Double Jeopardy by Bobby Hutchinson Read Free Book Online Page B

job.
    “Do you always work here in Vancouver?”
    “Nope, this is the first time I’ve been back to Vancouver on a job. I go wherever the work takes me. I worked in Chicago after graduation, doing stage sets, and then in Seattle for several years before I moved to L.A. I wanted to see if I could get into movies and television, which as you probably know do a lot of shooting in Vancouver. I was lucky to get this job, and it’s such a bonus to work in my hometown.”
    “Will you be here long?”
    “For the next few months. Unless they decide to move the production somewhere else, which isn’t unheard of.”
    “Well, your being here is a stroke of luck, for your sister and for me.”
    He stood up. “If you’ll come in here, we can begin.” He opened the door to an adjoining room and Sera leaped up, grateful to leave the crippling chair behind.
    She gestured at the drawing of the child as she passed it. “Is this cute guy your son?”
    “My godson. I’m not married, and have no kids of my own, for which I’m thankful each time I visit him. Stanley’s what my mother used to call a ‘holy terror.’ ” There were pride and affection in his tone. “How about you, Sera? You married? Kids?”
    “Nope, never been married. Gemma was for a short time, but I’m sort of married to my job, I guess.”
    “I know what you mean.” He gestured at a high stool. “If you could sit up there, it’ll make my life easier and your back sore, but I’ll try to be quick.” He turned on several lamps and aimed them at her face, doing his best not to shine them in her eyes.
    “It can’t be any worse than that chair in your outer office,” she said without thinking.
    What was she doing, making cracks like that? Gemma’s face was in this man’s hands, and here she was antagonizing him.
    But he laughed instead of getting annoyed. “Those were gifts from my mother when I first opened my office. I’ve been planning on getting new ones, but I keep putting it off. Mom goes for form instead of function.”
    With a professional looking camera, he snapped photos of her from every conceivable angle. As he did, he talked, a crazy stream of words that didn’t require any response and were obviously intended to help her relax and take her mind off the fact that the stool was uncomfortable.
    “I should have enrolled in a few classes in photography, but they never tell you that when you’re a med student.” He tilted her chin up with a gentle finger. “Perfect, that’s perfect. Actually, it’s amazing what they consider unimportant in a doctor’s training. I guess everybody’s heard by now about the two hours of nutritional instruction the average physician gets in training, but would you believe we never had even one hour’s instruction in what the well-dressed physician should wear once he can afford to buy clothes? You’d think somebody from GQ would catch on that there’s a lucrative potential market out there.”
    He moved to her other side, again tilting her chin with a finger and rapidly snapping one photo after the other.
    “They never even tested us for color blindness, can you believe that? What if a doctor ends up not recognizing blood because it looks gray to him? I’m not color blind, thank heavens, so I don’t mix up blood and drool, or I don’t wear purple shirts with yellow pants, but I don’t have much clothes sense. I’ve got to rely on an outspoken office nurse who’s quick to tell me which shirt doesn’t go with whatever pants.”
    Sera couldn’t help but giggle and he went right on snapping, coming in close, moving farther away. He was taking more photographs of her than she’d had taken in her life.
    “I’m pretty lucky,” he continued without a halt. “As I said, I’ve got Dana to clue me in if I go off track, but what about those poor devils just out of med school who don’t have an office nurse to guide them? I suppose that’s one of the reasons the majority of us marry in haste and