Chapter 1

chapter

one

Daisy

“Sorry to bother you, Dr. Allen, but Mr. Mosley wants to see you. He says it will only take a minute.”

Yeah.

Thanks to the new security system that feeds into my office, I already know that man is here.

This will also take way more than one minute of my time.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, and take a moment to gather extra patience. “Here we go.”

Owen Mosley gets under my skin, but not because of the reasons Trisha thinks.

The man tries my bedside manner simply because he harbors an extraordinary amount of stress, even for a single dad, which no amount of professional reassurance can quell.

Usually, I’m great at helping anxious parents calm down about a child’s sniffle here or a rash there. But Owen is a different breed of parent altogether. In my medical professional opinion, the 30-year-old single dad has read way too many parenting manuals for his mental health, yet, mystifyingly, does not know how to Google basic questions like, “When should I call the doctor about my child’s temperature?”

As the locals say, Bless his heart.

And that’s it, really. That’s the whole of my feelings about him, and none of those feelings are influenced by one awkward blind date we went on last New Year’s Eve. I’ve put that evening behind me. Completely.

“Is he on the schedule?” I ask Trisha.

The receptionist tilts her head to the side and smirks. “I think you know the answer to that.”

I blow out of breath and stand up, my 35-year-old knees cracking. “Here we go again.”

The sound of Trisha chuckling behind me as I go to the front desk has me feeling self-conscious. Her tone when it comes to my interactions with Owen feels like a wink and a nudge.

This is probably why I get an involuntary tingle when I glimpse him as I walk through the door into the reception area. Eighteen-month-old Graham, red-cheeked and squealing, grabs at Owen’s mouth while Owen pretends to gobble up those little dimpled fingers.

The adorable, curly-haired toddler has his six-foot-four, 200-pound feed store manager dad wrapped around his chubby little finger. Out of context, I’d say Owen looks like a typical dad. But I’ve seen Graham in my office so many times in the last several months that even though I don’t like to be quick to assign labels, Owen is on the verge of a hypochondriacal diagnosis with regard to the way he fusses and worries over his perfectly healthy boy, Graham.

Graham is a wonderful kid, if a little bit temperamental. Owen, however, has been a thorn in my side—even more than the older patients who don’t like being told to fill out online forms, even after the phone nurse offers to walk them through it.

And yet I can’t help but sense a fiery crackle deep in my body whenever he makes eye contact.

Settle down, ovaries. It’s not happening. Nobody wants to have sex with someone with my…not-so-little problem. Especially because I’m a doctor, who everyone thinks is supposed to know everything about the human anatomy.

The aforementioned dirty little secret ended my last relationship. That personal issue was there in the back of my mind during that ill-fated blind date on the previous New Year’s Eve, which only contributed to my attitude all night long.

Ugh. I don’t need to think about that right now. It does not matter that Owen is cute and single, and I also happen to be cute and single. Everyone loves to point out how we’re both still available and haven’t dated anyone since that horrible first experience. But everyone needs to get over it.

I know I have. And I know for certain that Owen also has gotten over it, without a shadow of a doubt.

“Did you have a question about something?” I ask.

Owen overwhelms the space on the other side of the check-in partition. His flannel shirt makes his broad chest seem broader somehow. Graham’s soft toddler hand grips his dad’s masculine chin, making Owen’s face appear all the more chiseled and scruffy.

Okay. Fine. Owen is not bad to look at, and having an adorable child attached to him at all times doesn’t make him less attractive.

“Hi, Dr. Allen. How are you?” He gives me his usual crooked smile.

Good god, he sees me so often he must have hit his deductible by now.

“I’m fine,” I say, noticing how I was a little short with my greeting. People here love to ease into a conversation, and some days, it makes my head explode. I’m from Gold Hill. I’m a fast talker and I like to keep things moving. I guess it’s not so bad to slow down for a little small talk, even if Owen is here too often. Nervousness aside, he does have a polite demeanor and gorgeous cobalt-blue eyes. Not to mention his criminally long lashes that draw me in. “Everything okay?”

Graham has moved on to reaching for the brim of Owen’s ballcap. The dad runs two thick fingers over the scruff of his chin. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I…I was just wondering if I was supposed to give him Children’s Tylenol before the vaccine or afterward.”

I smirk. We both know that the printouts Trisha gave him when they left after Graham’s check-up this morning had all of that information in there.

“Did you lose it already?”

Owen stammers, “Ma’am, I’ve been losing everything since you rode into town.”

I have no idea what everybody’s horse analogies are supposed to mean but I go along with it. This time, I think he means the former doctor never gave anyone the necessary literature to take home, and he’s simply not used to keeping track of printouts.

I say, “If you need another one, just ask.”

Owen shifts his weight from one foot to the other while trying to avoid Graham’s grabby hands that still reach for the brim of his cap. I’m getting the sense that he has something else on his mind.

Graham starts to whine and wriggle, no longer wanting to be carried. “Down!”

“In a second, kiddo,” the dad replies.

My patience is wearing thin here. “Is there something else, Owen?”

He stammers, “Yeah…um…I was wondering if I could see you in private. It’s kind of a sensitive question.”

I blink at him. He stares back.

Now free of his father’s grip, Graham makes a beeline for the wooden blocks in the children’s waiting area.

Owen’s handsome, masculine face has taken on the expression of a kid in school who’s been called up to the whiteboard to do algebra. I remember that look from our unfortunate blind date. When he asked about my secondary schooling and I answered, I volleyed the question back at him. He was weirdly unprepared for such questions, which I still find odd.

I try “Is it a medical emergency? Is Graham having a reaction to something?”

He blows out of breath. “No, ma’am, it’s not that.”

“Daddy!” Graham calls out, begging the man to get onto the floor to play.

This man is wasting my time. I have a waiting room full of patients and a full roster today. There is something in Owen’s face that tells me this has less to do with medicine and it’s more of a personal nature. I have to check myself. Owen is a single dad with no one to talk to about his problems. Maybe he just needs to vent about his ex abandoning him (assuming that’s the situation—we never covered that much information on that woeful date). I can refer him to a family counselor if that’s the case.

“I’ll tell you what. Add your name to the walk-in list, and I’ll see you as soon as I can. It’s only fair. Now if you feel like there’s a medical emergency, you know what to do, don’t you?”

A relaxed grin crinkles his blue eyes.

“Yes, ma’am, I do.”

Owen tips his hat and turns away, loping across the waiting room to find a seat.

I notice how those jeans hug his backside as he walks away, both cheeks eating up the denim with every step.

What the hell is wrong with me? My friend Rebel would say I need to bang it out. Get all these horny thoughts out of my system. She should know; she met her man while they were both in costume at a gamer convention we attended a few years back.

But Rebel is much more of a free spirit than I am. Still, I have her to thank for telling me about the medical practice for sale here. It’s reassuring to open a practice in a small town where I know at least one person who lives here.

But now, with Rebel married and busy with her own life, I’m starting to feel the effects of isolation and it’s clearly taking a toll on me. Why else would I be staring at a single dad’s butt in the waiting room of my medical practice?

I’ll just have to get past how good he is to look at because there’s nothing cute about a doctor staring at a patient in that way.

I lock that thought in the vault and go back to work.

I have to, because I see Graham more than any other patient.

This all started at the town’s New Year’s Eve dance, where Owen showed up to our blind date, having forgotten to buy a ticket for himself.

Trisha and Rebel have repeatedly urged me to give him a second chance. Trisha’s friend, who works for Owen at the feed store, initiated the blind date idea in the first place. The blind date ended up being the New Year’s Eve dance at Ursula’s now-husband Noah’s ranch, which made the whole debacle even more of a public spectacle.

Everyone in my little universe doesn’t understand that not everything works out perfectly just because they had a role in setting us up.

The bottom line is that Owen and I did not click that night.

And besides, I don’t have time for a relationship. After only eight months, I’m still getting established in Fate. I’m an outsider, and although many people have welcomed me with open arms, I’m still adapting to small-town life.

Everyone’s obsession with me finding someone to date is simply everyone’s favorite pastime.

This town has a habit of attracting deeply hot people, only to see them snatched up by other deeply hot people. You only have to look at the population explosion here over the last seven years to figure out that there’s something in the water. People move here, fall in love, and start making families.

It’s an epidemic, and I know all about those. Me? I’m inoculating myself against love and marriage.