The numbers on the clock had never moved so slowly. Jeremiah thought that surely God was playing a trick on him and actually making time go backward. Shannon had texted a couple of times, and they were planning to meet outside their buildings just after one.
Jeremiah was seriously considering taking the rest of the day off completely. He didn’t have any kids coming in, though he did have paperwork and files to go over. So much paperwork. If he didn’t come back and use the afternoon to get caught up, he’d pay for it later.
He honestly wasn’t sure he cared. Lunch with Shannon was a more exciting prospect, and the day was perfect for surfing. Finally deciding, when he took Taylor’s file back to Michelle, he said, “After Porter, I’m going to lunch and then I’ll be gone the rest of the day.”
Janey and Flo looked at him too, though there wasn’t much surprise in their eyes. “All right,” Janey said at the same time as Michelle.
“What’s my first appointment tomorrow?” he asked.
“Kelli at nine-thirty,” Flo said without missing a beat. “And it’s my birthday and you promised there would be cake.” She smiled at him, and it warmed Jeremiah all the way through. He loved the ladies he worked with.
“Oh, there will be cake.”
“Am I taking Hercules tonight?” Janey asked, and Jeremiah switched his attention to her.
“Can I take him instead?”
“Sure. I don’t think my grandson can come tonight anyway.”
“Great, thanks.” Jeremiah didn’t normally mind farming out Hercules to whoever needed him. But for some reason, Jeremiah felt like he needed the therapy dog that night. He knocked twice on the counter before turning and returning to his office. Five minutes later, he felt a year had passed. Tiffany knocked on the door and said, “Go on in, Porty.”
The little blonde boy came in, his stuffed alligator clutched against his chest.
“Oh, you brought Allen,” Jeremiah said, smiling at the child. “Did he want to see my newest trick?”
Porter nodded, his big blue eyes wide as Tiffany brought the door closed, leaving the doctor alone with his patient.
“All right.” Jeremiah cleared his throat. “But I’m still working on it, so you better tell him not to be upset if it doesn’t work.”
Porter glanced down at the alligator and whispered something to him. It had been Kelsie’s idea to get the stuffed animal for Porter, who had a very difficult time talking to adults. He’d been in foster care for a year now, and his latest family seemed to really love him.
“Is he ready?” Jeremiah asked, smiling at the boy.
Porter nodded and Jeremiah opened the top drawer in his desk. “All right then. Come on over here. Make sure you can both see.” He waited for the boy to come closer, and he adjusted his cards so the trick would work.
“Okay.” He shuffled the cards, which were covered with blue patterns on one side and had cartoon characters and numbers on the other. He fanned them out. “Pick a card. Look at it real good. Show it to Allen.”
Porter did as he was instructed, and Jeremiah swept the unchosen cards up and made a spot for Porter’s card, quickly marking it as he put it in the pile.
“Okay, so sometimes we have to really watch what’s going on around us,” Jeremiah said. “And if we don’t like it, we tell someone we trust.” He switched his gaze to Allen. “Right, Allen? Who would you tell?” He cocked his head toward the stuffed animal and said, “Porter. Of course. I think I could’ve guessed that.”
He flipped over a card. It wasn’t Porter’s. “Is this your card?”
“No,” Porter said, and Jeremiah knew today was going to be a good session. After all, Porter had just spoken to him, and it had taken less than five minutes.
He flipped another card and immediately swept it off the desk. “That’s not it either.” He looked at Porter, who smiled. “Wait. Was that it?”
“No.” Porter giggled, and Jeremiah wanted to scoop up the six-year-old and tell him he was going to be okay.
“Who would you tell if you saw something that made you upset?” he asked, still shuffling the cards. He took a peek at one, made a face, and tossed it away too. “Not that one.”
“I’d tell you,” Porter said. “Or my mom.”
Jeremiah almost dropped the whole deck of cards. He caught himself and kept them moving. “All right. Let’s see if I can get the right card this time.” He flipped over five cards and asked, “Is it one of those?”
Porter’s eyes rounded, and he nodded. “Yeah, it’s there.”
“Allen? Is he fibbing?” Jeremiah grinned at the alligator, and then he pointed to the mouse holding a pie with an eight-shaped candle in the middle of it. “It’s this one.”
“Yes.” Porter looked from the card to him. “How’d you do that, Doctor Yeates?”
“It’s magic, Porty. I can’t tell you how I did it. It just…gets done.” He swept all the cards back into a deck and put them back in the drawer. “Did you draw anything with Miss Kelsie last week?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Well, what are we going to do today then?” Jeremiah grinned at him. “I know. How about you tell me about your mom? That must be going good.”
“She made me a birthday cake,” he said.
“That’s right,” Jeremiah said, deciding to circle back to the fact that Porter had called Linda Lowry his mother when it had always been Linda in the past. “It was your birthday on Saturday.” He pulled open another desk drawer and pulled out a box wrapped in blue paper. “Allen almost forgot to remind me last time, remember?”
Porter stared at the gift. “You got me something?”
“Yep.” Jeremiah pushed the box closer to him. “But I want you to peek at it first, and don’t let Allen see. He might not like it, and you’ll need to decide what to do.”
Porter took his hands off the stuffed alligator—something he rarely did—and reached for the box. The top lifted right off, and he tilted it at an angle so that Allen couldn’t see in. Then he looked at Jeremiah again.
“Well?” Jeremiah asked. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“They could be friends.” Jeremiah leaned forward. “Like you and your mom are.”
“My mom loves me,” Porter said. “And she said if I wanted to, she and Daddy could adopt me.”
“Is that right?” Jeremiah asked, happiness swelling inside him. “And what do you think of that?”
“I don’t know,” Porter said.
“Hmm.” Jeremiah leaned away from the boy. “It sounds like you have some decisions to make.” He nodded toward the box. “Sometimes those are easy, and sometimes they’re hard.”
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Oh, now that’s like the magic trick. I can’t tell you what to do. But remember how we talked about what we feel in our hearts?”
Porter nodded, pressing his lips together.
Jeremiah pulled open his drawer of tricks and retrieved a piece of gum for the kid. Porter snatched it up and started unwrapping it.
“And what does your heart tell you about…you know.” He nodded to the box.
“I think Allen would like having a friend. I might could leave him at home if he had someone to play with.”
Jeremiah nodded. “All right. I can see that. And your mom and dad?”
“I like them.”
“You want to live with them forever? Have them be your family?”
Porter looked at Jeremiah for a long, long time. Finally, he said, “My heart says yes.”
“All right then. Why don’t you take that new friend out and introduce him to Allen? I’ll go get your mom.” Jeremiah stood up as Porter took out the new stuffed animal—a frog about the same size as the alligator.
He made it to the door before he heard Porter say, “Allen, this is Fiona. She is so nice, and you guys are going to be great friends.”
Later, as he stood in the sunshine and waited for Shannon to exit the building, he thought he should probably listen to his heart a little more too. It had hurt for so long, he’d sort of forgotten how.
He thought of Elaine, and her long, dark hair, expecting the tightening of his muscles and the quick pulse. But they didn’t come. He stood there, completely calm, and his heart told him he was over the woman that had broken them both so long ago.
“Hey,” Shannon said, breaking into his thoughts.
He wondered how long she’d been there. “Hey.” He grinned at her, the strangest desire to tuck her hair behind her ear raging through him. “The flower is pretty.”
She instantly reached up to her hair, where a yellow orchid sat just above her ear. “Oh, thanks. I forgot I had that there.” She started to remove it, and then tucked it in tighter.
He started down the sidewalk with, “Do we want to walk down the boardwalk a bit? Or drive somewhere?” He secretly hoped she’d want to drive somewhere, because it was hot outside.
“How much time do you have?” she asked.
“The rest of the day,” he said. “I decided not to go back and do my paperwork. I just need to get Hercules when we’re done.”
“Oh, playing hooky.”
He laughed, thrilled when she tucked her hand into his arm on the next step. “That’s right. I think I’m going to go surfing.”
“Mm, a surfing child psychologist. You know, I don’t think those two things go together.”
He enjoyed the teasing quality of her voice, glad he could flirt back with, “Well, if you play hooky too, you can come watch. Then you’ll see that they absolutely go together.”
She laughed now, and Jeremiah wanted to make her do that every day. “I can’t skip this afternoon. I have a huge report to put together for my boss.”
“What kind of report?” he asked, veering toward the parking lot.
“Remember how I went out to the flower farm a couple of days ago? She wants a cost analysis and three plans to present to the bride for next week.”
Jeremiah chuckled and slid his hand down her arm, where he could lace his fingers through hers. A sigh passed through his whole body, and he reached into his pocket with his free hand to pull out his keys.
“I’m not sure what you just said,” he said. “But it sounded really report-y.”
She grinned at him. “I want to get a steak salad out at the Cattleman’s Last Stop. What do you think about that?”
It was a twenty-minute drive there and twenty back. “I think that sounds amazing,” he said, unlocking the convertible and opening the door for her. He tried not to notice the curve of her hip in that tight pencil skirt, but he did. And the waves in her hair. And the orange and lemon scent of her perfume.
He went around the back of the car to give himself five seconds to get his raging hormones under control, and when he got behind the wheel, he said, “You obviously eat red meat. What else do you like?”
“It’s more a question of what I don’t like,” she said.
“Okay, start there.”
“Well, I don’t like tomatoes. And I don’t like bees. I don’t like people who are late, and I don’t like snow.”
“Snow?” he asked. “Have you actually ever seen snow?”
“We went to Utah for Christmas one year,” she said. “My great uncle lives there. It is so cold, and yeah.” She shuddered. “I don’t like the snow.”
“Good thing you live in Hawaii.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and she was so carefree in his car. Her hair streamed behind her as he drove, and she gathered it into one hand and held it there.
“What about you?” she asked, catching him looking at her. “What are you going to order for lunch?
“Easy,” he said, focusing on the road again. “Ribeye.”
“And for Hercules?”
“I didn’t bring Hercules.”
“Yeah, but I saw you with him. You’ll get him something.”
Jeremiah took a moment to mull over her words. “Yeah, I probably will. He likes a good flank steak.”
“Oh, so we get the good stuff for the dog.”
“He’s….” Jeremiah trailed off, because he knew what Hercules was to him, but he didn’t know how to articulate it to this gorgeous woman. He swallowed and another mile went by, and still Shannon waited for him to finish his sentence. So he wasn’t the only one with an astronomical wait time, and he searched for the words that wouldn’t make him weak.