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friends. The entire county was praying for his recovery. He was improving slowly but not as quickly as he wanted.
    As she listened to the phone ring, she wondered what she could tell Harold that wouldn’t upset him. Should she mention that things in Hope Springs weren’t the same without him?
    It was true, yet if the accident hadn’t occurred, Amber never would have met Phillip.
    There was no way she was going to tell Harold she might be falling for his grandson. Even a hint of that would have him planting a whole garden of celery. She had stopped counting the number of times he’d told her she needed to find a husband and raise some kids of her own.
    Like it was as simple as picking out a ripe melon at a roadside produce stand.
    Amber wasn’t opposed to finding a man who could win her heart and soul, but she didn’t want one who lived in Hawaii. She wanted someone who loved this community the way she did.
    When Harold answered at last, she knew what she would do. She’d fill Harold in on the things happening in Hope Springs. That was the truth. She could only hope that he wouldn’t dig deeper.
     
    “Keep it about the work,” Phillip muttered as he entered his grandfather’s house and closed the heavy oak door behind him. Sure, Amber was cute, intelligent, quick thinking and dedicated. What was so unusual about that?
    “Okay, she’s the kind of woman any man would want to know better, but she’s completely off-limits.”
    Talking to himself about it sure wasn’t a good sign. With the pressures of school and setting up his practice, the only relationships he’d had in the past few years were uncomplicated. Short-term relationships where both parties wanted nothing deeper than an occasional movie date, a dinner partner or someone to go surfing with. Amber was anything but uncomplicated.
    He’d ruled out taking a wife a long, long time ago. Too many times as a kid he’d seen his mother weeping uncontrollably when her latest lover left her brokenhearted. He’d seen it often enough to know he’d never risk doing that to anywoman. If his father had lived, would it have been different? He would never know.
    At least his mother was happy now, or as happy as she could be. Her current husband, Michael Watson, was a good and decent man. After spending years with one toad after another, she’d finally found her prince. However, the emotional toll of her former life stayed with her. She suffered from a deep-seated fear of abandonment.
    His mother met Michael when Phillip was a junior in high school. Michael provided the things she desperately longed for—safety, security, a nice home and a man who loved her. Although Phillip wasn’t sure she truly loved Michael in return, she worked hard to be a good wife.
    Phillip owed his stepfather a great deal. Without Michael’s help, med school would have remained a pipe dream. Phillip never would have come to know God without his stepfather’s gentle encouragement. That had been Michael’s greatest gift, but one Phillip had let slide recently. He would remedy that while he was in Hope Springs.
    He glanced at the clock above his grandfather’s mantel. With the five-hour time difference, his stepfather should be getting home from work in another twenty minutes. That left Phillip enough time to check on his grandfather first.
    After dialing the number to his grandfather’s room in the rehab hospital in Honolulu, Phillip settled himself on the sofa and waited for Harold to pick up. When he finally did, he was anything but cordial.
    “It’s about time you called. How are things? I want to know what’s going on.”
    “Things are fine. Like they were yesterday when I spoke to you. I came to Hope Springs so you would stop worrying. If you’re not doing that, I might as well go home and get a little surfing in.”
    “And then what would become of my people?”
    It was a good question. One Phillip hesitated to suggest an answer for, but he did anyway. “You could advertise