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No doubt about it, when it came to wielding guilt, her mother knew no equal. “Stop, Mom,” Kara pleaded, holding the receiver away from her ear. “I’ll see what I can do.” Pulling her calendar over, she picked up a pen, intending to mark the date. “When do you need it by?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Kara echoed. Talk about being last minute. “Mother, that’s—” She stopped herself. She knew better than to attempt to argue with the woman who’d made it into an art form. Instead, she said, “I’ll see what I can do, Mom.”
“That’s my girl.” Warmth radiated from the phrase. “I told Lisa you’d come through. By the way, would you mind dropping it off with Dave when you get it? Tomorrow is his day to work at the Seventeenth Street Clinic. He volunteers there, you know.”
As if her mother hadn’t already told her that little tidbit countless number of times. “You don’t say.”
“The clinic isn’t all that far from you,” Paulette went on, ignoring the sarcasm in her daughter’s voice.
Kara suppressed a sigh. If she sighed too often, she was going to wind up hyperventilating. Worse, she’d have her mother fussing over her, which was the last thing she needed.
“I know where Seventeenth Street is, Mother.” This time, a hint of impatience came through.
Sadly, it appeared that her mother hadn’t perceived it. “Wonderful, then we’re all set. Dave’ll be there all day,” Paulette stressed. “That young man is positively selfless, never takes any time off for himself,” Paulette marveled.
This was getting a little too thick. Kara smelled a rat—the kind that wore high heels and was given to being sneaky.
“Mother—”
“Oops,” Paulette exclaimed abruptly. “I’ve got to go. Talk to you later, Kara. Bye!”
Her mother’s flood of words came at her fast and furious—just before the receiver on the other end went “click.”
She’d been right, Kara thought as she leaned forward and replaced the receiver into its cradle. The universe was out of whack today. Now all she had to do was figure out why.
There were times, like today, when Dr. David Scarlatti wished he’d been blessed with an extra set of hands. Either that, or had learned to increase his energy level and work twice as fast as he normally did. There just never seemed to be enough hours in the day for him to do everything he needed to.
That was especially true whenever he volunteered at the free clinic. He’d been here since seven and he didn’t feel as if he was making a dent. For every patient he saw, two more seemed to pop up to take his or her place. After six hours straight, the waiting room was still jammed. So much so that some of the patients were sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Nobody was here for something as mundane as a routine checkup. Everyone had something wrong, usually something that they had been enduring for at least several weeks before grudgingly swallowing their pride and making the pilgrimage to the clinic.
It was one o’clock. Typically, most doctors’ offices were closed for lunch at this hour. But for him, lunch was only a faraway dream. Other than a candy bar, he hadn’t had anything to eat—nor the time to consume it if he’d thought to bring something with him.
He didn’t like being hungry, but they were down one doctor today, which made him not low man on the totem pole but sole man on the totem pole. Added to that, one of the nurses didn’t show and the one who did looked as if she were running on empty. Clarice, a normally no-nonsense nurse whose age he wouldn’t dare attempt to guess—he knew she had grandchildren—had been out sick for a week, and it was rather obvious to him that she needed a couple more days.
Too bad neither he nor the clinic had that kind of luxury. There were patients to attend to, and there was no putting that on hold.
As Dave walked out Mrs. Rayburn and her allergy-challenged twins, Megan and Moira, he paused by the reception desk to pick up the next file. There had to be a break coming soon, right?
“How many more, Clarice?” he asked the full-figured dynamo, who was, among other things, his first line of defense.
“You don’t want to know,” the woman informed him darkly.
Since the clinic had originally opened its doors, Clarice Sanchez had seen doctors come, burn out and go. For reasons he wasn’t quite sure of but was eternally grateful for, after an initial butting of heads, the somber nurse had taken him under her large, protective wing. Clarice was the one who kept things moving, even when she was operating at less than her usual maximum efficiency.
Dave read the side of the folder and was about to call the name of his next patient when suddenly, someone was calling out his instead.
“Dave!”
Caught off guard, he momentarily forgot about Ramon Mendoza and glanced about the waiting area to see who had just addressed him by his first name. No one did that around here. It was disrespectful. If they spoke to him, they always invoked his title in a grateful voice.
He didn’t have far to look. His line of sight was immediately engaged by a vaguely familiar, rather sexy-looking blonde. She was striding across the packed room, heading toward him as if she were the bullet and he was the bull’s-eye. From the expression on her face, he could see that she seemed agitated.
One thing was for damn sure. She certainly didn’t look as if she belonged here. It was like a lily suddenly sprouting in the middle of a field of weeds.
Before he could acknowledge the woman—God, that face looked familiar—Clarice stepped in. “I already told you,” she snapped at the blonde, giving her a withering look, “you’re gonna have to wait your turn, lady.”
“I just need to see the doctor for a minute,” the blonde insisted.
“That’s what everyone says,” Clarice told her coldly. “Now either sit down and wait your turn or I’m going to get someone to escort you out of here.”
Kara decided that she was going to give this one more try and then leave. Lunch was almost over and she was hungry. More to the point, she really didn’t need this kind of abuse.
“Dave,” she called to him again, deliberately ignoring his guard dragon. “It’s Kara Calhoun. Your mother sent me.”
Chapter Two
Dave found himself staring at the blonde, stunned. While the face was vaguely familiar in a distant sort of way, the name was familiar in a far more vivid, in-your-face kind of fashion.
He knew only one Kara, God help him.
That would be the only daughter of his mother’s oldest friend, Paulette Calhoun. Every single memory associated with Kara Calhoun was fraught with either embarrassment or frustrated annoyance—or both. He didn’t even try to remember one good moment spent in her company. There weren’t any.
Back when he was a little boy, his parents and hers would get together frequently. All the summer vacation memories of his childhood had Kara in them. Kara and turmoil. He’d been rather shy and introverted. Two years younger, Kara had been the exact opposite, as wild as a hurricane, and just as fearless. He’d felt inadequate.
And then mercifully, just before he turned thirteen, his father’s company began moving him, and thus them, from location to location. They traversed the Northwest and then the Southwest. Changing addresses so frequently made it hard for him to make any friends, but the upside was that at least during the rest of the year, he didn’t have to spend time confined in some remote summerhouse with the wild tomboy, counting the hours until September and the beginning of school.
If, after all these years, this gorgeous woman really was Kara Calhoun, then God, he couldn’t help thinking, had a very macabre and somewhat sadistic sense of humor.
Despite the pressures generated by an incredibly hectic morning stapled to the makings of an equally insane afternoon, Dave stopped what he was doing and waved his next patient into the first open room.
“Be right there, Mr. Mendoza,” he promised.
Then, instead of following the man, Dave rounded the reception desk and walked toward the sexy-looking blonde with the long legs.
That just couldn’t be Kara.
Still, why would she say she was if she wasn’t? He wasn’t going to have any peace until he found out for certain one way or the other, so, warily, he asked, “Kara?”
“Yes,” she cried with the same sort of feeling a contestant might display when their partner finally guessed the right answer after being supplied with countless clues.
He still couldn’t get himself to believe it. Why, after all these years, would she suddenly appear here, in a place where she was clearly out of her element? Her shoes alone looked as if they might equal a week’s salary for one of his patients—the ones who actually had a job.
“Kara Calhoun,” he said, trying to reconcile the image of a bratty, skinny girl with pigtails and a nasty sense of humor with the clearly gorgeous young woman who was standing in the packed waiting room. Obviously nature could work miracles.
Why all the drama? Kara wondered. The Dave she remembered had been a super-brainy geek. Had he been forced to trade in his brains for looks? Was that how it worked?
“Want to see my driver’s license?” she offered, wondering what it would take to convince this man who she was.
The touch of sarcasm in her voice was all he needed to convince him. “It’s you, all right. Still have the sunny disposition of an armadillo, I see.”
She stretched her lips back in an obviously forced smile. “You’ve filled out since I last saw you.” Which, she added silently, was putting it mildly. If the way his lab coat fit was any indication, the man now had muscles instead of arms that could have doubled for toothpicks. “Too bad your personality didn’t want to keep up.”
He would have liked nothing better than to turn his back on her and walk away, but she hadn’t just appeared here like some directionally challenged genie out of a bottle. There was a reason Kara had sought him out after all these years and he had just enough curiosity to wonder why.
He made it simple for her. He asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I was wondering the same thing myself,” she cracked. But then, as he apparently lost patience and began to turn on his heel to walk away, she relented. There was no point in coming all the way over here and not giving him the game. “I brought you a copy of the latest version of ‘The Kalico Kid’ video game. Your mother told mine that your cousin’s little boy’s birthday is coming up and he’s dying to get his hands on one.”
If this were anyone else, he would have expressed his gratitude, paid for the game and taken it. But this was Kara, and the ordinary rules didn’t apply here. His memory was crowded with a host of different sneaky tricks that a gangly ten-year-old played on his trusting twelve-year-old body. Spending summers trapped in her company had taught him to hold everything she was involved in suspect.
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. Motioning her closer to create at least a semblance of privacy, he asked, “What’s the catch?”
“Catch?” Boy, talk about not being trusting. But then, looking back, maybe she couldn’t quite blame him. She had been pretty hard on Dave when they were kids. “The catch is you have to spin a room full of straw into gold by morning.”
“You can do that?” a small voice directly behind her piped up. Despite the distance, her voice had carried enough so that the only child in the room heard, and he was clearly awestruck.
Kara turned around to see a little boy of about eight or ten. He looked rather small and fragile, so he might have even been older. She couldn’t tell for sure. But she did know that he had the widest smile she’d ever seen.
He also, she noted, had an extremely pale complexion and, despite the fact that it was unseasonably hot outside, he was wearing a bright blue wool cap pulled down low on his head. She suspected that the boy’s mother, sitting behind him, had put it on him to keep people from staring. The stigma of a bald head on one so young was difficult to cope with.
“She was making a joke, Gary,” Dave told the boy. “She does that kind of thing.”
Or did, he added silently. The truth was that he had no way of knowing what Kara was like these days, but he suspected she was still true to form—even if her outer form had turned out incredibly well.
He got back to business. “How much do I owe you for ‘The Kalico Kid’ game?”
But Kara was no longer paying attention to him. Her attention was now completely focused on the little boy. Even if he hadn’t been the only child in the room, he would have stood out because of his near-ghostly pallor.
“You really have ‘The Kalico Kid’ game?” Gary asked. She would have had to be blind not to notice the wistful gleam that came into his brown eyes.
She smiled at him, blocking out everyone else, especially Dave. “Yes, I do.”
Reaching into her shapeless, oversize purse, Kara felt around until she located what she was looking for. Instead of the boxed game she’d brought for Dave, she pulled out a handheld gaming system that had become all but standard issue for every bored kid sitting in the backseat of his or her parents’ car, forced to endure yet another cross-country family vacation.
She guessed by the way the little boy’s eyes lit up that not only did he not have a copy of the new version—only a few had hit the stores—but he didn’t have a handheld set, either.
“Want to play the game?” she offered, holding the gaming system out to him.
“Can I?” he breathed almost reverently. His smile was the closest to beatific she’d ever seen.
She had to restrain herself from hugging the boy. Hugging was something she did when she became emotional. Instead, she nodded and choked out the word “Sure.”
“Gary, you’d better not,” his mother chided. The woman looked as worn-out as her son. “I don’t want to risk having him break it. I can’t afford to replace it,” she explained.
Her eyes went from the boy to his mother. There was no way she was going to separate Gary from the gaming system. That hadn’t been her intent when she’d handed it to him. “I take it he doesn’t have one.”
Pride entered the woman’s face as she squared her shoulders. “We manage just fine.”
“I’m sure you do,” Kara quickly agreed. “I didn’t mean to suggest you didn’t.” She looked back at the boy. “Would you like to keep that, Gary?”
Gary looked as if he’d suddenly stumbled into paradise. “Can I?” he cried in absolute disbelief.
“No, you can’t,” his mother told him firmly, even though it clearly hurt her to have to deny him.
Prepared, Kara was quick with her assurances. “It’s okay. I work for the company that produces the game. We’re giving out a few handheld systems as a way of promoting this latest version.”
The boy’s mother looked doubtful. Gary looked ecstatic.
“Really?” he cried excitedly, his eyes now bright and as large as proverbial saucers.
Kara had to struggle to contain her own smile. She nodded. “Really.”
Gary clutched the system, fully equipped with this newest version of “The Kalico Kid,” to his chest. “Thanks, lady!”
Kara solemnly put her hand out to him as if he were a short adult. “My name is Kara—and you’re very welcome, Gary.”
Gary quickly took her hand and tried to look serious as he shook it, but his grin kept insisting on breaking through.
Kara raised her eyes to look at Gary’s mother, half expecting the woman to voice some kind of objection. Instead, she saw tears gathering in the woman’s soft brown eyes. Gary’s mother mouthed, “Thank you,” over the boy’s head.
Her mouth curving just a hint, Kara nodded in response.
Behind her, Dave was busy instructing Clarice, telling her to send another one of the patients to the second newly vacated exam room. Done, he turned his attention to Kara.
“I’d like to see you in my office,” he told the specter from his childhood.
Kara couldn’t help grinning as she followed him around the reception desk, then toward the back of the office. “Bet you’ve been waiting years to be able to say that line to me.”
He bit off his initial response to her flippant remark. After all, she’d just been very kind to one of his regulars. Instead, he waited until Kara had walked into the closet-size office, and then closed the door behind him.
The scarred, faux-mahogany desk listed a little to the right. It and the two chairs, one in front of the desk, one behind it, took up most of the available space. He didn’t bother trying to angle his way behind the desk. He anticipated that this was going to be short.
“You’re not really having some promotional giveaway, are you?” It wasn’t a question.
She would have played this out a little longer just to see how far she could take it, but she was running out of time. As senior quality assurance engineer, she was supposed to set an example for the others when it came to keeping decent hours. “No.”
“Didn’t think so. That was rather a nice thing you just did.” He didn’t bother going into any details about how very strapped Gary’s mother was, or what a brave little person the boy was. That was the kind of stuff that violins were made for and he had a feeling it would be wasted on Kara anyway. It definitely would be on the Kara he remembered.
Or thought he remembered, he amended.
Getting what sounded like a compliment from Dave felt awkward to Kara somehow. Not to mention unsettling. She shrugged, dismissing the words. “Well, I make it a rule not to eat children on Wednesdays.” And then she sobered. Raising her eyes to Dave’s green ones, she started to ask, “Does he have—?”
He cut her off, sensing that talking about the disease that had ultimately claimed her father was difficult for her. “It’s in remission, but I’m not all that hopeful,” he confided.
“That was always your problem,” she recalled, not entirely critically. To her, that was just the way things were and she viewed it as something that needed improvement. “Not enough hope, too much practicality.”
