Coltrain's Proposal

“There’s a dinner at the Rotary Club Thursday. How about going with me?”

She and Drew occasionally went out together, in a friendly but not romantic way. She would have refused, but what Coltrain had said made her mad. “Yes, I would like to, thanks,” she said.

Drew laughed softly. “Great! I’ll pick you up at six on Thursday, then.”

“See you then.”

She hung up, checked the X-ray again meticulously, and put it away in its file. Brenda ordinarily pulled the X-rays for her, but it was Monday and, as usual, they were overflowing with patients who’d saved their weekend complaints for office hours.

She went back to her patient, her color a little high, but no disturbance visible in her expression.

She finished her quota of patients and then went into her small office. Mechanically she picked up a sheet of letterhead paper, with Dr. Coltrain’s name on one side and hers on the other. Irrelevantly, she thought that the stationery would have to be replaced now.

She typed out a neat resignation letter, put it in an envelope and went to place it on Dr. Coltrain’s desk. It was lunchtime and he’d already left the building. He made sure he always did, probably to insure that he didn’t risk having Lou invite herself to eat with him.

Brenda scowled as her boss started absently toward the back door. “Shouldn’t you take off your coat first?” she asked hesitantly.

Lou did, without a word, replaced it in her office, whipped her leather fanny pack around her waist and left the building.

It would have been nice if she’d had someone to talk to, she thought wistfully, about this latest crisis. She sat alone in the local café, drinking black coffee and picking at a small salad. She didn’t mingle well with people. When she wasn’t working, she was quiet and shy, and she kept to herself. It was difficult for strangers to approach her, but she didn’t realize that. She stared into her coffee and remembered every word Coltrain had said to Drew Morris about her. He hated her. He couldn’t possibly have made it clearer. She was repugnant, he’d said.

Well, perhaps she was. Her father had told her so, often enough, when he was alive. He and her mother were from Jacobsville but hadn’t lived in the area for years. He had never spoken of his past. Not that he spoke to Lou often, anyway, except to berate her grades and tell her that she’d never measure up.

“Excuse me?”

She looked up. The waitress was staring at her. “Yes?” she asked coolly.

“I don’t mean to pry, but are you all right?”

The question surprised Lou, and touched her. She managed a faint smile through her misery. “Yes. It’s been a…long morning. I’m not really hungry.”

“Okay.” The waitress smiled again, reassuringly, and went away.

Just as Lou was finishing her coffee, Coltrain came in the front door. He was wearing the elegant gray suit that looked so good on him, and carrying a silver belly Stetson by the brim. He looked furiously angry as his pale eyes scanned the room and finally spotted Lou, sitting all alone.

He never hesitated, she thought, watching him walk purposefully toward her. There must be an emergency…

He slammed the opened envelope down on the table in front of her. “What the hell do you mean by that?” he demanded in a dangerously quiet tone.

She raised her dark, cold eyes to his. “I’m leaving,” she explained and averted her gaze.

“I know that! I want to know why!”

She looked around. The café was almost empty, but the waitress and a local cowboy at the counter were glancing at them curiously.

Her chin came up. “I’d rather not discuss my private business in public, if you don’t mind,” she said stiffly.

His jaw clenched, and his eyes grew glittery. He stood back to allow her to get up. He waited while she paid for her salad and coffee and then followed her out to where her small gray Ford was parked.

Her heart raced when he caught her by the arm before she could get her key out of her jeans pocket. He jerked her around, not roughly, and walked her over to Jacobsville’s small town square, to a secluded bench in a grove of live oak and willow trees. Because it was barely December, there were no leaves on the trees and it was cool, despite her nervous perspiration. She tried to throw off his hand, to no avail.

He only loosened his grip on her when she sat down on a park bench. He remained standing, propping his boot on the bench beside her, leaning one long arm over his knee to study her. “This is private enough,” he said shortly. “Why are you leaving?”

“I signed a contract to work with you for one year. It’s almost up, anyway,” she said icily. “I want out. I want to go home.”

“You don’t have anyone left in Austin,” he said, surprising her.

“I have friends,” she began.

“You don’t have those, either. You don’t have friends at all, unless you count Drew Morris,” he said flatly.

Her fingers clenched around her car keys. She looked at them, biting into the flesh even though not a speck of emotion showed on her placid features.

His eyes followed hers to her lap and something moved in his face. There was an expression there that puzzled her. He reached down and opened her rigid hand, frowning when he saw the red marks the keys had made in her palm.

She jerked her fingers away from him.

He seemed disconcerted for a few seconds. He stared at her without speaking and she felt her heart beating wildly against her ribs. She hated being helpless.

He moved back, watching her relax. He took another step and saw her release the breath she’d been holding. Every trace of anger left him.

“It takes time for a partnership to work,” he said abruptly. “You’ve only given this one a year.”

“That’s right,” she said tonelessly. “I’ve given it a year.”

The emphasis she placed on the first word caught his attention. His blue eyes narrowed. “You sound as if you don’t think I’ve given it any time at all.”

She nodded. Her eyes met his. “You didn’t want me in the practice. I suspected it from the beginning, but it wasn’t until I heard what you told Drew on the phone this morning that—”

His eyes flashed oddly. “You heard what I said?” he asked huskily. “You heard…all of it!” he exclaimed.

Her lips trembled just faintly. “Yes,” she said.

He was remembering what he’d told Drew Morris in a characteristic outburst of bad temper. He often said things in heat that he regretted later, but this he regretted most of all. He’d never credited his cool, unflappable partner with any emotions at all. She’d backed away from him figuratively and physically since the first day she’d worked at the clinic. Her physical withdrawal had maddened him, although he’d always assumed she was frigid.

But in the past five minutes, he’d learned disturbing things about her without a word being spoken. He’d hurt her. He didn’t realize she’d cared that much about his opinion. Hell, he’d been furious because he’d just had to diagnose leukemia in a sweet little boy of four. It had hurt him to do that, and he’d lashed out at Morris over Lou in frustration at his own helplessness. But he’d had no idea that she’d overheard his vicious remarks. She was going to leave and it was no less than he deserved. He was genuinely sorry. She wasn’t going to believe that, though. He could tell by her mutinous expression, in her clenched hands, in the tight set of her mouth.

“You did Drew a favor and asked me to join you, probably over some other doctor you really wanted,” she said with a forced smile. “Well, no harm done. Perhaps you can get him back when I leave.”

“Wait a minute,” he began shortly.

She held up a hand. “Let’s not argue about it,” she said, sick at knowing his opinion of her, his real opinion. “I’m tired of fighting you to practice medicine here. I haven’t done the first thing right, according to you. I’m a burden. Well, I just want out. I’ll go on working until you can replace me.” She stood up.

His hand tightened on the brim of his hat. He was losing this battle. He didn’t know how to pull his irons out of the fire.

“I had to tell the Dawes that their son has leukemia,” he said, hating the need to explain his bad temper. “I say things I don’t mean sometimes.”

“We both know that you meant what you said about me,” she said flatly. Her eyes met his levelly. “You’ve hated me from almost the first day we worked together. Most of the time, you can’t even be bothered to be civil to me. I didn’t know that you had a grudge against me from the outset…”