The Doctor's Undoing

Healing the Doctor’s Heart

When Dr. Daniel Parker requested an army nurse to help with his orphanage, he expected an organized, sensible matron. Instead he gets young, beautiful, obstinate Ida Lee Landway, whose vibrant outlook and unrelenting optimism turn his work and his life inside out.

Army life was easy compared to the discipline at her new workplace. Yet Ida is immediately smitten by the children in her care…and impressed by Daniel’s unfaltering dedication. Adding color and warmth to her new surroundings is one thing. Can she also help the good doctor embrace joy—and in so doing, find the family they both deserve?

He crossed his arms over his chest, teasing in his eyes.

“Am I to understand you are both asking permission and waiting for approval? Are you quite sure you’re Ida Landway?”

Something fell away between them. The carefully tended wall of employer and employee slipped down to reveal a timid, fresh partnership that went beyond children, medicine or education. When she heard him say her name, her view of him shifted from Dr. Parker the institution and took a small step toward Daniel Parker the man. The man who had just brought her paint to bring beauty into this tiny world they shared.

“Quite sure,” she said, wishing the words did not sound so breathless. “Thank you. Thank you more than you can ever know.”

“The sky blue is my favorite,” he said in the tone of a secret. “What’s yours?”

“All of them. Every single one of them.”

There was a moment of powerful silence, as if the air itself had changed between them. Ida wanted to look anywhere but into his eyes, but at the same time couldn’t pull her gaze away from their intensity. He seemed both bothered and more comfortable, which made no sense at all.

ALLIE PLEITER, an award-winning author and RITA® Award finalist, writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her passion for knitting shows up in many of her books and all over her life. Entirely too fond of French macarons and lemon meringue pie, Allie spends her days writing books and avoiding housework. Allie grew up in Connecticut, holds a BS in speech from Northwestern University and lives near Chicago, Illinois.

The Doctor’s Undoing

Allie Pleiter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.

—Genesis 9:16

To clever, long-suffering, much-needed school nurses everywhere

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Bible Verse

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

July 1919 Charleston, South Carolina

Brr. Cold.

For July in Charleston, South Carolina, that was quite a feat. The shiver that ran down Ida Lee Landway’s back had nothing to do with the afternoon’s heat—which was oppressive—but everything to do with the frosty feeling coming from the imposing iron gates of the Parker Home for Orphans. One didn’t have to know children to know those looming cement walls and thick black iron grating were just plain wrong. Charleston homes boasted many beautiful wrought iron gates and graceful stone walls, but this entrance was large, clunky and downright unwelcoming. Oh, Father, Ida gulped toward Heaven, have I made a wrong choice?

She checked the notice in her hands one more time, hoping somehow she’d gotten the address wrong. The multibuilding compound—what she could see of it through the gates—looked more like a factory than an orphanage to her color-loving artistic eye. Many of the buildings had the city’s classic red brick and black shutters, but somehow the place still looked as if someone had doused the whole affair with a bucket of gray paint. Even Charleston’s red-clay soil seemed to have more vibrancy to it.

A small face popped into her vision. “Who’re you?”

An artist by nature, Ida was a student of faces. She collected a dozen details of this tiny countenance in a matter of seconds. Clean, but pale, with powder blue eyes. Her blond hair hung in utilitarian braids down each side of her head—again, neat but without any bows or ribbons. She looked about seven, with a pair of her front teeth missing to show the tiny white buds of their adult counterparts poking through pink gums. She looked like a child who existed, but not one who thrived.

The girl stuffed her hands into the worn pockets of her faded white pinafore and stubbed a scuffed black shoe against the gate’s lower rung. With the large vertical iron bars between them, Ida couldn’t shake the notion that it felt as if she was at the zoo—and that was an awful thought for a place where children lived.