THE PASSION OF PARICK MACNEILL

by Virginia Kantra

  He wasn't talking about five-year-olds anymore, Kate realized. He was talking about himself. The bitterness in his voice struck at her heart. How could she help him? She wanted to cradle that implacable face between her hands and promise him everything would be all right. But she was no good at that kind of comfort. It wasn't what he needed anyway, not from her.

  "Maybe if Jack had the opportunity to meet other children before school started?" she suggested.

  "What good would that do?"

  At his dismissive tone, she put up her chin. "Well, it would give Jack a chance to relate to his peer group."

  Patrick raked his fingers through his hair, shooting her a disgusted look. "And what if he's hurt?"

  "What if he is?" she returned evenly. She wasn't going to feed his big, bad male ego by retreating. "The risk would be minimized in a controlled and protected environment. And you would have the chance to observe him."

  "What environment?"

  At least he was listening, Kate thought with a spurt of hope. "What about a play group? A neighbor's child?"

  "It's almost summer. That's a little late to enroll for play group. And we don't have any close neighbors."

  His reluctant consideration made her incautious. "I have a nephew. Billy turned five in February. Maybe you should bring Jack over to play the next time I'm sitting for my sister."

  Mistake, her mind shrieked instantly. She had reasons, good reasons, for staying out of this man's personal life. Reasons not to expose herself or her family to him.

  He smiled at her with wicked intent, thumbs tucked in the front pockets of his jeans, and the reasons all melted away.

  "You sure you want to let us in that far, Kate? Won't it detract from your doctor/patient relationship with Jack?"

  She snapped the cap on her pen and held it stiffly before her to reinforce the barriers between them. "Not at all. The visit will be good for him. I'm recommending it as Jack's doctor."

  Patrick lifted an eyebrow, and the silent, masculine challenge backed her breath up in her lungs.

  Sure she was.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  «^»

  The lady doctor had saline in her veins instead of blood. Patrick shook his head, both exasperated and admiring. No warm-blooded woman could have cut him open and then examined the results, like his emotions were a smear on a microscope slide.

  He accepted that the curvy little doctor got to him physically. He figured a week of heated dreams and tangled sheets was worth the discovery that he was no longer dead from the waist down. But now she was messing with his mind. Worse, she was interfering with his son. Recalling the way she'd challenged his assumptions about Jack's surgery in her cool, analytical doctor's voice made his blood pound in his temples.

  So what the hell was he doing driving to her apartment with Jack buckled in the back seat?

  Patrick glanced in the Volvo's rearview mirror. His son peered out the window from under the curled brim of his baseball cap, legs splayed on the wide leather bench. He looked happy. He was smiling. Every so often one of his feet jiggled excitedly.

  Jack wanted to make friends.

  Somehow Kate had seen that, somehow she had known. Patrick had never considered himself overprotective. But maybe he had tried too hard to shelter Jack from the inevitable reactions of children raised with the scary stereotypes of burn survivors. It seemed that in every movie villain from Freddy Krueger to Two Face, ravaged skin was an outward sign of inner decay or madness. Applied to his innocent son, that kind of prejudice made Patrick furious. And scared.

  Kate wanted Jack to relate to his peer group.

  Patrick exhaled, gripping the steering wheel. When she'd called last night to invite them to her sister's, his first instinct had been to refuse. How could he expose his child's fragile scars to judging eyes and careless taunts? And yet it was Kate doing the asking. Kate, whose brisk competence imperfectly disguised her caring heart. Kate, who had crawled beneath his dining room table to reach his son. Tired, tart, dogged Kate, willing to hazard her director's goodwill to protect her patients.

  Patrick wasn't about to take a similar risk with his son's feelings. But maybe he could regard this play trip as a sort of test flight. He could monitor how Jack did with careful preparation in a controlled environment. And hope like hell his boy didn't need an emotional parachute before it was all over.

  Pulling in front of Kate's apartment building, he undid his seat belt and threw open the door. "Okay, buddy, we're here."

  "Is this his house?"

  "Billy's? No. We have to pick up Dr. Kate first."

  You'll never find my sister's, she'd said last night, playing it very cool. We might as well drive over there together.

  In spite of her invitation, Patrick reflected, the lady doctor sounded almost as if she were trying to discourage him from coming. As if she were willing him to say no. Some deep-seated masculine impulse had driven him to play it even cooler and say yes.

  Jack hopped out of the car, looking around curiously. The Dumpsters were too close to the parking spaces, the buildings too close to the highway. But the apartment was convenient to the hospital, and Patrick suspected that mattered to Kate.

  The cement walkway cut through worn grass and tired bushes to three identical brick units. Kate lived on the right. He knocked on the green metal door and waited. A chain lock rattled before she jerked the door open.

  His month dried. Her bouncy hair was loose on her shoulders and smelled faintly of citrus. In place of her usual oversize lab coat and conservative separates, she wore jeans that nipped her waist and hugged her shapely hips. The soft knit of her coral shirt clung to her rounded breasts. He had a sudden memory of weighing that sweet breast in his hand, of her nipple pushing eagerly into his palm, and his body saluted.

  He jammed his hands into his pockets to hide his reaction, to keep from grabbing her. "You look good."

  She stepped back to admit them. "Sure. What the well-dressed baby-sitter is wearing this spring. Come on in."

  It intrigued him, this habit she had of deflecting compliments. He strolled past her into the apartment. "Is it just me, or are you this prickly with everybody?"

  "I'm honest, if that's what you mean. You're meeting the pretty, agreeable sister this afternoon."

  "I can hardly wait," he murmured.

  At his dry tone, her shoulders relaxed. She actually smiled. "Give me just a minute and we can go. Hey, Jack."

  Patrick turned his head and saw his son squatting in the narrow hallway, hand extended to a huge black cat.

  "Are you making friends with Blackie?" she asked.

  Jack nodded.

  "Original name," Patrick said for the sheer pleasure of watching her turn frosty again. He had himself under control now.

  She didn't disappoint him. Her brown eyes glinted. "Her name's Blackwell. After Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman medical doctor in the United States."

  The feline sniffed disdainfully at Jack's fingers and then walked away. Patrick grinned. Even the cat had an attitude.

  Kate hefted a brown paper grocery bag off a table that apparently doubled as her desk and mail repository. "All right. I'm ready."

  "Let me take that."

  "I can manage."

  Ignoring her dismissal, he reached for the paper sack. Her forearm was trapped between them, against his belly. The back of his fingers brushed the outer curve of her breast. His stomach muscles contracted in response.

  He watched her weigh her options, her feminine pride battling with her desire for dignity. She could either tussle with him or let go of the bag. She let go. "Okay. But we take my car. And I'm driving."

  He hated being driven. But having won one point, he could afford to be gracious. "Fine. Come on, Jack-o, let's go."

  Politely, he stood aside while she closed up and then followed her to the parking lot. Jack balanced on the curb, arms stretched wide, as she unlocked her car doors.

  Patrick inspected the battere
d gray Honda. "I thought doctors drove Beemers or Caddies."

  She took the grocery bag from him and put it in the trunk. "No, it's little red sports cars with vanity plates. And only after you're made an attending."

  He beat her to the driver's side, enjoying the surprise in her eyes as he opened her door. "And when do you get yours?"

  Her face shuttered. "Hard to say. I still have to pay off my med school bills."

  Her hair brushed his forearm as she swung into her seat. It was incredibly soft. He remembered the feel of it tangled in his hands, the tart, ripe scent rising to his brain, and felt his body instantly respond.

  Taking a deep breath of baking blacktop, he folded himself into her car. Without asking, he snapped on the radio, searching for a distraction. The strong country voice of George Strait flowed from the tiny speakers. Patrick lifted his brows. He'd pegged her as the public radio type.

  Flushing, Kate fumbled with the dial until she found an adult rock station. Patrick didn't protest the change. MacNeill Road Rules dictated the music selection was the driver's choice. Besides, earnest cowboys lamenting their broken hearts made him uncomfortable.

  Kate drove, her awareness of the man beside her grinding under her ribs, a constant, compelling ache. His lean fingers tapped his knee in time to a bass guitar. His right thigh flexed as his foot depressed an imaginary gas pedal.

  She'd been out of her mind to invite him. If she wrapped the car around a tree, if she smacked that handsome, teasing face, if she blew up her sister's trailer home and herself with it, she could plead temporary insanity.

  The thought cheered her slightly.

  In the back seat Jack was smiling and commenting on topics of likely interest to the adults in the car-billboards, cows and license plates, mostly. Apparently he'd recently mastered the alphabet and was taken with the letter Q, because, he explained, you didn't see it a lot. Also J, because it was in his name, and R, for no particular reason that Kate could discern. She began to feel better. Maybe this visit wasn't such a bad idea after all.

  She turned off the highway, following a sign that mentioned no major cities and a road that went nowhere, and her brief optimism faded. Dark pines gave way to red fields of new tobacco and foot-high com. She slowed through the town of Clayton, stopping at its one traffic light, and took the right fork to the Blue Moon Trailer Park.

  Nothing ever changed. A truck on cinder blocks, a dog tied in the front yard, a rusting swing set by a desiccated garden plot could have been left from her childhood. Clothes still dried on sagging lines, and incurious eyes watched from slatted windows. Kate stopped the car in front of a gray single-wide with a bicycle out front, her old surroundings resurrecting old insecurities in the pit of her stomach.

  Years and accomplishments meant nothing here. Her mother's trailer—her sister's, now—boasted a shiny new television antenna and a nice view of the pine woods and creek. The only other man she'd ever brought here had taken one look around and drawled, "Kathryn, darling, you didn't tell me you knew the Clampetts."

  Things had pretty much gone downhill from there, Kate remembered with a shiver. After Patrick's crack about her car and his recoil at her choice of radio station, she didn't even glance at him to see his reaction to her girlhood home.

  She hesitated before turning off the engine, as if planning a quick getaway. She had never belonged here. But her years here had shaped her, marked her, made her unfit for anywhere else. Right before Wade Preston left for Baltimore, her lover had taken pains to point out that Katie Sue from Blue Moon Trailer Park could have no place in the rarefied world the Prestons inhabited by right.

  The trailer's screen door opened. Like a princess in a fairy tale emerging from an enchanted cottage, Amy appeared, and Kate's transformation into a brainy toad was complete.

  "Katie!"

  Her sister's face was alight with pleasure. She posed a moment at the top of the rickety steps, the sunlight striking through her flowered skirt to reveal slender legs. And then she drifted down, her blond hair in perfect disarray, her hands with their sprinkling of silver rings outstretched.

  "I'm so glad you finally came. Billy's been up since six waiting for you."

  Inside Kate, a small kernel of warmth unfolded at her sister's welcome. The screen door screeched, and five-year-old Billy whirled down the stairs, yelling, "I saw you first! I saw your car!"

  Squaring her shoulders to banish her ghosts, Kate got out of the car and smiled at her nephew. "Hey, squirt."

  Billy tackled her legs.

  Amy floated over to envelope her in slim, tanned arms and a cloud of True Love cologne. Her head turned as she smiled over her shoulder. "And you must be Patrick."

  Heart sinking, Kate waited for the inevitable male reaction to her sister: dilated pupils, macho stance, drool. Amy never stayed in any one relationship for long. Since her divorce from Billy's father three years ago, she'd been madly in love with four men that Kate could remember. She saw in each man, each new beginning, the relationship she'd been waiting for. And every man saw in her blond prettiness the embodiment of his own fantasies.

  "Nice to meet you," Patrick said blandly.

  His large hand briefly engulfed her sister's dainty one before he stepped back beside Kate. His thigh, warm and solid, nudged her hip. Startled, she looked up to meet very blue, very amused eyes. Her heartbeat quickened. Confused by his reaction, by her own response, she ducked her head and hugged her nephew's shoulders.

  Amy, undeterred, swooped on the last person out of the car. "And … is this big boy Jack? Oh, sweetie, your poor face."

  Kate gritted her teeth. How could she ask Patrick to trust her recommendations when her own sister was so insensitive? "It's just a scar, Amy. I told you that."

  "Well, I know, but—"

  Billy cocked his head. "A scar? Like a pirate? Cool. Can I see?"

  A muscle tensed in Patrick's jaw. Kate held her breath. Would he give the boys a chance, or would his need to protect Jack overcome his grudging acceptance of her judgment?

  Jack flinched but held his ground. In respectful silence, Billy inspected his puckered face and misshapen ear.

  "Yowsers. Does it hurt?"

  "No. But my hand still does, a little."

  Billy gave the big bandage a cursory look. "Yeah. Aunt Katie operated on it. She told me. You want to see my space blaster? Aunt Katie got it for me."

  Jack's face lit. "Okay."

  Bless her nephew. But before Kate could draw her breath in relief, Amy intervened. "Billy, did you leave the baby inside all alone?"

  He squirmed. "Ma, she was fine."

  "Billy." She shook her head, seemingly more disappointed than angry. "You're the oldest. You go in and get her now and bring her to Aunt Katie."

  He scuffed the ground at his feet. "Yeah, okay. Be right back."

  "Can I come?" Jack asked.

  "Sure."

  They ran into the trailer, two sets of sneakers thumping on the steps.

  "Honestly." Amy turned to the other two adults. "You'd think he'd be more responsible by now. It's like some things never change."

  "Yes," Patrick said dryly. "I see that."

  Kate glanced at him sharply. Whether he meant to support her or not, she wouldn't tolerate him mocking her family.

  He hesitated, as if searching for an inoffensive explanation. "I'm an oldest child myself."

  Amy nodded, uncomprehending.

  Jack banged back through the screen door and held it open for Billy. The boy trundled down the steps, precariously balancing his baby sister, her fat little legs sticking out on either side of his waist.

  Rescuing her niece from Billy's slipping clasp, Kate settled the baby competently on her hip. "This is Jenny."

  A girl. The punch of yearning caught Patrick unaware. A real cutie, too, with her mother's flyaway curls and her aunt's observant eyes. A lifetime ago, Patrick had wanted a baby girl. The joy of Jack's arrival had eclipsed that dream. The loss of his wife had extinguished it. But seeing K
ate with her sister's child in her arms, he realized that the hope still flickered deep inside.

  Two sets of pink cheeks, two pairs of brown eyes, two rosy smiles…

  He jammed his hands in his back pockets to keep from reaching for them both and took a step back. "Cute."

  Kate, he saw, registered his withdrawal without understanding it, bristling at the imagined slight to her niece. "Don't you like babies?"

  The child lurched for a fistful of her aunt's wavy hair and stuffed it in her mouth. Nine months old, he guessed. Probably crawling, and into everything. He'd missed this stage with Jack. Jack had gone from a sturdy five-month-old just sitting up to wasted muscle on a hospital cot. By the time he was able to crawl, Jack was well over a year old.

  "I like babies fine."

  "But not girls."

  He smiled at the challenge in Kate's voice, letting her needling prick him from his memories, "Oh, I like girls."

  "I just bet you do," Amy murmured, widening her eyes at him.

  "Too bad he can't go to lunch with you and Ma," Kate said, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

  She was teasing him. His body responded with instant, serious intent.

  "Well, now, I know Mama wouldn't mind the company. If Patrick's free…" Amy trailed off suggestively.

  Damn, she was coming on to him.

  "I was joking, Amy," Kate said flatly.

  "I know that, but it's not a bad idea. The kids are used to you. We'll only be gone a few hours. And I'm sure Patrick wouldn't mind taking a couple of ladies to lunch."

  She couldn't be serious. He was here with Kate. He looked her way, but Kate was wearing her cool doctor's face again, the one he was learning concealed a wealth of emotion. What did she want him to do? He didn't want to be rude to her sister, but he for damn sure didn't want to spend time with Amy, either.

  "I can't leave Jack," he said.

  "Oh, Katie's real good with kids," Amy assured him. "Mama never could figure why she didn't have a couple of her own, instead of messing around with other people's."