A Match for the Doctor by Marie Ferrarella Page B

Meghan.
    â€œIs who coming back?” Simon asked absently as he helped Meghan fasten her seat belt and then tested it to make sure it had snapped into place.
    â€œKennon,” Meghan piped up. She smiled broadly as she gave the absent woman her seal of approval. “I like her, Daddy.”
    He glanced at his younger daughter. Meghan was the warm and sunny one. She took after Nancy, while Madelyn was more like him. Cautious. At least, until today, he amended.
    He laughed shortly, shaking his head. “You like everyone,” he told her.
    â€œBut Kennon’s nice,” Madelyn insisted. Her tone said that she usually agreed with her father, but in this one instance, Meghan was actually right. “So, is she?”
    â€œIs she what?” Simon asked, getting back into the driver’s seat. He quickly strapped himself in, then started up the vehicle.
    Madelyn sighed loudly. “Is she coming back?” she repeated her initial question. “Daddy, aren’t you paying attention?” she asked in exasperation.
    Now she sounded like her mother, the few times that Nancy had lost her patience with him. Even Madelyn’s inflection was the same. He had to stop doing this, Simon silently lectured himself.
    â€œSorry,” he apologized, easing away from the curb and waiting for his turn to enter the flow of snail-paced traffic. “My mind was wandering.”
    â€œWhere did it go, Daddy?” Meghan asked. At six she was a walking mass of question marks. “I didn’t see it go. Is it really little?” she asked, trying to lean forward. The seat belt restrained her and she wriggled in her seat.
    â€œNo, stupid,” Madelyn said impatiently. “Daddy just means he was thinking of something else.”
    Which led Meghan to another question. “What, Daddy? What were you thinking of?” the little girl asked him eagerly.
    Madelyn joined forces with Meghan and added her voice to her sister’s. “Yeah, what, Daddy?”
    He glanced over his shoulder at their inquisitive, lively little faces. God, he wished he could be thatyoung again. That young and able to bounce back from anything.
    He couldn’t tell them that he was thinking about their mother, couldn’t chance bringing them down because he was a stickler for the truth. So he lied. It was kinder all around that way.
    â€œI was just thinking about what two little girls might want for dinner.”
    â€œUs, Daddy? Are the two little girls us?” Meghan asked eagerly, her green eyes shining.
    â€œYes,” he replied. Finally out on the main thoroughfare, he glanced at Meghan in the rearview mirror. The flow of traffic picked up. “The two little girls are you and your sister.”
    â€œYou still didn’t answer my question, Daddy,” Madelyn reminded him.
    Madelyn was like a bulldog when she got hold of something, he thought. She didn’t let loose until she had what she wanted. In this case, it was answers to her question. This time, he needed no prompting to recall the topic.
    â€œYou really liked this woman?”
    It was Meghan who piped up first. “Oh, yes, Daddy. She smells good.”
    â€œNot an unimportant quality,” he agreed, amused. The light turned yellow. Alone he would have sped through. But he had the girls with him, so he slowed down and waited. The light turned red a beat later. “Anything else?”
    â€œShe talked to us,” Meghan added brightly with enthusiasm.
    â€œAll right.” He had already gathered that. So far, he wasn’t sure he understood what the girls’ excitementabout the woman was. At least, not on the junior level. Had they been teenage boys instead, he would have easily understood the attraction. Petite, she appeared to have a shapely form and her facial bone structure was such that a plastic surgeon would have wept with envy.
    His powers of observation had obviously become more acute.
    When had that