Against Doctor's Orders

Table of Contents

Synopsis

Applause for L.L. Raand’s Midnight Hunters Series

Acclaim for Radclyffe’s Fiction

By Radclyffe

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

About the Author

Books Available From Bold Strokes Books

Synopsis

There’d been a Rivers at the helm of Argyle Community Hospital for six generations, and Harper Rivers was set to take her father’s place whenever he decided to hang up his shingle. Unfortunately, the board of directors had other ideas—they accepted a buyout offer from a health care conglomerate with plans to close the hospital’s doors to the community that depended on it. And Presley Worth, a high-powered corporate financier, came to town to oversee the closure. Funny thing was, no one asked Harper, and she had no intentions of following anyone’s orders but her own—no matter how beautiful, smart, or commanding the new boss might be.

Applause for L.L. Raand’s Midnight Hunters Series

The Midnight Hunt

RWA 2012 VCRW Laurel Wreath winner Blood Hunt

Night Hunt

The Lone Hunt

“Raand has built a complex world inhabited by werewolves, vampires, and other paranormal beings…Raand has given her readers a complex plot filled with wonderful characters as well as insight into the hierarchy of Sylvan’s pack and vampire clans. There are many plot twists and turns, as well as erotic sex scenes in this riveting novel that keep the pages flying until its satisfying conclusion.”—Just About Write

“Once again, I am amazed at the storytelling ability of L.L. Raand aka Radclyffe. In Blood Hunt, she mixes high levels of sheer eroticism that will leave you squirming in your seat with an impeccable multi-character storyline all streaming together to form one great read.”—Queer Magazine Online

“The Midnight Hunt has a gripping story to tell, and while there are also some truly erotic sex scenes, the story always takes precedence. This is a great read which is not easily put down nor easily forgotten.”—Just About Write

“Are you sick of the same old hetero vampire/werewolf story plastered in every bookstore and at every movie theater? Well, I’ve got the cure to your werewolf fever. The Midnight Hunt is first in, what I hope is, a long-running series of fantasy erotica for L.L. Raand (aka Radclyffe).”—Queer Magazine Online

“Any reader familiar with Radclyffe’s writing will recognize the author’s style within The Midnight Hunt, yet at the same time it is most definitely a new direction. The author delivers an excellent story here, one that is engrossing from the very beginning. Raand has pieced together an intricate world, and provided just enough details for the reader to become enmeshed in the new world. The action moves quickly throughout the book and it’s hard to put down.”—Three Dollar Bill Reviews

Acclaim for Radclyffe’s Fiction

2013 RWA/New England Bean Pot award winner for contemporary romance Crossroads “will draw the reader in and make her heart ache, willing the two main characters to find love and a life together. It’s a story that lingers long after coming to ‘the end.’”—Lambda Literary

In 2012 RWA/FTHRW Lories and RWA HODRW Aspen Gold award winner Firestorm “Radclyffe brings another hot lesbian romance for her readers.”—The Lesbrary

Foreword Review Book of the Year finalist and IPPY silver medalist Trauma Alert “is hard to put down and it will sizzle in the reader’s hands. The characters are hot, the sex scenes explicit and explosive, and the book is moved along by an interesting plot with well drawn secondary characters. The real star of this show is the attraction between the two characters, both of whom resist and then fall head over heels.”—Lambda Literary Reviews

Lambda Literary Award Finalist Best Lesbian Romance 2010 features “stories [that] are diverse in tone, style, and subject, making for more variety than in many, similar anthologies…well written, each containing a satisfying, surprising twist. Best Lesbian Romance series editor Radclyffe has assembled a respectable crop of 17 authors for this year’s offering.”—Curve Magazine

2010 Prism award winner and ForeWord Review Book of the Year Award finalist Secrets in the Stone is “so powerfully [written] that the worlds of these three women shimmer between reality and dreams…A strong, must read novel that will linger in the minds of readers long after the last page is turned.”—Just About Write

In Benjamin Franklin Award finalist Desire by Starlight “Radclyffe writes romance with such heart and her down-to-earth characters not only come to life but leap off the page until you feel like you know them. What Jenna and Gard feel for each other is not only a spark but an inferno and, as a reader, you will be washed away in this tumultuous romance until you can do nothing but succumb to it.”—Queer Magazine Online

Lambda Literary Award winner Stolen Moments “is a collection of steamy stories about women who just couldn’t wait. It’s sex when desire overrides reason, and it’s incredibly hot!”—On Our Backs

Lambda Literary Award winner Distant Shores, Silent Thunder “weaves an intricate tapestry about passion and commitment between lovers. The story explores the fragile nature of trust and the sanctuary provided by loving relationships.”—Sapphic Reader

Lambda Literary Award Finalist Justice Served delivers a “crisply written, fast-paced story with twists and turns and keeps us guessing until the final explosive ending.”—Independent Gay Writer

Lambda Literary Award finalist Turn Back Time “is filled with wonderful love scenes, which are both tender and hot.”—MegaScene

Against Doctor’s Orders

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Against Doctor’s Orders

© 2014 By Radclyffe. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-268-7

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: November 2014

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editors: Ruth Sternglantz and Stacia Seaman

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design By Sheri (graphicartist2020@hotmail.com)

By Radclyffe

Romances

Innocent Hearts

Promising Hearts

Love’s Melody Lost

Love’s Tender Warriors

Tomorrow’s Promise

Love’s Masquerade

shadowland

Passion’s Bright Fury

Fated Love

Turn Back Time

When Dreams Tremble

The Lonely Hearts Club

Night Call

Secrets in the Stone

Desire by Starlight

Crossroads

Homestead

Against Doctor’s Orders

Honor Series

Above All, Honor

Honor Bound

Love & Honor

Honor Guards

Honor Reclaimed

Honor Under Siege

Word of Honor

Code of Honor

Justice Series

A Matter of Trust (prequel)

Shield of Justice

In Pursuit of Justice

Justice in the Shadows

Justice Served

Justice For All

The Provincetown Tales

Safe Harbor

Beyond the Breakwater

Distant Shores, Silent Thunder

Storms of Change

Winds of Fortune

Returning Tides

Sheltering Dunes

First Responders Novels

Trauma Alert

Firestorm

Oath of Honor

Taking Fire

Short Fiction

Collected Stories by Radclyffe

Erotic Interludes: Change of Pace

Radical Encounters

Edited by Radclyffe

Best Lesbian Romance 2009-2014

Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.

Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments

Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love

Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions

Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games

Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery

Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets

Breathless: Tales of Celebration

Women of the Dark Streets: Lesbian Paranormal

Amore and More: Love Everafter

By L.L. Raand

Midnight Hunters

The Midnight Hunt

Blood Hunt

Night Hunt

The Lone Hunt

The Magic Hunt

Acknowledgments

Not far from here is the Mary McClellan Hospital, a rural community hospital that sits high on a hill above the small town of Cambridge, New York. The hospital was financed entirely by a single individual, as was not unusual several centuries ago, and opened in 1919. It closed in 2003 and stands empty now, a silent testament to a bygone era. I found some pictures on the Internet that show the interior as it is now, with much of the equipment still in the rooms—old hospital beds, bent IV stands, monitors with blank faces. The halls seem eerily empty, beyond deserted, abandoned and forgotten.

For eight years of my life I was a surgery resident, and for most of that time, I spent every third night on call in the hospital. I walked the dark halls, listened to the murmurs of patients and staff, and wondered what the world was like beyond the glass where I could see the shimmering lights of the city. I can remember sitting with my fellow residents in the surgical lounge as morning approached, having spent a sleepless night taking care of in-house patients, responding to emergency calls, and finishing up the work of the day that never seemed to end, silently congratulating one another at having survived another day. Much has changed in medicine in the last decades, much for the better, but I think losing our community hospitals is not one of the benefits of progress. Now we must drive far from home to places with which we are not familiar, to be taken care of by strangers, often in surroundings where we become lost among the many.

This book did not start out as a commemorative to those lost hospitals, or lost moments in time, but as I wrote it, I felt the loss and wondered if we have not done a disservice by depersonalizing what must, after all, be one of the most human and humane experiences. This is not a book about hospitals or medicine, but a love story like all my novels are, which takes place in a singular community with the hospital near its heart. In the end, the heart of a romance novel always resides within the characters. I hope you enjoy these.

Thanks go to senior editor Sandy Lowe, who daily makes my job easier and gives me more time to write; to editor Ruth Sternglantz for understanding my work and where I’m going, sometimes before I do; to Stacia Seaman for careful reading and essential corrections; and to my first readers Connie, Eva, and Paula for constant encouragement.

Sheri found just the images I wanted for this book, and came up with a memorable cover—like always.

And thanks to Lee, who wanted to sneak up to the hospital at night with a flashlight for a glimpse of the past. Amo te.

For Lee, for always saying “why not?”

Chapter One

Harper Rivers ran along the shoulder of the narrow, twisting country road, the rising sun at her back and the broad Hudson lazily flowing to her left across a half mile of freshly plowed floodplain. The brisk early summer breeze cooled the sweat on the back of her neck, and the aroma of tilled earth burgeoning with life teased her senses. Her skin tingled with the pulse of blood through her veins, and the crisp air filling her lungs chased away the lingering exhaustion from a sleepless night. The rhythmic thump-thump-thump of her Sauconys on the cracked blacktop kept pace with her pounding heart, and her mind slowly emptied of everything except the inevitable joy that came with the resurgence of spring. She slowed as a pickup overtook her from behind and waved as the driver blew his horn before she turned down a crushed-gravel drive, wide enough for two good-sized tractors to pass, bordered on either side by apple and pear trees, their leaves a vibrant green and the first blush of blossoms glistening on the tangled boughs. A half mile ahead, a stately white country house reminiscent of a Southern plantation home with a pillared two-story front porch sat on a hill above the river. Smoke curled from one of the four stone chimneys, carrying the sweet, yeasty scent of baking bread from the kitchen hearth. She angled away from the flagstone walk leading to the formal front entrance, followed the winding rough stone path around the side of the portico to the rear of the house, and bounded up the broad wooden steps to the wide-planked rear porch. Just as she reached the screen door, a voice from inside greeted her.

“Don’t come in here with those muddy shoes, Harper Lee Rivers.”

“Yes, Mama,” Harper said as she always did in response to the familiar order. She toed off her running shoes, left them by the door, and walked in her socks into her mother’s domain. The kitchen, the informal meeting room for the entire family and most visitors, stretched almost the entire length of the rear of the home, dominated by a fifteen-foot-long timber table that had been carved from the hickory trees that once dominated the hilly profiles of upland New York farms. The rough-hewn wood had been worn down by decades of pots and dishes sliding across its surface and the vigorous polishing of generations of Rivers wives and children. The appliances had been updated, but everything else about the kitchen was as it had once been when the home was built 250 years before. The counters were of the same dark red-brown hickory as the table, the long thin grain interrupted here and there by darker knots and whorls. Hand-cut beams bearing the square scars of the axman’s blade supported the white board ceiling, and gray-green flagstone formed the entrance floor adjacent to the oak floorboards. An open hearth, four feet square and just as deep, held an early morning fire to chase away the chill.

Her mother pulled a pan of biscuits from the double-stacked oven and slid it with practiced efficiency onto a stone trivet on the wood counter. Harper made a fast grab for one and just as quickly snatched her hand back when her mother swatted at her with a wooden spoon.

“You know they’re best when they’ve cooled a little. Sit and drink your coffee.”

Harper pulled out a straight-backed wood chair with a leather seat shaped to comfort by decades of occupants, plopped down at the table in her usual place, and stretched her legs toward the hearth.

“You’re up early,” her mother said, sliding a mug of coffee in front of her. She regarded Harper with the direct gaze guaranteed to make Harper squirm when she was keeping something secret, although she hadn’t had secrets in a long time. At least none that her mother needed to know about. She tried hard not to fidget and searched her memory for a forgotten birthday or a missed family gathering. Ida Rivers was big on meeting family obligations.

“Or,” her mother went on, “have you not been to bed at all?”

Relaxing now that she realized she hadn’t committed a family sin, Harper sipped the strong black coffee and gave a sigh of contentment. The run and the familiar scents and sights of her mother’s kitchen drained away the lingering twists of tension from the last few hours. “Mary Campbell decided to deliver a little early. Her labor took most of the night.”

“First times can be like that. Everybody doing all right?” Her mother sounded interested despite having undoubtedly heard the same story in countless ways from Harper’s father over the last thirty years. Maybe truly caring helped make up for all the times Harper’s father hadn’t been around when her mother would have liked him to be.

“Everybody’s fine, including Tim. I thought for a while I’d have to get him a bed next to Mary’s.”

Ida laughed. “First-time fathers. Worse than the mothers by a long shot.”

“You got that right.” Harper grinned, leaned over, and snagged a biscuit without getting swatted this time. “I saw that Dad’s SUV is gone. I thought he wasn’t going to take night calls anymore.”

Ida huffed. “Yes, and we won’t be planting the lower forty again either.”

Harper nodded as she buttered the flakey biscuit. Neither was likely to happen in her lifetime. Her father was an old-time country physician, just like she was, and if the call came, it went against the grain to tell the patient to go to the emergency room. Not when all it meant was getting out of bed, pulling on a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, kicking into boots, and driving through the quiet country night with the company of the deer and possum and raccoons who appeared in the headlights, stared for a moment as if questioning why you were intruding on their domain, and bounded off into the underbrush with a dismissive swish of a tail. Those moments were among the most peaceful she’d ever known. Why would she pass those up while denying her patients the care of a doctor who knew them, and whom they trusted, at the same time?

“I told him I’d take his calls. I know all his patients.”

“You ought to—you’ve been going out with him since you were ten.”

“So you work on him—he’s earned a full night’s sleep.”

Ida speared her with a glance. “You think you’ll be ready to turn your patients over to someone else in another twenty-five years?”

“Okay, maybe not.” Harper didn’t think of medicine as a job, but as a responsibility, one she’d wanted since the first time she’d rode beside her father in the front seat of a Ford pickup with his big battered black bag between them, making house calls. She loved being greeted at the door by a friend or neighbor who opened their home to her and put their life in her hands because they trusted her. What she did mattered, and in her heart of hearts, she didn’t think anyone else could do it as well. Except her father. “Maybe I can get him to cross-cover with me now and then. At least he’ll get a few nights off that way.”

“You suggest it, and I’ll work on him.” Ida wiped down the counter with a damp dish towel and asked casually, “How are things at the hospital?”

Harper went on alert. Her mother didn’t do casual. She wasn’t a big talker, unlike her father, who could carry on a conversation with anyone, including strangers in the market, about any topic for seemingly endless lengths of time. Her mother was direct, perceptive, and the power to be reckoned with at home.

“Fine, as far as I know,” Harper said. “Is there something I don’t know about that I should?”

Ida turned and rested her slender hips against the counter in front of the five-foot-long cast-iron country sink. She and Harper were built the same, tall and lanky, slender in the hips and long in the leg. Even their hair color was the same, a brown so dark it looked black in low light. Harper’s hands were like hers too, long slim strong fingers. Right now Harper’s fingers were clenched around the steaming white porcelain mug. Her mother’s blue eyes, almost indigo like Harper’s, shimmered with…worry?

Harper’s shoulders tightened. Her mother was never wrong about something being wrong. Her mother had known when Harper’s sister Kate had been ill, even when no one, including Harper’s father and all his colleagues, could pin down why she suddenly wasn’t eating and was losing weight. And when the leukemia had finally surfaced, there’d been no way to stop it. Harper shook off the memory of saying good-bye to Kate in the bedroom next to hers. “What?”

“Your father.”

Stomach in free fall, Harper pushed the chair back and sat up straight. “What, is he sick? He hasn’t said anything to me.”

Ida waved a hand. “He’s healthy as a horse. But something’s worrying at him. He’s been pacing at night, doesn’t sleep even when he has the chance, and he’s had a couple phone calls that have clearly upset him, but he isn’t talking about it.”

“Is it money?”

“Not unless he’s suddenly taken up gambling.”

Harper snorted. Her father had two interests in life—medicine and his family. He didn’t have time for anything else and had never shown any inclination to change that. She admired him for his dedication to both and hoped that one day she would do as well, heading both the hospital, after her father retired as chief of staff, and a family, when she met the right woman to settle down with.

“Things are busy,” Harper said. “ER traffic has picked up now that the weather has broken, and we’re getting more tourists coming into the area. Other than that, I don’t know of anything at the hospital that might be bothering him.”

“Well then,” her mother said as tires crunched on the gravel outside, “whatever it is, I suspect we’ll know soon enough.”

Harper listened to the familiar sound of her father’s footsteps returning home, uneasiness settling in her middle. Her mother was never wrong about something being wrong.

*

Presley grabbed her roller bag off the carousel and pushed her way through the sparse pack of fellow travelers toward the airport exit. Three men in off-the-rack suits, white shirts, and dark ties held cardboard placards in front of them. One, a sandy-haired, florid-faced man in his early forties, held one with her name scrawled in black marker across it. She walked to him and he greeted her with a broad smile.

“Ms. Worth?”

“Yes.” She barely managed not to snarl. There’d been no first-class cabin, and the plane had been small and cramped and the service nonexistent. She’d managed a cup of coffee that tasted like lukewarm instant and a bag of nuts for breakfast. “How far is it?”

“About forty-five minutes.” He took the handle of her bag and headed for the exit. “Not much traffic out that way, so we’ll make good time.”

“Fine.” She followed along beside him into a sunlit morning. The air was crisp and a good twenty degrees cooler than she was used to at this hour of the morning. That was a bonus, of sorts, and about the only positive thing she’d noticed thus far. The airport was ridiculously small, which explained why she’d had to take two flights to get here. Really. Could she get any farther from civilization?

He led her to a black town car. While he took care of her bag, she climbed into the back and immediately checked her phone. Hopefully he wouldn’t want to chat once he saw she was busy. She scrolled through her several business email addresses and then her personal, sending instructions to her admin on several matters that had come up since the last time she’d checked. Thank God Carrie would be arriving the next day. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to wrap this up quickly.

The sooner they set the groundwork for a transition team to take over, the faster she could do what needed to be done and get out of here. The familiar anger at her brother and his maneuvering surged through her, and she tamped it down. Some battles were not worth fighting, and since he had the support of the board behind him, she’d had no ammunition with which to fight back. So here she was, pushed out of sight for the time being. The sooner she finished off the takeover, the better. Preston was mistaken, though, if he expected her to let him campaign for the CEO position while she was exiled in the ass-end of nowhere.

She glanced out the window at the city, or what there was of one, and discovered it had disappeared. Rolling hills and broad fields bordered the two-lane road. Farmhouses, white or yellow seemed to be the common color, sat along the road or back a distance on narrow dirt drives, the houses generally dwarfed by larger blood-red barns, silos, and a jumble of other buildings. No one had close neighbors. The landscape couldn’t be more different than Phoenix, where the starkly beautiful desert stretched for miles to the foot of the craggy mountain faces. Here, color exploded everywhere: greens in every shade and hue, deep yellows and rich earthy browns, purple-and-white flowers—lilacs, at least she thought they were lilacs—and other plants and flowers she could not name. The dizzying riot of bold colors was annoyingly distracting, and she turned back to her iPhone.

She opened a news app and after a second realized she had no signal. She stared at her phone. Was it possible? Really? No cell service? Where in God’s name was she?

Clutching her phone as if it were a lifeline to civilization, she leaned back and closed her eyes. The transition was projected to take six months. She’d give it three. Any longer than that and she was likely to lose her mind. Damn Preston and his maneuvering.

The vehicle slowed, and Presley sat up. A dented red mailbox with peeling reflective numbers perched atop a gray wooden post at the mouth of a dirt driveway. The car turned in and passed between fields of what Presley presumed was grass stretching as far as she could see on either side. Surely this was a mistake. “Are you certain this is the right address?”

“Says 246 on the mailbox, ma’am. And this is County Road 64.”

“Yes, but there’s nothing out here.”

“Well, there’s a house right up ahead past those trees. Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

“I was told a house had been rented for me, but I didn’t expect it to be—” She gritted her teeth. “Let’s just see what we see, shall we?”

The car bumped along a lane as long as two city blocks and barely as wide as an alley. The house was a neat wood-sided square structure—yellow, of course—with a broad porch running the full length of the front, the requisite red barn—not as big as some she had seen—fifty yards away, and a clothesline strung from the rear corner of the house to a big oak tree loaded down with sheets flapping in the breeze.

“Obviously, we have the wrong place. Someone lives here,” Presley said. Someone else, thank God.

The front door opened and a middle-aged woman in pale blue pants, a blue-and-white checkered shirt, and a flowered apron around her waist came down the porch and approached the car. Her graying blond hair was pulled back in a loose twist. Her smile was wide and welcoming.

Presley rolled down the window. “I’m very sorry to disturb you, I think we are in the wrong—”

“Would you be Ms. Worth?”

For a moment, Presley was almost too surprised to answer. “Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m Lila Phelps. The housekeeper.”

“The housekeeper.” Presley heard her voice rise at that. “I didn’t know the house came with a keeper.”

Lila laughed. “Well, I don’t live here, but the rental agency said you’d be needing a housekeeper, and I’m right up the road. My cousin Sue works for the agent and she called me, and I can use the extra with my youngest about to go off to community college in the fall. The house needed airing out and I just finished washing all the linens. Of course, if you don’t need me—”

“Do you cook by any chance?”

The woman beamed. “Does it rain in April?”

“Not where I come from,” Presley muttered. She pushed open the door and stepped out. “Breakfast at six a.m., dinner at seven thirty.”

“I can leave you something warming in the oven for your supper, but I’ll be needing to be home come four or so to see to the family’s meal.”

“Fine. Just leave instructions with it.”

“I can manage that. And do the wash and keep the place tidy and do the grocery shopping.”

“Excellent. I’ll give you a list of my preferences. I work in the morning over breakfast, so no radio.”

“Don’t like the noise myself.”

Presley nodded briskly. “We’ll get along fine, then.”

“I expect we will.”

Presley paid the driver, and he carried her suitcase up to the front porch. With her hands on her hips, she turned and surveyed her new home. All she could see were hills and fields and cows. There were a great many cows right up the road, and if she hadn’t been able to see or hear them, she could definitely smell them. She was going to make her brother pay for this.

Chapter Two

Harper’s mother turned with a cup of coffee in her outstretched hand just as Edward Rivers came through the kitchen door, greeting him as she had thousands of times before upon his return from a late-night call. He smiled, kissed her cheek, and took the coffee.

“Morning, Dad,” Harper said.

Edward sipped the coffee. “Mary and the baby doing all right?”

“Both fine.” Harper didn’t bother to ask how her father knew of Mary Campbell’s nightlong labor and early morning delivery. Somehow, he always seemed to know what was happening with everyone in the community, and certainly the condition of every patient in the hospital everyone still called the Rivers Hospital, as it had been named when her great-great-great-grandfather and several local mill owners had built it 150 years before. She hadn’t yet mastered his access to the local grapevine, but she was getting better every year. She’d only three years of medical practice to his thirty, so she didn’t feel too bad. “I’ll be heading back to check on her in an hour or so. Is there anyone you need me to see?”

He set down his cup, took off his suit coat—he always wore a suit and tie when seeing patients, in high summer or the dead of winter—and hung it on a peg inside the kitchen door. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and took his usual seat at the head of the table.

“Nothing urgent. I’ll be making rounds myself midmorning.”

Tires crunched on the drive. Flannery’s Jeep, the top already off in homage to the long-awaited warm weather, appeared outside the window above the sink and disappeared again as Flann pulled under the porte cochere. Harper glanced at her mother. “Family meeting?”

“Edward?” Ida asked.

Harper’s father nodded slowly.

Ida said, “I’d better put on more coffee.”

Edward rubbed his face, and for the first time Harper realized he looked far more tired than a night up seeing patients should account for. Maybe her mother was wrong. Maybe he was ill. A spear of panic, completely unlike her usual steady, calm approach to a crisis, shot through her. Her father had been her hero, the primary presence in her life, for as far back as she could remember. She was the oldest child, the first he took on rounds with him, before Flannery and then Carson, and now Margie. Kate had not lived long enough to join him. Harper couldn’t imagine the family without either of her parents—her father’s quiet anchor or her mother’s unbending strength—or her life without them. The day would one day come. Just not now.

“Dad?”

His dark brown eyes met hers and he smiled briefly. “Wait till you hear the facts, Harper. Listen to your instincts, but never disregard the facts.”

“Yes, sir,” Harper said, remembering one of the first lessons she’d learned at his side.

The back door swung open and Flannery blew in, energy pouring off her as it always seemed to do. The second oldest, she’d been in motion from the time she could walk, and she’d walked earlier than them all, their mother said—always the first to climb the tallest tree, the one to ride her bike the fastest, the rebellious teen pushing every boundary she could find. Harper’s father said he’d always known she’d be the surgeon, and he’d been right. Whereas Harper favored her mother in appearance, Flannery had the golden-brown hair and chocolate eyes of her father’s side of the family, and the temperament of a thoroughbred born to race. She looked like the soccer player she’d been in high school, with a little less height than Harper and more breadth in the shoulders. She kissed her mother, squeezed her father’s shoulder, and pulled out a chair next to Harper at the table.

“I’ve got an eight o’clock,” she announced to the room in general.

“You’ll make it,” Edward said. “Routine hernia, isn’t it?”

“That and an appendectomy to follow that Harper picked up in the ER last night.” She nodded to Harper. “Good call, by the way. Thanks for letting me sleep.”

“I was there with a delivery. No reason for both of us to be awake.” Harper had called Flannery at five a.m. after seeing Bryce Daniels at three when the ER nurses had stopped her for a curbside consult. The sixteen-year-old had the classic signs of appendicitis, and she’d gotten his workup started before waking her sister.

The swinging door from the dining room pushed open and Margie, wearing a loose T-shirt and soccer shorts, came in rubbing sleep from her eyes. At fifteen she was rangy and still a little coltish, but destined to be the prettiest of them all with shoulder-length curly blond hair and vivid blue eyes. She shuffled toward the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of milk. “How come everybody’s here?”

“Your father has news,” Ida said.

Margie sat on the far side of Harper as the last vehicle, Carson’s Volvo, pulled in outside. Her nephew Davey’s laughter carried through the open window, and a second later, Carson ambled in with the ten-month-old perched on her hip. She leaned down and kissed her father, then her mother, and took the coffee her mother held out to her before settling into her usual place on the opposite side of the table from Flannery. Slim-hipped and ivory-skinned, she looked more Margie’s contemporary than ten years her senior. She kept her auburn hair short and feathered at the temples, giving her a touch of innocence that belied her core of steel. A soldier’s wife, she’d been battle tested as the war in the Middle East dragged on.

“Thanks, Mama,” Carson said when Ida handed her a cracker for Davey.

The room was silent save for the baby’s chortling while Ida laid strips of bacon in a cast-iron pan on the stove. She turned the heat down low, poured her own coffee, and took her seat at the opposite end of the table from her husband, the four sisters ranged between them. “Well then. Edward?”

As if he’d been waiting for his wife to give him permission, he cleared his throat and looked at each of his children in turn.

“The board of trustees has sold the hospital.”

For a second, Harper couldn’t think above the exclamations and one pointed curse word from Flann.

“Flannery O’Connor, we’ll not have that language at my table,” Ida said without raising her voice.

“Sorry, Mama,” Flannery muttered.

Everyone quieted.

“What do you mean,” Harper said, “sold the hospital. Sold the hospital to who?”

“Can they do that?” Flannery interrupted.

“Wait,” Carson said, shifting Davey in her lap as she pushed her coffee cup beyond his grasping hands. “Why haven’t the staff been informed? A lot of jobs are at stake, not to mention our patients’ welfare.”

“It’s complicated,” Edward said, “but like most community hospitals that were started by a few individuals, the hospital transitioned to a for-profit institution sometime during the middle of the last century. The bank and a few major shareholders and the board of trustees control the business side of things. Apparently, the hospital’s profits have been declining and the sale is the only way to pay our creditors.”

“Well, decreased profits is to be expected,” Harper said. “With the fall in reimbursement from insurance companies and the cost of new equipment, that’s true everywhere. Our beds are always pretty full—” She glanced at Carson, who’d opted for business over medicine and now headed patient admissions. “I think?”

Carson nodded. “We run at eighty percent capacity most of the time and sometimes close to one hundred.”

“So why wasn’t the staff informed?” Flann reached for a biscuit and glanced at her mother. “How long to bacon?”

“Until I put it on the table.”

Flann grinned. “Soon?”

Ida’s eyes softened as she rose, stroked Flann’s hair, and went to the refrigerator.

Carson started to get up. “I’ll get that, Mama.”

“You sit.” Harper rose. “You’ve got the baby. I’ll get it.” She took a carton of eggs from her mother. “I’ll do this. I can hear from here.”

“Keep the heat low so the eggs don’t get rubbery.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As Harper cracked eggs into the skillet and listened to the questions and her father’s quiet answers, a hard knot settled in her stomach. The hospital was as much the center of her life as her family. Her friends and her colleagues there were her community. She knew the halls and stairwells as well as she knew the paths and streams that ran through the land she’d grown up on. The hushed murmur of voices in the dimly lit corridors at night and the steady beep of monitors from open doorways were as familiar as birdcall in the morning and the lowing of cows outside her bedroom window at night. The hospital was an extension of her world, and she’d never wanted to be anywhere else. Her father and his father before him and his before that had been the chiefs of staff, and she had known from the time she was twelve that one day she would be too. The hospital was her destiny, and she’d never considered any other path.

She flipped the eggs and tuned out discussions of profit and shares and stockholders and other things she didn’t care about. She cared about her patients, cared about the community she served, and the rest was of no matter to her. She wasn’t interested in profit. She’d never been interested in money or paid much attention to it at all. She lived in what had once been the caretaker’s house on four acres of land a quarter mile down the road from the big house. She had four rooms that were plenty of space until she met the right woman to start a family with, a garden where she grew her own vegetables in the summer, apple and pear trees, a dog who slept as often at her mother’s as he did on her back porch, three cats who’d claimed the woodshed, and chickens who roosted in a coop beside it and gave her more eggs than she could eat. Her life was going just according to plan.

She slid the eggs and bacon onto a big white platter and put it in the middle of the table. Margie took down dishes and silverware and stacked them at the other end. Everyone automatically helped themselves.

“What does this really mean?” Harper sat back down with a fresh cup of coffee. She didn’t take any food. She’d lost her appetite.

Edward shook his head. “No one really knows for sure. Maybe nothing. We’ve still got sick people to take care of, and that’s what we need to focus on.”

Flann drummed her fork on the table to a beat only she could hear. “What did you say the name of the corporation was that bought the hospital?”

“SunView Health Systems,” her father said. “They’re located out west somewhere.”

“Strangers.” Flann glanced at Harper. Fourteen months apart, they were as close as twins. They’d gone to the same medical school, had done their residencies at the same hospital, and on rare occasions had competed for the attention of the same girls.

Harper could read the warning in Flann’s eyes. Change was coming, and it couldn’t be good.

*

Presley lugged her suitcase and briefcase through the front door and found herself in a central foyer facing a wide staircase against one wall. Two large rooms opened on each side, and she took a quick glance into each. On the left was a sitting room with a sofa and several oversized chairs arranged in front of a stone fireplace. An oil painting of a red barn and fields of swaying green stuff hung above the broad granite mantelpiece. She shook her head. Didn’t they get enough of that view just driving down the road?

A faded Oriental rug in greens and browns covered the wood floor. The other room also had a fireplace against the far wall and walnut-stained, floor-to-ceiling wood shelves holding a haphazard assortment of hardback books, and a pair of comfortable-looking reading chairs with round, dark wood casual tables beside each one. The rooms appeared lived-in and surprisingly welcoming. She’d expected a rental house to be furnished, but this place looked as if the owner might return at any moment.

“Whose house is this?” Presley asked Lila, who waited for her at the foot of the stairs.

“It’s been in the White family for a hundred years or so,” Lila said. “Old Mrs. White finally gave in and went to live with her son downstate. They haven’t had any buyers, so they finally decided to rent it.”

“Can’t imagine there are many buyers for places out here.”

Lila laughed. “You’d be surprised how many city people like to try their hand at country living.”

“You’re right about that.”

Presley followed Lila upstairs where she found three bedrooms, one with a large bathroom attached, and a second bathroom down the hall. She’d never lived with anyone—she liked to work at odd hours and didn’t care to worry about someone else’s schedule, but Carrie could stay here for the short time they’d be on-site. They got along well and they wouldn’t actually be spending that much time in the house. Carrie had been her personal assistant now for almost three years, since Carrie had graduated from college and finished an internship at SunView. She was organized and efficient, respected personal space, and appreciated that Presley wasn’t a chatterer. Exactly the kind of person Presley could tolerate having around.

She took the master bedroom with bath, dumped her bag by a broad, tall four-poster bed, and walked to the open window. Lace curtains billowed in the breeze. The room overlooked a sloping lawn to the drive and, beyond that, a broad green pasture bordered by a wooden rail fence. The air was surprisingly clean and bright. She could almost smell the green in it. The thought struck her as ridiculously whimsical, and she turned away to study the room with its tall armoire in lieu of a closet in one corner and a matching dark wood dresser topped with a huge wood-framed mirror. Another Oriental-patterned rug covered the floor, and a small chair upholstered in a floral brocade design sat by the window with a standing brass reading lamp nearby. Homey. And absolutely nothing like her condo in Phoenix, where she favored glass and steel and modern art, highly polished tile floors, and a gleaming gourmet kitchen she rarely used. Not that she really noticed her surroundings when she got home late at night and put in a few hours’ work before bed.

“Talk about a fish out of water,” she muttered with a shake of her head. Frowning, she scanned the wall, checked what appeared to be a thermostat, and walked out into the hallway. Leaning over the wooden banister, she called, “Lila?”

Lila appeared below and looked up. “Need something?”

“Where are the controls for the air-conditioning?”

Lila stared at her for a few seconds. “Well, there aren’t any.”

“Come again?”

“Most places up here don’t have it. You won’t need it except maybe in August, when it can get a little stuffy. Then just open the windows, and if you want a bit more air, you can put a fan in one of them. I’ll see to it when the time comes.”

“A fan. In August.”

“Maybe.”

“Wonderful.” Presley added another item to her list of things she intended to torture Preston for. “Which direction is town? I thought I’d walk around and get acquainted.”

“You won’t be walking to town. It’s about eight miles.”

“Eight miles. Lovely.” She couldn’t wait for Carrie to arrive to see to the rest of the arrangements Preston had neglected. “All right then, I’m going to need a car. Today. Where’s the nearest rental place?”

“I imagine that would be in Albany. And that’s a good—”

“Yes, I know, forty-five minutes away.” She considered her options. “Where would I go to buy one?”

“Well”—Lila seemed to be searching for words—“a new one or used one?”

“One that runs.”

Lila smiled. “I know just the place. When you’re ready, I’ll drive you over.”

“Let’s go.”

Lila’s cousin’s husband Clyde operated a small used-car dealership out of a garage next to his house twenty minutes away. Lila called, and a big man in baggy jeans and a faded T-shirt met them in the driveway in front of a single-story white cement building surrounded by a dozen cars and trucks.

“Good morning, ladies. You’re looking for a car, I hear.”

Presley surveyed the vehicles, all of which looked relatively new and surprisingly clean and in good condition. “I need something reliable with air-conditioning and GPS.”

The man glanced at Lila, who gave him a nod. “Are you going to be hauling anything?”

“What would I want to haul?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Hay, sod, feed, furniture—that kind of thing?”

Presley smiled thinly. “No. No hauling.”

“And I guess you won’t be pulling a trailer, either.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

“Well then, I think I’ve got what you want.” He showed her a relatively new Subaru hatchback with all the basic requirements and assured her it was in excellent condition. “And if you have any problems with it, just bring it back and I’ll take care of it.”

“Fine. Will you take a check?”

“I sure will. And I’ll get the registration taken care of for you this morning as soon as motor vehicles opens up. You’ll need insurance.”

“I’ll have my assistant call you with that information. Can you have someone deliver it to me when it’s ready? My cell number is on the check. You can call me, and I’ll tell you where.”

“I can do that.”

“Excellent.” She wrote a check, handed it to him, and turned to Lila. “Might I impose upon you a little while longer? I’ll need a ride to town while Clyde gets this ready for me.”

“Of course. I was going to go grocery shopping and stock up the kitchen anyhow.”

“Wonderful.”

Lila dropped her off a little before nine.

“Thanks, Lila.” Presley grabbed her briefcase. “You’ve been a tremendous help.”

“If you need a ride back before Clyde gets the car ready, you call me. It’s no bother.”

“That’s all right. I can always call a cab.” She paused, reading Lila’s expression. “Or not.”

She laughed before Lila could. The absurdity of the entire situation was starting to feel normal. She waved as Lila drove away, and surveyed Argyle Community Hospital for the first time. The ivy-covered red brick building with its white colonnaded front entrance and two symmetrical wings extending out in a lazy U stood on a hillside above the village. The road up wended through what Lila had told her were apple orchards. A rolling grassy lawn studded with shrubs and flower beds bordered the circular drive in front. With its tall gracious windows and elegant portico, the place might have been a grand hotel or a private summer home. It bore no resemblance to the modern, sprawling hospitals Presley was used to. A pretty place. She started up the broad stone sidewalk, thinking of all the uses for a building like this when it wasn’t a hospital any longer.

Chapter Three

The hospital foyer soared two stories to a vaulted ceiling painted in swirling patterns of dusky rose, periwinkle, and pale cream. A line of brass chandeliers with candelabra bulbs lit the upper recesses, and floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the massive entrance let sunlight in to dance across the highly polished marble floors. Presley’s low heels tapped rhythmically as she crossed to a gleaming mahogany desk in the center of the expanse, behind which sat a tiny white-haired woman wearing a bright red jacket and a blazing smile. Presley glanced around and didn’t see anyone resembling a security officer, and she doubted that this diminutive octogenarian could stop a flea. Hopefully the other entrances were staffed more conventionally.

“Good morning,” the woman said in a surprisingly full, strong voice. “Are you here about a patient? Visiting hours aren’t until one unless you’re here to see someone in the ICU.” She pulled over a clipboard. “I can check a room number for you.”

“No, I’m not here to see a patient,” Presley said, scanning the desk in vain for a computer monitor. A clipboard? Why should she be surprised? “A business matter.”

“Oh, then you’ll want administration.” A thin bony hand pointed toward another set of polished wooden doors at the far end of the foyer. “Right through there to your left, second hallway on the right, and then follow the signs. Oh”—she held out a laminated card with a V on it—“just clip this to your jacket there.”

Smothering a smile, Presley took the little laminated card and clipped it to her jacket. A visitor’s badge. What next? Perhaps the plane had been caught in a time warp and she’d been transported back in time rather than simply across the country. “Thank you.”

“Not at all, dear. You have a nice day.”

Have a nice day. When was the last time someone had said that to her and sounded as if they really meant it? She spent her days in meetings with others just as busy and absorbed in their own projects as she was, or spearheading acquisitions that more often than not were unpopular with most of the people involved. Unused to the simple interchange, she searched for the appropriate response. “You do the same, Ms.…”

“It’s Mrs.…Mrs. Dora Brundidge. You can call me Dora. Everyone does.”

“All right, Dora. You enjoy your day.”

“Why, thank you. I will.”

Presley made her way from the reception area toward the main hospital entrance, slowly taking in the portraits dominating both side walls. On the left, four men, stern and serious looking in stiff, high-collared white shirts, vests, and coats, faced two men across the foyer in more modern garb. All the paintings were done in oils, the style formal, the elaborate frames gilt with engraved plaques beneath illuminated by individual brass lamps. Moving from one to the next, she perused the names. Alexander Rivers. Roger Rivers. Charles…William. Rivers all. Curious, she crossed to the right and studied the others. Andrew. Edward.

She pulled up a mental image of the report Carrie had given her on Argyle Community Hospital. Her memory was eidetic, or nearly so for practical reasons, and she sifted through the names of the board of trustees and then came to the entry she was seeking. Medical Chief of Staff: Dr. Edward William Rivers. She returned to the reception desk. Dora gave her another smile.

“Did you forget something, dear?”

“No, just curious. It looks as if the Rivers family is an institution around here.”

“Oh, well I would say so,” Dora said. “The first Dr. Rivers—that would have been Alexander Rivers—founded the hospital way back when the community was established, and there’s always been a Dr. Rivers at the Rivers.”

“The Rivers?”

“That’s what the hospital was called until after the war. Then, you know, the hospital name was changed, but it will always be the Rivers to a lot of us. We were mostly all born here, and our children too.” Dora laughed. “We’ve got some new blood over the years, of course—people moving in to try their hand at farming or raising goats and alpacas and such—but the majority of the families have been here a long time.”

“Yes, of course.” Presley tucked away that little bit of information. Community resistance in any kind of takeover was a possibility, although in this instance, she doubted any kind of organized or effective opposition could be mounted in time to slow the transition. She planned to be in and out as soon as possible, but it never hurt to be forewarned. “Well, thank you again.”

As soon as she passed beyond the foyer into the main building, the ambience changed. The hallways were still wide and grand with paneled wainscoting and tasteful muted colors and paintings of pastoral scenes hung at intervals, but the familiar signs of hospital activity were everywhere. Small discreet signs directed patients toward radiology, the outpatient labs, admissions, and the ER. Others pointed visitors to the elevators for the intensive care unit, the surgical waiting room, and the patient floors. Hospital personnel in scrubs, lab coats, and smocks hurried through the halls, some pushing gowned patients in wheelchairs. A young blonde in a white shirt with a logo above her breast that said Food Service pushed a rattling cart with pots of coffee and trays of bagels. She slowed and smiled at Presley, her gaze unmistakably appreciative.

“Looking for the conference room?” the blonde asked. Her ID read Deana.

“Is that where the coffee is going?”

Deana laughed. She was pretty in a completely unstudied way—clear eyed, no makeup, youthful and fresh. “Yes. Grand rounds, right?”

“Afraid not.”

“There’s plenty more in the cafeteria, then. Need directions?”

“I can probably find it. I’ll just follow the coffee.”

“Good. Need any help, let me know. Always guaranteed to be fresh. The coffee, that is.”

The mild flirtation was surprisingly pleasant and Presley grinned. “No doubt.”

The blonde grinned back and continued off with the clattering cart. Presley followed the signs toward the outpatient area, interested to see what kind of facilities were available. More signs pointed to cardiology, pediatrics, and the walk-in clinic. A few patients waited in seating areas here or there. She backtracked and took a left turn toward the emergency room and instantly felt the controlled tension in the air. The overhead lights were brighter, a row of wheelchairs lined one wall, and men and women in various colored scrubs hurried by. A young man in blue scrubs nodded to her as he pushed a gurney holding an old man with an oxygen cannula in his nose and a beeping portable cardiac monitor by his side. The old man’s eyes were closed, his stubbled cheeks pale, and his frail body barely made a ripple in the crisp white sheet covering him. Somewhere up ahead a child wailed.

She glanced into the patient waiting area across from the closed double doors marked Patients Only. Rows of plastic chairs faced a cubicle where a woman in a flowered smock sat at a computer behind a sliding Plexiglas window. A frazzled brunette in low-cut jeans and a frilly white ruffled top that exposed her pale midriff rocked a red-faced, tear-streaked toddler. An old woman with thick ankles and heavy black shoes in a worn gray sweater and shapeless faded floral housedress sat against the far wall with her palms pressed against her broad thighs, staring straight ahead as if she were somewhere else. Waiting for news, perhaps about the old man. Two teenage girls with teased hair and nearly identical tight, scoop-necked tank tops huddled over their phones in another corner, thumbs flicking rapidly as they texted.

The ER swished open, and Presley caught a glimpse of a big whiteboard with names scrawled in Magic Marker next to room numbers. Charts sat in slots down the wall beside the board. Over half of the ten or so slots were filled. Busy for a weekday morning.

Presley recalled the stats for the last year. The hundred-and-twenty-bed hospital had seen over eight thousand patients come through the emergency room with an admission rate of 15 percent. The hospital ran at 85 percent capacity and the OR at 90, employed a hundred nurses, nearly that number of ancillary technicians, another twenty in the clerical ranks, and a half dozen administrators. There were no full-time physician employees—all were private practitioners with admitting privileges. The model was an old one and not particularly efficient—too many overlapping specialties and not enough centralization. The number of inpatients at any time could easily be cared for by far fewer hospital-employed physicians. However, that wasn’t a problem she needed to be concerned with. The location within sixty miles of a medical center made the entire facility redundant.

As the ER doors started to close, two women walked through talking intensely in low voices. The taller, dark-haired one with a stethoscope slung around her neck was dressed casually in black pants and a neatly pressed pale blue shirt. The other, a sandy-brown-haired woman in hospital greens and a white lab coat, paused, and both scrutinized Presley.

The dark-haired one caught the door before it could swing closed and smiled. “Are you on your way in to see a patient?”

The question, or maybe it was the quick, warm smile and honey-slow voice, caught Presley off guard. A morning for surprises. “No. Thanks. Actually, I’m looking for the administrative wing.”

The one in scrubs laughed, her dark brown eyes dancing. Her grin was cocky and confident. “Well, we wouldn’t exactly call it a wing, but maybe a wing tip.”

“That will do nicely,” Presley said.

“I’m headed that way.” The dark-haired one held out her hand. “Harper Rivers.”

Another Rivers. Presley took her hand. It was large, warm, and strong. “Presley Worth.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Harper Rivers’s eyes were a dramatic shade of deep blue, and Presley had a hard time looking away. She released Harper’s hand. “You too.”

“I’m Flannery,” the sandy-haired one said, edging into Presley’s field of vision. “The better-looking sib.”

Presley glanced from one to the other and saw it then—the bold angle of the jaws, the firm straight noses, the full expressive lips. Eyes of a different color, but similar intelligent, confident gazes. The supply of Rivers doctors was apparently endless.

“I’ll wisely reserve comment,” Presley said.

Harper laughed and Flannery grinned.

“Are you new in town?” Flannery asked.

Curious, Presley nodded. “I am. How did you know that?”

The grin returned. “Because I don’t know you, and I would’ve remembered if I’d seen you before.”

“Aha,” Presley said. The woman was so self-assured she didn’t even pretend to be embarrassed at using such an old line, and that made her interesting. “Of course.”

Harper Rivers shook her head, her expression amused. “Don’t you have a case, Flann?”

“I’m going.” Flannery backed up a step, her focus still on Presley. “Staying long?”

“A while.”

“Excellent. If you need a tour guide or…anything, I’ll be free later today. Just call the operator. She’ll page me.”

Harper called after her, “Let me know what you find.”

Flannery tossed a salute. “Will do. Lunch?”

“Sure.” As Flannery disappeared around a corner, Harper turned back to Presley Worth, who looked after Flann with amused, faintly appraising blue eyes. Harper was used to seeing interest in a woman’s eyes when they considered Flann, but Presley’s expression was far more contemplative, as if she was trying to decide if Flann was worth her time. An unfamiliar reversal where Flann was concerned. Harper searched for something to say that wouldn’t sound like a follow-up to Flann’s invitation. “Been in town long?”

“That obvious?”

Harper laughed. “Only to someone paying attention—between me and Flann, we know the families of every patient in the hospital. Plus…”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Harper didn’t usually strike up conversations with women out of the blue, and definitely not in the hospital. That was Flann’s special skill. Flann was at ease with women anywhere and always had more dates and interested women than she could handle. Not so Harper. She preferred slow introductions and cautious explorations. She didn’t date much—she liked her privacy, and dating anyone at the hospital automatically meant everyone in the community would know before the night was out. And she’d grown up with many of the women she saw outside her professional arena and thought of them as friends, not romantic possibilities.

“Oh no,” Presley said. “You started it—now you have to finish.”

The teasing challenge in Presley’s voice caught Harper’s attention. “Your tan is a few weeks too early for the local weather, and…”

Presley made a keep-going gesture.

“And you look like a city girl.”

“Why do I think that might be a veiled insult?”

“Not at all,” Harper said hastily. “You look terrific.”

“You’re forgiven, then.”

Harper shook her head. “Sorry. Flann is the one with the smooth lines. I’m just a simple country doctor.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Presley said. “I must be keeping you.”

“I’m just making rounds. I’ll walk you down—do you have a room number?”

Presley hesitated. This was neither the time nor place to discuss her purpose with anyone, and most especially not one of the hospital’s dynastic family. “Actually, I’m here…about a job.”

Not strictly true, but not exactly a lie either. She wondered what Harper knew of the takeover and had the odd desire not to dispel their easy exchange quite so quickly. She must be more tired than she thought.

“Come on,” Harper said. “You’ll want personnel.”

Presley followed along. “What’s your specialty?”

“Family practice.”

“You work here at the clinic?”

“I staff it in rotation with about six others, but most of my practice is community based.”

“And your sister’s a surgeon.”

“Flann’s a general surgeon—she did a trauma fellowship, so she handles most anything out of the ordinary.”

Presley frowned. “What’s your trauma clearance?”

Harper gave her a questioning look. “Level three. Flann transfers out the complicated ones after they’re stabilized.”

They turned down another corridor lined with offices, the doors standing open and people visible within, working at desks.

“Are you staying in town?” Harper asked.

“Just a little ways outside.”

“Family in the area?”

“No,” Presley said, realizing her tone was sharper than she intended.

Harper paused in front of a partially open door. “This is personnel. You probably want to speak to someone in here if it’s about a job.”

“And where would the chief administrator’s office be?”

“That would be the room at the end.” Harper glanced at her watch. “Anyone there should be able to help you.”

Presley smiled. “Thank you for the tour.”

“Anytime.” Harper smiled wryly as if at some private joke. “And of course, there’s always Flann to continue the tour.”

“Of course.” Presley laughed.

“Good luck.”

Presley frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“With the job application.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you.”

“Well, good-bye then.”

“Have a good day,” Presley called as Harper Rivers walked away.

Harper turned back, her expression so intense Presley caught her breath. “You too.”

Presley really hoped she would, but she suspected before the day was out the Riverses and quite a few others would be less than happy to see her.

Chapter Four

Harper slid the cafeteria tray onto a table by the window and sat down facing Flannery. A lilac bush that had bloomed sometime in the last two days, its branches laden with deep purple flowers, brushed gently against the corner of the glass as if inviting her outside. Someone had opened the window, and the sweet vanilla scent of blossoms and fresh-cut grass beckoned. Down the hill, the church spire at the far end of town speared above slate rooftops, glinting in the sunlight. A twinge of spring fever and an unfamiliar restlessness toyed with her concentration. She rarely thought of escaping her schedule or her responsibilities, and the teasing urge to leave everything behind for just a day annoyed and unsettled her. She focused on Flann and the patient they shared, bringing her world back into order. “Everything go okay?”

Flannery balanced a hot dog in one hand and took a sip from the cup of steaming coffee she held in the other. “No problems. The appendix was red-hot, though. Another few hours and things could’ve gotten messy.” She took a bite and chased it with more coffee. “It’s good you jumped right on it.”

“Are you sending him home tomorrow?”

Flannery nodded. “As long as he’s not running a fever. I saw Tim Campbell giving out cigars in the lobby. Looks like you made his night too.”

Harper laughed. “I’d say Mary did that.”

“So…” Flannery polished off the rest of her hot dog in two bites and reached for a plastic plate with a huge slab of chocolate cake on it. “What’s the story with the new visitor?”

Harper forked up a few pieces of salad and considered ignoring the question as if she didn’t understand where Flann was headed. But she knew Flann, and she recognized the bird-dog glint in her eyes—bright and eager and relentless—when she spied quarry. No point in avoiding the inevitable. “There’s probably a story there, but I don’t have it.”

“You can get a patient’s life history in five minutes without even trying, but you spend—what—fifteen minutes with a hot-looking woman, and you don’t know the story?” Flannery shook her head. “Clearly, I failed to teach you anything of importance.”

“I can’t remember you teaching me much of anything, seeing as how you’re always trying to catch up to me.”

Flannery grinned. “I’d say once I was able to walk, we were even.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harper said, the game an old one and her mind only half on the familiar rivalry. Ordinarily, Flannery’s unremitting competition never bothered her, and on those occasions when they bumped up against each other around a woman, Harper had been happy to concede the chase to Flannery. That idea didn’t appeal to her right now. In fact, some instinctive resistance rose inside her when she thought of Flannery pursuing Presley Worth, although if she had to say why, she wasn’t sure she could. She’d only spent a few minutes in Presley’s company, but those few minutes had left more of an impression than had any woman she’d met in a long time. True, Presley was unlike many of the women she’d known since childhood, but her unfamiliarity wasn’t what appealed the most. Presley seemed totally self-contained and just a little bit apart from everything, and that very aloofness piqued Harper’s curiosity. For someone whose life was grounded in the lives of others as hers had been since birth, Harper found that very insularity intriguing. Presley was a mystery she’d like to unravel, a desire as unusual as it was disconcerting. It didn’t hurt a bit that Presley had been unfazed by Flannery’s teasing flirtations—unlike most women faced with Flann’s megawatt attention, Presley hadn’t melted, she’d teased back in a way that had put her in control. Harper spent so much time letting others lean on her, the idea of someone else in charge was appealing.

“Hey.” Flannery’s voice cut into her reverie.

“What? Sorry.”

“I was asking for the details—where she’s staying, what is she doing here, is she married, that sort of thing.”

“How would I know that?” Harper rankled at Flannery’s assumption that Presley was hers for the asking.

“Well, what did you talk about?”

“Nothing, really. I only spent a few minutes with her. I walked her down to the admin offices. She said she came about a job.”

Flannery’s brows drew down. “A job? And you didn’t ask about that? Didn’t it strike you as just a little odd?”

“Why would it?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice the way she looked.”

“I’ve got two eyes, don’t I?”

Flannery grinned. “Yes, but sometimes I’m not sure you actually see anyone unless they’re sitting on one of your exam tables.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Harper was feeling grumpier by the second—much the way she used to when Flann bugged her until she joined in on one of her harebrained schemes in college. Schemes that usually led to her bailing Flann out of one mess or another.

“Meaning, half the time you don’t notice when a woman is sending you interested signals.”

“There weren’t any signals.”

“Good.” Flannery collected the rest of the crumbs of chocolate cake on her fork and licked them off. “Because I’m pretty sure I was getting some, so…as long as you don’t mind, I thought I’d follow up on that.”

The grumpiness turned to outright irritation. “Since when did you care what I thought about you chasing a woman?”

Flannery put the fork down beside her plate and cocked an eyebrow. “I can’t remember any time when it really bothered you. If it had—”

“If it had, are you saying you would’ve done anything any differently?”

“I don’t know,” Flannery said, her tone curious. “I guess I’d like to think so.”

“Hell, it doesn’t really matter. I didn’t get the sense she was sending signals to either one of us, and I think it’s kind of premature for us to be sitting here discussing something that isn’t even likely to happen.” Harper rose and grabbed her tray. “I’ve got some calls to make and patients this afternoon. I’ll catch up to you later sometime.”

“Sure.” Flannery rose, her expression pensive. “Hey, Harp?”

Harper turned. “Yeah.”

“Keep your antennae tuned, just in case.”

Harper laughed and left to dispose of her tray, rolling her shoulders to work out the pain that lanced between her shoulder blades. Flann was just being Flann, and neither she nor Flann had any reason to think Presley Worth had given them a second thought. Presley had been friendly and she’d joined in Flannery’s game, but she hadn’t given any indication she wanted more. Harper had no idea why that bothered her quite so much.

When her pager went off just as she reached the lobby, she was grateful for the interruption to her brooding thoughts and strode to Dora’s desk. “Can I use your phone, beautiful?”

Dora laughed as she always did when Harper called her that and turned her phone to face Harper. “Of course you can, handsome.”

Harper grinned. Dora was one of her favorite people. Dora had been her first-grade teacher and, like almost everyone else Dora’s age in town, was still her father’s patient. When Harper’d returned to begin practicing medicine at the Rivers, Dora had been one of the first to tell her how glad she was to see her back home. Harper dialed the page operator. “Harper Rivers.”

“Hi, Harper,” Sandy Reynolds said.

“What have you got, Sandy?”

“Your father asked me to catch you. He wants you to meet him in the medical staff office as soon as you can.”

Frowning, Harper checked her watch. She had a forty-minute drive to see Charlie Carlyle, an elderly farmer with diabetes who’d called her answering service to say he was having trouble with his foot. That could be anything from an ingrown toenail to a diabetic ulcer or something worse, and she didn’t want to leave him waiting too long. On the other hand, a summons from her father wasn’t something she could ignore, and after what he’d told them all that morning, a call from him in his official capacity as chief of staff couldn’t be anything good.

“On my way. Thanks, Sandy.” She passed the phone back to Dora. “Thanks, Dora.”

“Don’t look so worried, Harper. Your father will take care of the Rivers. The two of you will.”

Harper didn’t even ask how Dora knew something was happening. Dora always seemed to know everything, as Harper’d discovered the first time she’d hidden a frog she’d picked up on the way to school in her lunchbox and Dora had discovered it within a matter of minutes, almost as if she’d had X-ray vision. She only hoped Dora was right about this too, and she and her father could handle whatever was coming.

*

“That would be the assistant chief now,” Edward Rivers said at the sharp rap on the door. “Thank you for your patience.”

“Not at all.” Presley, seated in a blue-upholstered club chair in front of Rivers’s broad dark wood desk, turned slightly and glanced over her shoulder. Harper Rivers walked in and slowed when her gaze met Presley’s.

Presley read an instant of confusion, then a spark of anger that was quickly quelled as the midnight blue of Harper’s eyes turned arctic. Harper dismissed her after that first quick appraisal and focused on Edward Rivers.

“You wanted me?” Harper said.

“Harper, this is Ms. Presley Worth, Vice President of Operations at SunView Health Systems,” Edward said. “Dr. Harper Rivers, Assistant Chief of Staff.”

Presley rose and held out her hand to Harper. “We’ve met, briefly. Good to see you again, Doctor.”

Harper shook her hand. “I see you got the job.”

Presley smiled wryly. She deserved that slight barb. Harper Rivers might have appeared the quieter of the two Rivers siblings, but she was by no means the passive one. “Yes, it appears that I have.”

“Ms. Worth,” Edward said, “perhaps you could brief us on your requirements so we can see that you have everything you need.”

Presley stood as Edward sat behind his desk and Harper leaned a shoulder against a bookcase with rows of hardback texts, some of which appeared as old as the building itself. Sitting put her in a subordinate position, and she needed to take command immediately in the presence of two alpha males, gender notwithstanding. Walking to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, she put the sunlight behind her to shade her face just enough to force both doctors to concentrate on her. Smiling, she launched into her familiar pitch.

“In a transition such as this, we proceed in stages, beginning with an overall assessment of the institution, its internal operations, financial projections, et cetera. That provides us a general view of how to position the institution within the SunView system. We then move on to the second stage, which you might think of as the integration stage—where systems are streamlined, efficiency protocols are instituted, assets are reallocated—all with the aim of optimizing resources and returns. The final stage would be the placement of a permanent management team to continue the operational plan going forward.”

Harper, hands in the pockets of her trousers, frowned. “What does all that mean in practical terms? Will you be bringing in your own people to run the hospital?”

Presley chose her words carefully. Harper was the scion of a medical dynasty, not a simple country doctor, and at this stage, the less actual detail the administration of the target institution was provided, the better. “SunView employs individuals who have experience in this kind of assessment and analysis, of course. At this point most of the communication will be done remotely, but I and my admin will be here on site.” She glanced at Edward. “I’m afraid I’ll have to impose on you to provide some office space for us.”

“Of course,” Edward said. “You may have this office immediately.”

“Thank you,” Presley said, glad that he had saved her the awkward task of informing him she was taking over in all but name. “That’s very kind.”

Harper sucked in a breath. Her father seemed to know a lot more about what was happening than he’d let on, and none of it made her very happy. “Wait a minute. You’re not eliminating the chief of staff position—that’s a medical—”

“Actually, Harper,” her father cut in, “it’s considered an administrative appointment, and as such, is very much part of Ms. Worth’s territory now.”

“You misunderstand,” Presley said. “We are not removing Dr. Rivers at all. However, certain functions of the post will need to be modified, particularly those involving allocation of resources.”

Harper gritted her teeth and decoded Presley’s doublespeak. Her father’s role as chief of the medical staff was to represent the various medical departments in budget negotiations with the board, among other things. The same board who had sold the hospital to SunView. The board who no longer held the reins, financial or otherwise, effectively giving SunView control over everything, including the medical staff. The taste of betrayal was a bitter pill, and bile soured her throat. Were the board members so shortsighted they couldn’t see what they had done?

“Just how many positions do you plan on eliminating?” Harper asked.

“Naturally, streamlining operations is one of our goals.” Presley smiled. “Dr. Rivers, I’m sure you can appreciate that the hospital is a business as much as it is a humanitarian institution. If the business is not viable, the hospital cannot survive.”

“I haven’t heard anything about patients in all of this. This isn’t Silicon Valley. We aren’t a biotech company.”

“Indeed,” Presley said. “But you are in the business of caring for people.”

“Medicine is a profession. We’re not selling commodities here,” Harper said flatly.

Presley disagreed, but she’d heard this argument before and knew better than to engage with traditionalists like Harper at this stage. Eventually, Harper and those like her would bow to the inevitability of the circumstances. What Harper didn’t yet fully comprehend was that all the power now rested with SunView and, by extension, her. Hopefully, by the time Harper did realize it, the takeover would be far enough along that the internal momentum would quell any lingering resistance.

“I can assure you, my goal here is to position this institution in a way to best benefit the community and, of course, the shareholders,” Presley said with as much patience as she could muster after a sleepless night in a hotel, a cramped tedious flight, and a long morning of being greeted with polite suspicion.

As she expected, a look of distaste crossed Harper’s face at the mention of shareholders. Why was it that so many doctors found the business of medicine distasteful? It wasn’t as if they weren’t being paid for their services, but somehow, they resented being reminded of that fact. Harper Rivers certainly qualified as one of those, but her sensibilities were not of major concern at the moment. Establishing her authority was.

“I’d like a tour of the institution, if that could be arranged,” Presley said to Edward.

“Of course,” Edward said. “Harper will see that you’re familiarized with the hospital.”

Harper glanced at her watch and made no effort to hide her displeasure. “I have patients this afternoon.”

“And I wouldn’t want to delay you,” Presley said. “What time would be convenient for you?”

A muscle jumping in her jaw, Harper said, “Tomorrow morning should be fine. Eight a.m.?”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby.” Harper nodded curtly, turned, and left without another word.

Presley gathered her briefcase and bag. Harper Rivers could prove to be a problem. She might do better with the other Rivers on her side, and reconsidered Flannery’s invitation to show her around town.

Chapter Five

Midafternoon, Flannery stopped by the recovery room to check her two post-op patients. Mike McCormick, the laparoscopic hernia repair she’d finished right before lunch, was awake and sitting up. A husky thirty-five-year-old redhead, he’d resisted her recommendation to have the progressively enlarging mass in his scrotum repaired until he’d shown up in her office the day before with pain so severe he could barely walk. Even then, he’d browbeaten her into promising he could go home after his procedure as long as he could tolerate the postoperative pain. She reminded him what it felt like to have a good swift kick in the gonads, and he reminded her he’d had plenty of hits below the belt as captain of the football team and all the other high school sports he’d excelled in. She’d only nodded and said they’d see about him going home after he woke up.

“How are you doing, Mike?”

“It feels like somebody twisted my nuts off.”

She smiled and resisted the I-told-you-so comeback. “I promise, I didn’t. In fact…” She pulled the curtain around his bed and then pulled the sheet down to his midthighs. The incisions she’d made had been small ones in his groin crease and lower abdomen through which she’d introduced the scope to repair the defects in the abdominal wall from the inside. All the same, she’d had to do a fair amount of pulling and tugging on some pretty sensitive tissues, and although rare, there was always the concern there might be some compromise to the blood supply. She pulled on gloves and gently palpated his groin. “Everything is fine. There’s a lot of swelling, and you’re going to feel like you’ve got a soccer ball between your legs for four or five days, but I don’t see any problems right now. I suggest you stay overnight so we can give you—”

“I best be getting home,” he said, his tone firm despite his pasty-white coloring and the beads of sweat pearling on his forehead.

Flannery set humor aside. If he didn’t follow her instructions to restrict his physical exercise for ten days, he’d be right back in here with something worse going on. “Mike, look. You’re going to be miserable if you go home this afternoon. There’s nothing you can do around the farm anyhow.”

“I can give orders, can’t I?”

“Sure, if you’re not throwing up from the pain or the pain pills. Marianne can give orders just as well as you can. Let her take care of things until you’re back on your feet.”

His jaw bunched. “It’s not Marianne’s job to run the farm.”

Flannery resisted the urge to roll her eyes. If she hadn’t grown up with half her patients or their relatives, she wouldn’t understand how their minds worked. “Listen, take it from me. If you let her help you once in a while, she’ll know she’s important to you, and women like that sort of thing.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Is that right.”

She nodded. “You can take it to the bank.”

“You probably know.” He sighed, his frown more for show now than anything else. “I suppose I could tell her what needs to be done.”

“You could, but you might ask her how things are going and I bet you’ll find out she’s got things covered.” She pulled the sheet up, wrote an order to increase his dose of pain medication, and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll be by early tomorrow morning and if things look good, you can go home. Get some sleep, don’t get out of bed, and let your wife take care of things for a few hours.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Her last stop was Bryce Daniels, the teenager who’d had the hot appendix. His temp was still a couple of degrees above normal, but he was awake and joking with the nurses when she pulled the curtain aside and stepped up to his bed.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“Yeah, like I haven’t eaten in a week.”

“You’ll be getting juice and Jell-O in a while.”

His face fell. “I was kind of hoping the guys could bring me a pizza. I’m really hungry, Doc.”

“I believe it, but if your stomach isn’t settled enough after the anesthesia and you vomit, trust me, you’re going to be one unhappy dude. Let’s just see how the liquids go, and if everything looks good later on this afternoon, the nurses can try you on something a little more substantial.”

“Okay, but I can go home tomorrow, right?”

“As long as your temp’s down in the morning.”

“How big is my scar going to be?”

She held her hands up ten inches apart and his eyes widened. She laughed. “About two and a half inches. But it’ll still impress the girls, don’t worry.”

He grinned.

“Get some sleep.”

In the surgical locker room, she changed into jeans, her favorite pair of scuffed brown boots, and a plain white shirt and tossed her used scrubs into the hamper on her way out. As she was leaving the hospital, she noticed Clyde Endee talking to Presley Worth in the visitors’ lot. She diverted from her planned path to her Jeep and sauntered over to them. “Afternoon, Clyde. Ms. Worth.”

“Hi, Flann. I was just dropping off a new car here for Ms. Worth.”

Flannery took in the shiny Subaru hatchback. Presley worked fast, it appeared. “Door-to-door service. Nice.”

“You know me, service is my middle name.” Clyde chuckled.

Flannery said to Presley, “All done for the day?”

“All done here. I’ve got some work to do at home.”

“Are you the type to play hooky?”

“Not usually.” Presley glanced back at the hospital and had the feeling that a dozen pairs of eyes were trained on them. As she’d walked out of the hospital, more than one individual had paused to watch her go by. Word traveled fast in a place like this, and she wondered what story was being spun about her arrival. She was used to being the outsider, the stranger who appeared on the scene to disrupt everyone’s routine and, in some cases, to threaten more than one person’s job. Often the only people who welcomed her were those behind the scenes who financed the enterprise or benefited from the profits. They were rarely the ones who performed the day-to-day functions of the business. Not many employees, management or otherwise, were happy to see her, but she couldn’t be concerned with being liked. What mattered to her was reconfiguring the newest acquisition to position it within the superstructure of SunView in order to maximize profitability.

It wasn’t her job to make anyone happy, and whether she did or didn’t had nothing to do with how happy she was with the job. Her happiness was spelled out on the bottom line at the end of the day. Neither did it bother her when she made people unhappy with her recommendations and decisions. She wasn’t a corporate raider—more often than not, those in control of the institutions SunView acquired wanted to be absorbed, hoping for a quick profit and a lot of long-term benefits. Unfortunately, many of the employees stood to lose some or all of their livelihood. If she allowed herself to feel responsible for that, she wouldn’t be able to do her job, and what would be the point? She was good at what she did, and the better she was at her job, the more powerful allies she would gain at SunView, and she would need plenty if she planned to be head of the company. This hospital, like so many others, was a brief stop along her way to the top, and when she finished here, it would be forgotten as quickly as all the others.

Ignoring Flannery, who seemed to be waiting for her to say more, she turned to Clyde. “Thank you for delivering the vehicle. If I have any questions or problems, I’ll let you know.”

“My number’s on the card there.”

Presley took the keys and a booklet with paperwork. She slid the papers into her shoulder bag. “That’s great. Thanks.”

“Where are you staying?” Flannery asked as Clyde headed back to his truck.

“At the White place, I’m told it’s called.”

“Oh yeah? Pretty out there.”

“If you like cows, I suppose.”

Flannery grinned. “I didn’t have to guess you weren’t a country girl.”

“Oh? And what was your first clue?”

She glanced down at her shoes. “The Manolos.”

“I think I’m impressed.”

“Why? That a simple country surgeon—”

“Oh, please. Between you and your sister, I’ve had enough of the simple country doctor routine. No, I merely don’t think you look like the kind of woman to be wearing heels or to recognize their designer.”

“Well, you’re right about the first part,” Flannery said. “But I’ve been known to have female friends who wear heels, and I am observant.”

“That I can believe.” Presley walked around to the driver’s side of the car. “And you’re right, I’m not a country girl.”

Flannery leaned on the top of the car and folded her arms. “So why here?”

“Like I said—I’m here because of a job.”

“And there wasn’t anyone else…where did you come from, anyhow?”

“Phoenix.”

“So no one else in Phoenix wanted to spend a few months up here in the peace and quiet, taking the country air?”

“I’m sure there was more than one person who would’ve loved to come.” Presley smiled. “But no one who is as good as I am.”

Flannery liked confident women, especially sexy, smart, slightly hard-to-get confident women. “What exactly are you doing here?”

“I take it you haven’t talked to your sister yet.”

Flannery straightened. “Harper? What about her?”

“Nothing serious,” Presley said, surprised by Flannery’s instant protectiveness laced with suspicion. Seeing the two of them together earlier, she’d sensed they were competitive, but that wasn’t what she was reading now. Flannery looked ready to do battle. Presley tried to remember the last time Preston had ever been protective of her, and decided that would’ve been exactly never. Even as children they were adversaries, competing for their parents’ attention—when they were around—and jockeying for positions of favor with others. They’d never been friends, let alone allies.

“Her version of events may be slightly different than mine, but as I’m sure almost anyone in the hospital will be able to tell you within the next few hours, I’m here to spearhead the transition of the hospital into SunView Health Systems.”

“Something tells me Harper wasn’t happy to hear that.”

“Your sister impresses me as someone who doesn’t care for change.”

“Harper cares about this community, and especially this hospital, more than she cares about anything except family. If the change is a good one, she’ll be open to exploring it.”

“Well, I’m delighted to hear that. What about you? Are you flexible as well?”

“I like to think so.”

“Good. Then perhaps, if you are serious about showing me around, we can get together when you’re free. I don’t know much about the area and I’d like to.”

“How about dinner tonight?”

Presley hesitated. Dinner was a little more personal than she wanted to get with Flannery Rivers. She had more than enough experience to recognize interest from another woman, and she didn’t need the complication. “I’ve got a number of things to finish this evening. I’ll have to take a rain check.”

“Some other time, then.”

“Yes.”

“How about tomorrow afternoon, say three?”

“You can call me tomorrow in the medical staff office. I’ll let you know.”

Flannery stepped back as Presley slid into her car. “I’ll do that.”

*

Harper pulled in behind her father’s battered fifteen-year-old Ford Bronco and climbed up onto the back porch. Her father, still in his white shirt and dress trousers, sat in one of the trio of rocking chairs with a glass of iced tea in his hand. Behind him the door was open and the top twenty music countdown floated out through the screen from Margie’s bedroom. Harper sat next to him and for a moment said nothing as they rocked in time, watching the sunset spill over the mountains.

“How long did you know this was coming?” Harper finally asked.

“There’ve been hints of something in the works since the end-of-year financials came out.” Edward sipped his tea and continued to slowly rock, one foot flat on the wood porch, flexing and relaxing, propelling the chair back and forth. “Since I didn’t get a vote, I wasn’t kept up to date. I didn’t expect them to move quite so quickly.”

“And there’s nothing to be done about it?”

“Once the ink is dry, the deal is done, I imagine.”

“What do you think is coming?”

Edward looked at her solemnly. “I honestly don’t know, Harper.”

Harper clenched her jaw. Helplessness wasn’t a feeling she welcomed or was used to. Headlights flashed, and Flann’s Jeep pulled down the drive. A minute later, Flann dropped into the third chair.

“That roast beef I smell?” Flannery asked.

Their father glanced over at her. “It’s Thursday, isn’t it?”

Flannery grinned. “Roast beef or short ribs. Either one works for me.”

“I have to run by the Rivers later,” Harper said. “Do your postops need anything?”

Flannery shook her head. “They should both be fine. What do you have going?”

“I had to admit Charlie Carlyle. He’s got a rip-roaring cellulitis in his foot and I want to make sure he’s gotten his first dose of antibiotics tonight.”

“Uh-oh,” Flannery said. “I told you those toes were going to go.”

“If we can get ahead of it, he’ll keep his foot for a while longer,” Harper said.

“Good. Let me know if you want me to look at it.”

“I will.”

“I ran into the lady of the hour this afternoon,” Flannery said casually.

Harper tightened her grip on the arms of her chair. She wasn’t sure what bothered her the most, that Flann and Presley had connected again or just the reminder of what Presley’s presence here meant. “Oh?”

“Mmm-hmm. She mentioned she’d talked with you earlier and that she was in charge of the transition. Whatever that means.”

Edward said, “That appears to be the question of the hour.”

Flann’s grin flickered out. “Is there some kind of problem already?”

Edward shrugged. “It’s hard to say. From what little we know, it would appear that Ms. Worth can do just about anything she wants, and until we know what that is, we don’t have any say at all.”

“It’s just not the right way to do things,” Harper said. “This is our hospital, our patients who will be affected. If they’d let us know what was happening, we could have prepared for it. We could have apprised them of the community needs and shown them how vital the hospital is—not just for healthcare itself, but for jobs.”

“We don’t know that we won’t have an opportunity to do that,” her father said.

“Keeping us in the dark is just another form of showing us who’s the boss,” Harper said.

Flannery got up and poured herself an iced tea from the pitcher that sat on a table nearby. She poured a second glass and handed it to Harper. “I might be showing her around town tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I can work on her a little bit.”

Harper carefully balanced the glass on the flat wooden arm of her rocking chair. “Showing her around? So she took you up on your offer to be a tour guide?”

“Seems so.” Flannery grinned.

“You might be wise to remember she’s not here on a friendly mission.”

Flannery’s eyes darkened. “You don’t know that, Harp.”

“And you don’t know otherwise.” Harper rose, pulled open the screen door, and headed for the sanctuary of the kitchen before she took another poke at Flann. She had no reason to be angry with Flann and didn’t care to ask herself why she was.

Chapter Six

By the time Harper helped her mother and Margie wash up and stow the dishes, it was close to nine. She folded the dish towel, laid it over the towel rack, and opened the cabinet for the broom.

“Go on out to the porch and have a drink with your father and Flannery,” Ida said, taking the broom from her. “You’ve done enough cleaning for one night.”

“I’ve got to head back to the hospital in a few minutes,” Harper said. She’d carefully avoided talking about Presley Worth with Flann during dinner, but the subject was bound to come up again if they all started talking hospital business, which they surely would over drinks on the porch. She wasn’t even sure what was bothering her about Flann showing Presley around town. Flann might have a tendency to rush into situations without much thought to the consequences, but somehow things usually ended up all right in the end, mostly because Flann was too good-natured to hold grudges and always knew when to step away before things got too complicated. The trouble was, everything about Presley spelled complicated, right from the beginning. She wore power easily and was clearly used to being in control. No matter how attractive and intriguing she might be, she was someone whose interests might not be in line with theirs. Harper drew up short. Attractive and intriguing? Maybe Flann wasn’t the only one whose judgment was skewed.

“You and Flannery bashing heads over something?” Ida said.

“No,” Harper said too quickly, earning a raised brow from Ida. Harper grinned. “We’re good. Just different speeds, as usual.”

“How are things at the hospital?”

“I’m not sure yet. The new manager has arrived—a woman named Presley Worth.”

“What does she intend to manage?”

Harper braced her arms on the counter behind her and shook her head. “That’s the question I’d like answered.”

Ida patted her cheek. “You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”

“I hope I do before it’s too late.”

Flann rounded the corner and headed for the refrigerator. “Too late for what?”

“Me to have a drink.” Harper pushed away from the counter and grabbed her jacket off the peg. “I’m headed to the Rivers.”

“Get some sleep,” Flann called after her.

Harper waved a hand and jumped into her Chevy pickup and five minutes later was headed up the hill to another place she thought of as home. The Rivers stood like a guardian above the town, its windows glowing golden against the night sky. The reception desk was empty, and only the echo of her footsteps kept her company as she walked through the deserted halls. She nodded to the night nurse on four as she checked on Charlie first. He was snoring softly, his ailing foot propped on a pillow. She flashed her penlight on the chart hanging at the foot of the bed. His temp was still elevated but hadn’t spiked. Good enough. She left quietly and took the stairs down to the surgical floor. Glenn Archer, a PA who often assisted Flann in the OR and covered the surgical floor at night, was at the desk.

“How’s it going?” Harper asked. She and Glenn, a rangy blue-eyed, sandy-haired ex-high school basketball star, had been in the same graduating class, but Glenn had opted for the Army right out of high school. After her enlistment was over, she’d come back to the village to live, having been trained as a medic.

“All quiet. Flann’s two are doing fine.” Glenn pushed out a rolling chair and Harper sat. “I hear we’re due for a shake-up.”

Harper rubbed her face. “Seems like it.”

“Any details?”

“Not yet.”

Glenn scanned the telemetry monitors as she spoke. “Doesn’t feel right, somehow. Who are these folks?”

“Not sure yet.” She pictured Presley and a myriad of impressions flashed into her mind. Presley’s face—elegant, composed, remote; a quick flash of sharp wit when jousting with Flann; a hard glint of steel when discussing business. Attractive and intriguing. Harper sighed. “We’ll know soon, I think.”

She talked with Glenn a few more moments. Everyone was resting comfortably. No one needed her attention. Finally she gave in and went home. At eleven, she was still restless and wide-awake. Too many things running through her head—change was on the horizon, and change almost always meant losing something. She sat in the rocker on her front porch trying to pick out the constellations in the clear, star-filled night sky. She’d never been very good at it. Kate had been the one to see shapes in the clouds and stars. Harper usually had to be content with finding the Big Dipper and the North Star. There were so many stars up there, scattered it seemed in random, endless patterns, dwarfing the world below. Tonight, though, a face kept forming as her lids lowered and her vision drifted. Presley Worth. Who was she?

The question wouldn’t give her peace. Eventually, she retrieved her laptop and settled back on the porch to search for answers.

*

Presley woke to unnatural quiet, a faint breeze cooling the bare skin of her shoulders. Sunlight slanted through the open window across from her bed. Absent were the rumble of traffic, the humming of mechanicals within the walls and beneath the floors, the distant wail of sirens, the shouts of trash collectors and all-night revelers. Life in the city was all about noise. Now she was surrounded by silence. Not absolute, she realized as she lay thinking about the day to come. The wind made its own humming tune. Birds trilled and chirped and cooed. Beyond that, though, the world was terrifyingly still. Ordinarily when she woke, her first sensation was of energy charging through her—the challenge of a new day, the opportunity to test herself—a fire in her blood. The calm peacefulness of this morning felt as unnatural as if she had suddenly been required to breathe underwater. She was out of sync with this place. Off balance and feeling more alone than she had in a long time.

She’d always been solitary, despite being a twin. She and Preston were not like those stories of twins Hollywood liked to make movies about. They had never been close. Their parents, internationally renowned financiers, had barely enough time in their busy schedule for one child, let alone two at once, and the needs of their offspring had been left to a series of nannies and tutors. Presley had quickly learned that the only way to gain a little bit of notice was to excel at the things her parents valued—academics, athletics, business—all while traveling in the proper social circles. Her greatest competitor for their attention was Preston. Now that her father was divesting himself of the responsibility of the day-to-day running of the corporation, she was in the biggest battle of her life. Sometimes it seemed she had been fighting forever for something just out of reach.

She threw back the covers and swung her legs to the floor. Self-analysis was a waste of time. She was in charge of her life, her future. What mattered was what she did. Actions produced results, and results were all that counted at the end of the day. With a wave of anticipation, she reminded herself that at the end of this day, Carrie would be here, they’d have the beginnings of their team in place, and she could get started on wrapping up this assignment. Preston was very wrong if he thought he could bury her somewhere while he moved a step closer to taking their father’s seat at the table.

She took a quick shower and, since she wasn’t due to meet Harper Rivers until eight and it was barely five thirty, pulled on loose workout pants and a T-shirt and shuffled down to the kitchen. Lila had left the coffeepot plugged in ready to go and, according to the thoughtful note next to the coffeemaker, all she had to do was push the button. Even more thoughtful was the small wicker basket with three fat blueberry corn muffins nestled under a hand-embroidered cotton napkin in the middle of the table. She chose a golden muffin and put it on a ceramic saucer she found in the glass-fronted cabinet above the sink. Within a matter of minutes she had a cup of coffee and the muffin and, after grabbing her iPad, was headed out to the back porch to have breakfast in the astonishingly cool morning air. Sitting down on the top step, she balanced her iPad on her knees, sipped her coffee, and absently broke off pieces of the muffin and popped them into her mouth as she scanned the morning news.

After a few minutes, she felt the prickly sensation on the back of her neck she often got when someone was watching her. She checked the time on her tablet—Lila was due soon but she hadn’t heard a car drive in. Who in the world would be walking around out here at this time of day? Slowly, she searched the expanse of the backyard down to where the drive curved around to the barn and saw no one. Of course she saw no one. There was no one there. She went back to reading and then she heard it. An ear-splitting screech that ended abruptly on a choking rattle. Gripping her tablet, she raised her eyes, prepared to jump up and run for the house.

It was standing about ten feet in front of her, one foot held up in the air, its head cocked to the left, blinking slowly. Its tail feathers were ragged but brilliantly colored: red and blue and golden brown. Its wings looked just as scruffy as its tail, with a few short feathers poking out at odd angles and looking as if they were about to fall out. It made another sound, a crowing croak, and bobbed its head.

“Go away.” Presley waved a hand. “Shoo.”

It put its foot down gingerly and hobbled a step closer.

“No, not this way.” She pointed in the general direction of the driveway. “Go that way. Go back to…wherever.” It hop-walked several more steps closer.

She drew her legs up onto the stair below where she sat. She didn’t think chickens—or whatever it was, exactly—attacked people, but she wasn’t leaving her bare feet exposed as an enticement. “No, no, no. Go back wherever you came from.”

“Could be that’s one of old Mrs. White’s brood,” Lila said from inside the kitchen door. “I bet they couldn’t catch him, and they just left him behind.”

“Well, he needs to go back to wherever he’s been staying. He’s getting poop all over the lawn.”

Lila chuckled. “Good fertilizer.”

“Not when it’s on the bottom of my shoe.”

“Hmm. Looks like he’s got a bum leg. If you want, I’ll have one of my sons come out and take care of him for you.”

“Good,” Presley said, returning to the news. The crowing resumed, the short caws rising at the end as if he was asking a question. She ignored it and he stopped. After another minute or two of silence, she peeked up. He was three feet in front of her, studying her with a disconcerting stare.

“You’re not very smart, are you?”

“Caw?”

“Lila? What is this thing?”

“A rooster, last time I looked.”

“What’s it good for?”

“Not much, not without the hens. Roosters are handy for protecting the chickens—keeping the predators away. And of course, if you want baby chicks—”

“God forbid.”

“Well then, he doesn’t really have much to do now.”

Presley hesitated. “What do you mean, your son will take care of him?”

“He’s lame. Probably no one’s been feeding him, and he doesn’t have a flock to look after. He doesn’t look too old to make a decent stew, though.”

“Oh.” Presley looked back down at the news and couldn’t find her place. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the rooster peck at the bare ground as if searching for some morsel. She broke off a corner of her muffin and tossed it toward him. His head bobbed as he studied it.

“Go ahead. It’s better than the dirt you’ve been picking up.”

The feathers on his neck gleamed in the sunlight, flashes of iridescent purple and blue as subtle as jewels. The sounds he made changed, the pitch rising as he pecked apart the small bit of corn muffin with obvious enthusiasm.

“Lila.”

Lila peered out the screen door again. “Yes?”

“Don’t bother your sons with him. He’ll probably just go on back to wherever he came from.”

“All right, if you’re sure.”

She wasn’t. “I’m sure.”

She went back to the news with the soft clucks of the busy rooster keeping her company. When she rose to get ready for work, he was still scratching about in the yard. “Lila,” she called as she walked inside, “what do these things like to eat?”

Chapter Seven

Harper parked in the staff lot behind the hospital and let herself in through the employee entrance with her ID card. She hadn’t slept much and had decided to start rounds early. At six thirty, a half hour before shift change, the halls were still quiet. She’d always loved the hospital at night, when a hushed stillness fell over the dimly lit halls, a serene quiet that seemed to promise hope for those who saw the new day and peace for those who did not.

Walking to the stairwell, she ran the list of patients in her head. Plenty of time to see them all before meeting Presley. She’d learned a few things about Presley Worth the night before. At least what Presley Worth chose to show the world. Thirty years old, only daughter of Yolanda and Martin Worth, twin of Preston. MBA from Wharton at twenty-three. VP of Operations at SunView at twenty-six. Brother Preston’s title was loftier—Chief Financial Officer—but organizationally apparently equivalent to Presley’s. Twins, still. Father was CEO, mother COO. High-powered, influential family. Presley had never married, supported humanitarian causes, and appeared to have no personal life beyond attending the obligatory charitable and business functions. What she did have was a record of successfully spearheading much of the expansion of SunView Health Systems from a regional Southwest healthcare network into a transcontinental consortium of hospitals, short-and long-term-care facilities, and allied enterprises. Harper hadn’t been able to find out much more than that, but she wasn’t done digging yet. If SunView was to be her new employer, she wanted to know who—or, more accurately, what—it was all about.

On impulse, she bypassed the stairs and turned down the east corridor toward admin, wondering if her father might be in the staff office catching up on paperwork as he often did early in the morning. His door was partly open and the light on, and she started in, expecting to hear his voice as he dictated reports or discharge summaries. She drew up short, remembering too late the office wasn’t his any longer.

“If you’re sure you can find it, call me when you get settled,” Presley said. “I’ll show you around and get you started on the staff assessments…About what you might expect. An abundance of dinosaurs.”

Harper halted, unable not to hear the conversation.

Presley laughed. “Around here, putting out to pasture is more than a metaphor…See you soon.”

Harper knocked on the door, refusing to skulk away as if she’d intentionally been eavesdropping. She wasn’t surprised by Presley’s view of the Rivers as provincial and old-fashioned, considering the circles she usually moved in, but the snap judgment irked all the same. Traditional didn’t mean outdated.

“Come in,” Presley called.

Harper pushed the door wide and Presley rose behind her desk. She glanced at her watch when she saw Harper.

“I’m sorry, am I late? I thought you said—”

“No, I just happened to be here.”

Presley wore another understatedly elegant suit, a pale green shirt over rich chocolate trousers. The jacket hung over the back of what had been Harper’s father’s chair. Her golden-blond hair was held back with a paler gold tie. She looked crisp and efficient and commanding. She should have looked out of place, but somehow she didn’t. She wore authority well, and that confidence was compelling. Harper slid her hands into the pockets of her slightly rumpled khakis. Presley was studying her in turn. Her gaze, acute and unapologetic, traveled over Harper’s face. Harper wondered what she was looking for, and what she saw.

“Do you do this often?” Harper asked.

Presley leaned forward, her fingertips resting on the surface of the desk, her gaze holding Harper’s. “What, exactly?”

“Take over hospitals?”

“We acquire new facilities several times a year,” Presley said.

“And then what do you do with them?”

“I plan to provide a prospectus of SunView’s activities that I think will give you a better understanding of who we are.” She frowned slightly. “I’m afraid the lines of communication haven’t been handled as well as they should have been regarding this acquisition. I wasn’t in charge of the initial negotiations. So I apologize for the lack of information. I plan to rectify that as soon as possible.”

“If you weren’t in charge, who was?”

“Another department,” Presley said coolly.

“So why apologize?”

“Because I’m here now, and I am in charge.”

Harper appreciated Presley’s refusal to pass the buck, whether out of loyalty or sense of responsibility. Both counted in her book. “I understand. It’s sort of like here.”

“I’m sorry?”

Harper grinned wryly. “The board kept this quiet until the deal was done.”

“I can assure you, Dr. Rivers—”

“Harper.”

Presley nodded. “Harper. None of this was undertaken with the intention of secrecy. SunView dealt with those who controlled the financial—”

“So I was told. But there’s more to us than facts and figures, you know.”

“I know,” Presley said.

“Do you?”

“I will.”

Harper knew the heart of the Rivers wasn’t going to be found in the ledgers and balance sheets, and she wanted this woman, this stranger who seemed to hold the fate of a big part of the community in her hands, to know that too. “Let’s postpone the tour. Make rounds with me this morning instead. Get a look at what the hospital is really like out from behind that desk.”

Presley’s first instinct was to refuse. She had just started delving into the financials and had the entire day planned out. Carrie was on her way to the house from the airport and ought to be at the hospital by midmorning. She didn’t really have time for anything other than a quick survey of the physical layout. And what could she possibly learn from trailing after Harper while she visited patients?

“Don’t you think the patients would find that an intrusion?”

“If there’s anything sensitive, we’ll ask their permission. But I doubt it.”

“I really don’t have—”

“How can you run a healthcare system and not know what it is that we really do?”

Presley stifled her irritation. The question just underscored how little she and Harper had in common. One didn’t need to know how an airplane engine worked to run Boeing, or understand nanomaterials to manage IBM. That was what the technical departments were for. “Running a hospital profitably occurs on a different plane than dispensing care. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were happy accepting chickens in payment for your services, but most of us have moved beyond that now.”

“Right. Because I’m one of the dinosaurs.”

“Ah.” Presley glanced at the open door. No one had been around when she’d arrived before dawn, and she’d been careless. She wouldn’t let that happen again. There was no point apologizing, not that she was inclined to. Her assessment of the staff, no matter how flip, was also accurate. The physicians with admitting privileges were an aging group with the exception of a handful like Harper and Flannery. Most were well beyond retirement age and, she was willing to bet when she looked at their statistics, probably had a preponderance of elderly patients with few resources who overstayed the recommended average, putting a strain on the hospital’s resources and lowering the reimbursement quotient.

“I wasn’t actually thinking of you with that remark.”

Harper shrugged. “I have been known to take a dozen eggs now and then.”

Presley laughed. “I completely believe that.”

“You can be pretty sure I mean what I say.”

“I suspect that’s a family trait.”

“Among others.”

Presley put her laptop to sleep. Transitions always went more smoothly when the hospital’s power brokers were cooperative. Harper Rivers—the whole Rivers family—was enmeshed with the hospital and the community. Antagonizing any of them was not prudent. If spending an hour tagging along with Harper would help, she’d make room in her schedule.

She slipped into her jacket and slid her cell phone into her pocket. “All right, Dr. Rivers. Educate me.”

*

Harper hadn’t expected Presley to agree. She’d seen the indecision in her eyes and could almost read the dismissal in her mind. Hiding her surprise when Presley joined her, she led the way back to the main hospital building, pointing out the administrative offices as they passed.

“The head of admissions is over here,” Harper said, pointing to the door to her sister’s office. “Carson should be in around eight. She can tell you just about anything you need to know about hospital visits, admission stats, placement, that sort of thing. She deals with social services pretty regularly as well.”

“That would be”—Presley scanned her mental files—“Carson Rivers.”

“That’s right.”

“Let me guess.” Presley paused. “Sister?”

“Third oldest, right.”

“Wait a minute.” Presley smiled, warmth softening the usually cool planes of her face. “Harper, Flannery, Carson. Who in the family is the Southern-author fan?”

“They’re some of my mother’s favorites,” Harper said. “She and my father met when he was doing his residency in Charlotte. She said if she had to move north into Yankee territory, her children would be reminded of their Southern roots.”

“Harper,” Presley turned the word over musingly. “It’s Harper Lee, isn’t it? Harper Lee Rivers?”

Harper nodded.

“Flannery O’Connor Rivers?”

Harper grinned. “That’s right.”

“Carson McCullers Rivers?”

“Right again.”

Presley laughed, and her laughter transformed her. She was still elegant, but softer, more approachable, the light dancing in her blue eyes hinting at hidden humor. “Tell me, is there a Kate Chopin Rivers too?”

The punch to the heart was no less powerful for being familiar. Harper kept her smile in place. “Kate was the fourth.”

Presley’s laughter disappeared and gentle sympathy filled her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Are there others?”

“Margaret Mitchell, the youngest. Margie is fifteen.”

“No boys?”

“I guess my mother wasn’t as fond of the Southern male authors.”

“Hmm. Is Margie bound for medicine too?”

Harper laughed. “She swears she’s forgoing medicine for professional soccer.”

“Breaking the family mold.”

“We’ll see. I went through a period when I was planning on being an organic farmer.”

“You, a farmer?” Presley shook her head. “I can’t see it.”

“I grew up on a farm, although I didn’t do a whole lot of hands-on farming. I was too busy following my dad around. But we’ve got some cows, chickens, a few pigs, and plenty of fertile pastureland. One of our neighbors farms that for us.”

“Never thought about leaving?”

“I left for medical school and residency.” Harper pushed open the stairwell door and held it for Presley. “And I was ready to come back. Not enough time to think. Too much noise.”

“Noise?”

“In the city. Always something moving, always something changing. Always something making noise.”

“Most people think of that as progress. And exciting.”

“I don’t see why progress has to be noisy.” Harper opened another door. “This is the fifth floor—the top floor. A mixed population of med-surg patients who no longer require acute nursing supervision. Most of the patients up here will be ready for discharge in a few days.”

“How many beds?”

“Eight rooms a side, two beds each on this floor. We’re about half-full up here right now.”

While Harper went to the supply room to get what she needed for rounds, Presley looked over the physical facilities, taking note of the number of nurses, aides, clerks, and other personnel. The staffing seemed adequate, but not excessive. The hospital was obviously old, but in good repair. The walls were freshly painted a neutral eggshell, the floors practical industrial tiles in a complementary tan. When she glanced into one of the patient rooms, she saw two large windows overlooking a grassy lawn. Pleasant. Peaceful.

Harper guided her down the hall. “The patient we’re about to see is ready to go home. Euella Andrews. She had a stroke about a year ago and has been managing at home with her daughter’s help. Unfortunately, she fell several weeks ago and suffered a hairline fracture to her femur. Flann decided not to operate and put her in traction. She started—”

“Your sister’s a general surgeon, isn’t she?”

“That’s right, with a trauma certification. She’s qualified to handle straightforward orthopedic problems, and the consulting orthopedists are just as happy for her to do it. Saves them getting out of bed at night to put on casts or review X-rays.”

“What happens if you have a complicated orthopedic problem—open fractures, joint replacements, that sort of thing?”

“Then we’ll refer or transfer.”

“Orthopedic procedures reimburse well, but the rehab can be costly,” Presley said. “Not a bad compromise.”

“Our thinking was it made sense to treat what we could—keeps the patients closer to home and our staff busy.”

“There, you see? We can find common ground.”

“Good to know.”

From there, they worked their way down through the wards, checking patients, ordering tests, charting progress. The patients greeted Harper as if Harper held the key to all the mysteries of life. She was relaxed and conversant with the patients, good-naturedly answering their questions and reviewing the treatment plan when they were ready to go home, chiding some of them to follow instructions. She introduced Presley as one of the hospital managers, and that seemed to be all that was necessary for her to be accepted. If the same thing had happened in Phoenix, the risk management team would probably have had people sign consent forms before they even let her into a room. Here, all it took was Harper’s introduction. She could see how that kind of freedom would appeal, especially to someone like Harper for whom the hospital was like a second home. Unfortunately, the days of medical fiefdoms were long over. Everyone from the state to the insurance companies wanted a say, and part of her job was seeing that the hospital and everyone in it stayed on the right side of the line. Breaches in regulations were costly.

As Harper was finishing a note, the phone rang at the nurses’ station. A male clerk who looked all of fifteen answered, listened, and held the phone out to Harper. “Page operator for you, Harp.”

“How do they know where you are?” Presley asked.

Harper laughed. “They always know.” She took the phone. “Harper. Okay, tell them I’ll be down in fifteen.” She passed the phone back, racked the chart, and motioned to Presley. “ER consult. Let’s grab a cup of coffee on the way.”

Presley snuck a peek at her watch, surprised to see how much time had passed. Usually when she was forced into social situations, she was bored senseless before the hors d’oeuvres were finished. This had been unexpectedly engaging. Harper was warm and compassionate while being thoroughly professional and effortlessly in command. The patients obviously loved her. “I suppose I can spare a few more minutes. Coffee sounds delightful. I’m buying.”

“You’re on.”

They took the stairs to the first floor, since Harper apparently did not believe in using the elevators. After pouring a large cup of dark coffee from a stainless steel urn, Presley grabbed a doughnut on the way to the checkout counter. Harper introduced her to Luanne, the cashier, who gave her a long inquiring stare. Luanne looked to be in her early twenties, full-bodied, with bottle-blond hair and sharp, appraising eyes. She turned slightly, a subtle redirection of her attention to Harper.

“Haven’t seen you out to Elmer’s the Hilltop lately, Harper.”

“Been pretty busy.”

“A little relaxing will do you good, don’t forget.”

Harper took Presley’s change and picked up their tray. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Presley slid into a seat at the dining table next to Harper and reached for her powdered-sugar doughnut. “I imagine you know everyone here.”

Harper sipped her coffee. “Pretty much. One way or the other.”

“Ah, yes.”

Harper laughed. “Not that way.”

“I can see where that might be problematic. Hospitals aren’t known for privacy.”

“That might be the first understatement you’ve made.”

“Still, I imagine after a while no one has any secrets.” The idea disturbed her. She much preferred the seclusion of her offices, where she knew what to expect and could decide how much to reveal.

“You might be surprised by the place.”

“You might be right.” Already, Presley’s normal routine had been upended. After all, she was sitting in the cafeteria in the middle of the morning with a woman she had nothing in common with, enjoying herself.

Chapter Eight

“So tell me,” Harper said, leaning back in her chair at the cafeteria table, “what do you need to know from the medical staff?”

Presley hesitated. She rarely interfaced personally with the staff at institutions SunView acquired, her decisions being several levels removed from the employees. Somehow she’d already broken her pattern at ACH and wanted to extricate herself diplomatically. She would far prefer the occasional smile from Harper than the barely disguised suspicion. “Well, I’ve just started and—”

Dr. Rivers, STAT, ER. Harper Rivers, STAT, ER.

“Come on.” Harper shoved her chair back and took off at a jog.

Presley automatically followed, whispering a silent thanks she’d worn low heels she could actually manage to run in that morning. Dimly aware of people hurriedly stepping aside, she focused on Harper as they sprinted through doorways, down hallways crowded with staff and patients, and around corners. Finally she recognized the entrance to the emergency room. Harper slapped an oversized red button on the wall and the big metal doors swung inward. Harper, steadying the stethoscope draped around her neck down against her chest with one hand, raced through without breaking stride. Presley ducked in as the doors closed, vowing to take up jogging as she struggled to catch her breath.

“What have you got?” Harper called to no one in particular.

A woman wearing a Snoopy smock pushed aside a curtain and leaned out into the hall. “Down here.”

Presley stopped at the edge of the curtain as Harper hurried into the cubicle, taking in the eight-by-eight space in one quick glance. Her stomach plummeted. She didn’t belong here in this harshly lit place where the air crackled with foreign energy and fear. She belonged in the quiet, orderly realm of benchmarks, options, and margins. She didn’t look away, having agreed to see Harper’s world.

A toddler, naked except for plastic training pants covered with multicolored polka dots, lay in the middle of a stretcher far too large for the tiny form, surrounded by towering adults who dwarfed the small body even more. Only the face was visible, haloed by blond ringlets, the features covered by a breathing mask that a grim-faced woman of fifty inflated with rhythmic squeezes to a gray football-shaped bag filled with air. A young woman, not more than twenty, stood staring with terrified eyes behind the people gathered around the stretcher, arms wrapped around her midsection, a keening sound rising from her throat.

Presley tugged her lower lip between her teeth. Leaving was akin to surrender, and she would not do that while the struggle continued.

The woman wearing the Snoopy smock, her name tag indicating she was Rose Aello, RN, said, “She came in with a URI. Her O2 sat was a little low. That’s why we called you. Then she just stopped breathing.”

The older woman squeezing the bag, Paula Jones by her ID badge, said, “I’m getting a lot of resistance. We’re not aerating very well.”

Harper pushed her way to the head of the stretcher and Paula made room for her. After a quick listen to both sides of the child’s chest, Harper slid both hands under the child’s shoulders and pulled her upward until her head was at the very edge of the stretcher. “Where’s the laryngoscope?”

“Here.” Rose handed Harper an impossibly large-looking instrument with a fat silver handle and a curved extension with a light at the end. Somehow Harper got that enormous thing into the toddler’s mouth and peered inside. “I’m going to need a tube. Let’s try a number four pedi.”

Rose rummaged in the cabinet and pulled out an assortment of long plastic tubes, individually wrapped in clear cellophane. She tore one package open and pulled out a tube. “Ready.”

Everything was probably happening quickly, but to Presley time seemed to stand still. Breathe, breathe, breathe kept running through her mind, eclipsing all else.

Someone pushed in beside her and Presley glanced away from the bed. Flannery Rivers, in scrubs, a paper mask hanging around her neck, her sandy hair tousled.

“You need me, Harper?” Flannery said in a strong, steady voice.

“Not yet.” Harper didn’t look up. She held out her hand and Rose handed her the tube.

“Thanks,” Harper muttered.

“Paula, honey,” Flannery said casually, “want to get a cut-down tray in here, just in case?”

“Got one right over here,” Paula replied.

“Good enough.” Flannery leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms, looking as relaxed as if she was waiting for a bus. Presley caught her eye and Flannery winked.

Presley understood then that Flannery had total confidence in Harper and was content, despite her obvious instinct to take charge, to wait until Harper needed her. What an interesting and foreign dynamic that was. To trust and be trusted so completely. Presley turned back to Harper, a disconcerting ache in her chest.

“Flann,” Harper said, peering into the child’s throat, “can you give me some cricoid pressure? I can’t see around the epiglottis it’s so swollen.”

“Sure thing.” Flannery pushed away from the wall and pinched her thumb and forefinger in the center of the baby’s throat. “That help?”

“Better,” Harper said, her focus absolute.

The frightened young woman—the baby’s mother, Presley assumed—started to sway, all the color drained from her face. “Oh my God.” Her voice echoed with hollow horror.

“Here,” Presley said, sliding an arm around the young woman’s waist. “There’s a chair right behind you. Sit down and let the doctors and nurses work. Everything will be all right.” The words came so automatically she couldn’t take them back and hoped she hadn’t lied. And yet, watching Harper and Flannery, she couldn’t believe anything else.

Alarms rang, jagged green lines jumped across a monitor on a high shelf above the bed, and the child lay so still. Never had stillness been so terrifying.

“I think I’m in.” Harper hooked a line connected to an oxygen tank up to the tube she’d inserted in the child’s throat. “Somebody listen.”

Flannery tugged the stethoscope from around Harper’s neck and placed the end on the toddler’s chest, the instrument looking far too large against the miniature rib cage. She moved it quickly over both sides of the tiny torso. “Sounds good.”

“Color’s coming back,” Rose said.

Flannery glanced up the monitor. “O2 looks good too. Nice job.”

Harper looked up at her sister and flashed a quick grin. “Thanks. Appreciate the backup.”

“No problem. Need anything else?”

“We’ve got it.”

Flann nodded and stepped over to Presley. “I see you’re getting a firsthand, up-close-and-personal introduction to the place.”

“Yes.” Presley took a deep breath. The room jumped into stark relief, as if a curtain had been swept aside. Harper’s hands moved with quick certainty as she secured the tube to the child’s cheek with strips of tape. Her fingers were long and tapered, elegant as an artist’s at work. “A bit more dramatic than I’d expected.”

“Harper has always been the showy one,” Flannery murmured.

Presley laughed softly at the obvious lie. “I noticed.”

“I’m still free later.”

“I’ll have to see how my schedule is running.” Presley wasn’t certain she could take any more of the Rivers clan in one day. There was something so raw about them, as if they’d somehow escaped the veneer of civilization that created an invisible shield around everyone else she knew. Their intensity scraped against her nerve endings and stirred feelings both uncomfortable and intriguing.

“I’ll look forward to hearing from you when you’re free.”

Flannery disappeared and Presley knelt by the young mother. “Everything is going very well. Do you need anything?”

The young woman, a girl really, turned eyes dilated and nearly blank with shock to Presley. “She was fine last night. Just a little runny nose. Then this morning she had a cough, and I didn’t like the way it sounded. All raspy, like. My husband said I should bring her in. Maybe I waited too long.”

Presley searched for the right words. God, this was awful.

Harper squatted down and took the mother’s hand. Her shoulder touched Presley’s and for an instant, Presley absorbed the hard strength of her. The unexpected comfort shocked her into pulling away.

“You didn’t wait too long,” Harper said. “She developed swelling at the back of her tongue, and it blocked her airway. Kids get this sometimes and it happens really quickly. You brought her in and that’s what matters.”

The mother clenched Harper’s hand so hard her knuckles turned white. “She’s going to be all right?”

“We’re going to put her in the intensive care unit and watch her really closely. She’ll be getting antibiotics. You should go to the cafeteria and have something to eat. One of the nurses will come down and find you when it’s time to see her.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Rose came over and took her by the arm. “Come on, sweetie, I’ll walk you down.”

Presley waited at the nurse’s station while Harper wrote notes and orders and called the intensive care unit to tell them about the little girl. Finally, Harper pushed back her chair and stretched her shoulders. She seemed completely calm, as if she hadn’t just saved a child’s life. Her disheveled hair was the only sign she’d just been in the middle of an emergency, and on anyone else the look would probably have been a studied effect. On Harper the result was rakishly appealing.

“What was that?” Presley asked, squelching the flicker of unsettling allure.

“Acute epiglottitis—it’s uncommon, but not really rare. Kids decompensate really quickly. If she hadn’t been here when the episode started…” She raised her shoulder.

Presley got the message. Harper was conditioned by generations of tradition to believe the hospital was essential to dispensing care, but in twenty-first century America, there were other more cost-effective models. “What about urgent care centers? According to our geographic searches, there are quite a few within reasonable driving distance.”

A muscle in Harper’s jaw jumped. “Urgent care centers have their place. They’re great for routine problems, but they’re not designed for emergency care. They transfer out anything of a serious nature. And this?” She shook her head. “I had trouble getting that tube in.”

“And if you hadn’t been able to? Couldn’t she have been transported to a medical center with pediatric intensivists?”

“Not safely. Flann would’ve had to do an emergency tracheostomy. In the emergency room, on a child? Not many people could do it.”

“I see,” Presley said. “And what if you and your sister hadn’t been immediately available? I’m guessing no one else here could have done what you did.”

“We’re always available.”

“Unusual, and admirable. All the same, let’s say the mother hadn’t had the option of coming here. Then she would have driven to a tertiary care center to begin with.”

“Why would I want to assume that?”

“Just hypothesizing, Dr. Rivers,” Presley said carefully. “We consider such things when determining risk management, for one thing.”

Harper rose, her expression shuttered. “Peggy. That’s the little girl’s name. Peggy Giles is going to be fine. Her mother brought her to the right place.”

“Of course.” Presley couldn’t argue, at least not now. She’d seen the truth of Harper’s statement. “You—all of you—were impressive.”

Harper’s gaze captured hers. “Will you take the time to know who we are? What we do?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Is it?”

Presley searched for a truthful answer. “We work on different sides of the same street, Harper.”

“Then walk on mine awhile. A month—spend a month with me in my practice.”

Presley laughed. “I can’t do that—I’ve got a schedule to keep. I…” I need to wrap this up before Preston shuts me out.

“Afraid to see the faces of the people behind the numbers?”

“That’s not fair,” Presley shot back. “You don’t know me or what I do.”

Harper raked a hand through her hair, her jaw clenching. “You’re right. So educate me.”

“Fine. I will.”

Harper grinned and Presley glowered. What had she just agreed to?

*

Presley left the ER and, halfway back to her office, abruptly changed her mind. She followed the exit signs to the side entrance and walked around to where she’d parked her car. She had too much nervous energy to sit behind her desk. The restlessness was a totally alien sensation. Work was her touchstone, her office the place she escaped to when the emotional ups and downs of dealing with her parents and the mental stress of jousting with Preston wore her down. But right now, her body refused to settle, and she climbed into her car and drove down the winding road away from the hospital with the windows open and the wind whipping through her hair. The image of Peggy Giles, so limp and lifeless, and the primal keening of her mother pursued her.

She pulled into the long dirt drive leading to the Whites’ and sat gripping the steering wheel, the faint mechanical ticking of the cooling engine loud in her ears. She hadn’t really let Harper goad her into wasting hours trailing after her, had she? She’d have to find a plausible excuse to withdraw. The more time she spent with Harper, the more she’d have to defend a position Harper could never appreciate or accept. Harper was an idealist, the worst kind of person to involve in business decisions. God. She needed to draw a firm line in the sand before a simple job got out of hand.

When she finally looked up and saw the rental car parked by the barn, she almost cheered. A little bit of normality at last. Carrie was here, solid, reliable, dependable Carrie, who understood the way she thought and didn’t take issue with her simply for being realistic. She hurried up the walk into the house. “Carrie?”

“Out here,” Carrie’s lilting voice announced.

Presley left her briefcase by the stairs and strode to the kitchen. The room was empty, a covered plate of what she hoped were more of Lila’s muffins on the table, and the screen door open. Outside, Carrie leaned against the back-porch post. “Hi! You found the place, I see.”

Carrie turned, her deep green eyes shining. Wisps of her shoulder-length red hair clung to her milky cheeks. “This place is amazing.”

“That’s certainly one word for it.” Presley scanned the yard. It was empty except for patches of deep yellow daffodils that seemed to have cropped up in the last few hours. The temperature had climbed but was still absurdly cool for June.

“Really! Everything is so green. And trees everywhere. It smells wonderful.”

Presley studied Carrie suspiciously. What could she say to that? Everything was amazingly green and golden and brilliant blue and ridiculously idyllic. And clearly, Carrie had already breathed too much of the intoxicating air. Hoping to bring her back to earth, she asked, “Have you been upstairs? Either one of the open rooms is yours.”

“I have. I took the one looking out the front. It’s an awesome view. Have you been exploring?”

“Ah, I haven’t actually walked around the place yet, but it seems like all the necessities are here.”

“What’s the hospital like?”

“About what you’d expect—better maintained than most places that aren’t even half as old, with a fairly steady census.”

Carrie pursed her lips. “I got the feeling Preston saw this as a quick turnover, maybe transitioning to long-term care or some kind of outpatient imaging center. Depending on the reimbursement profiles.”

That was SOP for small outlying places like this, but simply hearing that it had been part of Preston’s plan made Presley resistant. She doubted he’d done more than look at the financials for the last several years. He wouldn’t have had the patience to do a geographic or demographic analysis of the area. “Yes, well, we’ll know more when we’ve had a breakdown of resources and usage.”

“Yes, we ought to be sure we head in the right direction.” Carrie rose. “What about the staff? Any issues?”

Presley immediately thought of Harper. She could handle Harper—she just needed to remain firmly in charge and remember why she’d come. “Not so far.”

“Good. I’m ready to dig in, then.”

“Are you sure?” Presley wanted to return to the hospital, but strangely, her first thought wasn’t of work. She wondered if she might run into Harper again. She quickly pushed the thought aside.

“Totally. Can you give me fifteen to take a quick shower?”

“Don’t hurry.”

After Carrie disappeared inside, Presley sat on the stairs to wait. While she checked her mail, she half expected the rooster to appear to annoy her. After a few minutes he was a no-show. Maybe he slept in the barn during the day. She supposed she could go check while she waited.

The big barn door slid back surprisingly easily as she pushed it to one side. The interior was huge, with a row of empty stalls along one side under a loft still piled high with bales of hay. Light filtered through the metal-mesh-covered windows in the stalls and slanted through the cracks in the board walls. The hot, steamy air smelled sweet.

“Rooster?” Presley walked down the wide aisle and caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye. Her pulse jumped. Empty barns didn’t have rats, did they? “Rooster?”

The answering cry was distinctly un-Rooster-like. Stepping forward cautiously, she peered into a dim corner and shiny eyes stared back.

“Oh!” She jerked back as her brain deciphered the shapes. Little heads, little faces. Kittens. Four—no, five.

“Caw?”

Presley spun around. Rooster hopped up. “Oh no. This is not good.”

“What isn’t?” Carrie said from the doorway.

“Livestock everywhere,” Presley said.

Carrie joined her. “Look how cute! Where’s the mother?”

“Not too close, I hope.” Presley flapped a hand at Rooster. “Shoo. Go. Cats. Birds. Bad. Go.”

He cocked his head and didn’t move.

“Should we feed them?” Carrie said.

“No! Maybe they’ll go away.”

Carrie’s face fell.

“Fine. Why not!” Presley stalked toward the door and Rooster obligingly followed. “Why don’t we just give up business altogether and become farmers.”

“Ah,” Carrie said, unable to hide a smile, “we can probably manage both. Multitasking is our specialty.”

“Right.” Presley slid into her car and started the engine. Carrie jumped in beside her. Rooster watched as she U-turned around and roared away. Simply perfect.

Chapter Nine

Harper dictated Peggy Giles’s admission H&P and a procedure note, and headed for the ICU to make sure the baby was stable. She had no reason to go down the east corridor, although she wondered if Presley had gone back to her office and had to force herself not to wander over to check. What would be the point—they’d come to an impasse and they’d probably only argue. She wasn’t sure how things had unraveled quite so quickly. Presley had actually seemed interested and relaxed while they’d been making rounds, and Harper had enjoyed introducing her to patients and describing their care. Sharing her work came naturally, given that everyone in the family was part of it and always had been, but she’d rarely discussed it with anyone outside the family, not even the women she’d dated. There’d never seemed to be any need, when Flann or Carson or her parents were always around to bounce things off or share an exciting story with. Today had been different—showing Presley what the Rivers meant to her, to everyone within its walls, mattered on more than a professional level. Sharing her world with Presley had been satisfying in a way she hadn’t expected, at least until Presley had retreated into the alien landscape of budgets and cost-benefit analysis and other things that didn’t belong anywhere in the province of caring for patients. The thread of connection they’d been weaving had abruptly snapped, and that bothered Harper more than she wanted to admit. Fortunately, she had more important things to occupy her mind.

She walked through the ICU to the room at the end where they put the pediatric patients. Peggy was the only child in the unit. She lay in the center of the bed, her arms and legs outstretched and connected to IVs, EKG leads, a blood-pressure cuff, and a urinometer. The breathing tube ran to the ventilator beside the bed. She looked like a pale blond doll amongst all the equipment. The nurse who was charting vital signs smiled when she walked in.

“How’s she doing?” Harper asked.

“She’s been fine. We just sent a blood gas.”

“Great.” Harper listened to her chest. The breath sounds were clear and evenly distributed on both sides. She’d had to sedate her so she would tolerate the breathing tube and would need to keep her that way as long as the tube was needed. Hopefully, the steroids would kick in quickly, the swelling would go down, and the antibiotics would knock out the infection. As quickly as kids went bad, they bounced back too. “Did someone go to get her mother?”

“As soon as I get her cleaned up a little more, I’ll send Nancy down for her.”

“Thanks. Call me if anything changes.” Satisfied that everything was stable, Harper charted a few notes. She was done at the hospital and had no more reason to stay. She especially had no reason to drop by admin, but the urge to see if Presley had remained was still there, an annoying presence in the back of her mind like the throb of a sore tooth. Pushing the impulse aside, she left the ICU.

Flann, still in scrubs, sauntered down the hall in Harper’s direction. “I was just going to check on her.”

“She’s stable.”

“Good.” Flannery fell in beside Harper as she headed for the stairwell. “So how did our Ms. Worth come to be down in the ER during all of that?”

“When did she become our Ms. Worth?” Harper heard the crankiness in her voice. Every time the subject of Presley came up her hackles rose for no good reason. Of course, the woman herself was irritating enough to be the explanation. Flann’s obstinate refusal to recognize anything about her other than the fact that she was attractive and intelligent just added to her annoyance.

Flann grinned. “Well, I figured since we were sharing—”

“Knock it off, Flann.”

“Oh, sensitive. Is there something I should know?”

Harper stopped walking and jammed her hands on her hips. “It seems like you should already know without being told. Presley is not a member of your fan club. She’s here to take over the hospital, and we don’t even know what the plans are.”

“I didn’t know I had a fan club. Is there a website?”

Harper blew out a breath. “You know, sometimes you are a real pain in the ass.”

“Really?” Flannery raised her brows. “I never knew you thought that.”

Harper laughed. Flann could always make her laugh, even when she’d broken one of Harper’s toys, or gotten them both in trouble with one of her harebrained schemes, or drawn the attention of one of the girls Harper had given a thought to. She couldn’t stay mad at her. “Would you just think about something besides your hormones? Just this once.”

“I was,” Flann protested, the devil-may-care glint in her eyes at odds with her innocent tone. “I was thinking I’d go undercover, and when Presley falls victim to my charms, she’ll tell me everything, and I could report back.”

“Your charms notwithstanding,” Harper said, “I don’t think she’s going to fall victim to anything at all. If we’re not careful, we’ll be the ones picking ourselves up off our asses.”

“You’re really worried, aren’t you,” Flann said.

“Aren’t you?”

“I sort of thought I’d wait to see what was actually proposed before I got all doom and gloom about it.”

“Spend some time with her,” Harper said, and immediately regretted the suggestion. Why the idea of Flann and Presley together bothered her so much was just another irritation. Why should she care? “Listen to the questions she asks. I’m not getting the sense that she thinks the hospital’s all that necessary.”

“Come on, Harper. Why would they buy it if they didn’t want it?”

“I’ve been looking into SunView. There are more things in the SunView Health System than hospitals, and a lot don’t involve direct patient care.”

“Yeah, but this is a functioning hospital.”

“Do you really think that matters?”

Flann grimaced. “Yeah, I do.”

“I hope you’re right,” Harper said, but she had a bad feeling that Flannery’s legendary intuition was off this time. Presley might not be the cold, mechanical number cruncher she’d first taken her to be. That was evident from the way she’d reacted in the ER a little while ago. She’d comforted Jenny Giles instinctively, and that sort of kindness came from genuine caring. Those flashes of warmth disappeared pretty quickly when she started talking about the reason she was here, though. Then she was all hard facts and cold figures, and the questions she asked seemed to be leading to the conclusion that the hospital was superfluous. Nothing could be further from the truth. The hospital was the heartbeat of the community. Or, Harper had to admit, at least the center of her life. She couldn’t help thinking Presley meant to destroy it.

*

Flannery glanced at the big clock on the OR wall: 3:05. An hour and nine minutes. Excellent time. She checked the incisions again and cauterized the last few small bleeders.

“Happy up there?” she asked Ray Wilcox, the anesthesiologist.

“Smooth as can be,” Ray said. “What do you figure, fifteen minutes?”

“That sounds about right.” Flannery looked across the table to Glenn, who had assisted her on the laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Glenn had good hands and would have made an excellent surgeon, but she said she liked being a PA, liked the direct patient care without the hassle of running a practice. Flann counted herself lucky to have Glenn as backup at night and a first assistant in the OR. “You want to finish closing for me?”

“Sure.” Glenn held out her hand and the scrub nurse passed her the needle holder and suture.

“Page me when she’s extubated.”

“Will do.”

Flann stepped back from the table and waited for the circulating nurse to untie her gown. She pulled it off and tossed the gown into the hamper and the gloves into the trash. “Thanks, everybody.”

She grabbed her white coat from a hook inside the locker room and stopped in the family waiting area to talk to Margaret Hancock’s husband. Earl Hancock wore faded work pants, worn boots, and a pressed white shirt frayed at the collar. His hands were chapped and scarred, the knuckles swollen from decades of hard physical labor in all kinds of weather. He’d shaved close that day, and a couple of nicks marred his weathered cheeks. His deep-set blue eyes were clouded with worry. Margaret and Earl were high-school sweethearts and had been married going on forty years. Like Flann’s mother and father, they were lifelong friends and lovers and partners. She’d seen it work, knew it could, but her parents’ example was a lot to live up to. The idea of trying and failing kept her from getting too involved with anyone. She’d leave that particular legacy to Harper. That was one area in which she had no desire to compete.

“She’s fine,” Flann said. That was likely all he’d hear, but she’d repeat it all later if need be. “She’ll be in the recovery room in about fifteen minutes.”

“Can I see her?”

“Not in there. She’ll be asleep yet anyhow. The gallbladder came out without any problems. She had a few stones, and I suspect that’s what was causing all the pain every time she ate.”

“So she’s going to be better now?”

“I think she’s going to be a lot better. She’ll need to take it easy for a week or so at home, but we were able to do everything through the small incisions I told you about, with the laparoscope, so she won’t have too much pain and the healing will be a lot faster.”

He rubbed his jaw. From his expression, he didn’t really understand everything she was talking about, but he took her at her word and his eyes cleared. “That’s good then.”

“Better than good. That’s excellent.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “The nurses will let you know when she goes upstairs and her room number.”

“Okay. Thanks, Doc.”

“You bet.”

Flannery made a quick stop in the OR control room to check on her room. Two rows of four monitors showed the interiors of the eight operating rooms. She’d been in OR six. Glenn had finished sewing and was cleaning the abdomen before putting on the dressings. Flannery reached through the window, nodding to the ward clerk, and flipped the toggle on the intercom. “Is the tube out, Glenn?”

Glenn looked up. “Yes.”

“Everything good?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks.” She flipped the toggle back. “How you doing, Darlene?”

“Can’t complain,” the thin redhead with tired eyes said. She’d married her high-school sweetheart right after graduation and at twenty-five had four kids already. Flannery didn’t think much of her husband, who had trouble keeping a job, but Darlene seemed happy enough with him, which was probably what really mattered.

“You look terrific,” Flann said. “I like your new haircut.”

Darlene’s eyes lit up, and she patted her hair self-consciously. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Flannery waved and took off down the hall. So far, the day was looking good. Her surgeries had gone like clockwork and all her patients were doing fine. She had nothing scheduled for the rest of the afternoon except possibly a few hours with a very attractive woman who challenged her on most every level. She strolled by the admin offices and ducked into the alcove by the staff office, expecting to see her father’s secretary ensconced at the desk. She drew up short.

She’d known Alice Cunningham her entire life and enjoyed flirting with the cheerful sixty-year-old. The woman behind the desk, however, was not Alice. Not by a long shot. She looked about twenty-five and like she ought to be doing commercials for natural health products, she appeared so completely untarnished. Creamy complexion, red-gold eyebrows over spring-grass-green eyes, and shimmering hair the color of polished copper. Loose waves fell to her shoulders and framed her oval face. Except for the lace-topped figure-hugging plum-colored top she wore, she might have stepped down from a horse-drawn carriage a century ago. As Flann watched, pleasantly entranced, those green eyes widened and the full rose-tinged lips parted.

Flann said, “I’m staring, aren’t I.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Forgive me.” Flann pressed a hand to her chest. “I couldn’t help myself. You are truly beautiful.”

“Ah.” Pink colored the ivory cheeks. “Thank you.”

“I should be thanking you.”

“Is there something I can help you with?” She spoke slowly, as if to a dangerous animal she wasn’t quite certain was safe, or to a madman.

Flann laughed. “Let’s start again. I’m Flannery Rivers. And who are you?”

“Carrie Longmire. Administrative assistant to Presley Worth.”

“Aha. The boss’s right hand.”

Carrie laughed. “Well—”

“Actually,” Presley said from the doorway of her office, “she’s occasionally both my hands and my brain. And she’s busy.”

“I am,” Carrie said quickly, pulling her keyboard closer.

Flann spun around. “Hello. Are you ready for your tour of the local wildlife?”

“I’m afraid my schedule—”

Carrie coughed delicately, and Presley shot her a look. Flann watched the silent exchange and noted that the beautiful Carrie Longmire held considerable sway with the formidable new hospital exec. Interesting.

Presley sighed. “We did work through lunch, and I suppose it would be a good idea for both of us to get a introduction to the area.”

“Excellent.” Flann looked from Presley to Carrie. The day just kept getting better. “I would be delighted to escort you both.”

Carrie popped up from behind her desk and grabbed an oversized leather bag.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Presley said and disappeared into her office.

“Does she bite?” Flann whispered.

Carrie smiled sweetly. “Only when necessary.”

Chapter Ten

Flannery drove them into the village and parked on the main street, a two-lane road running through six or seven blocks of the village proper. The area would have been called quaint except that on close inspection many of the buildings showed unmistakable signs of deterioration and at least a third of the storefront businesses were closed. The village itself was an odd mixture of residences and businesses mingled together, as if houses had been built with an eye toward the proximity to the essentials of community life—work, school, and church. Several old brick factories stood along the river, their windows broken out and, in some cases, the roofs collapsed or damaged by fire.

“What was the industry here?” Presley asked.

“The Hudson River Valley has always been agricultural, but in the early settlements the river also provided power for mills, primarily flax, and transportation routes for textile and paper production. Once those goods started shipping by rail and manufacturing eventually moved out of the country altogether, the factories died away. Now tourism and agriculture are the primary sources of income in this area.”

Carrie said, “I read somewhere recently that a big electronics factory is locating near here. That will bring in new money, won’t it?”

Presley was impressed. Carrie had always been a self-starter, which was one of the many reasons she would do well. Her amiable, outgoing manner put clients at ease, and she had a keen business mind coupled with an aggressive determination to succeed. That little tidbit about a major new industry in the area was news, and something she’d have to factor in to her projections.

“That’s true, at least the factory is being built not far from here,” Flannery said. “But in general, people don’t like to commute, so I’m not sure how much housing spillover we’ll get. Still, the hospital draws from a large catchment area throughout the rural counties and provides jobs for a lot of the local community.”

“How far are we from the major highway? The Northway, isn’t it?” Presley said.

“Not far—at least not by rural standards. Probably twenty minutes, but then it’s another fifteen or twenty to the next regional hospital and a good forty-five to anything larger than that.”

Presley made a mental note to include that data in her assessment. She pointed to a feed store across the street. “That place—would they have rooster food?”

Flannery stopped, a grin spreading across her face. She’d changed into jeans and a polo shirt before they’d left the hospital, and she looked more like one of the tourists ambling along the streets than the urban surgeons Presley was used to dealing with. “No, ’fraid not.”

Presley frowned. “Mail-order then?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well then, where—”

“You could probably get chicken food, if you’re talking about, you know”—she made flapping movements with her arms—“cluck, cluck.”

“I see. Thank you for being so very helpful.” Presley tried to hide her smile with a glare. Flannery was charming enough to pull off the teasing, a friendly bantering Presley had never shared with anyone. Her family was not big on humor, and people she worked with wouldn’t assume the familiarity. When Flannery laughed, her brown eyes alight, Presley relented and joined in.

“How about people food?” Carrie asked. “Any place in town good for takeout or eat in?”

“There’s a diner, opens at three and closes about two.”

“Wait,” Carrie said. “Three in the afternoon until two in the morning?”

“Other way around—a.m. to p.m. No supper. Most everybody’s inside and in bed soon after the sun goes down. No late-night business.”

“You’re not really serious,” Presley said.

“Actually, I’m not exaggerating by much. The farmers are all up and out before sunrise, and once the sun goes down there’s not much to do around here. So supper is an early affair and then everyone turns in.”

Presley sent up a prayer to the gods of the Internet that she’d at least be able to contact the outside world somehow at night while the rest of the community slumbered.

“Where’s the supermarket?” Carrie asked.

Flannery pointed in the opposite direction from which they’d arrived in town. “There’s a small grocery on the far end of town with local produce in season and just about anything you’d need in terms of essentials. Good pizza and sandwiches too. There’s a big organic full-service place about twenty-five minutes south of here.”

Carrie looked aghast. “Twenty-five minutes. For groceries.”

“That and most big department stores, for clothes and that sort of thing.”

“Oh my God.” Carrie looked at Presley. “You knew and you didn’t warn me.”

“I didn’t want to ruin your flight.”

“Come on,” Flannery said. “I’ll buy you an ice cream while you recover from the culture shock.”

“This makes up for the grocery a little,” Carrie said as they sat on a wooden bench in front of the ice cream shop with enormous cones of homemade ice cream.

When they’d finished, Flannery took them through the rest of the town and pointed out the post office, the small, still-family-run pharmacy, the pizza place, the diner, and the bar that served food until ten at night. All in all it took them forty minutes of leisurely walking.

Presley couldn’t argue the village had its charms, with its quiet, almost genteel sensibility, but she suspected she would soon chafe at the absence of readily accessible conveniences. She glanced at her watch. “I think Carrie and I should probably make a quick run to that supermarket you mentioned. Our housekeeper is going to help with the food shopping, but we don’t have much of anything else in the house.”

“You said you hadn’t had lunch and it’s almost suppertime,” Flannery said. “Come to my house for dinner.”

“No,” Presley said quickly. Too quickly to be polite, probably, but the idea of socializing further with Flannery was out of the question. Flannery was for all intents and purposes her employee. “Thank you, but you’ve already been far too kind.”

“Oh, sorry,” Flannery said, “I gave you the wrong idea. I’m not cooking. That would be my mother. Everyone has dinner at the big house on Friday night.”

“Well, we certainly can’t intrude.” Presley backed up a few steps and glanced at Carrie for support. A family dinner. That meant Harper would be there. While Flannery had been entertaining her and Carrie, she’d managed not to think about the way she’d left things with Harper earlier. She couldn’t recall the last time anyone had seen her lose control like that. Seeing Harper at dinner would require a truce if not an apology for losing her temper, and that would just be—awkward. “I’m sure your mother wouldn’t appreciate surprise gue—”

“My mother is used to us bringing friends home. We’ve been doing it all our lives.”

“Yes, but we’re not dressed and—”

Flannery raised her brows. “You don’t look naked to me.”

Presley shot Carrie another look.

“You know,” Carrie said, “dinner would be great if it really wouldn’t be a huge imposition on your mother. Maybe we could help? I’m pretty good in the kitchen.”

Flannery laughed. “Not unless you’d like to lose some of your appendages. My mother might put you to work, but you’ll have to wait until she deems you worthy. Let’s go, we’re not that far away.”

“I really don’t thi—” Presley’s protest died as Carrie grabbed her arm.

“I think meeting the Rivers family would be a wonderful idea,” Carrie said.

Outmaneuvered again. Bowing gracefully to the inevitable, Presley said, “For a short while, yes. Thank you so much.”

“Like I said,” Flannery said, leading the way back to her Jeep, “entirely my pleasure.”

*

The house at the end of the long drive was different than anything Presley had seen in town or the surrounding farmland they’d passed through in the last ten minutes. The stately mansion, sprawling along the water’s edge, was surrounded by copses of trees and fields of corn just breaking through the earth that swept like soft green wings along the riverfront. From the drive, the front of the house had a formal appearance with tall symmetrical windows set in brick, and heavy white colonnades framing the entrance. A Volvo sat under a porte cochere on the left, and Flannery pulled up behind it.

“Good, Carson’s here. Have you met her yet?”

“Not yet.” Presley had wanted to have a little more information before she talked to the third Rivers sister about hospital census, admission patterns, medical records, and other demographic data, but now her plans had been preempted. An all-too-familiar occurrence lately and not one she welcomed.

Carrie leaned forward from the backseat. “This is amazing. How much land is there?”

Flannery cut the engine and opened her door to admit a breeze smelling of earth and water and green things. “The original parcel was fifteen hundred acres. Over the centuries, some was portioned off to the offspring of the original owners so the children could homestead near their parents and grandparents. Currently, we have a little over five hundred acres.”

“Do you live here, then?” Presley asked, secretly horrified at the thought of living anywhere near—let alone with—her parents. Obligatory dinners and social events always turned into critiques of her and Preston’s latest accomplishments, or lack thereof.

“Not me, no.” Flannery’s expression closed for an instant before her usual smile returned. “Harper has the old caretaker’s place just back up the road a quarter mile, and Carson and her husband Bill have ten acres round the next bend.”

Of course Harper would be the one closest to home, Presley thought. She was the heir apparent not just at the hospital, but here too.

“Five hundred acres.” Carrie stepped out and looked around. “It’s magnificent. And I think I smell dinner.”

Presley walked between Flannery and Carrie on the way to the house, preparing for a less-than-warm welcome. She doubted anyone in the Rivers family was happy about the transition. But Carrie was right, meeting the family was a good way to judge what she might be up against in the next few weeks. She refused to consider it might be the next few months.

Another porch stretched the length of the back of the house, facing a long grassy slope down to the river. Across the river, which looked to be a quarter of a mile wide, were at least four more huge fields and a white farmhouse beyond those. Otherwise there were no neighbors in sight.

“Here we are.” Flannery held open the screen door and gestured them inside.

Steeling herself, Presley walked into an enormous kitchen redolent of something wonderful. A younger woman who had to be Carson, since she looked like a red-haired copy of Harper, sat at the table with a child in her lap. A gold wedding band glinted on her left hand. An older woman with dark hair streaked with gray at the temples and striking blue eyes the same shade as Harper’s, wearing a red-and-white checked apron around her neck and a plain blue cotton dress, chopped carrots at a cutting board by the sink. She glanced over and took in Presley and Carrie in one swift glance.

“Hello. I’m Ida Rivers.”

“Presley Worth,” Presley said. “Please forgive us for intruding, but Flannery—”

Flannery strode by and kissed her mother on the cheek. “I told them there was plenty of room at the table and the best food in the county right here.”

“Well, you weren’t lying about the first part.”

“Hello,” Presley said, shaking Ida’s offered hand and turning to the woman at the table. “You must be Carson.”

“Guilty.” Carson reached around the baby, who was waving a cookie in the air with vigorous delight, and took Presley’s hand. “Good to meet you.”

“I’m Carrie,” Carrie said, shaking hands all around. “I’m Presley’s admin.”

“Welcome to town.” Ida went back to her preparations. “Flannery, get our guests something to drink.”

“Wine? Beer? Something soft?”

“Would iced tea be a possibility?” Presley asked.

Carson laughed. “In Mama’s house? Always.”

Flannery edged around her mother and took glasses down from a glass-fronted wooden cabinet hanging above the counter. She set them on the table and filled them with tea. Presley took a glass and sat at the plank table as a vehicle rumbled outside, followed a moment later by footsteps. The screen door swung open and Harper strode in.

Harper stopped abruptly, taking in the group. For just an instant, Presley thought she saw pleasure sweep across Harper’s face before Harper glanced at Flann and something else moved into her eyes. A question. Or displeasure. She had probably been looking forward to a pleasant family dinner only to discover, instead, the enemy in her camp. Her gaze settled on Presley.

“Hi, Presley.”

“Harper. Good to see you again.” And despite the way they’d parted, it was. Harper radiated a deep, intense energy that caught one up like the slowly building pleasure of a fine wine, heady and strong.

“Hello,” Harper said to Carrie, holding out her hand. “I’m Harper Rivers.”

“Carrie, Presley’s admin.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Have you heard from your father?” Ida asked.

“A few minutes ago. He’s on his way.” Harper leaned against the counter and stared at Presley. “How was your afternoon?”

“Educational,” Presley said, her throat dry despite the iced tea. Harper had changed as well and wore faded black jeans, an open-collared white short-sleeved shirt, and black boots. She must have just showered. Her hair was still damp and a few thick strands clung to her neck. She looked lean and taut and darkly forbidden. As with the finest chocolate, one bite would never be enough. Presley gave herself a mental shake. She’d never really cared for chocolate. “Flannery is an excellent guide.”

“No doubt.”

The glint in Harper’s eyes brought heat to Presley’s face. She pulled her gaze away when the swinging doors on the far end of the room opened and a teenager barreled in. The last Rivers sibling. Tall and coltish and destined to be a blue-eyed beauty.

“I’m starving.” The girl glanced around, took in Carrie and Presley. “Hi, everybody. Dinner soon?”

“Soon enough,” Ida said.

“Awesome.” With the remarkable self-assuredness of a teenager, she passed through the kitchen and out to the back porch, a book under her arm. As she passed, Presley caught a glimpse of the title. Money in the Twenty-first Century.

“We’ll have dinner when your father gets home,” Ida announced to the room in general. “Let’s say half an hour, if I know what on his way means to him.”

“Is there anything we can do—” Presley began.

“Yes, you can relax and enjoy yourselves. Flannery, Harper, show your guests around.”

“Oh, that’s really not nec—”

Carrie jumped up. “If it’s all right, I would love to see the house. I adore old historic homes.”

“You’re in the right place,” Flannery said. “I’ll give you a tour. Presley?”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just enjoy the view.” Presley escaped to the back porch and out of range of Harper’s brooding gaze. The teenager was sitting on the top stair, her back against the carved white post. “Do you mind company?”

“Nope. I’m Margie.”

“Presley. How’s the book?”

“Not bad, but I think it’s already a little outdated. They’re recommending bonds, for one thing.”

Presley nodded. “That’s a problem with books—by the time they’re published, some of the data is already outdated, especially in fast-moving areas like the economy.”

“Are you here about the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Independent institutions like the Rivers have trouble running in the black.”

“Sometimes.”

Margie set the book aside and wrapped her arms around her knees, studying Presley with unwavering scrutiny. “Can you turn it around or are you going to liquidate?”

Presley wondered if the girl was a plant. Maybe she was just a very young-looking twenty-something. She tried to remember what Harper had told her about the order of the siblings. She could have sworn there were only four. She hedged. “I just got here. No decisions without data, right?”

“True, but someone must’ve done it before the acquisition, though, right?”

Presley narrowed her eyes. Definitely a plant.

From behind them, Harper said, “Margie, subjecting a visitor to an inquisition would be considered impolite even by Yankee standards.”

Margie grinned at Presley. “Sorry.”

“Not at all,” Presley said. “If you like, I can give you a couple of titles you might enjoy better than that one.”

“Great, thanks.”

Harper said, “Dad just called and he’s going to be just a few minutes later than he thought.”

Presley stood and dusted off her trousers. “I’ll leave you two—”

Harper stepped closer, her intense gaze all Presley could see. “Would you like to take a walk down to the river?”

The words came out before she could stop them. “I would. Yes.”

Chapter Eleven

Harper guided Presley on a winding stepping-stone path across the grassy lawn and down toward the river where clusters of maples and evergreens leaned out above the water, their branches swaying gently in the breeze. As they walked, she slipped her hand beneath Presley’s elbow. “It’s a little uneven on these stones. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. I think I’ll have to give up wearing any kind of heels.”

Harper laughed. “You’ll probably be fine inside the hospital. Besides, you look good in them.”

“Ah…thanks.”

Presley seemed surprised and maybe a little embarrassed by Harper’s comment. Harper felt much the same. She rarely—okay, possibly never—commented on a woman’s appearance, at least not one she wasn’t dating. Presley somehow had her acting unlike herself in all sorts of ways.

They stopped on the riverbank where craggy boulders edged the water. An occasional powerboat sped by, its engine an unnatural growl in the otherwise still air. Strands of Presley’s hair floated around her face, and Harper had the urge to catch one in her hand and tame it back into place—or loose all the rest.

Presley turned and caught her staring. For a long moment neither spoke. Finally Presley broke the silence. “I didn’t realize the river was so large this far north. I’ve seen it in New York City, of course.”

“It doesn’t really narrow until a little farther upriver from here, although there are falls intermittently along the way.”

“Do you have a boat?”

“Not anymore. We did when we were kids, but none of us have much time, and truthfully, there’s too much traffic on the river now. I prefer to canoe or kayak on some of the smaller lakes around here.”

Presley threaded an errant lock back into place with a swift, economical gesture, as she seemed to do everything. That motion decided Harper—she definitely wanted to tug free the clasp at Presley’s nape and watch the wind run through her thick hair like subtle fingers. Presley was a woman who needed rumpling.

“I suppose after a week in the hospital, getting away to someplace quiet is what you’re looking for,” Presley said.

“Most of the time.” Harper slid her hands into her pockets to avoid embarrassing them both again and watched the waves ripple by on the river. “Although I’ve always liked quiet places.”

“Oh? And where did you go to find that in a house with four sibs?”

Harper considered how to answer. The question was personal, and she didn’t do personal easily. She found herself wanting to answer, which made her pause. Parts of Presley came out when she was away from work that Harper very much enjoyed. Presley’s question indicated she’d remembered Harper had once had four sisters, even though she had only mentioned Kate once. Presley listened and took note of things. There was power in listening, and Harper already was at a disadvantage. Presley had the ultimate authority at the hospital, and now she was here at the farm, the one place Harper always believed to be unassailable. This was where she came when she was disappointed or uncertain or disillusioned. When she’d walked into the kitchen and seen Presley at the table, her first reaction had been pleasure, followed quickly by disquiet. Presley had looked right sitting there, and there was no reason she should. Harper had intended to limit her socializing with Presley to the simple courtesies extended to any guest in her home until her mother came up beside her as she leaned on the counter by the open window, listening to Presley and Margie talking on the back porch.

“Took you by surprise, didn’t it,” Ida said. “Them being here.”

“Yeah.”

Ida rubbed Harper’s shoulder. “You’re not one for liking surprises.”

“You think I would be after all these years with Flann.”

“True enough.” Ida laughed. “Sometimes, Harper, you have to look beyond what you know to find what you want.”

Harper glanced at her mother. “Could you speak plain on that?”

“I think I just did.” Ida gave her a little shove. “Go entertain our guest. I raised you with better manners than this.”

Harper had done as her mother asked, and when Presley had agreed to the walk, she’d been surprised again at the pleasure the prospect of a walk gave her. Now she was enjoying their lazy conversation that ambled like the breeze through the grass, shifting direction with careless ease, and enjoying looking at her too. She puzzled over the inexplicable urge to share something even more personal than the time they’d spent together in the hospital. Practicing medicine was personal, but this, this place was a private passion and secret pleasure. Presley watched her, waiting, as if knowing she was trying to come to a decision. That was enough to make her decide.

“Come on,” Harper said, “I’ll show you.”

“All right.”

Harper took Presley’s elbow again and led her away from the river onto a cool, shadowy path through the trees. Twenty yards in she stopped, and Presley glanced around before giving her a questioning look.

“Do you think you can climb in those shoes?” Harper asked.

“Climb? As in a tree?” Presley’s voice rose as if Harper had suddenly lost her mind.

Harper grinned. “Sort of. More like a ladder. But if you don’t think you can handle it…”

Presley’s eyes sparked. Clearly turning down a challenge was not in her nature. “Can I do it without shoes?”

“I guess it depends on how tough you are.”

Presley immediately kicked off her shoes and stood barefoot on the soft mossy ground, her hands planted on her hips. “Ha. Show me this ladder of yours, Dr. Rivers.”

Chuckling, Harper guided her around the trunk of a huge oak tree that had to be hundreds of years old, given the width of the trunk. On the far side, wide thick boards had been nailed to the trunk, forming a ladder climbing into the thick branches overhead. Presley tilted her head back.

“All right,” she said slowly. “I think I should go first. If I fall, I’ll expect you to catch me.”

“I promise.”

Presley stepped onto the bottom rung and reached up for the one above her head. When she wavered, Harper grasped her waist. Presley looked over her shoulder, one eyebrow quirked.

“Where exactly am I going?”

“You’ll know when you get there. Grab the next one and step up.” Harper tried not to stare at the very shapely ass directly in her line of sight.

“I don’t generally set out on a journey without knowing exactly what my destination will be.”

“I think my mother just said the same thing about me. Maybe we should take an adventure.”

Presley stared down at her for a moment longer. “Perhaps we should.”

She turned back to the tree and started to climb. Harper waited until she’d gone up several rungs and then started after her. “Doing all right?”

“It’s not as hard as I thought it would be.”

“I’m right behind you.”

“And if I fall, we’re both going down.”

“You won’t fall.”

“I suppose at least I’ll have someone qualified to remove the splinters.”

Harper smiled to herself.

“Wait, there’s something up here. Oh!”

Harper scrambled up as Presley disappeared. She reached the hatch in the floor of the tree house and levered herself inside. Presley was already looking out the window toward the river. “Worth the splinters?”

“This is incredible!” Presley spun around, amazed by this hidden treasure in the trees. Harper grinned at her, her pleasure so obvious it was contagious. Presley’s stomach fluttered in the oddest way. Now she understood why Harper had hesitated to reveal it. This place was special. “You built this?”

“Flann and I started it as a lark when we were kids,” Harper said quietly. “But I’ve been working on it all my life.”

“Can I…” Presley gestured, wanting to explore.

“Sure. It’s totally safe.”

Presley slowly circled the room. More than a room. The tree house was really a cabin nestled in the branches of the huge oak that rose through the center of the room and out through the roof. The plank floor circled the trunk for ten feet on all sides, with windows on each of the four walls. A sofa with soft plum cushions took up part of one wall, bookshelves another, and a wood-burning stove the corner between the other two. The walls themselves were plain unfinished wood, gnarled and grained and obviously very old. The screened windows and a trap door over the hatch enclosed the space entirely.

She studied the books on the handmade shelves, expecting medical tomes or historical fiction with local settings. Instead she saw rows of numbered Tom Swifts and the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew—originals, from the look of them.

“Let me guess—Tom Swift for Flannery, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew for you?”

Harper rocked on her heels, studying her with that intense probing gaze. “How do you conclude that, Sherlock?”

Presley laughed. “Well, my dear Watson, Swift is an adventurer, first and foremost, and that would appeal to the surgeon in Flannery. The others are detectives, who study clues and ferret out hidden secrets. Much more in keeping with a medical specialist.”

“You know a lot more about medicine than you let on,” Harper said.

“Thanks.” Unexpectedly pleased again, Presley settled on a window seat beneath an open window, stretched out her legs, and propped her elbow on the narrow sill. From this height she could see patches of water framed by sun-dappled leaves and bits of blue sky peeking through the branches overhead. The isolation appealed to her. But more than that, the peace was a refreshing breeze cleansing her soul.

“It’s sort of like a cocoon, isn’t it,” she murmured.

Harper came to stand beside her. “I always thought of it like a cave.”

Presley looked up at her. Her skin shone golden in the slanting late-afternoon light. They might have been anywhere, in any age, and the timeless moment called to Presley in some primal way. “Either way, it’s a place to rest, maybe hide, and perhaps emerge changed.”

“I always thought of it as a place to keep things from changing.” Harper’s smile was crooked, whimsical.

“And there is our difference.”

“One of them.”

“We don’t need to be on opposite sides of this, you know, Harper.”

“Maybe we aren’t. I guess time will tell.”

“Yes.”

“Where do you go?” Harper asked. “To hide?”

Presley didn’t have an answer Harper would understand. “There’s nothing I want to escape from.”

“You’re lucky, then.”

“Not really.” Presley sighed. “I just let go of some of the things I wanted a long time ago.”

“What kind of things?” Harper stepped back and leaned against the tree. In her faded denim, plain shirt, and scuffed boots, she looked completely at home in the rough, hand-built room. She could have been a frontiersman from two hundred years before. Perhaps she would have been happier then too—living simply where honest work received honest reward and a chicken sufficed as well as a silver coin in payment.

She was also waiting for Presley to say more, but she’d already said far too much. “I bet you’re good at getting your patients to reveal their secrets. You have a way of looking at someone that makes it seem like you’re really interested.”

“I am. But most of them want to tell.”

“I don’t.”

“I know.”

“Besides, there’s nothing much to tell. I enjoy my work.” Presley knew she sounded defensive. “So there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“I enjoy my work too. But sometimes we have to step away from it in order to come back stronger.”

“You can’t step away until the battle is won.”

“What battle are you fighting?”

Presley felt heat rise to her face and waved her hand. “Figure of speech.”

Harper looked as if she didn’t believe her, but this time she didn’t press. “Okay.”

“What do you do when you don’t want to be alone?” Presley wanted to know as much as she wanted the conversation on safer ground.

“I play softball.”

“Of course you do.” Presley laughed and shook her head. “The all-American pastime.”

Harper grinned. “There’s a hospital team. We’re part of the local league. We could use another player or two. How about you and Carrie?”

“Me? No,” Presley said emphatically. “I have no idea if Carrie knows anything about softball. And we’re probably not going to be here long enough to really contribute.”

Harper stiffened. “Really? How long do you plan on staying?”

“I expect the initial phases will be done well before the summer is over.”

“And then you leave.”

“Yes. We’ll put a transition team in place and—”

“And you’ll move on to your next conquest.”

“No, I will go back to the head office in Phoenix.”

“And do what there?”

“Nothing that would interest you, I’m sure.” Presley didn’t know how Harper had suddenly turned the conversation around to her again, but she wanted to put an end to that right now.

“Try me.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You don’t know I won’t be interested unless you tell me.”

Harper’s tone held both challenge and invitation. How did she manage that? Presley said, “Just some business challenges that need my attention.”

“Is Preston your only sibling?”

“How do you know about Preston?”

Harper lifted a shoulder. “The Internet.”

“The Internet. You’ve been investigating us.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Presley said quickly. “And yes, Preston is my only sibling. We’re twins, actually.”

“Like me and Flann.”

Presley frowned. “I didn’t realize you were twins.”

“We’re not really, not biologically, but we’re close to that in some ways. When we were growing up, Flann was actually much more verbal than me even though she’s the younger. Once she got started, people worried I was never going to talk. She did that for both of us.”

“I am not at all surprised.” Presley laughed. “I’m sure you were the quiet, thoughtful one and she was the adventurer, always the first one to try something new. You would’ve been much more cautious.”

Harper grimaced. “You make me sound boring.”

“Not at all. Simply careful.”

“Careful.” She nodded. “Maybe.”

“I’m glad you showed me this tree house. I think I can almost understand the pleasure of escaping.”

Harper smiled. “You really should try it sometime.”

“I think maybe it takes a tree house.”

“Then you should build one.”

“If I ever decide to, I’ll have you design it for me.”

“My pleasure.”

Mine too, Presley almost said, and caught herself just in time. The air was still and warm inside the tree house, the scent of leaves and bark a sweet backdrop. The sun at her back painted the floor in swatches of gold. Harper stood half in shadow and half in sunlight, the contrast a reflection of her hidden depths. She was far more complex than the simple country doctor she liked to project—she had a secret life, secret pleasures she obviously didn’t share easily. Presley discovered she wanted to open those hidden doors to Harper’s secret self. That desire was not without risk. Harper’s gaze was the most direct Presley had ever known, unwavering, searching, making her feel as if all of her secrets were on display, making her feel vulnerable in a way both frightening and exhilarating. Despite feeling exposed, she wouldn’t look away, wouldn’t yield to the faint tremor growing in her depths. Her heart hammered in her throat.