The Life Saver

by Lilian Darcy

Don't read anything into it, Jo, she told herself.

  'You can call Andy Grafton from my place, too,' Rip suggested. 'I'd like to hear what he says.'

  They checked that Dotty had set the answering-machine, then locked up and left, and Jo followed Rip to his place in her own car. Miffy would be spending a second rare evening on her own, but cats didn't get as lonely as dogs, provided their physical wants were catered for, and Miffy's were.

  At Rip's, Jo called the Graftons' home number but there was no answer and she guessed that Andy and Alice must still be at the hospital with Nina and Cody. She'd have to try again later.

  She imagined Genie sitting patiently in the silent house, hearing the unanswered phone, and her eyes filled with sudden tears. A dog like Genie was an inspiration, and she had no doubt as to the strength of the animal's bond with Nina and her family.

  'They have to know about that lump already, don't they?' she muttered, putting down the phone. 'It can't be significant, surely it can't. But Alice said Genie is ten years old. That's canine middle age. Why can't dogs who are as clever and useful as human beings live as long as the people they care for?'

  'Talking to yourself?' Rip had appeared in his wide kitchen doorway.

  Jo liked his house. It was a very modern interpretation of the traditional log cabin, with lots of varnished golden wood, a wood-burning fan-forced stove, a high-ceilinged open-plan living area and a gallery level featuring three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

  Tara was a quilt artist as well as a singer, and even though she'd taken most of her favourite quilts with her, she'd left several gorgeous ones behind. Mounted on dowel rods on the walls or draped over the backs of couches, their bright, clever colours and patterns echoed those of the throw pillows on the couches, softened the expanses of wood and created a cosy, rustic feel.

  'Talking to myself,' Jo agreed. 'About Genie. No one was home at the Graftons', so I'll have to try again later. For now, let me help you cook.'

  'You can just sit and sip wine and look decorative, if you want.'

  'Not very good at looking decorative.'

  Fishing, Jo?

  Silly, she hadn't meant to try and squeeze a compliment from him, but that was how it had come out.

  'You're beautiful,' Rip answered quietly. He didn't look at her, just kept on cutting mushrooms.

  She went hot all over.

  I asked for it so blatantly. He said it as if he meant it, but I'll never be sure of that, now, ever.

  She was so busy chastising herself that she forgot to answer out loud, and Rip didn't say anything more either. Chop, chop, chop went the knife on the wooden cutting board. A dozen halved button mushrooms landed in a metal bowl with a chorus of muted thuds. Still without speaking, Rip went to the walk-in pantry and brought out a dark green bottle, then opened a drawer and found a corkscrew.

  'Red, don't you think?' he said at last, holding out the bottle. 'To go with filet mignon?'

  'Yes, that would be nice. Tell me what to do, Rip. You mentioned cream?'

  'Yes, I got ambitious and decided on chocolate mousse. If I give you the recipe, can you tackle that, while I get everything else going?'

  'Of course.'

  'Or would you rather sit?'

  'No, I'd only feel awkward doing that.'

  'Cheese and crackers with the wine, to keep us fortified?'

  'Yes, please.'

  He shook a box of crackers into a Japanese ceramic bowl, unwrapped a wedge of Dutch Edam and a circle of French Camembert and set them on a cutting board with a knife.

  'And maybe some music...' He disappeared into the living room without waiting for agreement from her on this last suggestion, and she suspected he didn't want to risk too much silence.

  Think of some safe, suitable conversation topics, Jo, so he doesn't have to tell you you're beautiful again. Eat a cracker and some cheese, too, so your mouth looks busy until you've thought of what to say.

  'Tell me more about Shelley,' she said, when he'd filled the air with what sounded like Cajun Klezmer music and returned to the kitchen to toss a green salad.

  'Well, she's short,' he said vaguely, 'about five feet two inches...'

  Jo laughed and continued for him, 'And she has a mole on her right cheek. I didn't want a police identity parade description, Rip. I meant—'

  He wheeled away from the kitchen bench suddenly, and the vagueness had gone. 'Problem is, Jo, you see, I so wanted to kiss you last night, and now I've got you here again and so the exact same issue is coming up and I can't think straight. At all.' An intense energy crackled in his body, and Jo felt its impact like a powerful ocean wave, even though they weren't close enough to touch.

  She put down her wine and narrowly escaped coughing up a cracker crumb. She couldn't look at him. She couldn't even move any more, now that the wine was safely on the kitchen table. 'You did want to kiss me? I didn't know. I thought. But then—'

  'Yes, I wanted to kiss you! It was killing me,' he said simply.

  Look up at him, Jo, she urged herself. He's looking at you, you can feel it like heat. What's his face saying?

  She cautiously lifted her gaze, saw a smooth mouth curved slightly, in a helpless sort of smile, and dark eyes that burned and twinkled at the same time. 'Then why didn't you?' she asked. 'Because to be honest, since, uh, we seem to be doing that, it was killing me, too.'

  'Lord, Jo, because I was being cautious.'

  'Cautious?'

  'Taking it slow. Kissing you could change a lot of things. I wanted to work out how I felt about that. Don't you think—?'

  She didn't let him finish but put her hands on her hips and grinned and glared at him at the same time. 'Waiting twenty-four hours counts as cautious?'

  'Twenty-four of the kind of hours I've just spent, yes.' He almost yelled the words, venting a frustration they both shared. 'Anyhow, it might be more than twenty-four hours, if I don't kiss you.'

  'If you don't—? Rip!' She gave a gasp that was nearly a sob. 'Oh, Rip, good grief, after what we've just said to each other, of course you have to kiss me now!'

  He didn't need a second invitation.

  The distance between them, across the kitchen floor, somehow wasn't there any more. Jo didn't notice it disappear, didn't notice which of them covered the most ground. She reached out her arms, desperately impatient and eager to discover how he would feel, but then at the last moment she waited, for some reason wanting the final impetus to come from him.

  He smiled down at her and brought his hands to rest on her shoulders, curving his palms to fit against her, taking it slow as if he needed to make sure at each step that he was doing it right…

  You are doing it right, she wanted to tell him. So far, you're doing it perfectly.

  'Hi, Jo.'

  'Hi.'

  'You are beautiful. You didn't say anything just now when I told you that.'

  'I know. I'm sorry. You took me by surprise. Thank you.'

  'Hey, no need for that.' He squeezed her shoulders, then dipped his head and brushed his forehead lightly against hers.

  'OK,' she said.

  This felt so new—much newer than it would have felt if they'd only just met, because they weren't simply taking in fresh impressions, they were letting go of old, outdated ones.

  This is Rip.

  Just Rip.

  Ripley Taylor, MD, whose name sits neatly above mine on the brass plaque beside the practice's front door. This is a man who was married to someone else when I met him. This is a man whose marriage I watched fall apart, wondering if Tara was as much to blame for the whole thing as she seemed.

  Rip brushed the backs of his lingers against her neck, as if smoothing the way for his mouth, which came next, planted soft and hot on the tender skin just below her ear. She leaned her cheek against his head and smelled the lingering scent of conditioner in his short dark hair, tangy and sweet at the same time.

  He pulled his head back a little, and now their cheeks pressed together in a slow caress. The corner
of his mouth touched hers, and it felt right, so right and delicious and full of the promise of more. He took her face between his hands, parted his lips and covered her mouth, moving in a deep, seductive rhythm. When she responded, he went deeper, tasting her and ravishing her, making her satisfied and yet still hungry.

  With closed eyes, she lost all sense of time and direction, had to anchor herself the right way up by holding his strong, warm body, running her hands down his back and bringing them to rest against the satisfying curve of his backside.

  She wasn't ready for him to stop when he did. Opening her eyes, she found him watching her, his hands still softly cupped against her face.

  'Was that the whole kiss?' she murmured.

  Jo Middleton, what a ridiculous question!

  'No, it was only the test run,' he answered seriously, as if the question had been quite reasonable. 'I thought we should do the whole, actual kiss after we've eaten, if we still want to.'

  'You think there's a chance we might not want to?'

  'Not a chance in hell, from my end. But, you know, we're doctors, we have to allow for rare syndromes and worst-case scenarios.'

  'The rare syndrome of having a wonderful test kiss and not wanting to repeat it?'

  'Hey, give me a break. I've never fantasised about making love to my practice partner before, I'm making up the ground rules as I go.' His voice dropped to a husky whisper. 'Don't you think, Jo? That we should take it in little steps, one at a time? Don't you think this has a horrible potential to blow up in our faces if we make any mistakes?'

  No.

  Right now she didn't think that at all.

  She tried to imagine it and couldn't. She tried to envisage feeling hostile towards Rip, hiding in her office to avoid him, having to negotiate through lawyers to terminate the partnership while her house was on the market because she felt so negative about Rip that she had to leave Harriet and maybe even the whole state of Vermont, the way Tara had done.

  But she just couldn't see it. Rip had been in her life for five years, and she couldn't imagine ever wanting him not to be.

  So she smiled at him and shrugged and said, 'I guess.'. She ran her fingers lightly through his hair, then brushed her mouth across his and whispered, 'One more test kiss, then, Rip, just to be really sure?'

  He didn't argue.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dr Breck came up for an interview the following Monday. At least, they all referred to it as an interview, but it was more like a conversation between colleagues. Jo warmed to Shelley at once, and the decision was a foregone conclusion on Rip's part and her own.

  Shelley seemed fairly confident also. 'We drove up yesterday, and Lloyd is already getting serious about real estate. From our end, I'd definitely like to join the practice, so keep that in mind when you discuss your decision.'

  She left to meet Lloyd and baby Hayley for a picnic lunch in their car, while Ripley, Jo, Trudy, Dotty, Merril and Amanda closed up shop for an hour and went to the Harriet Café for a meeting. Nobody voiced any doubts about Dr Breck and everybody agreed that it had been an easy decision on all sides. At her own request, Shelley would start as the new partner in just two weeks' time.

  Spring was definitely on the advance today, like a military campaign marching up from the south. The calendar had turned over to April. Down in the Carolinas, the trees might already be starting to show a fuzz of green. That hadn't yet happened here in the colder northern climes of Vermont, but the promise of colour and scent infused the air in some indefinable way that you felt without having the right words for.

  Jo talked with Dotty about their garden plans for the summer, and while hostas and impatiens and hybrid tea roses featured in her conversation, her thoughts kept drifting to the delicious, secret memory of kissing Rip four days ago, the way thistledown drifted on warm, sunny air.

  She couldn't help watching him across the table more often and more closely than she should, with a little kick of pleasure and anticipation and, yes, possessiveness in her heart. Nice possessiveness, tender and warm and generous.

  Could possessiveness be generous? Was that too much of a contradiction? She didn't think so. As he'd said on Thursday night, however, all of this was new. She knew they both had a lot of exploring still to do.

  By mutual agreement, they hadn't seen each other over the weekend. Ripley had been on call Friday and Sunday nights, while the other practice in Netherby had taken the hours in between. He must have gone skiing, because he had a tan line cutting across his face, below the paler shapes that showed where his sunglasses had been.

  Jo had skied at one time, but after Mamie's stroke she'd fallen out of the habit. Her skis probably had rusted edges and bindings now, since she'd left them almost forgotten in the basement for the past four years. She'd spent the weekend focusing on the coming warmth, not the departing cold, but next winter, she vowed, it might be time to invest in some new equipment.

  In case Rip and I...

  No. For herself! Because she liked it.

  Ripley was eating a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, accompanied by sparkling mineral water and a side order of fries. Poor thing. His mood was fine, thanks to the patch on his arm, but nicotine replacement didn't deal with the whole cigarette habit. The way he picked up his French fries and slid them into his well-shaped mouth, and the way he once or twice patted the breast pocket where he always used to keep his cigarettes, told Jo that he was still finding this tough.

  She needed to be patient, she told herself, if he wanted to approach the shift in their relationship more cautiously than she did. And she needed to be brave, in case the shift was temporary and didn't work out.

  Thursday's kiss did its thistledown drift into her thoughts again.

  Not the test kiss.

  The real kiss.

  The one they'd had after dinner and wine.

  The one when his strong male body had seemed like even more of a treat to have in her arms, and when she'd wanted to find out so much more about what it was like— all the detail that seemed so important and precious in a lover. His body's patterns of hair and soft skin, firm muscle and hard bone, its tenderest places, the way it moved and responded to touch far more intimate than just mouth on mouth, no matter how delectable that was.

  Despite her hunger to move forward, she'd told him, 'I do kind of like the idea of taking this slowly,' when they'd agreed to stop at a kiss and part for the evening.

  She appreciated what his caution said about him, and realised that Tara might have something to do with it, too. He didn't want to repeat anything that in hindsight seemed like a mistake.

  Jo shared this feeling in relation to her own past. Jack had wanted full love-making the same night as their first kiss, and in the grip of a heady crush, she'd given it to him. It hadn't been satisfying for her. Too much, too fast, too soon. It had taken her weeks—months, maybe—to learn how to make their bodies work together so that he wasn't the only one to attain full pleasure.

  Rip bit another French fry in half and met Jo's gaze across the table. Their secret smile lasted for just the blink of an eye, but that was enough for now. 'You should have ordered the home fries, Rip,' she teased him. 'They're not such a suggestive shape for an ex-smoker.'

  'The suggestive shape was the whole point,' he said. 'That and the salt.'

  'Dr Taylor, you've got Don Gregory coming in this afternoon.' Dotty had come in. 'And I know you're going to tell him again to cut down on his salt, so...'

  'You're asking me to give up all my weaknesses at once, you cruel woman?'

  'Find some other, better weaknesses that don't contradict what you tell your patients is what I'm asking.' She was teasing, too. 'It's spring. Take up a hobby.'

  'Might do that,' he agreed, and his eyes met Jo's again.

  That kind of a hobby, you're thinking of, Rip?

  The kissing me kind?

  Yum!

  He was coming to her place for dinner tonight. She could hardly believe it was only six days sin
ce he'd stormed around to apologise for his nicotine-deprived mood and she'd fed him mushroom and cheese omelette and a glass of wine.

  Her favourite season?

  Definitely spring!

  In theory, Jo's appointment hours finished early on a Monday. Sometimes she stayed late to catch up on paperwork and medical journals. More often, in recent months, the early finish had become stretched right up to her usual going-home time by the extra patients that the practice just hadn't been able to squeeze into her official hours.

  Today, she resisted a walk-in who only needed over-the-counter advice from a pharmacist, as well as a fifty-three-year-old who read scary magazine articles on various health topics on a regular basis and invariably developed imaginary cases of myriad ailments as a result. Dotty had learned to get some information from her about the reason for her visit before showing her in for an appointment.

  Sally Meath's disease of the month today was ovarian cancer. No joke, this one. It was a silent killer that had usually progressed beyond the possibility of treatment before any defining symptoms developed, but as Sally had had a full hysterectomy including ovaries ten years previously, she needed only a thirty-second verbal reassurance that she couldn't possibly have the disease.

  'But did you call up that therapist I mentioned to you, Sally?' Jo asked. She'd tried to suggest in the past that Sally should receive some counselling from a trained psychologist. The imaginary symptoms were getting more frequent and less plausible.

  'I lost the card.'

  'They'll give you another one at the front desk, OK? Put it in the credit-card section of your purse this time maybe. I'll call the therapist myself and tell her you'll be coming in.'

  With that, she was able to get away, and it was still only four o'clock. She'd shopped on the weekend. She could leave her car out front, here at the practice, and walk home, since tomorrow's forecast was just as favourable for walking back here in the morning. She would potter around in the kitchen, put on music, put a load of laundry on, and Rip would show up at her front door some time between six and seven.

  Ahead of her, going up the street, she saw a familiar figure. Two familiar figures, one of which was a black, woolly-haired dog. 'Mrs Grafton?' she called, and quickened her pace to catch up as the other woman stopped and turned.