Saving Dr. Ryan (19 page)

She recoiled slightly, something like hurt swimming in her eyes for a moment before she took off for the door. Remembering all over again why he preferred living on his own, Ryan cut her off, her shoulders tense under his palms when he turned her around. She met his gaze, angry tears glinting in her eyes.

“I'm sorry, Maddie,” Ryan said on an exhaled breath. “I didn't mean to yell. What with everything that's happened today, I'm just on edge, is all. But for crying out loud, honey—your debt is long since paid. You've got to move past this thing you have about putting everybody else's needs ahead of your own.”

Maddie let out a choked laugh. “Look who's talking!”

He felt his mouth twist into a wry smile. “Okay, point taken. But it's different for me—”

“No it's not. You forget I've been watching you in action for more than two months now. You
thrive
on taking care of other people, same as me. It's just that all I can do is cook and clean and maybe stick together a few branches to make a centerpiece. Making a home is all I know how to do. All I
want
to do—”

She clamped shut her mouth and twisted away, hugging herself and shaking her head.

“Maddie?”

For the space of several heartbeats, there was no sound except for the
chink-chink-chink
of the sweep hand of the clock, the hum of the refrigerator. Then finally she turned back around, her mouth twisted.

“See, when I got married, I was still all wrapped up in fantasies, about what love was supposed to be, about what married life was supposed to be. Only as we all know, it didn't turn out that way.” She looked down at the toe of her shoe, then back up at him. “So I guess I was putting too much on this one dinner. I just wanted it to be perfect.”

Ryan didn't completely understand, but since the next line was clearly his, he came up with, “It's not up to you to fix the world, honey.”

“I don't want to fix the world any more than you want to take care of everyone in it! I just wanted to have a nice holiday for once in my life!”

She sucked in a sharp breath, apparently startled at her own vehemence.

Ryan leaned back against the counter, bracing the edge in his hands. “Like the ones you used to have with your foster parents?”

Her gaze jerked to his. Then she nodded.

“That's not such an unreasonable thing to want, honey.”

“I wonder,” she said on an exhaled breath.

“So tell me,” he said, because clearly his brain wasn't firing on all cylinders, “did part of your wanting things to be
perfect
include inviting Noah's teacher to dinner?”

He could see her pulse kick up in the hollow of her throat.
“I told you,” she said at last. “She just didn't have anywhere else to go—”

“And her being single didn't have anything to do with it?”

Out went that damn chin. “Of course not.”

“Right. Maddie, I've been on the receiving end of far too many matchmaking attempts not to recognize them a mile off.”

Finally, on a sharp sigh, she said, “It was just a thought. Forget it.”

“I intend to. Besides, I don't need anybody but—”

You.

The word caught in his throat like a chunk of wood, while farther down his heart hammered ferociously, desperately, against his rib cage—a prisoner trying to escape its cell.

“Myself,” he finished, finally, somehow.

She apparently found that humorous. “Oh, for heaven's sake, Ryan—anybody with one eye and half a brain can see how lonely you are.”

He nearly reeled. “
Lonely?
Hell, who's got time to be lonely?”

Silence stuttered between them for several seconds before she turned to go, only to turn when she reached the doorway. “Ask yourself why you kissed me this morning,” she said, “and I think you'll find your answer.”

T
his time, Hank was in the motel office, standing behind the counter at his computer, his expression pretty much matching the stormy weather outside. Not to mention the Wagner opera blasting from inside his apartment. His dark eyes darted to Ryan when he came in, then back at the computer screen as he steadily clicked away at the keyboard with one hand.

“Wipe your feet. I just vacuumed.”

“Yes, mother.” Ryan plopped his soaked hat on the coat-rack by the door. “Weather's sure a bitch today.”

Hank grunted, then said, “I take it you didn't come by to give me a weather report.”

“No.” Already roasting—why'd Hank have the heat cranked up so high?—Ryan unbuttoned his shearling coat. “Heard you stopped by yesterday.”

Underneath a plaid flannel shirt worn open over a button-front T-shirt, one broad shoulder hitched. “Figured long as Maddie'd gone to all that trouble…”

“Shame you couldn't've stayed longer, though.”

Hank's hand stilled over the keyboard. “I couldn't hack it, Ry,” he said, not looking at him. “I tried, but—”

“S'okay, don't worry about it.”

That got a sharp nod. Then Ryan said, “But I didn't come about that. Actually, I was wondering if you might be able to help me with something.”

Hank lifted his head, guarded interest hovering in his eyes. “Such as?”

“Seems Maddie lost contact with her last set of foster parents after she got married. All I know is their name and that they lived at the time in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Not much to go on, but—”

Hank's eyes narrowed. “She ask you to look them up for her?”

“No. I get the feeling there was some misunderstanding or other, that she hasn't gotten in touch with them because she's afraid to.”

“Which you naturally took as an open invitation to go sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong.”

Ryan thought of his and Maddie's conversation in the kitchen the night before and felt his mouth torque into a grimace. “It's the least I can do.”

Hank's dark brows lifted at that, but all he said was, “Well, if they're still there, you could start by trying the Fayetteville phone book.”

“Which is not something I'm likely to trip over in Haven, am I?”

His brother resumed his infernal key-clicking. “It is if you know where to look, smartass. What's these people's name?”

“Idlewild. Grace and George.”

More clicking, more scowling. A couple more taps…then Hank twisted the monitor around. And there it was: a White Pages listing for George Idlewild in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

“That was too easy,” Ryan said, entering the number into his cell phone.

“Which should probably tell you right there,” Hank said, “to watch your butt.”

 

“Maddie Kincaid,” Ruby whispered down from her perch atop a ladder, her hands full of silver tinsel garland, “you are one crazy woman.”

Rooting through a box of Ruby's Christmas decorations for the diner—being the day after Thanksgiving, with most folks gone over to Claremore or even to Tulsa to shop, the place was nearly empty—Maddie glanced over at the back booth where she'd parked Mildred and Uncle Ned, who'd actually been having something like a civil conversation for the past ten minutes or so over bowls of Ruby's turkey noodle soup. Noah and Katie Grace were in the kitchen with Jordy, who had put them to work doing heaven-knew-what, and the baby was sound asleep in her baby seat right next to Mildred in the booth.

“Yeah, I've heard that before,” she said with a grin that wasn't as forced as it might have been an hour ago.

It had been some morning, one she wouldn't wish on another living soul. She'd promised to take Mildred over to the Wal-Mart before she remembered that the kids didn't have day care or school, so they'd have to go along. Then Uncle Ned had made so much noise about never getting out anymore, she'd had to take him, too, walker and all. Add the awful weather to the mix, not to mention the fact that most of Eastern Oklahoma had had the same idea, and Maddie was frankly surprised she had any brain cells left.

“Where you want this?” she asked, holding up a green and gold foil Merry Christmas sign.

“That goes right in the window, over the center booth.” Maddie trooped over as Ruby stapled a swag of tinsel to the ceiling, then carefully lowered her ample form to terra firma in order to drag the ladder over to the next spot. She positioned the ladder, wiggled it with her hand to make sure it was steady, then closed the distance between herself and Maddie and whispered, “I like to fell over when I saw you bring those two in together.”

Maddie looked over at the elderly couple again, then back at Ruby. “Why?”

“Obviously you don't know.”

“Obviously I don't know what?”

“Only that Mildred Jones—well, she was a Jones before she got married—was Ned McAllister's big love, once upon a time.”

Maddie blinked. “You're kidding?”

“Uh-uh. Not that I think she ever knew, seeing as she'd been in love with J.T. forever.”

“Oh, my word.” Maddie had to fight to keep from staring at them. Then she wrinkled her nose at Ruby. “How come the doctor never said anything?”

“Probably because he didn't know. Few people did. Like I said, Mildred wasn't aware of Ned's feelings, far as I know. And Ned never
told
a living soul.”

“Then how do
you
know?”

“From my mama, who heard it from my grandma, who used to clean for Mildred's mama, back in the dark ages. See, when Ned got out of the service and came back here to live, oh, that must've been going on…Lordy, was it really thirty years ago? Anyway, I guess that got Mama to thinking about him and what Granny had told her, that she'd sometimes see Ned walk by Mildred's house when he didn't figure on anybody seein' him. Once he even apparently left a bunch of flowers with no name tag or anything, 'cept Granny saw him skeddadling away from there.” She laughed softly. “Hard to think of that old codger wearin' his heart on his sleeve for a gal, isn't it?”

Well, Maddie very nearly just sat right down in the middle of the floor and started crying at that. Honestly—between that poor Sam Frazier losing his wife, and her own convoluted feelings about Ryan, and now hearing of yet another love-gone-awry story…she simply wasn't sure how much more buffeting her poor bedraggled emotions could take, and that was the God's honest truth.

“Honey—you okay?”

Maddie willed the stinging behind her eyelids to stop, pasted a smile on her face and nodded. “Just tired out after yesterday, is all.”

“How'd that go, by the way?”

Maddie gave Ruby the
Reader's Digest
version of the day,
leaving out all the parts she didn't want to either think about or discuss, if not both. Which pretty much left Ryan out of the discussion altogether. Then she said, since she'd been talking about how she'd made too many pies and they'd be eating pumpkin and apple pie for a week, “By the way, I was wondering if you might be interesting in having me bake some pies for you?” (She only put forth this idea since Ruby had once confided how much she and Jordy both hated to bake.) “Sadie Metcalf paid her bill in put-by peaches this month. And I've got a whole bushel of apples the Andrews brought over a couple weeks ago. Real nice green pie apples. Seems a shame to let them go to waste, especially since the doctor said I could do anything I liked with them.”

Ruby cocked her head at her. “You make good pies?”

“Ruby Kennedy,” Maddie said with the first real grin she'd had all day, “I make
great
pies. Just ask Ryan.”

She didn't even catch her goof until she realized Ruby's dark-eyed gaze was glued to the side of her face. When she looked up, Ruby said, “Ryan?”

Blood rushed to Maddie's cheeks. Only before she could think of a single blessed thing to say that wouldn't just get her into more trouble, Hootch Atkins ambled in, on the hunt for coffee. With a laugh, Ruby told him to go on ahead and help himself. But when he spotted Maddie, he got this moony expression on his face.

“C'n I get you a cup of coffee, too, Miss Maddie?”

She smiled for him, but politely declined. Ruby just rolled her eyes.

 

It was nearly two-thirty by the time she dropped off Mildred and then got everybody else back home. Even Noah didn't protest a nap today (for which Maddie said a silent prayer of thanks), Amy Rose was still asleep, and Ned—more subdued than she could recall ever seeing him—had wandered off to his room. For which she sent up a second prayer of thanks. Frankly she wouldn't mind a nap herself this afternoon. Much as she loved doing for people, she wasn't averse
to a half-hour to herself now and again. Or even fifteen minutes.

But first—her mouth twisted at the sight of all the blue plastic bags littering the kitchen table and counters—she had to put away all this
stuff.

She pushed herself through her tasks in record time, then drifted out to the living room. The baby, bless her heart, was still snoozing in her seat, set in a spot on the floor where the drafts couldn't get to her, her little paper-thin eyelids fluttering in a dream. With a somewhat contented—and exhausted—sigh, Maddie collapsed onto the sofa.

She awoke with a start a little later, disoriented and fuzzy. Bolting upright, her gaze zipped to Amy, who was scrooching up her face the way she did when she was cranking up for her next feed. But then Maddie heard noises from the kitchen and figured she'd better check in case one of the kids was trying to help him or herself to something they shouldn't.

She scooped the baby out of her seat, talking nonsense to her as she carried her to the kitchen, where she found, not the children, but Ned, glowering at usual and banging cupboard doors while hanging on to the walker.

“Need help finding something, Uncle Ned?”

He jerked, nearly knocking over the walker. “Dammit, woman—why you have to sneak up a on a body like that?”

“I didn't sneak and you watch your language, old man. I'm not gonna have a cuss word be the first thing out of my baby's mouth.”

“Sorry,” he grumbled. “Didn't know you had her with you. Where are those cookies you bought today? Can't find 'em anywhere.”

On a bemused sigh, Maddie walked over and lifted the top off the cookie jar.

“Oh,” Ned said, reaching inside.

“What am I gonna do with you?” she said softly, one-handedly putting the kettle on for tea. Uncle Ned did like his tea. Or maybe it was he just liked having somebody to make it for him. In some ways, he was just like a little boy. But then, she thought with a wry smile, most men were.

Today, especially, there was something about him…an unsettled look in his eyes, the way his whole body seemed to droop, that just tore at Maddie's heart. She didn't dare press him, though. If he felt like confiding in her, she'd be there. But it'd probably been a long, long time since he'd opened up to anybody. If ever. He might not even know how.

The kettle shrieked, startling both her and the baby, who was now trying to suck on Maddie's jaw. So she didn't lollygag about fixing Ned his tea and carting it over to the kitchen table, where he'd planted himself, along with a half-dozen oatmeal cookies.

“You fixin' to feed her?” he said, nodding his thanks for the tea.

“Uh-huh.” She reached over to get a napkin, handing it to him to put underneath the cookies. “You mind if—?”

“No, no. You go right ahead.”

So Maddie settled herself and her daughter, carefully arranging herself and the baby so that there was nothing showing. When she looked up, though, she nearly gasped at the sight of tears cresting on Ned's lower lids.

“Uncle Ned!” With her free hand, she reached over and grabbed his. “What's wrong?”

No answer.

She hauled in a deep breath and said, “Tell me about Mildred.”

His heavy brows flicked up in surprise, but he didn't say anything for a good half a minute, maybe even longer. “How do you know about Mildred?” he finally asked, but she sensed more relief than irritation in his voice.

“Does it matter?” she asked, hoping like heck it didn't.

Slowly he shook his head.

Then he started to talk.

 

Ryan heard the voices in the kitchen when he came in. Ned's, rough as a pitted road. Then Maddie's, rough, too, but more like a kitten's tongue.

He'd gotten used to hearing other voices in his house. Maybe he wouldn't go so far as to say he
liked
it, but he was
used to it. These voices, though…he strained to hear the overtones as he walked back toward the kitchen.

Once at the door, however, he stopped. Ned's back was to him, Maddie sitting close enough to hold his hand. That alone was cause for amazement, since Ryan couldn't imagine Ned McAllister letting anyone touch him like that.

But then, this was Maddie they were talking about.

A tiny crease marred the space between her brows as she sat there, so intent on whatever her uncle was telling her, she didn't notice Ryan right off. Amy Rose had fallen asleep in her other arm, at an angle that couldn't have been comfortable. But either Maddie didn't mind or didn't notice, focused as she was on whatever was going on with Ned.

A pang that was equal parts longing and envy shot through Ryan.

She gave Ned's hand a squeeze, then let go to shift the tiny weight in her arms, her gaze catching Ryan standing there. If his presence startled her any, she didn't let on. Instead, her lips curved in a gentle, welcoming smile.

The kind of smile a man might expect—hope—to see on his wife's face at the end of a long day.

“This could be yours,”
whispered through his brain, his heart, his aching, traitorous body.