Pushing the door closed behind him, he quickly crossed to the kitchen where the phone hung on the wall and picked up the receiver.
“Sullivan.”
“You don’t keep banker’s hours, do you?”
He knew it was her. Even though he’d never spoken to Raven on the telephone before, he could tell it was her. The sound of her voice over the line was a little deeper than it was in person, a little like brandy at room temperature, swishing along the sides of a glass. But it was unmistakable.
Now what? he wondered. And how had she gotten his number? While his office numbers were a matter of record, his home line was not listed. “Ms. Songbird?”
“Raven,” she reminded him. “We agreed that you were going to call me Raven.”
“You agreed,” he pointed out stiffly. “I said nothing.”
The momentary pause on the other end told him that she’d decided not to argue the point. Instead she got to what he imagined was the crux of her phone call. “You told me to think about it.”
“I told you to take your time.”
“Time is relative,” Raven informed him, her tone blithe. “I’ve used enough of it. I’d like to come talk to you.”
He tried to figure out where to fit her in. For that matter, he was going have to do some heavy juggling to fit the boy’s surgery into his schedule. “You could come by the office tomorrow, or the hospital—” As he spoke, he reached into his pocket for his P.D.A. He needed a clearer idea of what tomorrow looked like before telling her a time.
“Are you free right now?” When he made no immediate response, she added, “because if you are, I’d like to meet somewhere now.” Her voice picked up a little momentum as she spoke. The image of a locomotive, leaving the station, flashed across his mind. “I want to talk to you as a person, not a doctor.”
Her request was highly irregular, but then, in the very short time that he’d known her, he had gotten the impression that Raven Songbird was by definition highly irregular.
His first instinct was to refuse her request. He wasn’t going to be operating on her brother as a person, but as a doctor, a surgeon, and it was in that capacity that he could advise her. He had the feeling that she required something different, something more of him, and even without naming it, he knew he wouldn’t be able to accommodate her.
So it was with complete surprise that he heard himself saying, “Where?”
There was relief and pleasure in her voice when she answered. “A restaurant or a sidewalk, doesn’t matter. You name the place.”
The woman was nothing if not highly unorthodox. “A sidewalk?”
“Yes.” She made it sound as if it was the most natural suggestion in the world. “We could go for a walk.” There was the tiniest hesitation before she added. “I just don’t want you thinking that I was fishing for a free meal.”
“Never crossed my mind.” And it hadn’t. From the limited information he had about Songbird, Inc., her company could buy any one of a number of restaurants out of petty cash.
“Restaurant,” he said, not wanting to be put in the position of endless wandering around with a woman who could quite probably talk for all eternity.
“Okay.” She’d called prepared. “Are you acquainted with the Hawaiian Inn? It’s a little restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway down in Laguna—”
How, with all the places in the area to chose from, had she landed on that particular one? “I’m acquainted with the restaurant,” he responded stonily.
“Is it all right with you?” she pressed. “Because if it’s not—”
He didn’t want her speculating about why the restaurant wasn’t acceptable to him. The simplest thing was just to agree to it. “It’s all right with me,” he told her.
“Perfect. I’ll see you there, say, in about half an hour.”
“Sounds fine,” he responded before hanging up.
But it wasn’t.
As he drove to the Hawaiian Inn, Peter tried not to remember the last time that he had been there. Tried not to recall the sound of happy voices inside the car as he’d driven to the restaurant.
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 mistake, 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 mo
re 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.”
Chapter Five
The 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 allowed 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 consciousness. 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 unfurlin
g 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.
The M.D.'s Surprise Family Page 5