THE PASSION OF PARICK MACNEILL

by Virginia Kantra

  His blue eyes blazed. "It was more than that, and you know it. I told you things I've never told anybody."

  He had, and she did know it. It only made his exclusion of her now more painful.

  "But not about Jack," she replied quietly. "I'm still on the outside looking in on you and Jack."

  Patrick turned his head to stare out over the fields and far away. Black against the luminous pink-and-gray sky, his profile looked strong and proud and profoundly alone.

  "I don't know what you want me to say. If you're ticked at me because I didn't take your medical advice, I'm sorry. You're a good doctor, Kate. I know that."

  His unexpected offering moved and angered her at the same time. "Then why not listen to me?"

  "I'm used to making decisions about Jack myself, that's all. I'd decided on the surgery months before we even knew you."

  Kate wanted to point out that he'd been married before, that Jack had had a mother before. This Lone Ranger routine didn't cut it. But she didn't know enough about Patrick's relationship with his dead wife to challenge him.

  Besides, she wasn't his wife. She wasn't Jack's mother. She was merely a handy adjunct to Patrick's life. Her problem, she accepted starkly. She couldn't let her foolish self-delusion interfere with getting the best possible treatment for Jack.

  "You have to let go," she argued. "Of control. Of the past. You can't deny what happened to you and Jack. You can't erase it, from his face or from your hearts. You can only accept it and go on."

  Patrick was still silent, staring out over the darkening ground. She wasn't reaching him, she thought in despair. In any way.

  "Patrick?" she insisted softly. "Can you do that?"

  His shoulders braced before he turned at last to face her. "I don't know. Kate, I honestly don't know."

  Defeated, she dropped her head. She felt the betraying prick of tears and widened her eyes. Consciously, she reached for her medical persona, wrapping it around her like a lab coat to shield her lacerated feelings.

  "Swaim is asking Owen Roberts to assist," she managed. "You should call him. Get a second opinion."

  He straightened, tension and regret radiating from his coiled muscles. "I can do that."

  She turned blindly. "I should go."

  "Kate…" Once more he put out his hand. This time she genuinely didn't see until it was too late. "Jack's expecting you."

  The words hurt. How could she disregard a child who wanted her? How could she run out on Jack? Yet she was falling apart. She had to get out of here. "Tell him something came up at the hospital."

  He jammed his hands in his pockets. "Is that what you want me to do?"

  What she wanted didn't matter any longer. He needed to decide what he wanted. Until he chose to put the past behind him and admit her all the way into his life, she would batter herself against the walls he'd thrown up to protect himself. His distant politeness was breaking her heart.

  "Yes, please," she answered, equally polite.

  He nodded, a brief, curt acknowledgement. "All right. I'll walk you to your car."

  This time, Kate thought ironically, she was the one to drive away, when she would have given her soul for Patrick to ask her to stay.

  If she didn't look back, it was only because her eyes were filled with tears.

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  «^»

  His second lesson of the morning was a disaster, a forty-something flight groupie more interested in landing a pilot than an aircraft. Patrick managed to get down to earth with his plane and his temper intact, and then took to the skies again alone.

  He had no destination. Fuel was expensive and time limited. He was meeting Swaim at the hospital at two o'clock. So after radioing the distant Raleigh-Durham flight tower, Patrick settled down in a tight holding pattern over his own airstrip's signal cone, twenty-five hundred feet up, three knots above stalling. At the airplane controls, he had power and perfect freedom. He held them in check with his fingertips, making tiny, precise adjustments, never varying his altitude by more than twenty feet or his actual bank by more than a few degrees.

  The disciplined focus kept at bay the storm of emotions inside him. Anger. Confusion. Doubt.

  Who was he to decide what was right for Jack? When he and Holly married, he hadn't signed up for single fatherhood. It wasn't the kind of duty any man would volunteer for. But when his life erupted in a blaze of flame four years ago, he'd responded like any good Marine, taking charge, getting the job done. Who was Kate to tell him now he'd bungled? Prickly, opinionated, know-it-all doctor.

  God, he missed her. Not eighteen hours since he'd seen her, less than thirty-six hours since he'd filled her on her bed—since she'd filled him, heart and soul and senses—and already he felt the lack of her like the phantom pain of an amputated leg.

  Deliberately, he widened his perceptions to take in the round, flat dials and the bright, rolling Carolina landscape: dark pines, red clay, empty blue sky. Over his headset, he heard the anonymous voices of air traffic control, soothing and unobtrusive as music in a hospital waiting room.

  One minute straight and one minute around. He timed his turn, scanning the instruments, scanning the sky. One minute straight. One minute around. He cross-checked his position on the second radio. Four minutes exactly.

  Patrick nodded, calmed by the clear evidence that he was in control. In solitary, perfect control. And over the chop of the propeller as it cut the uneven air, he heard Kate's harsh accusation: You don't want to give up that level of control.

  Damn woman. She'd even followed him into the cockpit. She'd entrenched herself so deeply, in his flesh, in his routine, in his heart, that he might never be free of her.

  In the emotional wreckage after the accident, his duty had seemed so clear. Putting Jack first had been his way of keeping faith with Holly's memory. If he couldn't prevent the crash that killed his wife and maimed his son, at least he could sacrifice his own life to Jack's medical and emotional needs.

  The wind veered as Patrick started another circuit of the radio signal. He made appropriate, sensitive adjustments to the throttle and steering column. For the past four years, he'd kept Jack at the center of his life in a holding pattern as rigidly controlled as the one he now executed over the landing strip. The lady doctor was like an outlying signal, disturbing his concentration, pulling him off of his intended course.

  She was a torment and a beacon. He didn't know how to respond to her. He was reluctant to lose control. He was afraid to lose direction. And yet…

  He scanned the instrument dials, checking the drop of the Cessna's wingtip as he turned and banked again. One minute. The measurement was reassuringly precise. The exercise was restrictedly satisfying. Yet he wasn't going anywhere. Trust Kate, he thought dryly, to point that out. Kate, with her clear brown eyes that saw too much, and her wide, generous mouth that spoke so bluntly.

  Maybe you need to get on with your life.

  As if he hadn't struggled for four years to put the past behind him and make a life for Jack. Patrick frowned, bringing the plane back around. A life for Jack. There was the kicker. His anger wasn't really directed at Kate at all. He was mad at himself, because this softhearted, hardheaded, infuriating woman had made him realize finally that living solely for Jack was no longer enough. He wanted, needed, more.

  He needed her.

  Do you really want me? Or do you just want a warm body who won't make too many demands on you, who won't interfere with your son?

  His mouth tightened. Over the fuel-rich carburetor mix, through the open air scoops and the Plexiglass flap on his left, the scent of the warm, damp earth rose from twenty-five hundred feet below. Patrick cross-checked the plane's position, correcting speed as he eased into the last leg of his circuit, suspended between the empty sky and the breathing ground.

  Exhaling, he prepared to land, breaking radio silence. "At Dumont. Cessna November Two One Nine downwind, right turn, in the pattern for runway Two Seven."

&n
bsp; While the radio cone provided a stable point for his holding pattern, its real purpose was to direct pilots en route.

  Kate was right. It was time to go on. Not to leave his son behind—he would never do that—but to find a new direction for their lives.

  He suspected he'd found his heart's true destination in Kate Sinclair.

  * * *

  Gerald Swaim leaned back in his mahogany leather chair, his high-ranking-officer-face set in lines of disapproval. "I really don't understand your decision, Mr. MacNeill. We've discussed this procedure. You requested it."

  Patrick let the man's tone pass for now. He had two objectives in this discussion, and antagonizing the director of Kate's burn center wouldn't help him achieve either one. "Well, now I'm un-requesting it."

  Swaim placed his fingers together tip to tip, and then abruptly abandoned the gesture, dropping his hands to the top of his desk. "May I ask why?"

  Patrick chose his words carefully. "Dr. Sinclair feels we shouldn't do anything until Jack can enter the equation. In a couple of years, if he can identify specific changes he wants to make in his face, we'll go for it."

  "Of course, you're declining an elective procedure. But Dr. Sinclair is, after all, only a senior fellow. Perhaps you'd like a second opinion?"

  Get a second opinion, Kate had said, her eyes shiny with tears she thought he couldn't see. Patrick's jaw tensed.

  "I don't need one," he said firmly. "I trust Dr. Sinclair's."

  Swaim frowned. "With all due respect to a colleague, Mr. MacNeill, I don't think you can rely on Dr. Sinclair's objectivity in this case."

  Damn. Patrick straightened in his chair, watchful, wary. "Excuse me?"

  "Given her personal involvement with you and with your son, can you really trust her judgment?"

  Patrick struggled to contain his growing anger. This is Jack's doctor, he reminded himself. Kate's boss. He wasn't going to do anybody any good by taking the man's insinuations and shoving them up his… Yeah, anyway, it wouldn't do any good. "Yes. I can, and I do. Maybe especially given the way she feels about Jack."

  Swaim assumed an expression of avuncular concern. "You know, it's perfectly natural for you to feel anxious about the potential risks of this procedure. Dr. Sinclair may simply be telling you what she thinks you want to hear."

  Kate? The man must be joking. Patrick thought of the way Kate had checked up on his son after surgery, the way she'd come by his house at night when they'd struggled with his physical therapy. She'd braved Patrick's displeasure by pushing him to let Jack make friends with her nephew. She'd reorganized her work schedule to care for the kid when his grandfather had a stroke. She'd insisted on being there for Jack every step of the way.

  Hell. He didn't need to wonder and worry about making Kate part of Jack's life. She'd already demonstrated both her ability to care for and her willingness to love the boy. All Jack's father had to do was overcome his grunt-stupid mule stubbornness long enough to admit it.

  "No. She wouldn't do that."

  "She might. If the two of you are personally involved, it might represent a conflict of interest. Something which, as director of the burn unit, would naturally cause me grave concern."

  Patrick narrowed his eyes. Was this egotistical sawbones actually threatening Kate over her involvement in Jack's case?

  "That's bull. She's always put her patients first. Everything she's done, every choice she's made, has been in Jack's best interest. In your patient's best interest. If you can't see that, you're blind."

  Swaim appeared taken aback by this direct attack. "Not blind. But it's possible my vision has been obscured by…" He threaded his fingers together. "…personal considerations."

  Patrick leaned both palms flat on the director's desk. "Like what?"

  He pursed his lips. "I don't intend to discuss my private life with you, Mr. MacNeill."

  "Why not? You didn't hesitate to drag mine and Kate's into this discussion."

  The gray gaze slid away. "No. Well, perhaps I was wrong. Please don't misunderstand me. I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Sinclair's abilities. You might almost say I envy them."

  As long as Swaim gave Kate her professional due, Patrick figured he should try to keep the conversation civil. Kate wouldn't thank him for ticking off her director. But his antagonism toward Kate just didn't make sense. She'd gone to bat for the man more than once, seeing his appointments and taking over for him in surgery. Why wasn't he grateful?

  "Why 'envy?' Look, you've been Jack's doctor for four years. You're the director of the university burn center. I can see you being upset that I'm going with Dr. Sinclair's call on this thing with Jack, but she's no threat to you."

  Gerald Swaim spread his pale, long-fingered hands out on his desk. He regarded them for a moment before he looked up. "I recently learned that I have Parkinson's disease, Mr. MacNeill. My hands shake," he explained in response to Patrick's puzzled look. "While the tremor can be controlled with medication, it is extremely unlikely I will ever operate again."

  Hell. Illness of course excused the doctor's recent absences, explained his withdrawal from surgery. The man must be fighting for his professional life. Not to mention wrestling with his personal identity. A surgeon who couldn't operate? It would be like a pilot who couldn't hold the stick. Unwilling sympathy moved in Patrick's chest.

  But pity wouldn't help Swaim. And letting him take his frustration out on Kate for damn sure wouldn't help her.

  Deliberately, Patrick met Swaim's gaze. "All the more reason, then, for you to value having a good surgeon like Dr. Sinclair on your staff."

  "Ah." The doctor's mouth twisted in a partial smile. "Yes. Yes, you make a very valid point, Mr. MacNeill. Once I'm—limited—to administrative duties, I will, as you say, be very glad to have her on my staff."

  * * *

  Amy held up her long-necked bottle of beer. "We need to make a toast."

  Kate forced a smile. She appreciated her sister coming over on a Saturday night. Date night. Amy had brought the beer and the kids and her own airy charm. Billy, dangling a stethoscope for Blackwell to swat at, was a distraction, and brown-eyed Jenny a sweet comfort.

  Dabbing the grease from a slice of pizza, Kate slid the paper plate in front of her nephew. "How about, to your new job?"

  Amy beamed with pleasure. "I'll drink to that. To Newton's new Assistant Restaurant Manager."

  Solemnly, they clinked and drank. On her mother's lap, baby Jennifer arched her back and flailed her rounded arms.

  Amy swung her bottle out of her daughter's reach with one hand, cuddling her expertly with the other. "None for you, lambie pie."

  Jennifer dimpled, revealing four pearl teeth. Watching them, Kate felt a shaft of pure envy. What would it be like to bear a child of your own body? To know you were loved, unconditionally and completely? To share that magic parent/child communication and accept the responsibility of that child's care?

  The memory of her own words pierced her. I'm still on the outside looking in on you and Jack.

  And Patrick's voice, blunt and regretful: I'm used to making decisions about Jack myself… I don't know, Kate. I honestly don't know.

  Her heart ached.

  "Don't look like that, sweetie." Startled, Kate glanced up from the wriggling baby to meet her sister's eyes, surprisingly understanding, unexpectedly kind. "Come on, now. We're celebrating. Let's drink to your new job. What is it again?"

  The smile came more easily this time. Even with the hurt at her heart, Kate discovered, there was satisfaction in attaining a goal so long desired and so hard-won.

  "Attending physician, burn unit."

  "Cool." Amy lifted her bottle again. "To Jefferson University Hospital's newest attending physician in the burn unit."

  "Thanks." Fortified by her second beer, Kate confessed, "I didn't think I would get it. When Swaim called me into his office yesterday, I thought he was going to tell me once my fellowship was over, I was through."

  "But you work so hard! Ho
w could you even think that?"

  Kate busied herself reaching for a slice of pizza, already regretting her uncharacteristic admission. "I made a mistake recently."

  Amy leaned across the table to tap her son's arm. "Billy, honey, don't cram the whole thing into your mouth like that, you'll choke. The Perfect One made a mistake? I don't believe it. What did you do? Kill somebody?"

  The Perfect One? Is that how her younger sister saw her? Kate shook her head. "No. No, I got personally involved with a patient."

  "Oohh." Kate winced at the long, drawn-out note of discovery in her sister's voice. "With a patient … or a patient's father?"

  The last thing—very nearly the last thing in the world Kate wanted—was to expose her pitiable love life to Amy's sympathy. Kate was the sensible, rational one, her life orderly and passionless. Miserably, she pleated her napkin, her single bite of pizza smoldering in her stomach.

  "It's that good-looking MacNeill man, isn't it?" Amy asked shrewdly. "That Patrick."

  "It doesn't matter who it is. It's over now."

  "Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry. He was so nice looking, too. And I thought he liked you, I genuinely did."

  You don't like me, she'd accused, that first night she went to his house.

  Not at first, not much. You're good with Jack.

  Not good enough, apparently. And did she really want them on those terms? Did she want to be Jack's surrogate mother, Patrick's substitute wife?

  Kate stared sightlessly at her congealing pizza, recalling the way, three nights ago, she'd taken Patrick MacNeill into her body. The way he'd let himself be taken, body and soul. But she deserved more than sex, no matter how tender or profound. She deserved a man's whole heart and an equal place in his life. Even if Patrick couldn't give her those things, she would always be grateful to him for making her believe that.

  "I think he did, too." She felt her lower lip threaten to get away from her and bent it into a smile. "Just not enough."

  Amy's hand, winking with pretty silver rings, squeezed her arm. "Well, then, who needs him? You've got this great singles apartment and your little black cat and your nice new job… What are you going to do with all that lovely money?"