Baby, It's Christmas & Hold Me, Cowboy by Susan Mallery

Author:Susan Mallery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Despite the fact that she’d only had about four hours of sleep the night before, Kelly was in her office before seven. She had a couple of things to do there before she made her way to the hospital to check on her patients, especially Corina.

Kelly set her purse on her desk, then settled in her chair. She stared at the phone for a long moment before picking it up and dialing a familiar number. With the two-hour time difference between Oregon and Kansas, she should catch her father right as he came to work.

“Pastor Hall’s office, this is Betty.”

“Hi, Betty, it’s Kelly. Is my dad around?”

“Kelly!” The older woman’s voice rose with a note of both surprise and pleasure. “How are you? Your father says you work too many hours. Is that true? You have to take care of yourself. You’re not a teenager anymore. You need your sleep and lots of fruits and vegetables. Did I send you my lentil vegetable soup recipe? It’s wonderful. I served it at the ladies’ prayer lunch just last month, and it was a hit. I’ll email it to you. Did you know we have email at the church now? Very modern. Horace and I are thinking of getting a computer of our own. The things people can do on those machines. It’s just amazing. So why were you calling, dear?”

Despite her exhaustion, her worries and her questions, Kelly couldn’t help smiling. Betty never changed. According to town legend, she’d been born talking.

“I’d like to speak to my father.”

“Of course you would. He’s right in his office. Just got here a few minutes ago, but then you’d know that. Pastor Hall is as regular as the church clock. He walks through that door every day at exactly eight fifty-eight. In the past ten years I don’t know that he’s been late more than once, and that was because he stopped to help old Mrs. Winston with her car. It had a flat tire, or was it out of gas? Anyway, he’s quite punctual.” She paused to draw breath. “I’ll let him know you’re on the phone.”

There was a click as she was put on hold. Kelly knew that it would be a couple of minutes until her father could get Betty off the intercom so that he could pick up the phone. The older woman was a trial at times, but she was as much a part of Kelly’s world as the town where she’d grown up. Betty and Horace had never had children. Despite that, and their differences—her talking constantly and him as silent as a tree—they rarely went anywhere without each other. And when they were together, they always held hands. Once when Kelly had been all of fifteen or sixteen, she’d even come across them kissing in a corner of the choir room. It had been the only time she’d known Betty to be quiet.

“This is an unexpected pleasure,” her father said a few minutes later. “Good morning.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.