Page 53 of Daddy's Little Patient

Raina shrugged. “Sure.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in this wing of the house.

They walked down a long hallway and peeked into rooms. There were four open exam rooms with old-fashioned-looking things. Past them was a room for supplies and files, and the doctor’s office was across from it. “And this was the waiting room,” Raina said. There were a dozen old chairs, some with moth-eaten fabric, but they still looked solid otherwise.

Larkin pointed to another door. “And that one goes outside?”

Raina nodded. “Yes. I’ve been told he was very private, and the patients loved that about him. There’s a little area for parking, but I’m not sure it’s been kept up. The last time I saw it, the concrete had weeds and potholes.”

“Those can be fixed,” Mara said.

“What for?” Raina asked.

“What if Alex could be here most of the time instead of at the hospital?”

Raina’s mouth dropped open. Why hadn’t she thought of that? “Do you really think he’d do it?”

The four girls nodded.

“You couldn’t barge into the office, but if you really needed him, he’d be a phone call away,” Sienna said.

Raina nodded and then grinned. “That would be so cool if he was here. I wouldn’t worry so much.”

“Show us some more,” Mara said.

The time flew, and before she knew it, they had to leave but promised to be back.

Now Raina anxiously waited for her daddy to come home and ran up to Alex several hours later when he entered the door. He immediately pulled her into his arms and kissed the breath out of her.

When he lifted his head, she blinked at him a few times, trying to remember what she had to tell him.

He grinned down at her. “I like those kind of greetings.”

“Oh, I remembered. I’ve got something to show you.”

Alex chuckled. “All right. Let me set this stuff down in the office.”

She bounced on her toes as she waited. She grabbed his hand and dragged him down a hallway when he came out of the office, turned, and headed down another one. At the end, she turned to him and grinned. “This is one of the places you haven’t seen.”

He laughed. “I imagine there are a lot of places around here I still haven’t seen.”

She rolled her eyes and opened the door to the clinic. She walked down the hallway and turned to him as he looked in the rooms.

“I forgot to tell you that my great-grandfather was a doctor.”

Alex grinned. “No, you haven’t mentioned that. So, what is this place?”

“This is his doctor’s office. These first four rooms were examination rooms.” They moved down the hall. “Here’s the supply and file room. Across from that was his own office.” She threw her arms out when she came to the last large area. “This was the waiting room, and the secretary’s desk is in the corner.”

She watched him walk around and started to get nervous.

“This is very interesting,” he said and faced her.

“What do you think about making it yours?”

His eyes widened, and he looked around again.

“You wouldn’t have to leave the house and go to the hospital all the time.”

Alex walked over to the window.

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