Czytaj książkę: «Plain Jane's Plan»

Chapter One

“You are coming to the conference, aren’t you, Jeffy?” the sultry female voice asked through Jeff’s answering machine. “We had so much fun last year, and I just can’t wait to see you again.” The voice lowered to a sexy whisper. “I’ve got the most incredible new black dress. You’ll love it. Okay, Jeffy? See you next weekend, bye-byeeeeee!”

Jeff Hardison groaned and flopped onto his leather sofa. He could almost see Sherry McCormick’s frosted lips as she’d cooed her way through the message. Last year, at the medical products convention in Dallas, he’d found the man-crazy nurse an amusing distraction. But a little of Sherry went a long way, and he had no intention of spending four days with her stuck to him like a tick.

He briefly considered skipping the conference, but he really needed to go, since his father couldn’t make it this year. Jeff and his dad prided themselves on having all the latest diagnostic equipment, despite the fact they ran a small-town medical practice in Cottonwood, Texas.

So how was he going to dodge Sherry? In fact, he’d just as soon dodge any female who had her sights on him. He was tired of shallow relationships with shallow women who saw a single doctor as their ticket to the country-club life. He was even a bit tired of the ones who just wanted to party.

A knock on his door distracted him momentarily from his dilemma. When he opened the door, he was pleased to see his friend Allison Crane on his porch.

His pleasure quickly turned to concern when he realized she had a bleeding elbow. A huge tear in the leg of her sweatpants revealed a nasty case of road rash along the side of her leg. Her bike was lying in the grass in his front yard with a bent wheel, telling the rest of the story.

“Hi, Jeff,” she said quickly before he could express his concern. “I’m fine, don’t worry, I just slid in a patch of gravel, hit a pothole, and got myself two flat tires. Since I was right up the street—” she shrugged “—I just want to use your phone.”

Jeff dragged her inside. “Hell, Allie, you’re going to kill yourself on that bike if you don’t slow down.”

“I wasn’t going that fast,” she protested as he led her into the kitchen. “Can I use your phone?”

“To call 911?”

She laughed. “I’m not hurt that badly, just a scratch. I was going to call Anne and see if she could run me and the bike home in her van.”

In the kitchen, he took a piece of sterile gauze from the cabinet where he kept his first-aid supplies, then poured some antiseptic onto the gauze and faced Allison with a determined expression.

“Get away from me with that stuff. It stings.”

“You can use my phone after you let me fix you up. God knows what kind of germs are lurking in gravel.”

“Oh, you and your germs.” But she capitulated, sitting in a chair at his kitchen table and rolling up the sleeve of her oversize T-shirt.

“I can give you a ride,” he offered.

“That’s not necess—ouch!” She jerked her arm out of his grasp when he tried to clean the cut on her elbow. “Surely medical science has invented a disinfectant that doesn’t sting by now.”

“Stop being a baby.” After wiping away some of the blood, he inspected the cut more closely. “You’re bleeding like Niagara Falls here. You need stitches.”

“No way. I’ll just apply pressure. It’ll stop bleeding in a minute.”

Jeff shook his head. “You are the most pigheaded person when it comes to medical care. You’d bleed to death before you let someone take a couple of stitches.”

“Pigheaded! You’re the one who hasn’t seen a dentist in three years.”

“My teeth are fine.”

“And my elbow is fine. You and your needles can just keep away from me.”

Despite her protests, he managed to clean out the cut to his satisfaction. The bleeding had already slowed. “All right, maybe some antibiotic ointment and a couple of butterfly bandages will do the trick,” he said. “Can I at least do that?”

Allison frowned. “If it’ll make you feel like a hero.”

Jeff stifled the smile that threatened. Taking care of a patient, any patient, always made him feel like a hero. Most people thought he’d gone into medicine simply because his father was a doctor. But that had little to do with his career choice. In fact, he’d been planning a very different path, something related to business or marketing, leading to a fast-paced job and a corner office and all the big-city excitement he could handle. Then his mother had gotten sick, and he’d watched, helpless, as this doctor and that one tried futilely to save her.

Jeff’s father, himself a physician, had accepted her death. He’d accepted the fact that medical science had limits, and he’d let his wife go, knowing he’d done his best. But Jeff hadn’t let go so easily. He’d disappeared into the woods for hours, screaming at the unfairness of it all. Then he’d vowed that he would never be that helpless again. He would learn the healing arts, learn them better than anyone ever had, so no one he loved would get sick and die like that.

As he got older, he realized his outlook had been naive. Doctors weren’t gods, and sometimes patients died. But he always took it hard when one of his patients slipped away. And he’d never gotten over the thrill of finding a cure, easing pain, giving comfort and occasionally pulling off something that bordered on miraculous.

He would never say it aloud, because it sounded so sanctimonious, but being a doctor truly was his calling.

ALLISON WINCED as Jeff deftly cleaned the scrapes on her leg.

He looked up with clear, blue eyes that could melt a glacier. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”

“It’s okay,” she said. It wasn’t the pain that made every nerve ending in her body stand at attention. It was the touch of Jeff’s hands on her bare skin. They’d played doctor once, when they were children, but ever since then she had assiduously avoided letting Jeff practice his medical arts on her. It wasn’t that she mistrusted his skill. He was one of the best doctors in all of East Texas. But she was deathly afraid that if he touched her, her bodily reactions would give her away.

Thank goodness he thought her fidgeting and shortness of breath were due to discomfort, rather than the fact she was so hot and bothered she couldn’t sit still.

She was crazy in love with Jeff Hardison, had been since she was thirteen. Unfortunately, Jeff had never given her any indication that he reciprocated, so she had pined away in secrecy. He’d always been a good friend to her—really, her best friend—but nothing more, and she would die a thousand deaths if he ever found out her true feelings.

She’d known since high school that he would never be the one for her. Jeff gravitated toward sophisticated females with style, panache and long legs. She had none of those things. Even losing sixty pounds—a result of her newfound passion for bicycling—hadn’t turned her into the sort of femme fatale Jeff went for.

It was hopeless, completely hopeless. She never should have opened her dental practice back home in Cottonwood, where she saw him all the time. They hung out with each other. She even spent time with his family at the Hardison Ranch, which Jeff’s brother Jonathan ran. She was constantly reminded of everything she couldn’t have. Yet, a certain perverse part of her enjoyed being with him. It was torture, but sweet torture.

Jeff applied a couple of bandages over the worst scrapes on her legs. “There, that ought to keep you from bleeding all over my car.”

“You don’t have to take me home. Anyway, I couldn’t fit a loaf of bread in the trunk of your Porsche, much less a bicycle.”

“You can pick up the bike later. I trust you won’t be riding it right away.”

“Of course I will.”

He gave her a disapproving frown.

“Oh, all right, you can take me home,” she said. as if it were a great concession on her part. In truth, she loved riding in Jeff’s luxurious, dark-green sports car, loved the buttery feel of his calfskin seats and the powerful purr of the engine, barely contained on the calm streets of Cottonwood. “I need to take the bike into the shop, anyway, to have that wheel straightened out.”

She would ride her mountain bike until the racing bike was repaired, but Jeff didn’t have to know that.

“That road rash will be a great topic of conversation next weekend,” Jeff commented as they headed for his garage.

“Next weekend?”

“The convention? You’re going, aren’t you?”

“That’s next weekend? Oh, shoot, I think I forgot to send my money in. I’ve probably got back-to-back patients next Thursday and Friday, too.”

“Allie, you have to go.”

She was surprised by the urgency in his voice. “Why?”

“Because it’s no fun without you. Anyway, you have to save me from Sherry McCormick.”

“That nurse with the curly blond hair?”

“That’s the one. She’s planning to hunt me down at the convention and make me her love slave.”

Allison rolled her eyes. “The fact that you’re irresistible to women is a curse you’ll just have to live with. What’s wrong with Sherry, anyway? I remember her from last year. She seems just your type.”

“You really know how to hit below the belt.”

“Well, if you want to discourage her attentions, wear a fake wedding ring. That ought to cool her jets.”

Jeff opened the passenger door to his dark-green Porsche and helped Allison into her seat with more concern than usual. Allison enjoyed his solicitousness. She just wished it wasn’t because she’d left half her skin in the intersection up the street.

“I doubt Sherry would be dissuaded by a wedding ring,” he said as he slid behind the wheel. “She’d just consider it a little extra challenge. What I need is a wife, a flesh-and-blood wife.”

Allison batted her eyelashes. “Why, Jeff, this is so sudden.”

Jeff didn’t laugh, as she expected he would. Instead he looked at her with a speculative gleam in his eye.

“What?”

“How would you like to be my fiancée for the weekend? Run a little interference for me?”

“I told you, I’m not going to the convention.”

“You can change your plans. It’s not too late to register as a walk-in. C’mon, Allie, it’ll be fun.”

Allison’s instincts told her to say yes. What a fantasy, walking around for four days on Jeff Hardison’s arm, pretending they were engaged. “It would be dishonest.”

“It would save me from Sherry the Leech. Please?”

“What about all the other women? As I recall, you usually cut a wide swath on a long weekend in Dallas.”

“Not this time. I’m mending my ways. No more tomcatting. I’ll be your devoted fiancé, proper in every respect.”

That would be the day.

“I’ll take you to dinner at Antares,” he wheedled.

Antares was the revolving restaurant atop Reunion Tower in downtown Dallas, and Jeff knew darn well it was her favorite restaurant. He was really going for the jugular.

She heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Let me see if I can rearrange my appointments.” She knew all the while she would give in to his request. She was pretty much powerless to say no to Jeff, and he knew it. Anyway, she’d been looking for an excuse to get up to Dallas and see her former roommate, Stephanie Rich, who was a gynecologist. If she phoned right away, Steph could probably squeeze her into her schedule.

She most definitely did not want to see her regular doctor, who happened to be Jeff’s father, about her little health problem.

ANNE HARDISON froze, a French fry halfway to her mouth. “You’re going to do what?”

Allison enjoyed the look of shock on her friend’s face. They were lunching at their usual spot, Triple Z Barbecue. Anne’s husband, who was Jeff’s younger brother, Wade, was taking his turn today watching their new baby.

“I’m going to pose as Jeff’s fiancée to keep this certain woman, Sherry, from hitting on him at the convention,” Allison explained. “She just about drove him crazy last year.”

“And you agreed?” Anne asked, dumbfounded.

“Sure. Why not? It’s a favor between friends.

Anyway, he promised to take me to Antares for dinner.”

“You could afford to take yourself to Antares. Allison, honey, he’s taking advantage of you. He’s using you.”

“Oh, he’s not, either.” Allison took a bite of her barbecued beef sandwich. She loved the fact she could eat anything she wanted, guilt-free, since she started bicycling.

“Yes, he is,” Anne insisted. “He’s a big boy, and I’ve seen him break a heart or two without blinking an eye. I’m sure he can fight off a dozen Sherrys if he wants to. I think he has another angle.”

“Like what?” Allison took a sip of iced tea.

“I don’t know. Like…like maybe he’s tired of being single, and he wants to test the waters—see how it might feel to be committed, without really committing.”

Allison laughed so loud the construction workers at the next table looked over. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”

“No, I think I’m on to something,” Anne said, her enthusiasm rising in her voice. “Jeff has been hanging around at our place quite a bit, helping out with the rodeo camp. He’s wonderful with the kids, and sometimes I catch him looking at Wade and me and the baby with this sort of wistful expression on his face.”

“You think he’s jealous of your marital bliss?”

“All men get the urge to settle down and procreate sooner or later, even Jeff.”

Allison took a particularly savage bite of an onion ring. “Even if you’re right, I’m not the one he fantasizes about. I mean, get real.”

“What do you mean, ‘get real’?”

“I mean, Jeff can have any woman he wants. Why would he set—”

“Don’t you dare use that word, settle. Jeff Hardison would be damn lucky to have you. Any man would.”

Allison rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, Anne, you don’t have to stroke my ego. Jeff is attracted to sophisticated model-types with long legs and collagen lips. We both know I’m no beauty queen.”

Anne threw down her French fry, splattering ketchup on the checkered tablecloth. “That is such bull! You could go up against any woman in this town—or anywhere, for that matter. You’ve got great skin, great cheekbones, great hair—”

“Mousy brown is not great.”

“But it’s thick and shiny, and—”

“Anne, cut it out, okay? I don’t care that Jeff doesn’t notice me.”

“Oh, don’t you?” Anne asked innocently. The silence that followed her question was charged with enough tension to suffocate a mule.

“We’re just friends, and I like it that way,” Allison said, trying her best to sound casual.

“Liar.”

Suddenly Allison found it hard to swallow. She’d nurtured her ridiculous crush on Jeff for years, and no one had ever suspected. Or had they? She’d never said a word to anyone and always acted completely indifferent around Jeff, but Anne was very observant.

“You haven’t mentioned this to anyone, have you?” Allison asked, dying a thousand deaths. Her secret, her precious secret, was out in the open.

“Um, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I don’t have to mention it. Everyone knows.”

Allison thought she was going to throw up. Surely this was just a terrible nightmare. “Everyone?”

“Everyone but Jeff, the lunkhead. I guess he’s so used to women adoring him that he’s oblivious.”

Here, at least, was a shred of hope. “You’re sure he doesn’t know? And nobody’s said anything to him?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Listen, Anne. He can never, never know. Promise me you won’t say anything to Jeff.”

“I won’t. I wouldn’t do that. But, Allison, why can’t he know? In every relationship, someone has to make the first move. Why don’t you just tell him how you—”

“I did that once.”

“When? I thought—”

“In seventh grade. I screwed up my courage and asked him to the Christmas dance at the country club, and he was grossed out by the whole idea.”

“Good Lord, Allie, that was eons ago. He probably doesn’t even remember it.”

“Well, I do.” No sting of rejection had ever hurt so badly.

“You need to try again,” Anne said gently.

“No! Oh, Anne, you don’t know what you’re saying.” Allison scooted out of the booth. The restaurant suddenly felt stifling, suffocating. She had to get out. She threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table and scrambled to her feet, unable to get to the door fast enough.

“Allison, wait,” Anne called, hot on her tail.

In the parking lot outside, Allison stopped and caught her breath. “Anne. I am not Jeff’s type. If he knew I had…feelings for him, it would just make him uncomfortable, and then he’d feel sorry for me, and I can’t be some object of pity, I just can’t. I could never be friends with him again. At least if we’re friends, I can see him.”

“And slowly torture yourself to death. Allison, honey, that’s no way to live.”

“You have another suggestion? Besides making a total fool of myself? I’d have to move, you know. If he rejected me, I’d have to leave Cottonwood forever.”

“Chill out, drama queen.” Anne was walking slow circles around Allison, chin in hand, looking very thoughtful.

“What? Did I spill something on myself?”

“What if I could turn you into ‘Jeff’s type’?”

“Huh? You mean, like, a makeover?”

“Yeah. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, Allison, but you don’t exactly enhance your good points.”

“You mean because I don’t wear two pounds of makeup and a push-up bra, and tease my hair like Dolly Parton? That’s not me, Annie.”

“I’m not suggesting you do any such thing. But you hide your figure under baggy clothes, and you’ve been wearing the same hairstyle since junior high.”

“I’m comfortable with myself this way.”

“Yeah, because no one notices you. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about because I’ve been there. I was a nerdy law student before I met Wade, remember? Men never looked twice at me. But one crazy night I did myself up like a country-and-western singer and went to the rodeo, and boy, did the men notice.”

“One man in particular,” Allison said with a smile, recalling Anne and Wade’s tumultuous courtship. Anne had settled on an image that was somewhat toned down from the vampy rodeo queen. But Allison had to admit, her friend was a knockout now, when before she’d been easy to overlook. “But I’m just not the girly-girl type,” Allison added.

“You say you want Jeff to make the first move,” Anne said, “but he’s never going to do that if he doesn’t notice you.”

“I could walk down the street stark naked and he wouldn’t notice. I lost sixty pounds—sixty pounds—and he never said a word.”

“That’s because you’re still wearing size sixteen clothes!”

Allison looked down at what she was wearing. “Am I that bad?”

“Frankly, yes! Let me play Professor Higgins. Maybe you’ll like it. If not, there’s nothing lost.”

Allison sighed. “Okay, if you really want to. But it won’t do any good.”

“Maybe not. But there’s a whole sea of men out there besides Jeff.”

ALLISON PACKED and repacked her suitcase, making sure she had everything in her arsenal that she would need for the convention.

Three Miracle Bras in various colors, check.

Garter belt and stockings, check.

Catch-me-kiss-me, four-inch pumps, check.

Little black dress with no back, check.

Two pounds of makeup she’d sworn she wouldn’t wear, but which made her look like a supermodel so she’d changed her mind, check.

Clingy tops two sizes too small, and pants that showed her belly-button, check.

Dangly jewelry, check.

Contraceptive devices—like she would need them—check.

As she zipped the suitcase closed, she caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror, and her heart skittered around until she realized there wasn’t a stranger in her bedroom. Anne had done a real number on her. They’d taken two evenings to accomplish the makeover, plus an evening of shopping, but the results were more than Allison had ever dreamed of.

Plain-Jane Allison was now pretty. No, she was gorgeous. A knockout. She hardly resembled the creature she’d been before. Her clothes were stylish and figure revealing, and her figure was worth revealing, taut as a bowstring but still softly curved. Her makeup enhanced her dark eyes, full lips, and sharp cheekbones.

And her hair—that was the wildest change. Anne had taken her to her favorite stylist, who had suggested golden highlights and a feathery cut that fluffed around her face. Jeez, she was almost a blonde.

People she’d known her whole life passed her on the street without a flicker of recognition. Her own patients stared at her as if she was going topless. And her parents…well, they’d been surprised to say the least. Her father, a church minister, had actually given her a brief lecture on the sins of the flesh. Her mother had nodded in agreement, then taken her aside and said, “Don’t listen to your father. He’s being a fuddy-duddy. You look fabulous. Do you think Anne might have time to show me how to do my makeup?”

Allison hadn’t run into Jeff yet, but that would soon be remedied. He was due to pick her up any minute. They were riding together to Dallas, of course, as an “engaged” couple should.

Allison tried to corral the butterflies in her stomach. How would Jeff react to the new Allison, all decked out in low-cut jeans and a snug purple crop top? Would he whistle with appreciation? Would he stare with his mouth gaping open? Would he take her in his arms and kiss her passionately?

Well, okay, that third possibility was a pretty farout fantasy. But she couldn’t wait to see what he would do.

The doorbell rang and the butterflies fluttered themselves into a frenzy. This was it, her moment of truth. If this didn’t prod Jeff into thinking of her as a desirable woman, she didn’t know what would.

She hoisted her suitcase off the bed and wheeled it to the door, where her smaller bag of toiletries was already waiting. “Coming!” she called as she found her purse, a sassy little faux-alligator bag Anne had picked out for her.

Then she held her breath and opened the door.

Oh, Lord, he looked good. But then, he always did. Even as a skinny high-schooler, his broad shoulders and burgeoning muscles had hinted of good things to come.

“Hey, Allie.” He flashed an easy smile. “Are you ready?”

“Um, yeah,” she managed, searching for telltale signs of shock on his face. But he looked perfectly passive.

He spotted her two bags and reached for them. “I’ll get these.” He loped back out to his car, popped the trunk with a button on his key chain and stashed her luggage alongside his. “Hey, we have matching bags.”

“Bought mine on sale at the outlet mall.” She wasn’t sure how she managed to assemble words and phrases into coherent sentences, but she must have been doing all right, because Jeff didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

And that was just the problem, wasn’t it? she thought with a wave of despair. Her big plan was a big, fat failure. She had changed everything about her appearance, and Dr. Jeff Hardison didn’t even notice.