A Doctor's Agreement

By Cynthia Hickey

Sadie Rollins wants to raise subscriptions to her father's newspaper and knows just the way to do it.

A contest for the hand of the town's most eligible bachelor, Doctor Ezekiel Phelps. Everything goes according to plan...until someone enters Sadie's name into the drawing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cynthia Hickey
• Release date: May 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201867997

Cynthia Hickey

Multi-published and best-selling author, Cynthia Hickey, has taught writing at many conferences and small writing retreats. She and her husband run the publishing press, Winged Publications, which includes some of the CBA's best well-known authors. They live in Arizona and Arkansas, becoming snowbirds with two dogs and one cat. They have ten grandchildren who them busy and tell everyone they know that "Nana is a writer."   

Book preview

Chapter 1

Montana, 1888

Doctor Phelps, Daniel, I need your help. Sadie Rollins burst into the whitewashed cottage that held the doctor’s clinic and living quarters.

Sadie. Tall, with massive shoulders and hair the color of varnished oak, he looked more like a blacksmith than a doctor, and nothing like the lanky young boy she used to fish the creek with. His blue eyes crinkled with concern as he stood from his desk and rushed to greet her. Are you hurt?

No, but the newspaper is sadly in need of help, and I’ve come up with an idea that might benefit us both. Ever since she had overheard her father telling her mother that subscribers to the Oak Shadows News was dropping, she had spent many hours trying to come up with a solution. She thought she might have found one. Daniel, her childhood friend, was the key to her plan working. Since you only just returned to Oak Shadows, I—

Doctor! A man rushed into the clinic. You got to come quick. There’s been an accident.

Daniel, I really need— Sadie reached out a hand.

I’ll do whatever you need me to, he said, grabbing his black leather bag. You know that. Lock the door and flip the sign to closed for me, all right?

But—

Anything, Sadie. He patted her shoulder on his way out the door.

She sagged against his desk. That was easy. Too easy. She flipped the sign and locked the door, dropping the key into her reticule. Daniel would retrieve it later. Sadie had a newspaper article to write.

Her boot heels clicked the wooden sidewalk as she made her way to the newspaper office. Spirits lifted, she almost stopped in the mercantile for a piece of lemon candy, but decided to pass. She needed her article in the paper that would be delivered in the morning. Front page, she hoped.

She sat at the small desk beside her father’s larger one and caressed the shiny new Remington typewriter. It had cost a precious amount of money, but after her graduation from journalism classes, her pa said she deserved it. While Sadie still preferred taking notes with a new sharpened pencil, the typewriter made writing the actual article much faster. The small announcement she intended for the front page would take only seconds to write.

Soon, the sound of striking metal keys filled the office.

Good morning, Sadie dear. Her pa emerged from the back room, wiping his ink stained hands on an equally stained rag.

Pa, I’ve come up with something to save the paper. She ripped the sheet from the typewriter and handed it to him.

He scanned the words. The doctor agreed to this?

Yes, sir. She grinned. He said he would do anything to help us.

Pa shook his head. I thought Daniel had more sense than this, but you’re right. This will definitely sell a lot of newspapers. I’ll set it to type right now. Front page, my dear Sadie. Front page!

Happiness bubbled inside her. She’d made her pa proud and most likely saved the newspaper as well. At least for a while. She grabbed her reticule. It was time for that lemon candy.

I’m heading to the mercantile, Pa. She peered into the back room. Do you need anything?

Your ma needs sugar and white thread. He never looked up from the printer.

Sadie smiled and left the office, smiling at the town residents she passed. Oh, what would they all say come morning? Surely, they would be as excited for the upcoming event as she was. Not that she planned to participate. Oh, no. She was a career woman and not cut out for marriage.

Still ... she did dream occasionally about a promise made to Daniel before he left for medical school. But, the letters between the two of them had grown sparse over the years, until they stopped altogether. A silly, childish dream had no place in a grown woman’s heart. After tomorrow, it would be out of Sadie’s hands anyway.

Good afternoon, Sadie. Mrs. Hoffman, the wife of the mercantile owner, looked up from where she measured a deep pink fabric. Won’t my Lucy look lovely in this color?

Beautiful. Sadie approached the counter. I need five pounds of sugar and a spool of white thread, please. The mercantile owner’s daughter, Lucy, at the age of eighteen, would be perfect for the competition Sadie had planned.

She ticked off her mind who she thought would join in. There was Sally, the daughter of Ira Newman, who owned the diner, the widow, Ruby Pierson who owned the bed and breakfast. She wasn’t too old at the age of twenty-five. She tapped her fingernail against her cheek as she thought.

Would any of the unmarried girls who lived on the outskirts of town be interested? If so, the competition could grow to a large number. Maybe Sadie should have had a lottery of some sort. The first five women to sign up or something.

She asked Mrs. Hoffman to put the order on her family tab and dashed back to the newspaper office to have Pa make a minor change to her announcement. Oh, what fun the town would have!

After having the necessary change made, Sadie prioritized her pa’s messages, and headed home. She couldn’t wait to tell her ma of her plan.

*

What in tarnation is this? Daniel rattled the newspaper in Sadie’s face the next morning. A competition to win my hand in marriage?

You agreed to it. She tilted her chin and crossed her arms, the little minx. One dark curl fell forward, obscuring one of the most fetching hazel eyes he’d ever seen.

I most certainly did not. He scanned the announcement again. "A lottery in which five names will be drawn in competition for the town’s most eligible bachelor, Doctor Daniel Phelps. A competition in which women will try to

Reviews for A Doctor's Agreement

[carolyn · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So many typos! They were enough to be distracting and at times told the opposite of what you know the author intended. Aside from that, the story was awkward and silly. The one redeeming quality was that it was clean.