Saving Dr. Ryan

by Karen Templeton

  “Whatever you want to make is fine with me,” he said, hearing the curtness in his voice. At her puzzled look, he forced himself to ask, “Have a good time?”

  “Land, yes,” she said, then said, “Oh! Cal loaned me the lace tablecloth for Thanksgiving y’all used to use on holidays.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Don’t bowl me over with your enthusiasm,” she said, her lips curved in a teasing smile. “Have you asked Hank yet?”

  “No. Haven’t had a chance.”

  “Well, it’s early yet, I guess. Okay, guys,” she said to the kids, “why don’t you go see what’s on TV while I feed Amy Rose, then it’s tacos for dinner!”

  Amid shouts of glee, they all left.

  And it was quiet again, although not as quiet as before. Ryan could still hear them, in the other part of the house. Could still feel their presence, shimmering around him. Inside him.

  He got up again, went back over to the window. Stared out of it some more until his brain stopped acting all stupid and finally decided to cooperate.

  Maddie Kincaid was the kind of woman who was meant to be married, he decided. Not to him, though. To somebody who’d truly appreciate her, who wouldn’t feel invaded when she was around. Maybe to Cal—maybe Maddie was to be the one who’d finally rein his baby brother in?—maybe to somebody else. Maybe not right away—well, no, definitely not right away, she just lost her husband not too long ago, after all—but…but surely there were one or two single men around he’d consider worthy of her. Not that he could think of any at the moment, but still. Because, see, this wanting Maddie business…well, it was beginning to get out of hand. Badly.

  Nothing wrong with wanting things, true. Unless they were things you couldn’t have. And it wasn’t as if he was going to act on his impulses, even if they were threatening to melt down his brain. Not to mention other things. He’d learned his lesson on that score, boy. Still, it would just make things a helluva lot easier if she’d find herself interested in somebody else. Somebody solid and steady who’d be there every night for her, who could be a real husband to her.

  Who’d love her the way she deserved to be loved.

  All Maddie could think about through supper was her conversation with Cal. That, and the strange way Ryan was acting. The whole time they were at the table, he kept looking at the children like he was trying to memorize them.

  But he barely looked at her at all.

  When Noah and Katie Grace finally finished and went off into the living room to watch their half hour of TV before bed, she got to her feet and started snatching the dirty plates off the table. “Are you really that ticked with me for going out to your brother’s?”

  Ryan looked startled. He rose as well, taking the plates from her and scraping them before putting them in the dishwasher he’d had installed just last week. “Why would I be ticked? Where you go is none of my business.”

  Except she’d never seen a man scrape plates with such vigor before.

  “Not even to Cal’s?” she asked mildly.

  “Like I said. None of my business.”

  She stood on tip-toe to get down a container for the leftover cheese. Just before the whole shootin’ match came down on her head, Ryan came up behind her and fetched it for her, close enough that their bodies touched, just for a second. Just long enough for her hormones to start having a hissy fit.

  “Heaven knows why I’m telling you this,” she said as he walked away, “but I swear to you, nothing’s going on. I like Cal, but I’m not attracted to him.”

  “Maddie,” he said, facing her. And the stark longing in his eyes almost knocked the wind out of her. “I do not care if you and my brother see each other.”

  Then he went back to his task, leaving her standing there winded and confused. Okay, obviously he wasn’t longing for her—no hissy-fitting hormones on that side of the room, far as she could tell—but if not her, what? Or who?

  Cal was right. Ryan needed to move on, let another woman in his life. Not Maddie, though. But somebody. Maybe he was acting weird because being around her kids had loosened something inside him, making him realize just how much he’d sacrificed for his career. Made him realize…

  Standing at the sink, Maddie sucked in a breath. Maybe, just maybe, she’d been led here, to Haven, to Dr. Ryan Logan’s house, to somehow save him from his own loneliness. So…surely there had to be at least one single woman around selfless enough to be a country doctor’s wife?

  “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  With a smile that didn’t feel all that bright, she met his gaze.

  “Just fine,” she said, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Now—you any good at carving jack-o’-lanterns?”

  Another week passed before Ryan finally got around to asking Hank about Thanksgiving. Not that his heart was in it. But Maddie’s heart was set on having all the Logan brothers sitting around the table, so Ryan figured he may as well humor her. Just as he’d humored her by helping to carve pumpkins and handing out candy to trick-or-treaters while she took the kids out.

  Somebody had given Maddie a tiny peapod costume for Amy Rose. Ryan had never seen anything so cute in all his life as those great, big, solemn eyes staring up at him from inside that ridiculous costume. And judging from Maddie’s sparkling eyes when they got back, she’d had nearly as much fun as the kids.

  So he liked seeing the gal and her kids happy. So, hey, if it rang her chimes to get up at 5:00 a.m. to stuff stuffing up a turkey’s butt, who was he to stand in her way?

  Hank wasn’t in the motel office. Ryan went back out, listening for signs of life. After a second, he zeroed in on some scraping or something coming from one of the cottages, down by the lake. Couple minutes later, he found Hank up on a roof, dislodging old shingles.

  Balanced on his knees, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his brother shielded his eyes from the sun for a moment, then attacked the next layer of shingles. Despite the near-freezing temperature, he wasn’t wearing a jacket.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Hank. Maddie wanted me to ask you something.”

  “Ever hear of the telephone?”

  “I was in the neighborhood. And what the hell are you doing smoking?”

  Hank plucked the cigarette from his lips and waved it around. From the looks of things, he hadn’t shaved in two or three days. “Think of it as a relapse. So Maddie’s still living with you?”

  “I think living at my place is a better way of putting it, but yes. For a while.” He paused. “She’s been working for me, in the office. In trade.”

  “Mmm,” Hank said, then stubbed out the cigarette on the roof with the toe of his workboot. “So what does she want?”

  “To invite you to Thanksgiving dinner.”

  Hank stared down at Ryan. “You’re not serious.”

  “What I am has nothing to do with it. She’s hell-bent on seeing the three of us sitting around the same table—”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, I’m not forgetting it. And neither are you. It’s two lousy hours out of your life, such as it isn’t. Pencil it in.”

  Hank gave him a long, assessing look, tossed the crowbar he’d been using onto the grass beside the cottage, then jumped down off the roof. Aluminum clattered as he telescoped the ladder, then grabbed it with one hand. “You know,” he said, tramping back toward the office, “if I didn’t know you better, I’d get the feeling this means an awful lot to you.”

  “It means a lot to Maddie, which is what’s important here. I gather it’s been about as long for her as it has for us, having a real holiday.”

  “Holidays.” Hank snorted his disgust. “They’re such bull—”

  “Get over it, Scrooge.”

  Hank threw down the ladder and whipped around, his expression thunderous. “I don’t do holidays, remember? Especially this one. And I’m sorry if your woman’s hurt by that, but she’ll get over it.” He started to walk away, but Ryan grabb
ed his brother’s arm and yanked him back around.

  “One, Maddie’s not my woman,” he said in a low voice. “And two, I don’t give a damn right now about your baggage, which is getting pretty worn out after two years, don’t you think?”

  Hank twisted free of Ryan’s grasp, then got right up in his face, his fists clenched. “Says the man whose girlfriend walked out more than five freakin’ years ago! Walked out, Ryan! As in, she was still alive to walk.”

  For what seemed like an eternity, his brother’s raw pain reverberated through the woods around them. Ryan hauled in a ragged breath, then braced his hands on his hips, his gut cramping at the anguish blazing in Hank’s dark eyes…and the brutal truth of his brother’s words.

  “Maddie will want to know why you’re not coming.”

  Hank swore, then stomped back to the dumped ladder and snatched it up. “Tell her…actually, I don’t give a damn what you tell her. Just as long as everybody leaves me the hell alone.”

  By mid-November, the colorful, brisk days of fall succumbed to a bleak, bitterly cold early winter. But the weather was the least of Maddie’s concerns. She was far too busy trying to find a good woman to steer in Ryan’s direction.

  Not that she was having much luck.

  There’d been Marybeth Reese, the lawyer’s secretary who’d called that day everybody thought Sherman was having a heart attack. When Maddie met her in the grocery store, she thought she saw possibilities. But after inviting her over for coffee and seeing how the woman jumped every time one of the kids did something, she changed her mind.

  And Tree Sutherland, who ran the gift shop, had looked promising until Maddie decided the funny, pungent odor coming from the back of the shop wasn’t incense.

  Then, in rapid succession, Maddie disqualified Charmaine Chambers, Ruby’s new waitress, who was pretty enough but running short in the brain-cell department; Laura Raley, who ran the bakery, because she always looked like she was on the verge of tears; and Billie Mertz, the librarian. Lord, but the woman could talk your ear off.

  Unfortunately, the pool was drying up fast. But at least she wasn’t thinking about Ryan so much. Well, she was—she’d have to be, wouldn’t she, if she was trying to find him a girlfriend?—but not in that “serious trouble” way.

  Or so she told herself, at least twenty times a day.

  Maddie pulled up alongside the convalescent home where Ned had gone after his release from the hospital, then sat in the car, frowning and picking at a ragged fingernail. Something must’ve happened when Ryan asked Hank about Thanksgiving, something that went beyond his brother’s flat-out refusal to come. Because ever since, Ryan had been more withdrawn than ever.

  On a sigh, she got out of the car and headed toward the entrance.

  There just had to be a woman out there who’d love him enough to rattle loose whatever was keeping him from having a full life. Somebody who didn’t come with three kids and—she thought wearily as she opened the door to Ned’s room—a crotchety old great-uncle-by-marriage.

  “I want to go home, dammit!” he yelled at Maddie before she even got all the way inside. “A body can’t even take a leak around here without somebody or other gettin’ in my way!”

  With another sigh, Maddie set the day’s food offering on a table beside his bed. As usual, he was sitting in a chair facing the TV in his room, dressed in overalls and a wrinkled plaid flannel shirt. The home made sure his clothes got washed, but ironing was another matter altogether. His hair was combed today, though, at least. “Well, you can’t go home, Uncle Ned,” she said. “You still need looking after. Besides, your house isn’t fit to raise pigs in.”

  He cussed. Something he did a lot of. Except when she brought the children. He was real good with the children. Especially Amy Rose.

  “Nothin’ wrong with my house,” he muttered.

  “Everything’s wrong with your house. You know it. I know it. So can we please stop rehashing this conversation?”

  To her complete shock, the old man’s eyes brimmed with tears. “The food here isn’t worth giving to pigs, either,” he said, which she might have found funny if he hadn’t looked so miserable. She could just imagine what he’d been eating when he was on his own. At least he seemed to be mending pretty good. It was going to take a long while before he got back to normal, if indeed he ever did, but for a seventy-five-year-old man he was doing okay. According to the nurses, he was hell on wheels in that walker of his.

  “Ned, I’m sorry. You cannot go back to that shack.”

  “Then can I come home with you?”

  She nearly lost her breath. Granted, he was desperate, but…here she thought she’d have to fight tooth and toenail to convince him to come live with her and the kids, and bless his heart, he thought of it all on his own. Except…

  “If I was in my own place, I’d sign you out this minute. But I’m still living with Dr. Logan for another six or seven weeks at least. It’s not my house to offer.” She reached over and tucked her hand around his. “I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

  He looked at her like a little boy who’d just found out Christmas had been cancelled, then nodded.

  She reached around to fetch the plate of blueberry muffins she’d made, handing one to him. “It’s not so bad here, is it? I mean, the staff seems nice and all. And you’ve got your own room….”

  “Never been in a hospital my entire life,” he mumbled, picking apart the muffin and spilling crumbs all down the front of his shirt. “Now I can’t seem to get out of one.”

  “This isn’t a hospital, Uncle Ned—”

  “Might as well be,” he snapped, then shoved a huge bite of muffin into his mouth, half of which landed in his beard. Chewing slowly, he glanced around, sadness drooping his features. “Only real fear I ever had was being left to die in a place like this.”

  Well, Maddie’s heart couldn’t have hurt any more if somebody had tried to cut it right out of her body. She leaned over to pluck the biggest of the crumbs off his front, then stood, dumping them in the garbage before going to his closet and pulling out half a dozen or so wrinkled shirts. Honestly, what was she going to do with the men in her life, none of whom she could help in the way they most needed it? She yanked the last shirt off the hanger, thinking there was nothing worse than being a fixer who can’t fix a doggone thing.

  “Thought I might take these back and iron ’em for you. Can’t be comfortable, wearing them all creased like that.” When she got to the door, though, she turned around, opened her mouth, and heard herself say, “I’ll see what I can do about getting you out of here, okay? I can’t promise anything,” she added when his face brightened. “But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

  “It’d only be for six weeks. Maybe even a little less, if I can get that house before the New Year.”

  After chewing over how to approach Ryan about Ned for the better part of the afternoon, Maddie decided to just come right out and ask. The baby was asleep; Ryan was outside, raking leaves from the pair of huge sycamores that dominated the front yard, a task he’d been tending to in fits and starts over the past week. At the other end of the lawn, the kids were jumping in the one pile of leaves he’d designated as theirs, occasionally dumping wads of leaves all over each other.

  Now he leaned on the rake handle, his blue eyes a stark contrast to all the beiges and browns around him, the flanneled sky overhead. A few stragglers drifted down like a crackly, tawny snow, occasionally bouncing off his head and shoulders. He didn’t seem to notice.

  He also hadn’t said anything yet. She licked her lips and wrapped her arms around herself, the fabric of her old, sorry coat scratching her ungloved fingers.

  “And I know I have no right to ask this of you since you’ve already had enough to deal with, what with me and the kids hanging on forever, but his insurance won’t pay for more than a couple weeks, and he just can’t go back to his own place.”

  Okay, so that wasn’t exactly the truth. Although
she didn’t exactly know for sure that it wasn’t. It was just that saying Ned simply didn’t like being there didn’t seem like a compelling enough argument, somehow.

  Oh, Lord—why didn’t he say something?

  “He could stay in that downstairs bedroom, especially as it’s got its own bath…”

  “Maddie.”

  “What?”

  “Ned’s a veteran. Uncle Sam covers all his medical expenses.”

  “Oh.” Her face flamed. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Telling me a story? Or for wanting to help Ned out?”

  “For sucking you more and more into my affairs. I should be able to—”

  “You should be able to feel you can ask for help, Maddie.” He resumed his raking, calmly, quietly. As if nothing or nobody was going to ruffle his feathers. “Without being afraid to. I don’t have a problem with Ned staying here.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, not even bothering to peer out at her from inside his shell. Across the yard, a laughing Noah dumped more leaves on Katie Grace, who was giggling so hard she could hardly stand up.

  All “confuzzled,” as Grace used to say, Maddie started to walk away, only to hear Ryan say, “By the way—it’s time for your six-week postpartum checkup.”

  She turned around, blushing all the harder. “Do you really think I need—”

  “I figured you’d probably be more comfortable with Ivy doing it than me,” he said to the leaves.

  “Oh. Yes. Um, thank—”

  “You’re welcome,” he said mildly. Like they hadn’t been talking about poking around her inner workings. Of course, he was a doctor. Still, he didn’t have to sound so…so…detached from it all. And why did she care so darn much?

  Why?

  The kids’ giggles caught her attention again, just for a moment, just enough to enable her to act without thinking. Her heart pounding, Maddie scooped up an armful of leaves from a nearby pile…and dumped them over Ryan’s head. “What on earth—?” He spun around, leaves going every which way.