Chapter Five
After they’d arrived at the hospital, Maple tried to hang back and linger in the doorway to Oliver’s room so Ford could check and make sure the little boy wasn’t asleep, but Lady Bird had other ideas. The golden hustled right inside, dragging Maple behind her as if they’d been issued a personal invitation. Which she supposed they had, basically.
If the child was disappointed to find Maple on the other end of Lady Bird’s leash instead of Percy, he didn’t show it. His entire face lit up the second he spotted the dog.
“Lady Bird. You’re here!” Oliver scrambled to push himself up in his hospital bed for a better view.
“Hold up, there. I’ve got you,” Ford said as he reached for the call-button remote and pressed the appropriate arrow to raise the head of Oliver’s bed.
Maple wondered if the mechanical sounds or the moving piece of furniture might spook Lady Bird, but she handled it like a pro. She shimmied right up to the edge of the bed and gently planted her chin on the edge of the mattress, easily within Oliver’s reach.
The boy laid a hand on the golden retriever’s head and moved his thumb in gentle circles over Lady Bird’s soft, cold fur. “I knew you’d come.”
If Maple had still been harboring any doubts about caving and letting Ford take her to County General, they melted away right then and there. A lump formed in her throat. I knew you’d come. Even at his young age, Oliver already knew what made dogs so special. They were loyalty and unconditional love, all wrapped up in a warm, furry package. The very idea of Lady Bird failing to show up to comfort him in the dead of night was inconceivable.
The ball of tension in Maple’s chest loosened a bit. Even if Oliver ended up despising the sight of her, like everyone else in this town, at least she’d done one thing right. She’d gotten the dog here and managed to help preserve the child’s belief in the goodness and loyalty of man’s best friend. It felt good, despite the fact that she was still doing her best to blend into the beige hospital walls.
“Oliver, bud. I want you to meet a friend of mine.” Ford smiled at her, and for reasons she really didn’t want to think about, her heart went pitter-patter. “This is Maple. She’s taking care of Lady Bird for now.”
Maple held up a hand and took a step closer to Oliver’s bed. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Oliver said without tearing his gaze away from the dog. Lady Bird had nudged her head so it fully rested in the boy’s lap, and her eyes were trained on his pale face.
“I’ve got to go check on something, okay?” Ford glanced at the smart watch on his wrist. “I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes. Twenty, max.”
He was leaving? Already?
Ford shot her a reassuring wink. “Oliver, take it easy on Maple, okay? She’s shy.”
Maple’s face went warm. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
She was sure of nothing of the sort. So far, the people she’d met in Bluebonnet weren’t at all like the people she knew back home. She’d been in town for a day, and already everyone seemed to know more about her personal business than she typically shared with friends, much less strangers. There were no walls here. No barriers to hide behind. No crowds. She felt wholly exposed, which was especially nerve-racking considering she was trying to adjust to a whole new version of herself as a person.
You’re still Maple Leighton. Absolutely nothing about your life has to change.
But what if she wanted it to?
She didn’t, though. Of course not. Maple had a plan—a plan that she’d worked long and hard for. Grover had given her full permission to skip the first wasted year of that plan and move full steam ahead toward her dreams. Her dad had already paved the way for her to walk right into her perfectly planned future. Now wasn’t the time to entertain change.
Something about the quiet intimacy of a hospital room in the middle of the night was making her question everything, though. Time seemed to stand still in places like this. The outside world felt very far away.
Maple took a deep breath and moved to sit in the chair that Ford had dragged too close to Oliver’s bedside for her. This was crazy. She had no clue what to say or do, and panic was already blossoming in her chest as Ford sauntered out of the room in his blue hospital scrubs.
“You like dogs, huh?” she said quietly after Ford was gone.
Oliver nodded but didn’t say anything. He just kept toying with Lady’s Bird’s ears, running them through his small fingers. The dog’s eyes slowly drifted closed.
“She really likes that.” Maple smiled. “I love dogs, too.”
“My mom says when I’m better, I can get a dog of my own.” Oliver’s gaze finally swiveled in her direction. The dark circles under his eyes made her heart twist. When I’m better... She prayed that would happen and it would be soon. “When I do, I want one just like Lady Bird.”
“She’s quite special.” Maple’s throat went thick, and she wondered what would happen to the dog once she’d gone. She’d been staying with June since Percy’s passing, but the older woman hadn’t said anything about keeping Lady Bird and giving her a permanent home.
Why would she? This dog is supposed to be yours now.
Maple’s grip on the leash tightened.
“Do you want to see some pictures I drew of her?” Oliver asked with a yawn.
Maple nodded. “I’d love to.”
Oliver pointed at his bedside table. “They’re in the top drawer. You can get them out if you want to.”
“Are you sure?” Maple hesitated. She wasn’t sure rummaging through a patient’s nightstand was proper protocol.
But Oliver seemed determined. He nodded. “There’s a whole bunch of drawings in there, right on top of the chocolate bars I’m not supposed to know about. My mom keeps them for me. She’s going to make a whole book out of my drawings for me when I leave the hospital.”
“That’s a great idea,” Maple said, biting back a smile at the mention of secret chocolate. Something told her nothing got past Oliver.
She pulled open the drawer and sure enough, there was a neat stack of papers covered in bold strokes of crayon nestled inside.
“These are amazing, Oliver.” Maple slowly flipped through the drawings, which seemed to chronicle Oliver’s stay in the hospital.
In the first few, the little boy in the pictures had a mop of curly brown hair. Soon, the child in the drawings had a smooth, bald head, just like Oliver’s.
“That’s Ford,” Oliver said when her gaze landed on a rendering of a man in familiar-looking blue scrubs with a stethoscope slung around his neck.
Maple grinned. “It looks just like him.”
Except the kid had forgotten to add a yellow halo above Ford’s head. Maple still wasn’t sure what, exactly, Ford did around here, but she had a feeling that escorting therapy dogs and their handlers to the hospital wasn’t part of his official job description.
He was almost too wholesome to be real—like the humble, flannel-wearing, small-town love interest in a Hallmark movie. Whereas Maple was the big-city villainess who always ended up getting dumped for a cupcake baker in those sticky-sweet movies. It happened every time. How many cupcake bakers did the world actually need, anyway?
“And here’s Lady Bird.” Maple held up the next drawing, which featured a big yellow dog sprawled across Oliver’s hospital bed, definitely a case of art imitating life. “I’d know that big golden anywhere. I really love your artwork, Oliver.”
The child gave her a sleepy grin. “There’s lots more.”
“There sure is.” Maple sifted through page after page of colorful renderings of Lady Bird, and she felt herself going all gooey inside. Not full-on cupcake-baker-gooey, but definitely softer than she normally allowed herself to feel around people she’d only just met.
Then she flipped to the next page, and her entire body tensed.
“That’s Lady Bird with Mr. Percy.” Oliver lifted one hand from the dog’s ear just long enough to point to a crayon-sketched figure with gray hair and an oversize pair of glasses perched on his round face.
Mr. Percy. Maple’s father.
She wasn’t sure why his likeness caught her so off guard. She knew good and well that Lady Bird was Percy’s dog, and he’d been the one to take the dog on her pet-therapy visits. But something about seeing him drawn in Oliver’s young hand brought back the feeling she’d had just hours ago when she’d toed off her stilettos and slid her feet into his slippers.
She still wasn’t quite sure why she’d done it. The shoes had been placed right next to the bed in the small home’s master bedroom, as if Percy was expected to climb out of bed and slip them on just like any other day. Before she’d known what she was doing, she’d put them on and tried to imagine what it might be like to follow in her birth father’s footsteps. Was it just a coincidence that she’d become a veterinarian, just like him, or was there a part of him still living inside her? Perhaps there had been, all along.
Maple wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. All she knew was that somewhere deep down, she was beginning to feel a flicker of connection to a man she’d never met before.
And it scared the life out of her.
“Ford said Mr. Percy is in heaven now,” Oliver said.
Maple’s heart squeezed into a tight fist. She knew next to nothing about her birth father, but heaven seemed like just the right place for the kind man in Oliver’s drawing.
“Ford’s right,” she heard herself say.
Oliver’s eyes drifted shut, then he blinked hard, jolting himself awake.
“Oliver, it’s okay if you fall asleep. Lady Bird and I will be here when you wake up. I promise,” Maple said.
“Really?” the little boy asked, eyes wide as he buried a small hand in the ruff of fur around the dog’s thick neck.
“Really.” Maple nodded.
What was she saying? She had a plane to catch and a whole life waiting for her back in New York. Her real life, as opposed to the one here in Bluebonnet that was rapidly beginning to feel like some kind of alternate universe.
But try as she might, Maple couldn’t think of a more important place she needed to be at the moment than this hospital room. For once in her life, she was right where she belonged.
“You do realize what time it is, don’t you?” Ford narrowed his gaze at Maple, still sitting at Oliver’s bedside mere minutes before the deadline she’d given him when he’d picked her up earlier and all but dragged her to the hospital against her will.
“Not precisely, but I have a good idea,” she said, gaze flitting toward the window, where the first rays of sun bathed the room in a soft golden glow.
Ford crossed his arms. “You made me promise to get you home in time for your rideshare to Austin. That means we need to go now, or all bets are off.”
“I guess all bets are off, then.” Maple reached over the guardrail of the hospital bed and rested a hand on Lady Bird’s back. The big dog was stretched out alongside Oliver, paws twitching in her sleep.
Ford didn’t know what to make of this unexpected turn of events. The dog’s part in the impromptu sleepover was no surprise whatsoever. He’d seen Lady Bird sleep anywhere and everywhere, and the golden seemed especially fond of Oliver.
Maple, on the other hand...
Ford felt himself frown. Every time he thought he had this woman figured out, she threw him for a loop. It almost made her fun to be around.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“How am I looking at you?” Ford crossed the room to drag the other armchair closer to the recliner, where Maple had her feet tucked up under her legs. He raked a hand through his hair and sat down.
She gave him a sidelong glance. “Like you don’t believe me when I say all bets are off.”
“Probably because I don’t. You seemed awfully sure about catching that rideshare.”
She shrugged, but the way she averted her gaze told him her decision hadn’t been as casual as she wanted him to believe. “I promised Oliver that Lady Bird would be here when he woke up.”
Ford nudged her knee with his. “Careful there, Doc. You almost sound like a people person.”
She turned to glare at him, but he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. “I’m sure it’s just a phase. I’ll get it over it soon enough.”
“If you say so.” He bit back a smile.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked, deftly changing the subject.
He leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Shoot. I’m an open book.”
“What exactly do you do here?” She eyed his scrubs, and a cute little furrow formed in her brow. “Are you a nurse?”
“I’m a pediatrician. I have a solo practice in Bluebonnet, but I’ve got privileges here at County General. Oliver is one of my patients.” Ford had, in fact, been Oliver’s doctor since the day he’d been born. He loved that kid. Sometimes being a small-town doctor meant you got a little too close to your patients, although Ford usually didn’t consider that a problem.
Oliver’s case was different, though. Special. He would’ve moved heaven and earth to see that child healthy again.
The furrow in Maple’s brow deepened, and Ford had the nonsensical urge to smooth it out with a brush of his fingertips. “Please tell me you’re joking. You can’t be a doctor.”
“Not a joke. I assure you.” A smile tugged at his lips. He was enjoying her befuddlement a little too much. “What’s wrong, Doc? Have you got a thing against physicians like you do against robotic animals?”
She regarded him with what could only be described as abject horror. “I do when said physician intentionally let me believe he wasn’t a doctor.”
Ford shook his head. “I never intentionally misled you. Name one time I did that.”
“How about every single time you’ve called me Doc?” She was blushing again, and Ford wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or rage. Probably some combination of the two, if he had to guess.
“But you are a doctor—a doctor of veterinary medicine. As I recall, you seem especially proud of the title.” Okay, so maybe the nickname had been somewhat of a taunt. Ford hadn’t been able to resist.
She gasped as if she’d just remembered something, and then she covered her face with her hands. “Oh, my gosh. You let me go on and on about the two types of doctors, didn’t you?”
“You mean general-practice physicians who are driven by their innate need to help people and specialists who relate more to the scientific part of medicine?” Ford said with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek as he parroted her own words back to her.
“I guess we know which one you are, Mr. Hometown Hero.” She snorted.
She had him pegged, that was for sure. Ford had made it his mission to become a pediatrician back in the fifth grade when his best friend, Bobby Jackson, had died from acute myelogenous leukemia. Over the course of a single little league season, Bobby had gone from being the star pitcher for the Bluebonnet Bears to being bedridden with the disease. By Christmas, he was gone. Ford’s small world had crumbled down around him, and in a way, he’d been trying to put it back together ever since.
So, yeah, he’d gone into medicine to help people. Was that really such a bad thing?
Lately, he’d begun to wonder. If he’d become a specialist instead of a pediatrician, he could’ve done more for Oliver and other children like him.
Children like Bobby, he thought as the memory of his best friend floated to the forefront of his mind. It had been years since Ford had spent the night at Bobby’s ranch, tucked into their matching Spider-Man sleeping bags in the treehouse in Bobby’s shady backyard. Two and a half decades, in fact. But he still remembered those nights like they’d happened yesterday—the shimmering stars overhead, the swishing of the horses’ tails as they grazed in the pasture just beyond the barbed-wire fence, the feeling that Bluebonnet was the safest place in the world and nothing bad could ever happen there...
Ford knew better now, obviously. But that didn’t stop him from doing his level best to make it true. He’d moved away once, and that had been a terrible mistake. Now, he was home for good and still trying to hold things together, as if it was possible to carry the entire town on his back. At least that’s what his sister always said.
Maple resumed glaring at Ford, a welcome distraction from his spiraling thoughts. Why did things always seem so much more hopeless in the dead of night?
“You’re impossible. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Maple said.
Ford arched an eyebrow. “You didn’t ask.”
She sure as heck hadn’t. She’d barreled into town like a tornado, all too ready to flatten everything and everyone in her wake.
That had certainly backfired.
Ford had heard all about Percy’s last will and testament. There were no secrets in Bluebonnet. By now, everyone in town knew that Maple Leighton was Percy Walker’s long-lost daughter.
She’d had quite a day. Ford should probably go easy on her, but where was the fun in that? Besides, Maple didn’t seem like the type who wanted to be treated with kid gloves. Everything Ford knew about her thus far screamed the opposite.
He slid his attention away from Oliver and Lady Bird, still sleeping soundly in the hospital bed, and found Maple watching him, eyes glittering in the darkened room. Their gazes met and held, until her bow-shaped lips curved into a knowing smile.
A delicious heat coursed through Ford, like wildflower honey warmed by the summer sun. “What’s the grin for? I thought I was impossible.”
“Oh, you definitely are.” Her eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. “And that just made me realize something.”
“What’s that, Doc?”
She looked away, focusing on the boy and the dog. But Ford could still spy a ghost of a smile dancing on her lips. “You’re not quite as nice as you seem, Ford Bishop.”