“Did Wynd not even give notice?” He sounded gratifyingly peeved.
“She did. Two weeks.”
“Okay, so you have two weeks to replace her. Piece of cake.”
“Yeah, but unless I hire an unemployed loser, the new person will have to give notice at an existing job. Ugh, maybe I should just close the clinic early for the holidays and go to Toronto and be with my grandma.” She’d been planning to close between Christmas and New Year’s anyway, but that was still a couple weeks off.
“Is that what you want to do? Close up shop now?”
Was it? No. She couldn’t do that to her town. “No. I don’t want the clinic to close for longer than the holiday break we were already planning on. I have to figure out a way to stay open until then.”
“Okay, then, that’s what we’ll do.”
“‘We’?”
“I’ll help you.”
Ah, Jake. He was used to solving problems, but this wasn’t a problem that could be fixed with power tools and a can-do attitude. “What are you going to do? Answer my phones? I thought you weren’t a phone guy.”
He shrugged. “I’m rethinking that.”
“And forget the phones, Wynd really is the only one who has truly conquered our stupidly complex scheduling software.”
“I’ll handle it.”
She didn’t want to make him feel bad, so she didn’t say anything, but if Jake wasn’t a phone guy, he definitely wasn’t a software guy. But her face must have conveyed her skepticism, because he said, “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said automatically. Of course she did. He’d fixed her house, and then when her house proved uninhabitable, he’d found her another one. He had seen her at her most vulnerable, crying over her grandma and fighting with Rufus, and he was still here.
“Then let me handle this. Go to Toronto for the weekend. Hang out with your grandma, and I’ll see you Monday morning at the clinic.”
“But—”
“You wanna take Mick with you or leave him here?”
“You can’t just—”
“I’ll keep him, then. One less thing for you to worry about.” He started the backward-walking thing.
“Jake!”
“Nora.” He kept retreating.
“If you—”
“Be careful on the roads. You should leave soon, take advantage of the last of the light.”
And with that, he turned his back and jogged off with her dog trotting along beside him.
Chapter Sixteen
She’s coming!”
Jake chuckled as Amber stepped away from the window at the front of the clinic. Everyone was acting like they were throwing a surprise party.
And honestly, they might as well have been, given the size of the crowd that greeted Nora early Monday morning when she stepped through the front door, her eyes wide. He tamped down a smile. She was completely bundled up in a parka with the hood up and a scarf wrapped around her neck and covering the bottom half of her face.
“How’s your grandma, dear?” Pearl was the first to intercept Nora. “Did she like the pastry cutter I sent?”
“She did, thank you,” Nora said, her eyes darting around until she found Jake’s. The effect was comical, given that her eyes were the only part of her face visible. “She had me make and roll out some dough just so she could cut it up, in fact.” She shot him a look that was very clearly a What the hell, Jake? look, even though he could only see a small slice of her face.
He shrugged. Everyone else would fill her in.
“You know,” Eiko said, “no one told me that your grandmother was a famous surgeon. If I’d known, I might have written about it in the paper.”
“But she doesn’t live here,” Nora said.
“I know, hon—Dr. Hon—but you do. Second-generation medical genius comes to town—that would have been a great angle. I still might do it. Do you have any pictures of the two of you together?”
Jake had known he was playing with fire when he walked into the hardware store after Nora left town and asked the old folks to help him. He hated their meddling, but this was for Nora. He’d suspected—and he’d been right—that they’d jump at the opportunity to help her.
“What’s everyone doing here?” Nora asked as Clara approached from where she’d been camped out behind the reception desk with Wynd and Amber.
“We’re your temps,” Clara said.
Jake had also known he was playing with fire when he went from the hardware store to the inn to see if Clara was interested in earning some extra cash over her winter break. But Sawyer was already onto him. And even if that hadn’t been the