Burke's Christmas Surprise

Before he’d gotten halfway into his tale of how he’d brought Neil Anderson into the world during a blizzard in ’58, Cletus McCully interrupted. “Doc, I swear you could talk the ears off a deaf man. I ain’t necessarily gonna live forever, ya know. Would you get to the point?”

Another time Louetta might have smiled, but she glanced over her shoulder, straight into Burke’s eyes, and she couldn’t have smiled if her life had depended upon it.

“Burke,” Doc called. “Come on up here, would ya?”

What could Burke possibly have to do with Doc Masey?

Like the quiet before the storm, silence filled the room. Surely Louetta’s heart wasn’t the only one thumping a little wildly at the way Burke carried himself, at the width of his shoulders, the fit of his black pants. However, it was highly likely that she was the only woman who averted her eyes.

“As you all know,” Doc Masey declared, “I’ve been searching for a replacement for a few years now. I’m pleased to say I’ve found one. Looks like he got the jump on me, but I like a man who knows his own mind. Folks, I’d like you to meet my new partner, Dr. Burke Kincaid.”

Louetta’s head came up, her heart rising to her throat. “What did Doc say?” she asked Lisa McCully, the young woman sitting next to her.

“It looks like Doc Masey’s taken on one of your fiancés as a new partner,” Lisa whispered.

“One of my—”

A freight train sounded in Louetta’s ears. The lights went dim, her muscles turned to liquid. And she keeled over in a deep faint.

Louetta came to amid a blur of faces and a whir of voices.

“She fainted, you say?”

“Is she gonna be all right?”

“How would I know? I ain’t no doctor.”

“There’s no need to snap my head off.”

“Boys, would you give me a little room?”

Louetta recognized Doc Masey’s voice. Although she couldn’t quite make out the two cowboys who were stepping out of the way, she could see Isabell hovering over her right shoulder, Doc Masey over her left. Burke’s and Wes’s faces were inches apart, and someone—a quick glance at the masculine hand touching her wrist told her it was Burke—was taking her pulse.

“Are you all right?” His voice was edged in velvet, just as it had been that night two and a half years ago.

“Of course she’s all right. You are all right, aren’t you?” Wes asked.

Louetta nodded and tried to sit up. Had she really fainted before a roomful of people? Lord, her humiliation was nearly complete.

“I’m fine. I’d really like to go up to my apartment now.”

Suddenly Burke was bending down, gliding his arms underneath her, lifting her up. No, she thought, her dark purple skirt hitched up around her thighs, her white sweater askew, her face inches away from his, now her humiliation was complete.

“Please,” she protested, “I can walk.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Isabell sputtered, “put her down this instant. Haven’t you done enough?”

Burke eyed the old biddy over the top of Louetta’s head. As far as he was concerned, he hadn’t done nearly enough. He hadn’t kissed Lily or Louetta or whatever the hell her name was. He hadn’t explained. He had yet to see her smile.

Wes Stryker’s voice cut into Burke’s thoughts. “She said she can walk.”

Reading the challenge in Stryker’s eyes, Burke tightened his grip around Louetta. Wes took a step closer and held Burke’s stare.

“Come on, you two,” insisted a woman with large brown eyes, a sultry voice and a protruding stomach that indicated a baby was due in a month or two. “Why don’t you go shoot some bottles off a fence or duke it out over at the Crazy Horse or do whatever else men do to compete for a woman’s hand. Melody, Jillian and I can take it from here. That okay with you, Louetta?”

As a doctor, Burke supposed the blush on Lily’s cheeks was a good sign. As a man, he didn’t want to let her out of his arms, let alone out of his sight. Since she nodded at the pregnant woman, he didn’t see what choice he had. He lowered her feet to the floor, slowly stepping aside as two women each slid an arm around Lily’s back.

There was a lot of noise all around him as people spoke amongst themselves. Burke stayed where he was, watching Lily walk away, regal even now.

He’d imagined her reaction to his return a hundred times. He would have liked her to welcome him with open arms. He would have settled for a small smile and a shy hello. He supposed he should have known this wasn’t going to be easy. Nothing about the past two and a half years had been easy.

She stopped suddenly in the doorway and glanced over her shoulder, bravely meeting his eyes. Her lips trembled. Although she didn’t smile, a look passed between them. He swallowed, but it only made him aware of the pulsing sensation in his throat and the growing pressure much lower.

Burke could feel all eyes on him, and he knew that this wasn’t the time or the place to say what he’d come here to say. Meeting her serious expression with a serious expression of his own, he said, “We’ll talk later.”

Her throat convulsed on a swallow. Neither nodding nor shaking her head, she allowed the other women to lead her away.

“For a doctor, you have lousy timing.”

Burke glanced at the man who had spoken. Wes Stryker looked the way a person would expect an ex-rodeo champion to look, all cheekbones and squint lines and stiff joints, rugged and haggard at the same time. Burke wondered if Lily was in love with the man. While he was at it, he wondered if it was possible that she was still in love with him. Releasing a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, Burke squared off opposite the other man. “Maybe, but I’m told I have a good bedside manner.”

Stryker’s eyes narrowed. “I’m more concerned about your in-bed manner.”

“Sorry. I don’t kiss and tell.”

The other man’s eyebrows rose slightly, and Burke sensed a grudging respect in Wes Stryker’s expression.

“You gonna step aside, Wes,” somebody called from behind, “and let the new doctor run roughshod over you?”

Wes shook his head. “It looks like Boomer was right. My competin’ days aren’t over after all.”

Burke accepted the challenge, along with the hand Wes held out to him. Wes’s knuckles were bony, his palm callused, his grip bordering on painful. Squaring his jaw, Burke squeezed the other man’s hand in return.

Wes grunted. “May the best man win.”

Burke nodded stiffly, tightening his own grip. “Believe me,” he said, wondering whose bones would crack first, “I intend to.”

Bets were made among the other men. The old biddy who’d helped Lily earlier insisted that this was exactly the kind of thing the Ladies Aid Society had been afraid would happen. A few old-timers grumbled that folks needed a little fun and excitement now and then, and the meeting was finally adjourned. Burke and Wes might have gone on shaking hands all night if Doc Masey and another old man with white whiskers and tattered suspenders hadn’t broken them up.

The man on the right snapped one suspender and rocked back on the heels of worn cowboy boots. “Name’s Cletus McCully. Looks like you and Wes are evenly matched. That’s gonna make things more interesting, that’s for sure. Tell us, boy, where are you from?”

Refusing to give in to the impulse to cradle his right hand in his left one, Burke met the old codger’s inquisitive stare. “I grew up in northern Washington. My practice was in Seattle.”

“Ah, you must have met our Louetta when she went with her mother to that cancer research hospital last year. Didn’t do much good. Opal died right on schedule. She raised Louetta by herself, you know.”

No, Burke hadn’t known. And that wasn’t where he’d met Louetta. Since Cletus McCully didn’t need to know that, Burke held the old man’s piercing stare a few seconds longer, then strode out to the sidewalk with the country doctor.

The snowflakes were getting bigger, the air colder. Several men jaywalked across the street and disappeared inside what appeared to be the town’s only bar. Burke glanced up at the lighted window in the small apartment over the diner.