Dr. Dad by Judith Arnold

wasn’t straining herself.
    â€œNo,” her voice came to him. “Am I?”
    Not now, he wanted to say. Before, when you asked me questions I didn’t want to answer…
    Yet she hadn’t really asked. And he could haveavoided answering. Perhaps, on some subliminal level, he’d wanted to tell her these things. Perhaps he needed a woman to talk to even more than Lindsey did.
    No. Susannah was Lindsey’s friend first. Lindsey was the one who mattered, the one he loved, the one he worried about.
    â€œI appreciate your spending the afternoon with Lindsey,” he said.
    She didn’t respond immediately. “We had fun,” she said.
    He screwed in another bracket. “Lindsey more than you, I’m sure.” He fastened another bracket, then warned, “The last two are going into the bottom of the door, so there’s going to be more pressure down there.”
    â€œOkay.”
    He knelt on the thick blue carpet and worked the last two brackets into the wall. She said nothing. Yet the tension seemed to leave him. The silence had grown comfortable, almost companionable. “Done,” he called to her. “I’m going to put the mirror on now.”
    Susannah emerged from behind the door. “What do you want me to do?”
    â€œJust hold the door steady from the side,” he requested, lifting the heavy silver glass and fitting it into the brackets. He adjusted them, wedging their lips against the mirror to pin it to the door, and then stepped back. His image filled the mirror, and then Susannah’s as she came to stand beside him.
    â€œI had fun, too,” she said quietly, addressing his reflection. “I like Lindsey.”
    He watched her reflection as she watched his. Her eyes were so clear he felt as if he could see straight through them to something inside her, something softand sweet and questioning. Something that told him she was trying to communicate much more than what her words expressed.
    He was afraid to find out what. So he didn’t ask. He simply returned her reflected smile, pocketed his screwdrivers and said, “All done.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    S USANNAH HADN’T EXPECTED to fall asleep easily that night, so it didn’t shock her to find herself at two-thirty in the morning, seated at her computer in the room she’d set up as an office. A cup of herbal tea stood near her elbow, its minty fragrance soothing.
    She’d been writing. Rewriting. Revising. The story line she’d come up with for the scripts she’d been commissioned to do for Mercy Hospital was fine, but the character she’d created, the handsome young pediatrician, needed work.
    Actually, he would have served as a fine character the way she’d first written him: reserved but friendly, exuding a quiet confidence that drew women to him. But tonight, as Arlington slept, Susannah remained awake, altering him, giving him added texture, added dimension. His quiet confidence would mask deep vulnerabilities. His sexy smile would disguise a wounded heart. He would not be just some handsome dude introduced into the plot to excite the female staff of Mercy Hospital—and the female audience tuning in to the show. He would be much more complex.
    Leaning back in her chair, she rubbed her eyes, which were beginning to burn from the strain of staring at the monitor. She took a sip of tea, then glanced toward the window.
    Toby’s house was dark.
    She wasn’t sure what she’d expected when he’d come to her house, but she’d sensed that more would happen than merely the mirror hanging. Maybe she’d hoped he would suggest that they get together, just the two of them, some evening. Dinner, a movie, nothing elaborate, but…just some time together, assuming he found her even remotely as attractive as she found him.
    Several times that evening, she’d felt a spark. When the mirror had been hung and she’d moved beside him to judge