Designs on the Doctor Read online

  So she didn’t offer an explanation and instead said, “How did it come about that you hang out with a group of…” She was a little afraid that she might refer to her mother and her mother’s friends in a way that would set him off. She settled on, “women of advanced years?”

  “It isn’t only women. I hang out with some advanced-years men, too,” he said, making fun of her cautious choice of words. “It’s just that the advanced-years women outnumber the men, so there are fewer men making up my posse.”

  Ally had to smile at that. “Your posse?” she repeated, happily surprised to discover that he had a sense of humor on top of the other appealing things she was coming to see him capable of.

  “That’s right, we’re the Silver Dogs,” he said, keeping up the patter. “Walkin’ our three miles a day, blowin’ those sweet retirement checks on cinnamon buns, hittin’ the streets to stir up trouble, maybe score some antacids and bunion pads on the black market.”

  “Okay, okay,” Ally stopped him, laughing. “I get it—you’re the Wild Bunch.”

  “Age isn’t a big deal to me,” he said then, without the humor. “We’re all just friends.”

  “But that still doesn’t tell me how you got involved with them.”

  “Through Bubby. I’ve been friends with her granddaughter Nina Hanson since we were both teenagers. That’s how I met Bubby, so I’ve known—and loved—Bubby for half my life. She hooked me up.”

  Another note of levity. Ally didn’t know if he was doing it purposely to ease the tension of being at the hospital again, of setting the wheels in motion to find out what was wrong with her mother, but it was helping even if that wasn’t what he had in mind.

  “Why did Bubby hook you up with them?” she asked.

  “I have a lot of geriatric patients in my private practice. I’m also on staff here, so I see a lot of seniors when they come into the hospital. Bubby knows that. She talked me into doing a few counseling groups at the Wilkens Center—grief and loss, adjusting to the changes of aging, things like that. That’s where I met your mom.”

  “You said that that first time we met, but you said Mother hadn’t exactly gone to you for therapy,” Ally reminded him.

  “Some of the groups are serious, by-the-book therapy, and, no, Estelle hasn’t come to any of those. Some are more social, more chitchat—we’ve hashed through getting one group converted to online banking so their social-security checks don’t come in the mail and get stolen out of their mailboxes. But the social groups have therapeutic value, too—isolation can breed depression.”

  “And the social groups are what Mother has joined,” Ally guessed. “Until you said it, I didn’t know you were part of the weekday walking—I thought it was just Mother and her friends. But if you’re in on that, does that mean it’s one of your sort-of-socializing counseling groups?”

  “No, the walking group really is just a bunch of friends and—like I said—I happen to be one of them. It did get its start at the center, in the counseling groups, though. I encourage exercise in all of the groups, but that wasn’t getting the job done—it needed some organizing, some implementing. Pretty much everybody who uses the senior center lives near it and so do I. I suggested we meet mornings in the park that’s central to us all, and it worked—several of the seniors from the center started showing up—including Bubby and Estelle.

  “We’ve been at it for four years now. Three miles a day, Monday through Friday, through all but the worst weather. We walk, we talk, we’ve all gotten to know each other pretty well.”

  He paused to drink more coffee, but his eyes never left her. Then he added, “Which is why I’m wondering now why I don’t know more about you.”

  “Probably because I’m not my mother’s favorite thing to talk about,” Ally muttered. Then, as if she hadn’t, she said, “What do you want to know?”

  “Why you make comments like that, for one.”

  “What else do you want to know?”

  He smiled at her blatant diversion. “Okay, how about something easy? Like, what do you do for a living—I can’t remember Estelle ever saying.”

  “I’m an interior designer.”

  “Do you work for yourself?”

  “Well, yes, I’m the Ally Rogers in Ally Rogers Designs. But I work for whoever hires me.”

  “And you’re in L.A., so does that make you the decorator to the stars?”

  He said that as if it were a headline and Ally laughed again. “I do have a celebrity-heavy client list.”

  “You must be good at what you do,” he said as if he was impressed.

  “I hope so.”

  “And you could tell me what color tile is on the bathroom walls of the biggest names in Hollywood?”

  Ally laughed once more at his mock-starstruck act.

  “I could, but then I’d be breaching confidentiality,” she said as if she were the medical professional.

  “I’ll bet you could whip my place into shape, couldn’t you?”

  That wasn’t an invitation and yet the idea of seeing his place gave Ally a little tingle of excitement.

  She told herself that was crazy and said, “Does your place need whipping into shape?”

  “Probably. I go for comfort not style. I can’t believe it wouldn’t give the decorator to the stars nightmares.”

  “What about you?” Ally countered, making it his turn. “How did you decide to become a psychiatrist?”

  He’d finished his coffee and pushed his cup away.

  “You’re not going to tell me how you decided to become a psychiatrist?” she persisted.

  He shrugged a shoulder and her gaze fell there and to the big bicep below it that stretched the polo shirt’s short sleeve to the maximum—apparently he did more in the way of working out than merely walking.

  “I grew up around a lot of people who had mental and emotional problems,” he finally said.

  “You did? And you said last night that you don’t have any family—could this be another piece of the Jake Fox puzzle?”

  He smiled a secretive sort of smile that said he was no more willing to be open with her than she had been with him. “Anyway,” he went on, “I saw how much suffering and turmoil there could be for psych patients and even for the rest of us who might have some things to deal with—”

  There was emphasis on that and a pointed poke of his chin at her to let her know he was referring to her and Estelle.

  But he didn’t push it, picking up where he’d left off to finish. “I just wanted to help, and in the process of getting some therapy of my own it struck me that being a psychiatrist was a good route to that.”

  “You were in therapy?”

  “I was,” he admitted unashamedly, giving her another puzzle piece.

  “So you didn’t just grow up around people with emotional and mental-health issues—you had some yourself?” Ally ventured, extending it as a challenge because she was wondering about him more and more with every clue he gave and she was hoping the question might provoke some candor.

  But Jake only smiled again to let her know he wasn’t taking the bait. “Everybody has issues.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re one of those brilliant but completely loony guys and you aren’t a doctor at all, you’re just posing as one and you’ve fooled this whole hospital.”

  “Want to see my credentials?” he asked in a wicked tone of voice, making her laugh yet again before he said, “The proof that I’m a bona fide M.D. is that I can drink hospital coffee.”

  “That’s true,” she played along, grimacing at her own cup. “A person would have to have some serious desensitizing for that.”

  He checked his watch then and Ally realized that if his intention had been to get her mind off the pending problems with her mother he’d done a good job. Until that moment she had been allowed a little break from the worry.

  But she knew what he was going to say now…

  “Well, Alice…”

  Okay, so she
hadn’t known he was going to use the name he’d heard her mother call her. He hadn’t used it the rest of the time. But he did seem to enjoy teasing her with it at that moment.

  Ally grimaced. “Not Alice. Never Alice.”

  “That’s what your mother calls you,” he said like an ornery kid.

  “And only my mother, who I can’t get to stop calling me that, no matter how hard I try.”

  “Alice is a nice name,” he said.

  “Not when my mother says it, so I’ve never liked it,” she answered, again somewhat under her breath.

  “See—issues,” he pointed out.

  Ally rolled her eyes at him, but when she didn’t remark he finished what he’d been about to say.

  “Well, Ally-not-Alice, we should get back. Estelle will just about be done in radiology.”

  Ally took a deep breath to bolster herself for the return to the task and tension of the day and stood.

  Jake got to his feet, too.

  There was a restroom at the entrance to the cafeteria and when they reached it Ally paused. “I’m going to make a quick pit stop.”

  “Think you can find your way to the E.R.? I’d hate to have no one be there if Estelle gets back.”

  “I’ll only be a minute, but I’m sure I can follow the signs if you want to go ahead.”

  “I’ll see you there then,” he said.

  Without warning he reached out and grasped her arm much as he had that first night when he’d left her mother’s house, giving it a gentle but firm squeeze and a brush of his thumb.

  The gesture caught her by surprise as much today as it had before. Only today, in public, it seemed to carry with it not only a sense of comfort, but an even greater air of intimacy and a feeling of connection between them.

  “See you back there,” she echoed quietly as she wondered what there was about this man that made the slightest thing throw her out of whack.

  That reaching out of his was just a reflex, she told herself. It was just something he did. She didn’t believe it meant anything to him. So it shouldn’t—couldn’t—mean anything to her.

  Yet as she went into the restroom, she could still feel his hand where it had made contact with the bare skin of her upper arm.

  And it did mean something to her.

  It meant that it was way too easy for him to get to her.

  “Ally Rogers? That is you, isn’t it? I thought it was when I saw you in the cafeteria!”

  Ally was hurrying to the sink in the hospital restroom to wash her hands so she could follow Jake back to the E.R. to wait for her mother to be returned from her CT scan. She stopped short and studied the woman in the nurse’s uniform who had just come in. It took a moment before she realized who the woman was.

  “Gretchen Fuller?”

  “In the flesh—still fat and sassy!” the nurse confirmed.

  “You were never fat!” Just a nice kind of fluffy that made her good to hug—which Ally did.

  They’d gone to high school together but lost touch second year of college when Gretchen had gotten married and moved to Iowa.

  At the end of the hug, Ally said, “You moved back?”

  “About four years ago. Teddy and I were both homesick and now that we have three kids, we wanted to cash in on some free babysitting from the families.”

  “Three kids?”

  “All boys—I live in testosterone town! We’re thinking about a fourth, to try one more time for a girl before it’s too late, but we haven’t decided for sure. What about you? Married? Kids?”

  Ally shook her head. “Neither.”

  “No wonder you look so good!” Gretchen exclaimed, rearing back to give Ally the once-over. “You put me to shame, you’re so beautiful!”

  “Hardly,” Ally demurred, embarrassed.

  “You could be right out of a fashion magazine with that adorable outfit. And those sandals are gorgeous! I’ll bet they cost what I spend at the grocery store to feed three kids for a month!”

  Ally had no idea how much groceries for three kids for a month cost, but she thought Gretchen could be right since the shoes were Italian and the price had made Ally’s jaw drop. But she’d loved them, bought them, and worn them today because they were so fabulous and her entire outfit had been chosen carefully, knowing it shouldn’t matter what she wore to a hospital to find out if there was something wrong with her mother, and yet it did—because she would be spending the afternoon with Jake Fox.

  Uncomfortable with her old friend’s scrutiny, though, she changed the subject. “When did you become a nurse?”

  “Right after we left Chicago. We were in Iowa City, Teddy was doing his residency in pathology, the kids hadn’t started to come yet, I was bored and there was a nursing program, so I just thought why not?”

  “You must like it if you’re still doing it with three kids at home.”

  “What I like is getting out of the house for a few shifts a week so I can talk to adults and someone else can change diapers and holler at my kids.”

  Ally laughed, thinking that Gretchen was right about herself—she was still sassy.

  “I don’t have to ask what you’re doing,” Gretchen said then. “I’ve seen your name in the home-and-garden magazines I’m addicted to, so I looked you up on the Internet—you’re the Ally Rogers who decorates all those fancy movie stars’ houses!”

  “It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it,” Ally joked.

  “Only here you are now—and with our Jake Fox! I saw the two of you—”

  There was insinuation in that and Ally shook her head quickly to disabuse her old classmate of whatever it was Gretchen was thinking.

  “I’m here with my mother. She’s been having some problems and she’s undergoing tests today.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope she’ll be all right.”

  “Thanks. Me, too.”

  “Then you haven’t moved back?”

  “No! I’m only here temporarily, to deal with what’s going on with Mother and then I’ll go home to L.A.”

  “Really?”

  Why the doubt?

  “Really,” Ally confirmed.

  “Because I saw you and Jake…”

  “Having coffee?” Ally asked, confused by the insinuation that had returned to her friend’s voice.

  “The two of you seemed really into each other.”

  “Into each other? We were only talking. He’s a friend of my mother’s, he arranged for the tests she’s having today and is just keeping us company.”

  “Huh. Well, you’d be lucky to snag him—maybe you should think about it.”

  Ally laughed. “I don’t think I want to snag anyone.”

  “But Jake Fox,” Gretchen said with adoration. “Just about everyone around here has a crush on him. Even me, although I’d never let Teddy know,” she whispered.

  Then in a normal voice again she said, “And not only is he the best eye candy I’ve ever seen in person, he’s as nice as they come. When Teddy’s grandmother died last year his grandfather went downhill fast from the grief. We thought we were going to lose him, too, just from a broken heart. But we got him in to see Jake and what a sweetheart he was! He just turned Teddy’s grandfather around. We were so grateful to him.”

  “My mother and her friends are fond of him, too.”

  “And you’re not?” Gretchen said facetiously, as if Ally was trying to put one over on her. “Because you never took your eyes off him in the cafeteria.”

  “We were just talking,” Ally repeated.

  “And smiling and laughing—I was two tables away trying to get your attention to see if it really was you and you didn’t know anyone else was even in the cafeteria.”

  Okay, so maybe she had been devouring the sight of the man. In her defense, she’d been trying to figure out why it seemed as if the more she looked at that handsome face of his, the more she found to like about it. But there was no way she was going to admit that.

  Gretchen whispered again as if the
y weren’t the only ones in the restroom, “Is it a secret?”

  “No, it isn’t a secret. There’s honestly nothing between us. I barely know him.”

  Though for some reason, the truth in that made her feel a tiny bit melancholy.

  “Well, I’m telling you, you should think about it,” Gretchen urged. “You couldn’t do better than Jake Fox. And you’d be good for him, too. The last girlfriend he brought around was wrong for him. We could all see it—she wasn’t his type.”

  Ally knew she should cut this off to get back to the emergency room. But even so she heard herself say, “How was she not his type?”

  “She was all about her career, she’d barely say hello and then go outside to use her cell phone as if none of us were worth wasting her precious time. And that’s sooo not Jake. No matter how busy he is, he’ll always ask how you are and listen when you tell him. And the way he is with his older patients? He’ll sit with them forever while they tell their stories—and some of them can talk your ear off!”

  “But that is what a psychiatrist does, isn’t it? Listen?” Ally pointed out.

  “Oh, this is above and beyond the call of duty. But that last girlfriend would get so put out if she had to wait for him. I saw her pacing outside a patient’s room one night, huffing and puffing and tapping her foot because he was in there just sitting on the edge of the bed while a ninety-year-old talked about her first dance. I knew then that it would never work.”

  “And apparently it didn’t?” Why was she digging for dirt on Jake Fox’s love life? Especially when she should be getting back to her mother?

  “They broke up not long after that,” Gretchen said. “I don’t know why or who broke off with who or anything, but if you want my opinion, he dodged a bullet. As far as I know, he hasn’t had much action since then so he should be ripe for the picking. And like I said, there’s no shortage of women around here who wouldn’t give anything to sink their claws into him. If you have the inside track, you should go for it.” Gretchen nudged Ally with an elbow. “Besides, you better get busy to catch up with me.”

  Ally merely smiled and nodded, but Gretchen didn’t seem to notice her lack of comment because the nurse glanced at her watch and said, “I have to go back to the floor. Any chance we could get together while you’re in town? I’d love it if you could come by the house, meet the kids…”