Read Online Huckleberry Hearts by Jennifer Beckstrand - Free Book Online Page A

this very moment.
    And maybe another look at the angel.
    The most beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on, and he couldn’t even talk her into a date with him. There must be something fundamentally wrong with him. She’d looked past the straight teeth and the crooked nose and the doctor title. Had she been able to see into his heart? Could she tell just by looking how flawed and confused he was? And how angry he felt?
    It wasn’t just that she was pretty. If she’d been merely pretty, he would have been able to walk away from her rejection unscathed. There were lots of pretty girls who would jump at a chance to date Dr. Zach Reynolds. Her bearing, the way she carried herself had made Zach look twice, but the way she’d cared about the little Amish girl, the deference she paid to her grandparents, the kindness with which she treated him even though she didn’t want to date him, were all astonishingly attractive qualities.
    Earlier today, Zach had walked out of surgery to see Cassie engrossed in a conversation with Cheryl, the grumpiest nurse in the hospital. She didn’t like anybody, and she complained about everything, but there Cassie had been with her arm around the prickly nurse, listening to her problems and offering kindness and sympathy. Cassie was like a one-woman ministry.
    Sweet, unpretentious, kind people like her were pretty rare.
    Why would a girl like her ever give a guy like him a second glance? Girls like her dated . . . Who did girls like her date?
    Navy SEALs? Saints? Archangels?
    He didn’t know, but it was a sure bet they didn’t date mere mortals like Zach Reynolds.
    With bowl and fork in one hand, he slipped his phone out of his pocket and scrolled to her name. Cassie Coblenz. Pretty, smart, determined. Very good to her grandparents.
    And completely uninterested in Zach Reynolds.
    Dr. Zach Reynolds.
    It took him about ten seconds to memorize her number. He wanted to commit it to memory just in case he lost his phone or accidentally deleted it.
    He’d never accidentally delete it. Someday she might change her mind about him. He’d be ready.
    He laid his phone on the sofa and stuffed another bite of ramen noodle with hot dog into his mouth. He wouldn’t hold his breath for Cassie. His face would turn fluorescent blue before she would ever agree to go out with him.
    He had almost secretly snapped a picture of her with his phone after Anna’s surgery this morning, but he had thought better of it. He might have felt a twinge of desperation when he thought about not going out with her, but taking a secret picture was kind of creepy, and he wasn’t the stalker type.
    Maybe he could look her up on Facebook.
    Lots of people did that.
    Maybe not.
    He picked up his phone again and resisted the impulse to scroll to her name. Instead, he checked his messages. Only one, from Blair saying she’d be in Stevens Point at the first of March. Did he want to get together?
    Not really. He’d broken things off when he’d graduated from medical school. He hadn’t invested enough in the relationship to make it work long distance when he’d never seen it working out long term anyway. Blair was a career woman through and through. There wasn’t anything wrong with that, except Zach wanted kids, lots of kids, and Blair practically broke out in hives at the mere mention of children. But the real problem was that Blair didn’t seem real, as if she put on a mask every morning when she got out of bed and never showed her true self to people. She acted out a part, and Zach was just another cast member in the movie of her life.
    He didn’t want to be a cast member.
    His phone vibrated and lit up with a picture of Mom. His mom seldom called him. When he left for college, she had told him that she didn’t want to be one of those annoying mothers who called three times a day to check up on her son. But she had gone overboard and hardly called him at