Page 57 of Unlikely to Stay

Brant laughed.“Why do you act so shocked?”

“Because you…you’re all medically educated and stuff.I didn’t picture you doing manual labor.”

“That’s because you don’t have a mom like Betty who insisted on her son having a job during the summer to keep him out of trouble.She had a good friend from our church who was in construction.I helped him build houses and work on his rentals every summer beginning the year I moved into her house.”

Colleen raised her eyebrows in shock.“Well, I guess I was wrong then.”

“What do ya say, Freckles?Wanna let me help?”

She pretended to think.“Why not?I’m always good with free labor.”

“Who said I would work for free?”

“This cut on my finger you had to fix with five stitches.That’s who.”

“Touché.Give me just a second.”

Brant walked a couple of blocks down the sidewalk and dialed the number to the clinic.

“Parker Medical Clinic,” Patty said.“How can I help you?”

“Patty, it’s me.”

“Hi, Brant!Are you running later than you thought you’d be?”

“Kind of,” he replied.“In fact, I need you to cancel all my appointments for today and close up.Take a vacation day for yourself.”

He heard Patty gasp.“Whatever for?”

“You’ve earned it and it’s a beautiful day.And something’s come up I need to do.”

“Nothing wrong, is there?”

Brant looked over at Colleen, who was hauling things out of the back of Wyatt’s truck and putting them in the empty building.

“Not at all.I just need to take the day off.”

“Okay.I hope what you need to do goes well.”

Brant pressed the end button on his screen, walked back to the truck, and began hauling things out of the bed.He was never so happy for all the time Betty made him work with Frank every summer.He had a feeling it was going to help him impress a girl.

CC ploppeddown on a bucket in the middle of the room.She had been incredibly shocked when Brant had offered to help with the gym.If someone had told her he had experience working with his hands, she would have laughed them out of her salon.She was being honest when she told him he didn’t look like he would be one to do manual labor.

But then she remembered the feel of her hand in his at the creek.The calluses on the pads of his fingertips.The roughness that could only come from hard work.A person didn’t get those from simply practicing medicine.She should have known then he was more than just a pretty face with a medical degree.The more she got to know him, the more she realized he was nothing like she ever imagined him in her head.

“So?”he asked, sitting down on the other bucket and facing her.“Where are we going to start?”

CC looked around the room.There was nothing finished.Nothing.She had so much work to do.“Um…”

“There’s a lot to do, isn’t there?”

CC nodded her head.“There’s a lot to do.”

“Then let’s tackle one thing at a time.Have you made a list yet?I lived my life by lists in nursing school.Study this subject today, take these notes tomorrow.Go grocery shopping with Mom this day.”

“You went grocery shopping with your mom?”

“Doesn’t every teenage boy?”he asked with a wink.