Free Family Practice by Marisa Carroll

rest, or his peace of mind. But the new resident sure did. He swore he could even smell her shampoo through the bathroom wall if he put his mind to it when he stepped into the shower in the morning.
    He pulled deeper on the oars and the boat shot over the water, skirting the lily pads that grew within fifty feet or so of the dock. They were closed for the night, their white and yellow petals furled over their waxy hearts, waiting for the touch of morning sunlight to open again.
    Yep, he’d make it an early night. He understood the physician in charge well enough now to realize he’d need all his wits about him in tomorrow’s early-morning face-off with Dr. Callista Layman.

CHAPTER FIVE
    “I S IT NECESSARY to keep two appointment spaces available in the morning and the afternoon for unscheduled cases? We only left one open in the clinic where I worked during my residency.”
    “You probably did—but I bet there were several doc-in-a-box clinics and hospital emergency rooms close by, right? And how many of you were there on staff?”
    “There were three physicians and two nurse practitioners on staff.”
    “And here there’s just the two of us,” Zach pointed out, spreading his hands. “When there are a lot of tourists in town, even that block of time gets used up fast. Usually it’s just sniffles or a sunburn or poison ivy, but no one wants to be sick on vacation in the first place, so to spend half a day driving to Petoskey or Traverse City to the emergency room just makes it worse.”
    “Point taken,” she said. And another point lost in their latest sparring match. She bet he was keeping score. She shouldn’t have tried to equate her experience at a busy urban clinic with what went on in White Pine Lake.
    “Did you ever consider setting up practice here, I mean before your dad’s SOS brought you back?”
    The question caught Callie off guard. “Sure,” she said. “Once I settled on family practice as my specialty, it seemed the logical thing to do, but then, as time went on I realized there were other opportunities out there I wanted to explore.” And by then she had been away from home so long it seemed less familiar and more intimidating.
    “For instance?”
    He was sitting across from her at the little table positioned by the front window of her half of the duplex, and he seemed to take up a lot of space in the small room. She’d had to stop herself from scooting backward in her chair when he’d sat down twenty minutes earlier, and she still felt as though he was encroaching on her space.
    Doc Hottie . She wished her mother hadn’t called him that. It was far too close to the truth. Maybe if she had been able to keep a bit more distance between them she would stop noticing that he smelled like pine soap and fresh air and a hint of some kind of masculine aftershave that she couldn’t name.
    “Well, traveling, for one.” She took a quick breath. She was going to have to start telling people sooner or later. “I’ve got an offer for a two-year contract with a cruise line. They sail the Caribbean in the winter and Mediterranean and Europe in the summer. The salary is minimal, but if I agree to a two-year commitment, they’ll retire almost half my student-loan debt.”
    He whistled softly. “That would be a sweet gig.”
    “Yes, it would, though I haven’t accepted it yet.”
    “Have you mentioned the offer to your dad?”
    “No, I haven’t. Not yet, and I’d appreciate it if you keep the information to yourself.” The question struck a nerve; it was just another indication of how her relationship with J.R. had changed since Ginger had arrived on the scene. Before, she would have been on the phone to him the moment she had hung up on the cruise-line headhunter. Instead she had kept it to herself to spare him another thing to worry about, because having her halfway around the world for the next two years would definitely cause him stress.
    “I won’t mention it. You’d be a fool not to