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“Fantastic.”
“Okay.” She handed him the headphones. “Put these on and relax. Remember to stay as still as possible. If you move, the pictures will blur and this will take longer.” She handed him the communication button. “If you need to talk to me, hit the button.”
When he nodded his understanding, she turned her attention to the controls on the side of the machine. She placed the helmet-shaped scanner over his head and he flashed a wide smile.
“You don’t like me much, do you?”
“I’d like you better if you stayed still.” She readjusted the metal frame over his ears, checking to make sure his head was centered. His last couple of scans had been clear, but anything could have changed since his last fight.
At least the fighting commissioners took proper precautions, she’d give them that much.
“But you don’t approve of what I do.”
“I don’t approve of any activity that routinely requires a brain scan. Now, shh, and stay still.” She hit the button on the side and the table slid into the tubular machine even further. She noticed his grip tighten on the communication button. “You okay?”
“Perfect,” he said, but his voice was strained.
“Okay, I’ll be in the other room, press the button if you need me.”
In the lab, she sat at the computer as the scanner performed the first series of scans. Images appeared on the screen in front of her and, to her experienced relief, nothing seemed to be a cause for concern on immediate viewing. Of course the radiologist and the doctor would review the images in more detail that afternoon.
His communicator beeped and she hit the intercom button. “Noah? Something wrong?”
“No, I wanted to ask you something.”
She waited.
He was silent.
“Go ahead.”
“I was wondering if you’d have dinner with me tonight.”
Seriously? The guy was wearing a hospital gown and booties, had half his body in an MRI machine, and he was asking her out? Clearly the relaxation meds she’d given him were working.
She hesitated. She wasn’t sure of his exact age but she suspected he was at least four or five years younger than she was and, given his chosen career, he wasn’t even on her radar of potential men to date. A fighter who put constant stress on his body and mind was not someone she would consider as a life partner, even though at thirty-five, she thought maybe it was time to start taking relationships seriously.
“I have to work.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. You were totally flirting with me at Bailey and Ethan’s wedding last weekend.”
She cringed. She’d known dancing with him had been a mistake, but when the roster of single men in town was made up of high school boys and the over-fifty divorced crowd, her options had been slim.
It had nothing at all to do with the fact that dressed in a suit and tie, Noah had been the hottest man in the room and his occupation had momentarily escaped her mind.
“I also danced with Mr. Grainger, the seventy-year-old manager of the bait-and-tackle store. Don’t read too much into it.”
“I’d like to think I was the better dancer at least.”
“’Bye, Noah.”
A moment later the intercom beeped again. She hit the intercom. “Maybe I should have specified—unless you’re in pain or experiencing anxiety, you don’t need to hit the button.”
“Wait. I am in pain.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“I’m heartbroken.”
Leaving the room, she walked into the scan area and took the communication device from him.
“Hey, what if I need you?”
“You won’t.”
* * *
OPENING THE DOOR to Victoria and Rachel’s B and B later that afternoon, Lindsay ushered Melissa inside, handing her niece her backpack. Several guests lounged in the sitting area and she waved as she scanned the room for her brother. His truck had been parked in the family’s designated parking space, which she hadn’t been expecting.
“I thought your dad was in Newark this week?” she asked Melissa.
“He got back this morning,” the girl grumbled, obviously not pleased about it, either.
“What is on my daughter’s lips?”
Ah, there he was.
Aunt and niece rolled their eyes in unison. “The shade is called Pretty in Pink,” Lindsay said.
“Tell me you did not have that on at school.” The frown lines on her brother’s forehead were so deep, he looked like the older sibling...by a lot...she liked to think.
Melissa sighed. “No, Dad. Aunt Lindsay let me try it on in the Jeep on the way home.” Lindsay watched as the girl hid the lipstick she’d given her—last season’s shade—in her back pocket.
“Well, go wash it off and start your homework,” Nathan said.
“Aunt Lindsay wants to watch the episode of Gossip Girl we recorded last night,” Melissa protested.
“Well, Aunt Lindsay can watch it. You have homework first. Besides, I need to talk to your aunt...” His voice trailed as his cell phone rang in his pocket and, reaching for it, he frowned. Again. “I have to grab this. Don’t go anywhere,” he told Lindsay.
“Where’s Rachel?”
“Upstairs bathing the two of my daughters you haven’t corrupted yet.” Answering the phone, he turned away from her. “Hello? Nathan Harper here...”
Saved by one of her brother’s demanding clients. Maybe it was Ben Walker, the friend who’d co-founded the land development firm with him. Lindsay’s most recently failed setup. Apparently, according to Ben, they’d met years ago at Nathan and Rachel’s wedding. She had no recollection of it.
Bending to whisper in Melissa’s ear, she said, “I’ll hide from your dad in your bedroom after I talk to your mom. Hurry, so we can watch the show.”
Thursday nights were Aunt and Niece Night, but the night before she’d been stuck at work. She hated disappointing the kid. The oldest of five, Melissa was expected to help out, stay out of trouble and, naturally, received the least amount of attention. Lindsay could relate.
“Okay, remember—no smoking.”
Seriously, the girl was worse than her own conscience. As a nurse, she knew the habit was a bad one, she knew the health risks, she also knew how terrible it looked to the patients when they caught her outside the clinic doing exactly what she preached to them not to do. The truth was, she’d tried many times over the years to quit and she’d failed miserably every time.
But how could she not attempt it for the fifty-eighth time when her niece had tearfully asked her to stop the month before when they’d watched a video in school about lung cancer?
She lifted the sleeve of her uniform to reveal several nicotine patches. “I’m trying,” she told her. And she was. So far she’d only caved twice in a month.
“I think you only need one,” Melissa said.
“Well, it can’t hurt. Go do your homework,” she said, the urge for a cigarette stronger now that they’d been talking about it.
The kid rushed off to do her homework at one of the dining room tables and Lindsay headed upstairs.
In the bathroom of the B and B’s living quarters, Rachel was perched over the bathtub. The eighteen-month-old twin girls, Mackenzie and Abigail, splashed in the bubbles while Rachel tried to wash their dark hair.
“What’s got my brother out of sorts now?” Best to get a heads-up from Rachel—the rational one of the pair—before dealing with her uptight sibling.
“The Facebook profile you created for Melissa.” She didn’t exactly sound pleased herself.
The girl wasn’t supposed to have told her parents Lindsay’d set up an account for her. Besides, she wasn’t stupid, she’d restricted the security settings. “What’s the point of being the cool aunt if she’s going to rat me out?”
Rachel rinsed the twins’ hair. “She didn’t. We got a call from Isabelle Thompson’s parents. Apparently, Isabelle was complaining that Mel was allowed to have Facebook and she wasn’t.”
“Wow, do all parents get up in each other’s business like that?”
Rachel shot her a look. “Nathan deleted her account.”
“Well, at least she won’t be upset with me.”
“Spoken like a true aunt,” Rachel said with a laugh. “Someday when you have kids, you’ll realize if they’re not mad at you, you’re probably not doing the job right.”
“I’m thirty-five and Mr. Right is nowhere in sight...I’m not exactly rushing out to buy parenting books.”
“Which reminds me, what happened on your date with Ben? He told Nathan you faked an emergency call halfway through dinner.” She frowned.
Great. He’d seen through the lie. She hadn’t thought he was paying attention long enough, answering his cell phone twice and replying to several “important” client emails. She’d seen her brother act that way on so many family dinners—and she wasn’t sure how Rachel put up with it.
If a man couldn’t put work aside for an hour, then she wasn’t interested.
“I’m sure he didn’t mind. We weren’t exactly hitting it off.”
“Really? He said he liked you and hoped you could try again sometime.”
Not likely. The man was nice and charming and good-looking but there hadn’t been a spark between them. He was too much like her brother...probably why they worked so well together, and exactly why he didn’t work romantically for her. Her brother was too serious and often far too stressed.
She took life one challenge at a time. The fact that Ben wanted to see her again was surprising but not going to happen. “I wasn’t feeling a connection.”
“Maybe you need to lower your standards a little. Your one-strike-you’re-out philosophy doesn’t really give the guys a fair chance, Linds.”
Lower her standards? “That’s not exactly easy, surrounded by perfect, disgusting couples all the time.”
Rachel laughed.
Lindsay sighed as she sat on the edge of the bathtub and lifted Mackenzie from the water, wrapping her in a ladybug towel.
The little girl shivered and she hugged her, wiping the soap bubbles off her legs and feet. Mac giggled and wiggled in her arms.
“‘Perfect, disgusting couples’?”
“Yes. You and my brother are the best example of the kind of nausea-inducing love hitting me in the face whenever I turn around.”
Rachel and Nathan had been high school sweethearts, which was status quo in the small town, and the couple had five adorable children. As co-owners of the Brookhollow Inn, they were family focused and as solid as any couple could be.
Lindsay had yet to find true love or anything close. Most of her short-lived relationships lasted a month at best. She couldn’t find someone who made her laugh, made her weak in the knees and wasn’t in too much of a rush to settle down. She wasn’t sure how she felt about marriage and kids. Most days, being cool Aunt Lindsay was enough.
“Well, we’ll try not to love each other so much,” Rachel said, wrapping Abigail in her butterfly towel and letting the water out of the bathtub.
“Rachel, you up there?”
Lindsay winced. Victoria Mason. Another blissfully happily married woman—one who was eight and a half months pregnant.
“In the twins’ room,” Rachel answered, as they carried the girls into the bright purple-and-pink bedroom they shared.
A long time passed before Victoria appeared in the doorway, out of breath. “Hi, Lindsay.”
“Hey, Vic,” Lindsay mumbled, fighting a sense of irritation at the sight of Rachel’s partner in the inn. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Victoria. The opposite was true—she admired and respected the woman who’d left Brookhollow years before to pursue a career in New York City. Lindsay just wished she’d stayed there instead of returning to marry Luke Dawson. A man Lindsay had always had feelings for. Unreciprocated feelings, but still...
“I wanted to say good-night. I’m heading out. The front entrance is locked and no other guests are scheduled to check in tonight.”
“Okay, as soon as I put the girls to bed, I’ll go down and get the tables set for tomorrow’s breakfast,” Rachel said.
“It’s done.”
“Wow, I don’t know how you’re not dead on your feet. When I was pregnant, I got exhausted walking to the bathroom.” Rachel slid Abigail’s tiny arms into the one-piece pajamas covered in dinosaurs.
Her frugal sister-in-law reused as much of her older children’s clothes on the smaller ones as she could. Nathan’s company had picked up in the past year, but Lindsay knew that being self-employed often gave the couple concern, especially with the possibility of five college tuitions to pay for someday.
“Ah, staying busy helps to keep my mind off things.” Victoria shrugged, but Lindsay noticed the dark circles under the blonde’s tired eyes.
The nurse in her took over.
“Keeping busy is fine, but you really should start taking it easier in these last few weeks. You’re going to need your strength for the delivery,” she said bluntly. Victoria’s blood pressure had been high at her appointment the month before. She was afraid the high-strung workaholic was overdoing it.
Besides running the B and B, the woman was still volunteering on the New Jersey Tourism Board, against her doctor’s recommendations. And Lindsay knew the mom-to-be was putting the baby’s nursery together, instead of waiting for Luke.
