hint of cleavage in the smooth skin at the U-shape neckline. She was glistening with perspiration, and I had to actually clear my throat three times before I was able to speak.

  Maybe it was just the allergies.

  “About the same, really,” I managed. “The dog is fantastic, though. The girls love him to death, and he is patient and sweet with them.” I hoped I was managing to speak actual English words. The combination of the allergy medicine and my body’s reaction to Paige—a racing around of feelings I had thought were mostly dead—was very distracting.

  “You’re the doctor dog,” Maddie said, staring up at our long-legged neighbor.

  Paige laughed—an open-mouthed, somewhat goofy sound I thought I could hear hundreds of times and still want to hear again. It was un-selfconscious and light, and for a minute I envied her the ability to laugh like that.

  “I am,” she said.

  “I’m Taylor,” my seven-year-old daughter said, sticking out her hand to shake, making me realize at once that I’d managed to flub polite conversation by missing proper introductions. “And this is Maddie. We met you when we got Luke.”

  “That’s right, I remember,” Paige said, getting to her knees and looking right at Taylor as she shook her little hand. I stifled a hysterical laugh. Something about Taylor approaching our neighbor like a tiny businesswoman, combined with the sweet and accepting way Paige had taken it in stride had me feeling a little dizzy.

  “You have a dog,” Taylor noted astutely.

  “I do, this is Bobo.”

  Maddie and Taylor both petted Paige’s dog, and I had a wild desire to take a picture of the whole scene.

  I really needed to stop with the Benadryl.

  Paige was petting Luke, and the girls started telling her everything they could about him. How he favored one particular bush in the back yard to sleep under when he was out in the sun, how he seemed to inhale his food, how he was going to be the sugar plum fairy if they could just teach him to dance.

  She listened intently, responding with interest at all the appropriate points, and smiling the whole time. By the time Luke and the girls trotted out to the edge of the yard, continuing their game, I was nursing a dangerous cocktail of feelings—confusion, guilt and desire, mostly.

  Bobo seemed to be struggling with envy, contained at the end of his leash and whining softly as the little group of playmates moved away.

  Paige got back to her feet after saying a few soft words to him and smiled at me. My breath caught, even as I felt Linda’s ghost peering from the front windows, watching us.

  “How are you doing, Cormac?” she asked, and I thought hearing my name from her lips might have been the best part of my day.

  I willed myself to find the power of speech and not make a complete ass of myself. “Uh, yeah.” No, moron. That wasn’t an answer. Try again. “I’m doing okay,” I managed. “Really hoping for some kind of miracle in the allergy department.”

  “Pretty miserable?” Paige’s f
ace was sympathetic, and she stepped a little closer as she said that, peering up into my eyes with what I guessed was doctorly concern.

  I sneezed in answer, spinning to sneeze into my elbow instead of Paige’s face. I turned back around. “Yeah.”

  The look on her face was some mix of sympathy and friendly interest—and something else I couldn’t place. I hadn’t had much practice talking to women in a while, and reading minds had never been my strong suit. Her blue-grey eyes were clouded though, like a summer afternoon before a storm.

  “How’s everything else?” she asked. When I shrugged, she moved on. “You aren’t from here, right? You moved in a few years ago?”

  “Yeah,” I confirmed, shaking myself from my contemplation of my neighbor’s eyes. And other parts. “My wife—my late wife—and I moved here when she was pregnant with Taylor. From Chicago.”

  Paige let out a little laugh. “That had to be a big change, huh? Big city to the most boring place in the world!”

  I was surprised to hear her say that. People here seemed pretty devoted to the place. “It was a good change,” I said. “Small town, safe neighborhood—a good place to raise kids.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Paige’s voice was thoughtful, and she gazed out at the street before us, quiet and wide with trees draping long branches over the sidewalks like a shield. The girls were sitting on the edge of the lawn, Luke between them. “Yeah. Hard place to be single, though,” she said, and a laugh emerged from her then—sharp and uncomfortable. She turned back to me, but immediately dropped my gaze.

  “It would be.” I thought about that. Wasn’t I single, too? “I mean, it is, yeah.”

  A prickly silence fell between us then, and I didn’t want to move for fear of nudging up against its ragged edges. I took a shaky breath, wishing the air hadn’t suddenly taken on such a charged vibe.

  “Well,” Paige said after a while, glancing around the yard and nodding at the girls. “If you need anything, you know where I am.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Have a good night,” I said, and I watched her walk with Bobo back across the street, doing my best to keep my eyes off that perfect ass. When she’d disappeared inside her own house, I called the girls and went inside too, my mind working in circles around the way Paige Tanner looked in her running clothes while simultaneously reminding me that I was a married man. Kind of. Wasn’t I?

  If nothing else, I was a widower with a lot of responsibility, a vicious dog allergy, and no room in my life to entertain thoughts of my neighbor’s ass.

  This was not good.

  “Daddy?” Taylor’s voice broke my daze and I glanced down to find her staring at me, little fists planted on her hips as we stood inside the front door. “Why do you look weird?”

  This was really not good.

  “Probably thinking about kangaroos,” Maddie supplied helpfully. She and Taylor had agreed that most people got a strange look on their faces when thinking of kangaroos.

  “That’s it,” I agreed.

  That was so not it.

  “Time for dinner,” I announced, and then sneezed into my arm again. Even sneezing made me think about my pretty neighbor. I was screwed.

  Washington’s Cookies

  Paige

  One of the benefits of a small-town practice was the ability to keep pretty regular hours at work. Now and then I got an emergency call about a patient, and I even occasionally made house calls (mostly when my mother got involved), but for the most part, I was off after five-thirty and my evenings were very much my own.

  And Bobo’s.

  My dog, Bobo, was a mutt through and through, but he was partly Corgi (as evidenced by the insanely short legs and long plump body) and part pit bull (as evidenced by the constant smile and the shape of his cute face.) And while I was very glad Bobo had come to be, sometimes when I thought about that mix, and what had to have happened between two very differently sized and shaped dogs to make it happen … well, that wasn’t my brand of kink, I guessed.

  “Let’s go, boy.” Because of the previously mentioned very-short legs, Bobo wasn’t a great running partner. But on my off days, I took him to the park or into town to get him some exercise and a change of scenery.

  This evening, we were heading to Mom’s cafe, where she’d stayed on late experimenting with something she was dying to show me. It was a couple miles from my neighborhood to the square, but spring had decided to be beautiful this year, and I wanted to take advantage of the perfect weather, so Bobo and I strolled toward town. I took in big lungfuls of air, trying to force myself to live in the moment.

  Lately, I’d begun to feel a bit of stress about the choice I needed to make. And strangely, what had seemed a pretty clear-cut decision just a couple weeks ago was making me sad now. I figured it was probably just the difference between moving being an idea and a reality. Once something was concrete, you began worrying about the details. This wasn’t concrete yet, but I was definitely worrying already.

  I’d had to force myself not to glance over at Cormac’s place as I’d left tonight. I was finding thoughts of him and his family to have become something of an obsession—not in a creepy way. More in a neighborly interest kind of way. But I’d seen him outside a few times this week since I’d stopped by after my run, and I was beginning to worry he might think I was engineering the coincidences. And that would be creepy.

  So tonight, it was almost a relief when I didn’t see him or the girls in the yard as I’d left. Not that I was looking, because I was definitely not looking. Not on purpose.

  I pulled open the door to Mom’s place and braced myself for the full frontal cinnamon and brown-sugar-scented assault of sweet warm air that always gushed out that door. Having a world-class baker as a mother was not an ideal scenario for my dietary willpower efforts.

  “Paige is here!” Mom practically sang it out as I stepped inside, Bobo at my side. “With her weird little dog!” Mom added, frowning at me over the pastry-filled counter. She had never been a fan of Bobo’s—something about his ever-present smile. But her frown was short-lived as she nodded her head comically sideways in the most un-subtle of motions and then said, “Look who else is here, Paigey. Your patient!”

  Since half the town were patients, this didn’t really narrow things down, but I didn’t need the help. My eyes followed the track of Mom’s sideways nod and found the broad-shouldered form of Cormac seated at a little table in the corner, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled at me.

  “Hi,” I said, looking between them and including them both in my greeting. Suddenly I felt bad for bringing Bobo inside. He often came in with me, but with Cormac’s allergies, I didn’t think it was fair to parade him around. I walked him to a far corner and asked him to sit, promising water and a dog biscuit as he stared up at me with trust-filled eyes.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling. “Hi Bobo.”

  My dog grinned at Cormac and then turned himself in a circle and laid down.

  There were only a few other customers seated along the windows overlooking the square, and Mom wasn’t busy, which meant she was pretending to move things around behind the counter while she eavesdropped. “Quiet in here tonight,” I observed, feeling silly.

  Cormac looked around and nodded his agreement, and I found myself standing next to his table, shifting my weight and wondering what in the world I’d come in here for. Suddenly, I felt like I’d come just to see him, but that was definitely not true. Now that I was seeing him though, I was glad for it.

  He wore a dark green long-sleeved T-shirt, and I wondered if he knew the color set off his golden eyes in a way no other color could have done. His posture was relaxed, but he was a big man, and he filled the little chair in the corner, making it look almost like playhouse furniture. He had some folders and a laptop open on the table in front of him.

  “Working?” I asked, demonstrating my clear mastery of the obvious.

  He nodded. “This is becoming my second office since we brought Luke home. It turns out I g
et more done when I’m not sneezing or napping.”

  I ventured a bit nearer, dropping my hand on the back of the chair facing him. “I wish I had a magic prescription for you,” I said. “But hopefully we’ll see some improvement in a few weeks.”

  He sighed. “Maybe I’ll just get used to the allergies.”

  “That would be pretty awful,” I said, thinking of someone just accepting that feeling miserable was their norm.

  He lifted a shoulder, and though he didn’t say it, I knew he was thinking something along the lines of the allergies just being something he’d do for his kids. He was a good dad. I didn’t know him well, but I knew that.

  “No girls tonight?” I asked, realizing he was unaccompanied.

  “My brother’s place. He’s got a huge house and no kids, and now and then he forgets how nice and quiet his life is and invites the girls over so I can get some work done.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile, and my stomach turned over as a dimple appeared in his cheek.

  “I should let you work,” I said, moving toward the counter where Mom was hanging on our every word. “I’m sorry to bother you. And hopefully Bobo isn’t affecting you too much from over there.”

  He shook his head and waved a hand as if to push the idea away. “No, he’s fine. And I was just finishing up here.”

  “Well, it was nice to see you again,” I said.

  Something passed through those light eyes, I thought, and for a second it seemed he was going to ask a question, or say something I thought I’d really want to hear. But then his shoulders dropped and he leaned back in the little chair. “You too,” he said.

  I moved toward the counter, and my mother’s face mirrored the strange disappointment making my chest feel suddenly heavy. I knew she’d like nothing more than for me to propose to the man right here and now, and I also knew I was closer to breaking her heart with my news about moving than I was to making her happy. So I did my best to keep her where I’d been telling myself to stay—in the moment.