The M.D.'s Surprise Family (5 page)

With his already busy schedule, he'd had to do some fancy rearranging, but it had been worth it. Worth carving out a rare evening on the town with the wife he adored. It had been a celebration of sorts. He and Lisa had just decided to try for a second child. Driving that misting evening, he had been feeling very good about life in general.

The following week, life had irrevocably changed, taking with it any reason to ever feel good about life again.

Strange that the woman should have picked this place, he thought as he pulled up in the lot. Getting out of his car, he hurried up to the front entrance. He'd almost told her no, but then Renee's voice had echoed in his head, telling him that he needed to move on.

He couldn't argue that. He needed to face life if only because he was all that remained of his union.
Continuing was a tribute to the woman he'd loved, to the family he'd lost. Their memory remained alive as long as he did.

Peter walked up to the dark mahogany double doors. Faces of Hawaiian gods, long lost in myth, were carved into the wood. He pulled one of the doors open and walked in. Warmth and noise greeted him.

For a moment he stood just inside the entrance. Remembering. It was as if nothing had changed, certainly not the restaurant. It was just as busy, just as cluttered as he'd recalled. The owners had gone through a great deal of trouble to make the interior look like a thatched hut. As he recalled, the prices on the menu gave testimony that simplicity did not come cheap.

To his right was a five foot reproduction of a Tiki. He looked around it, wondering if he should have waited for Raven outside. Now that he thought of it, she hadn't mentioned where she was going to meet him.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Turning, he found that she had solved his dilemma. Raven Songbird, wearing something comprised of swirling blues, greens and yellows, stood right behind him.

Her smile was every bit as warm as the restaurant seemed to be. “You made it.”

“Apparently.” He knew his reply sounded curt, but he began to think that maybe he'd made a mis
take, agreeing to meet her here. He wasn't the master of emotions even though he liked to think that he was. “Did you just get here?”

“No, I've been here for a little bit.” She pointed to a tiny table for one located on the side. There was a bar just beyond it. “Long enough to order one of those fruity drinks they're so famous for. We can just sit here,” she suggested, nodding at the table. “Or we could walk along the beach.”

Something else he'd done with Lisa. Peter shook his head. He didn't feel right about walking along the sand in the moonlight with someone else.

“Here's fine,” he told her. He glanced around for a waitress. Spying one, he waved the young woman over. The hibiscus tucked behind her ear seemed to be too large for her.

“Yes, sir, what can I get you?”

“A beer. Whatever's handy,” he added when she began to ask what kind. He had no preference as long as it was cold.

Raven took a seat. Her mouth quirked in amusement as she picked up her pink and foamy drink. “Beer, huh?” She used the tip of her umbrella to carefully spear the cherry that was bobbing up and down. “I didn't take you for a beer drinker.”

He made himself as comfortable as he could opposite her, still wondering what he was doing here. “Why not?”

She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. The colorful
material slipped off, she tugged it back over her shoulder. “I envisioned you tipping back something fancy.”

A cynical expression drifted across his features before disappearing again. “My father was a dock worker in Baltimore. Formal meant changing his T-shirt more than once a week.”

He didn't sound as if he liked the man very much, Raven thought. She couldn't imagine not loving your father. “Where is he now?”

“He died while I was still in medical school.” Realizing that he'd given out more personal information than he'd intended, he looked at her sharply. “Did you ask to see me to quiz me about my family?”

Finishing the cherry, she placed the umbrella on the cocktail napkin. “No, I asked you here to get a feeling for Peter Sullivan, the man.”

He frowned at her. “You want Peter Sullivan the surgeon operating on your brother, not the man.”

“Yes, I know, but the two are a package deal.” She saw impatience crease his brow. This was a great deal harder than she'd anticipated. Ordinarily, people talked to her freely. She was usually able to put them at ease. “You can bill me for a consultation.” She saw him open his mouth, but beat him to the punch. “As a matter of fact, I insist on it. That way, you won't feel as if I'm trying to take advantage of the situation.”

He didn't want her thinking that she had the upper hand here. She didn't. He was in control at all times. He
needed
to be. Because allowing control to slip through your fingers meant being at the mercy of fate—and he knew what fate did to you. It kicked you in the teeth just when you thought happiness was yours.

“You can only take advantage if I let you,” he told her pointedly.

She read between the lines. “Tough as nails?” There was a smile on her face, and then it faded just a little. “What do you care about, Peter?”

He didn't like the fact that she felt free enough to strip away the formal layers between them. “That doesn't matter.”

She moved her head slowly from side to side. “Oh, but it does to me.” Leaning over the tiny table, she tried to make him understand. “I need you to tell me you care about something, Peter. White mice, sunsets, endangered species—it doesn't matter what, just something.” She desperately needed to know that the man who would be operating on her brother was someone who cared about the outcome.

He knew he should just get up and leave. But there was something in her eyes… Something that kept him in his seat. Something that had him answering her invasive question. “I care about my mother-in-law.”

A smile curved her mouth. “Wow, there's a first.” He found himself watching, mesmerized as her smile continued to bloom. “Tell me about her.”

“She's a little like you. Pushy.” He thought of what Renee had called out to him as he'd left for her prescription. “She wanted me to ask you for a scarf.”

“Done.” To his surprise, she opened her purse and produced a folded scrap of colorful material, which she handed to him. “I want you to do my brother's surgery.”

He took the scarf and put it into his jacket pocket. “Because I care about my mother-in-law?”

“Yes.”

“You're a very odd young woman.”

She laughed softly as she raised the drink to her lips. “You're not the first to say that.”

T
he wind was getting serious again, growing chilly, reminding everyone that winter, even in Southern California, was definitely here. As he and Raven stepped outside the restaurant, Peter thought to himself that he should have remembered to wear his coat.

But things like coats and weather were huddled together in the second or third tier of his thoughts, never foremost in his mind. Now that he was no longer a family man, that area was strictly reserved for the surgical procedures that were second nature to him.

Peter turned up his collar and looked out into the
vast parking lot, trying to remember where it was that he had left his vehicle. Though preoccupied, he soon realized that the woman beside him was touching his arm. Trying to invade his space even more than she already had. He raised his brow in a silent query.

“I'd like you to come home with me to tell Blue yourself that you're going to be doing his surgery,” she said.

“Ms. Songbird—”

Her eyes touched his. He could almost physically feel her gaze. “Raven,” she reminded him.

“Raven—”

And then he stopped. She had a look on her face that he couldn't begin to describe. It occurred to him that sailors, drawn by the siren's song, saw an expression akin to this on the face of an angel just before their ships splintered all around them.

“What?” Peter took a breath, bracing himself.

Her eyes crinkled just a little as she continued watching at him. “Nothing, I just like the way you say my name.”

“You mean, under duress?”

The laughter was soft, making him think of gentle breezes and hope springing eternal. He had to be getting punchy.

“I'm not forcing you, I'm asking you,” she told him softly.

Not only her expression, but her voice began to
seep into him, like early morning mist that seemed so innocuous, but somehow managed to drench you if you walked in it long enough.

She drenched him.

“Raven,” he repeated more firmly, trying to distance himself from this woman and having a harder and harder time doing it. She was like quicksand, he suddenly realized. The more he pulled against her, the more he felt himself being held fast and going under.

This was ridiculous.

This was also what came of putting in eighteen- to twenty-hour days. If he didn't watch himself, his patients were going to suffer. And that was absolutely unacceptable. He might not want to regard them as anything more than items in need of repair, but neither did he want to view them as recipients of possible failed surgeries. Each and every one of them had been brought to him to be made whole again and there was no way he was about to shirk that shoulder-crushing responsibility.

He attempted one last time to detach himself. “Raven, I think the news would come better from you. You handle the P.R., I'll handle the surgery,” he added glibly.

“He likes you,” she reminded him.

“Your brother doesn't even
know
me,” Peter declared, taking no trouble to hide his annoyance.

But if she was the target of that anger, she al
lowed it to bounce right off her. “He's met you twice now. It doesn't take much for Blue to form opinions.” Here came that smile again, the one that could disarm him faster than a high-powered magnet could yank a gun out of an assailant's hand. “And he's usually right.”

He sighed, shaking his head. A couple maneuvered past them on their way to the front entrance. Stepping aside, he found himself standing closer to Raven than he'd intended. “So, what, now you're going to tell me that your brother is some kind of psychic?”

“No, just that he's rather intuitive when it comes to people.”

He nodded, remembering she'd mentioned something like that to him the other day. “So you said.”

She smiled at him, smoke penetrating through the minuscule, almost unperceivable cracks of a thick brick wall. “You were paying attention.”

“I
always
pay attention. There're just times when I don't chose to acknowledge the fact,” he said.

Her eyes looked as if she was retaining some secret amusement. “I'll keep that in mind.”

Why should she bother? he wondered. After the surgery and the two standard follow-up visits, the chances were very high that he and Raven would never interact again. From somewhere deep within the recesses of his mind and soul, the single word “pity” whispered along the fringes of his con
sciousness. It grew larger, floating upward like a scrap of paper being raised by the wind. He shook himself free of it.

“My car's right there.” Raven pointed toward the lot at a sleek red sports car that sat low to the ground. “You can follow me.”

“Follow you?” He wasn't even following her mentally and had no intentions of doing so physically.

She turned, looking up at him again. “Home, so you can tell Blue.”

He'd assumed that suggestion had faded away. “I thought that we—that I—”

To Peter's surprise, Raven lightly touched his cheek, silencing him as the sensation undulated through him, rolling along his flesh.

Raven raised her eyes to his and smiled.

He could feel that very same smile unfurling inside his chest, as if, for just a single moment in time, they were one, sharing a single action. “We did,” she told him, her voice low.

Obviously her “we did” was different than his, Peter thought.

What did it matter? There were still a number of hours left before midnight and he never fell asleep before then. Sometimes not even then.

Peter shrugged, surrendering the small battle, not wanting to waste his energy on it. Moving away from the front entrance, he took a couple of steps
toward the car she'd pointed out to get a closer look at it.

His eyebrows pulled together. No, his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. He looked down at Raven. “A Ferrari?”

“You sound surprised.”

He supposed he was at that. “I guess I pictured you driving around in a VW bus.”

He tried not to notice the appealing grin that curved her mouth. “Complete with flowers painted on the side?”

Ordinarily he would have said that she was laughing at him. Except that he couldn't feel himself taking offense. Her expression was too genial, too deliciously amused.

“Yes,” he conceded.

He watched a shimmer of delight brightening eyes the color of a cloudless, midmorning sky.

“Actually, that was my parents' vehicle—and where my mother ultimately began her company.” She pulled her expression into a serious one, and almost succeeded. “But driving around in something that vintage now would be kind of unsafe, don't you think?”

His eyes swept over her. It was like carrying on a conversation with pixie dust. Glittery, shimmery, but if he tried to catch hold of it, there would be nothing in his hands. “I got the impression you didn't trouble yourself with things like that.”

Again the laugh—musical, light—went right through him, embedding itself within his marrow. “You have a lot to learn about me, Peter.”

Peter. Not Dr. Sullivan, or even just Doctor, but Peter. The structure he'd built up so carefully all around him was being torn away with her delicate, bare hands. And again, she was talking as if this was the beginning of a relationship instead of something that was meant, by design, to be quick, fleeting. Over with before it ever really got started.

“You know,” she was saying after she'd allowed her words to sink in, “I've always loved the color red and I've loved Ferraris ever since I saw Tom Selleck fold his muscular body up into one on
Magnum P.I.
”

“You watched television?” Something else he couldn't visualize her doing.

She could almost read the thoughts as they telegraphed themselves into his head. “Children of neo-hippies got to watch television.” She laughed.

And then she leaned her head into his, as if about to impart some deep, dark secret only he could hear. The scent of wildflowers and honeysuckle penetrated his consciousness, filling his head even though, logically, the night air should have easily dissipated it. But apparently logic and Raven Songbird could not coexist in the same space.

“Besides, I saw the show on one of the cable
channels. Burned the whole series onto DVD disks,” she confided with a wink.

He had no idea what she was trying to convey with the wink, only that it went through him with the force of a bullet hitting its target dead center.

What the hell was going on here? he wondered. Was he coming down with something? During all his years at medical school and in residency, surrounded by sick people, he'd never come down with so much as a cold. It looked as if his luck had run out.

“Never saw it myself,” he muttered when she continued to look at him as if he should know what she was talking about.

He thought that would put her off. Even at this point, he realized he should have known better. Nothing seemed to put her off. She was like one of those little yellow toy ducks that bobbed upright no matter how hard you tried to sink it.

“No?” Her eyes widened. “Then you're in for a treat. It had everything—humor, action, mystery, buddies being there for each other, terrific scenery. Anytime you're up for it,” she impulsively promised, “we can make a marathon of it.”

Assaulted with her enthusiasm, his head was beginning to spin. “Excuse me?”

“A marathon,” she repeated. “You know, the way they do on some of the cable networks whenever there's some kind of a holiday. Ten, twelve
uninterrupted hours of something or other,” she prompted when he continued to look at her as if she'd suddenly begun spouting Martian. “In this case,
Magnum.
”

He had absolutely no intention of sitting anywhere with her, watching anything. The scenario she was suggesting was far too intimate. It was something he and Lisa had done. “Wasting time” someone on the outside would have called it. Savoring time was the way he saw it.

“I've never had ten uninterrupted hours of something, other than work,” he amended. His tone was meant to cut the conversation dead.

But it refused to die. “Might be just what the doctor ordered.”

Peter frowned. He'd once been told that his frown could freeze a sunspot at fifty paces. “Not this doctor.”

Unfazed, Raven was devoid of any frostbite. Instead, there was actual concern on her face as she gazed up at him. “Why are you trying so hard to be superhuman? To deny that you
can
be human?”

Maybe it was because he was warming up to her and maybe, here in the darkness, he allowed himself a rare moment of truth, a rare moment in which he allowed the truth to be heard by a complete stranger. A very strange stranger. “Because being human is extremely painful, extremely unrewarding and if I wasn't attempting to be ‘superhuman' as
you call it, your brother might not stand any chance at all to—”

Peter never got a chance to finish what he was trying to say.

One moment he was lecturing this woman who had exploded into his life. The very next moment, his lips were no longer moving. Or at least, no longer allowing any sounds to slip past them.

They were sealed to hers.

It happened so suddenly, Peter had no idea how he'd gotten from point A to point B. For a moment he entertained the idea that he was either hallucinating or having, quite possibly, an out-of-body experience. One moment, only darkness surrounded him, and the next, bright lights went off, filling him inside and enveloping him on the outside.

Lights and warmth and something that he vaguely recognized as desire.

Which was impossible. Because desire in all forms had deserted him. Whether it encompassed the most basic kind or just a craving for a particular food, he had become utterly devoid of it.

Until now.

He felt desire, robust and full-bodied.

He would have sworn this part of him had died at Lisa's gravesite. He'd become, for all intents and purposes, a hollow man.

Yet he wanted to be kissing this woman he'd inexplicably found his lips pressed against. Wanted to
be holding her to him, feeling her soft, supple body molding into his.

Wanted this rush that both hurt and felt good.

He was coming unglued.

 

She knew it, knew that it would be like this. Knew the second she had seen the tall, dark, brooding doctor and heard his voice. Knew that there was trapped emotion within him that if she could only tap, would sweep her away.

And she needed to be swept away, needed to feel, just for a moment, as if every star in the universe was in the right place and that everything,
everything
would be all right.

Anything less was unthinkable.

She needed to know, to be convinced, that this man cared. Because only a caring man could fix her brother and make him well again.

Raven raised herself up on her toes, her fingertips digging into a pair of strong, muscular shoulders. It was hard to remain grounded when all the forces of the known world conspired to make her let go and just be, just feel.

A sigh escaped her.

It had been a very, very long time since she'd allowed herself this kind of a connection. In her own way, she was as removed as the doctor she was trying to bring around. She hadn't lost a soul mate, but she had lost pieces of her soul. Her par
ents had been very precious to her and the irony that they had died while on their way to see her moment of triumph was not lost on her. It brought with it a vast amount of guilt.

She tried to assuage her guilt by being both mother and father to Blue. And by running the company that her parents had started. It was their legacy, as was Blue, and neither was going to be allowed to be anything less than perfect in every way.

It kept her from making any deeply personal connections. Not the kind that would ultimately result in her having a home and family of her own. She had the memory of receiving her diploma, then being taken aside by a teacher and told that two-thirds of her family had died and that the little brother she adored was fighting for his life. This memory kept her from making any more commitments.