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“You, as a matter of fact!”

“Me?” I took my seat behind the desk and gave him a knowing look. “Is this about the Labor Day Extravaganza?”

“Oh.” Rafe’s forehead furrowed. “No.”

“Oh.” I tilted my head to one side. “It’s not about Gloria is it?”

“No, no.” Rafe waved his hand. “Of course not. I know why you can’t tell me.” He pressed his lips together and looked at me beneath lowered brows. “Thing is, Doc, I’ve got a lead on a doctor who’s interested in coming to work here.”

I blinked in confusion, but my stomach swoop-dived like a seabird, apparently getting the message before my conscious brain could process it. The only thing I could think to say was “Oh.”

Rafe shook his dark, shaggy head. “Now, thing is, Mason, there’snothingI’d like better than for you to stay.Nothing. If it were a matter of getting you a signing bonus or a better housing situation, I’d see what I could do. But it’s not those things, is it?”

“I—” I shook my head. “No.”

“You’re a man after my own heart,” Rafe said with a grim smile. “Ambitious. Determined. I wish it weren’t so, but like recognizes like. You’ve got big dreams. Big plans. You don’t just wanna be a cog in the wheel, you want to be the motor that turns the cogs. You want the fancy title and the penthouse suite.” He winked. “I get it.”

I frowned. It felt like a long time since I’d thought about it like that, and it sounded strange hearing it spoken aloud now, like a choice I dimly remembered was therightthing,though I couldn’t quite remember why anymore.

“Now! I know you said you were gonna stay until we found your replacement and you found a new job, but I know you.” He wagged a finger at me. “You’re putting it off.”

“Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mason, the lady I spoke to at the big hospital in Minneapolis was so impressed, she wanted to interview you online that same day. Didn’t she call you?”

“Um.” I made a show of straightening the perfectly straight blotter on my desk and tidying the pens Taffy had stuck in anI Heart Cooter Keymug for me. “I believe she did, yes.”

“And?”

“I thought better of it. I mean, Minnesota? In the winter?” I shuddered. “Worse than Upstate, and I left there for a reason.”

“Mmmm. And the folks in Greensboro? Got a cousin up there who says it’s real pretty country and the winters are nice and mild.”

“I’m sure that’s true. But Greensboro’s smallish—”

He snorted. “‘Bout a hundred times bigger than here.”

“—and there are no beaches.”

“Ah. So that means those folks who called me from Des Moines and Sonoma are out of luck, too?”

I frowned. “It was Davenport, not Des Moines, and yeah, neither of them were the right fit.”

“And what does Fenn say about all this?”

I waved a hand airily and lied through my teeth. “I have no idea, because it has nothing to do with him.”

Rafe was silent for a long moment. “Mason, you’re as transparent as that window.”

I winced. “Am I?” I was afraid of that. I mean, not that I’d consciously been turning downamazingjobs, of course, but I’d definitely gotten more selective.

Much,muchmore selective.

“You’re gonna find fault with every job you apply for, aren’t you?”

“I—” Possibly.

“Because you’re staying here out of a misplaced sense of obligation to the town.”