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He met her gaze. “Next.”
“Chelsea Dolan has red bumps on her face. She’s barely four months old and her mom read on the internet that it should be gone by now.” Dawn met his gaze.
“Of course we know that if it’s on the internet it must be true,” he said wryly. “The pimples are perfectly normal and can last longer than three months, especially in breast-fed infants. She should baby the skin, no pun intended.”
For just an instant the tension in Dawn’s expression disappeared and her lips twitched, as if she wanted to smile. “Anything else?”
“She should keep it clean and dry. No cream or lotion. Next question.”
She continued writing then looked up. “Alice Weber says her friend’s baby is sleeping through the night and has been since he was born. Her Finn is still waking up every couple hours and she wants to know if there’s something wrong or maybe she’s doing something incorrectly.”
“She’s not. It’s hard enough being a new mother without comparing your baby to someone else’s.” He sighed and rested his forearms on the desk. “Some babies wake because they’re hungry. If she feeds the baby before she goes to bed everyone gets more uninterrupted sleep.”
“Okay.”
“There’s also the pacifier.” He gave her tips for using it more successfully and watched her taking notes, trying to keep up.
Dawn flipped the page on her tablet. “Anything else?”
He couldn’t resist giving her more information than necessary, only to mess with her a little because she refused to come any closer to him. “There are a lot of quirky fixes for restless babies from putting them in a swing all night to dad driving around the block or mom sitting on the dryer and cradling her infant.”
She stopped writing and looked up, a little startled. “My sister did that with Sydney, my niece—”
He held up a hand. “I’m not judging. Next question.”
“There aren’t any more.”
“Okay. It would be nice if all the questions were this easy to answer.”
“I probably should have known this but most of my experience is in acute care. And the volume of questions seems higher but that’s probably because your specialty is children.” Her tone had a tinge of grudging respect.
“Makes sense.” Maybe that was a break in the ice. Jon stood and walked around the desk, then rested his hip on the corner. “This place was rockin’ and rollin’ today. How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Handle the patient load with one less person?”
She backed up a step into the open doorway. “We managed.”
“Obviously. But it can’t have been easy.”
“No.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I should go—”
“That kind of pace makes downtime even more important.” He wanted to talk to her. About something other than work. “What do people in Rust Creek Falls do for fun?”
“Fun?” Her eyes flashed just before the deep freeze set in again. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to return these phone calls, Dr. Clifton.”
“That’s so formal. Please call me Jon.”
“That’s all right. Formal works for me. Have a good evening, Dr. Clifton.”
One second she was standing there, the next she was gone. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him at all and wouldn’t have if the questions were about adults instead of kids. Apparently with her, friendly and pleasant was too much to ask. What was her deal?
Admittedly he’d always been more studious than social. He could talk to people; after all he had to communicate with his patients and their caregivers. But talking to a woman was different. Of course they were people, but there was often an undercurrent or subtext to the conversation that he didn’t get.
Jon wasn’t sure how long he’d been contemplating the mystery of Dawn Laramie but he snapped out of it when Emmet walked into his office.
Without invitation or conversation the other man sat in one of the chairs facing the desk. Why couldn’t a woman be more like a man?
“You’re just standing here, Jon. Something wrong?”
That’s what he’d been trying to figure out. “How long have you known Dawn?”
“Let me think.” The older man contemplated the question. “She lives with her mom and is a native of Rust Creek Falls so I’ve seen her from time to time. But I didn’t really get to know her until she came to work here.”
“After leaving Mountain’s Edge Hospital.”
Emmet nodded. “Like I said, the commute must have been bad because she took a cut in pay leaving that job.”
“Sometimes it’s not about the money.” If it was, Jon could have had his pick of lucrative career opportunities. Thunder Canyon Resort was what he’d needed at the time.
“Care to elaborate?”
“No. Guess my Zen just slipped out.” Jon straightened and moved behind the desk. “How well do you know her?”
Emmet thought for a moment. “We work closely together. She’s conscientious and good-natured. Her previous job was in the pediatric ICU at the hospital. Parents relate to her. Kids seem to love her. She’s efficient and knowledgeable. An invaluable asset to this place.”
“So if adults and children like her she must be pretty easygoing?”
“Real friendly. Callie and Brandy took to her right away.” Emmet studied him for a long moment. “Why?”
Jon started to say no reason but knew that wouldn’t fly, what with his interrogation. He wasn’t sure how to answer. It would sound like a complaint and that wasn’t the case. Her interaction with him had been completely professional, but all the friendliness had been surgically removed.
Finally he said, “I like to get to know my coworkers.”
“Makes sense.” Emmet nodded thoughtfully as he stood. “And it occurs to me that when the rest of the reinforcements arrive, I should get everyone on staff together socially.”
“To get to know each other better?” Jon asked.
“Yes. In a relaxed setting where we can let our hair down. A friendly office is a happy office and everything runs more smoothly.”
“Very forward looking of you, Doctor. Sounds like you’re open to suggestion.”
“Yeah,” Emmet agreed. “Why?”
Jon figured he had nothing to lose and this had been on his mind since yesterday when he walked into the clinic. “What do you think about setting up a separate waiting room for kids?”
The other man met his gaze. “Because of the wedding babies?”
“What?”
“All the infants who were born as a result of the spiked punch from the wedding last summer.” Emmet’s eyes twinkled.
Obviously he didn’t hold the adults’ behavior responsible for the population explosion. Jon wasn’t touching that topic, not after his run-in with Dawn.
“Yeah, the wedding babies,” he said. “Infectious disease control would say that a waiting room full of sick people is a breeding ground for germs and it’s especially bad when folks’ immune systems are already compromised by illness.”
“A catch-22. If they weren’t sick, they wouldn’t be there in the first place,” Emmet agreed.
“And infants shouldn’t be exposed to all of that,” Jon said.
“It’s a good idea and would probably mean some remodeling. There’s still grant money left from rebuilding this place after the flood. I’ll look into it.”
“Good.”
“Now, I’m going home. And you need to get out of here, too, Jon. Don’t want you to burn out.”
“Right.”
The other man nodded and left. When he was alone Jon thought about burnout and figured in his case it felt more like a flameout when he considered Dawn. It sure sounded as if she was friendly and easygoing with everyone but him. If that was the case, the logical assumption was that he’d said or done something to upset her.
But, for the life of him, he didn’t know how he’d managed to alienate her. Mentally he reviewed every conversation, all of it up to his innocent question about what people did for fun in this town. From her reaction, you’d have thought he’d hit on her...
Jon winced.
That hadn’t been his intention, but he could see how she might have jumped to that conclusion. Truthfully, he wouldn’t mind getting to know her. She was an attractive woman and, as much as she’d tried to hide it, they shared a similar sense of humor. But none of that meant a tinker’s damn if the workplace was hostile. Doctors were trained to take symptoms and form a diagnosis. That’s what he was going to do with Dawn.
If he didn’t find out what he was doing to put her scrubs in a twist, it was going to be a very long year.
Chapter Three (#ulink_7be2595a-7de2-5edb-9cf8-5a03a00ea14f)
After a second day of working with Dr. Jonathan Clifton, Dawn needed to vent to someone who knew all the skeletons in her closet. Her sister, Marina, had talked her through the personal crisis that was so much of the reason she’d quit her hospital job. For two shifts now Dawn had watched the new doctor charm everyone within a two-mile radius of the clinic. Except her. Was she just being overly cautious and seeing problems where there weren’t any? Talking to Marina might give her a better perspective.
Dawn knocked on her sister’s front door and waited. It could take a while sometimes to get an answer if Marina was busy with the baby. But not tonight.
The door opened and there she was with baby Sydney in her arms. “Hi, little sister.”
Dawn was four inches taller than her petite, red-haired sibling but Marina was three years older. The tease was a running joke between them.
“Hi.” She smiled at her niece. “Hello, sweet girl. Come to Auntie Dawn?”
Sydney grinned and that was all the encouragement necessary for grabbing her up and squeezing her close. “Ooh, you feel so warm and soft and good. And you smell like a baby.”
“She is a baby.”
“Trust me. They don’t always smell like flowers.”
“Tell me about it. She got a quick bath after you called. I figured that would give us more time to visit.” With her index fingers, Marina added air quotes to the last word. Clearly she knew there was something out of the ordinary going on. “Let’s talk in the other room. Are you hungry? I can throw something together.”
“No. Thanks, though.” She carried the baby through the kitchen and into the adjacent family room where a baby gym was set up on the carpet.
“You can put her down there and let her play. She likes that toy, don’t you, sweet Sydney?”
Of course the baby didn’t answer but Dawn put her down where directed. The two women sat on the rug, watching Syd bat at all the bright-colored things that dangled and rattled.
Marina met her gaze. “So, what’s up?”
Instead of answering Dawn asked, “Do you ever think about that night?”
“The wedding and reception last July Fourth.” Her sister wasn’t asking a question. The two of them were close and somehow always on the same wavelength. “I do think about it. But I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”
“Syd was conceived that night. Along with a lot of other babies.” She met Marina’s gaze. “It seems crazy what happened.”
“It is crazy. Whatever was in that punch made a lot of people behave in ways they never would have otherwise.”
“Irresponsibly?” Dawn asked, remembering what Clifton had said.
“I suppose so. But Homer Gilmore is the one at fault for spiking the punch in the first place.” Marina’s blue eyes darkened. “They say crisis reveals character and I found that to be true. When I told Gary I was pregnant he dropped me like a hot rock. In his defense our relationship was still new when we went to the wedding together.”
“Don’t defend him. Everything he did before that night telegraphed to you that he was serious. If you hadn’t believed that you never would have slept with him, punch or no punch. He has the character of a toad and that’s an insult to toads. I’d like to punch him for not being a man and supporting you.”
Marina took her daughter’s tiny, flailing foot in her hand and smiled lovingly. “I can’t regret what happened because now I have this beautiful, precious little girl.”
“She is precious.” Dawn studied the blue-eyed, red-haired baby who was going to be a clone of her mom. “And she’s healthy.”
“I’m so thankful for it. Sometimes I forget that you see a lot of children who are sick.” Marina’s eyes filled with empathy. “That must be hard for you.”
“I just focus on what will help them get better.” She recalled how Clifton had explained the timing for the triplets’ flu shots. And how he patiently answered new parent questions, no matter how routine. There was no way she could say he wasn’t good at what he did. “And we see a lot of kids for regular checkups to chart their growth and prevent them from getting sick.”
“True.”
“In fact Jamie Stockton brought the triplets in to see Dr. Clifton yesterday.”
“The new doctor?” Her sister’s eyes grew bright with curiosity.
“Yeah. He told him—”
“What’s he like?”
That was what their mother had asked. But unlike Glory, her sibling knew the unfortunate, the bad and the ugly about the last new doctor Dawn had worked with. That was why she was here, to confide in someone who had all the facts.
“He’s really good-looking.” Gorgeous, in fact.
“Yeah. And?”
“Everyone likes him. Patients. Parents. Clinic personnel. They’re all singing his praises.”
Marina turned serious. “What do you think of him?”
