From House Calls To Husband

by Christine Flynn

  For a moment, Mike said nothing. He just stood with the ladder on his shoulder, wondering if he should be insulted. Since it was obviously all right for him to see her as she was, he’d apparently been lumped into the same category as her psycho cat.

  Personally, he didn’t think she looked so bad. Granted, the old sweats were so loose that a person really couldn’t tell how shapely she was. And she did look considerably less polished without makeup and her hair pulled into that high, slightly listing ponytail. But there was an intriguing lack of artifice to her freshly scrubbed face, and a gamine quality about the baggy clothes that was kind of sexy in its own way. Especially with the stretched-out neckline sliding off her shoulder again. It kind of made a guy want to discover just how soft she was under that concealing material. Especially since he already knew she had a great little body. She was curvy and feminine, not sinewy and hard the way some of the women at the gym looked. A man would feel as if he were making love to a marble statue with some of them. But with Katie, he’d know he was holding a woman.

  He was wondering if she was wearing a bra, suspecting she wasn’t, when he felt a tightening low in his gut. Reminding himself this was Katie he was mentally bedding, he swung the long, aluminum extension ladder upright.

  “Why don’t you get a ladder from your parents’ house?” he muttered, blaming the edginess he suddenly felt on the fact that he hated being late. “You could have your dad throw it in the back of his Suburban and drop it off. Or I’ll leave this one,” he added, the afterthought occurring as he wedged the ladder between the pine’s long branches. “It would make sense to keep one here if your cat’s going to keep this up.”

  His last words were accompanied by an ear-piercing screech and a shower of pine needles as fifteen pounds of skittish feline scrambled higher.

  Katie’s hand flattened over the knot in her stomach. The thought of imposing on her father had put the knot there. Her panicking cat doubled it. “The ladder scared him,” Katie explained, her tone caught between admonishment and sympathy. “Try not to make any sudden moves. Okay?”

  A vision of her precious kitty clinging like an ornament to the top of the tree vied with the guilt aroused by Mike’s narrowed glance. Having interrupted his evening, she had no business criticizing his rescue effort. Especially since he was going out of his way to help her. That was something her father never would have done. She’d grown up hearing how important her father was, how important was his work, and being told that she shouldn’t interrupt him unless it was absolutely necessary. This man shoving a bough out of the way as he started up the ladder was no less important, his work no less significant, yet there he was, six feet up in her tree making kissy noises at her cat.

  The thoughts were the sort guaranteed to produce a headache if she let herself dwell on them, so she focused only on Mike’s ascent and held the ladder to steady it. The fresh scent of pine enveloped her, but she couldn’t see a thing. The instant she’d glanced up, pine needles and droplets of water cascaded in a mist, forcing her head back down.

  The cat hissed.

  “Hey!”

  Her head jerked right back up again. “What happened?”

  “He tried to scratch me.”

  “Spike! Knock it off.”

  “That’s effective,” Mike muttered, moving higher.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him, thinking of his hands. A cat scratch wouldn’t keep him out of surgery, but unless he wore a bandage, a cut or scratch against latex gloves could be awfully irritating.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. But he’s on the edge of the limb now.”

  “Maybe I should get him.”

  Mike clearly refused to be defeated by something one-twenty-fifth his size. He didn’t even acknowledge her suggestion before he moved up another rung and his arm shot out

  The tearing sound was the sleeve of his jacket catching on the end of a broken branch. The screech was Spike when Mike clamped his hand around the cat’s ruff. Pine cones bouncing through the branches, he dragged Spike along the limb.

  “Be careful!”

  “I’m not going to hurt him. Ow! Damn it,” Mike growled, pulling back with the animal clinging like a barnacle to the underside of his sleeve. “What do you do to his claws? File them to points?”

  “That’s just the way they grow. Here, sweetie,” she cooed, reaching up as Mike pried off the cat and held him out to her. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “You talking to him or me?”

  Mimicking Mike’s droll glance, Katie tucked Spike’s little head under her chin, holding him like a baby while she whispered to the little monster that she’d take his stuffed mouse away for a week if he pulled a stunt like that again. To Mike, she merely said, “Come here,” and reached for his arm when he hit the ground so she could pull him into better light.

  “Oh, geez,” she murmured, when she saw the back of his jacket. Shivering from the cold night air, she hugged the cat tighter. “It did rip.”

  Something low and succinct preceded his cautious, “Great. How bad?”

  “Just a couple of inches. Right along the shoulder seam,” she expanded, feeling worse by the second for imposing on him. “It won’t take but a minute for me to fix it.”

  “Then let’s go. You need to get inside before you get pneumonia, anyway.”

  Katie wasn’t fooled by the disgusted scowl Mike aimed at Spike before he turned to grab the ladder. She knew for a fact that he liked the cat better than he let on. As she retrieved the grocery sack from her car—since that was what she’d originally started to do—she didn’t think that right now was a good time to point that out, or to mention that having a cat of his own might be good for him. Having a pet would put another heartbeat in that mausoleum he lived in, give him companionship, provide a little diversion from his work.

  “Take off your jacket,” she told him when he followed her in the door that opened to her cozy dining area and kitchen. The low drone of a television newscast immediately greeted them, along with the faint scent of cinnamon from the potpourri on her front entry table. “I’ll get a needle and thread and be right back.”

  “I need to wash up.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Spike leapt from her arms as she reached the oatmeal-colored sofa that divided the comfortable space, promptly perching on the matching chair. The walls of her living room were lined with art prints, all Monet and all of his gardens with their verdant greens and splashes of soft color. With her view restricted to the back of a neighbor’s garage in one direction and another duplex in the other, the colorful prints and the plants she kept in brass pots on the bookcase and by the windows, were the only way she had of bringing the outdoors in.

  It took less than a minute for her to dig her sewing basket from between the quilt she’d started four years ago and never completed and an unfinished cross-stitch project of geese with holly wreaths around their necks. Promising herself she’d have that project done by next Christmas, she headed back down the short hall—and found Mike on her telephone. He had the portable unit tucked under his chin and was drying his hands on a paper towel while he paced between the country French canisters on the beige counter by her stove and the bunches of dried flowers and herbs hanging above her sink. Without missing a step, he nodded to where he’d left the jacket on a chair back.

  She was at her kitchen table, searching the small basket for the right shade of brown, when she heard him order a string of medications meant to stabilize a dysrhythmic heart. She’d assumed he was just calling whoever he was meeting for dinner.

  His pager must have gone off, she thought. Listening, because it was impossible not to, she sat down and snipped off the torn threads from the shoulder seam. When that was done, she began stitching the small rip. Mike paced past her a dozen times, his slow, measured steps more a way to expend energy than a sign of impatience.

  “A double bypass was just readmitted through emergency. Eva Horton,” he added, hitting the off button on the phone with his
thumb.

  Katie glanced up midstitch. Mike had his broad back to her as he returned the phone to the end table by the sofa.

  “What happened?”

  “She was having trouble breathing. Her niece brought her in.”

  His deep voice rumbled with terminology that Katie understood all too well as he went on to say what the EKG and blood tests had shown. The news wasn’t good, but Mike was so accustomed to dealing with such situations that, when his glance fell to the jacket bunched in her lap, he revealed nothing but mild surprise.

  With the tear no longer visible, his dark eyebrow winged upward. “You’re finished?”

  His expression would have amused Katie had she not been so busy scrambling to keep up. A double bypass, he’d said, identifying the problem first, then the patient. She did that herself sometimes. And she knew it undoubtedly sounded cold and callous to anyone who’d never worked with pain and suffering; to anyone who’d never had to guard against becoming too involved because the emotional drain over the years could be so devastating. It was simply an occupational form of protection. But separating patient from problem didn’t always work for her. Not as well as it seemed to for Mike.

  Now was not the time to ask him how he did it; how he kept from worrying when he cared.

  “I’m finished,” she said, making the last, neat stitch so he could be on his way. “I’m not going to make you any later for dinner than you already are. Who’re you meeting, anyway?”

  “Claire Griffen.”

  “Dr. Griffen?”

  “Why do you say it like that?” he asked, watching her bite off the thread and hand him back his jacket. “She wants a consult on a patient. We’ve been trying to get together for three days, but something keeps coming up. Lately, it seems as if everyone’s going in eight directions at once.”

  “Must be a full moon,” Katie muttered. “Just a consult?” Caught by a twinge of something she preferred not to define, she cocked her head and smiled. “You sure that’s all it is?”

  “Of course, I’m sure.” He scowled at her teasing, looking as if he couldn’t imagine why else he’d be having dinner with the woman. “We need to talk, and we both need to eat. It’s the two-birds-with-one-stone method of time management.”

  “Have you been out with her before?”

  “What for?”

  “Well, for starters,” she drawled, amazed at the total lack of comprehension in his normally intelligent blue eyes, “she’s pretty, she’s nice, she’s single and you have a lot in common.”

  “You know I don’t have time to date.”

  Which was why you asked me to the Heart Ball, she thought, but she kept the faintly chiding thought to herself. He didn’t have time because he wasn’t making time. He didn’t want a relationship. That knowledge should have worried her. It probably would have, too, if his disinterest in his very eligible, female colleague hadn’t just relieved her somehow.

  Not caring to consider what the attractive internist might have on her own menu for the night, she moved to where Mike shrugged on his jacket by the door.

  “Are you going to get a ladder from your folks, or do you want me to leave mine?”

  Checking the back of his jacket to make sure her handiwork didn’t show, she considered her alternatives. “Well, there’s no way for me to get one over here in my car,” she said, thinking out loud. “And Mom’s car certainly wouldn’t work.” The miniscule size of the car alone precluded any further consideration there, but the thought of petite, perfectly groomed Karen Sheppard driving down the road with a twenty-foot extension ladder poked through the windows of her little Mercedes made Katie smile. “If you don’t mind,” she began, but Mike cut her off as she moved around to face him.

  “Ask your dad to drop it off. This is practically on the way to his office.”

  The knot she’d felt before reasserted itself. “I’m not going to ask for his help with something like this.”

  “Did you ever consider that he might like you to ask for his help?”

  “Frankly? No. And there’s really no point in discussing this further,” she insisted, holding up her hand to cut him off before he could get started. He’d never been able to understand her relationship with her father—or, rather, the lack of one. And since he knew her dad quite well, he couldn’t comprehend how she, who’d lived in her father’s house for eighteen years, scarcely knew him at all. “Thanks for your help. Really,” she added, her voice softening with apology and fatigue. “I appreciate it.”

  “Why do you have to be so stubborn?”

  “Mike, please. Why can’t you just accept that my father and I don’t have the same sort of relationship that you and your dad do? Or the same sort of relationship you have with him for that matter.” She drew a deep breath, and pinched the headache threatening behind the bridge of her nose. Mike made her absolutely crazy when he started in on this particular subject. He simply didn‘t—couldn’t—seem to understand that she did not want to discuss it with him. It wasn’t worth the anger and hurt she felt every time they did.

  “You’re going to be late,” she said, her patience straining. She couldn’t do this. Not now. She was running on reserve as it was. “I’ll keep your ladder for a while, if you don’t mind.”

  The defeat in her tone silenced him. For a moment, he just stood there looking big and solid and strong, and seeing far too much.

  “You know I don’t mind,” he finally said, and absently pushed back the curl that had fallen against her cheek.

  The gesture was one of conciliation, and it forced the corner of her mouth to curve. He matched her weak smile with one of his own.

  “You’re looking a little flushed,” he murmured. “Is your throat still bothering you?”

  She shook her head, her fingers lingering on the spot he’d just touched when she pushed the curl back again herself. “It’s a lot better. Really,” she insisted since he looked as if he didn’t quite believe her.

  “You push yourself too hard.”

  “You have no room to talk. I’m not the one heading off to a consultation after working all day.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sick.”

  “I’m not either. I’m better.” Almost.

  His lips thinned, but more in exasperation than doubt. Shaking his head at her, he reached out again and brushed his knuckles over her cheek. “Get some rest.”

  It had to be the craziness of the day—the week—that made her reach toward him as he turned to the door. He didn’t see what she’d done, though. With his back to her as he let himself out, he didn’t notice, either, how she drew her hand back to cross her arms, or see how tightly she held herself as she listened to the heavy click of the latch when the door closed.

  It was just as well she hadn’t caught his attention. She didn’t know what she’d have said she wanted if he had. There were just so many times lately when she’d wanted a pair of arms around her. Not just any arms, either. But it didn’t seem wise to think about how good it would feel to have Mike hold her, even though there were times she wanted that more than she dared admit.

  Three days later, all Katie wanted was to walk out the front door of the hospital and never go back. Eva Horton coded that morning. They’d worked on her for over an hour before she passed away in CICU.

  The desire to simply chuck it all didn’t last. There were too many other patients to attend, too much else to be done for Katie to indulge herself in something so easy. The reaction was knee-jerk, anyway; a response that occasionally came when circumstances made her question her skills, her judgment, her choice of occupation. With other patients needing her attention, she couldn’t dwell on how unfair it was for Eva’s fire and spark to be snuffed out when there had been so much the woman had wanted to do. But Katie couldn’t ignore the tugs of sadness that told her she’d failed once again to keep professional compassion from getting personal. Being the pro she was, however, she continued efficiently about her duties, soothing anxious patients, practicing patienc
e with imbecilic insurance red tape, and working around the odd little ache such a loss always left.

  Still, she didn’t think she’d ever been so glad to leave a place when, having logged in only two extra hours of overtime, she finally left to join Dana and Lee at Granetti’s for a drink after work.

  Granetti’s Pub was something of an institution among the hospital crowd. The cozy trattoria and bar was only a block away, a short dash through the parking garage. Its owners, an Italian chef and his Irish wife, took pride in the fact that much of the hospital’s staff thought of the place as they would a friend’s kitchen.

  When Katie hurried in from the rain, her friends were already there, occupying one of the green-clothed tables under a trellis of faux grapevines and a Guinness beer sign that proclaimed the brand was good for one’s health. Dana, looking chic as always with her stylishly short blond hair, held up a glass of white wine to indicate she’d already ordered for her. Across from her, Lee raked her fingers through the dark strands of her wind-tousled shag. With her warm, easy smile, she motioned to the chair beside her.

  “Can you believe she actually applied for that promotion?” Lee asked, picking up the conversation as if it hadn’t been hours since she’d called about getting together that afternoon.

  Katie eyed the basket of warm garlic cheese bread on the table, struggling between the lure of the bread’s heavenly scent and the need to shed the last of her holiday weight. The only drawback to having finally shaken her sore throat was that her appetite had returned.

  “It’s about time,” she replied. Inhaling the intoxicating blend of garlic, parsley and Parmesan, she smiled at Dana. “You waffled about it long enough. How long before you hear?”

  Dana was an excellent nurse, and her organizational abilities made her the perfect choice for nurse manager of the surgery department. It had just taken a little arm-twisting on their part to get her to see her potential. But then, arm-twisting was what friends were for.