Saving Dr. Ryan (20 page)

What a fool. What a dadblamed fool. But why? Why should this tiny scrap of a woman be setting him on fire like this?

“Ask yourself,”
Maddie'd said,
“why you kissed me this morning, and I think you'll find your answer.”

Telling himself he'd only be interrupting something private between Maddie and her uncle, Ryan forced himself to walk away.

Telling himself that maybe Maddie was right, maybe he did need to start claiming some control over his so-called life, he went to his office and dragged over the local phone book, such as it was.

Telling himself it would do him good to maybe get out for a couple hours, he looked up Taylor McIntyre's number.

Telling himself he hadn't just gone over the edge, he dialed it.

 

Ned lowered himself into the chair in the downstairs bedroom and clicked the remote to the small TV Maddie had found for him at a yard sale. Supper would be in about an hour, she'd said. Leftovers from yesterday, he supposed, but that was okay. His niece was a damn good cook. She even fixed vegetables so he could eat them and not gag.

He reached up to scratch his face, thinking maybe it was time to ditch the beard, thinking about how good that turkey and homemade gravy was going to taste, about how he wasn't quite as fired up about going back to his own place as he'd thought he'd be. Funny how easily a body gets spoiled. Take having a TV, for instance. All those years without, and now… Not that there was a whole lot on worth watching, but he found some of the talk shows entertaining. Never knew there were that many stupid people in the world.

He frowned at that, lowering the volume in case the kids were still napping. If anybody'd said he'd feel much better for confiding in somebody about his feelings for Mildred, he'd've told 'em in no uncertain terms where to get off. But, you know, secrets were bitches to carry around, even ones that didn't hurt anybody. And he appreciated how Maddie had only said he oughta
think
about telling Mildred how he felt, not that he
should,
like most women would, most women being convinced they had a direct link to God. But when he'd said no, he didn't think that'd be a smart idea, she'd backed right off, swearing she'd never breathe a word to anybody, especially Mildred. Ned saw no reason not to believe her. She was a good gal, that Maddie.

And he'd bet his hide she didn't know he'd caught that look in her eyes when Ryan came to the kitchen door. She probably didn't even know Ned knew Ryan was there, but he'd gotten real good at being able to see who was comin' up behind him in his eyeglasses' reflection. And unless he was sorely mistaken, she felt the same way about Ryan Logan as Ned had always felt about Mildred Jones.
Rafferty,
he corrected himself with a sneer. 'Course, J.T. had been gone for nearly twenty-five years. Still, women like Mildred…well, he
couldn't very well fault her for being a one-man woman when there had only been one woman for him all these years.

Not that he hadn't fooled around now and again, when he was in the service. Pining away for a woman he couldn't have had never been on his agenda. But none of those other gals made him feel all warm and sappy inside like Mildred had. None of them had made him feel much of anything, actually.

So why hadn't he taken the damn bull by the horns after J.T.'s death? Oh, not right away, that would've been unseemly. Besides, he imagined she was hurting pretty bad at that point. But a couple years later, when her grief had dulled some… What had scared him so much, that he wouldn't take a chance on just letting the woman know he was there, if she needed somebody? That he cared? After all, he hadn't been the same know-nothing spawn of a pair of drunks he'd been before he went into the service. He'd been decorated for bravery, dammit, twice in Korea and once, much later, in Nam.

Yet he hadn't had the guts to go after the woman he loved.

And now…now it was too late.

 

Ryan couldn't remember the last time he'd followed through on an idea as dumb as this one. And he hoped to hell it was a long time before he ever did anything this dumb again.

Oh, he'd done his best to convince himself, for the week or so between when Taylor had accepted his invitation to go out to dinner and tonight, that maybe once he got going, he wouldn't feel like such an idiot. Just as he tried to convince himself that Maddie hadn't looked funny when he told her he'd asked Taylor out.

They'd been in his office. Maddie was just putting stamps on a couple billing reminders, a necessary evil out here where so many patients, being largely self-employed, were uninsured. She always added a personal, handwritten note on the bottom of the delinquent bills, encouraging folks to give Ryan a call if they were having trouble, to see what they could work out. That way, she said, they'd understand they still had an obligation to pay him for his services, while still letting them
know he understood everybody had difficulties from time to time. More often than not now, they did call and set up some kind of payment schedule, rather than just letting the whole thing slide.

And he had Maddie to thank for that.

Just as he had Maddie to thank for this.

“Isn't this what you'd had in mind?” he'd asked.

“Well, yes. I'm just…surprised, is all. I honestly didn't think you'd do it.”

“Well, I did.”

“I can see that.”

“So you should be happy.”

“I am. Really. It's just going to take a minute to wrap my mind around it.”

Then she'd said she thought she heard the baby crying and left the office, abandoning the stamped envelopes on his desk. By unspoken mutual consent, neither of them mentioned his upcoming date for the rest of the week. Although he noticed Maddie's conspicuous absence when he came downstairs in his sports jacket and tie. Lord…how long had it been since he'd worn those?

By that point, his stomach had been in more knots than when he'd gone on his first date with Roberta Whitson in the eighth grade, an experience that traumatized him so much he didn't ask a girl out again until his junior year.

And now, pulling up in front of Taylor's small rented house at the north end of town after what could only be described as a bizarre evening, he was hard pressed not to berate himself for being the stupidest man on the planet.

Not that Taylor seemed to corroborate his opinion of himself. In fact, she was as gracious as Ryan supposed a woman could be who'd just spent the past two hours sitting in Dixie Treadway's Day-Glo yellow kitchen while Ryan tried to talk Dixie's eighty-five-year-old mother, Gertie, who had what Dixie liked to euphemistically call “spells,” down out of the Treadway's hayloft.

The call had come halfway through their meal. Gertie was okay when she took her medication, but sometimes she'd pull
a fast one on Dixie and her husband Willy and they'd find the pills stashed in odd places, like in the bottom of the sugar bowl. That's when the trouble started.

And Ryan seemed to be the only person she trusted at these times.

Sometimes it only took him a few minutes to calm the old woman enough to bring her back down to earth. Sometimes it took a lot longer than that. He'd explained the situation and offered to take Taylor home first, even though that meant losing an additional hour before he could get out there, but Taylor had insisted she didn't mind going along. Or having her dinner interrupted.

“Believe me,” she said in her soft Texan accent, huddled against a brisk wind as he walked her up to her front door. “You don't have to apologize.” She held up her foam container. “And at least I got a doggie…thing.” As they went up her porch steps, she asked, “But why isn't that poor woman somewhere where she could be looked after twenty-four hours a day? That must be a tremendous burden on her daughter and son-in-law.”

“Two reasons. They'd have to sell their farm to afford it, for one thing. And Dixie can't stand the thought of ‘putting her mother away,' as she calls it. It would break her heart to do that to Gertie, even if they could swing the expense.”

Taylor looked away, a half smile tilting her lips. “What a remarkable woman,” she said softly, then looked back at Ryan. “Although no less remarkable than the doctor who'd drop whatever he was doing in order to ease the fears of an old, mentally ill woman.”

“I am so sorry—”

Taylor laughed. It was a very nice laugh, low and warm. And she certainly was pretty enough, with her green eyes and red hair. She just wasn't…for him.

“So you've said,” she said, her eyes twinkling in the porch light. “But you've just driven home why I'll never get involved with a man who's already married to his career. I tried that once. Discovered, much as it embarrasses me to admit,
that I've got a real problem with sharing my man with all and sundry.”

Curiosity dulled her comment's sting, at least enough for him to ask, “Then…why did you go out with me?”

She shrugged. “It's a small town. Pickings are slim and dates are few and far between. At least, dates with men I'd want to spend more than ten minutes with,” she added with a light laugh. “So when one of the town's most eligible bachelors calls me up and asks me out…well, I'm not that much of a fool.”

Ryan felt a grin pull at his mouth. “Should I be flattered?”

“Oh, immensely.”

He chuckled, then asked, “So…who are the town's other eligible bachelors?”

“Your brothers, of course.”

“Of course.”

Then she said, “But tell me something—why did you ask
me
out? It was perfectly obvious from the minute you picked me up your heart was not in this date.”

Ryan's brows lifted. “Now, that's not true—”

“Yes, it is.” Funny, she looked a lot more amused than ticked. Then she slanted her head. “Word is that you haven't dated in quite a while, Dr. Logan. So why now? And why me?”

“Because…because I thought it was time. And…”

“And…?”

He gave a half-laugh. “Because you're very pretty and nice and a friend of mine thought it would be a good idea…and
damn
I'm not any good at this.”

“Actually you're doing fine. Too bad you're doing it with the wrong person.”

He frowned. “The wrong person?”

Despite the freezing temperature, she crossed to the porch swing nearby and sat down on it, yanking down her coat to cover her knees. “Frankly you could have knocked me over with a feather when you called. I would have thought, judging from my observations a week ago at Thanksgiving dinner, that you and Maddie Kincaid had…how shall I put this? Feelings
for each other? But then I thought, well, maybe I was mistaken. But I wasn't, was I?”

Ryan stood there like a bump on a log, then said, “There's nothing…romantic going on between Maddie and me, if that's what you mean. I certainly wouldn't be out on a date with another woman—if you can call what we just had a date—if I was.”

Her eyes narrowed; she clutched her coat collar, scrunching it up higher around her neck, then rose from the swing, fishing for her housekey in her purse.

“But there won't be another date, will there?”

After a tense couple of seconds, Ryan shook his head. “No. Please understand, though…this has nothing to do with you.”

Her key in her door, she turned, her eyes crinkled with laughter. “You know, that's the first time a man's said that to me that I actually believe him. No, Dr. Logan, I'm not hurt at all. Except that it pains me greatly to see such an honest man lying to himself.” She opened the door to her house, then leaned over to kiss him briefly on the cheek. “'Night.”

Well. So much for that.

When he arrived back home ten minutes later, Maddie was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, nursing the baby and watching some legal drama on TV. She looked up when he came to the living room door, her expression unreadable.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

She huffed a sigh. “How'd it go?”

“It didn't. Ended up spending most of the night out at the Treadways'.”

That little crease nestled between her brows. “Gertie again?”

“Yep.”

“She okay?”

Ryan shrugged. Maddie nodded, then said, “Maybe I'll drive out there tomorrow, take them some of that banana bread I made.”

“They'd like that.” Then he said, “It didn't work out. With Taylor and me.”

“Oh.” Maddie forked her hand through her hair, making the layers shiver and shimmer in the light from the table lamp. Amy Rose's little hand jerked up, batting her mother's breast. “Any particular reason?”

His throat suddenly dry, Ryan stared at Maddie for a long moment, then shook his head. “Just…don't be getting any more ideas about trying to fix me up with anybody else, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. Which should have meant he'd won that round, right?

So how come he felt more like he'd lost?

B
y the middle of December, Noah had lost his first tooth and Amy Rose cut hers; Katie Grace learned all the words to “Jingle Bells,” which she would sing for anybody at the drop of a hat; Maddie found herself in the pie-baking business, since apparently Ruby's customers couldn't get them fast enough; and Mildred Rafferty, who had broken her wrist when she slipped on a patch of ice on her way to her mailbox to send in her
TV Guide
payment, had come to stay with them for a little while, at least until she could do for herself again. At Ryan's insistence.

Maddie, who was way too full of the holiday spirit to let anything get her down, saw this as one of those “lemonade out of lemons” kind of things—

“Oh, for the love of heaven, Ned McAllister—stop your infernal fussing!”

—or maybe not.

Maddie tried to keep a straight face as she mounded sliced apples in the crust-lined pie plate, letting Katie Grace pat down the lumps and bumps with the back of a wooden spoon, followed by Noah's sprinkling a premeasured mixture of
brown sugar, cloves and cinnamon on top (neither kid any the worse for wear from the flu they'd gone through the week before). Mildred, her arm in a cast and sling, had been sitting at the table, entertaining Amy Rose in her swing. But when she got up to fetch more cinnamon for Maddie, she nearly collided with Ned in his walker, asking if she needed any help.

“The only thing I need, old man, is for you to get out of my way before you make me fall and break something else!”

They were quite a pair, these two.

In the middle of all this, Ryan wandered into the kitchen, his very presence making Maddie's breath hitch inside her bony chest. Considering that three months ago he'd been living completely alone, he was being a very good sport about not being able to turn around in his own kitchen without tripping over somebody.

“Rrrrr-oooowwww!”

Or something. Well, how much sense did it make for one of them to make the trip out to Mildred's trailer every day to feed her cats when they could just as well bring them here?

Gamely, he ruffled kids' hair and unruffled the cat's feelings, let Amy Rose poke her finger in his nose, and told Ned he wasn't doing Mildred any favors by trying to do everything for her, to which Mildred said, “Hallelujah.”

Then he got what he apparently came into the kitchen for—a cup of coffee—coming to stand next to Maddie. But not too close.

“Apple?” he said.

“Uh-huh.” Feeling warmer than she should, she swiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

“Any chance one of them is for us?”

“Yep. This one.”

“You just made my day, Maddie Kincaid,” he said, then added, “you feeling all right? You're looking a little flushed.”

Her heart jerked, making her fingers do the same, making her have to redo the fluting on the pie crust. “Just the heat
from the oven,” she said, trying to ignore the four sets of eyes glued to them.

“Oh. Okay. Well. I'll be in the office if anybody needs me.”

Then he left, taking his scent and warmth with him.

And finally, inevitably—Maddie sighed at this—her heart.

Yep. It was official. Despite all the promises she'd made to herself, despite everything she knew to be true, Maddie Kincaid had fallen head over heels in love with Ryan Logan.

On the surface of it, nothing had changed between them since his date with Taylor, even though she'd been far more relieved than she had any right to be that there wouldn't be a second date. But one night about a week before, they'd just sat down to dinner, and she passed him the biscuits. And when he took one, nodding his thanks, his gaze brushed hers…just barely…and
boom.
There it was. The truth of her feelings, blowing raspberries at her.

This time was so different from her only other experience she'd nearly missed it. With Jimmy, falling in love had been like that first incredible swoop down on a roller coaster—she'd been almost unable to breathe with the wonder and exhilaration of it. But with Ryan, the feelings had snuck up on her, all soft and sweet, like the sensation of holding a child's hand or smelling cookies baking or the way the air feels after a spring rain. This time, falling in love was more like a gentle warmth spreading through her, all the way out to the tips of her fingers and toes, all the way down to the most secret parts of her.

She could only imagine what it would be like, making love with him.

And since imagining was as far as things were going to get, she had best be about controlling all those feelings. Sweet or not, since it was obvious Ryan didn't return them, they were only going to get her into trouble. Dreams were still a luxury she could ill afford. The longer she stayed, the more likely she was to get hurt. Not because Ryan would ever deliberately cause her pain, but because Maddie knew that once
the seed of love had taken root in her heart, it would only keep growing. That's just the way she was.

So all she had to do, she thought as she slipped the next pie into the oven, was get through Christmas. Once they all got into the new house, maybe her dumb hormones would settle down and stop nagging her half to death.

Then she straightened up and her legs gave right out from under her.

 

“You sure Mama's gonna be okay?” Noah asked as Ryan tucked him into bed, Katie Grace having fallen asleep in her own bed some time ago. Ivy had come right over to pitch in as soon as Ryan told her Maddie'd come down with the same crud that had taken half the town under within the past week, but the midwife had had to leave a little while ago to attend a delivery. Ryan hoped against hope
he
wouldn't be called away, too, since, despite Mildred's and Ned's protests, he wasn't real comfortable about leaving the children in their care.

Ryan sat on the edge of the bed, smiling down into Noah's worried dark eyes. He smoothed the child's unruly hair away from his forehead, the gesture as natural as breathing. “She's gonna be fine, grasshopper. I promise.”

“But…she's just lyin' there. Can't you give her some medicine or somethin'?”

Frankly, it had scared the bejesus out of Ryan, too, when the kids had burst into his office, blubbering about their mama being on the floor and not waking up. Of course, by the time he got there, she'd come to and was more embarrassed than anything else about passing out. Except then she'd looked up at Ryan with those sweet silver eyes of hers, glazed with fever, and said, “Maybe I don't feel so good after all,” and he'd laid a hand on her forehead and felt her burning up, and worry had flooded right through him until he remembered he'd seen no less than a dozen cases exactly like this, just in the last couple of days.

“Not for this, squirt. All she needs right now is lots of rest
so her body can fight this off on its own. That's why she's so still—she's sleeping real hard.”

Still, the trepidation in Noah's eyes tugged at Ryan's heart. Little guy had already lost a daddy; he was probably petrified of losing his mama, too.

“You've never seen your mama sick before, have you?”

Noah shook his head. “Not since she had the baby, anyway.”

Ryan smiled. “That's different. It hurts when a lady has a baby, but your mama wasn't sick. And you saw yourself she was just fine right after Amy Rose was born, remember?”

That got a tentative nod.

“Well, I swear, there's nothing for you to worry about. In a couple of days, your mama's gonna be good as new—”

Tears glistening in his eyes, Noah scrambled out from under the covers and into Ryan's arms, nearly knocking the breath clean out of him. The child smelled of baby shampoo and cinnamon and his mama, and Ryan wrapped his arms around the boy and held on tight. He got hugs all the time from his littlest patients, but this wasn't like any of those. This was a hug that was asking for something he wasn't sure he could give.

No matter how desperately he might want to.

He shifted Noah around to sit on his lap; the child slumped against him, completely trusting, provoking a sweet ache deep, deep inside Ryan's chest.

He loved these children, he realized. As much as he would have his—

“C'n you read me a book?” Noah asked.

“I guess I can do that. Which one?”

Thanks to the town library, Maddie made sure the children always had a pile of books on hand. Noah slid off Ryan's lap to reach the stack on the nightstand, taking several seconds to make his selection.

“This one,” he said, crawling back up on the bed to lean into Ryan's side.

So Ryan read a story to Ryan, about a little boy who learned to conquer his fear of the terrible “monster” that
lived in his cellar. He made his voice go deep and scary whenever the monster talked, like his father used to do when he read to Hank and him, and Noah giggled and snuggled closer. And Ryan's eyes burned, but not from eyestrain, he didn't think.

By the time he'd finished reading, Noah's eyelids were at halfmast. Ryan yanked back the covers and repeated the tucking-in procedure.

“Dr. Ryan?” Noah said on a yawn.

“Hmm?”

“I'm not scared a'you anymore.”

The ache sharpened. “Well. That's good.” He leaned over, tickled the boy through the covers. “I'm not scared of you anymore, either.”

Noah's eyes went wide. “You were scared of
me?
”

“Well, sure. Tough guy like you…you had me pretty worried there for a little while.”

That got a giggle, revealing the new space between his bottom teeth. “You're a silly-billy, Dr. Ryan.” After another yawn, he forced out, “Mama said we could go get a Christmas tree tomorrow, but now she's sick.” His tiny forehead a mass of creases beneath his rumpled hair, he picked at his top sheet for a moment, then gave Ryan puppy-dog eyes. “D'you think maybe you could take me and Katie to get one instead?”

Ryan felt a clutch in his chest. “Oh, gee, squirt…I don't know. I've got office hours in the morning, and then hospital rounds in the afternoon. And with this bug going around, I'm liable to get a lot of calls—”

“It wouldn't have to take long, I promise! An' you could take your phone with you so if anybody needed you, they could call you, right?”

His hands braced on either side of the child's pillow, Ryan felt the corners of his mouth kick up into a half smile at this beseeching expression in those huge, dark eyes. For Ryan, Christmas trees were but distant memories. Remembering what it was like to be a child at Christmas time was downright ancient history.

But he did remember.

“I guess they could at that,” he said, and Noah's entire face bloomed into a smile. Then he linked his thin arms around Ryan's neck and gave him a hug, falling back onto the pillow with a deep, satisfied sigh.

“Thanks, Dr. Ryan,” he mumbled, his eyes closing before the words were all the way out.

And the ache, which by now was threatening to cut off his breathing altogether, only intensified when he peeked in on Maddie in the next room. She was sleeping fitfully on her side, her brow puckered. Once again, she was his patient. But when she'd first come, that's all she'd been. Now…

Now.

He took a step closer, his thumbs hooked in his pockets, not even bothering to deny the emotions welling up inside him at the sight of her.

The children weren't the only ones he'd come to…

The word jammed in his brain, rusty and so long unused, he wasn't sure he knew the meaning of it anymore.

But he sure as hell knew what it felt like.

It felt like…a war raging inside him. Logic versus emotion, fear versus need, the breath-stealing urge to flee versus an equally breath-stealing desire to never leave. Total helplessness versus an almost savage protectiveness, as he watched Maddie sleep, wishing it was him sick instead of her because he couldn't stand the thought of her being in any sort of pain.

He'd do anything for her, to see her happy. To see her safe.

Anything.

Blinking, Ryan glanced around the room. Other than this morning when he'd carried her to bed, he hadn't been in here since that first night. For the most part, the room was exactly the same, although she'd hung a decorated grapevine wreath over the bed that she'd gotten at the high school's annual arts and crafts show. But it was vastly different, even so. This was
Maddie's
room now, not a guest room in which Maddie happened to be staying. It smelled like her, looked like her…felt like her.

How long would it take, after she left, for him to stop thinking of this as her room?

Nearby, in the crib someone had donated to the cause when Amy Rose grew discontented with the bassinet, the baby stirred. Ryan frowned. The only major hitch about Maddie's being sick was that she was still breastfeeding. There was little danger of her passing on her illness to her daughter, since her own breast milk provided sufficient antibodies, but whether she felt up to feeding her daughter was something else again. And bottle feeding the baby could not only easily wean her before Maddie was ready, but would undoubtedly be extremely uncomfortable for Mama.

He hated to do this, especially as it looked as though she was finally getting some decent sleep, but…

He scooped Amy Rose up from her crib, his insides twisting a little more at the baby's crooked, trembly smile, at her gurgles of communication. As he changed her diaper, she made little breathy sounds in response to his soft chatter, staring at him as if trying to absorb him. After snapping up her sleeper, he carried her over to Maddie, gently stroking her shoulder. At her daughter's first whimper, however, she came awake enough to understand what was being asked of her. And groaned.

“Sorry, honey. This is one thing I can't do.”

After a moment, she nodded, then unbuttoned her nightgown, unmoving, letting Ryan set the baby down where she could reach her mama's breast. He sat at her back while she dozed and Amy Rose took her fill, the baby grinning up at him periodically with the nipple in her mouth until she let go altogether and cooed at him, her tiny hand batting at the air.