Why he should be feeling something like admiration for a woman who made no apologies for loving a man who had left her with nothing but a pile of debts and three children, he didn’t know. Yet he did. She’d given that love freely, unselfishly—the illogical, irrepressible, irresistible love of youth, Ryan mused sourly. And now, even though that love had left her in a fix and a half, her pride still balked at having to ask strangers for help.
Like a stubborn child, Ryan thought, snapping upright and rubbing his eyes. A stubborn, courageous child with the soul of a woman, a woman who deserved far more than life had given her thus far.
A woman who deserved the kind of man who would put her first.
Who could offer her more than dreams.
A rap on the office door disrupted Ryan’s brooding. He got up, opened the door to look down into Sadie Metcalf’s puzzled smile. “Don’t mean to rush you, Dr. Ryan, but Alden left some time ago…?”
“Yes, yes…sorry,” Ryan said, standing aside to let Sadie in, at the same time pushing a whole bunch of thoughts he shouldn’t even be having out.
A tiny window over the tub let in enough light for Maddie to see her reflection in the medicine cabinet over the pedestal sink, upon which she now leaned heavily, frowning at herself. The tile floor chilled the bottoms of her bare feet; she barely noticed. The shakiness from having told Dr. Logan her story had already begun to ease some, mainly because there seemed little point in dwelling on things she couldn’t change. She would grieve for what she’d lost every day of her life, but her heart told her that her marriage would’ve died anyway, even if Jimmy hadn’t. Her love for him sure had, although she’d resisted admitting that to herself for some time after the fact.
Oh, Lord, it was all too much to think about right now. She finally got around to brushing her teeth, which is why she’d come into the bathroom to begin with. When she finished, though, she squinted at her reflection, her mind wandering off in a different direction entirely.
Why on earth would anybody call her “pretty”? All she saw was a redhead complexion without the benefit of having red hair, a mouth that was no more than a slit in her face, a nose that was too long, eyes that were too wide apart. And a figure? She wouldn’t know a curve if it bit her.
And, no, she was not feeling sorry for herself. Those were just the facts of the matter.
Maddie let out a sigh, then shuffled back to bed. Oh, well…if nothing else, she supposed it was still a nice ego boost to know that some man, somewhere, found her worth looking at. And since ego boosts came few and far between in her life, she figured she might as well make the most of this one. Even if it had come secondhand, like her clothes, through a source who didn’t see her as a woman at all.
Which, she thought on a yawn as she felt herself drift off, she supposed was just as well, all things considered.
Ryan’s last appointment of the day—removing a dozen stitches from Roy Farver’s forehead where renovating his hen-house had led to a run-in with a wily two-by-four—had been gone for a half-hour or so before he heard the thumps and thuds and animated conversation that signaled Ivy’s and the children’s return. They burst into his office, bringing the chill with them. Both children sported brand-new jackets, Noah’s navy-blue, Katie’s a hot-pink bright enough to blind half the state.
“Look what Ivy buyed me, Dr. Ryan!” Noah beamed at him, apparently momentarily forgetting his apprehension. “It gots like a hunnerd pockets an’ everything!” Seated at his desk, Ryan removed his glasses to peer at the kid, who was gleefully slurping down what was left of a chocolate ice-cream cone. Dots of color stained his pale cheeks over an ice-cream stuccoed chin, while bits of yellow leaves clung to his dark curls. Then Ryan’s gaze shifted to Katie, who, clinging to Ivy’s hand, gave him a shy, chocolate-coated smile in return. She looked down at her coat, then back up at him, her smile broadening.
“I look pretty,” she said, her voice weightless as goose down.
“You sure do, sweetheart,” he said, ignoring the dull ache curled up inside his chest like a dog settling in for the night. Then he waved Noah over, grabbing a tissue to wipe off the sticky little face. When he gently took the child by the arm, however, the boy flinched, the fire going right out of his eyes.
“It’s okay, grasshopper…I just want to clean you up a bit. I won’t hurt you.”
After a moment, Noah nodded, although he still made a helluva face when Ryan tried to undo some of the damage. “Where on earth you take these kids, Ivy?”
She hadn’t bothered unfurling herself from that poncho thing she wore, so he guessed she wasn’t planning on staying. “Verna Madison’s youngest gal’s about to have her third baby, they’ve got four-week-old lab pups. You seen them yet? Five of ’em, gold as sunshine. And full of the devil.”
“C’n I go show Mama my coat?” Noah asked between licks, completely undoing Ryan’s cleanup job.
“Your mama and sister are taking a nap,” he said, wondering how Maddie was going to react to Ivy’s purchases. “Which they both need.” At the child’s crestfallen expression, he added, “You know, I’ve got about a million blocks out in the waiting room. Why don’t you go build something to show your mama later?”
When the children had gone, Ryan stretched back in the desk chair, making it squawk. Hard to believe those were the same frightened children who’d shown up on his doorstep barely twelve hours ago. A knot formed in his chest at the thought of any child’s having to feel that kind of anxiety.
He could only imagine how Maddie must feel.
He glanced up at the midwife, whose face indicated she was thinking much the same thing. She caught his stare, blushed. “I didn’t figure it would hurt them to have a treat. And the coats were half off. Last year’s stock or something.”
Shaking his head, Ryan leaned forward again to gather up the charts strewn across the blotter. “Looks to me as though somebody wants to be a grandma real bad.”
Ivy let out a sigh. Her daughter Dawn, whom Ivy had raised on her own, had left Haven before the ink was dry on her high school diploma, going off to college, then law school. Now an attorney at some high-falutin’ firm in New York City, Ivy’s only child seemed determined not only to never set foot in Haven again, but to never give her mother any grandbabies, either. “Guess I’ve just about given up on that score. Not that I’m not proud of my daughter, but I swear I’m gonna wring her skinny little neck if she tells me one more blessed time her career’s far more challenging, reliable and stimulating than raising a kid could be.”
Yeah, that sounded like Dawn, who was the same age as his brother Cal. In fact, there was a time there when Ryan had thought Cal might have been a little sweet on Ivy’s daughter, but that was a long time ago….
“Now, where on earth did you drift off to?” he heard Ivy ask, and he lifted his gaze to catch the amused curiosity in hers.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, standing to pull a chart out of the file. “Just thinking about…stuff.”
“Uh-huh. Like what to do with your houseguests?”
He slammed the file cabinet shut. “Hadn’t gotten that far yet.” He peered over at her, standing there with her arms tucked up under that poncho. “Although something tells me you have.”
“Knowing you, you’d put the kids in sleeping bags in the downstairs bedroom with Maddie and the baby.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong with that?”
Ivy huffed. She was nearly as good at huffing as she was at clucking. “You know, sometimes I wonder how on earth you were smart enough to get that scholarship to med school. How’re you gonna keep an eye on mama and her baby if she’s down here and you’re asleep upstairs? Besides, those two youngsters need their own space, and you’ve got those two connecting bedrooms upstairs that would be just perfect—”
“For crying out loud, Ivy—take a breath, wouldja?” Hands on hips, Ryan simply stared at her, frozen, as something damn close to fear knifed through him, as surprising in its sudden appearance as it was in it
s intensity. Especially as he had no idea what he could possibly be afraid of. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t had any company for a while. Like forever. No reason the prospect should make him feel uneasy. And yet everything inside him whispered, “Watch out, buster.”
“I’ll go on ahead and change the beds,” Ivy said, now shedding the poncho and heading out the door and, presumably, the back stairs, “if you tell me where the clean linens are.” She vanished, reappeared. “You do have clean linens, don’t you?”
“In the closet at the end of the hall. Shoot, Ivy, I’m not a throwback.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
He no sooner got out a sigh when he felt somebody looking at him. He turned, still frowning hard enough to make Katie Grace frown back.
“You mad at us?” she asked.
Well, that just turned him to mush. He scooped the little girl up onto his hip, just like he did with every other three-year-old who came to his office. Difference was, this one wasn’t going home in a few minutes. “No, sweetheart. I’m not mad at you.”
Calm, blue-gray eyes linked with his for a second before a pair of tiny arms looped around his neck.
Oh, Lord. He was in trouble now.
Chapter 4
This bedroom didn’t look much different from the one downstairs, Maddie thought, but it had two windows and was a little bigger. And a bit more inviting looking, but that might have been due to the warm light given off by a pair of rose-decorated lamps on either side of the bed. Before she’d left for the evening, Ivy had fed them all, then made up the double bed in fresh white linens, turning down the covers like this was some fancy hotel.
For what seemed like the thousandth time that day, tears pooled in Maddie’s eyes, that strangers should be showing such concern for her and her children. But right now, her babies came first: instead of resenting how helpless she felt, she should be grateful that there were such good people in the world.
Since she wasn’t an invalid, for heaven’s sake, she’d put on a pair of jeans with the doctor’s shirt, and was now settled with Amy Rose in an old but comfortable padded chair in the corner of the room. Noah and Katie Grace were in the adjoining room, bouncing from one twin bed to the other. Maddie had already told them three times to stop, even resorting to the time-honored threat of “Okay, but if you fall and crack your head open, don’t come cryin’ to me,” which the kids clearly took as permission to keep jumping. So she told the doctor, who’d been in and out carrying up her cases and what-not, that if they did crack their heads, to just add his fixing them up to her bill. He’d laughed a little at that. But in the intervening twenty minutes, there’d been plenty of giggling, but no cracked heads, so she’d begun to relax some.
About that, anyway.
Despite her kids’ shenanigans, Dr. Logan seemed to get on with them real well, which she supposed wasn’t any too surprising, considering what he did for a living. But there was still something about him that only confirmed her earlier conclusion that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the situation. Nothing she could put her finger on, just a feeling.
“So how many rooms does this house have, anyway?” she asked, more for something to say than anything else.
“Well, let’s see,” he said, leaning against the dresser flanking one wall and crossing his arms over his chest. The storm was fixing to make an encore appearance, the wind tormenting the pyracantha branches outside the house, making them scrape against the wall. “There’s four rooms downstairs, not counting the office space, another six bedrooms and two baths up here.”
“Goodness.”
Dr. Logan smiled. “This had been Doc Patterson’s childhood home. He was the youngest of nine. His parents kept adding to the original house every few years to accommodate them all.”
“And nobody in the family wanted the house after the doctor died?”
“Nope. His brothers and sisters had scattered all over creation years before, their kids all have places of their own.”
“What about his kids?”
“Didn’t have any. Married twice, but no children.”
“Oh,” she said, then got quiet for a moment, rubbing the baby’s back. “So it’s just you in this great big place, all by yourself?”
He paused. “Yep.”
From the next room came a thump loud enough to make the sleeping baby’s hands flail out, followed by more giggles.
“What made you decide to become a country doctor?” she asked, because this was something she really was curious about.
His mouth twitched a little. “Being sick a lot as a kid, actually.”
“You?”
“Yep. Allergies, recurring bronchial infections, you name it. If Doc Patterson wasn’t out at our farm, I was in here, at the office. We got to be pretty good friends, he and I. Enough that, about the time I started to grow out of many of my ailments, he started taking me with him on his calls. And I began to think I wanted to follow in his footsteps.” Now he grinned, full out. “Most people I knew thought I was nuts, wanting to take on a job with no benefits, long hours, and unreliable income. But there was no talking me out of it.” He checked his watch. “It’s getting on to eight o’clock. You want me to get the kids ready for bed?”
She opened her mouth to say, no, of course not, only to realize there was a big difference between sitting still in a chair and wrestling two wired little kids into bed. So what she said was, “I’d be very grateful.”
Dr. Logan nodded, then headed into the adjoining room. Maddie decided she’d best supervise, though, so she got up and carefully moved herself and her new daughter into the kids’ bedroom, where Ryan was already pawing through the smaller of the two suitcases, looking for pajamas.
“Oh, land!” Maddie nearly gasped at the rumpled sheets and every-which-way blankets and pillows on the beds. “Would you look at what you two have done to these beds! And where did you put your new coats? They better not be on the floor somewhere!”
Naturally they both flew out of the room to heaven-knew-where, appearing not ten seconds later, panting and giggling, with the coats.
Maddie set Amy Rose, who was sawing logs to beat the band, down on one of the beds and reached out for the coats. “Give those to me.” She swiped dust and dirt off first one, then the other. “Honestly, you two.” But even she could tell her scolding didn’t have much punch to it. “Get your toothbrushes out of the case and go brush your teeth,” she said, and to her immense relief, they did. She turned to Dr. Logan, who was now standing with a faded Barbie nightgown in one hand and a pair of worn Barney pajamas in the other. “They love those coats so much, I don’t have the heart to make them give them back.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, Maddie Kincaid, because you’d for sure hurt Ivy’s feelings if you did that. And what do you think you’re doing?”
“Fixing up the bed,” she said, tugging the bedcovers up on one of the beds, then rearranging the pillow. Trying to convince herself that accepting Ivy’s generosity wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. “And no, before you ask, I’m not straining anything.” From the bathroom, she heard lots of giggling and spitting, followed by a shriek. Her belly protested some when she straightened up.
“Noah James!” she hollered in the direction of the bathroom, “you better not be spitting toothpaste at your sister!”
“I’m not, Mama!” More giggles. On a sigh, Maddie looked over at Dr. Logan. “I guess you have a point. About the coats, I mean. It’s just…”
“Tell me if the situation were reversed, you wouldn’t do the same thing.”
The kids came barreling out of the bathroom, their chins a slobbery mess. Maddie grabbed a tissue from the box by one of the beds, then a child. “Well, I guess you’re right about that,” she said, swiping the goo off Katie Grace’s chin and sending her over to Dr. Logan. In the midst of cleaning off Noah, Maddie glanced over at the doctor, who was down on one bended knee in front of the tiny girl, patiently waiting while she unbuttoned her sweater herself. When the l
ittle girl got the last button undone and beamed up at him with a look that was equal parts triumph and adoration, something twisted around Maddie’s heart. Something she didn’t need to be dealing with right now.
Despite what she’d said about letting the doctor do this, Maddie snatched up Noah’s pajamas from where Dr. Ryan had left them on the foot of the bed. “C’mere, sugar. Let me help—”
“No!” Noah swiped the garments from her hand. “I can do it!” Maddie’s brows lifted: she’d been fighting for some time, without much success, to get Noah to do more things on his own. Suddenly now he’s Mr. Independent? At first, Maddie figured it was just because he didn’t want Katie Grace getting one up on him. But as she caught his furtive glances at Dr. Logan, she understood a little more what was going on. Thought she did, anyway. He might have let the doctor take care of him this morning, when he was too frightened and tired to do otherwise, but now that he was feeling more on top of things, caution had returned with a vengeance.
Suddenly she heard herself say, “You think there’s any way I could go see Ned in a few days?”
She had no idea why that had popped out of her mouth, especially right now, or why she saw that as some sort of solution, but it had and she did. Maybe it was just a sense of doing something. In any case, after a second or so, Dr. Logan shrugged and said, “I don’t see why not. We’ll find someone to watch the kids for a couple hours and I’ll take you over.”
“I don’t need you to take me—”
“I’m up to the hospital several times a week, anyway, checking up on my patients or doing rounds. No sense in both of us driving over there.”
“Oh. Well, yes, I suppose you have a point.” She licked her lips. “And if Ned says it’s okay with him, I want to see his house.”
Ryan frowned. “I told you, that house isn’t fit for you and the kids.”
He had, over supper. But she said anyway, “I know what you told me. But I think I’m perfectly capable of deciding whether his house is ‘fit’ or not.” She sighed at his expression, then lowered her voice, keeping an eye out on the kids, who were busy drawing pictures in the condensation on the window panes. “We can’t stay with you forever, we can’t go back to Arkansas, I don’t have any money, and the prospect of living in my car doesn’t exactly thrill me. Besides, it’s not like we were exactly living in a palace before. And if I was living at Ned’s, then maybe he could come home to convalesce instead of going into that place you were talking about.”
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