The M.D.'s Surprise Family

by Marie Ferrarella

  “You know,” she was saying after she’d allowed her words to sink in, “I’ve always loved the color red and I’ve loved Ferraris ever since I saw Tom Selleck fold his muscular body up into one on Magnum P.I.”

  “You watched television?” Something else he couldn’t visualize her doing.

  She could almost read the thoughts as they telegraphed themselves into his head. “Children of neo-hippies got to watch television.” She laughed.

  And then she leaned her head into his, as if about to impart some deep, dark secret only he could hear. The scent of wildflowers and honeysuckle penetrated his consciousness, filling his head even though, logically, the night air should have easily dissipated it. But apparently logic and Raven Songbird could not coexist in the same space.

  “Besides, I saw the show on one of the cable channels. Burned the whole series onto DVD disks,” she confided with a wink.

  He had no idea what she was trying to convey with the wink, only that it went through him with the force of a bullet hitting its target dead center.

  What the hell was going on here? he wondered. Was he coming down with something? During all his years at medical school and in residency, surrounded by sick people, he’d never come down with so much as a cold. It looked as if his luck had run out.

  “Never saw it myself,” he muttered when she continued to look at him as if he should know what she was talking about.

  He thought that would put her off. Even at this point, he realized he should have known better. Nothing seemed to put her off. She was like one of those little yellow toy ducks that bobbed upright no matter how hard you tried to sink it.

  “No?” Her eyes widened. “Then you’re in for a treat. It had everything—humor, action, mystery, buddies being there for each other, terrific scenery. Anytime you’re up for it,” she impulsively promised, “we can make a marathon of it.”

  Assaulted with her enthusiasm, his head was beginning to spin. “Excuse me?”

  “A marathon,” she repeated. “You know, the way they do on some of the cable networks whenever there’s some kind of a holiday. Ten, twelve uninterrupted hours of something or other,” she prompted when he continued to look at her as if she’d suddenly begun spouting Martian. “In this case, Magnum.”

  He had absolutely no intention of sitting anywhere with her, watching anything. The scenario she was suggesting was far too intimate. It was something he and Lisa had done. “Wasting time” someone on the outside would have called it. Savoring time was the way he saw it.

  “I’ve never had ten uninterrupted hours of something, other than work,” he amended. His tone was meant to cut the conversation dead.

  But it refused to die. “Might be just what the doctor ordered.”

  Peter frowned. He’d once been told that his frown could freeze a sunspot at fifty paces. “Not this doctor.”

  Unfazed, Raven was devoid of any frostbite. Instead, there was actual concern on her face as she gazed up at him. “Why are you trying so hard to be superhuman? To deny that you can be human?”

  Maybe it was because he was warming up to her and maybe, here in the darkness, he allowed himself a rare moment of truth, a rare moment in which he allowed the truth to be heard by a complete stranger. A very strange stranger. “Because being human is extremely painful, extremely unrewarding and if I wasn’t attempting to be ‘superhuman’ as you call it, your brother might not stand any chance at all to—”

  Peter never got a chance to finish what he was trying to say.

  One moment he was lecturing this woman who had exploded into his life. The very next moment, his lips were no longer moving. Or at least, no longer allowing any sounds to slip past them.

  They were sealed to hers.

  It happened so suddenly, Peter had no idea how he’d gotten from point A to point B. For a moment he entertained the idea that he was either hallucinating or having, quite possibly, an out-of-body experience. One moment, only darkness surrounded him, and the next, bright lights went off, filling him inside and enveloping him on the outside.

  Lights and warmth and something that he vaguely recognized as desire.

  Which was impossible. Because desire in all forms had deserted him. Whether it encompassed the most basic kind or just a craving for a particular food, he had become utterly devoid of it.

  Until now.

  He felt desire, robust and full-bodied.

  He would have sworn this part of him had died at Lisa’s gravesite. He’d become, for all intents and purposes, a hollow man.

  Yet he wanted to be kissing this woman he’d inexplicably found his lips pressed against. Wanted to be holding her to him, feeling her soft, supple body molding into his.

  Wanted this rush that both hurt and felt good.

  He was coming unglued.

  She knew it, knew that it would be like this. Knew the second she had seen the tall, dark, brooding doctor and heard his voice. Knew that there was trapped emotion within him that if she could only tap, would sweep her away.

  And she needed to be swept away, needed to feel, just for a moment, as if every star in the universe was in the right place and that everything, everything would be all right.

  Anything less was unthinkable.

  She needed to know, to be convinced, that this man cared. Because only a caring man could fix her brother and make him well again.

  Raven raised herself up on her toes, her fingertips digging into a pair of strong, muscular shoulders. It was hard to remain grounded when all the forces of the known world conspired to make her let go and just be, just feel.

  A sigh escaped her.

  It had been a very, very long time since she’d allowed herself this kind of a connection. In her own way, she was as removed as the doctor she was trying to bring around. She hadn’t lost a soul mate, but she had lost pieces of her soul. Her parents had been very precious to her and the irony that they had died while on their way to see her moment of triumph was not lost on her. It brought with it a vast amount of guilt.

  She tried to assuage her guilt by being both mother and father to Blue. And by running the company that her parents had started. It was their legacy, as was Blue, and neither was going to be allowed to be anything less than perfect in every way.

  It kept her from making any deeply personal connections. Not the kind that would ultimately result in her having a home and family of her own. She had the memory of receiving her diploma, then being taken aside by a teacher and told that two-thirds of her family had died and that the little brother she adored was fighting for his life. This memory kept her from making any more commitments.

  But this wasn’t a commitment. This was some thing different.

  For a moment longer she allowed the kiss to deepen, allowed the sensation to quicken every pulse in her body. And then, because she knew that if it went on even a breath longer, she might not be able to regain her footing, might not be able to stand, much less think clearly, Raven pulled back.

  Her heart was hammering so hard, she was ninety-eight percent certain it would lodge itself in her throat, preventing her from talking. She cleared her throat for just that reason, to make sure she still could.

  She’d kissed him.

  The thought throbbed through his brain as more and more functioning parts returned. He struggled to keep them from floating away again.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked, looking at her. “Why did you kiss me?”

  “Because you needed me to,” she replied without blinking an eye. Inside, there were banked questions of her own. Questions such as, Had he been as affected by the kiss as she had? Had the world trembled for him the way it had for her? Or had the strain of worrying about Blue, about what could happen to her brother if things went wrong, finally made her crack?

  “I need you to?” He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “You seemed so alone—”

  He gestured toward her impatiently. “I was standing here with you.”

  �
��You can be in the middle of a crowd and still be alone.”

  He didn’t like the fact that she was playing Gypsy fortune-teller with him. Worse, he didn’t like the fact that she seemed to be reading him so well. Because she was right on target, which was waging hell on his resolution to keep his distance from the world at large. He wasn’t about to let any of it in, ever. The price was too high.

  And what he hated most of all was that the desire to take her back into his arms, to kiss her again with the same feeling, the same passion he just experienced, was still alive, still thriving in his veins, urging him on.

  He shrouded himself in anger. It was the only weapon he had.

  “I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed, Raven.” Because she’d unsettled so much inside of him, he glared at her. “We’ll get along a lot better if you keep that in mind.”

  “It wasn’t a matter of psychoanalyzing you,” she told him gently. “It was more a case of one kindred soul connecting with another.”

  “And that’s how you connect?”

  She gave a half shrug, one shoulder rising, brushing against her hair. “Beats paper clips.”

  She’d called them kindred souls. He was no more like her than he was like a mermaid. Trying to get a grip on his thoughts, he shook his head and laughed dryly. “You really are something else, aren’t you?”

  The trouble was, he was beginning to suspect that he didn’t know what that something else was. He didn’t like the unknown.

  Not answering him, Raven watched him for a long moment. “So,” she finally said, getting back to her original subject, “will you come to the house and tell Blue?”

  The light dawned. She’d tried to entice him. “Was that what the kiss was about? To make sure I’d come talk to your brother?”

  If he expected her to look guilty or embarrassed at being caught, he was disappointed. She appeared to be neither.

  “No. That was strictly about you. And maybe a little about me,” she allowed. “You’re not some adolescent to be coerced into doing something because someone kissed you.” Raven paused for a second, as if weighing something in her mind. “If you don’t feel up to it, I’ll tell him myself. It’s just that I think he’d rather hear it coming from you.”

  Peter watched the wind ripple through her hair, playing with strands before moving on. She had let him off the hook. The woman knew just how to maneuver, he thought. She would have made a hell of a general. “Give me a few minutes to get to my car,” he told her. “Then you can go ahead and lead the way to your house.”

  Turning on his heel, he still didn’t miss the smile that came to her lips. It almost made the capitulation worth it.

  Chapter Six

  Obviously not all neo-hippies took a vow of poverty, Peter thought as he approached the place where Raven lived. He’d seen smaller, less impressive castles. The driveway was comprised of countless tiny, colored rocks that were arranged to form the company’s logo—a white dove soaring through a crystal-blue sky. He almost hated parking his vehicle on it.

  She was out of her car and at his side before he had a chance to close his door. There was pleasure and more than a hint of surprise on her face.

  “I didn’t think you’d follow me all the way,” she confessed. “I kept looking in the rearview mirror to see if you’d suddenly decided to make good your escape.” She sounded as if she was only half kidding.

  “It crossed my mind,” Peter conceded.

  Despite the nip in the air, she’d driven her car with the top down. He had to admit that the sight of her hair whipping around as she drove had been a compelling, enticing picture.

  But her hair wasn’t why he’d followed her. Once he said he would do something, he kept his word. Without a family to mark his passage, Peter felt that his word was all he had. His word and his work. He meant for both to stand for something.

  She flashed a grin. “Glad it was only passing through.”

  Taking his hand as if they were old friends instead of two people who didn’t know each other a few days ago, Raven led him to the front door. She glanced over her shoulder to see his reaction and nodded in silent agreement when she caught his eye.

  “It’s a little over the top,” she allowed. “My father bought it for my mother the day she told him she was pregnant with Blue. He wanted to do something spectacular for her.” Fond memories left their mark upon her features as she remembered. “He cried when she first told him, he was so happy. Said there was no greater miracle than a baby.”

  “No,” Peter agreed quietly, thinking of Becky, remembering how he’d felt the first time he’d held her in his hands, “there isn’t.”

  He was rewarded with a smile that went straight to his gut, as if fired from a high-powered rifle. He really wished she’d stop doing that, stop detonating all these small land mines inside of him. It was getting in the way of his thinking.

  “Isn’t he asleep?” Peter asked, realizing that while it was early for him, a child of seven might very well already be tucked into bed.

  She laughed and shook her head. For a while, bedtime had been an issue between them, but then she’d decided to raise him the way her parents had raised her, by giving Blue his own head in the matter.

  “Not yet,” she assured Peter. “He doesn’t really seem to need much sleep and he likes to stay up with me, so most nights, I let him fall asleep on his own and then just carry him off to bed.”

  That sounded more in keeping with the lifestyle he attributed to someone like her. The thought vaguely amused him because he’d never really known anyone quite like Raven and her bohemian way of life. His own life had been strictly regimented. Growing up without a mother, the only parenting skills he’d known were his father’s. Larry Sullivan was a former Marine turned dock worker whose entire life ran on discipline and punctuality. Other things, such as love, never entered into the mix. He felt his mother died because it was the only way she could get away from his father.

  Peter caught himself watching how Raven’s hips swayed gently as she walked across a blue-and-white marble foyer.

  “I’m home,” she called. Her voice seemed to echo up the wide spiral staircase.

  A middle-aged woman with thin ribbons of gray running through her jet-black hair came from the rear of the house. Her face was round and perfect for the warm, genial expression she wore.

  “He’s in the media room, Raven.”

  “Thank you, Connie.” About to dash off, Raven halted in midstride, remembering that these two did not know one another. She gestured from one to the other. “Oh, Consuela, Peter. Peter, Consuela.”

  The woman inclined her head. It was obvious that the dark eyes were taking complete and strict measure of him, despite the friendly smile on her face. Consuela nodded acknowledgment, then continued on her way to the kitchen.

  “Connie looks out for Blue when I’m not around and kind of keeps up on things for me. She’s been with us forever,” Raven told him as she led the way to the back of the house. And then, because it was important to Connie, even though she was no longer within earshot, she added, “She used to play backup for a band.”

  “Of course she did,” he muttered. At this point, Peter was beginning to feel that he would believe almost anything Raven told him. Coming here to this house was not unlike stepping through the looking glass. Instead of rabbits hurrying by with pocket watches in their hands, there were aging rockers.

  But the evening was young. The rabbit might still turn up.

  Raven opened a door just off the family room and gave him his first peek into the media room. It looked exactly like a miniature movie theater, complete with tiered theater seats arranged in rows of four. Twenty seats in all faced the largest screen he’d seen outside of a movie house.

  Maybe inside of a few, too.

  Raven read his expression. She inclined her head toward his, whispering in his ear so as not to interfere with the on-screen dialogue. “Dad wanted to make it three times this size, but Mom liked things cozy.”
>
  Cozy was definitely not the first word that would have popped into his head. Unless it had to do with the person at his side.

  “Right,” Peter responded after a beat, pulling himself back from the wave of heat traveling through him thanks to her proximity and the effect her warm breath drifting along his skin had on him. Being around her was making a jumble of his thought process.

  His antenna going up, the lone figure in the first row turned around and saw them. The beatific smile instantly spread along his small lips. Without a second thought, Blue abandoned the movie he was watching. He rushed back to where they stood.

  “Dr. Pete, you’re here.”

  The boy was way too informal for him, Peter thought. But at least Blue attached the title of “Dr.” to his greeting, which was more than Raven had done when she’d introduced him to her housekeeper.

  He glanced toward Raven. It was as if everything about her was trying to strip away the insulating layers he kept around himself, the ones that kept him safe from the rest of the world. From the pain that he kept at bay 24/7, every single moment of his life. Kept at bay until such time as it wouldn’t eat him alive.

  That time hadn’t come yet.

  Blue still beamed at him. “Raven said she’d bring you by.”

  Obviously the woman didn’t have a drop of humility in her. And she seemed to run completely on confidence. He eyed her now, knowing he should have been annoyed at being taken for granted this way. But for some reason the ire didn’t come.

  “Oh, she did, did she?”

  Raven shrugged out of her pea coat, leaving it slung across the back of one of the seats. “I had a hunch you wouldn’t say no.”

  Hunch. So that was what she called her brand of arrogance? Peter couldn’t help wondering just what lengths she would have ultimately gone to, to get him to come along so that she could continue to look like the heroine to her brother. She might appear like something that would be found floating along on a warm summer night’s breeze, but he was getting the definite feeling that the lady was as tough as nails.