Read Online The Doctor's Redemption by Susan Carlisle - Free Book Online

if there was an occasion, which there wouldn’t be. She doubted that her path and Mark’s would cross again. They didn’t even live on the same side of the bay.
    Allie and Jeremy ran ahead on the way toMarsha’s apartment. She and Marsha followed more slowly.
    A few minutes later, Marsha set a glass of iced tea in front of Laura Jo and said, “Okay, spill.”
    “Mark let the kids dress up Gus, his dog.”
    “So you’re on a first-name basis with the good doc now?”
    Laura Jo rolled her eyes. It was starting. “He asked me to call him Mark and it seemed foolish not to.”
    Marsha nodded in a thoughtful way, as if she didn’t believe her friend’s reasoning. “So what else did you do?”
    “We went to the parade. Mark walked with the kids while I watched.” She chuckled.
    “What’s that laugh for?”
    “I was just thinking of the look on Mark’s face when he showed up pulling a wagon with the kids and the dog in it he’d bought off a boy.”
    Marsha gave her a long look. “That sounds interesting.”
    “It was.” Laura Jo launched into the story, her smile growing as she told it.
    She ended up laughing and Marsha joined her.
    “So you went back to his place?”
    “I wish you’d stop saying ‘so’ like that and acting as if it was a date. The only reason Iagreed to go was because Allie wanted to dress up the dog and be in the parade so badly.”
    “So…”
    Laura Jo glared at her.
    “You didn’t enjoy yourself at all?” Marsha continued without paying Laura Jo any attention.
    “I don’t even like the guy.”
    “This is the most you’ve had to do with a man since I’ve known you. I think you might be a little more interested in him than you want to admit.”
    “I think you’re wrong.” Laura Jo was going to see to it that it was the truth. “There’s one more thing and I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but he did ask me to the krewe dance.”
    “And you said no.” Marsha said the words as a statement of a fact.
    “I did. For more than one reason.”
    Marsha turned serious. “We could use his contacts.”
    “I’ve already told you that I’m not going to do that. What if I saw my parents and they found out I was there, asking for money. I couldn’t face them like that.”
    “Even at the cost of losing the house? Laura Jo, you’ve been gone so long I can’t imagine that your parents would see it as crawling back.”
    “You don’t know my father. It would be hischance to tell me ‘I told you so.’ I lived though that once. Not again.”
    Marsha didn’t know that Laura Jo hadn’t spoken to her parents since before Allie’s birth.
    “So I guess we’ll put all our hope in that grant coming through.”
    Laura Jo took a sip of her tea then said, “Yes, that and a moneybags willing to help us out.”
    “You’ve got a moneybag in Mark Clayborn.”
    “Oh, I forgot to show you this.” Laura Jo pulled the check Mark had given her out of her pocket.”
    Marsha whistled. “Very generous. He must really like you.”
    “No. It was more like I made him feel guilty.”
    “Whatever you did, at least this will help. We just need to get others to be so kind.”
    “Now I’m not only indebted to him for giving Allie a wonderful afternoon but for helping with the shelter.”
    “You don’t like that, do you, Ms. I-Can-Do-It-Myself?”
    “No, I don’t. We have nothing in common. He and I don’t want the same things out of life anymore.”
    “Oh, and you know that by spending one afternoon with him?” Marsha picked up both of their glasses and placed them in the sink. “You do know that people with money also careabout their families, love them, want the best for them?”
    All of what Laura’s Jo’s father had said to her just before he’d told her that Phil was no good. Had her father felt the same way about her as she did about Allie? Worry that something bad might happen to her? Worry over her happiness?
    “Well, it’s time for me to get Allie home.”
    As Laura Jo