A Christmas Kiss with Her Ex-Army Doc by Tina Beckett

Author:Tina Beckett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2019-08-13T18:30:36+00:00

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Hollee had never been anywhere where people were treated in an actual barn, though the building hadn’t housed animals in a very long time, instead holding the home owners’ equipment, which had been sold when mining in the area had taken a downturn. And the hopelessness on the faces that lined the walls waiting their turns tugged at her heart. She worked as quickly as she could, but the crowd never seemed to thin.

By the third day she was more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life. To try to inject some tiny element of Christmas where there seemed to be none, she’d strung the Christmas lights in the small bedroom she shared with Kristen. But for the most part she was too tired to plug them in at night. Instead she fell into one of the twin beds feeling like she’d succeeded in moving a pebble up a very steep hill only to look behind her and see the landscape riddled with boulders, making her feeble efforts seem ludicrous. But they weren’t. She had to believe that she—and the team before them—were making a difference.

Although many of the people they saw were poor, they cared for each other in a way that rivaled most families. And so everyone on their team owed it to them to do the best they could with what they had.

She’d barely seen Clancy, as she’d been dealing with pregnant women, and he’d been busy stitching up wounds and giving antibiotic and tetanus shots. Six o’clock found Hollee cleaning and sanitizing the exam room she’d been working in, since they were all taking turns with that chore. She was dead tired, but it was a good tired. She was wiping down the portable metal exam table when Clancy appeared in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a black shirt, holding some kind of tree in his hand. He looked like a lumberjack.

What in the world...?

She opened the door and ushered him in. Not seeing him should have been a blessing, but instead... She’d missed him.

“Have you decided to take up gardening instead of medicine?”

He chuckled. “Not exactly. But since we’re in the first week of December, I thought we should at least have a tree.”

“A tree?”

Holding up his prize, he said, “Yep. Not an actual Christmas tree, since I couldn’t find anything that I wouldn’t need an ax to cut down, so I found a shrub instead.”

It did have the look of an evergreen, but on a smaller scale, dirt still clinging to the roots. “I don’t think anyone is going to realize it’s a Christmas tree if there’s nothing to go on it.”

“That’s where the fun comes in. I thought we could have the children come up with creative, free ways to decorate it. We could hold a contest, and the participants get one of the presents we brought in for sick kids. We could vote on a winner and give that child a bigger prize.”

It was a wonderful idea. She shouldn’t be surprised Clancy had thought up something like that.

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