The Doctor's Do-Over

by Karen Templeton

  “What? Oh, fine. Just tired.” Smile, she commanded her mouth. Grudgingly, it complied. “Didn’t sleep particularly well last night.” As in, not at all. Thank you, Ryder...

  “Me, neither,” Quinn said. “It was so quiet I could hear my heart beating.” She shuddered, then filched another piece of asparagus. “So...what’s going on? Like, is Blythe gonna decorate the house or something?”

  Although both Blythe and Mel remained adamant that they still wanted no part of their cousin’s scheme-slash-dream, it was obvious Blythe could not wait to get her mitts on the place, even as she insisted on waiving her fee. Said having it in her portfolio was more than worth the hassle of shifting around appointments to oversee the project—which they hoped to have done before Christmas, when the annual St. Mary’s Cove Festival brought in tourists by the boatload. Literally.

  “April’s going to keep the house and pay Blythe and me for our part of it. So, yeah, Blythe’s going to make it all pretty.”

  Quinn’s brows flew up. “Does that mean we can come visit?”

  More anger spurted. Accompanied by a healthy side order of fear. “I don’t know, baby.”

  Brows dropped. “Why? Won’t April let us?”

  “Of course April would let us. That’s not the issue—”

  “It’s Ryder, isn’t it?”

  And didn’t that testify to the sorryness of the whole situation that Quinn’s assumption that Ryder was the issue was actually a relief? Which didn’t keep Mel’s eyes from snapping to her daughter’s. “What?”

  “You already said you two were friends. When you were kids. So how come you act so strange around him?”

  “I do not—”

  “Mom.” Huffed sigh. “Not blind, okay? Even if I don’t exactly know what I’m seeing.”

  “Remind me to trade you in for a dumb model, ’kay?”

  “So...does that mean I’m right? It’s not that we couldn’t come back, it’s that you don’t want to. Because of Ryder.”

  Sighing, Mel resumed her chopping. “It’s complicated.”

  “He’s not...ohmigod—is he my father?”

  Mel laughed. Sort of. Then turned to get something, anything, out of the fridge. “No, baby. He’s not your father.”

  “Swear?”

  “On my life.”

  “Was he at least your boyfriend?”

  Annoyance trumping embarrassment, Mel sucked it up and carted a couple of tomatoes to the table, along with a clean cutting board. “Not my boyfriend, either. Hon, Ryder’s five years older than I am. I mean, when he was sixteen I was eleven.”

  “Oh. Ew.”

  “Exactly.” And can we please move on—?

  “So how’d you two know each other?”

  Apparently not. The hacked, er, wedged tomatoes dumped on top of the salad, Mel inwardly sighed. And, okay, asked a God she wasn’t exactly on speed dial status with for the right words. Not for her sake, for her kid’s. And you know what? Those truth-waves lapped a little harder, eroding her resolve a little more and making her curse her grandmother for leaving her the house—or a third of it, anyway—followed by another surge of annoyance, that they hadn’t simply decided to dump the place. So future visits wouldn’t be even be an issue. Then there was Ryder, showing up on her doorstep...and Quinn’s timing for impaling herself on that nail...and her grandmother’s lawyer spilling the beans...

  Yep, this here was what you might call a perfect cluster...fluff.

  The salad assembled, Mel set it aside—she’d do the dressing after the others showed their faces—and sat across from the little girl she’d sworn to protect with her last dying breath.

  “Grams and your grandfather worked for Ryder’s parents. Grams was the housekeeper and cook, my father was the groundskeeper.”

  Quinn’s jaw dropped. “Really?”

  “Really. We lived in a cute little cottage—” after a fashion “—on their property. After I was born, Ryder sort of appointed himself my honorary big brother.”

  “Why?”

  Because that’s Ryder. “You’d have to ask him that.” Oh, hell. “I don’t mean literally ask him, I just mean...”

  “I know what you mean. Geez.” Quinn stood to reach across the table and grab a tomato, cramming it into her mouth before she said around it, “So why’d you stop being friends?”

  “Our lives changed,” Mel said over her thumping heart. “We got older, he went on to college and—after my dad died—Grams and I moved to Baltimore.”

  “When was this?”

  “Before you were born.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Quinn gave her a funny look, then shrugged. “For what it’s worth? He seems really nice.”

  There was no mistaking the wistfulness in her voice. That cross between don’t-want-to-be-hurt-again caution and sweet, sanguine hope...

  Mel plucked out the unfinished thought before it could take root. “He’s a doctor, he’s supposed to be nice.”

  “Yeah, right. You remember the doc in the E.R. when I broke my wrist? Worst. Attitude. Ever—”

  Her cousins’ arrival at that moment blessedly ejected Dr. Ryder Caldwell from the conversation, if not the look in her daughter’s eyes that said this discussion wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

  Oh, yeah. She was fluffed, all right.

  Chapter Five

  Ryder rang Amelia’s doorbell, telling himself it was only professional courtesy motivating him to stop by to make sure Quinn’s stitches were healing up okay. But he knew that was a lie. As would Mel. Smart cookie, that Mel. Not to mention enough of a worrywart about her daughter that she would have called him if there was a problem.

  This was dumb, he should just leave now—

  “Oh!” said the tall, graceful blonde who answered the door, flashing him a full body scan before planting one long-fingered hand on a hip that was nothing but bone and dusty denim. A grin sliced her angular face as Betty Crocker aromas slithered from behind her. “Ryder?”

  “Holy cow...Blythe?”

  She laughed, then waved him in, her voluminous, blue-gray sweater sliding off one shoulder. After calling for Mel, she turned eyes nearly the same color on him, swiping at a smudge of dirt on her cheek. “My, my, my,” she said on a low chuckle as she tucked a pointy wisp of nearly white hair behind one multi-studded ear. “After spending all day surrounded by rampant decay—” she swept one arm to indicate, he assumed, the decrepit state of the house “—you are a sight for sore eyes. Nice to see that at least something in this two-bit town actually improved over the last decade!”

  Ryder smiled, even as he bristled at the dig. Of all the places he’d lived or visited, St. Mary’s was still home, the place he’d deliberately chosen to establish his career. A point he might’ve been tempted to make had Mel not appeared, about a hundred expressions zipping across her face and pinking her cheeks. Which in turn made her eyes look brighter and Ryder realize that the big brother thing was definitely not working for him anymore.

  She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail—blast from the past—so she was all dark, messy, sexy bangs and big, pale, wary eyes. And those pink cheeks. But mostly the wary eyes.

  “Hey,” he said, “Thought I’d check on Quinn.” From underneath a deep pink cardigan a lowish-cut white top hinted at cleavage, clung to what caused the cleavage. He looked up. Just in time to catch the arched eyebrow. “See how she’s doing.”

  Aaaand time went into stop-action mode.

  Blythe cleared her throat, backing away while jabbing a thumb over her shoulder. “And if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a hot date with an upstairs closet....”

  They both watched Blythe’s retreat, dust motes boogying around them for several seconds until Mel raked a hand t
hrough her bangs, provoking memories. “Quinn’s fine.”

  “And that would be your professional medical opinion.”

  “After ten years of on-the-job training? As good as.” Ryder lowered his chin; Mel sighed, said, “Fine, see for yourself.” Then, with a nod toward the kitchen, she turned. “We’ve been making cookies.”

  Speaking of clinging...no mom jeans for this gal. And could we hear a hallelujah for that?

  No, what he needed was someone or something to clobber some sense into him, stat. So Mel was back and they were all grown up now and he no longer had to feel like scum because he was physically attracted to her. Except he still did because this was Mel and the timing was no better now than it had been then, legal issues aside, and because, hello? Not...ready? Willing? Able?

  Okay, able, maybe. Probably. But he still wouldn’t feel right about it. Hell, even without the clobbering he knew this whole thing had disaster in the making written all over it.

  And yet.

  In the eclectically furnished dining room they passed a dusty-glassed, dark wood breakfront crammed with crystal and china, the matching buffet laden with tarnished silver. Good, if neglected, pieces at odds with the general tattiness of the rest of the furnishings.

  “What happened to the other stuff? On the buffet?”

  “Boxed. Pitched. Whatever.”

  “So...you guys going to hold an estate sale?”

  “Haven’t decided yet. Right now we’re just trying to figure out what stays and what goes.”

  “Stays?”

  Mel slowed enough for Ryder to see her mouth pull flat. “We’re not selling. Or I should say, April’s not selling. She wants to keep the place, turn it into a B&B. So she’s buying Blythe and me out and turning it into something people might actually want to spend the night in.”

  “Oh. And how do you feel about that?”

  “Resigned,” she said after a moment. “And relieved, I suppose. That I can walk away and never think about this place again—”

  “Ryder!” From the kitchen table where she’d apparently been decorating cookies, Quinn grinned up at him, and from out of nowhere Ryder felt knifed, that she didn’t know who he really was. Who she really was, for that matter. “Did you come to make sure my hand’s okay?”

  “I did.” Shaking off the unsettled feeling—for the moment—he glanced around, taking in the supplement-divested counters, now smothered with plates of cookies in all shapes and varieties. “Although something tells me I needn’t have bothered. That thing still works?” he asked, frowning at the stove.

  “After a fashion,” Mel said, then sighed, taking in the cookie explosion. “We might’ve gone a little overboard.”

  “You think?”

  “That’s because we couldn’t decide what kind to make,” Quinn said, then wagged her bandaged hand. “It doesn’t even hurt, I swear.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Ryder said, sitting at right angles to her. “But why don’t you let me take a peek, anyway?”

  “Knock yourself out,” she said, extending her hand in a very royal gesture, and Ryder smiled, even as the knife twisted again, although for another reason.

  He glanced up at Mel, who was concentrating on her daughter’s hand, and way too many emotions collided in his brain to suss out. But one thing was absolutely clear—for both Mel’s and her daughter’s sake, this subterfuge needed to end, now. Or at least very soon. Because not only could he tell the whole situation was eating Mel alive, but the longer Quinn was kept in the dark, the worse it would be when she found out the truth.

  And she would find out. Because these things always worked their way to the surface. Always.

  A minute later, satisfied, he replaced the gauze with an antiseptic plastic bandage and gave Quinn a thumb’s up, then Mel a grin which he didn’t feel nearly as much as he would have liked.

  “I do good work, if I say so myself,” he said, and she sputtered a short laugh.

  “Me, too,” Quinn said, planting her hands on the edge of the table and pushing herself to her feet, giving Mel what sure as heck to Ryder looked like a pointed look. “C’n I take some cookies up to my room?”

  Mel handed her an enormous plastic mixing bowl. “Go for it.”

  With a squeal, the child gathered enough cookies to feed Delaware and flounced out of the room, munching as she marched. Figuring whatever was left was fair game, Ryder plucked a still-warm oatmeal cookie from a plate in the center of the table. “Now you’ve gone and done it,” he said to Mel’s back as, with much clattering and banging, she washed several discolored, misshapen cookie trays at the chipped sink. “I may never leave. At least not until the cookies are gone.”

  The cookie sheets haphazardly stacked in a dingy plastic drying rack on the counter, Mel turned, drying her hands on an equally dingy towel, and Ryder suddenly flashed back to another kitchen, another woman drying her hands on a towel, smiling at the two kids sitting at the kitchen table, stuffing their faces with her oatmeal cookies. Odd, how easy things seemed back then.

  At least, for him.

  Ryder held up another cookie. “Your mom’s recipe?”

  He saw the flash of pain in her eyes before she nodded. “Although she didn’t bake much after, um, we left. Or cook, either. Said she just didn’t feel like it, with Dad not there. So I learned in self-defense.” Her mouth pulled into a sly grin. “As you may have noticed, I’m not exactly a three-carrot-slices-on-a-lettuce-leaf kind of girl.”

  “I noticed.” She rolled her eyes, provoking another memory flash, even though now, with a pang, Ryder saw it for the illusion it was. Chewing, he regarded the cookie with a gaze that probably bordered on worshipful. “I’m guessing you use real butter?”

  Her eyes actually dilated. “Every chance I get. Well, um...” The towel slung over a door knob, she crossed her arms. “I’ve already played hooky with the cookie baking, I really need to get back to sorting and cataloguing. We only have Blythe through tomorrow, she has to get back to D.C.—”

  “Need help?”

  “Don’t be—”

  “Unless you want to spend the rest of your life going through your grandmother’s things? Come on,” he said, getting to his feet and yanking open the nearest cupboard door. “It’ll be fun.”

  “In what universe?”

  “Mine.”

  “You honestly have nothing better to do?”

  He hefted a stack of chipped stoneware onto the counter, his heart pounding at the prospect of bringing up a subject he’d lay odds she was not even remotely ready to discuss. “It’s Saturday. So not really, no.”

  “You do realize how lame that sounds?”

  “And you realize,” he said, clunking a second stack onto the counter, “the longer you stand here arguing with me the longer it’ll take to get away again?”

  He felt her eyes on the side of his face for a long moment before, huffing a sigh, she opened the cupboard door on the other side of the sink and started pulling out glasses, no two of which appeared to match. At her extended silence, he said, “You going to tell me what’s bugging you or let me guess?”

  “For God’s sake, Ry...” She faced him again, a deep furrow between her brows. “What do you want?”

  “From you?”

  “Sure. Let’s start there.”

  He grinned. “Dinner?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Still thinking.”

  The smile dimmed. “Then...to regain your trust?”

  The question mark at the end of his answer startled him more than it apparently did Mel, even though another flush washed over her cheeks as she turned back to pull out more glasses. “That might be tricky since I’m not really sure I completely trust anyone anymore,” she said, and he felt like he’d been sucker-punched.

  “Don’t you sometimes wish,” he
said carefully, “that you could get a do-over?”

  “No. Never. Especially if it meant I’d have to live through the same crap.”

  “But if it didn’t?”

  “Then there’d undoubtedly be different crap to live through. Right?” With a grimace, she tossed several of the glasses into a plastic-lined bin where they sadly shattered, their lives finally over. “Life is just...crappy.”

  “You didn’t used to be so bitter.”

  “People change.” Another glass met its demise.

  “You’re just in a bad place right now—”

  “Now?” Her gaze lanced his. “You can’t even begin to imagine what the last ten years has been like for me, Ryder. What my life has been like. Okay, I’m not saying it’s all been horrible, that would be a gross exaggeration and totally unfair to people who’ve faced far worse challenges. Not to mention...I can’t imagine not having Quinn. How could I possibly regret her? But still. Most days I feel like I’m shoveling sand—I no sooner plug up one problem than another one appears, and the thing of it is, it’s my own damn fault—” She abruptly turned away. “None of which is any of your concern. Sorry.”

  “For dumping on me?”

  She shrugged, then dragged over a chair, climbing up on it to reach the upper shelves.

  “Hey. If you can’t dump on me, then who?”

  “And you do not want to get me started on the folly that is letting myself lean on other people.”

  “Especially people who let you down when you needed them most, you mean.”

  “Or who might have hidden agendas. Good God, there’s a dead bug the size of my head in here.”

  Ryder frowned. “Where on earth did that come from?”

  “I’m thinking Jersey. Oh. You mean the agenda comment?” With a shudder, she swept the carcass off the shelf onto the counter. She hadn’t been kidding—biiiig sucker. “The deep, dark recesses of my embittered brain.” Her gaze met his. “Forgive me for being skeptical, but...” She lowered her voice. “Is your wanting to reconnect really about me, or about my daughter?”