Man Of Her Dreams
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“You gotta love a guy who’s all that and doesn’t seem to know it,” Rachel agreed, her dark eyes full of fun.
“Doc, how long do you think a man has to work out to get muscles like that?” Tonya asked, joking.
“Less time than you spend curling that pretty hair.”
Ry had to laugh. That was Doc, in for a zinger every chance she got. It was just silly talk, a balance for the misery and pain they saw in their work every day.
“Doc, you know this man better than most. Do you think there’s the slightest possibility that our guy Ry doesn’t have a New Year’s Eve date tonight?”
The silly way Tonya rhymed his name put a ghost of a smile on his partner’s face. Way to go, Tonya. She deserved a gold star. Doc could use a whole load of smiles. It bothered him how she seemed to hate life.
“Yeah, Doc, help us out here,” Rachel said earnestly. “Don’t you think Ry would like the company of a pair of love goddesses to ring in the new year?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” Doc shoved the gurney on, not breaking pace.
He grinned at the nurses. They’d asked for that. Doc cared about her patients, but not much else. He and Doc had an unspoken rule. He didn’t talk about his love life—the quantity and quality of which was greatly exaggerated—and she didn’t talk about her life at all.
“Ladies, I’d love to celebrate with you,” he said, “but I’m catching a flight home to be with my family.”
“Aw, that’s nice,” Tonya cooed.
For once, Doc looked at him with approval.
“Where’s home?” Rachel asked.
“California.” No way would they get more than that. He was as secretive about his past as Doc was about her present.
“California!” Tonya said, a big grin on her face. “Why am I not surprised? I thought you looked like a surfer.”
Actually, he looked like a guy who’d played quarterback in college, though he was leaner these days. “That’s me, all right, hangin’ ten,” he said, making them laugh.
He would leave it at that. When he’d lived in California, he’d been too busy to surf even if the beach was close by. He’d loved his job as a pool boy, both for the money he earned to buy a forbidden motorcycle and for the endless embarrassment it caused his country club parents.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he called back, exiting the wide double doors. That advice left them plenty of room—or it would have until recently. Accepting the Lord as his Savior had already changed a lot in his life.
He shut the rear doors of the ambulance as Doc, without comment, took the driver’s seat. The woman had a control issue about driving, but Ry didn’t mind. Doc was a good driver, and he’d rather be in the back with the patients anyway.
“You’re really going to California?” she asked, pulling away from the hospital.
“Do you think I’d make that up to get out of a date?”
“I never know what you’ll do.”
“Aw, Doc. I never lie.”
She snorted skeptically but didn’t argue. How could she? Even before he’d become a Christian, he’d been a stickler for the truth. There were times when patients might think he was more optimistic about their condition than he actually was, but that was for their benefit. It made them easier to treat when they were calm.
“When are you coming back?” she asked, scowling.
“How sweet of you to ask. I knew you cared,” he teased. That’s the way it was between them. He let her be as grumpy as she wanted. She gave him room to have fun. It made the shift pass.
She sighed heavily. “If I’m going to have to break in a new partner, I’d like some time to get used to the idea.”
He smiled to himself. That was Doc’s way of saying she’d miss him. Well, not him, but the change in her routine. “No need to fret, Doc. I’ll be back after our forty-eight hours off. I couldn’t live without you.”
“Yeah, right. You’ve got time coming. Take it.”
He’d thought about it. The trip was a lot of money and travel for a couple of nights, yet even that might be too long. His fuse could be pretty short when it came to his family. If he didn’t feel so strongly about starting the new year off right, he wouldn’t be going home. Unless this visit went as he prayed it would, he would never go back.
Meg Maguire slid the clothes hangers from one end of her closet to the other, searching for something that would do for the Brennans’ New Year’s Eve party. There were plenty of bridesmaid dresses, but nobody wore those, no matter what the bride said about choosing a dress that would work for other occasions.
What other occasions? Meg’s job required jeans and pants in the basic colors, some tops and a few jackets. For social occasions, she added shorts. That was it. If there was a pair of panty hose in her chest of drawers, it would be a miracle, and any dressy shoes in those boxes on the top shelf would have partnered one of the bridesmaid dresses.
She should have gone shopping, but she would rather clean the grout in her shower than shop. It wasn’t that she was so hard to please. Just the opposite, she liked a lot of colors and styles. There were plenty of size fours that fit. It was the multitude of choices that made her crazy. As often as not, she came home empty-handed.
The Brennans’ party was definitely a dress-up affair, or it used to be in the days when she’d been best friends with Beth and Ry. When they were little, they’d spied on the guests, laughed at them in their party hats and had more fun than anyone.
She glanced at the bedside picture of the three of them taken at Disneyland when she and Beth had been toothless six-year-olds and Ry was only a couple of years older. There was such pure joy in their young faces that she loved that photo.
She’d been so lucky to have them as her unofficial sister and brother. Adopted into her heart, she’d loved them as surely as she loved her older brother, Pete, who had been their faithful rescuer, while their older brother, Trey, had been their worst enemy. A born tattletale, he’d practically forced Beth and Ry to hang out at the Maguires’.
Down the hill from the Brennans’, the Maguire family had a big yard where kids gathered to play. Inside the house was a filled cookie jar and a refrigerator stocked with cold drinks. Meg’s mom was always home, though usually busy in her studio, sculpting the art pieces that made her famous. Meg’s dad sometimes stopped by during the day and was home every night from his job as a general contractor. He joked with the kids, often played with them and treated the Brennans as if they were his.