Page 1 of Fix Me Up

chapter

one

Daisy

“Sorry to bother you, Dr. Allen, but Mr. Mosley wants to see you. He says it will only take a minute.”

Yeah.

Thanks to the new security system that feeds into my office, I already know that man is here.

This will also take way more than one minute of my time.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, and take a moment to gather extra patience. “Here we go.”

Owen Mosley gets under my skin, but not because of the reasons Trisha thinks.

The man tries my bedside manner simply because he harbors an extraordinary amount of stress, even for a single dad, which no amount of professional reassurance can quell.

Usually, I’m great at helping anxious parents calm down about a child’s sniffle here or a rash there. But Owen is a different breed of parent altogether. In my medical professional opinion, the 30-year-old single dad has read way too many parenting manuals for his mental health, yet, mystifyingly, does not know how to Google basic questions like, “When should I call the doctor about my child’s temperature?”

As the locals say, Bless his heart.

And that’s it, really. That’s the whole of my feelings about him, and none of those feelings are influenced by one awkward blind date we went on last New Year’s Eve. I’ve put that evening behind me. Completely.

“Is he on the schedule?” I ask Trisha.

The receptionist tilts her head to the side and smirks. “I think you know the answer to that.”

I blow out of breath and stand up, my 35-year-old knees cracking. “Here we go again.”

The sound of Trisha chuckling behind me as I go to the front desk has me feeling self-conscious. Her tone when it comes to my interactions with Owen feels like a wink and a nudge.

This is probably why I get an involuntary tingle when I glimpse him as I walk through the door into the reception area. Eighteen-month-old Graham, red-cheeked and squealing, grabs at Owen’s mouth while Owen pretends to gobble up those little dimpled fingers.

The adorable, curly-haired toddler has his six-foot-four, 200-pound feed store manager dad wrapped around his chubby little finger. Out of context, I’d say Owen looks like a typical dad. But I’ve seen Graham in my office so many times in the last several months that even though I don’t like to be quick to assign labels, Owen is on the verge of a hypochondriacal diagnosis with regard to the way he fusses and worries over his perfectly healthy boy, Graham.

Graham is a wonderful kid, if a little bit temperamental. Owen, however, has been a thorn in my side—even more than the older patients who don’t like being told to fill out online forms, even after the phone nurse offers to walk them through it.

And yet I can’t help but sense a fiery crackle deep in my body whenever he makes eye contact.

Settle down, ovaries. It’s not happening. Nobody wants to have sex with someone with my…not-so-little problem. Especially because I’m a doctor, who everyone thinks is supposed to know everything about the human anatomy.

The aforementioned dirty little secret ended my last relationship. That personal issue was there in the back of my mind during that ill-fated blind date on the previous New Year’s Eve, which only contributed to my attitude all night long.

Ugh. I don’t need to think about that right now. It does not matter that Owen is cute and single, and I also happen to be cute and single. Everyone loves to point out how we’re both still available and haven’t dated anyone since that horrible first experience. But everyone needs to get over it.

I know I have. And I know for certain that Owen also has gotten over it, without a shadow of a doubt.

“Did you have a question about something?” I ask.

Owen overwhelms the space on the other side of the check-in partition. His flannel shirt makes his broad chest seem broader somehow. Graham’s soft toddler hand grips his dad’s masculine chin, making Owen’s face appear all the more chiseled and scruffy.

Okay. Fine. Owen is not bad to look at, and having an adorable child attached to him at all times doesn’t make him less attractive.

“Hi, Dr. Allen. How are you?” He gives me his usual crooked smile.

Good god, he sees me so often he must have hit his deductible by now.

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