“You know good and well I mean Louise Wallant,” she said softly.
Recognition dawned. The expression on his face set. “Look, Louise and I are friends, sure. We know each other from way back. That’s no illicit secret.”
“No, maybe not. But where you spend every other weekend seems to be a secret. It’s only logical that you’ve been spending it with her.” Rebecca’s heart was numb. She slowly lowered herself to a chair. “Look, Louise Wallant and you really don’t concern me. It’s none of my business. It’s just—just—well, things got out of hand between us that one time. We did things we shouldn’t have. I see now I want more from a man than a couple of dates whenever he’s decided to stay in town for the weekend.”
“I don’t spend every other weekend at Deer Lodge with Louise Wallant, if that’s what this is about.”
He didn’t seem to be lying, she realized, despite her growing confusion. He was too sincere, and besides, lies would be too easy to expose. All she had to do is ask Louise.
“But you said you had specific reasons for coming to Mystery, for settling here,” she reminded him. Looking away, she added, “I figured it was a woman.”
“It’s not a woman. Not yet, anyway,” he added cryptically. “I came here because it was the nearest place to the Bitterroot Valley that needed a surgeon. I wanted to be close enough so that I could drive to Bitterroot Valley on weekends.”
He took her arm and drew her up from the chair. Slowly his arms encircled her. “I’m not having an affair with anyone, Becky. I volunteer my time at the children’s hospital on the reservation. They have no funds for extra surgeons but plenty of need.”
“That’s something to be proud of…. Why in the world would you keep it a secret?”
This time his smile was a little more wistful. “The heart is a lonely hunter, remember?”
He stared hard at her for a long time, as if trying to assess whether he could trust her or not.
Finally, when he seemed to have made up his mind, he said, “I know this might sound dumb to others. But I didn’t want anyone to know because one of the reasons I do it is that my own family was so dirt poor and dysfunctional. I’m not whining when I tell you this, just being honest. My dad was a broken-down failure who abused the hell out of me, my mother and his liver—alcohol killed him.”
His frank, calm tone made it clear he didn’t want pity, he wanted just to get it off his chest. “The Indian families near me sort of adopted me, just the way Hazel adopted you—not in court, maybe, but in everyday fact. No matter how many times my old man booted me out in a drunken rage, I never wanted for a place to sleep or a hot meal. Now I just want to give back something to them for all they gave me, you know what I mean? I just don’t talk about it because to explain my deep relationship to the reservation requires me to explain my relationship with my father—and I’m sure as hell not proud of that.”
She stared up at him, not sure, not yet willing to hope. “Okay, that explains what you do with your time. It doesn’t explain how cold you’ve been to me when every socialite in town purrs on your arm.”
He laughed so hard he almost roared. “That’s a great observation, Becky, and it’s true. I can make those kind of women purr. I know them so well. What surgeon doesn’t? All you have to do to make those kind happy is give them a costly trinket and a designer handbag. They’re no mystery at all. They don’t confound me.”
He wrapped her in his arms and looked down at her. “But then there’s Rebecca, with the wild untamed hair and spirit to match. You’re nothing but a mystery to me, and if I’ve come off cold, it’s just that I’ve found myself out of my element with you. I don’t know what will make you happy, or if I’m the guy to do it.”
She stared up at him, noting the love in his voice for his friends, the intensity of his features as he talked about deeply personal feelings. Only a strong and good man, she thought, could have overcome that background to become what and who he is today.
A tight bubble of emotion swelled within her chest, and she hardly trusted her voice. “I’m no mystery, Dr. Saville. I just want love and commitment and a family.”
It all suddenly overwhelmed her—the full realization of how wrong she had been about him, how unfair. Her own insecurities had somehow taken hold of her and crushed her good sense. Now she looked like a fool. A jealous, vulnerable fool.
His knuckles brushed along the smooth line of her cheek. In a voice rough with meaning, he said, “If you need to know anything about me, anything,” he emphasized, “all you have to do is ask. I believe in honesty in relationships.”
She closed her eyes, sick with regret. “Sometimes asking is the hardest thing in the world to do. Especially if you’re terrified of the answers.”
Her eyes opened. She knew tears glistened in them, but she had no more walls to put up. Now was the time to bare all. And pray there would be pieces left of her heart to pick up afterward.
Staring up at him, she confessed, “I didn’t think we had a relationship. I suppose that’s why I’ve been so cold. You were going off on your mysterious weekends, and I knew that day we spent together could very easily have been chalked up to just one of those things—especially for a big time bachelor M.D. But I couldn’t keep you from affecting me. I guess I just couldn’t relinquish the hope and need for something more between us. I just couldn’t relinquish it,” she finished with a whisper.
“But why should you? I became a doctor because I care about people, Rebecca. I’m not the kind of guy who wants one-night stands and throw-away girlfriends.” His embrace grew tighter, his expression more intense. “Look, I was afraid to be too pushy. I knew that one time between us took us both by surprise. But I also knew I wanted more. And not just more sex, more you. But you were skittish, so I just figured it was me. That I was too uptight, too controlled for you—”
“It wasn’t you. It’s never been you,” she blurted out, wiping the tears from her cheek. “It was me, okay? I just didn’t want another doctor to pass me up for a better class of woman.” She tried to pull away, but his hands became manacles, refusing her escape.
She shook her head, trying to entice him to let her go, but he wouldn’t. Finally her body went limp against his. The tears came fast now.
“I was jilted by another doctor,” she said, the words bitter on her tongue. “I fancied myself pretty much in love with the guy. Imagine my surprise when he told me my community college background wasn’t going to quite cut it on the way up the ladder to his success. He left me for a woman who already had everything—a woman very much like Louise Wallant. And there I was, little old Rebecca O’Reilly, holding the empty bag again. I just—just wanted to forgo a repeat experience. Once was enough in my life, thank you. And besides—”
She swallowed and finally stared him in the eye. “Besides, what I felt for Brian was nothing compared to how I feel for you. I didn’t think I could ever stand your rejection, and so the best way to protect myself was to not get involved.”
He drew her even closer. His arms locked around her shoulders. His mouth kissed away the tears. Nuzzling her hair, he said nothing for long sweet moments. Finally, in a lover’s whisper, he said, “Becky, you are who you are because you’re involved. That’s so much of your beauty. Don’t withhold it.”
She wanted to shout with joy. All the emotion she’d longed to show him seemed to demand release all at once. But once in freefall, the unknown assailed her. Her heart was captured, no doubt about it. But the ending was still unclear.
The timer on the oven dinged. The mood shifted.
“Dinner’s ready,” he announced, holding her eyes with his. “Shall we delay it?”
“Let’s.”
He pulled her against his chest; she surrendered to the strength of his arms. His lips found hers, warm and pliant and electrifying, and the hunger that drove them had nothing to do with dinner.
She pulled away first, breathless. “I think it’s safe to say we have all night.”
He smiled and kis
sed her eyes shut. “Yeah, twelve glorious hours. Let’s take our time. You can yell at Hazel all you want to. I think she’s one cool gal.”
Sixteen
“You’ve taken plenty of blame for the misunderstandings between us,” John remarked over dinner in the cozy, candlelit dining room. “But a lot of the problems between us were my fault, too. I remained silent too often, and that created wrong impressions.”
“Why? Was it just your background?” Rebecca pressed him.
“Fear of failure. I see that now.”
“Fear of failure? You, a sought-after surgeon who publishes several articles a year in top medical journals?”
His smile was self-deprecating. “Weird, huh? But I’ve found out the hard way—early brainwashing goes down deep inside your genes. My dad was always screaming at me, ‘Failure is not an option.’ I realized long ago he knew nothing about life skills. But no matter how much I really wanted to open up to you, I had this…I don’t know, visceral fear of rejection. All stemming from the old days at home.”
He reached across the table and took one of her hands in his.
“We both screwed up,” she assured him. “I assumed, with no evidence, that you were a rich-kid snob, but it turns out our backgrounds are quite similar.”
She suddenly thought about that little rhyme Lois had recited earlier, and a smile tugged at her lips. “Or as Lois put it, you and I were both staying home from the circus to avoid being hurt.”
He laughed.
Each of them lapsed into silence, just getting lost in the eyes of the other, and this time silence was awkward for neither of them.
The May nights still had a snap to them, and he had built a wood fire in the old nickle-and-brass stove. Not only had wood been chopped into neat stove lengths and piled nearby, but Hazel even made sure there was crumbled tree bark in a coffee can, for use as kindling. By now the flames reflected in the new polish of the floor and furniture, making them glow like embers.
He rose and moved around behind her chair, leaning down to embrace her and lightly kiss her hair.
He lowered his lips to kiss her neck, and she trembled with pleasure.
“Failure isn’t always so bad, is it?” she asked him gently. “Hazel told me once that failure actually makes us more lovable because it makes us more human. You need to get over your perfectionist hang-up. I would still…love you even if you failed now and then.”
“You know,” he murmured low in her ear, his breath warm and tickly and exciting, “I actually believe that. After all, I failed to get that door open, didn’t I? Yet you just said you love me.”
“Hmm, that door. Did you really give it your best shot, Doctor, no pun?”
“Hell no,” he confessed brazenly. “I’m not crazy. Hazel had a good plan, and I wasn’t about to blow it. Mad at me?”
“Outraged,” she fibbed, pretending to pout. “Now you’ll have to take your punishment like a man.”
She turned her head just enough to put her lips in contact with his.
Both of them found sudden release for their pent-up passion in a long, deep kiss.
“Tonight I’m a glutton for punishment,” he told her, his breathing, like hers, heavier and less even now. “Can we go into the bedroom so you can really teach me a lesson?”
She searched his face. “I hate to point out the obvious, doctor, but at the rate we’re going, your real lesson may come in about nine months.”
He brought his face closer to hers. A secret smile tugged on his lips. “I love you, Becky, with all my heart I love you. You’re the one for me. I knew it practically the moment I met you. If we produce a child from our union it would be the second happiest day of my life.”
“What would be the first?”
He stared at her deeply, his face taut with emotion. “Our wedding day. Would you do me the great honor?”
Tears filmed her eyes, and emotion closed her throat against speech. She managed a nod.
He kissed her, his tongue, his lips dipping into her very soul. Slipping one arm under her legs, the other behind her back, he easily lifted her. Once in the adjoining bedroom, he lowered her to the coverlet.
Two half-filled champagne glasses stood on the bedside table from earlier. Candles provided a gentle, burnished light.
He stood over the bed and raised his glass. “A toast,” he said softly. “To Doctor and Mrs. John Saville and the long, happy life they’re going to share.”
She sipped from his proffered glass. Already she was lightheaded from sheer joy and the heady course the night had taken. The cold, arrogant snob she had invented in her mind was dead and buried forever, along with the pain Brian’s treachery had caused her.
“Come here,” he whispered, staring down at her.
She did.
He watched her, transfixed, while she rose to her knees. Slowly, languidly, she unfastened the white terry robe provided by their ever-thoughtful hostess. The robe’s edges fell away, revealing white pearly skin bathed in the candlelight.
When he started to remove his trousers and shirt he’d just thrown on, she playfully pulled him onto the bed with her.
“Allow me,” she whispered. Running her hand down his unbuttoned shirt, she kissed his tautly muscled chest, reveling in the warm hard rock beneath her tongue.
Her lips moved lower, kissing his hard, flat stomach. His hands slid between them, and he cupped her breasts to tease the nipples erect with his fingers.
Impatient, he pulled her fully on top of him. He eased first one, then the other nipple into his mouth. The delicious heat made her gasp.
He slid off his shirt. She straddled him, holding tight while he slid off his trousers. The white robe was next, puddling uselessly on the floor.
His hands wound into the mass of her unbound hair. He kissed her fiercely, then whispered, “I love you, Rebecca, I’ve needed you my whole life. At last, you’re here,” he said as he slid every inch he had into her.
She gasped. Pleasure filled her. The want for more and more of him drove her as she moved her hips with increasing speed and force.
His kiss satiated the hungry hollow of her mouth. He moved harder and deeper inside her until she shuddered from the intense waves that gathered to the exploding point. In her mind, in her heart, all she saw, tasted and felt was him. All sense of time and place disappeared, taken over by the mindless ecstasy of newfound love.
He groaned his passion, coming deep inside her, and like a domino effect, he sent her crashing into her own release. She collapsed on top of him, exhausted by pleasure, enveloped by love.
Just before she drifted off, floating on a warm sea of bliss, he whispered in her ear, “May I assume you won’t be looking for that new job after all?”
“You may,” she whispered back. “But we just might have to discuss a generous maternity-leave policy, Doctor.”
When Hazel finally unlocked the door on Friday morning, she was prepared to defend herself.
The first pleasant surprise was finding her two guests lingering over omelettes and coffee, looking very tired but very happy.
“Now don’t get your innards in an uproar, you two,” she greeted them. “I know what you’re going to say, and I—what?”
She stopped, surprised, when both of them burst out laughing.
“How’s your heart this morning?” John teased her. “Any flutters? Or did we decide you had twitches?”
All three of them laughed.
Rebecca poured Hazel a mug of coffee, and she joined them at the table.
“Hazel,” she told her friend fondly, giving her a quick hug. “You’re too wicked to be pitied, you know that? And I love you for it.”
This was a far better reception than Hazel had envisioned; indeed, she had even begun to regret her bold plan and feared their anger.
It was clear, however, after several failed schemes, that she had finally played the right trick. Not only was she vindicated as a master matchmaker, but her beloved town would have one more wonderful
family to keep it alive and thriving.
“Happy now?” John demanded, grinning at her.
“Do-si-do and don’t let go,” she replied, singing it like a square-dance caller and evoking more laughter. “Well it’s about time you two opened your damned eyes,” she added in a lecturing tone, though from a joyful face. “It was as obvious as clown’s makeup, to me and Lois, that you two belong together.”
She squinted, spotting something on Rebecca’s ring finger when the latter raised her cup to drink.
“What’s that, honey?”
She and John exchanged a glance, and both laughed again. It was a ring fashioned from a horseshoe nail John had found in a cabinet.
“Hazel,” he asked, “any chance you’d be interested in holding a wedding reception for us here at the ranch? As soon as next week, I mean?”
“Would I—well, is Paris a city? Of course I will! But my lands, why so soon, what’s the hurry?”
“Because we’re pretty sure,” he replied, “that we’ve got less than nine months to tie the knot.”
“And doctors,” Rebecca added with a wink to him, “are seldom wrong about these things.
Epilogue
Lois rolled her eyes at Hazel. “He’s a nervous wreck. If that baby doesn’t come soon, they’ll have to put him in the hospital.”
Hazel stood at the patient sign-in almost rubbing her hands in glee. “That’s always the way. Doctors can handle just about any complaint except their own.”
“Tell me about it!” Rebecca chimed in from behind Lois, a stack of files in her hands.
“What are you doing carrying files? Let me take those!” Lois chided. “Do you want to give him a heart attack? It’s bad enough you’re still at work!”
Becky rubbed her blossomed middle with the absentminded contentedness of a mother-to-be. They’d been married almost nine months but with John at her side, the time seemed to have flown. Perhaps because she was living the life she’d always wanted, with her soul mate by her side, and there weren’t enough years to savor it all.
The M.D. Courts His Nurse Page 16