The Doctor's Perfect Match Read online

  “Poor Brooks,” Hypatia said. “The last thing he needs, with Morgan now happily married, is a reminder of all he has lost.”

  “This is true,” Magnolia admitted, “and yet, if we’ve learned anything over the years, we’ve learned that God has plans and reasons for what and whom He brings into this house.”

  Her sisters murmured their agreement, nodding.

  “Our first concern,” Magnolia went on, “must be Eva herself. Perhaps my fear that she is dying is unfounded, but her spiritual condition is not. She blatantly admitted her lack of faith.”

  “Brooks originally stated that she would be staying only until her stitches could be removed,” Hypatia revealed, “so our time with her is limited, regardless of the true state of her health.”

  “Then, there’s no time to lose,” Magnolia decided. “She won’t like it, but we need to get her to prayer meeting tomorrow night.”

  “And how do you suggest we do that?” Hypatia asked, sounding tired. She tugged the collar of her navy blue silk robe closer about her throat. Magnolia noted idly that its white piping looked very like her skin, which seemed unusually pale tonight.

  “Leave Eva to me,” Magnolia said, waving a hand. “Are you cold, sister?”

  “This winter has seemed interminable,” Hypatia complained. “I’m off to my warm bed.” She heaved herself out of the armchair where she customarily sat for these late evening chats. The sisters routinely spoke and prayed together at the end of the day, and Magnolia was glad that hadn’t changed with Odelia’s marriage a couple years ago.

  “Good night, dear,” Odelia said, uncurling from the corner of the sofa.

  “Good night.”

  “Kent thinks she needs a good multivitamin,” Odelia whispered as soon as the door closed behind their sister’s back.

  Magnolia blinked. She hadn’t noticed that Hypatia needed anything, though perhaps she had seemed to suffer more from the cold this winter than in years past. Kent, being a pharmacist, would know about these things, though.

  “Getting her the vitamins and getting her to take them are two different things,” Magnolia murmured. “Maybe we should speak to Brooks about it.”

  “Hmm,” Odelia considered. “Perhaps so, though perhaps not just now.”

  Magnolia smiled. “I suspect the right time will come.”

  “It always does,” Odelia said with a giggle, hurrying toward her private suite and her waiting husband.

  Magnolia sighed and shook her head. It had come for Odelia after fifty years, and the result seemed to be one long honeymoon. She prayed that Eva Russell’s time for joy would come before it was too late. Hers and dear Brooks’s.

  Chapter Four

  She woke hungry. Nothing new in that. Eva rolled over, opening her eyes, and everything abruptly changed. The bed beneath her did not squeak and groan or smell of plastic. She was not locked, crammed, into the back of her funky old van. Instead, light and opulence flooded her senses. Memory rushed over her, beginning with the scrumptious doctor who had tended her the day before and ending with the wizened old gardening gnome who had delivered the pajamas that Eva currently wore. She thought of Magnolia pugnaciously standing up to her last night.

  I blame your mother for your brain tumor. I blame her for your terrible taste in men. I could even blame her for your sister’s cancer. It’s often hereditary, after all...You blame God for the failures of His children and the problems of a fallen world...let Himself be crucified to pay the sin debt for the whole of humanity...and give that same humanity the free will to reject His sacrifice. I suspect your definition of cruel is simply not getting what you want when and how you want it.

  Eva had to admit that she had a point. If people possessed free will, it didn’t seem quite fair to blame God for everything they did. And while Eva wasn’t completely sure what the “problems of a fallen world” meant, she’d never before thought of the crucifixion as payment for sin debt. She tried to square that with some of the things she’d heard her aunt say, but her stomach rumbled, so she quickly moved on. Throwing back the covers, she sat up and looked around her.

  The stitches pulled on the back of her head and pain knocked on her skull, but the room didn’t tilt, so she threw her legs over the side of the bed and put her feet on the floor. After quickly dressing, she used a new toothbrush that she found in a drawer in the bathroom, then went out in search of a meal, leaving all but a single shawl behind. She met Magnolia, also dressed much as she had been the night before, on the landing at the head of the stairs.

  “Good morning. Sleep well?”

  “I did,” Eva answered, tying the shawl about her waist. “How about you, Penny Loafers?”

  Magnolia lifted her eyebrows but answered sedately. “Always. Ready for breakfast?”

  “Does a bear, uh, live in the woods?” And the doc said she had no internal monitor.

  Magnolia blinked at her. “I would imagine so, yes.”

  “Well, there you go, then.”

  Blink, blink. “Ah. Hm. Let’s go down, then. I’ll show you the way to the sunroom where we breakfast.”

  As they descended the broad staircase, which turned back on itself halfway down, Eva gazed upward at the ceiling. On second perusal, it did seem too ethereal for comic ducks.

  “Maybe doves,” she murmured.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The ceiling.” She pointed upward. “Who painted it?”

  “No one knows,” Magnolia told her. “The records were long since lost. It is a work of art, though. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s something, all right,” Eva muttered.

  Still craning her neck to take it all in, she almost missed the bottom step and nearly pitched onto her face. Only Magnolia’s cry and Eva’s grasp on the curled banister saved her. Stumbling into the bottom post, Eva righted herself in the nick of time.

  “Whoa!” she joked, swiping at her scarf. “Remind me not to go walking around looking up while my stomach’s empty and I have stitches in the back of my head.”

  Magnolia set her pruned mouth and grasped Eva by the wrist, instructing, “This way.”

  The old girl proved surprisingly strong as she towed Eva down one of a pair of hallways flanking the grand staircase to the sunroom at the very end. A colorful combination of rattan furnishings, tropical prints, potted plants, a rock fireplace and glass walls overlooking an enormous patio and a large, covered pool, the long, narrow room managed to feel sunny and warm despite the gray, cold day. Most compelling of all, however, was the table laden with pots of tea and, thankfully, coffee, crisp bacon, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit and steaming oatmeal.

  “I’m going to kiss the cook,” Eva exclaimed, pulling out a chair, “right after I pig out.”

  Magnolia chuckled, seating herself. “What will you have?”

  “Just don’t let any body parts get too close to my plate.”

  Clucking her tongue to hide her smile, Magnolia poured tea for herself while Eva heaped her plate. A large woman with brownish-gray, chin-length hair came out of a side door and carried a basket of ridiculously fragrant muffins to the table.

  “Hilda,” Magnolia said, “this is our guest, Miss Eva Belle Russell. Miss Russell—”

  Shielding her full mouth behind her hand, Eva corrected her. “Eva. Just Eva.”

  “Eva,” Magnolia went on, “this is our cook, Mrs. Hilda Worth. Her husband, Chester—”

  Whatever else she might have said got lost when Eva jumped up and smacked a kiss on Hilda’s cheek.

  Hilda screeched an “Oh!” and started to laugh. “That hungry, are you? I was told to fatten you up. No one said you were starving.”

  “I’ll kiss your feet to keep eating like this,” Eva said, dropping back into her chair and reaching for a muffin. She brought it to her no
se and inhaled deeply. Lately she’d found that she couldn’t always smell as well as she should, but the ginger aroma made her head swim. Biting off a huge chunk, she let the flavors infuse her mouth before she chewed, moaning with delight, and swallowed. Hilda waddled back into the kitchen, chuckling and shaking her head.

  “You’ve made a friend there,” Magnolia told her. “Feel free to help yourself to anything in the kitchen that doesn’t need cooking, and if you like reading or want to use the computer, I’ll show you the library.”

  That caused Eva to pause in her feeding. “You have a real library?”

  Magnolia nodded. “And a music room. Just off the ballroom.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Huh. Sure beats a roadside park for amenities.”

  Eva went on eating, aware that she was behaving like a perfect glutton but unable to help herself. It had been so long since she had been able to simply eat her fill that she couldn’t stop until she was stuffed. When she finally put down her fork, Magnolia was looking a little worried.

  “Are you going to keep all that down?”

  “I think so, but if you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit here for a minute to let it all settle. I wouldn’t want to upset the Muffin Queen by upchucking her delicious food.”

  Magnolia laughed, waved a knobby hand and picked up her teacup, long since having finished her own breakfast. Eva stretched out her legs beneath the table and folded her hands over her packed middle.

  “The doc said he’d take me to get my things out of my van today.”

  “It’s his half day at the office,” Magnolia told her, “so I imagine he’ll be around this afternoon, but I can call him to remind him, just in case.”

  “Ah. You know him pretty well, then.”

  “I should say so. We’ve known Brooks Harris Leland his entire life.”

  Eva sat up straight again. “Do tell.”

  Magnolia looked down, picking up stray crumbs from the tabletop with her fingertip and transferring them to her plate. “He’s a family friend, the best friend of our nephew Morgan. His father was paralyzed in a fall when Brooks was in grade school and died while he was in college. His mother wore herself out taking care of her husband and died before Brooks married.”

  “He’s a widower, right? He mentioned his late wife last night.”

  Magnolia’s amber gaze speared Eva’s. “That’s right. His wife, Brigitte, died only a few years after they married.”

  “And he hasn’t remarried?”

  “No. It’s been, oh, sixteen, seventeen years, and he’s never remarried, never even come close, that I know of.”

  Eva realized that her mouth hung open and snapped it shut. “Dr. Gorgeous has been single for that long?”

  Lifting her eyebrows, Magnolia disciplined a smile. “He is rather...handsome, isn’t he?”

  Rolling her eyes, Eva said, “Yeah, well, there’s eye candy and there’s handsome. In my book, handsome is as handsome does.”

  “And as I said, Brooks is handsome,” Magnolia insisted. “He’s a fine Christian man.”

  “Which is three reasons to avoid him,” Eva told herself, only to realize that she’d spoken aloud when Magnolia frowned at her.

  “Three reasons?”

  Eva cleared her throat. So much for that interior monitor. Still, might as well lay it out for the old girl. “One, he’s a doctor.”

  “Not usually a negative,” Magnolia mused, obviously confused.

  “Two, he’s gorgeous.”

  “Again, not usually a strike against a man.”

  “And three,” Eva went on, only to realize that number three might actually insult her hostess, an outspoken Christian. “He, um, is obviously still in love with his late wife.”

  “I suppose that might be true,” Magnolia mused, frowning.

  “How about kids?” Eva asked, more to distract Magnolia than from any true desire for an answer. As a rule, she tried not to think about other people and their kids.

  “None, sadly,” Magnolia told her with a shake of her iron-gray head.

  “Well, at least he’s not raising them alone,” Eva said, quickly adding, “I mean, since he hasn’t remarried. I can see why he might not, really. If his experience with happily-ever-after was anything like mine, he’ll have sworn off forever-after, believe me.”

  “You’ve been very hurt, haven’t you?” Magnolia observed more than asked. “Was your husband a professing Christian then?”

  Eva snorted. “Not hardly.”

  “Perhaps that was part of the problem,” Magnolia suggested before abruptly getting to her feet. “Now, let me show you the library.”

  Sheepishly, Eva got up and let the garden gnome in her cardigan and penny loafers lead her back through the house to the library just off the foyer across from the formal parlor.

  * * *

  First a phone call, and then an ambush. Brooks tamped down his irritation and smiled at Magnolia, who looked like a shrunken version of her late father, albeit with a braid gracing one shoulder. The fact that she wore a pair of Hubner’s old galoshes and huddled inside his old overcoat added to the illusion. She might even be wearing his old eyeglasses at the moment. Doubtless, she was also encased in one of Hub Sr.’s old cardigan sweaters under that voluminous coat. Magnolia did not wait there on the porch of Chatam House in the cold January sunshine so he could admire her frugal, androgynous style, however. Like her phone call reminding him that he had promised to take Eva to retrieve her personal belongings from her impounded van, this did not bode well for his peace of mind. Inwardly he sighed.

  “What has she done?”

  Magnolia waved a gnarled hand. “So far as I know Eva hasn’t done anything but eat and read. I am deeply concerned with her spiritual condition, though, especially as I suspect she is very unwell.”

  Magnolia stood no taller than his shoulder, but when she looked up at him with those stern, steady amber eyes of hers, she—more so than her sisters—made him feel all of ten years old again. He resisted the urge to clear his throat and shuffle his feet.

  “You already know that she has a brain tumor. Beyond that, I cannot tell you a thing.”

  “Such frightening words, brain tumor,” Magnolia mused, turning away, “but I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “No.”

  “Still, great strides have been made in treatment.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Many new treatments are now available.”

  “True.”

  “I understand that some tumors are now treated with drugs alone.” She looked over her shoulder then, pinning him with a gaze so direct that he knew he was being probed. He was almost glad that he didn’t have answers to give her, answers he could not have given her, anyway, for ethical reasons.

  “Some,” he returned succinctly.

  As if admitting defeat or drawing an unhappy conclusion, she nodded. “And God is still in the healing business.”

  “He is.”

  She turned to face him again, her chin aloft. “We’ve come to the conclusion that we need to get her to prayer meeting.” The we being Magnolia and her sisters, of course, for whom he would do just about anything, as they well knew.

  “Tonight, you mean.”

  “The sooner the better, wouldn’t you say? All things considered.”

  Well, she had him there. Given Eva’s condition and the fact that she would be staying only long enough to let her scalp wound heal, it didn’t make any sense to delay.

  “I assume you want me to convince her to attend the meeting.”

  Magnolia’s mouth twitched. “I think that in this instance Dr. Gorgeous might have more influence than Penny Loafers, Silk-and-Pearls and Kindred Spirit, not to mention Easter Egg
.”

  Brooks rolled his eyes. “Oh, brother.”

  “Although Hilda the Muffin Queen runs you a close second at this point,” Magnolia informed him from behind her hand.

  He laughed. “So her cognitive abilities are not seriously impaired, then.”

  “Or at least she knows which side of her bread is buttered. Literally,” Magnolia teased.

  Brooks reached out an arm to escort her into the house, saying playfully, “I think Eva is rubbing off on you.”

  “She does have a winsome way about her,” Magnolia admitted.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Brooks muttered, letting them into the warmth.

  “I believe you’ll find her in the library,” Magnolia told him.

  Brooks unbuttoned his overcoat and walked across the foyer to the open door of the library antechamber. A large red mahogany conference table surrounded by chairs took up most of the space. Beyond that was a small office with a double desk topped by a computer and a broad, lovely space furnished floor-to-ceiling with shelves filled with books. A trio of comfortable chairs flanked by lamps had been arranged around a long low table suitable for a tea tray, of course. Brooks walked past the conference table and the door to the office, turning into the library proper.

  He did not at first see anyone. Then a slender foot clad in a black stocking kicked into the air, prompting him to look past the tea table.

  “Eva?”

  The foot went down, and her head popped up, a smile breaking across her face.

  “Doc!” She reared up onto her knees, obviously having been reclining on her stomach on the floor. “You remembered.” Beaming, she clutched a book against her chest.

  In truth, she had not been far from his thoughts all morning. Then again, he found himself all but unable to speak as she laid the book on the table and got to her feet. She stood before him covered chin to toes in black spandex, a single large colorful scarf tied about her slender waist above one hip, and yet her garb left absolutely nothing to the imagination where her shape was concerned. And how shapely she was!