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So she knew about her uncle Charlie’s flirtations. It couldn’t be easy for her, coming back to L.A. where so many people thought they knew her because they knew her family.
“Which is Mona’s desk?” she asked, leading the way to the front office and picking up the flowers. “In the interest of a peaceful transition, I brought these for her.”
The flowers were arranged in a container shaped like a dove. Noah smiled as he pointed out Mona’s desk. It looked as if the doc had done her homework and knew what she might expect from Mona.
“And I have this for Vanessa…”
It was a candy dish, shaped like a pair of kangaroos, their pouches full of candy. Beth placed it on the front desk. Vanessa did have a sweet tooth. How had Beth known that? Since she was batting two for two and there were a couple of gift bags remaining, he wondered what she might have for him.
“And for Noah…” The big bag held a long white box, the kind that long-stemmed roses came in.
Roses? For him?
But the “flowers” were big chocolate chip cookies attached to long green wires sprouting leaves. “Have you ever had a cookie bouquet?” she asked.
“No, this is a first,” he said, pleased with his gift. “My daughter’s going to love these.”
“I saw her picture on your desk when I was moving in. I thought she would like these even if you’re not a cookie kind of guy.”
Now, that was the way to his heart. A kindness to his little girl topped anything Beth could have given him. “Chocolate chip cookies are her favorite, but she’ll think these are too pretty to eat.”
“I know!” Beth said with that soft laugh he was getting to know. “That’s why I got these.” She handed over the smaller bag which held a commercial brand of chocolate cookies with icing. “These are for eating until the novelty of the others wears off.”
Three for three. She couldn’t do better than that. “I have something for you, too,” he said, unrolling his daughter’s sign.
“Oh, Noah!” Her voice rose in delight.
For a second, he thought his new boss might cry.
“Your daughter made this, didn’t she? And she signed her name, Kendra McKnight. We need to put this up for everyone to see.”
He couldn’t have asked for a better reaction. “I wanted to have it up before you got here.”
“Her drawing really looks like the clinic. How old is your daughter?”
“She just turned seven.”
“So, she just started second grade?”
He nodded. “She loves school.”
“It’s very advanced artwork for a child so young,” she said with that truly knockout smile, taking the picture to the bulletin board and placing it in the center.
A piercing screech came from the lobby. Noah took a deep breath and geared up for the storm. Hurricane Mona had arrived, and there was no telling the damage she’d do.
Chapter Three
Beth squared her shoulders and prepared for the blast of anger about to walk through the door. As Grandpa had said, getting along with Mona Fitz would be as challenging as getting along with Beth’s own mother, but Beth could walk on eggshells in her sleep.
“Beth Brennan, you’ve turned this place into a zoo.”
“Good morning, Mona,” Beth said, as pleasantly as rushing adrenaline would allow. Her body might react to Mona’s wild accusations, but her mind would stay clear.
Judging from Mona’s flushed face, Beth would say the woman’s blood pressure was stroke-high. She’d hate for her first patient to be her own nurse.
“Good morning, Mona,” Noah echoed, going to his desk as if this were just another day.
“I suppose you think this is just fine and dandy,” Mona said as she brushed by him to her own desk.
“Take another look,” he teased. “Notice the pairs? It’s Noah’s ark.”
“Ark, smark,” Mona said, her face puckered angrily. “It’s not appropriate for a professional office.”
“I like it,” Noah said, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “But then I get to play the part of Noah. Be nice, and you can be Mrs. Noah—either my wife or my mom.”
Beth couldn’t believe it. A smile crept over the woman’s lips. Grandpa’d said he thought Mona might have a soft spot for Noah. If she did, who could blame her? Noah seemed to be as nice as he was good-looking. Even better, he didn’t seem to know it.
If he’d been this nice when they met, why couldn’t she remember him? Guys this great weren’t forgettable.
Mona shoved her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk and noticed her flowers.
Beth was counting on those flowers. What woman could resist something that lovely, to say nothing of the sweet dove container?
“Achoo!” Mona sneezed, not once but again. Grabbing a tissue, she held it to her nose. “Noah, get those flowers out of here.” Another sneeze punctuated her complaint.
Beth bit her lip, trying not to laugh. A child could have faked sneezes better than that.
“Your office?” Noah muttered, barely suppressing a grin as he walked by her with the flowers.
She nodded. Perfect. It would keep Mona out.
“All better?” she asked as Mona’s sneezing ended miraculously. “Are you taking something for that allergy, or can I prescribe something?”
“No, you can not!” Mona pointedly ignored Beth.
“Oh, wow!” Someone in the lobby liked the ark.
Beth opened the door and saw a beautiful dark-haired young woman with absolute delight in her sparkling eyes.
“Would you look at the aquarium! And all the little fish! And the darling animal chairs for the kids! This is unbelievable! Hey, Noah! You have an ark out here!”
Noah joined her, wearing a big matching grin. “Kendi’s going to love this, isn’t she, Vanessa?”
“Oh, she will. All the kids will!”
The glowing approval was a boost after Mona’s reaction.
“Hi, Dr. Brennan. I’m Vanessa Taylor, as you’ve probably figured out, and I’m so happy you’re here.”
How nice that her patients’ first impression would be this lovely young woman’s smile. “Hi, Vanessa. Please call me Beth.”
“Really?” Vanessa looked as if she’d been offered a raise. “But what if I forget around the patients? Maybe I should call you Dr. B or something?”
“Pfft!” The sound was comically incongruous coming from an impeccably groomed woman. Mona’s manicured nails matched the rose color on her thin lips and the flowers of her smock. There wasn’t a hint of gray in her upswept black hair, and her pants, shirt and shoes were very white.
“A man of Dr. Crabtree’s stature didn’t require a nickname,” she said with a sniff.
But the Brennan kids had given him one anyway. Dr. Crabby had seemed perfect back then. When Beth knew him as an adult and realized he was just shy, she’d felt bad about that.
“Let’s go with Beth or Dr. Beth,” she told Vanessa.
“Got it!” Vanessa said, heading for her desk. She spotted the kangaroo candy dish and stopped. “Look at this! It is so cute. Thank you, Dr. Beth.”
Beth nodded, feeling exceptionally good about how things were going. “Let’s all get settled, then we’ll take a little tour and go over a couple of new procedures.”
Mona swung around. “A tour?” Her shrill voice could have stripped paint from a wall. “I hardly need a tour! I was here in this office, taking your temperature, before you knew how to count, Beth Brennan.”
“You were, weren’t you?” Beth struggled to be cordial when every instinct said her grandfather was right and Mona Fitz should go.
“Dr. Crabtree took good care of all you little Brennans, though a lot of thanks it got him.”
Beth wasn’t sure what that meant, but, trying again to be nice, she said, “It must seem strange that most of us are doctors here now.”
“It isn’t strange at all! Or it wasn’t until today. Your brother and your cousin know how to fit in. They haven’t created an eyesore like that mess outside.”
This disrespect had to end. No one should have to work in unpleasant conditions. “Mona, do our patients and their parents still call you by your first name?”
“Of course! My name hasn’t changed.”
“With respect for your many years on the job, I think it’s time you were called Ms. Fitz.”
Clearly, Vanessa and Noah hadn’t heard Mona called that or thought how the two syllables sounded together. To their credit, neither cracked a smile, though Vanessa rushed to the restroom and Noah checked on a lab report.
“My name is Mona!” the woman said, her voice quivering with rage.
“Are you sure?” Beth said doubtfully. “It’s important to treat everyone with respect, don’t you think?”
Whew! If looks could kill, she’d be dead. Mona’s glare was so piercing that Beth had the urge to check for entry wounds, but Mona turned abruptly to her desk.
Beth took a deep breath and walked down the hall to her office, almost skipping. That had gone better than she’d expected, even though she had prayed it would. There was nothing that the Lord and she couldn’t handle.
Grandpa’d said there was no way she could handle Mona. Ha! Nothing fired Beth’s determination like being told what she couldn’t do. They would get along fine.
Beth opened the door to her office and paused to see if it still felt as if she were trespassing there. Missing were Keith’s books, personal items and diplomas, but everything else was as he’d left it, everything but the flowers she’d intended for Mona.
Noah had placed them on the massive mahogany desk. Beth leaned down and sniffed their lovely fragrance. What a shame that Mona couldn’t have enjoyed them as a sweet reminder of all that was good and pleasant in this world.
Sitting in Keith’s big office chair, Beth swiveled slowly, taking in the view of the clinic’s lush grounds, the empty bookshelves, the armchairs in front of her desk, the monstrous mahogany desk and the credenza behind her. She would feel more at home when her diplomas were on the wall and the furnishings were her own. There’d been so much to do, her office had been her last priority.
Lord, thank you for what I have, and help me do this job right. I don’t want to let Grandpa down.
“Dr. Beth.” Noah stood at the open door, holding two more floral arrangements. “Where would you like these?”
The flowers were extraordinary, but the guy holding them took her breath away. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen her share of good-looking men, but something about Noah McKnight stirred her senses. She gestured toward the credenza behind her. “How about there?”
“Looks like a good spot.”
She watched him, impressed with the easy way he moved and the conscientiousness with which he placed the flowers, turning them to show them off to best advantage. Some guys would have plunked them down any which way. Either he had an artistic flair or he liked things done right.
“Is that okay?” He gestured toward the flowers.
“It’s perfect, but…”
“What?” Instant concern covered his face.
The look on his face seemed so familiar. She had to have seen it before. “I just wondered if you could drop the formality and just call me Beth.”
“The first name is important to you, isn’t it?” he said with a quick smile that deepened faint laugh lines around his eyes.
He hadn’t always been the serious guy Keith Crabtree had described. “I do like first names,” she said. “They seem more…friendly.”
“And you want to be friends?” he said, his eyes narrowed as if he didn’t quite believe it.
“Well, sure. And a friend would sit down for a minute.” She tapped her desktop. “Keith had our morning patients rescheduled. We aren’t seeing anyone until after lunch.”
He sat on the edge of her desktop, balancing himself with one hand, not crowding her space, but close enough that she noticed his tanned muscular arm. And the rest of him, too. Blue scrubs had never looked better on anybody, and she’d seen a lot of blue scrubs.
“Not all doctors are friendly with staff,” he said.
She couldn’t argue that. The older generation of physicians had their hierarchy of propriety, which some of her peer group still valued, but not her. “I think of us as a team—you, Mona, Vanessa and me.”
“Mona? Not Ms. Fitz?”
She bent her head, not wanting him to see her pleasure in winning one tiny battle. “She’s Mona…for now.”
“For the record,” he said, “that’s the first time I’ve seen anyone shut Mona down.”
“Really? I’m not usually known for my great assertiveness, but you’ve been around doctors. You know how we can pull out the sharp comment to get what we want, stat.”
He laughed, showing off those laugh lines again. “You just showed who was the boss. Mona’s not used to that.”
“I don’t really want to be ‘the boss.’ Like I said, we’re a team, and we’ll find a way to get along. Mona’s a fixture here, and she’s a first-rate nurse, or Keith Crabtree wouldn’t have kept her on all these years.”
Noah’s eyes drifted, exactly as a person’s might if he knew something more than he planned to share.
“Noah?” She wouldn’t let him get away with that. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He spoke slowly, as if he were choosing his words carefully. “Keith Crabtree was a very private person. I worked with him for two years and didn’t know what he did in his spare time…other than fish. I didn’t know what his wife was like, how long they’d been married before she died or anything about their baby.”
