Taking a Chance Read online

  Emma sighed. “Yes.”

  “You know, they don’t have any way of knowing that beyond your little one-month stints, you’ve hardly ever set foot in a nursing home.”

  “Then let’s hope I don’t make it painfully obvious on day one.”

  Emma took a deep breath as she unsnapped her seatbelt. She’d been planning to come last night to scope the place out before anyone knew she’d arrived in town, but halfway up the dark mountain road, she’d chickened out and turned around. After all, she’d reasoned, if she’d fallen off said road, or met a hungry moose, she and her rental car might not be found till spring.

  “How’s your hotel?”

  “Standard-issue leftie. A bed, a desk, a table, and a chair. Bathroom on the left.”

  “For three months? Seriously? They wouldn’t spring for a suite?”

  Emma looked out the window, squinting to try to determine how many layers of jagged mountains she was seeing. “For whatever reason, there are more people who want to stay out here right now than there are rooms.”

  “But free breakfast, right? Yay?” Ari’s voice was trying a little too hard, but Emma appreciated the effort.

  “All the waffles I can eat for three months.” She picked up her coffee cup and sipped, then grimaced. “But I have to find a place with better coffee, or I’ll need ulcer meds by the time I get back home.”

  “Okay, sweetie. I need to get back to class, but knock ’em dead, okay?” Ari paused. “I mean, don’t knock ’em dead. Definitely not—dead.”

  Emma laughed as she hung up, but sobered as the thought of dealing with a grieving family made her stomach do uncoordinated gymnastics.

  She was definitely not ready for that.

  She looked up at the sky, clasping her hands together. Please, no dying. Not for the next twelve weeks. Please.

  She did not do dying. She loved the elderly population. Loved designing housing and programming that sustained and stimulated and comforted. Loved crunching numbers, loved researching the latest trends in Denmark and Norway, who always seemed to be one step ahead in their elder-care programs. She didn’t even hate dealing with insurance companies, because for every rep she educated, she saved headaches for someone else.

  But as much as she loved her job, one of the parts she loved the most about it was that she got to do it from a windowed cubicle in Florida. She made decisions, delivered proposals, worked with other management-track colleagues to make sure Galway stayed at the top of the retirement home heap. Their reputation was stellar, and she prided herself on being one of the many, many cogs in the wheel that kept it that way.

  From the office.

  She didn’t do boots-on-the-ground, except for her required experiential excursions. Her father would say it was a Winthrop’s sacred, Harvard-educated duty to lead the people, not be the people. The stock market was ideal, but medicine was an acceptable second-best, as long as you were stellar in the field.

  Her sister Annabelle had paved that path with her discovery of some random neuron pathway that had scored her articles in every medical journal in the world. But Emma wasn’t cut from her big sister’s cloth. Honestly, she wasn’t sure what cloth she was cut from, except that it was apparently the kind that was still stuck somewhere in the middle of the damn ladder—stuck like gum on the bottom of a sneaker.

  A siren jolted her from her thoughts, and her eyes widened as she saw an ambulance come flying into the parking lot.

  Oh, no. No-no-no-no-NO. Not on the first day!

  She got out and walked as quickly as she could in her low heels, but by the time she got to the front doors, the four medics had already swung a stretcher through and had disappeared around a corner.

  “Can I help you?” A young voice came out of nowhere, and Emma stopped, looking around to see who had spoken. All she saw were three closed doors and a window with a shade pulled all the way down.

  “I said, ‘Can I help you?’ ” the voice repeated.

  Emma spotted a speaker on the wall above the window, so she took three steps toward it. Just as she was about to speak, the window shade flew upward, and the next two seconds went by in rom-com-style slo-mo as she tripped backward, the coffee in her cup leaped for her white blouse, and she landed on her butt on the smooth, tiled—but really effing hard—floor.

  The door beside the window opened almost as quickly as the shade had rocketed north, and a tiny woman in bright pink scrubs half-jogged into the hallway, her hands to her chest.

  “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

  Emma pressed her lips together, but instead of speaking, she took a deep breath, holding her coffee cup out to the side as she pulled her warm, wet blouse away from her skin.

  Crappity-crap-crap. All she’d wanted to do this morning was come in, make a good first impression, and have a peaceful, please-nobody-die day in her temporary digs.

  Instead, there was an ambulance crew careening down the hallway, somebody might very well be dying, and a dark brown stain was creeping over her first-day outfit as she sat on her butt on the lobby floor.

  “Oh, no. Your shirt.” The woman’s hands went to her mouth. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  She reached down for Emma’s hand, and because she was in heels and didn’t have a chance of managing it gracefully on her own, Emma held on and let the tiny woman haul her upward.

  “Thank you,” she said tightly as she surveyed the damage.

  It was bad. Like, just-leave-now-and-never-come-back bad. The coffee that hadn’t managed to assault her had splattered all over the floor, except for—ugh—a puddle of it that had apparently soaked into the back of her skirt.

  “You’re…Emma Winthrop, aren’t you?” The woman swallowed hard, backing up as subtly as she could.

  “I am.” Emma tried to smile, because the fear in the poor woman’s voice was palpable. Great. Good start, Em. “And you would be?”

  “Fired?”

  Emma smiled tightly, looking down at her blouse as she tried to take a cleansing breath. “It’s just coffee. And a mild heart attack. Possibly a broken tailbone. Not sure those are dismissable offenses.”

  “I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Well, how were you to know I was so jumpy, right?” Emma tried to smile again. “What’s your name?”

  “Brandy. I’m an LNA. I usually man the dining room, not the entranceway.”

  “Thank God for that, I imagine.”

  Brandy laughed carefully. “Yes. Right. Well. Um, welcome?”

  “Can you tell me why the ambulance is here?” Emma pointed down the hallway.

  “Dodgeball injury.” Brandy shrugged.

  “I’m sorry?” Dodgeball?

  “No biggie. Archie probably just cracked another rib. He’ll be fine. The rescue guys don’t get a lot of calls, so they crank up the drama because it’s something to do.”

  “So them rushing through the doors like someone was having an aneurysm?”

  “The usual.” Brandy shrugged again. “They’ll have him taped up in no time.”

  Emma swallowed as she pulled at her sticky blouse. Okay, apparently there was no dying going on. There was, however, someone in dire need of water and bleach. Stat.

  “Any chance you could show me where my office is?”

  Brandy nodded, pointing toward the door she’d just blown through. “Follow me.”

  As Emma passed into a cluttered reception area, she glanced behind her at the window that looked into the hallway.

  “Hey, Brandy? Maybe we could keep that shade open? Just—you know—so we don’t give anybody else a heart attack?”

  “Sure. You go right ahead and keep it open.” Brandy laughed, then winked. “But by the tenth time Helena tries to order a double-dip cone with extra sprinkles because she thinks it’s the ice-cream stand, you’ll see why we keep it closed.”

  “Oh-h. I see.” Emma pursed her lips. “Never mind. Closed is good, too.”

  Brandy pointed to an open door beh
ind the reception desk, then stepped aside so Emma could pass by her.

  “That’s Bette’s office—your office, I mean.”

  “Thank you.” Emma stepped through the doorway and tried not to gape at the utter chaos that greeted her.

  Her feet froze to the carpet as her eyes went wide. “Have we been robbed?”

  Papers were piled on the desk, on chairs, and on a credenza that had all but disappeared under the load. Three coffee cups sat on the desk, one of them going for the leaning-tower-of-Folgers award atop a stack of manila folders.

  Brandy twisted her hands together. “We tried to clean up a little bit, but Bette doesn’t really like people touching her piles, and she didn’t leave till late last night, so…” She grabbed the most precarious cup and looked for a place to set it, but didn’t find one. “Sorry. Bette’s kind of a drop-and-run sort of person. She doesn’t spend much time in here.”

  “I…see.” Emma spun slowly, feeling the walls creep inward. Gah, she could see why Bette didn’t spend much time here. If she wasn’t careful, these piles were going to grow legs and eat her alive.

  “I know it looks bad.” Brandy shrugged. “But you ask her for anything, and she knows exactly where it is, guaranteed.”

  “Charming,” Emma whispered under her breath as she made her way around the desk, wondering how in the world she was supposed to find anything in this office.

  “You, um, want some scrubs?”

  “Scrubs?” Emma used her toe to shove aside a pile of paper so she could get to the chair.

  Brandy pointed to her own chest, then at her backside. “For the—I thought you might—the coffee?”

  “Right.” Emma looked down. For a moment, the frightening sight of this office had topped the sickening feel of her pores soaking up bad coffee. Her remaining clothes were at the hotel at the bottom of the mountain, and no amount of bleach pen was going to take care of this stain. The dampness had crept from icky warmth to clammy coolness, and she was sure she smelled like a cheap café.

  Plus, it probably looked like she’d already sat in something questionable, and she’d only been in the building for five minutes.

  “Do you keep scrubs here?”

  Brandy tipped her head like she didn’t think the question was for real. “Um, yeah. We keep scrubs here. Kind of a lot of them.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Emma nodded like of course I knew that. “Yes, then. I’d love some. Can you show me where we keep them?”

  Brandy did the head-tip thing again, scanning Emma from top to bottom. “I’ll go get you some. No need to have you walking around on your first day looking like you can’t walk and drink coffee at the same time.” She cringed. “Which I know was my fault—sorry! So I’ll go get you some fresh clothes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Plus, if Jasper smells that nasty hotel coffee on you, he’ll go nuts.”

  “Who’s Jasper?” Emma pictured an ancient patient with some sort of coffee-induced PTSD.

  Brandy laughed. “You’ll meet him. He’s a little hard to miss around here.”

  And then she was gone in a whoosh of hot pink, leaving Emma to turn in a slow circle, wondering how in the world this Bette Hansen did her job in this absolute sty of an office.

  In her last conversation with Duncan, he’d recommended that she tread lightly out here. Apparently, Bette was well-loved by both her staff and her clients, and Galway considered her one of their top assets. Emma’s job was just to keep the place humming along in the manner it was already humming. She wasn’t out here to make changes, wasn’t out here to whip errant staff members into shape, and definitely wasn’t out here to try to make a name for herself by putting one of her research projects into action.

  Duncan had been pretty clear on that last point.

  Just lie low, keep the paperwork flowing, and you’ll be back here before you know it, he’d said. I have faith in you.

  “Well, first I’ll have to find the damn paperwork,” she muttered as she slung her bag across the back of the desk chair, which seemed to be the only open spot in the room.

  “What was that?” Brandy’s perky voice made her spin toward the door. The woman needed a bell.

  “Nothing. Just talking about paperwork.” Emma waved her hand carelessly.

  Brandy laughed. “Bette does a lot of sputtering about paperwork, too.”

  “I’m sure she does.”

  “Here.” Brandy held up two sets of scrubs—one green with pink elephants, and one powder-pink like Emma’s grandmother’s bathrobe. “I brought you two choices. Not sure of your tastes.”

  “Oh. Wow.” Emma nodded as she took them, like they were both adorable. Inside she was dying a slow, pink death. “I’ll take them both, just in case one doesn’t fit. Thank you.”

  “No prob. I’m guessing you’re not usually a scrubs kind of girl, huh?”

  “Um, no. Not usually.”

  “You’re from Florida, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I always wanted to go to Florida.” Brandy got a faraway look in her eyes. “Do you live right on the beach?”

  Emma felt a stab in her chest as she pictured the little cottage she’d had bookmarked for a year now—the one she would obviously not be buying, even though it was so run-down that it might fall into the ocean by this time next year.

  “No. I’m actually fifty miles inland.”

  “Oh. Seriously?” Brandy shook her head. “Why would you live all the way down there and not live on the beach?”

  “Mostly because beach houses cost more than I’ll make in this lifetime.”

  “Oh. Well, bummer.”

  Emma pulled her shirt away from her chest. Ick. She really needed to get this blouse off. “Is there a staff room or restroom I can change in?”

  “Staff room windows look out onto the parking lot. Kind of big windows.” Brandy wrinkled her nose. “And Vonnie’s doing the bathrooms right now. But you’ve got the only office with a door that closes. If I were you, I’d just change in here.”

  Emma looked around dubiously. “Um, okay.”

  “I have to head back to the dining room, but after you change, just look for Katrina. She’s the head nurse. She’ll give you the tour and the low-down on the patients.”

  “Thank—” The word died on Emma’s lips, because Brandy was already gone.

  She made her way to the door, kicking off her heels so she wouldn’t trip over Bette’s piles. Good Lord, this place needed a steam shovel, and nothing less.

  When she closed the door, the lock wouldn’t catch, but there wasn’t a soul in the reception area, so she undid her buttons as fast as she could, relieved to see that at least her new lavender Victoria’s Secret splurge hadn’t fallen victim to the coffee.

  She had just dropped her blouse to the floor and was leaning over to scoop the pink scrubs top from the chair when she heard an ominous click.

  She whirled around, but before she had time to cover herself, the door opened, and in strode a man—a tall, ruggedly hot man with a five-o’clock shadow and eyes that went from friendly to shocked to appalled in three seconds flat.

  Chapter 3

  “Oh, hell!” Jasper spun back toward the door, banging into the file cabinet as he did so. “Ow. God, so sorry.”

  He got his feet organized, stepped back out into the reception area, and pulled the door closed behind him. Shit.

  Who the hell was in Bette’s office?

  And just how much trouble was he about to be in for catching her half-naked?

  “Hey, Jasper.” Brandy bounced in from the hallway. “Meet the new director yet?”

  Jasper’s jaw froze as his eyes darted from Brandy to Bette’s now-closed office door. “New director? The one who was supposed to start tomorrow?”

  He cleared his throat as his voice cracked.

  “Yup! She just got here, but I allegedly might have possibly made her dump her coffee down her white shirt, so she was going to change into scrubs. I’m sure she’ll be out i
n a minute?”

  He nodded slowly. Usually he was amused by the way Brandy’s statements always seemed to end in question marks, but today he just swallowed hard, realizing he’d just been flashed—inadvertently, mind you—by Bette’s temporary replacement.

  Oh, double hell.

  “You know…” Brandy winked. “I was going to give Emma the grand tour, but Pam needs me to help get Mrs. Kowalski out of bed. Think you could handle her instead?”

  “Mrs. Kowalski?” He nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll head right down there, and I might not come back to this office for three months or so.”

  “What’d you do?” Brandy’s shoulders dropped in sudden suspicion. “Oh, my God. Did you just walk in on her while she was changing?”

  Jasper shook his head slowly. “Who would do that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a guy accustomed to barging into Bette’s office like he owns the place?”

  “I take exception to that. I do not barge.”

  “Fine. You ga-lump. Is that better?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “No.” Then he looked at the office door. “Damn.”

  “If you scare her back to Florida, you’ll have to play interim director instead.”

  “Bette’d sooner have her surgery right on that desk than turn over this place to me, and you know it.”

  “True, but it’s not because she doesn’t love you.”

  Before he could respond, Bette’s office door clicked, then opened slowly. He’d caught a glimpse of wavy hair before he’d spun around, but he definitely hadn’t seen eyes that fell somewhere between blue and green, and he most certainly hadn’t noticed the little dimples in her flushed cheeks as she gave a tentative smile.

  “Hi.” He stuck out a hand, determined to pretend maybe it’d been some other oaf who’d burst in on her. “I’m Jasper. You must be Emma.”

  “Emma Winthrop, yes.” She shook his hand tentatively, a deeper blush creeping up her neck.

  “Sorry for—that.” He waved a hand at the door, apologetic phrases fleeing his brain before he could put one together and say it aloud. “I didn’t know you were even in town yet.”

  “We could just totally pretend that didn’t just happen, if it works for you.”