Father By Choice. M.J. Rodgers
of town. No one could have lifted it without an audience.”
“So unless the entire town was in on a conspiracy to keep the death of this guy a secret, we’re going to have to look elsewhere for answers,” Brad said. “The documents might give a clue as to who the guy was, even if they don’t reveal how he got there.”
“Your investment won’t be worth the slim chance of reward. This is a time-consuming task.”
“Then we’d better get started.”
“You mean now?”
“You had something else planned?”
“No, I’m just surprised you don’t.”
“Normally, I do work Saturday and Sunday. But I’ve pulled a few double shifts this past week, so, at the moment, I’m looking at a whole weekend off. What do we do first?”
This good-looking, single doctor wanted to bury his nose in old records on his rare weekend off when he could be downstairs making important contacts and letting attractive women come on to him?
Emily looked him straight in the eye. “Why are you here?”
He didn’t so much as blink. “Do you really want to know?”
Did she? She’d purposely avoided this confrontation yesterday because she believed she could keep the truth from him. But if he had somehow found out she’d gotten his sperm, it would be better to discuss the matter openly than to continue to worry about hidden meanings and motivations in everything he said and did.
“Yes, I want to know,” she said.
“I got dumped.”
That caught her completely by surprise. “You what?”
“Woman I’d been seeing over the past few weeks canceled our time together. Seems some fortune-teller read her tea leaves and warned her that everyone whose name starts with the letter B was going to bring her bad luck over the next few days. She decided to spend the weekend in the far safer pursuits of skin exfoliation and incense burning.”
“Where did the dumping come in?”
“Right after I assured her that she would have felt at home with the ignorant savages who read falling tree leaves a few thousand years ago and got the message to sacrifice the village’s virgin to ward off the approaching bad weather.”
Yes, she could imagine him saying that.
“I take it you don’t believe in anything beyond the five senses,” Emily said.
“When someone can’t breathe or is bleeding, science provides the tools that enable me to help them. But, I’ve also seen prayer and nothing but a strong will to live keep someone alive well beyond what should have been medically possible.”
“So you are open to other possibilities.”
“I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do believe that whatever gives meaning to someone’s life shouldn’t demean or belittle someone else’s. When a person is branded as a threat simply because the first letter of his name starts with a B, then the line into superstitious lunacy has been crossed.”
He wore the expression of a warrior who’d gone into conversational battle on this subject more than once. And was weary of it.
“After your brother and I got to talking at the bar last night,” Brad continued, “he decided that what I needed was to be dragged to the Founders Day Celebration. Good thing, too, or I’d probably be forced to study for my board certification exams coming up next month.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you aren’t downstairs shaking hands and drinking the very best in champagne.”
“I’ve found that I react to people best when I take them like a potent prescription—one at a time and never mixed with alcohol.”
His explanation filled her with relief. Maybe she hadn’t been quite so prepared for that confrontation as she’d convinced herself.
“Too bad your weekend turned into such a disappointment,” she said.
“Oh, I’d say things are definitely looking up. So, what do we do first?”
He had the kind of smile that made a woman want to smile back. She resisted.
“Go through everything and make a list of what type of things we have and how many,” she answered. “Then we can start the process of scanning them into the hard drive.”
She handed him a pad and pen. “You get the task of record keeping.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“You consider it beneath you?”
“I consider it far above me. All those stories you’ve heard about how doctors can’t write legibly? They’re absolutely true.”
It was the serious look on his face that had her lips twitching, despite her best efforts. “How are you at typing?”
He held up all ten fingers. “My hand-eye coordination has always rated within the top one percent.”
“Of E.R. doctors?”
“Of volleyball players. You can catch our games Sunday afternoons out on the beach near the big barbecue pit.”
The smile was getting harder to contain.
“You’ll recognize me,” Brad said nonchalantly as he shifted in his chair. “I’m the one who’s always falling into the pit.”
She was grinning now, couldn’t help it. Brad Winslow had a very nice personality beneath his staid doctor’s countenance.
“So what do you and your husband do for fun?”
Emily’s grin subsided. “I’m not married.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m not.”
She faced the computer monitor and opened a word-processing document. After naming it “Time Capsule Artifacts” she came to her feet.
“Okay, Mr. Nimble Fingers, you get the job of entering a list of the contents into the computer file as I read them off to you.”
They switched chairs so he could have access to the computer, and she was closer to the time capsule.
Once settled, she raised the lid and slipped on some protective gloves. “First item is the letter Patrick O’Shea read that was signed by the mayor and the eleven other men who were chosen to set the sundial in place.”
She heard the confident click of keys as Brad entered the information. Peeking over at the screen, she could see he’d already finished the identifying sentence. Nimble fingers indeed.
“What do you want to list about the letter?” he asked.
“Let’s put in the names of those who signed it, starting with the mayor’s. This is the first time I heard that there were twelve men chosen to put the sundial in place. There are only eleven initials carved on its surface.”
“Whose initials are missing?” Brad asked.
“Something I plan to check on later.” One by one she read the signatures at the bottom of the letter to him.
“What’s next?”
“The pictures.”
Emily picked up the first—a gorgeous shot of a ship in full sail. Even though it was in black-and-white, her mind’s eye filled in an azure sky and turquoise sea. Turning it over, she found to her delight that someone had printed the name of the vessel. Every item in the cargo unloaded at the Courage Bay dock was listed.
“I can see why this could become a very time-consuming task,” Brad said.
Her head came up at his comment. It was only then that she