The Man Who Wouldn't Marry

Ignore him. You’ve done it for the last six months. You can do it now.

Not so easy this time as Toby had twisted around to look, a contented sigh lifting his thin chest. She listened for the warning wheeze, but it didn’t happen. A dose of self-righteous anger whipped up at the deadly charisma her former beau gave off in waves. She would not let him hurt her son the way he’d hurt her.

She leaned down. ‘Just a few more minutes.’ She realized too late those were almost the exact words she’d heard Mark whisper to him earlier.

Thank heavens she hadn’t waited around for Mark’s return. Because he now barely gave her the time of day. And she wasn’t much better. She avoided him whenever she could—not an easy feat on an island like Dutch Harbor—and the only times he’d appeared at the clinic over these last months had been to deliver a tourist who’d gotten a scrape or a bruise.

Her turn to offer her congratulations to the happy couple. Finally!

She pasted on a smile as she reached out her free hand to Blake, the groom. ‘So you went and did it.’ She tried to keep her voice light, but it betrayed her by shaking just the tiniest bit. She pushed on, anyway. ‘I can’t believe you’re leaving the island and taking Molly with you.’ Blake, Mark, and Sammi had joined forces during their childhood days, becoming a kind of mod squad—inseparable and lifelong friends. Those strands were now tattered and worn—she doubted they could ever be woven together again.

Blake laughed, evidently not noticing the strain she was under. ‘I think if Molly had a choice, she’d never leave Dutch Harbor.’

Molly had worked as a doctor at the tiny clinic with Sammi for the last year until her funding had dried up, forcing her to move back to Anchorage. She and Blake had met while doing medevacs and, after a rocky start, realized they were meant for each other. Once she left, Sammi would be stuck doing medical evacuations with Mark, not something she was looking forward to.

Who was she kidding? She was dreading it.

Pausing to gather her thoughts, she tried to keep her mind on the happy couple and off her own problems. ‘Treat her right, Blake. Or I’ll come and find you.’

‘I intend to.’

While Blake squatted to talk to Toby, Sammi moved over to embrace the bride. ‘Be happy,’ she whispered.

‘You too.’

If only it were that easy.

She sensed Blake rise to his feet to greet Mark. At the sound of awkward male hugs—complete with palms delivering a few resounding smacks to the other’s back—she had to fight back a smile.

She tried to tune out their words, but Mark’s ‘You caved, bro’ caught her attention, the wry tone as flip as ever.

The bride’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘Okay, you two, I’m tired and starving.’ She crinkled her nose. ‘And I still have a three-hour flight to Anchorage to get through.’

That drew a laugh from Sammi. Her friend had married a pilot, yet she didn’t like to fly. At all. Talk about opposites attracting. She gave Molly another quick hug. ‘You’ll be fine.’

Molly smiled. ‘I know I will. I just like the extra handholding it gets me.’

Those words made Sammi’s heart ache. Although she was over the moon that her two friends had found each other, she was sad she’d never found that same perfect happiness. Her ex-husband had done his best, but in the end they’d both known it wasn’t meant to be. When Toby had been one, they’d separated. They’d finalized their divorce two weeks before Toby’s second birthday. Her ex, now living in Anchorage, had remarried and was, to all appearances, blissfully happy with his second wife. Even Toby liked her.

A throat cleared behind her, making her jump. She realized she was holding up the line and that Mark couldn’t get around her in the narrow gap between the door and the newly married couple without touching her. Again. The thought made her quake inside. She squeaked out a quick ‘Sorry’.

Then she grabbed Toby’s hand and did the only thing she could think of.

She fled.

CHAPTER TWO

SAMMI pumped the inhaler twice and waited.

Toby, still half-asleep, lay on his back propped in a nest of pillows. The terrifying rattle in his chest slowly eased as the albuterol flooded his lungs, widening his breathing passages to allow more air flow.

As Community Health Aide for the island, she knew better than to panic, but when it was your own son… She closed her eyes. Who could maintain any kind of objectivity under those circumstances?

Not that she had much of that anyway. Molly had continually fussed at her for rushing from one house to another to check on patients she’d just seen the day before.

‘You’re going to wear yourself out this way’ had been the rebuke du jour.

Her friend was right, but she hadn’t been able to stop.

Now that Molly was gone and with only one other physician’s assistant on staff at the clinic, she wouldn’t have the luxury of taking off at any hour of day to check on her patients. And either she or the PA would now have to accompany any medevac flights headed to Anchorage. The good part was that she’d be able to meet up with Molly periodically. The bad part was that she was stuck flying with Mark—although Blake could still handle cases that weren’t life or death and who could wait the three hours it took him to reach Dutch Harbor.

‘Better?’ she asked her son, his breathing now almost back to normal.

He nodded sleepily, trying to squinch his way back into his cocoon of warm covers.

‘Not so fast, bud. Let’s just wait another minute or two.’

His impatient sigh made her smile. Okay, if he could do that, instead of gasping for each breath, she could afford to let him go back to sleep. She tucked him in and stood over his bed, watching him for a second. Before putting the inhaler back on the book-packed nightstand beside his bed, she shook it to see how much of the medicine remained.

Were they going through it faster than normal?

She couldn’t shake the feeling that Toby’s attacks were coming more frequently than in the past.

Checking the child monitor before she clicked the lights off, she headed back to her own room, hoping she could squeeze her eyelids shut long enough to turn off her brain. She needed the sleep, or tomorrow promised to be a long, exhausting day.

‘Mrs. Litchfield is in room one. One of her joints is swollen to almost twice its size.’ The receptionist handed Sammi a file folder.

She tossed her braid over her shoulder, catching a movement outside the front plate-glass window as she did.

Mark. He was striding by on his way to the airport, hands stuffed into the front pockets of his leather bomber jacket, long, loose limbs moving in a way that drew the eye. Not quite a swagger, his stride gave off an air of easy confidence that said he didn’t care what the world thought of him.

And unlike Sammi, who couldn’t seem to look away, the man didn’t spare a glance at the clinic, or at her. With a sigh, she forced herself to turn away and head to the exam room.

As soon as she arrived, all thoughts of Mark evaporated when Barbara Litchfield, a woman in her mid-fifties, climbed to her feet and greeted her.

‘Sorry to come back so soon,’ she said, the regret in her voice unmistakable.

‘What are you talking about? I told you to get back in here at the first hint of trouble. Arthritis is nothing to play around with. I know you need those fingers whole and strong.’

A retired orchestral pianist, Barbara had moved to the Aleutians with her husband when he’d retired from a corporate job a couple of years ago. At a time when most retirees sought refuge in the south, hoping for warm, sunny days of golfing and fun, the Litchfields had bucked the trend, fitting right into the harsh landscape of Dutch Harbor. Barbara taught piano lessons—free of charge—to a few of the local kids. It meant a lot to both the former pianist and the kids she worked with. Those fingers were important, and not just for her physical health.

Sammi snapped on a pair of gloves. ‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’

Taking the other woman’s hands in hers, she spotted the affected joint immediately. Swollen and angry red, her left ring finger didn’t look happy, and for good reason. Molly frowned when she noted the woman’s wedding band. ‘Why is that still on?’

‘I tried to get it off this morning when I realized how bad it was, but it wouldn’t budge, and when I tried to force it…’ Her voice trailed away.

‘It’s okay. The base of your finger isn’t swollen at the moment, but if it begins to swell, we may need to cut the ring off.’ She put a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. ‘We won’t unless it’s absolutely necessary, okay? In the meantime, I’m going to give you a shot of cortisone in the joint. Then I really want you to see a rheumatologist in Anchorage. I’ll make a phone call and get you in as soon as possible.’