He nudged a mug toward Ethan, then retrieved a bottle of hazelnut creamer from the fridge.
Ethan raised a brow as he dumped several healthy glugs into the mug. “You gonna have a little coffee with that creamer?”
“Like my coffee like I liked my women—blonde and sweet.” He sipped and studied Ethan over the rim. “Hear tell you got the same taste.”
Hell, even Chester had heard about his interest in Miranda? “Don’t know as ‘sweet’ is exactly the word I’d used to describe her.”
The old man threw back his head and laughed. “Doc Campbell’s a pistol, that’s for damned sure. Woman like her’ll keep a man on his toes.”
He didn’t want to discuss his prospective love life. “Got an appreciation for spirited women, Chester?”
“It’s a stupid man who doesn’t.”
“Your neighbor fits that description.”
“I know it. Maudie Bell was good friends with my Jeannie.” There was something in his tone that had Ethan’s curiosity pinging.
“Then why, exactly, are you going around pissing her off by not taking care of your fence problem? I can see you care about your property, your animals. So this doesn’t fit.”
A flush crawled up Chester’s neck. “I get it fixed, maybe she stops coming by.”
Ethan stared. “You’re doing all this to get her attention?”
The bony shoulders twitched, and he didn’t quite meet Ethan’s gaze. “Her coming over and ranting at me is kinda like having my Jeannie back a little bit. She gets a kick out of it, too, since her Melvin died. Not that she’ll admit it.”
“So, let me get this straight—this whole little feud y’all have going on is some kind of flirtation?”
“It passes the time.”
“Man, you can do better than that. You will do better than that. Today we’re fixing that fence. And next week, you’re going down to the nursery to pick up the replacement roses Cam ordered, and you’re gonna put them in for her. And maybe when you’re done with that, you’ll actually apologize and do something radical, like ask her to dinner.”
“What qualifies you to hand out advice on anybody’s love life?”
Given the divorce under his belt, probably not much. “Apparently a better sense of self preservation than you’ve got.”
Chester harrumphed. “You any better qualified to fix a fence?”
“Grew up on a ranch in West Texas. I was fixing fences from the time I was five years old.”
The old man’s eyes lit with interest. “Well, reckon we’ll see how good you are with the fence first. Maybe you’re worth listening to on the rest.”
Ethan’s lips twitched. “You don’t listen, I can fine you.”
“Same song, different verse, son. Let’s get to work.”
“This is not what I expected.” Despite the firm grip Ethan had on her hand, Miranda dragged her feet a little as he pulled her across the scuffed wooden floor of Speakeasy Pizza toward the little stage.
“You said you wanted to hear me sing.”
“Yeah, you. Not me.”
His eyes glinted with amusement. “Maybe I wanna see what you’re made of. Karaoke says a lot about a person.”
As they joined the short line beside the binder containing all possible song options, nerves kicked in her belly. “That a dealbreaker for you?”
He sobered, bending close to her ear to speak. “Not if you legitimately don’t want to do it. You don’t strike me as the nervous type.”
“I’m not usually totally sober when I do this. And the last time anybody managed to drag me up here was for my friend Piper’s bachelorette party.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Well, the baby just turned three weeks yesterday.”
Ethan crouched down just a little to look into her eyes, as if trying to determine whether he was gonna make her go through with this. It’d have been nice if she knew whether she wanted to do it.
“C’mon, Legs,” he coaxed. “I’ll let you pick the song.”
Bracing herself, Miranda stepped up to the book. “Fine. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
He peered over her shoulder as she made her selection of “Islands In The Stream.” Not close enough to touch, but near enough the heat of him distracted her.
“Old school. I dig it.” He punched the number into the machine himself, removing her last opportunity for escape.
And then they were on the stage and he was grinning at her as he launched into a damned fine impression of Kenny Rogers. Her voice shook as she added her Dolly to the mix. She could carry a tune, but she was no performer, and this stage was generally ruled by the active community theater members who were. Ethan never once looked at the crowd. A funny thing happened under that complete and total focus—she lost her nerves. So by the time they wrapped the country classic, Miranda was grinning back and laughing.
Ethan swung an arm around her shoulders as they stepped down. “You give good Dolly. That definitely earned you pizza and beer.”
They nabbed a table far enough back from the stage they could talk without yelling and put in an order for a New York style pie with pepperoni and mushrooms. As they waited, they listened to the other performers—good, bad, and heinous—and Miranda entertained him with little anecdotes about each of them.
“Do you know everybody?” he asked.
“Seems like. Other than school and residency, I’ve lived here all my life.”
“Was that always the plan? Or did you want to stay in Chicago?”
She tipped her beer back and considered. “No. Chicago was a means to an end. But I did expect to be there longer than I was.”
“Surgical residency, wasn’t it?”
“Somebody was paying attention.”
“You had your hands on my ass at the time. Hard to pay attention to anything else.”
Miranda snorted and hoped she’d get the chance at that again under less professional circumstances. “Fair point. When I started up there, I fully intended to finish out my trauma surgeon training. But Chicago is one of the most violent cities in the country. It started to feel like I lost as many people as I saved. Some of them I managed to patch back together only to have them show up months later from some other thing and end up with a toe tag. It was wearing on me.”
“I can imagine.”
“I became a doctor because I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. Wanted to see that that difference lasted. Most surgeons have only a peripheral kind of relationship with their patients. Bare minimum contact to do the procedure and follow up. Trauma surgeons often have even less because of the nature of the conditions being treated. My mentor constantly frowned on my desire to get involved beyond medical necessity. He considered me naive. I chalked it up to the fact that he’s been a practicing surgeon for nearly thirty years, and in all that time he’s developed a wall between himself and his patients out of self-preservation. But I just couldn’t live like he did. I give a damn, and that isn’t going to change. So I gave up my residency up there and came home to specialize in family medicine. Even now, he still hasn’t forgiven me for walking away. He thinks I’m wasting my skills in a small town clinic.”