The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

“Come on,” Meri said, when she returned to the truck. “I checked with his receptionist and she said there’s no wait.”

“I’m fine, Meri.”

She gave him the look again, then grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and tugged him out of the truck and up the walkway into Doc Malloy’s office. “Let the professional decide that.”

Jack paused a moment in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. Meri had released him, and stepped two steps to the left. For some reason he refused to decipher, a little shiver of disappointment ran through him when she did that.

“Jack Barlow. Always a pleasure to see you, sugar.” Corinna Winslow’s voice came across the room like warm honey. She slipped out from behind the reception desk and sashayed across the small room. Corinna had been a cheerleader in high school, and even back then, she had pursued Jack with single-minded determination. They’d gone on a couple dates, years ago, but Jack had little interest in Corinna and had put a quick end to it. When he’d come home, she’d been one of the first to call to see if he “needed anything. Anything at all.”

Now she put a palm on his chest, just a light, quick touch, but one that seemed to stamp him. “Don’t tell me you’re hurt.”

He held up his hand. “Nothing big. I figured I could get by with some bandages, but someone—” he jerked his head in Meri’s direction but she just gave him that look again “—insisted on stitches.”

Corinna took Jack’s injured hand in hers. “Oh, my. Yes, stitches indeed. Let me take you right back, sugar, and get you all fixed up.”

Before he could protest, Corinna was leading him down the hall and into an exam room. What was with the women in his life today? Herding him around like a wayward sheep, for God’s sake.

Corinna leaned in as she took his blood pressure and temperature—two things Jack was sure he didn’t need—but Corinna insisted. She wore a snug-fitting V-necked white T-shirt under an unbuttoned scrubs top, which meant he got more than one healthy look at her cleavage. Jack was pretty sure nurses weren’t supposed to bend like that to take a blood pressure, but he didn’t argue.

On any other day, he would have enjoyed the obvious flirtation. Maybe even traded a few innuendos with Corinna, who had never made a secret of her interest in him. Instead, he found himself wondering about Meri, sitting in the uncomfortable chair in the waiting room. Not just wondering about what her cleavage looked like—hell, he wasn’t dead, after all—but what he had seen in her eyes earlier today when she’d seen the vulnerable, determined fawn.

And why he still cared.

He, of everyone in the world, should stay far, far away from Meri Prescott. Not just because he had already learned his lesson about tangling with a woman who lived in that world of debutantes and beauty pageants, of hair spray and high heels. Once upon a time, that hadn’t bothered him. Then he’d gone to war and become a different man. Not a better man, some would argue.

And then there was Eli. Just those three letters sent a sharp pain searing through his chest.

“You okay?” Corinna asked.

He jerked his attention back. “Uh, yeah. The stethoscope was a little cold.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you can’t take a little cold, a big, strong man like yourself.” She gave him a playful swat. “Or, I can warm it up against my own skin first. If you’d like.”

Before she could do that—and Jack really didn’t want to know where the stethoscope was going to get warmed—the door opened and Doc Malloy came in. Corinna stepped back, fumbling with the blood pressure cuff.

“Why, hello, Jack,” the doctor said. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

Jack leaned forward and shook hands with the elderly doctor. He’d known Doc Malloy all his life, and except for a few more pounds around his gut and a few more white hairs on top of his head, the doctor looked about the same as he had when he’d given Jack his first vaccination shots. He was an amiable doctor, one often given to long chats with patients he knew well. Doc had fought in Vietnam, and had traded a few war stories with Jack over the years. “Nice to see you again, sir.”

Doc Malloy nodded at Jack’s bandaged hand. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“Just a little flesh wound. Meri thought—”

“Meri Prescott? She’s back in town?”

Jack nodded. God, he hoped they didn’t get into a lengthy conversation about Meri. He didn’t want to think about her any more than was necessary, and over the last day, that had been like every five seconds. “She thought I needed stitches.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in thirty years of marriage, it’s that the woman is always right.” Doc Malloy grinned. “And even when you think she’s wrong, you agree anyway. Happy wife makes for a happy life.”

“Uh, Meri and I aren’t...she isn’t...” What was with him? Since when did he stumble and stutter? “She’s just visiting her grandpa.”

Across the room, Corinna’s face broke into a smile. She fiddled with the chart, but kept a pair of coquettish eyes on Jack’s face.

Doc Malloy bent to study Jack’s injury. In the end, he decided a few stitches were called for, after all. Corinna stayed by the doc’s side, handing him supplies, but keeping her attention on Jack. She’d flash him a smile from time to time, when she wasn’t contorting herself to give him a direct view of her best assets. Once Jack’s hand was bandaged, Corrina ducked out, with a little sashay, to refill the supplies.

“There you go, good as new,” Doc Malloy said.

It was almost the same thing Meri had said earlier. Did people really think a bandage or two would change anything about Jack?

“I’ve been so battered and bruised in the last year, Doc, I’ll never be good as new.” It wasn’t just what had happened to Jack on the outside—those scars had healed, faded to almost nothing—it was the burdens he carried inside his heart, the guilt that weighed down his every step, like an elephant hanging off his heel.

Jack was the one who could sit out on his back porch and look across beautiful Stone Gap Lake, soaking up the warmth of the sun, breathing in the fresh, clean air. Eli never would again. Would never know those joys or moments of peace. Because of Jack’s decisions, Jack’s choices, Jack’s mistakes.

Doc Malloy laid a hand on Jack’s arm and met his gaze. “You know how they temper steel? They take it to its limit over and over again, then let it cool, until it becomes so hardened and strong there’s almost nothing that can break it or change it. That’s how people get tempered, too. They get broken, they go through tragedies, triumphs, pain, loss, new lives being born and others lost to death.” The kindly doctor’s eyes met Jack’s with a knowledge that came from years of continuity. Doc had given Jack his kindergarten polio vaccine and his last checkup before he shipped off to boot camp. Doc’s blue eyes were eyes that knew Jack, knew him as much more than another file in the cabinet. “The hells people go through make them stronger in the end, stronger than steel.”

Jack lifted his newly bandaged hand and cradled it in the opposite palm. There was no bandage to fix what was wrong with Jack inside his soul. “Sometimes the tests go too far, the heat too great, and they break.”

“The people? Or the steel?”

“Doesn’t matter, Doc. Does it?” Jack slipped off the table and headed for the door. “Thanks again for fixing me up.”

“I only fix the outside problems, Jack. A man’s gotta fix the inside ones on his own.”

Jack just nodded to that and headed out to the waiting room.

Meri was reading a magazine when Jack entered the room, her blond head bent over the glossy pages. The sun streamed in through the window behind her. Like a halo, he’d say, if he was a sentimental guy.

She looked up and a smile curved across her face, and something caught in his chest, something that fluttered like hope, that made him feel like the kid he used to be a long time ago. Then the smile was gone and she was all business, putting the magazine to the side and fishing her keys out of her purse. “All set?”

“Yup.” He paid the bill, then the two of them walked back into the bright sunshine. Meri unlocked the truck and climbed in the driver’s seat, waiting for him to get in on the other side. Without a word, she put the truck in gear and traveled the mile to the hardware store. Jack glanced over at her, but she kept her gaze on the road. He told himself he was glad.

The air between them chilled, and the silence thickened the air in the truck. When he unconsciously reached for the door handle with his right hand, he winced when the newly bandaged injury let out a protest.

“You okay?” Meri asked. “Sugar?”

“Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?”

“I’m not jealous of anyone. And especially not of that plastic enhanced former cheerleader.”

He arched a brow. “Are you sure about that? Because it sounds like you might want to go back in there and stick her stethoscope in a painful place.”

Meri waved toward the hardware store. “Why don’t you go get what you need, and I’ll hit the grocery store. Kill two birds with one stone.”

On any other day, Jack would have welcomed the opportunity to be alone, puttering around among tools and nuts and bolts. But instead, he found himself raising the bandaged hand and giving Meri a pity-me smile. “I’m, uh, not so sure I should be lifting tools and plywood with this. I could open the stitches up. That could lead to an infection. Gangrene. Amputation.”

She shook her head and laughed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a drama queen?”

“I’m just trying to head off further injuries.” He worked up the pity-me smile again. “If you suffer through the hardware store with me, I promise not to complain when we’re picking out cereal at the Sav-a-Lot.”