A Match for the Doctor

by Marie Ferrarella

  Even so, she knew the difference between nice and teeth-jarring. Between okay and wonderfully soul-inspiring. And Simon Sheffield with his mind-blowing mouth definitely fell into the latter category.

  Thankfully when he finally drew back, he was still holding on to her arms. If he hadn’t been, she had more than a passing suspicion that she would have found herself unceremoniously sinking to the floor.

  With her lips no longer hermetically sealed to his, Kennon had to concentrate on catching her breath. It felt as if she had just completed a twenty-six-mile marathon inside of a time warp. Her head was spinning badly. It was a huge effort to get her mind back in gear, because right now rainbows and fireworks had taken over.

  And she wanted to kiss him again.

  Damn it, get hold of yourself. You’re not some starry-eyed teenager—and neither is he.

  But that was just the problem. She did feel starry-eyed. And the racing pulse, the sweaty palms, the shortness of breath, they all belonged to a naive, inexperienced teenager.

  What had he done to her?

  Blowing out a long breath, she drew an even longer one in. Desperate to divert his attention from what she assumed was her flushed face, Kennon said the first thing she could think of.

  “I guess this means you’re thanking me,” she said, referring to the last words that had left her mouth before the world as she knew it had burnt to a crisp.

  “Something like that,” Simon agreed, his tone deliberately evasive.

  Think, Kennon, think. Form sentences, don’t just stand there like some kind of village idiot. He’ll think you’ve never been kissed before.

  Well, she hadn’t. Not like this. Not ever like this.

  Her brain took baby steps, searching for a subject. And then she found one, thank goodness.

  “About the amusement park,” Kennon began haltingly, reverting back to the only topic that even marginally occurred to her. The rest of her mind was a charred wasteland.

  “You change your mind about going?” Simon asked, surprised.

  Maybe after he’d broken all the unwritten rules by kissing her, Kennon had decided to avoid any additional complications by bailing on her initial suggestion. Not that he could blame her. He wasn’t sure just what had come over him, except that for a single moment he’d wanted to be human again, wanted to know if he was capable of being human again.

  Obviously he was and he could—apparently all too well.

  He’d probably scared her, he realized. He sure as hell had scared himself. And yet, despite all that, despite crossing lines he knew he shouldn’t have for a myriad of reasons, he felt like smiling. Smiling because, just for the length of that incredible encounter, he’d not only felt human, there’d been this glimmer of hope inside him. But even as he became aware of it, he could feel it fade with the stab of disloyalty, of guilt.

  He had no right to reach for happiness, no right to be happy. Because Nancy couldn’t be happy. Because Nancy had died in his place.

  “No.” Did he want her to change her mind? But she couldn’t. Once she’d made the suggestion, she couldn’t go back on it. The girls would be heartbroken. “I just wanted to tell you which park I thought the girls—and you—might like to go to.”

  Her voice sounded tinny to her ear. She stumbled, looked for words to hold back the silence that threatened to devour them. And as she looked up at Simon, she could see the happiness receding in his eyes. Worse, she could see what rose in his eyes to take its place. A sadness that tore at her soul.

  She didn’t want to have him withdraw before she got to explore what had just happened here.

  Don’t feel bad about this. Please don’t feel bad about this.

  She cleared her throat, hoping that her voice wouldn’t crack as she spoke. “I thought that maybe Knott’s Berry Farm might be fun for them.” She realized that it sounded as if she was calling all the shots so she added, “Unless you have a better idea.”

  He didn’t have a better idea. He didn’t have an idea at all. He was still a little punchy, a little groggy from the impact of what they had just shared. What he had just started without thinking it through.

  “No,” he murmured. “I don’t have a better idea. Knott’s Berry Farm’s fine. I’m sure that the girls’ll love it.”

  Because apparently they love you.

  He realized that Edna was right. The girls were desperate for a woman’s attention. And they had picked their woman.

  He couldn’t complain that they had bad taste. Their taste was right on the money—and it bothered him that he thought that, but he did.

  “Good.” Kennon caught her lower lip between her teeth, thinking. Debating. And before she knew it, she heard herself asking, “Are you all right, Doctor?”

  It seemed ridiculous to call him by his title after he’d kissed her hard enough to knock the socks off her bare feet, but she didn’t want him to think that things had changed between them.

  Even though they had.

  “I’m—” Simon was about to say fine, but then he thought better of it. “Actually, I’m not sure.”

  A wariness entered her eyes. He wanted her to understand. Understand that he wasn’t trying to take advantage of her, or attempting to set the stage for a future, more heated encounter. This had just happened, without any deliberate premeditation on his part.

  He needed her to know that. “Kennon, I’m still trying to get over things—I’m still trying to realign my day-to-day world and make sense out of it.” It was hard for him to admit this, hard to share something so personal. “My wife was a huge part of everything about me.”

  She wondered what it felt like, to be loved that way. Cherished that way. But to put him at ease, she nodded and said, “I understand.”

  He still wasn’t certain that he had made things right. “If I gave you the wrong idea—”

  Now, what did that mean? Was he sorry he’d kissed her? Or just sorry if she thought he was forcing himself on her in a minor way? Just what was the “wrong” idea—and what was the right one?

  “No, no wrong idea,” she told him brightly, doing her best to seem as if she was making light of the whole situation. “No ideas at all,” she emphasized. “You know, like that song in Casablanca said, ‘a kiss is just a kiss’.”

  Although she knew that she felt a follow-up would have been more than a little nice, maybe this was for the best after all. No complications for him, and she wouldn’t run the very real risk of feeling like a fool once it was over.

  “It’s not like I’m expecting to find roses scattered all over my store,” she added, tongue in cheek.

  When she pressed her lips together, she could still taste him. Her pulse jumped. Okay, it was time to retreat before she gave in to the desire to kiss him again.

  “I think I’d better be going. I do have some things to catch up on,” she added, hoping he didn’t think it was as lame an excuse as it sounded.

  Simon nodded. “I guess we were monopolizing your time.”

  Even though it gave her a way out, she couldn’t let him think that was how she felt. It added a negative edge to things that just wasn’t true.

  But coming on too strong might give him the wrong idea, too. So she kept her tone light as she told him, “That would only be a problem if I minded being monopolized.” Then, in case the man harbored even a kernel of a doubt, she assured him, with feeling, “I don’t.”

  Reaching for her purse, she slipped the strap onto her shoulder and began to head for the door. He fell into step beside her. That was when she heard the sound of two pairs of feet, running quickly and heading in her direction.

  “You’re leaving?” Madelyn cried, dismayed, her lower lip protruding just a little.

  “Without saying goodbye?” The accusation came from Meghan.

  “It’s just until Monday,” Kennon told them as she cupped Meghan’s chin in her hand. If she ever had daughters, she’d want them to be just like this—

  Hold it, don’t get started down this
path, she warned herself.

  Right now, there were no daughters on her horizon. She had a business to run and a profit to turn. Beyond that, her most complicated endeavor should be deciding which movie to put into the Blu-ray player. She’d promised herself a break from men, from thinking of them in any other light than as potential clients.

  Her heart just wasn’t ready to undertake another journey down Niagara Falls.

  But if it had been, a little voice inside her head whispered, Simon Sheffield would have definitely been right up there as a leading candidate to bring the journey to fruition.

  “Can’t you come by tomorrow, Kennon?” Meghan asked.

  Simon came to her rescue. “Give the poor woman a break, Meghan. Seeing the two of you seven days would be above and beyond the call of duty. You guys are more than a handful,” he told them, draping an arm around each girl’s shoulders.

  Meghan wiggled free, her eyes on Kennon. “But we like seeing you seven days a week,” she told the woman she’d decided was her new best friend. And then she looked over at her older sister, clearly asking for backup. She received it readily.

  “If you don’t want to come over here, can we go over to your house tomorrow?” Madelyn asked hopefully.

  Simon appeared stunned at his daughter’s question. “Madelyn, you don’t just invite yourself over to someone’s house,” he chided.

  The little hurt face was just more than Kennon could bear. Besides, she had no plans for Sunday other than sleeping in late. She gave Madelyn a warm, encouraging smile. “Sure, you can see it,” she told her. “If Edna doesn’t mind bringing you.”

  “Sunday’s Edna’s day off,” Madelyn said. A fighter, she wasn’t about to accept defeat easily. “But Dad can bring us, can’t you, Dad?”

  Kennon didn’t want to put Simon on the spot. But she would have been lying to herself if she pretended that she didn’t want to hear his answer. Now that the idea had been presented, she would really love to see him on her own home territory.

  So rather than volunteer to swing by and pick the girls up herself, Kennon waited to hear what he had to say.

  Caught off guard by his daughter’s request, it took him a moment to answer. When he finally did and said, “Sure, I can bring them,” Kennon felt something inside grow warm, spreading out to all parts of her, along with a tingling sensation.

  Quickly writing down her address on a piece of paper, she handed it to him. “How does eleven o’clock sound to you?” she asked.

  The question was for Simon, but it was Meghan who answered, declaring, “It sounds perfect!”

  Both girls were grinning from ear to ear.

  “Then it’s all settled. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

  Turning on her heel, she walked quickly away before Simon had a chance to declare his previous response null and void. As she closed the front door behind her, she caught herself humming.

  Kennon heard her cell phone ringing in her purse as she drove home. She stifled her urge to reach for it and answer the call. But because she hadn’t mounted the phone on its stand on the dashboard or activated her Bluetooth before starting up the car, she had to let the call go to voice mail. Doing so drove her crazy as well as set her curiosity into high gear.

  There was nothing she could do about it without risking a fine should a policeman suddenly materialize behind her. California frowned on cell phones and hands making contact while driving anywhere.

  Ten minutes later, the cell phone rang again just as she entered her development. Her curiosity swelled another notch, tempting her to at least sneak a peek at who the caller was. That was when she saw him. A motorcycle policeman taking the major cross street right where she’d turned into the development. The cell phone remained where it was.

  When her cell phone rang a third time, just as she put her key into the lock on her front door, Kennon could finally indulge her curiosity. She paused to dig through her purse to retrieve the phone. It took her a minute, despite the fact that she’d stripped down her purse to what she felt were the bare essentials.

  Locating the device, she flipped it open and let herself into her house. It was too dark to see the caller’s name on the tiny screen. Kennon felt around for the light switch. “Hello?”

  “Well, it’s about time. If it hadn’t been for that eighteen hours of labor I suffered through, I would have started thinking that maybe I’d made you up.”

  Kennon suppressed a sigh. Finding the light switch, she turned it on as she closed the door with her back. “Hello, Mother.”

  “Ah, you remember who I am, that’s encouraging. But you’ve obviously forgotten my phone number, and where I live. I haven’t heard from you in eons, much less actually seen you. Have you changed much? Would I still be able to recognize you if I saw you across the street?”

  It hadn’t been that long. She’d seen her mother just before she’d taken on this assignment. Her mother had always liked to exaggerate. Ruth Cassidy had a flair for the melodramatic.

  “Sorry.” Kennon apologized because she knew her mother expected her to. “It’s been a little hectic lately.”

  “Good hectic or bad hectic?” her mother pressed.

  She hated getting the third degree, but she supposed that, since she was her mother’s only child, there was no getting around it. Maybe, if she were in that same position, a divorced mother of an adult child, she’d feel the same way.

  “Good hectic,” Kennon told her. “I’ve been working closely with a client.” Actually more closely with his daughters, she added silently, but her mother didn’t need to hear that. She knew how her mother’s mind worked. It leaped from one conclusion to another, creating a completely impossible fantasy scenario out of the tiniest bits and pieces.

  “What kind of a client?” her mother was asking.

  Oh, God, she’d woken the sleeping giant.

  “The kind who needs to have his whole house decorated,” she answered, praying that would be the end of it. Knowing it wouldn’t.

  The answer seemed to satisfy her mother. Hope sprang eternal. And then it died the next moment. “Then he’s wealthy. Good, good. Anything else you want to tell me?” her mother coaxed.

  Right now she didn’t want to tell her mother even this much because she knew the way her mother thought. Ruth Cassidy wanted nothing more than to have her only daughter, her only child, walk down the aisle and promise to love, honor and cherish a man in a rented tuxedo. And if he was a rich man in his own tuxedo, so much the better.

  Well, at least there were no surprises there. Her mother had been making noises about her “finding someone” from the moment Kennon had graduated high school and subsequently gone off to college.

  “Anything else,” Kennon echoed. “Yes, my feet hurt and I’m tired. Can I call you back, Mother?” Like, in another month or so?

  “Of course you can,” her mother answered, sounding a little miffed. “But whether you will or not is a whole other story.” That was definitely the sound of complaining in her mother’s voice, Kennon thought. “You know, I’m not going to live forever.”

  Uh-uh, here we go again. The guilt trip. Not tonight, Mother. I’m exhausted.

  “Of course you are, Mom. God’s not ready to have you come up and rearrange heaven on him. You just might wind up being the first woman who lives pretty close to forever.”

  She heard her mother sigh deeply on the other end. “Oh, ‘how sharper than a serpent’s tooth—’”

  About to open the refrigerator to get a can of diet soda, Kennon rolled her eyes. She’d been hearing this particular quote from King Lear since before she’d hit her teens.

  “‘It is to have a thankless child,’ uh-huh, yes, I know. I promise, Mom, if you give me a kingdom, I won’t turn you out. You can even have your pick of towers.” If you promise to stay there. “But right now, I’m really beat and I still need to clean up—”

  The second she said it, she knew she had made a tactical mistake and could have bitten off her tongue. Her
only hope was that her mother hadn’t heard.

  “Why do you need to clean up?”

  Hope went down in flames. “Because I’m having company over tomorrow.” She hated being faced with a long list of things to do first thing in the morning.

  Her mother was quick to volunteer helpful advice. “Your Aunt Maizie’s got that friend with the cleaning service. I can get the number from her and you could give them a call—”

  Evening stretched out before them. “Mom, my company’s coming tomorrow at eleven,” she said, stubbornly not putting a name to her “company.” “There’s not enough time for someone to—”

  “Leave it to me. There’s always enough time,” her mother promised.

  Again Kennon rolled her eyes. Why did she even bother arguing? “Mom, I’m not about to throw away money on something I can do myself.”

  “You sound exhausted. You’re always edgy when you’re exhausted. You need your sleep, baby.”

  Kennon knew it was futile to point out that it had been a long time since she had actually qualified for that term. “Fine. I’ll get up early tomorrow and clean then. Now, good night, Mom,” she said firmly, adding, “I’ll call you back later,” to assuage her conscience.

  She could have sworn she heard her mother say, “When pigs fly,” but she wasn’t about to respond. She didn’t want to be drawn into another round only to arrive nowhere.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kennon had nothing against mornings. As long as they arrived at a reasonable hour, say, seven-thirty or so. When they began at six, the way hers had today, all bets were off.

  Groping her way into the kitchen after her alarm had unceremoniously woken her up, Kennon found that her first challenge of the day was making herself a bracing cup of coffee. Her coordination was not the greatest before the sun actually occupied the sky. But without coffee, she knew she was not about to come to for at least another hour if not longer.

  Setting her alarm for six had seemed like a pretty good idea last night. Not so much this morning. But then, she really did need to get up this early. Her house needed cleaning and she needed to get moving.