Saving Dr. Ryan (15 page)

Exactly what she'd been for the rest of the night.

Her cheeks burned. What in blue blazes was wrong with her, thinking along these lines? Except…

Except, was it such a bad thing, knowing her touch had done that to him?

She wasn't exactly what you'd call a sex goddess, after all. Well, she supposed she did okay with Jimmy, but then, they'd still been teenagers when they got married. There wasn't exactly much of a challenge turning on somebody who didn't have an off switch.

“There's a stain on the ceiling,” the doctor was saying, his voice echoing in the empty, half-painted room cluttered with ladders, paint cans and drop cloths. Although considering how much paint there seemed to be on the bare wooden floor, Maddie wasn't sure how much good the drop cloths had done.

“Hmm?” She looked over, telling herself it couldn't affect her one way or the other, how he looked holding onto the stroller handles like that. After all, the doctor had insisted on pushing it. After the sleepless night she'd had, Maddie wasn't up to arguing.

“Stain. On the ceiling.”

She looked where he was pointing. “Apparently the toilet backed up a time or two,” she said, almost defensively. “The agent said it's been fixed, now all they have to do is repair the damage.”

He nodded, then glanced around. “Seems small.”

“Well, I suppose next to your house, it is. But it's big enough for us. There's the two rooms and a screened-in back porch plus an eat-in kitchen down here, then three bedrooms and a bath upstairs.”

Ryan looked pointedly around the very empty room. “I suppose all the furniture's in storage?”

Maddie felt her cheeks heat up. “There's a kitchen table and chairs, and some beds upstairs. We can live without living room furniture for a while—”

Something crashed overhead, shaking the ceiling. Katie Grace screamed. The doctor took off, bounding up the stairs two at a time. Her heart racing, Maddie unhooked the baby from her stroller and quickly followed, almost afraid of what she'd see when she got up there.

“It's okay,” Dr. Logan said when she arrived. “It was just a ladder going over.” But he frowned hard at the kids. “Which I don't imagine happened on its own, did it?” There was a sternness in his voice she'd never heard before, one that sent Noah backing up against her.

Katie, ever helpful, pointed to her brother. “He tried to climb it an' it falled over.”

“Yeah, that's what I figured.” He took a step toward Noah,
who crammed himself against Maddie's thighs so hard she nearly lost her balance.

“S'was an accident,” he said, his voice trembling. “I didn't mean to. P-please don't get mad at me.”

The doctor's gaze shot to Maddie's for a moment before he crouched in front of Noah. “I'm not mad at you, grasshopper,” he said, more gently. “I just don't want you messing with something that could get you hurt, that's all.”

“But you're a doctor. You can always fix it when somebody gets hurt.”

His expression clouded over as he shook his head. “Not always, Noah. I'm a doctor. Not a magician. Which is why it's always better to avoid getting hurt in the first place.” He stood, hesitating a moment before palming Noah's haywire hair. “Hey—no matter what I say to you, or how I say it, you don't ever, ever have to be afraid of me. Okay?”

After a second or two, Noah nodded, then twisted around to look up at Maddie. “C'n me and Katie go play now?”

Her chest tight with emotion, Maddie said, “Sure,” hitching the baby higher in her arms as she watched the two of them scamper off. Then she looked over at the doctor. “Thank you. He needs…more of that in his life. To see there's a difference between being strong and being mean.”

Their gazes linked, for just a moment. Dr. Logan swallowed, then nodded, before wandering off into the next room, where he started knocking on walls and things with a serious expression on his face. Old, faded wallpaper molted off the walls in ragged strips; the closet door was off its hinges and propped next to the window. Still, sunlight danced across the uneven floor, chasing the gloom from otherwise dark corners. The doctor tapped something again.

Maddie chuckled. He turned to her, looking bemused.

“What's so blamed funny?”

“I keep expecting you to go, ‘Say ah.'”

“Well. You never know,” he said.

“You have any idea what you're looking for?”

He just frowned at her.

Just then, the kids came barrelling past them in the short
hall and on down the uncarpeted stairs, sounding like those crazy people who run from the bull every year in Spain or wherever that was.

“Those could be dangerous,” the doctor said, nodding toward the stairs. “Especially when the baby starts walking.”

“That's why there's baby gates.”

“They don't always work. Some babies learn to climb over them.”

“Honestly, Dr. Logan…” Exasperated, she headed down the stairs. “Anybody ever tell you you're a worry wort?”

Grumbling and mumbling, he followed her. Halfway down, he said, “How much did you say they're asking?”

She told him. He grunted.

“And they're sure it's going to be ready by New Year's?”

“I only know what the agent told me. And speaking of holidays…” She carted Amy Rose back over to the stroller to strap her in, wondering why she was about to suggest this. But the idea had been building up in her mind for the past week until there was no ignoring it. After scooping off a trickle of slobber from the baby's chin with her finger and wiping it on her jeans, she took a deep breath, said a mental prayer for her sanity, then said, “I've been meaning to ask you if it'd be okay with you if I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for you. As a way to say ‘thank you' for everything you've done for me and the kids.”

As expected, he gave her an odd look. But then, he was always giving her odd looks. She was beginning to get used to it.

“You got something against Thanksgiving?” she asked.

“No, no, it's just…it's been so long since…” He rubbed the back of his neck for a second, then seemed to catch himself, quickly lowering his hand to his side. “And I wouldn't want you to go to a lot of trouble for nothing. Holidays are usually my busiest days. Kitchen accidents, food poisoning, heart attacks from overeating.” He smirked, crossing his arms. “Patching up the wounded after a family ‘discussion.'”

Maddie laughed, then said, “Okay, I see your point. But I also want to do this for the kids.” She looked back at the
baby, who was trying to stuff her fist in her mouth. “It's been a while since we've had a real holiday celebration, too.”

“Lord, woman,” Ryan said softly behind her, “you sure do know which buttons to push, don't you?”

Her gaze whipped to his. “I'm not trying to—”

To her shock, he reached up, tenderly brushing her hair away from her face. “It's okay, honey,” he said with a smile that was more sad than anything. “Knock yourself out. Just don't…” He lowered his hand, stuffing it in his pocket. “You just can't count on my being there, okay?”

“I won't, I promise.” Her cheek still tingling from his touch, she crouched by the stroller, afraid to look at him, afraid he'd see something in her eyes that had no right to be there. “There's one more thing.”

“And what's that?”

She straightened up, finding the wherewithal to face him again. “Long as I'm doing the cooking, is it okay if I invite one or two other people? Like maybe, Mildred and Ivy?”

“Sure, you can invite anybody you like—”

“Even your brothers?”

He frowned at that, just like she figured he would.

“My brothers and I haven't shared a holiday meal in nearly ten years.”

“Then it's high time you did,” she said, calling to the kids as she wheeled the stroller to the front door. “You can invite Hank,” she added, “and I'll invite Cal when the kids and I are go out there on Saturday.”

The doctor hardly said three words to her the rest of the way back to his house.

 

“This is really beautiful.” Maddie fingered the folded lace tablecloth draped across her arm, then looked up at the doctor's younger brother. “You sure you don't mind me borrowing it?”

Accompanied by a small herd of grinning dogs—a pair of Australian shepherds, a Border collie, and one multicolored thing made out of scraps—they'd toured the Logan family home, a sturdy, rambling cinnamon-brown clapboard house
that Maddie liked nearly as much as she liked the doctor's, as well as the grounds and stables. Then the kids had their pony rides, complete with one horror-stricken moment when the kids caught sight of pony poop for the first time and Maddie had thought she'd just about die laughing. Now they were standing out back, at one end of the large vegetable garden Cal's housekeeper, Ethel, maintained. Most of it was spent now, this late in the season, but there were still winter lettuces going and some Brussels sprouts…and pumpkins. Dozens and dozens of pumpkins, which the kids were now inspecting one by one, with the dogs' help.

“Nobody's used that tablecloth since Mama passed,” Cal said, leaning his weight on top of the chain link fence surrounding the garden to keep the varmints out. “It's just been sitting in the buffet, gathering dust.” He squinted up at her. “Thanks for inviting me, by the way.”

“You're welcome.”

“So what'd Ry think of the idea?”

“Hard to tell. Although I think he thinks I'm nuts.”

Cal just laughed.

Visoring her eyes with her hand against the strong late-afternoon sun, Maddie watched the children for a moment, hopping from pumpkin to pumpkin like a pair of giggling fleas. Every day, they seemed to relax into their new lives a little more. Especially Noah, she thought with a wry smile, whose troublemaking skills had nearly returned to normal levels. Her smile flattened out some, though, when she thought about how attached they were both getting to Dr. Logan. What was it going to be like two months from now, when they had to move out?

“Hey. A man could go deaf from the sound of all those gears grinding in your head.”

Maddie shook off her errant thoughts and looked over at Cal, standing there with that up-to-no-good grin on his face. “Sorry. Got a lot on my mind.”

He shifted to face her, the grin dimming by a few hundred watts or so. “You know, I wasn't all that sure you'd come out today.”

She squinted out at the kids. “Neither was I.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I thought it
would
be good for the kids. And because…” Her cheeks warmed.

“Because Ry told you not to?”

Her gaze flew to his. “He didn't tell me
not
to.” She smoothed her hand over the tablecloth. “Not in so many words, at least.”

Cal let out a bark of laughter, shaking his head. “You are something else, Maddie.”

An indignant squeal caught their attention; they looked out to see both kids trying to sit on the same pumpkin. Katie Grace butt-bumped Noah in the hip, knocking him onto the ground. Unfazed, he simply got up and moved on to the next throne, the pumpkin nearly as big as he was.

“C'n we have this one?”

“You sure can, buddy. Now help your sister pick one out, then we'll load 'em up in your mama's car.”

The kids scampered back further into the patch as Cal said, “So what you're saying is, you came out here to get a rise out of my brother.”

“I did not!” Except then he angled his head at her, his grin all crooked and knowing, and she let out a sigh. “Well, maybe a little. And what's so funny?”

“Nothin',” he said, chuckling. “Just that I was thinking what a fine sister-in-law you'd make someday.”

“Sister-in—”
Maddie clamped shut her mouth and just gaped at him. When she found her voice again, she said, “You have definitely been out in the sun too long. And would you please wipe that exasperatin' grin off your face? Honestly, Cal—what on earth would even make you say such a thing?”

“My brother's attitude about you, for one thing.” Katie Grace pointed out her pumpkin; with a wave of acknowledgement, Cal headed for a shed near the house. Maddie followed. So did Mooner, the scrap-dog.

“He's just being protective, is all. Because—”

“You work for him? You live with him? He delivered your
baby?” Cal pushed open the door to the shed, stepped inside long enough to get a wheelbarrow. When he reappeared, he said, “Hell, Maddie—he doesn't go around warning any
other
woman about me. And then—” he steered the wheelbarrow through the garden toward Noah's pumpkin “—you go and deliberately antagonize him by comin' out here. So what does that tell us?”

Stumbling along behind him, praying she didn't trip over a vine and break her neck, Maddie said, “That I'm free to choose who I see and where I go?”

“Nope. Wrong answer. What that says to me is, you knew your coming out here would tick him off.” He stopped, stared at her hard. Mooner sat down and stared, too, until an itch over his stubby tail distracted him. “Might even make him jealous.”

“That's crazy!”

The late-afternoon sun made Cal's green eyes twinkle like emeralds. “You're forgetting who's the experienced one here. There's not a man-woman game on earth I haven't played at one time or another.” He leaned toward her. “I know all the moves, Miss Maddie.” Then he sobered. “I also know my brother doesn't generally look at a woman the way I saw him look at you that night I was up to his house. Not since—” He stopped.

“Suzanne?”

“So you know about her?”

“Only what Ivy's told me. Your brother never talks about her.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” He took out a pocketknife to whack the pumpkin's stem. “I'm sorry, but the man's not leading a normal life. Him and Hank both. I figure if you can get his heart started again…” With a grunt and a thud, he loaded the pumpkin into the barrow.