Free The Boyfriend of the Month Club by Maria Geraci Page B

year. But the only things on the walls now were photographs of sailboats, which, Grace had to admit, were pretty. But you could only stare at a photo for so long.
    Grace went up to the reception desk. “What happened to the big TV?” she asked Melanie.
    “Dr. Joe feels that we , as a society, tend to watch too much television. He wants to set a good example for his younger patients.”
    The way Melanie said Dr. Joe’s name was like he was some sort of saint. Melanie pointed out the newly remodeled children’s area of the waiting room. There was a small plastic playground and several miniature tables with coloring books and crayons. Nice for the kiddies, Grace supposed, but apparently Dr. Joe intended to bore his adult patients into comas. Maybe it was some new kind of dental pre-anesthesia.
    She found a spot near the water fountain and spent the next two hours watching the clock on the wall and thinking about what they would do to her tooth. Fixing it wouldn’t involve drilling, would it? Grace shuddered. That hadn’t occurred to her until now. She hated the sound of the drill. She should have brought a book to pass the time. But now that her book club was officially defunct, there wasn’t anything she needed to read. She was the last person left in the waiting room when they finally called her name.
    A young woman wearing royal blue scrubs who identified herself as Tiffany led her to a room in the back. She instructed Grace to sit in the padded dental chair. Grace had never seen Tiffany before. Where were all of Dr. Fred’s regular staff?
    “So you chipped your tooth, huh?” Tiffany said.
    “I know it’s not life-or-death. I guess you could say it’s more like a cosmetic dental emergency,” Grace said, waiting to get chastised by the assistant. She opened her mouth to show Tiffany.
    “Yeah, I see what you mean,” Tiffany said, studying the chipped tooth.
    “You can? So you agree, this is an emergency?”
    “Not an emergency exactly, but I’d want to get it fixed as soon as possible too,” Tiffany confided.
    Finally! Someone at Sunshine Smiles was on Grace O’Bryan’s side.
    “This isn’t going to involve drilling, is it?”
    Tiffany looked like she was used to hearing that question. “I don’t believe so, but I’ll let Dr. Joe explain the procedure. Don’t worry! He’s brilliant. He’s got a lot of interesting theories on pain management. You’re going to love him.”
    Brilliant? Grace didn’t think she’d ever heard that word linked to a dentist before. If Melanie had made Dr. Joe sound like a saint, Tiffany made him sound like Albert Einstein. Grace began to feel uneasy. Like Melanie, Tiffany was also young and attractive. Tanya, Dr. Fred’s longtime receptionist was in her late fifties. Just this past summer when Grace had come in for a cleaning she and Tanya had talked about Tanya’s eldest daughter, Ruth, who was going through a difficult divorce. Tanya had confided in Grace that she was helping out Ruth financially. Tanya was too young to retire, and jobs weren’t so easy to come by at her age. It was clear Dr. Joe liked to surround himself with pretty young things who found him “brilliant.” Had he sent Tanya packing because she didn’t fit in with the rest of his “new-and-improved” staff?
    “Tiffany, is Connie still here? She’s the hygienist who cleans my teeth. She’s been with Dr. Fred for over twenty years.”
    “Connie? Oh yeah, I remember her. She left a few days after I started working here.”
    Left? Who left a job after twenty years? Dr. Joe was no saint. He was more like the Hugh Hefner of teeth! Chipped tooth or not, Grace had her standards. She wasn’t about to give the man who’d given the axe to both Tanya and Connie her business. How could sweet, loveable Dr. Fred with his cute, grandfatherly ways and his excellent waiting room magazines have left his practice to this . . . this Dr. Joe character?
    “I’ve changed my mind. This isn’t really an