Georgie's Heart (2 page)

Georgeanne had been thrilled several months before when one of the doctors she worked for had come up with a plan to help children whose parents had too much money and pride to go to the free county clinics, but not enough money to afford regular medical care. Using the Gant Clinic's facilities, Dr. Baghri had created the Saturday Children's Clinic where office visits cost only twenty dollars per visit on Saturdays.

Dr. Baghri's plan involved having each doctor in the surrounding area donate one Saturday per year of his time. The twenty-dollar charges helped offset the expenses of keeping the clinic open, and the medications were mostly free samples donated by drug companies. Community response threatened to overwhelm the clinic, thanks to local layoffs and a generally poor economy, but doctor-response so far had been less than enthusiastic.

“I'm working on that,” Georgeanne said, “and so is Dr. Baghri. We'll get more doctors signed up soon. The problem is, no one quite understands how Dr. Baghri's plan works. As soon as I get my sales pitch worked out, things will be different. And I'm thinking about a web site — ”

“It isn't your fault, Georgie.” Denise folded her arms, book still in hand, and studied Georgeanne in a knowing way. “If that clinic fails, don't you go convincing yourself it failed because you didn't talk it up good enough.”

“That's for sure.” Angela pushed off Georgeanne's desk and brushed down her clinging white trousers. “You've worked as hard for the Saturday Clinic as Dr. Baghri has. Harder.”

“It won't fail,” Georgeanne said. “Not after Dr. Scott's widow just donated her husband's old clinic building to the cause. Which reminds me.” She turned a stern gaze on her co-workers. “This weekend Dr. Baghri and I are going to be cleaning out the building and doing some painting. We're going to need a little slave labor.”

Good-natured groans arose, but Georgeanne smiled with satisfaction. No matter how much her co-workers might gripe about the encroachment of the Saturday Clinic upon their free time, each and every one of them would be present for the great paint-in Georgeanne planned.

“Do you know what I wish?” Angela gave Georgeanne an affectionate grin. “I wish that just once when we talk about winning the lottery or getting big royalty checks, you'd say you're going to lose five pounds and buy a yellow bikini and a yellow convertible.”

Georgeanne laughed at that. “Come on, dreamers. Five pounds won't make a dent in this body, and you know it. As for bikinis, I think I'd feel more comfortable in one of those boy-leg swimsuits.”

Good-natured hooting arose. Georgeanne smiled on her friends and shook her head when they proclaimed her figure perfect as it was. A woman who stood six feet tall and who was built on a grandiose scale to boot didn't go around kidding herself about yellow bikinis. She bought a black boy-leg suit and she draped a dark towel around her overly curvaceous body.

Still, she liked knowing her friends appreciated her as she was. She certainly wasn't likely to change, not when her every effort in that direction had met with total and complete failure.

“Honey, you aren't meant to be a skinny bean pole,” Denise said. “You were born with curves, and you're going to die with curves. Unless you do something stupid.”

“Like get the curves liposuctioned off?” Georgeanne asked in the meek tones of one seeking information.

Denise frowned at her. “Like develop anorexia or get that weight-loss surgery. You wouldn't look right if you starved yourself down to nothing.”

“Oh, give us a break.” Angela walked over to gaze idly out the tall window facing Georgeanne's desk. “You're beautiful as you are, Georgie. And if you weren't so busy being soft-hearted, you'd take pity on some of the men who keep falling all over themselves trying to get you to notice them.”

“What men?” Georgeanne asked. “If you're talking about poor Mr. Spector, who tripped over his little boy yesterday — ”

“Brent Spector is just one of them,” Denise said. “You don't see all these single fathers gazing at you when you aren't looking, but we do.”

Since the Gant Clinic specialized in pediatrics, any man old enough to be gazing at Georgeanne was a father. As for men falling all over themselves to gain her notice, Georgeanne found that ridiculous.

“Let me demonstrate the way they look at you.” Denise leaned forward with a sheeplike expression so full of wide-eyed longing, Georgeanne almost burst into laughter. “They're all dying to stroke those curves of yours, honey. Men think you look like a real woman.”

“That's probably because I look like the motherly type. Single fathers don't need wives. They need mothers for their children.” Georgeanne gathered up her papers once more.

“You don't see yourself, Georgie,” Sandra said. “Men love the way you look.”

Georgeanne reflected that if she had a nickel for every time she'd heard that statement or one like it, she'd be able to buy herself that yellow convertible.

“If I listened to my loyal friends, I'd be impossible to live with.” She stood, papers in hand. “I'd better get these into the mail right away, or Dr. Baghri will have no one present when he dedicates the new Saturday Clinic building.”

Angela pulled aside the translucent curtain and peered out the window. “Dr. Gant and Dr. Baghri just drove up. Who's that with them? Oh, my God. I'm having a heart attack.” She grabbed at her chest. “Serious hottie alert, ladies.” She fanned her face. “Now there's a man a woman could have an orgasm just looking at.”

“Where?” Denise rushed over to join Angela at the window. “Oh, wow. He looks like a movie star. Say, I think he is a movie star. I know I've seen that face before. Isn't he the guy who played Tanner Colt in
Deuces High
?”

Sandra joined the group. “It is him. It's Hunter Howell.”

“I expect it's Dr. Zane Bryant,” Georgeanne said. “I've been writing him on Dr. Baghri's behalf.” She went to the counter separating her cubicle from the waiting room and began folding letters and slipping them into envelopes. “Haven't you heard the story? Hunter Howell and Dr. Bryant are identical twin brothers. They were separated at birth and adopted out to different families. They found each other several years ago when Dr. Bryant saw Hunter Howell in a movie and contacted him.”

“I don't care if he is just a doctor,” Angela declared. “If he's coming in here, I'm going to get his autograph. He's seriously, seriously hot.”

“He's coming in here.” Georgeanne went back to her desk and rustled through her top drawer for stamps. “He practices pediatrics in Pasadena, and he's very interested in Dr. Baghri's idea. He wants to learn firsthand how the Saturday Clinic operates.”

Pasadena was a suburb of Houston within easy driving range of Fannett. Georgeanne smiled with satisfaction, recalling the regular letters and emails she had written on Dr. Baghri's behalf to Dr. Zane Bryant over the past few weeks. She had been as thrilled as Dr. Baghri when Zane Bryant asked for an appointment to view the new clinic. The request meant her skills in coaxing reluctant doctors into donating time to charity showed improvement.

“Oh, please,” Angela groaned. “Don't tell me all he's going to be talking about is charity clinics. What a waste.”

“You don't mean that,” Georgeanne said with gentle reproof. “You were the first person to volunteer when Dr. Baghri couldn't get a lab tech for the Saturday Clinic.”

“Well, tell the world, why don't you?” Angela stared out the window. “If a woman was married to a man who looked like that, she wouldn't need Fritzi Field's advice on how to fake it.”

Georgeanne's face flamed, and she wished for the millionth time that she wouldn't blush every time anyone mentioned Fritzi Field. One of her friends might draw the correct conclusion any day now: Georgeanne Hartfield had a guilty conscience.

Two years ago, Georgeanne's handsome husband left her for another woman. During the period immediately after her divorce, Georgeanne had produced a book. The writing had assuaged her anguish and helped her come to terms with her dead marriage.

The book had blessed her in more ways than one. It had been excellent psychological therapy, and the money from its sale helped finance Dr. Baghri's clinic and bought dog food for the Humane Society, among other things.

Georgeanne simply hadn't expected the book to take off the way it had, much less that it would be waved in her face every day at work.

Lord help her if anyone ever realized Georgeanne Hartfield was the reclusive, controversial author, Fritzi Field. Everyone would know she had lost her husband because she was lacking as a woman, and Georgeanne didn't think she could stand that.

The group at the window scattered. Angela hustled back to her lab and the two nurses scurried off in opposite directions.

Georgeanne remained at her post, pasting stamps on the envelopes she had already addressed. She would get a close-up view of Dr. Zane Bryant soon enough. Besides, a woman who had been married to a man who resembled Robert Redford knew better than to let a man's good looks sway her common sense.

The front door opened and three men entered. One assumed an instant prone position on the floor when a blue toy car flew from beneath his foot and bounced off the wall.

“Dr. Bryant!” Aghast, Georgeanne rushed through the swinging door that separated her from the waiting area and knelt beside him while Dr. Gant and Dr. Baghri gazed down in paralyzed horror. “Are you all right? Oh, this is all my fault. I didn't see that car when I straightened the office this morning. I'm so very sorry.”

“It's not your fault, Georgie,” Dr. Gant, a tall, thin man with graying hair said in stunned tones. “Cleaning the office isn't your job in the first place.”

Georgeanne winced. That meant the clinic's regular cleaning woman, who was at home nursing her sick mother at Georgeanne's insistence, might be in trouble. If only she could learn to think before she spoke.

“My apologies, doctor.” Vijay Baghri, a short Indian man, joined Georgeanne in kneeling beside Zane Bryant's prone figure, and his small dark hands joined Georgeanne's efforts in assisting Dr. Bryant. “Dr. Gant will perhaps hire a new cleaning person.”

“Not on my account, please,” Dr. Bryant said. “The truth is, I was born clumsy.”

Georgeanne gave a sigh of relief. There lay a rare man indeed, a young good-looking doctor who wasn't so stuck on himself, he sought revenge on anyone who placed him in a ridiculous position.

“It was my fault,” she said in firm, no-nonsense tones. “That truck wasn't there this morning when we opened, or I'd have been the one on the floor. Here, Dr. Bryant. Let me — ”

Then Georgeanne met the fallen doctor's gaze and found herself as breathless as if she had taken the fall herself.

Laid out full-length on Dr. Gant's blue carpet, his black hair disarranged by the fall and tumbled across his forehead, Dr. Bryant lay perfectly still and stared up at her. The way his smoky, gray eyes focused on her in such a dazed fashion, she feared a concussion.

Oh, he was a stunningly handsome man all right, but handsome men were as litigious as ugly men, especially when an incident involved damage to their self-image.

He kept staring at her, and Georgeanne felt the full focus of his attention with an unprecedented, purely feminine sensation she found almost as disturbing as her fears of concussion.

She took herself in hand. Dr. Bryant had come to learn about Dr. Baghri's Saturday Clinic. Her job was to promote the clinic with every fiber of her being. Nothing else mattered.

*

Zane Bryant rolled over and looked up from his nose-down position on the floor. He found himself face-to-face with a goddess. Or an angel. He wondered if more than the breath had been knocked out of him by the unexpected fall.

She was almost as tall as he was, and she had soft, candid, dark-brown eyes framed with incredibly long, curling lashes that reminded him of a doe's eyes. She had skin like that of a porcelain doll, all pink and white, and full red lips that needed no lipstick.

Moreover, she was soft with lush feminine curves, and the hands that supported his shoulders were long and strong and slender, the hands of a woman who wasn't afraid of work. She looked like a woman who valued people more than she valued intangibles. Or a career, he added in his mind.

In spite of many self-lectures about the folly of imagining virtues into a woman just because of the letters and emails she wrote, Zane knew he was guilty of exactly that.

He didn't really know her yet, he reminded himself. That's why he was here.

Zane came to himself at last and realized he still lay on the floor like an idiot. He let them assist him to a sitting position and tried to gather his wits.

“Miss Hartfield?” he wheezed. Damn, but he'd taken quite a fall. He wished he wasn't so clumsy. Talk about making a miserable first impression on a beautiful woman.

She smiled and looked relieved. “Yes, I'm Georgeanne Hartfield. This isn't the way we wanted to welcome you, Doctor.”

“I can assure you, I'll never forget my first sight of you.” Zane smiled and placed one hand over his heart while he remained seated on the floor. She smelled of lilies. Zane decided lilies were his favorite flowers. “Keep your cleaning woman, Dr. Gant. She just did me a great favor.”

Georgeanne laughed. Zane considered the warm glow of gratitude in those gorgeous brown eyes an unexpected reward.

“The doctor does not need our help to get himself to his feet,” Dr. Baghri said in his humorous, broken English. “Our Georgie will lift him up by his heart.”

Georgeanne blushed. “Hush, Doctor. You'll have our guest thinking I do heart transplants on the side.”

Zane Bryant stared again in spite of his fear that Georgeanne might consider him rude. This magnificent creature actually blushed. If she was the Georgeanne Hartfield who had been corresponding with him on Vijay Baghri's behalf for the past few weeks, his good fortune looked too incredible to be true.