Page 25 of Mistletoe Dreams
"No, it's fine. He can stay here. I mean, obviously we're limited in what we can do, but he can stay."
She didn't have to say that if he tried to leave, she wasn't going to be able to stop him. He was still bigger than his son, but Hannah was not.
"I wouldn't expect you to do anything extra or extraordinary. I just wanted him to sit here and not move until I get back. I'll deal with him from there."
"All right. I'm sure that'll be fine, right, Terry?" She glanced across the room at Dr. Terry, who nodded.
"Of course. He's more than welcome to stay. I think we can probably put him to work actually." She grinned, while Mason rolled his eyes, and then she opened the door to the exam room and disappeared inside.
"Go ahead. Put him to work. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do, but I'll have a plan by the time I get back."
"All right. That sounds fine," Hannah said. Then she grabbed a pen and a notepad that was sitting on the counter. "Do you mind giving me your number in case anything happens?"
"Of course not." He rattled it off to her, and she scribbled it down. Then he saw her write his name underneath it and underline it.
There was something about seeing her write his name. He wasn't sure why, but it sent an odd feeling seeping down his backbone.
"I really need to leave. I'm sorry to saddle you with this."
"You're not saddling me with anything. I noticed yesterday that Mason seemed to have an affinity for medical things. This might be a good opportunity to try it out. And you heard Dr. Terry. She's fine with it. You go on. We've gotthis, don't we, Mason?"
Mason looked surprised, and then he nodded.
"I'll stay," he said.
Mason leaving was what Ben had been afraid of, and the assurance that he was going to stay was what he needed to hear.
"I'll be back as soon as I'm done," Ben promised, and then he hurried off. He'd taken a job in a smaller town hoping for less hours, knowing he needed to try to figure out a way to piece his family back together—to piece the relationship between him and his son back together. He really needed to get on that. Or he was afraid that he was going to lose him completely.
Chapter Twelve
Hannah watched as Ben left. There was a part of her that admired his long-legged stride, the confident way he moved, and yeah, a bit of arrogance. And despite herself, she found herself drawn to it. He was definitely a masculine man, and it almost was painful to see him out of his element, unable to deal with his teenage son, especially since it was so obvious that he loved him with all of his heart and soul.
"Hey, Mason. I was just about ready to go into an exam room and put some stitches in. You're a bit of an expert at this. I'll have to get permission, but if I do, would you like to join me?"
Mason turned and his eyebrows went way up. He probably had expected her to chain him to a desk somewhere, which honestly was her first thought. But there was something about the way he had been interested in taking his own stitches out last night that made her think that perhaps he had a natural bent toward medicine.
"Really? I could go in with you?"
"And help."
His eyes brightened. Just as she thought. He really was interested.
"Yeah. I'd do that."
"All right. Give me a second to check. I'm going to call you my assistant, and I'm going to say you're shadowing me because you're interested in a career in medicine. Would that be a lie?" she asked, not wanting to tell her patients untruths.
"No. I definitely am interested. I don't know if I'm smart enough to be a doctor though."
"It's not necessarily a matter of being smart enough. It's honestly just a matter of how hard you are willing to work and how much you're willing to sacrifice." She lifted her shoulder. "I'm not any smarter than your average bear."
That made him laugh, and she turned around and walked into the waiting room where Karen Hutchison sat with her son, Buster, who had wrecked his bike and needed stitches just above his eye.
"Mrs. Hutchison, I have an assistant who has joined the practice, and he's shadowing me because of an interest in a career in medicine. Do you mind if he comes in and observes and possibly helps by handing me tools and equipment?"
"No. That's fine," she said, looking up from where she had been trying to distract her son by using her phone.
Poor little Buster, at only eight years old, was scared and looked up with frightened eyes.
