by Annie O'Neil
“You know,” Ty began, “the reason I go to barbecue and bowling every Tuesday is because my sisters made me.”
“No way!” It was difficult to imagine making Ty Sawyer do anything he didn’t want to.
“Hand on heart. My sisters can be every bit as overpowering as your brother.”
Kirri shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t imagine trying to do the same to Lucius. How did they manage it?”
“First of all, my sisters outnumber me,” Ty reminded her. “I have to choose my battles tactically.”
She let the words settle in her heart. Maybe that was where she’d gone wrong with Lucius. They were both stubborn, and terrible at communicating, so their battles started as flare-ups over tiny things and inevitably ended in stony silences that gnawed on her conscience.
She gave a micro-shrug. “We have our moments, but honestly I’m happy at Harborside.”
She wasn’t really. Hadn’t been for a while. Working for Lucius meant she’d always be the Baby Whisperer’s kid sister and now she’d hit a crossroads. It was time to make a decision. Leave Harborside for good to pursue her research, knowing she might fail, or accept what Lucius had said. That she’d make more difference in the here and now in the OR.
It was a huge decision. One she didn’t even begin to know how to make.
Kirri gave her head a shake, then said, “Go on—you were saying about your sisters?”
“They saw what I couldn’t.” His eyes darkened and a muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Which was...?”
“I’d lost perspective on that all-important work-life balance.” He cleared his throat, then smiled at her. “Which is why you and I are sitting in the park, in the middle of a work day, having deep fried chicken and syrup-soaked waffles.”
Ty took a huge bite of his overflowing sandwich and when he put it down Kirri got the giggles. There was a blob of mayonnaise on his nose and some of Grandma Poppy’s Magic Mystery Sauce trickling down his arm.
Kirri hooted with laughter as she handed him the pile of napkins. “We’re both going to need a cardiologist after this.”
Ty laughed along with her. “Or a nap.”
Kirri tipped her head toward the end of the park, where her condo was. “A ten-minute waddle away there’s a king-sized bed, lying in wait.”
Their eyes caught and synced in a humming electric bond. Her mouth went dry as she realized what she’d done. Invited him to her bed. He must think she was desperate for him. Well, her body definitely was, but that wasn’t the point.
A hysteria-edged laugh burbled up and out of her throat along with, “I’m totally kidding!” She swallowed when his eyes stayed glued to hers. “Obviously...” The word came out as a question.
“You do look a bit tired.”
Her heart careened around her ribcage. Was he accepting her invitation to bed? She narrowed her eyes. He looked serious. Concerned, actually.
Ah. Not a come-on. Just an observation. She hid the disappointment she hadn’t expected to feel.
“It’s your fault I want to work all the time.” She pointed behind her toward the skyscraper where their offices were. “There are far too many temptations up there.”
Ty arched an eyebrow.
Stop using sexy talk when you’re describing work, you dill!
Ty’s tone was serious. “Don’t push yourself too hard. I know the exchange has a time limit, but remember now that you know the team sharing information will be much easier.”
Kirri knew her laugh sounded false. “But sharing the 3D printer won’t!” She waved off her comment before he could reply. “Honestly. There’s nothing for you to worry about. I’ve just been enjoying playing with your fancy equipment, is all.”
“Kirri...” Ty’s expression turned completely serious. “I didn’t invite you over here to work yourself to death. Yes, the research is important. Everything we do at the clinic is. Life and death sometimes. But there’s a balance. Your personal wellbeing is every bit as important as the things you work on.”
“Sure.” She took a big bite of waffle to stop herself from saying what she really wanted to—which was that there couldn’t be balance in her life. Ever.
She had always burnt the candle at both ends. Cracked it in half and burnt it at four ends when she could. It was how she’d been programmed. There was no red light at the end of her work day. Green was the only color that mattered if she wanted to make changes. Be someone who’d made a difference. So she was go, go, go all the way.
What did it matter if she was a burnt-out husk at the end of the day? It wasn’t like she had a child to go home to like Ty did. Her job was to make sure other expectant parents had a baby to go home to. A child to raise. If she could do that, then she would find some balance.
Ty was looking intently at her, those dark eyes of his impossible to read. Was he trying to figure out if she was worth the investment? A workaholic? Or just plain crazy? It was impossible to tell, so she did what she usually did in these situations—carried on talking until she found herself an out.
“In fact, if it’s all right, I’d love to be able to work on the weekend. Is the lab open or do I need special keys?”
His expression shifted, as if he’d made a decision. “I’m afraid you aren’t going to be free this weekend.”
“I’m not?”
“No, ma’am.” Ty shook his head and put down the remains of his sandwich. “My mother would never let me hear the end of it if I didn’t bring you to your cooking lesson. She’s already bought more peaches than you can shake a stick at.”
Kirri pinned on a smile. There went her plan to put some space between her and Ty. Then again, if she’d really wanted to do that she wouldn’t have scrubbed in on his surgery or be sat here munching on Mama Poppy’s finest with him.
“Your mother has got her work cut out for her.”
“You’re a can’t-boil-an-egg type of cook?”
“Can’t-boil-water type of cook.”
She dragged a fry through a puddle of ketchup, then caught Ty looking a bit more pleased with himself than she might have imagined for someone whose social calendar looked set to be eaten alive by Kirri’s inability to cook.
“Are you staying for the lesson?”
His smile broadened. “Wolves couldn’t keep me away.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
TY GLANCED ACROSS at Lulu. She was merrily singing away along with a song about an elephant and trying to teach Kirri the lyrics. Quite unsuccessfully, if the number of corrections were anything to go by.
Lulu was twisted round in her seat so she could face Kirri, who had insisted on sitting in the back of the car when they’d collected her this morning. “No changes on my account,” she’d quipped as she’d jumped into the back.
She looked a bit tense and, if he wasn’t mistaken, still quite tired. He would put money on the fact she’d stayed late at the lab, despite his popping his head in about six o’clock last night and securing a promise from her that she’d be leaving soon.
An increasingly familiar flare of protectiveness shot through him. Something was driving Kirri’s research beyond the obvious. Apart from her brother, she hadn’t mentioned much about her personal life. The few times he’d tried to get her to open up she’d deftly changed the topic. Today he had his secret weapons. His mother and sisters. They could draw blood from a stone.
Not that he was equating Kirri to anything even closely resembling a stone. Far from it. But it pained him to think there was something dark driving her to work the way she did. The type of work they did had to come from a place of joy or it could easily destroy a soul.
“Here we are.” Ty pulled his car into the drive of his parents’ house, smiling when he saw Kirri’s eyes widen. His gut told him bringing her here was a good idea.
“This is beautiful,” she whispered, opening the
car door and slipping to the ground, her eyes still glued to his parents’ colonial-style home.
Lulu, as ever, was already running up onto the porch and through the front door.
“It looks great now,” Ty said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice. “But it was definitely a challenge to grow up here.”
“What do you mean?” Kirri threw him a look as she waited for him to lock the car and head up the drive to the wide covered porch circling the house.
“When they bought it, it was about as close to a wreck as you can imagine.”
“Seriously? And you all moved in straight away?”
He laughed at the memory. “We couldn’t wait.”
“Why?”
“Before this we lived above Dad’s shop in a two-bedroom apartment.”
Kirri’s hands flew to her chest. “All seven of you?”
“Yes, ma’am. My older sisters were in bunk beds, I was in a trundle bed, and Winny and Reba shared a crib. My parents soon decided giving everyone a bit more personal space was a good idea.” He smiled up at the house. “They have never shied away from a challenge.”
Kirri looked from the house to him, then back at the house. “I’m going to take a wild guess and suggest that you inherited some of that gusto.”
Ty smiled. It was the type of compliment people usually reserved for his sisters. “What makes you say that?”
She laughed. “Uh...elite medical practice? First-class facilities? Triumphant surgeries few other doctors would even think about, let alone try? Not just anyone could have done all that. It’s impressive. Much like this house.”
Before he could say he wouldn’t have tried to have any of those things if his life plan hadn’t been ripped out from under him, Ty’s mother appeared on the porch, along with her two middle-aged bloodhounds Pootle and Piggy. His nieces had named them when they were little, and no one had bothered to override their decision.
“C’mon in, you two.” She beckoned them to join her. “There’s dozens of peaches waiting to be pitted. Crusts to make. Pies to fill. I told the church I’d be bringing half a dozen over for the youth group, so we’d best get cracking.”
Kirri shot Ty a triumphant grin. “Like I said—I don’t think the apple fell too far from the tree.”
Warmth filled his chest as he watched her jog up to the porch, accept his mother’s inevitable bear hug, then be ushered into the house along with the dogs. He’d never really thought of himself being like his family before, but he supposed they were all cut from a similar cloth.
His parents embodied everything he hoped he could offer his own daughter. Constancy. Loyalty. Unwavering love. Up until now he’d never thought that his goals could also involve meeting and possibly loving someone new. The hole in his heart made when Gemma had died had become so enormous he simply couldn’t imagine the darkness ever becoming light. But perhaps the light had never gone...perhaps it had just been surrounded by darkness and impossible to see.
He went into the kitchen, where his mother was popping a flowery apron on Kirri and setting her up at the kitchen table with an enormous bag of flour and some butter, alongside some sort of kitchen gadget that was going to whiz it all together.
She was like this with everyone, his mother. “Giving my waifs and strays a bit of love,” was how she put it. He’d often wondered how she had room in her heart for them all, but looking at Kirri now, and feeling the heat in his own heart, he began to realize that hearts didn’t necessarily push things aside to make room for new love. They grew. Expanded to embrace all the love and joy they could.
His mother looked across at him from the counter and said, “I don’t know what you’re standing there for, son. Come on and join us.”
With a smile on his face, he did just that.
* * *
Two hours later Kirri had never felt more relaxed or at home than she did here and now in Marina’s kitchen. Ty’s mother was gracious, patient, kind, and utterly engaged in everything whirling about her.
Dogs. Cats. Grandchildren racing in in their baseball uniforms, asking for one of the huge discs of chocolate chip cookies in a huge old jar. Her husband wandering through, stealing a peach whilst wondering aloud where all the fishing things had got to. Saying he wanted to take Lulu down to the lake, see if they could catch anything.
There were daughters on the phone. Daughters in the house. Daughters picking up and dropping off yet more grandchildren. Ty asking if they minded as he wandered off to do something out in the shed. He was granted permission on condition that he came back once all the peaches had been sliced.
That had been about an hour earlier, and in that time Marina and Kirri had reduced the pile of peaches from enormous to just a few left.
Marina looked out the window and gave a loving cluck. “That boy of mine... He’d live in that shed if there weren’t some women in his life to drag him out of it again. His father’s just the same.”
Kirri nodded. All this was so different from her own family.
As if cued by her lack of response, Marina asked, “How about your own family? They must be missing you, with you being so far away and all. I don’t think I could bear it if any of mine upped stakes and moved out of Atlanta, let alone out of the country.”
Kirri’s laugh sounded far more forlorn than she’d intended.
“You all right, honey? I haven’t made you homesick by bringing it up.”
“No,” Kirri said solidly. “Not in the slightest. If anything...”
“Yes?” Marina handed her a peach. “If anything...?”
“If anything it’s made me wistful. Being here with you like this.”
“Wistful? What on earth...? Honey, you must be seeing things. This place is a madhouse.”
“It’s a lot better than silence.”
Marina stopped what she was doing and looked Kirri square in the eye. “I can’t imagine you growing up in a silent house. You’re so full of life yourself.”
“Oh...trust me. It was quiet.”
Intimidating was what it had been. Family dinners had usually ended up being interrogations for Lucius. Had he passed this exam? Had he got that extra credit? Had he signed up for this club or that club? Activities that would put him in good stead with the best universities.
The answer had always been yes, but none of it had seemed to matter. No matter what, Lucius hadn’t been able to satisfy their father. Neither of them had. It was easier, they’d both learned, to study some more or hide away in their rooms with a book. Escape, as their mother did, into someone else’s life.
That was what Kirri wanted to do right now. Escape into this life—but for real. Knowing she couldn’t twisted her heart so tight she closed her eyes against the pain.
“Are you all right, honey?”
Kirri forced herself to open her eyes, smile and slice up the peach she was holding. “I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry if I dredged up some bad memories. But surely you’ve got some loved ones back home who are missing your beautiful face?”
Again the ache of losing something she’d never had filled Kirri’s chest. Her mother had never once told her she was beautiful.
“My family doesn’t really work like that. I always hoped that one day I might—” She stopped herself. Dreaming the impossible was almost as crazy as trying to invent the impossible.
“Go on, honey. Finish what you were saying. Everyone’s allowed a few hopes and dreams.”
Marina’s words felt like a warm embrace. “I’d hoped to have a family of my own one day. Like yours. Big and boisterous and a bit crazy.”
Marina got up and pulled her into a hug. “You’re welcome to be a part of our big family while you’re here, sweetheart. There’s always room at our table for one more.” She held up a finger and wagged it at her before returning to the peaches. “And once you go, don’t you dare forg
et us.”
“Not a chance,” Kirri said, selecting another peach and getting to work with a gusto she hadn’t felt in ages.
The screen door swung open and in walked Ty, carrying a small wooden birdhouse by the tips of his fingers. It was a gorgeous little thing, painted eggshell-blue.
Kirri breathed a soft ooh. “Is this what you do in your spare time?”
“Lulu said she wanted one. I know it’s a bit late in the nesting season, but there’s never any harm in trying, is there? Even if we’re a bit late in the game?”
When his eyes hit hers an explosion of connection punched her in the chest. He had been talking about birds, right? She looked away when she noticed Marina’s eyes flicking between the pair of them.
“Ty, honey? Why are you holding that birdbox as if it were made of poison?”
“Wet paint,” he explained.
Marina pointed toward the door. “Kirri, run and get some newspapers from the back porch, would you, honey?”
Kirri did as she was asked. As she left the room she heard Marina lower her voice and a swift exchange of conversation. A sneaking suspicion told her it was about her.
When she came back in, Marina smiled up at her and said, “It’s decided.”
“What is?”
“You and Ty are going out to the bowling alley tonight, after supper.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Lulu and her grandfather are going fishing, and of course if she catches anything she’s going to have to learn how to clean it and all that. When they get back, the girls want me to bring Lulu over to play with their kids. Tammy’s got a pool—her husband does very well in the plumbing trade—and Lulu does love to swim. I’ve got my quilting group to go to, and Ty’s father wants to stock-take down at the store, so that just leaves the two of you with nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs. Ty and I did some blue sky thinking just now and we thought it’d be a good idea for Ty to get you brushed up on your bowling before we all meet next Tuesday for barbecue.”