One of the residents—Simmons?—indicated the first bed. In a rapid monotone, he began to read from a color-coded chart. “…seven-year-old male, unrestrained MVA, surgically repaired damage to lower intestine…”
Mel’s attention drifted to the patient. Oh, no—the kid was taking in every word Simmons rattled off, understanding none of them and getting more scared by the minute.
His eyes were huge. They were also dark blue. Like Jack’s.
Without thinking, Mel slipped around the other students. Reaching the bed, she squeezed the child’s hand. “What’s your name?” she whispered.
“Eddie,” the boy whispered back.
“Well, don’t worry, Eddie. The man using the big words is a very good doctor who only lets his patients get better.”
The youngster’s rigid form relaxed as he gave Mel a grateful smile.
She smiled back. It was always good to remember why she was here. Not to impress Dr. Bowen. To learn how to help children heal.
That’s why she’d married Jack Halloran. Not to jump-start her previously flatlining erotic imagination. To help her survive this fellowship.
A minute later, as they all filed out of the room and headed down the hall, Dr. Bowen dropped back to walk beside her.
“Heartwarming, Dr. Burke.” His tone missed being scathing by a mosquito’s eyelash. “But don’t make promises to these kids that other doctors have to keep. And don’t get distracted during rounds.”
With that, Bowen strode forward, leaving Mel to grind her teeth in peace. Lordy, the man made piranha look like Easter pets.
Is that how Tess—and Jack, and Sherry—saw her? Mel wondered, touching her pager as she followed the other white coats into the next patient’s room. So dedicated to medicine, she’d lost touch with humanity?
It’s not that she didn’t want to have friends, a social life, some fun once in a while.
But everyone had to make a choice, and she’d chosen medicine. Six short months from now, her years of personal sacrifices would start paying off. Soon she’d be saving children like Eddie, like her brother, sending them back to their families healthy and whole and alive.
That would make every solitary, dateless Saturday night, every clueless social situation worthwhile. It would even, Mel assured herself as the group squirted back into the hallway and headed to the third patient, make marrying a stranger for the purpose of housework seem like a good idea.
Which it hadn’t this morning. Not when she’d awakened to that sexy stubble and hard, hot body looming above her. She’d wanted to ditch everything except coaxing him into bed for a real honeymoon.
Mel shook her head. Where was this mushy female stuff coming from?
She’d have plenty of time for all that personal stuff later. Now she’d just have to watch herself around him. Yeah, keep her distance, so she didn’t do something career-damaging stupid. Like throw her socially inept self at her hottie of a husband. Er, wife. Er—
“Does your silence mean you’re unprepared, Dr. Burke?” Bowen’s sharp-edged question cut through Mel’s self-lecture like one of those lasers used for vision correction surgery.
“Of course not, Dr. Bowen,” she replied calmly, ignoring the weasel’s patently skeptical expression as she mentally assembled her case’s information into coherent order.
“Good.” Bowen’s silky purr grated like nails on a blackboard. “We were afraid you were lost in a romantic haze.”
“Excuse me?” Mel fingered the pager clipped to her pocket.
“I understand you took the weekend off to get married.”
Mel shot a glare at ol’ Dan Something. Dan Blabbermouth, apparently. “Saturday, sir,” she replied quietly, her fingers sliding past her beeper to form a fist in her pocket. “One day. I can assure you that my full attention remains focused on pediatric surgery.”
“It better, Burke,” Dr. Bowen snapped. “Because only those willing to give 110% can hope to complete this program.”
Taking a deep breath to avoid shouting at him that she was already giving 150%, Mel nodded, then began her presentation.
No question she’d made the right decision, marrying Jack. The next six months might be hard on her hormones, but with his help, she and her parents’ house would survive this surgical residency from hell. Run by the devil himself.
AMAZING WHAT A three-hour nap could do for a man’s outlook on life, Jack thought as he shambled into the kitchen. He was good to go now. Ravenous, too.
He headed for the refrigerator, ready to chow down.
Oh, yeah. No food. And fixing that was his job.
For the second time that morning, Jack retrieved his keys and wallet and headed for the supermarket he’d seen near the pancake house.
A woman in Mel’s high-stress profession needed to eat right; he should stock up on healthy, nutritious foods. Like what? Tofu patties or fruit-flavored sports drinks or something?
Trying to guess Mel’s likes and dislikes, Jack cruised the aisles, filling his cart. The meat department was a little confusing, but he emerged from it with hamburger meat and something called a roast. He’d make that for dinner, he decided as he ate a bag of pork rinds on the way home.
The snack restored his good spirits—so much that when the retiree across the street came over to introduce himself, Jack accepted his offer to help carry in the sacks of food.
Ol’ Bob seemed okay. A little talkative…
Now who’s making understatements, Halloran? The guy hung around for thirty minutes, blabbing nonstop.
Once the old geezer left, Jack opened a can of ravioli. As he forked out the first bite, he remembered the laundry needed drying.
Man, this housework was just one thing after another.
Setting aside Chef B’s creation, Jack went into the utility room and lifted the washer’s lid. He reached in and pulled out some tiny wet feminine coverings.
Pink, tiny, wet feminine coverings.
Mystified, Jack gave a shrug, then transferred them to the dryer.
Back at the washer, he picked out more pink little bits of clothing.
“What the—?” This time, Jack reached in with both hands and pulled out a whole wad of wet laundry. Also pink. Weird, he thought as he tossed them into the dryer with the other stuff. He could have sworn she didn’t have so many p—
“Oh, hell.” Spying the explanation, Jack snatched it out.
With a sinking feeling, he draped the red silk blouse atop the dryer, then dug through the washer.
Dammit! The whole load was pink.
And he was toast.
So now what, imbecile? Jack asked himself, perusing the culprit blouse gloomily. That, of course, was when he noticed the label.
Not that the instructions it contained were much help. “Wash with like colors.”
Colors like what?
He was guessing not ivory. Or pale blue. Or yellow. Great. Now he remembered their original colors.
The real question du jour was—how chapped would Mel be when she discovered he’d ruined her underwear?
Not that any of it was shredded. If it was his stuff, he’d just figure “no harm, no foul.” But women, he knew, looked at these things totally differently.
Refusing to let himself picture even that crimson blouse against Mel’s pale skin and dark hair, Jack grimly read labels and resorted everything he’d turned pink.
He ended up with a “do not bleach” bunch—consisting of the lacy little lingerie confections that made his palms sweat—and a “use only color-safe bleach” group.
Wasn’t that an oxymoron? Jack wondered as he began the rewashing process.
Two hours later, both batches were still pink. Glumly he folded it all and took it upstairs, leaving it piled pinkly on her bed.
Then he clomped back downstairs, determined to do something right today.
He’d dust, he decided, heading for the den. Catch the end of the Rangers game, get a saner—i.e., less erotically charged—perspective on the woman he’
d married…and dust.
Any moron, he assured himself—even an ex-stockbroker—could dust.
5
MEL LET HERSELF INTO the house quietly. Not that she expected a little noise in the kitchen to disturb her new…wife?…husband?…maid-by-marriage? Jack, just call him Jack. His room was at the far end of the house and upstairs to boot. And it was way late. Closing in on midnight.
The guy’s in dreamland, Burke.
Which was where she needed to be. Mel pushed her glasses up onto her hair so she could rub her tired eyes.
“You call this ten o’clock?”
Mel jumped. Who the—?
Oh, my. There was no “just” about the Jack who stood in the doorway leading to the living area, and it didn’t take corrective lenses to read his body language—feet apart, chiseled forearms crossed over that hard-muscled, broad chest.
The man looked like a slightly overdressed but still lethally attractive pirate, straight off the cover of one of those torrid historical romances she sometimes wished she had time to read.
“Ever heard of a telephone?”
So much for “Hi, honey! How was your day?”
“Do you even own a watch?” Somehow he managed to inject the question with the same blend of astonishment, worry and mild disappointment her mother always had when Mel had first started working at the hospital during med school.
Mel couldn’t help herself. She chuckled.
It was that or cry because somebody noticed how hard she worked.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Jack informed her, uncrossing his arms to clamp his hands on his hips. “You’re almost two hours late! I was worried—anything could have happened.”
Mel lowered her glasses to bring him into focus and felt her jaw drop. The man was scowling at her?
The heck with that. Bowen’s criticism she had to take, but not Jack Halloran’s nagging. “I don’t know what business of yours it—” she began.
“What business?” He interrupted her, just like Bowen always did. Was that a man thing or what?
If she wasn’t too exhausted to spare the energy, Mel decided, she’d get PO’d about it.
“I’m supposed to be taking care of you, remember?” Flames seemed to flare from his blue eyes, but it was her insides that felt hot.
Sexy and concerned—an irresistibly attractive combo.
And that’s exactly why she’d dawdled at the hospital, gathering nurses’ observations instead of rushing right home after she finished charting her patients.
“For all I knew,” Jack was ranting on, “you wrecked your car or got mugged in the hospital parking lot or—” his arms waved through most of the kitchen’s air space “—or something.”
The man certainly had a vivid imagination, Mel thought as she struggled to ignore the way her pulse spiked when Jack rebulged—er, recrossed his arms.
“Okay, I’m sorry.” Mel offered a smile as a peacemaking gesture. “This—” she did her own arm-waving “—is all new to me. I—”
Don’t explain, Burke. Inform. “I mean, I don’t expect you to greet me at the door with my pipe and slippers.”
“Fine.” Jack’s voice dropped to its normal, still dangerously sexy level. “But feeding you is part of my job. And if I’d had something ready for you at ten, it would be totally ruined by now.”
It would? Mel thought pizza could stay warm in the oven indefinitely.
Wait a minute. “If you’d made something?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Mel felt her eyelids retract. Her eyeballs were probably popping out of their orbital sockets.
Halloran, however, didn’t seem to have heard what he’d just said. Instead—as if she was the one with the reasoning impairment!—he blithely continued, “I agreed to take over all homemaking chores—including cooking meals—but I can’t do it without your cooperation.”
That sensual idiot who’d taken up residence in her brain immediately suggested a few delicious—and deliciously indecent—cooperative “chores” they could do. Together.
Maybe her reasoning was impaired.
“Again, I’m sorry. I’m not used to having a wife yet.” Mel started forward, then stopped. His large male body blocked her path. Like Hoover Dam blocking whatever river that was.
“I’ll, uh, call next time,” she promised, trying to edge around him so she could escape upstairs. Before she did something stupid, like blurt out one of those X-rated suggestions. Or heave a sigh of pleasure as she plastered herself against that big, hard chest wall.
“Dinner’s no big deal,” she said, to clarify to herself, at least, that she wasn’t needy, not really. She’d married him for the house.
Yeah. And Bowen’s a marshmallow inside his cactuslike exterior. “I had a piece of somebody’s birthday cake this afternoon.”
Jack shook his head at her like she’d given the wrong answer to a test question. The little strand of hair shooting out into space from the cowlick above his eyebrow waggled at her.
“That’s not eating, Melinda,” Jack’s disapproving-mom voice instructed. “That’s snacking. Nobody who works as long and hard as you do can survive on cake.” Brushing past her, he headed for the refrigerator. “Good thing I went to the supermarket today. Twice.”
If it was such a good thing, why did he sound so annoyed?
“I’ll microwave you something.”
“Oh, I can nuke boxes,” Mel said cheerfully, following him across the kitchen. Hell-bent on getting him out of the room. Out of pheromone range. “Let me—”
Pirouetting with the grace of one of those Russian ballet-athletes, Jack planted a rock-hard arm against an upper cabinet, blocking her progress like a railroad crossing gate. She could go through it if she had the guts, but something told her it might be a bad idea.
“I’ll prepare your dinner, Melinda,” he insisted softly, jutting his jaw at her. “It’s what I do now, remember?”
Between the man’s force field of sheer maleness and the goofy pronouncements coming out of his mouth, Mel was beginning to feel light-headed.
Or maybe she was hungry.
“I think we need to set some ground rules,” Mel declared, then her gaze came to rest on the crinkly hair covering his forearm just inches away. Her brain quit thinking—its synapses shorting out under a flood of glandular secretions aimed at species’ continuity.
“I thought we had,” Jack claimed, adding piously, “I do the cooking and cleaning.”
“But you don’t have to wait on me hand and foot.” Jack’s hands on her. Mmm. Mel struggled to resist the image. “You see, Dr. Bowen—that’s my boss—he’s very dedicated—”
“He’s a slave driver.”
Well, yeah. That’s why she’d married this hunk.
She hadn’t married him to get into domestic arguments like this, but she was at a complete loss about how to wrap it up. How did couples stop wrangling once they got started?
“I’m just saying, my hours are crazy—”
“I noticed.”
Mel grinned. “That doesn’t mean I expect you to keep crazy hours, too.”
“No sweat,” Jack said, then grinned sheepishly. Even that did something very somersaultish to Mel’s insides. “I, ah, took a little nap after you left this morning,” he confessed.
Then, before she could congratulate him, he scowled. “But I still pulled my weight today. Hell, I spent all afternoon at the supermarket. Bought nearly three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries.”
“H-how much?” Whoa! Had she married a compulsive shopper?
“Two hundred, thirty-nine dollars and seventeen cents, to be exact.”
Huh? “I thought you rounded down below fifty,” she said faintly.
“Not if you’re making a point.”
Mel closed her eyes. So gorgeous, so male, so nuts. “The point being—?”
“You do need me, Melinda.” His voice caressed her name. His hands cupped her shoulders gently. Oh, she wanted to lean
into him, to press against that solid chest, to rest in his arms….
Puh-leeze, Burke. He wants your insurance, not your body draping all over his like burn dressings. He said so, remember?
“And I’m going to help you.” His hands left her shoulders, which wanted to veto the departure. “But you have to let me. I admit—” Now he held out open palms. “It’s going to take me a while to whip this place into shape and for us to develop routines that work—for both of us. All I’m asking is that you do your part. Just communicate, okay?”
Mel nodded, mesmerized by such sweet reasonableness. That woodsy, understated cologne he wore didn’t hurt either.
Her stomach, however, wasn’t quite as impressed; it growled.
Jack’s hands returned to her shoulders. But only to turn and aim her toward the breakfast nook. “Go sit down.” He opened the freezer. “Chicken marsala okay?”
“Sure.” Relieved they’d resolved their differences so easily, Mel imitated that bobbing-headed doll Aunt Gertrude’s husband used to set in the rear window of his ’57 Chevy. “Fine. Great.”
Whatever. She’d just as soon go upstairs and crash, but he sounded so intense about his wife-ing, she was afraid he’d suffer severe emotional distress or something if she bailed on dinner.
So she sat as ordered and let herself enjoy the appetizing view as Jack unboxed and vented the meal.
“Did you know your stove doesn’t work?” he asked as he popped it into the microwave.
Why would she? “No.”
“That’s why there’s no real dinner,” he explained, stabbing the key pad. “I called a repair service, but….”
“On Sunday?” Even she knew real businesses weren’t open then.
“They advertised 24/7 service.” Jack frowned at the now-revolving carousel. “Which is bull! They said they can’t send anyone out until Tuesday—at the earliest!”
Mel realized her limited experience with interpersonal relations was hampering her again. She didn’t have the faintest glimmer of how to assure him that the delay wasn’t a personal affront.
Or a national disaster. “So we eat fast food or frozen dinners for a few days. No biggie.”
“But I promised you home-cooked meals.”
Daddy By Design? & Her Perfect Wife Page 23