Teresa Hill Read Free Page B

“I get messy, too. Which is why I live in these.”
    She thought about taking off the ugly white coat, but she worried the gesture might be…misinterpreted.
    “You must work outside,” she guessed.
    “Yes. I’m a builder.”
    He said it as if she might find something objectionable in that. She didn’t. He was obviously a strong man and he was gorgeous, in a rough-and-tumble sort of way. What was there for any woman to object to?
    Samantha’s only problem was that she’d lost all track of the conversation and forgotten the reason he was here. His son. That was it. Did that mean he had a wife, too?
    She checked as discreetly as possible and saw no ring on his left hand. Women did that these days, she’d found. Regularly. For some women it was an automatic action. Check the hand. No ring? No telltale pale band of skin on the ring finger? He wasn’t shy about giving out his home phone number? Didn’t find excuses why you shouldn’t call him at home? He was likely single.
    Samantha hadn’t put any of those tactics into practice—until now—but she’d learned all the signs that indicated a married man. Just in case she was ever interested enough to check out a man.
    So far, she hadn’t been. She’d hardly met any men at all since she’d been here. At the dentist’s office it was almost all mothers and children, which made this man even more intriguing.
    Oh, come on. Samantha admitted he’d be intriguing under any circumstances, and she was staring quite rudely, probably making a fool of herself. She was sadly out of practice. It showed in everything she’d said and done to him. She could relate to seven-year-olds better than grown men. And he had a seven-year-old. An adorable one, which made him strictly off-limits, him and his kid.
    “Mr. Morgan—”
    “Joe,” he cut in.
    “Joe.” She liked the sound of his name on her lips. “About Luke—what can I do for him? And for you?”
    Looking wary again, Joe just stared at her, then finally started to talk. “Luke has been behaving strangely lately.”
    “You can tell me,” she said encouragingly because this seemed to be so difficult for him.
    “It’s…I don’t understand it. He’s obsessed with teeth. Yesterday, on the playground at school, he tried to pull out a little girl’s tooth. Today in the cafeteria, he had a flashlight and his hand inside a little boy’s mouth…”
    “Oh.” Samantha considered for a minute. “Does he by any chance go to St. Mark’s?”
    “Yes. Why?”
    She’d definitely embarrassed him now, and she felt bad.
    “I’ve been getting some calls from St. Mark’s. I think I saw his patient, Jenny, yesterday. I’ve been wondering about my competitor, actually.”
    “The little girl’s all right, isn’t she? Please tell me Luke didn’t do any damage.”
    Samantha wanted to reassure him, felt an almost overwhelming urge to touch him. With the kids, she was generous with her smiles, her laughter, the touch of her hand on a shoulder. But this was a man, she reminded herself again. And she’d already made a fool of herself with her little bag of tricks.
    “Jenny’s fine.” She managed to keep her hands to herself and rushed on, “She would have lost the tooth in a few days, anyway.”
    “Thank goodness for that,” he said.
    “So, what else is Luke doing?”
    “He’s so caught up in this whole tooth thing. At first I thought it was money. But after he lost his first tooth and put it under his pillow, the…uh…”
    “The tooth fairy came to visit?” she suggested.
    “Yes, and he got his money. Then he decided he’d rather have the tooth back. He came and asked if he could buy it back.”
    Samantha laughed. “I hope you agreed.”
    “Yes. He put his two dollars under his pillow without complaining at all about the loss of the money, and the next morning, there was his tooth.”
    “Good,” Samantha said. He was willing to play along, for the sake of his son. “So what did he do with the