“I can’t deal with this now,” he muttered.
“It’ll blow over,” Pam said in an attempt to reassure him. She regarded him worriedly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have shown it to you.”
“No. I needed to see it,” he told her, then added briskly, “Now let’s get started. We have a busy morning.”
“You don’t want to give Samantha a call?”
“Later,” he said tersely.
Pam looked as if she wanted to argue, but instead she sighed, handed him a file, then rattled off the information on the patient’s vitals that she’d gathered already. Ethan nodded, then plastered a smile on his face as he opened the examining room door.
From that moment on, his morning went exactly according to plan, with not a spare moment to be found. Only one problem. Samantha managed to creep into his head just the same, along with this new complication that seemed likely to doom their relationship. He’d always been a local golden boy, thanks first to his high school sports success and later to his war hero status. But he’d seen the flip side. He knew the damage negative press could do in a small town. Samantha, despite her relationship to Cora Jane, wasn’t a local. Folks wouldn’t cut her the same kind of slack they might cut him. And if that killed her plans for a new professional future, where would that leave the two of them?
Maybe it was time to admit defeat after all, cling to his last shred of pride and set her free to go back to New York where she belonged, where a story like this would barely register on anyone’s radar.
That was definitely the smart thing to do, the safe thing, he concluded.
But his heart didn’t seem all that happy about the decision.
* * *
Samantha showed up at the emergency clinic at lunchtime with a picnic basket filled with all the things her grandmother assured her were Ethan’s favorites. She’d begged off from the lunch at Castle’s, eager to share her news about her father’s property with Ethan. Her head was reeling, filled with exciting possibilities for the renovations.
When she walked in the door, she was greeted with a smirk by the receptionist at the front desk.
“You must be Samantha,” the twentysomething woman said. A name tag indicated she was Debra. “You don’t look like a stripper.”
Samantha paled. “I’m not a stripper. Where did you get that idea?”
“That’s what the paper said.”
Samantha felt a cold chill spread through her body. There was only one reason anyone would label her a stripper, the incident at Boone’s bachelor party. What on earth had made her think no one would ever learn the humiliating details of that night? While she doubted anyone had brought a camera to record the night’s events, every single person there had probably had his cell phone out seconds after Ethan had pried open that catastrophe of a cake, and she’d popped out in her revealing bikini.
“The paper?” she echoed with dread.
“Sure thing,” Debra said happily, clearly delighted to be the bearer of bad news. “Boone’s a big deal around here, and this wedding of his is getting wall-to-wall local coverage. If you ask me, though, that picture doesn’t do you justice. You’re much prettier. I think they caught you at a bad angle. And the lighting was all wrong.” She beamed. “I’d have done a much better job with that.”
Samantha’s knees felt as if they might give way. Though it was pretty clear what had happened, she kept trying to make sense of it. “There’s a picture in the paper?” she asked to be sure.
“Uh-huh. Haven’t you seen it?” Debra grabbed her copy and shoved it in Samantha’s direction.
It struck Samantha that Debra seemed a little too pleased to show Samantha the humiliating photo. In fact, her attitude bore all the traits of a jealous woman eager to get revenge on the competition. That, however, was something Samantha would have to explore another time, not in the middle of a very real crisis.
Samantha stared at her image. On the front page, no less. At least it was a local weekly. The bachelor party must have squeaked in right under their deadline. It was probably much more titillating than the wedding itself would have been.
“Oh, sweet heaven,” she murmured as she saw herself being scooped out of that ridiculous cake by Ethan, who looked as if he had all sorts of preferably dire fates in store for her. This was not a hero rushing to the rescue. It was a man operating on his last frayed nerve. He had been awfully testy, now that she thought about it.
Panic set in. Ethan had wondered about skeletons in her closet. Apparently he was going to be caught smack in the middle of this particular one. That night might have been totally innocent, but the newspaper’s spin sure made it sound otherwise.
“Where’s Ethan? I need to see him.”
“He’s off this afternoon. He’s always off on Thursday afternoon. It’s his day with the kids.”
Samantha stared at her blankly before it dawned on her that Debra was referring to the kids he worked with. She just hadn’t realized which day he’d designated for the outings.
“Of course. I should have remembered,” she mumbled.
It was clear, though, that Debra wasn’t buying her quick attempt at recovery. The girl gave her a pitying look that said she couldn’t possibly mean much to him if she didn’t know about his schedule.
“Surely he’s mentioned Project Pride,” Debra said, though the gloating in her voice suggested a level of superiority that she knew things that Samantha did not. “Today they’ve gone to see the wild horses up at Corolla.”
“I see,” Samantha said, though she didn’t see anything. She gestured toward the picnic basket. “Just give him that when he comes
