Her Forever Cowboy
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Marie Ferrarella
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17
Prologue
No one looking at her would have suspected that her heart had just been broken, or even bruised. She made sure of that.
Dr. Alisha Cordell prided herself on being self-contained. She wasn’t the type to let people in on her private hurt. Nor would she allow herself to shed tears. At least, not publicly.
Publicly, if she included the half-naked hospital administrator closeted with her fiancé as being part of the general public, the only display of emotion anyone had witnessed was when she’d thrown her three-carat diamond engagement ring at Dr. Pierce Belkin—a neurosurgeon who was much in demand, not always by his patients—and the aforementioned hospital administrator.
A flash of fury had accompanied the flying ring as well as a single seething word that wasn’t part of her usual vocabulary.
It hadn’t even been the sight of the ruggedly handsome Mayflower descendant making love to the vapid, overly endowed blonde that had made Alisha throw her ring at him. It was Pierce’s complete lack of contrition coupled with the snide remark—“Oh, grow up, Alisha. Just because we’re getting married doesn’t mean I’m going to be your slave”—that made her lose her composure and had her throwing the ring and then telling Pierce to take up residence in a much hotter location.
The story was already making the rounds by the time she’d taken the elevator from the fifth floor down to the first. Not that she cared about the gossip. She’d never been the kind to pay any attention to whispers. But what convinced Alisha that she needed a change of scenery was the fact that although the hospital was far from a small place, there was no doubt in her mind that she wouldn’t be able to avoid running into Pierce or any of what she had come to realize were his numerous conquests.
Good at shutting out things that irritated her, Alisha still knew that she would be able to hold her head high for only so long before the situation would become intolerable to her.
There was no way around it. She needed to find somewhere else to be. Preferably somewhere far away.
As a rule, Alisha didn’t make friends easily. Dedicated, driven, she’d ignored socializing to focus on becoming the best all-around general surgeon she could be. In part—a large part—to honor her father.
A giant of a man, Dr. William Cordell had been a family-practice physician. Alisha was his only child, and she had adored him. A nature enthusiast, he would go camping whenever he could get away. His wife hadn’t shared his interest in the great outdoors, but Alisha had, and he had taken her with him, teaching her all the fundamentals of survival.
Cancer had abruptly ended her father’s life when she was just fourteen. She’d never been close to her mother, and the two had drifted even further apart after that. Alisha closed herself off emotionally and worked on achieving her goal to the exclusion of almost everything else. It kept her father’s memory alive for her.
The people she’d been thrown in with at college studied hard but partied harder. She remained on the outside fringes of that world. Looking back, she realized that the only reason Pierce had pursued her with such vigor was because she was the only female who had ever said no to him. He viewed her as a challenge as well as a budding gifted surgeon. In time, he thought of her as a worthy extension of himself, a professional asset.
Added to that, his parents liked her, and his grandmother, a very wealthy woman, was crazy about her. She’d referred to her as her grandson’s saving grace and wholeheartedly looked forward to their wedding.
Secretly missing the comforting security of a home life, Alisha had accepted Pierce’s proposal despite the uneasiness she experienced when she’d actually uttered the word yes. Her uneasiness refused to completely go away even as the weeks went by.
She should have gone with her gut. Alisha upbraided herself after the engagement ring—a family heirloom—had left her finger. It was her gut that had told her to turn Pierce down; her gut that told her that a so-called fairy-tale wedding and marriage were not in the cards for her, not with this self-centered Adonis. But loneliness was a powerful persuader, and she really had liked his family. In a moment of weakness, she’d agreed.
And now she was paying for it, Alisha thought ruefully.
The worst part was that this was not the first time she’d caught Pierce being unfaithful. But in each case, it had been after the fact, certainly not during the act, the way it had been this last time. And those other times, he’d made apologetic noises that she’d accepted. This time, there hadn’t even been the pretense of regret or remorse. If there was any regret about the incident, it was that he had gotten caught, nothing beyond that.
Well, her engagement—and Pierce—were now part of her past, and she wanted no reminders, no chance encounters to haunt her and make her uncomfortable, even inwardly. It didn’t matter how good a poker face she could maintain, she didn’t want to be reminded of her near-terminal mistake.
Moving away was not a problem. But finding a destination was. Where could she go? As if some unseen force was taking matters in hand, Alisha became aware of the fact that she was pondering her fate standing next to the physicians’ bulletin board, the one where almost anything could be found by those who had the patience to carefully scan the different missives tacked onto that board. There were courtside tickets to the next basketball game being offered for sale—or more accurately, resale—slightly used furniture in reasonable shape could be gotten for a song and so on. All in all, it was like a visual bazaar without the noise.
For a fleeting moment, looking at the bulletin board, it occurred to Alisha that she could have offered her engagement ring up for sale, but she decided that throwing it at Pierce was infinitely more satisfying than any money she could have gotten for it.
Besides, it had belonged to his grandmother, and she had liked the woman.
That was when she spotted it. A letter tacked on the upper left corner of the bulletin board. It was almost obscured by an ad for a European cruise of a lifetime. Moving the ad aside, she saw that the neatly typed letter was addressed to “Any budding, selfless physician reading this letter who might be willing to put in long hours for very little financial reward, reaping instead endless emotional satisfaction that he or she was making a difference in some good people’s lives.” There was more written after that, an entire long paragraph, describing the conditions in the area as well as summarizing the basic requirements. It was signed by a Dr. Daniel Davenport.
Alisha stared at the letter for a minute or so before she finally took it down to read more carefully.
Was this Dr. Daniel Davenport for real, sending something like this here? Alisha wondered. The recently graduated physicians at this teaching hospital were all aiming at practices that would have them working a minimum of hours for a maximum financial return. This letter sounded as if it was an appeal for a saint, or at the very least, for a doctor who was willing to travel to a third-world country on a regular basis.
Well, you wanted to get away. This certainly qualifies as getting away, a voice in her head pointed out.
Alisha stared at the address at the top of the letter. This Dr. Davenport lived somewhere called “Forever, Texas.”
Alisha frowned. Okay, not a third-world country, but she still hadn’t heard of the place. But then, she hadn’t heard of a great many places, and this Forever certainly sounded as if it was far away enough to qualify as getting away.
Alisha stared at the letter, weighing her options. The one thing she knew was that she did not want to remain here a second longer than she had to.
After a moment’s internal debate, rather than tack the letter back up on the bulletin board, she carefully folded it and put the letter in the pocket of her white lab coat.
Forever, Alisha mused. It had an interesting ring to it.
