The M.D. Meets His Match

by Marie Ferrarella

  With a sigh, she leaned over and opened the passenger door.

  “All right, get in. Just don’t talk,” she warned him.

  Jimmy got in, shutting the door. He looked at her as he buckled up. “You worry about your grandmother a great deal, don’t you?”

  She turned the key in the ignition. “I said, don’t talk.”

  The takeoff was far from smooth and he had a hunch she had done it on purpose. “Just making conversation with my guide, that’s all.”

  She’d almost forgotten about that. “This isn’t part of the tour.”

  “I said I wanted to see Hades. I didn’t mean necessarily during the day.”

  There was something in his voice she couldn’t put her finger on, but she knew trouble when she heard it. “During the day is the only time you’re seeing Hades if I’m doing the driving. Alison or Luc can show you around at night. Or someone else. Seems to me like you make friends easily enough.”

  Sitting back, he studied her profile and wondered how much of the tension he saw had to do with her grandmother and how much had to do with him. “Oh, I don’t know, I seem to be having trouble convincing you I’m friendly.”

  He had that straight. She didn’t know what had possessed her to agree to showing him around in the first place. “No offense, ‘Dr. Jimmy,’ but I’ve seen your kind of friendly and I can do without it.”

  “Everyone should learn how to enjoy themselves, April.”

  “When I get the time, I’ll look into it.”

  “When people say that, that’s usually the time they need it the most.”

  She didn’t answer him. Maybe there was some truth in what he was saying, but she didn’t want to explore it, not when her mind was so preoccupied.

  There were lights up ahead coming from the back of Yuri Bostovik’s house. Where the bedroom was likely to be. Was that a bad sign?

  What’s wrong with you? The man’s probably getting ready for bed.

  God, but she hoped he was getting ready alone.

  “He’s home,” she murmured more to herself than to Jimmy.

  She stopped the car and pulled up the hand brake, hard. Without another word to Jimmy, she hurried out, ran to the front door and knocked.

  Praying.

  Chapter Six

  No one answered her knock.

  “Maybe they’re asleep,” Jimmy suggested.

  She resented the pronoun. “Yuri lives alone.” April didn’t bother turning around to look at him. With the heel of her hand, she pounded on the door again. “Yuri, I know you’re in there. It’s April Yearling. Please, open up!”

  “Maybe we’ll have better luck if we try throwing pebbles at his window.”

  She could hear the grin in Jimmy’s voice and it only made her more irritated. He wouldn’t be taking it so lightly if this was his grandmother they were looking for. “They’d have to be boulders, not pebbles,” she told him. “The man is partially deaf.”

  Since she wouldn’t turn around, Jimmy moved to lean against the house to see her expression. Except for the moonlight, the area was devoid of light. “Then how do you expect him to—”

  “I said partially,” she retorted, pounding on the door again. Was this annoying man determined to take apart everything she said?

  This time, the door opened. The man Jimmy had seen practically devouring April’s grandmother with his eyes and hanging on her flirtatious smile stood in the doorway, looking bewildered and sheepish. His clothes, Jimmy noticed, had the suspicious appearance of being just a wee bit disheveled.

  April didn’t wait for a formal invitation from Yuri. With the familiar air of someone who had grown up amid these people and had a strong, unspoken connection to all of them, she walked right into his house. A single floor lamp that had been turned on before Yuri answered the door lit the way into his Spartan living room.

  Yuri’s black eyes darted from April to the man he vaguely recognized and then toward the back of the house.

  He cleared his throat nervously. “I did not expect to see you here,” he told April. “Is there something I can be doing for you?”

  Yes, you can tell me where my grandmother is. April dragged a hand impatiently through her hair, trying not to let her thoughts run away with her. “I’m sorry to barge in like this, Yuri, but you’re the last person to have seen her.”

  “Her?”

  The comical way Yuri echoed the single word had Jimmy biting his tongue not to laugh. He knew neither party would appreciate his sense of humor right now.

  April nodded. For the first time, she took a good look at the old man before her. He had a trim gray beard and his hair was a bit shaggy at the back—a little like the smirking doctor next to her, now that she thought of it. Her grandmother liked longer hair in men. She said it gave a woman something to run her fingers through.

  April’s eyes narrowed as she regarded Yuri. The fact that he was shifting his weight from foot to foot wasn’t wasted on her.

  “Her,” she repeated. “My grandmother.”

  Jimmy saw a red tinge creep from the top of the old man’s cheeks to settle along his earlobes. Since it wasn’t hot in the room, he assumed the sudden color was from embarrassment rather than any sudden whimsical behavior on the part of his blood pressure.

  He was right, Jimmy thought. They had interrupted something. He wondered if there was any way to convince April to just leave. One look at her face gave him his answer.

  “Well, yes, I was.” Yuri said each word as if he were slowly measuring them out with a spoon.

  April could feel her impatience intensifying. “Did you see where she went?”

  Jimmy saw the man look at him as if silently asking for help. “Yes.”

  This was like pulling teeth, April thought, frustrated. The people in Hades were even slower than she remembered. Molasses flowed faster than any of Yuri’s sentences.

  “Well?” she pressed. “Where did she go?”

  Trapped, Yuri looked down at his worn shoes. The voice that finally emerged was hardly audible. “Here.”

  “What?” April squeezed the single word out of a throat that was closing over. He was right, damn him. The smirking doctor beside her was right.

  “Here,” he finally told her. “Your grandmother is here.”

  Since she wasn’t retreating of her own volition, Jimmy slipped his hand under April’s arm to silently urge her out of the house. “Maybe we’d better go.”

  Not knowing if she was more stunned by the information that her grandmother was indeed here, unchaperoned in the middle of the night with a man, or by Jimmy’s all-too-familiar behavior toward her, April yanked her arm away from him.

  “No, we’d better not. Where is she?” she demanded, her eyes pinning Yuri.

  “I’m right here, April.”

  April swung around to see her grandmother standing in the narrow hall that led to the back of the house.

  “No need to let the people in Anchorage know you’re looking for me.”

  “Gran, how could you?”

  “How could I what? Come here with a man I’ve known for over twenty years to share some conversation and a little of his Russian vodka? Easily.” With a dignity and humor that instantly captivated Jimmy and made him the older woman’s everlasting fan, Ursula Hatcher raised her chin like a queen. “Your timing’s terrible, April.”

  “My…my timing?” April stammered incredulously. “My timing is terrible?” Was her grandmother out of her mind? People her age and in her condition didn’t just play with fire the way she knew her grandmother intended. It was too dangerous. “You’re getting ready to re-enact Lady Chatterley’s Lover, knowing what that could do to your heart, and you’re telling me my timing is terrible? I’d say my timing is damn good.”

  Ursula’s expression reflected an angelic disposition—and a made-up mind. “Not that I’m dignifying your accusation with a denial, but it’s my heart, April, and I get to do with it what I want.”

  April didn’t see it that wa
y. “A corner of that heart is mine and I want it preserved.” Because she didn’t want to take out her anger on her grandmother, she whirled on Yuri instead. “And you, what do you mean bringing her out here at this time of night? She’s a sick woman. She belongs in bed—her own bed.”

  Yuri’s jaw dropped as he looked from Ursula to April. “She does not behave like a sick woman.” He smiled a little, looking at Ursula. “She behaves like a young girl.”

  Ursula beamed. “Thank you, Yuri, I feel like a young girl.”

  April’s temper was dangerously close to the edge. “A young girl with a heart condition,” she shouted. Annoyed at losing her temper, she turned to Jimmy, her tone less than friendly. “You’re a doctor, back me up here.”

  Just like that, Jimmy found himself the focus of three sets of eyes, one angry, one pleading and one bewildered and confused. Like a man walking on thin ice, he took his steps carefully.

  “I’d say this is pretty stressful right now.” He looked at Ursula and smiled kindly. “How do you feel, Mrs. Hatcher?”

  “Fine,” she announced proudly, tossing her head slightly as she looked at April.

  Well, of course she’d say that, April thought. She’d have to. “Don’t take her word for it.”

  “Whose word should I take?”

  Jimmy’s tone grated on her nerves. She should have known better than to ask someone like him to be sensible. He probably thought this was a great joke.

  “She’d be the best authority on what she’s feeling, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Hatcher?”

  “Ursula,” Ursula told him softly.

  Great, now she was flirting with the doctor. “Don’t you have a stethoscope or something?” April demanded.

  “Not on me.” A smile played along his lips. “I didn’t think I’d need it for the saloon.”

  He did, however, take Ursula’s hand in his. With two fingers on her pulse, he timed the rhythm, glancing at his watch.

  “Seems fine to me, given the situation.” He looked at April significantly, his eyes taking full measure of her and the way her breasts heaved with each angry breath she took. “Steadier than my own right now.”

  It was hopeless. She had no one to depend on but herself. What else was new? “Let’s go, Gran. We’re going home.”

  “I’ll go home when I’m ready, dear,” Ursula said sweetly. Her eyes shifted toward Yuri, who was standing off to the side. “Yuri was just getting to the good part—in his story,” she added with what looked to be an almost wicked smile to Jimmy. “And, as you seem to want to believe, I haven’t much time left. I’d like to enjoy whatever time there is, thank you.”

  April opened her mouth to refute the statement, but nothing came out.

  “She has a point,” Jimmy commented.

  She wanted to hit him. And shake some sense into her grandmother and Yuri. Instead, confounded and outnumbered, April sighed. “All right, stay. I give up.” Upset, worried, she turned on her heel and walked out.

  “I’ll be home before morning,” Ursula called after her.

  About to follow April, Jimmy looked over his shoulder and winked at Ursula. “Don’t overdo it. Doctor’s orders.”

  Ursula watched the young man hurry after her granddaughter. Her smile was wide when she looked at Yuri. “I like him.”

  “Me, too,” Yuri agreed. “But I like you better. Come—” he slipped his arm around her shoulders “—before the vodka evaporates.”

  “Wouldn’t want that to happen.” Ursula laughed softly as she allowed herself to be led back to the rear of the house.

  “Hold on,” Jimmy called as he hurried after April to her car.

  Right now, all April wanted to do was get into the car and drive away, leaving him stranded here. But that would be giving in to more childish instincts and it had been a long time since she’d been a child. So instead, she swung around and glared at him, her fisted hands digging into her waist.

  “Just what kind of a doctor are you?” she demanded hotly.

  There was something very arousing about the sight of a beautiful woman with fire in her eyes. He had to concentrate to keep his thoughts from going off on a tangent.

  “The kind who respects people’s wishes.”

  That was a cop-out and he knew it, she thought. “Even self-destructive wishes?”

  He pointed out the obvious. “We don’t know that for sure. For all you know, all they’re doing is talking and exchanging childhood experiences.” He saw the incredulous look she gave him. “And if it goes further than that, well, sex is a wonderful stimulant. It revitalizes you and makes you feel young again. Yuri might be exactly what your grandmother needs.”

  Was she the only one making any sense? “To do what? Kill her?”

  “No.” In his opinion, April was overreacting. Was she just being protective of her grandmother’s health, or was there something more at play here? “That’s why Shayne wanted her to go to Anchorage for tests, to see whether or not she needs further care.”

  “She’s complained of chest pains,” she reminded him.

  April made an effort to rein in her temper. She was tired of being the caretaker for everyone, and yet, there was no one to take her place. Everyone was being far too blasé about it.

  Damn it, she’d known this would happen if she came back to Hades.

  “Look,” she tried again, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

  He certainly wouldn’t have minded building his own fire with April, but for the time being, he kept that to himself. “Not necessarily. Sometimes the wind just carries the smoke off in a different direction.”

  Dumbfounded, she stared at him. “Do you like to argue?”

  “Sometimes.” Very carefully, he pulled her fisted hands away from her waist and slipped his thumbs in between the clenched fingers, opening them until he held her hands in his. “Look, all I’m saying is that your grandmother should be allowed to make her own choices and enjoy herself.” He smiled at her. “She’s old enough and she’s definitely earned the right.”

  His smile had an unsettling effect on her. For reasons of self-preservation, April looked away from him and toward the darkened house. Was it her imagination, or was that laughter she heard coming from the rear? “I’m beginning to think she’s going senile.”

  As far as he was concerned, Ursula Hatcher had fairly crackled with life. She certainly behaved a great deal younger than her granddaughter. “She seemed pretty lucid to me.”

  He would say that. “How can she be lucid, ignoring her health problems like that? Her heart is bad,” April insisted. “If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t have asked me to come and help.”

  The explanation was so simple, it made him smile. “Maybe her heart’s involved in another way in the request.”

  She stopped avoiding his eyes and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe she just missed having you around and thought that if she told you she was sick, you’d come.” He looked at her, driving his point home. “And apparently she was right.”

  This wasn’t duplicity on her grandmother’s part. Her grandmother had her pride. She didn’t ask for anything. Ever. “She didn’t tell me. June did.”

  “And who told June about her condition?”

  “Gran did,” April said reluctantly. “But June checked it out with Shayne,” she added triumphantly as she remembered the detail. “Gran has angina.”

  Jimmy acquiesced. “All right, maybe she does bear watching.”

  April looked over his shoulder at the house. She’d go him one better. “She bears being dragged out of there and made to go home.”

  “Don’t treat her like a child, April, she deserves better than that.” He saw the surprised look on her face and found himself wanting to kiss it away. “She deserves her dignity.”

  April frowned, then shrugged helplessly. He made sense, she supposed.

  “Maybe you’re right. But I worry about her.” The chip she’d been carrying on her shoulder all evening slipped off as
she leaned against the car. Remembering. “She’s been both mother and father to us for most of our lives—even when my mother was alive, it was Gran who took care of everything. Gran who saw to it that we went to school, did our homework, had clean clothes to put on.” She didn’t add that she’d gradually taken over all those details, and more, feeling it her duty as the oldest to take care of her siblings. And then Gran, too, because that was just the way things were.

  But he didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t anything she advertised.

  “I’d say she more than earned a little play time, wouldn’t you?”

  She wanted her grandmother to be happy, but it was more complicated than just that. “Not if it means losing her.”

  What made him a good doctor, he liked to think, was his ability to see both sides. And to care about each. “It’s the quality of life that’s important, April, not just the quantity. Quantity without quality is just another way of marking time.”

  The remark had merit. It seemed the kind of thing a sensitive man would say. She hadn’t thought the word applied to him. April looked at him now, wondering how much was real and how much was just talk for its own sake.

  The moonlight made him appear even sexier than he had before, in the Salty, if that were possible. She felt that same intense pull she had earlier. The one that kept reminding her that it had been a long time since she’d felt like something more than just a photojournalist or someone’s granddaughter. A long time since she’d felt like a desirable woman.

  She thought his words over. Though she hated to admit it, he was right. Gran was enjoying herself and she had every right to. She had more than earned it.

  The distant sound of pleasure-filled laughter came to her and this time she smiled.

  Way to go, Gran.

  Maybe she should take a page out of her grandmother’s book and do the same. Enjoy herself. Wasn’t she overdue? What would be the harm?

  She looked at Jimmy. Neither one of them would be around in a few weeks. There was nothing wrong in a harmless fling, especially if it made her feel good. And she had a feeling that Jimmy Quintano knew all the places that made a woman feel good. It might behoove her, for her own good, if she stopped treating Alison’s brother as if he were the enemy.