Knocking at Her Heart (Conover Circle #1) (2 page)

Helen entered and dropped the
pain medication into Dr. Jordonson’s open palm. “Thanks, Helen,” he said,
sounding as if he smoked a couple packs a day. “I’ll take it from here.” Helen
shrugged and left the room. Dr. Jordonson slid his stool over and firmly closed
the door.

“I’m never,” he said, his face
very serious, “going to turn my back on her again.”  He handed a sample to
her. “Take these. That way you don’t have to get a prescription. You’ll
probably only need something for tonight and maybe tomorrow. An ice bag will
help, too.”

“I suppose it’s way too late for
an apple? You know. An apple a day…”

He shook his head. “If you want,
I can write you an excuse from work tomorrow.”

“No one there would be able to
read it,” she said jokingly.

“What?” 

Was that outrage? Concern? “I own
the daycare that’s next door,” she explained. “I live on the top floor.”

His eyes narrowed. “To the east?”

West of the hospital was a shiny
new three-story parking deck. Did he think she pitched a tent at night? “That’s
right. The big Victorian. It was my Great Aunt Grace’s house up until she died
a few years ago.” 

“Imagine that?” He said it like
it would take some doing.

Whatever. It wasn’t that unusual
of story. She smiled. “Anyway, just in case, I did the Hansel and Gretel thing
and left a trail of blood on the sidewalk so I could find my way home.”

He stared at her and she could
feel a weird warmth spread through her body. She had lost some blood but surely
not enough to account for that kind of reaction. She stood up quickly. “Thanks
so much,” she said. “You do great work.” The words spilled out of her mouth.
She edged past him.

And when he raised his arm, like
he might try to hold her back, her stomach did some kind of dip thing—similar
to when she rode roller coasters. But at the last minute, he jerked his hand
back, and she managed to keep her squeak in.
        

She was four steps down the hall,
her back towards him, when she heard him say, “Those stitches will dissolve as
the cut heals but you’ll still need to have that hand checked again in a week
or so.”

She didn’t break stride. Instead,
merely held up her good hand in acknowledgment and said, “I’ll call my regular
doctor.” She managed to wait until she got through the exit doors before
breaking into a dead run. Less than a minute later, she took both steps in one
leap, strode across the wrap-around porch, and unlocked her front door. Once inside,
she ran up the stairs and into her apartment. She sank down on the couch.

Snowball crowded his fat white
body next to her. “I know I didn’t handle that especially well,” she said, “but
really, I was getting all hot and bothered and that couldn’t be good for my
health.”

Snowball nipped at her hand in
understanding.

“He could have been a plumber or
a teacher or a salesman?” She reached down and with her good hand, snatched up
her cat. “A thousand different things. But no, he went to medical
school.” 

She studied her kitten. “Such a
shame,” she added.

Snowball rolled onto his back.
She gave him a quick scratch, got up, went to her bedroom to change into her
pajamas, and then detoured through the kitchen to grab essentials. It took her
less than ten minutes to get settled on the couch. She lay on her back, her
knees bent, with a new hardcover thriller resting on them. Her bandaged hand
turned pages while the other one kept the chips and dip coming.

Her doorbell rang on page 139.
She wasn’t expecting anybody but it wouldn’t be the first time a desperate
parent had stopped by looking for an emergency sitter. She set her snack aside
and moved a sleeping Snowball off the robe that she’d thrown on the back of the
couch. She quickly belted it.

“Coming,” she yelled as she
bounced down the steps. She looked through the peephole. Dr. Jordonson stood on
her front steps. He’d changed his clothes. He wore a light gray jacket, worn
blue jeans and scuffed loafers.

Code blue. Her heart was
thumping. Swallowing hard, she opened the door. “Hello?”

He smiled. “How’s the hand?” he
asked.

Had she injured her hand? It was
hard to focus when her hormones were doing the tango. “Fine,” she said. She
looked down and realized that Snowball had taken advantage of the open upstairs
door and followed her downstairs.

He smiled at the cat and she
could feel her resolve start to capitulate.

He shifted his weight from foot
to foot. “You were smart to come get it stitched. It’ll heal a lot faster.”

She couldn’t very well tell him
that she was there because her kitten got neutered last month. He’d want her to
go back for an MRI—of her brain. “That’s what I’m hoping,” she said.

“Well, I…uh…finished up and
thought I’d stop by and see if you might be interested in a cup of coffee or
something.”

It couldn’t be explained, but
suddenly she was big-time interested in the
or something
. She needed to
take control of this situation. “I don’t think so. You might have been sick the
day they covered this in med school. Too much caffeine isn’t good for you.”

He laughed, she glimpsed a
dimple, and she almost relented.

“I hope I didn’t miss anything
else important,” he said, looking just too handsome.

Time to pull out the big guns.
“Isn’t it unethical for a doctor to hit on a patient?”

He pulled back a little. “You’re
not my patient,” he said, his tone serious. “You made that clear. You said that
you would follow-up with your regular doc.” He stuffed his hands in his jacket
pockets. 

“In any event,” Maddie said, as
she pulled tighter the edges of her old robe, “I’m just on my way out.” 

He stared at the faded blue
terrycloth.

She clamped her teeth together to
keep from apologizing. “I’m already late,” she said. She took a step back and
slammed the door shut. Her hand shook when she slid over the bolt lock. Then she
turned, braced her back against the door, every vertebrae touching solid wood.

She heard the faint sound of his
shoes on her porch. She stayed absolutely still until the night was quiet once
again.

What had he been thinking? He
couldn’t just stop by, flash a mouthful of white teeth, and ask her out.

What had she been thinking? She’d
been this close to yanking him inside and bolting the door.

She thumped her head against said
door for good measure.

She looked at Snowball who looked
disappointed that the company hadn’t been invited up to play. Maddie shook her
head at the cat. “
Doctor
Jordonson,” she reminded the animal.

She could still see her father,
standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at her, on his way back to the
hospital, a mixture of frustration and maybe even a little regret in his eyes.
You
don’t understand Madelyn. I took an oath. When they need me, I have to go.

That night and too many other
nights to count, Maddie had gone to bed and cried herself to sleep.
What
about when I need you, Dad? 

He’d missed her sixth-grade play
and had been late to her eighth grade graduation, arriving after her name was
called. He’d been at a conference the weekend that she’d won the state tennis
tournament and busy receiving an award from the state medical society the night
of her junior prom. He’d later looked at the picture of her and her young beau
and pronounced her dress
a winner
.

Nobody had been a winner in the
Sinclair household.  

Determined not to get sucked in
by the past, she went back upstairs and took her place on the couch. She opened
her book but barely had a page read when her landline rang. She looked at the
caller ID.
Jeff
. It suddenly dawned on her that when her blood had been swirling
down the drain, she’d considered calling Dante or Faith but hadn’t even thought
about Jeff. What did that mean? She suspected she knew but it wasn’t something
she was quite ready to face.

“Hi Jeff,” she said.

“Maddie, I tried you earlier. You
didn’t answer.”

“I—”

Before she could offer an
explanation, he interrupted. “I have to go to Cleveland. There’s an account
there that my boss has always handled. Now, all of a sudden, I have to do an
audit. Like I’m some punk kid fresh out of business school. It makes no sense.
It’s a waste of four or five days.”

It was unusual for Jeff to have
to travel anywhere. But Cleveland couldn’t be that bad. “I’ll miss you,” she
said. She would. She and Jeff liked the same movies, they both had a thing for
Japanese food, and it was a crapshoot as to which one of them would finish the
Sunday crossword puzzle first. There were some sparks in bed, not any big
fireworks or anything, but they were definitely compatible.   

But to be truthful, lately
compatible was leaving a strange taste in her mouth. “Call me when you’re
back.” They needed to have a conversation.

Maddie hung up the phone and
looked at Snowball, who had jumped down to play with an old Ping-Pong ball,
chasing it across the hardwood floors. The cat slipped on the waxed wood and
tumbled around. “He’s really a nice guy,” Maddie said. “Steady. Has a nine to
five job. You understand the attraction, right?”

Snowball didn’t even look up.

Jeff had been doing her
accounting work for a couple years. Six months ago, he’d asked her out. Just
the previous week, Jeff had hinted that they were both of a certain age where
they should consider getting married. Did she know that you only had to be
married for one day of the calendar year and you could still file a joint tax
return?   

Ugh. Those were not things she
thought about. She’d changed the subject quickly before she’d had to break that
bad news to him.

She wasn’t intending to brush up
on generally accepted accounting practices before he got back to town.

She picked up her book but didn’t
get more than a paragraph read before she was interrupted again by a ringing
phone. She looked at the display and frowned. “Hello,” she said, already sure
that this call could not be a good thing.

“Madelyn, it’s me. I have to talk
to you.”

Her mother’s voice sounded odd,
like she had a bad cold. Frances Sinclair never called at night. No. Frances
made telephone calls in the morning. From her desk in the downstairs study,
where she overlooked the Potomac River. Maddie’s fifteen minutes were slotted
in on Friday mornings, always at ten o’clock eastern, nine her time. She could
set her watch by her mother’s calls. Heck, sometimes she did. “Sort of late for
you to be calling, Mom.”

“I have no idea what time it is.”

Frances lived with a leather-bound
planner in her hand. She always knew the date, the time, and what was supposed
to happen in the next twenty-four hours. “What’s wrong, Mom?”

“I don’t want to talk about it on
the telephone.”

So, why did you call then
? Maddie bit the words back. “I
don’t understand.”

Now her mother was sobbing. Big,
loud, very non-ladylike sobs. 

It scared the hell of out Maddie.
She couldn’t remember ever hearing her mother cry.  “Mom. Mom. I’m sorry.
Don’t cry. Is everything okay with Dad?”

More sobs. “Yes. He’s … fine.”

This could not possibly be over
the Ladies Auxiliary Luncheon, could it? That’s all her mother had talked about
during last week’s call. She’d gone on and on about how difficult it was to
find silver bells in May. 

“I want to come visit.”

Over the last six years, she’d
been back to Washington DC several times but her parents had only come this
direction twice. “Dad can get the time away?”

“Your father won’t be coming.
Just me.” 

Her mother had taken several
trips without her father over the last several years. She’d wanted to travel
overseas but he couldn’t get the time away. She hung with a group of other
women in similar situations. “Okay. When should—”

“I suppose I should just tell
you,” her mother interrupted. “After all, I haven’t done anything to be ashamed
of.”

It was official. Her mother was
creeping her out. “Mom?”

“I’m leaving your father.”

Maddie sat up. “Why would you do
that?” she asked.

Her mother sniffed. “There’s
another woman.”

Maddie got up so quickly that her
book tumbled onto the hardwood floor. Snowball, startled by the noise, ran
under the chair.

“Are you sure?” Maddie asked.

“I read the thank-you note. He
left it in his suit coat pocket. She
loved
the dinner and the flowers.
She
adored
the jewelry. She was
wearing
the underwear.”

Yuck. “Do you know who she is?”

“She’s a nurse. I assume they met
at the hospital.”

It couldn’t be true. Peter
Sinclair barely had time for his wife. How would he fit another woman into his
schedule? And even more importantly, he’d carefully cultivated his way to the
top of his profession. It didn’t make sense that he’d risk his reputation for a
quickie. There had to be some reasonable explanation. “What did Dad say when
you told him you were leaving?”