Saving Dr. Ryan (17 page)

On a sigh, she got out of the car and headed toward the entrance.

There just had to be a woman out there who'd love him enough to rattle loose whatever was keeping him from having a full life. Somebody who didn't come with three kids and—she thought wearily as she opened the door to Ned's room—a crotchety old great-uncle-by-marriage.

“I want to go home, dammit!” he yelled at Maddie before
she even got all the way inside. “A body can't even take a leak around here without somebody or other gettin' in my way!”

With another sigh, Maddie set the day's food offering on a table beside his bed. As usual, he was sitting in a chair facing the TV in his room, dressed in overalls and a wrinkled plaid flannel shirt. The home made sure his clothes got washed, but ironing was another matter altogether. His hair was combed today, though, at least. “Well, you can't go home, Uncle Ned,” she said. “You still need looking after. Besides, your house isn't fit to raise pigs in.”

He cussed. Something he did a lot of. Except when she brought the children. He was real good with the children. Especially Amy Rose.

“Nothin' wrong with my house,” he muttered.

“Everything's wrong with your house. You know it. I know it. So can we please stop rehashing this conversation?”

To her complete shock, the old man's eyes brimmed with tears. “The food here isn't worth giving to pigs, either,” he said, which she might have found funny if he hadn't looked so miserable. She could just imagine what he'd been eating when he was on his own. At least he seemed to be mending pretty good. It was going to take a long while before he got back to normal, if indeed he ever did, but for a seventy-five-year-old man he was doing okay. According to the nurses, he was hell on wheels in that walker of his.

“Ned, I'm sorry. You cannot go back to that shack.”

“Then can I come home with you?”

She nearly lost her breath. Granted, he was desperate, but…here she thought she'd have to fight tooth and toenail to convince him to come live with her and the kids, and bless his heart, he thought of it all on his own. Except…

“If I was in my own place, I'd sign you out this minute. But I'm still living with Dr. Logan for another six or seven weeks at least. It's not my house to offer.” She reached over and tucked her hand around his. “I'm sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

He looked at her like a little boy who'd just found out Christmas had been cancelled, then nodded.

She reached around to fetch the plate of blueberry muffins she'd made, handing one to him. “It's not so bad here, is it? I mean, the staff seems nice and all. And you've got your own room….”

“Never been in a hospital my entire life,” he mumbled, picking apart the muffin and spilling crumbs all down the front of his shirt. “Now I can't seem to get out of one.”

“This isn't a hospital, Uncle Ned—”

“Might as well be,” he snapped, then shoved a huge bite of muffin into his mouth, half of which landed in his beard. Chewing slowly, he glanced around, sadness drooping his features. “Only real fear I ever had was being left to die in a place like this.”

Well, Maddie's heart couldn't have hurt any more if somebody had tried to cut it right out of her body. She leaned over to pluck the biggest of the crumbs off his front, then stood, dumping them in the garbage before going to his closet and pulling out half a dozen or so wrinkled shirts. Honestly, what was she going to do with the men in her life, none of whom she could help in the way they most needed it? She yanked the last shirt off the hanger, thinking there was nothing worse than being a fixer who can't fix a doggone thing.

“Thought I might take these back and iron 'em for you. Can't be comfortable, wearing them all creased like that.” When she got to the door, though, she turned around, opened her mouth, and heard herself say, “I'll see what I can do about getting you out of here, okay? I can't promise anything,” she added when his face brightened. “But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

 

“It'd only be for six weeks. Maybe even a little less, if I can get that house before the New Year.”

After chewing over how to approach Ryan about Ned for the better part of the afternoon, Maddie decided to just come right out and ask. The baby was asleep; Ryan was outside, raking leaves from the pair of huge sycamores that dominated
the front yard, a task he'd been tending to in fits and starts over the past week. At the other end of the lawn, the kids were jumping in the one pile of leaves he'd designated as theirs, occasionally dumping wads of leaves all over each other.

Now he leaned on the rake handle, his blue eyes a stark contrast to all the beiges and browns around him, the flanneled sky overhead. A few stragglers drifted down like a crackly, tawny snow, occasionally bouncing off his head and shoulders. He didn't seem to notice.

He also hadn't said anything yet. She licked her lips and wrapped her arms around herself, the fabric of her old, sorry coat scratching her ungloved fingers.

“And I know I have no right to ask this of you since you've already had enough to deal with, what with me and the kids hanging on forever, but his insurance won't pay for more than a couple weeks, and he just can't go back to his own place.”

Okay, so that wasn't exactly the truth. Although she didn't exactly know for sure that it wasn't. It was just that saying Ned simply didn't like being there didn't seem like a compelling enough argument, somehow.

Oh, Lord—why didn't he say something?

“He could stay in that downstairs bedroom, especially as it's got its own bath…”

“Maddie.”

“What?”

“Ned's a veteran. Uncle Sam covers all his medical expenses.”

“Oh.” Her face flamed. “I'm sorry.”

“For what? Telling me a story? Or for wanting to help Ned out?”

“For sucking you more and more into my affairs. I should be able to—”

“You should be able to feel you can ask for help, Maddie.” He resumed his raking, calmly, quietly. As if nothing or nobody was going to ruffle his feathers. “Without being afraid to. I don't have a problem with Ned staying here.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” he said, not even bothering to peer out at her from inside his shell. Across the yard, a laughing Noah dumped more leaves on Katie Grace, who was giggling so hard she could hardly stand up.

All “confuzzled,” as Grace used to say, Maddie started to walk away, only to hear Ryan say, “By the way—it's time for your six-week postpartum checkup.”

She turned around, blushing all the harder. “Do you really think I need—”

“I figured you'd probably be more comfortable with Ivy doing it than me,” he said to the leaves.

“Oh. Yes. Um, thank—”

“You're welcome,” he said mildly. Like they hadn't been talking about poking around her inner workings. Of course, he was a doctor. Still, he didn't have to sound so…so…
detached
from it all. And why did she care so darn much?

Why?

The kids' giggles caught her attention again, just for a moment, just enough to enable her to act without thinking. Her heart pounding, Maddie scooped up an armful of leaves from a nearby pile…and dumped them over Ryan's head. “What on earth—?” He spun around, leaves going every which way.

“Tag!” She poked him and took off across the yard. “You're it!”

Not that her short legs would do her much good if Ryan came after her, she realized as she dashed through one of the leaf piles. She glanced over her shoulder and squealed.

Oh, Lord—he was coming after her all right, huge wads of leaves fisted in both hands. And judging from the look on his face, he was going to make her pay but good. Laughing breathlessly and waving to the kids gawking at her as she zipped past, she took off around the house, squealing again when she heard Ryan's boots pounding behind her. She ducked behind a sixty-foot spruce in the backyard, pretending to be trapped, laughing, laughing…only to dodge him at the
last second, sprinting back around to the front, Ryan hot on her heels.

And he was laughing, too.

“Come back here, you little twerp!”

“Who you calling a twerp?” she hollered back, only to let out another yelp when he got close enough to shower her with leaves, some of which got into her mouth. Now laughing and sputtering, she stopped just long enough to re-arm, taking off again…and tripped right over a leaf-smothered tree root. Too close to stop, Ryan plowed right into her, knocking both of them down.

They landed with a
whoomph,
panting and laughing so hard, Maddie's lungs screamed for air. She was vaguely aware of the kids beside her, Katie Grace's sweet little face right in hers, asking if she was okay.

She was, however, extremely aware of Ryan's leg straddling hers, his leaf-speckled face inches away, the way the skin crinkled up at the corners of his eyes, even as his laughter wound down. Then concern flared in his eyes.

“Oh, Lord, Maddie—are you all right?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, although she did wonder if maybe she'd hit her head on the root because, frankly, her entire thought process had shut down. For all she knew, she could have a dozen broken bones. All there was, right at this moment, was his body on top of hers, strong and solid and warm and
safe,
his fingers gently brushing leaves from her hair, his breath puffing over her face.

And something in his sweet blue eyes that made her heart foolishly want to believe in dreams again.

Then she squinted at his…face…

“Eeek! There's a spider in your eyebrow!”

Ryan bolted to his knees, swiping at his forehead. Then he frowned at his hand. “Got it.”

“Lemme see, lemme see!” the kids said, barreling right over her in their excitement to see dead bug guts, only to make disgusted “ewwww” sounds when Ryan showed them. Then, their attention span all used up, they took off again to the other side of the yard.

Slowly, Maddie propped herself up on her elbows, chuckling at Ryan's continued scrutiny of his inadvertent victim. “Only you would feel sorry for a spider.”

Ryan brushed the spider's remains from his palms, then looked down at her, his expression …wistful? “Only you would dare to start a game of tag with a man who'd almost forgotten how to play.”

She pulled herself all the way upright, hugging her knees with one arm while picking bit of leaves out of his hair with her other hand, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like her entire insides weren't just a'shimmyin' and shakin' for all they were worth.

“Thought maybe it was high time somebody jogged your memory.”

Her breath caught as Ryan sighed, then slowly—oh, so slowly—traced one warm knuckle down her cheek.

“We're bad news for each other, Maddie Mae.”

She hesitated, her gaze briefly meeting his before returning to his hair. “Why?” she said, barely able to keep her voice steady what with all this shimmying going on inside her. “Because I make you laugh?”

“Yes. Because you make me laugh.”

Suddenly exasperated, with him, with herself, with the world at large, she sprang up, brushing leaves off her butt as she walked back to the house. And this time, she didn't stop until she was all the way inside.

T
he next ten days passed in a blur, what with getting Uncle Ned settled in and it finally hitting Maddie that she'd never done an entire Thanksgiving dinner on her own before and just how much work it was going to be. She didn't have much time to think about anybody, let alone a certain blasted doctor who was wreaking havoc with her good sense.

But if she'd learned anything from her experience with Jimmy, it was that there was no sense in getting moony over a man who wasn't any good for you. And at least she'd had youth to blame then. At seventeen, what did she know? But she wasn't seventeen now.

Unfortunately, since her heart seemed determined to fight her brain on this issue, Maddie became more determined than ever to jar Ryan Logan out of his stupor and get him dating again, so she and her wayward heart could get on with her life. Of course, finding somebody for Ryan and getting him to actually go out with that somebody were two entirely different things.

But you never knew.

Thus she took it as an encouraging sign when she walked
into the kindergarten classroom for Noah's parent-teacher conference and realized, oh, for pity's sake—she'd completely forgotten about Taylor McIntyre, Noah's teacher. Attractive, thirtyish, ringless, not to mention intelligent, friendly and in a service profession herself. What more could anybody want?

So when Maddie discovered that Miss McIntyre wasn't planning on going home to Texas for Thanksgiving…well, it would have just been downright inhospitable on her part not to invite her to dinner, wouldn't it?

Maddie then swore to herself she'd back off and let nature take its course.

She also swore to herself that she had no right to get upset if it did.

 

When the alarm shrilled at five-thirty on Thanksgiving morning, Maddie jumped, groaned, then lay there pressing her pounding heart back down inside her chest, wondering what on earth had possessed her to plan dinner for one o'clock? And of course, Amy Rose, who
had
been sleeping through the night for some weeks, decided last night that waking Mama up every two hours was much more entertaining. Yawning so widely her jaw popped, Maddie hiked herself up on one elbow, listening, but all she heard was Amy Rose's soft, even breathing.

Great.
Now
she slept.

Maddie's breasts ached a little with wanting to feed the baby, but having done so no less than four times during the night, she figured playing cow could wait until she got this dang turkey in the oven. Stumbling around the bed, she stripped off her nightgown and yanked on the same pair of jeans and sweatshirt she'd been wearing yesterday, not bothering to put on a bra (she'd stopped leaking a month ago and besides, she didn't figure the turkey would much care) or run a comb through her hair. She did, however make a quick sidetrip into the bathroom to do her business and brush her teeth, although she didn't suppose the turkey would much care if she had morning breath, either.

By this time, she could pretty much keep both eyes open
simultaneously, although she still hung on to the banister more tightly than usual as she descended the stairs—

Was that coffee she smelled?

Telling herself exhaustion was making her hallucinate, she pushed open the kitchen door, only to let out a yip when she found Ryan sitting at the table in the semidarkness, sipping his coffee. Thank goodness he hadn't turned on his music. Mozart this early would've sent her right over the edge.

Tucking her arms over her midsection against the early morning chill, and ignoring the coffee she couldn't have as long as she was nursing, she glowered at the shadowy male shape in front of her. “Ryan Logan, you don't have the good sense God gave you. What in tarnation are you doing up at this hour?”

“Figured you might need help getting the turkey into the oven…
damn
it, Maddie—” His hand shot up to shield his eyes from the sudden glare when she switched on the overhead light. “Warn somebody before you do that.”

“Serves you right for scaring me half to death.” She shuffled over to the counter and grabbed the cutting board, which slipped from her hand, making a godawful clatter against the Formica. “And why, exactly, do I need help getting the turkey in the oven?”

“Maybe because the damn thing's bigger'n my truck. There's no way you can lift that without spraining something. How much does it weigh, anyway?”

“Twenty-three pounds,” she snapped, dragging celery, onions and mushrooms out of a crisper drawer. “Although I don't suppose it occurred to you how it got in the refrigerator to begin with. Not to mention into the grocery buggy—” she slammed down the celery “—from the buggy into my car—” and the bag of onions “—and finally, from the car to the kitchen.” She jangled open the utensil door, rattling around inside it for a good five seconds before she found the knife she was looking for.

After a pause, Ryan said, “And here I always thought you were a morning person.”

“Long as it's dark, it's still night in my book.”

Ryan slowly got up from the chair, stretched, then lumbered over to the refrigerator. “I hate to point this out, but this whole shebang was your idea.”

Maddie decided not to tell him he was losing points fast. Except then a glass of orange juice appeared in front of her.

So she stopped banging and clattering long enough to gulp down the juice, which she had to admit perked her up some. Then she flicked a glance in Ryan's direction as he hauled the enormous bird out of the refrigerator, deciding maybe letting somebody else wrestle with a dead bird that weighed nearly as much as her three-year-old wasn't such a bad idea. With her luck, she'd probably have ended up on the floor pinned underneath the dang thing, where nobody would have found her for hours, soaked in turkey juice and breastmilk.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “You can help.” Then she waved the knife at him. “But as soon as this bird's in the oven, you're to go right back to bed, you hear?”

“Only if you don't need me to help with something else.”

“Trust me,” she said, knife now whomping against wood as she sliced celery, “the best thing you can do for me is stay out of my way. If I'm going to make an idiot of myself, I'd rather do it without an audience, thank you.”

He thunked the still wrapped turkey into the sink, fumbled in the nearby drawer for a pair of scissors to slit the plastic. “Thought you said you knew what you were doing?”

“In theory, yes. I helped Grace do Thanksgiving every year I was there. Just never handled the whole thing on my own.”

Ryan discarded the shredded turkey wrapper in the garbage, then frowned at her. “Then how come you're doing it now?”

“I told you. As a way of sayin' thank you.”

“And?”

Her brows lifted but she didn't lose her rhythm. “Who says there's an ‘and'?”

Underneath his sweatshirt, his shoulders hitched as he removed the neck and package of giblets from assorted turkey orifices. “Just figured there was in your case.”

She thought on that a moment, then said, “Okay. I guess
I see this as kind of a rite of passage. Doing Thanksgiving officially makes me a woman.”

“I'm supposed to run cold water over this, right?”

“Hey. You've done this before.”

“Just this part. With my mother. Nobody else'd get up this early. Past this point, I'm clueless.” Then he said in a low voice, “And by the way, I'd say you've officially been a woman for some time, Maddie.”

She froze. Here she stood at five-thirty-something in the morning, braless, showerless, her hair looking like an abused doll's, and unless she was sorely mistaken, the onion-and-raw-turkey-scented air was crackling with sexual electricity.

Of course, she could be hallucinating, being still half-asleep and all. After all, only a blind man would want her in her present state.

“And here I wasn't sure you even thought of me as a woman, Dr. Logan.”

She could feel his gaze searing the side of her face. Then he reached over to get the foil roasting pan she'd picked up when she bought the turkey. Several more seconds passed while he loaded fowl into pan, washed his hands.

Maddie just kept on chopping.

Except she started at the touch of Ryan's fingertips on her chin, gently turning her face to his. And before she could catch her breath…he did.

His morning whiskers tickled a little, but in a nice kind of way. But his lips…oh, my. Oh, my, my, my… And oh, was she ever glad she'd brushed her teeth.

Then it was over, and he was walking away, and all she could do was stand there, staring stupidly at his back.

“Ryan?”

When he reached the door, he twisted back, his hand clamped on the frame. He looked…shell-shocked. “Holler when you're ready for me to put the bird in the oven,” he said. “I'll be in my office.”

Her mouth twisted, Maddie frowned at the window at the lightening sky.

This did not bode well for the rest of the day.

 

What the blue blazes had just come over him?

Ryan jerked back his desk chair and crashed into it, then rammed his head into his hands.

Hey, Logan—it was just a kiss.

Yeah, well, he could tell himself it was
just a kiss
from now until Doomsday but that didn't change the fact that he
had
kissed her, and he had
wanted
to, and God help him, he wanted to again. And again. And maybe a hundred thousand times more after that.

On a groan, Ryan dragged his hands away from his now pounding head long enough to peer at the calendar on the back of his desk. Ever since their tumble in the leaves, he'd ordered his errant longings to lie down and shut up. And every…damn…time he'd hear her laugh or see her smile or catch a whiff of her scent in a room she'd just been in, those errant longings reared their horny little heads and laughed themselves stupid. New Year's was five weeks away, give or take. Five more weeks of having Maddie around where he could see her and smell her and want her…

He'd go insane. Completely, out-of-his gourd, insane.

Of course, if he'd managed to exercise any sort of control back there in the kitchen, he might have had half a chance of retaining some semblance of sanity. But
nooooo,
he had to
kiss
her.

And he thought her baby was a lip magnet.

A slight noise made him look up to see Mama Lip Magnet standing in his doorway, arms crossed, brows dipped, looking half-perplexed, half-pissed. Make that three-quarters pissed. If he'd ever entertained the slightest doubt about her not being a child, that expression alone would have cured him of his misconception.

If the way she kissed hadn't already.

“Turkey time?” he said, hoping against hope this was all a bad dream.

“Depends if you're talking about the one in the kitchen or the one sitting here in front of me.”

He sighed. “I suppose I had that coming.”

“Yes, you did. You want to explain what that was all about?”

“I…” Frowning, he shook his head. “No.”

“No, you don't? Or, no, you can't?”

“Either. Both.”

“Men,” she muttered, spinning on her heel and tromping down the hall.

 

Long about ten o'clock, Ivy called. “I'm so sorry to do this to you at the last minute, but I can't come.”

Maddie practically fainted. “Oh, no, Ivy…don't say that. I
neeeeed
you.”

After a long silence, the midwife said. “That sounds ominous.”

Oops.
“Um, I could just really use the moral support, is all. Besides, who's going to pick up Mildred?”

“Oh, I can bring Mildred, don't you worry about that, but…” She lowered her voice. “Dawn showed up out of the blue a few minutes ago—”

“So bring her. What's the big deal?”

“Cal.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake—that was, what, ten years ago? And nothing even happened, did it?”

Ivy sighed. “I know, but…”

“He's a big boy, Ivy. I'm sure he can handle being with his ex…whatever she was for a couple hours. Besides, it's not like you've got fixings for Thanksgiving dinner in your house, since you're supposed to be having it here—”

“She's apparently
engaged,
” Ivy said in an even lower voice. “And he's
with her.
”

Maddie stopped zipping long enough to think about this for a minute. Then she flapped her hand and said, “Unless the man has fleas, bring him along, too. Like I said, Cal will just have to cope. Or if he is carrying a torch, maybe that will cure him.”

Just like she was having to cope with thinking about Ryan and his kiss when she didn't want to be thinking about Ryan and his kiss and shouldn't be thinking about it because she
was a grown woman and grown women didn't hyperventilate over a single kiss.

Not even grown women who'd only been kissed by one other man their entire lives.

“If you're sure…”

“I'm sure. So we'll see you at one.” That crisis was no sooner resolved, however, when Noah called from the living room.

“Mama! Katie Grace just barfed all over the floor—!”

“When the hell you plannin' on servin' this meal, gal?” Uncle Ned came thumping into the kitchen, effectively blocking her exit. “I'm like to starve to death—”

“Have a roll or something. That'll hold you until one—”

“
One?
I'll be dead by then!”

Maddie tamped down the urge to bonk him one with her wooden spoon. “I sincerely doubt that, old man. Besides, I fixed you oatmeal an hour ago.”

He screwed up his face. “Oatmeal! Tryin' to poison me, more like! Bacon and eggs, that's what I need! A
man's
food, not this sissy stuff—”