THE PASSION OF PARICK MACNEILL

by Virginia Kantra

  "Why not?"

  "Because." Oh, heavens. "It's your bed."

  His voice was deep and wicked. "But I like the idea of you sleeping in my bed."

  Kate fought for a note of dry humor. "This isn't going to turn into one of those naughty phone calls, is it?"

  "Do you want it to?" He sounded amused.

  She put up her chin, forgetting he couldn't see. "Of course not."

  "Because I don't have any experience with that kind of thing, but I could give it a shot."

  Kate was embarrassed to realize that her heart was beating faster. "Don't be silly."

  "I can't help it. I haven't done this before. So, what are you wearing?"

  She bit her lip to control her smile. "Oh, please."

  "Isn't that how I'm supposed to start?" Patrick asked in mock innocence. "Come on, help me out here."

  Kate tried to ignore her racing pulse. "Jeans and a shirt. Hardly seductive."

  "Honey, I've seen you in jeans. They'll do. Believe me, they'll do. Is the shirt buttoned?"

  Involuntarily, her hand flew to her throat. "It's a T-shirt."

  "Damn," he said, and there was so much genuine regret in his voice that she laughed. "What color?"

  Her fingers stroked the soft cotton below her neckline. "Teal."

  "What is that? Green? Blue?"

  "Sort of a greeny blue, I guess."

  "Uh-huh. And underneath?"

  Against her sensible cotton bra, her nipples drew taut. Her face was hot. "Underwear."

  He laughed softly. "That's real descriptive, honey. Guess I'll have to wait to find out in person.

  She felt compelled to object. "I haven't said—"

  "No, you haven't," he said roughly. "I just didn't figure that when I finally got you into bed I wouldn't be there."

  There was an unexpected weariness in his voice, a fissure in his iron control. Instinctively, Kate responded to it, settling back against the headboard, drawing her legs up under her.

  "How are things going, Patrick?" she asked gently.

  "Fine."

  "You sound tired."

  "Yeah."

  "How's your mother?"

  "She's … okay."

  Kate tapped her knee in frustration. "You know, getting you to talk about your feelings is like trying to make me describe my underwear. Can you tell me what's really going on, please?"

  "I'd rather talk about your underwear."

  She waited.

  His breath blew out. "Fine. Things are a little tense up here. Mom wasn't expecting this, and she's upset."

  "Are your brothers both there?"

  "Yeah. Sean is flirting with the nurses, and Con is arguing with the doctors."

  "Oh, that's productive."

  She could almost see his shrug. "It's distracting, anyway."

  "Is there something I can do to help? Talk to your father's doctors, anything?"

  "No. Mom's pretty much got the medical angle covered. She works here, remember. Hospitals take good care of their own."

  Kate nodded. "Well, if you think of anything…"

  "Thanks. You're already doing more than enough. It helps knowing Jack is with you. It helps talking with you."

  His confidence honored and scared her at the same time. Protected by the distance that stretched between them, they were drawing closer in ways she'd never anticipated. She took another cautious step forward. "How are you doing?"

  "Fine. Like I told you, Dad's stabilized. There's not much to do at this point but wait for the surgery."

  And Patrick was good at that, she thought with a tear at her heart. He'd had to be. Like an eagle forced from the sky, he'd trained his fierce, passionate spirit to withstand the confines of hospital waiting rooms. She could imagine how they all relied on him as the eldest. Silent, tempered Patrick would be an anchor for his worried mother, a rock for his shaken brothers, a stand-in for their stricken patriarch.

  "The surgery's on Monday?"

  "Yeah." He hesitated. "I know it's a lot, asking you to stay on another couple days. I could fly home tomorrow, pick up Jack."

  "No," she said firmly. "Stay there. We're doing fine."

  "What about your work?"

  Kate pressed two fingers between her brows, rubbing away her worry. She'd have to juggle to cover Monday. "It's taken care of."

  "Liar."

  His perception disconcerted her. She wasn't used to having her needs considered or her pronouncements questioned. "I'll work something out. You just concentrate on your family. Good night."

  "Yeah, good night." His voice roughened. "Sleep well."

  Sitting on his bed, she pressed her thighs together. "I will."

  He chuckled. "No, you won't. You'll think about me."

  She resented the easy way he cracked open her defenses. Resented it, but couldn't resist it. "Dream on, flyboy."

  "Oh, I will. I'll dream about you in my bed. It goes both ways, Kate."

  With that, he hung up.

  Just as well, she reflected. He'd left her speechless.

  Cradling the receiver, she slid from the mattress. At least her legs still supported her. Her skin tingled. Her jeans chafed her thighs as she walked, and the soft knit of her shirt teased her shoulders. Hugging her arms across her chest to hold in her ballooning desire, she wandered across the room. And came face-to-face with a photograph of Patrick's dead wife.

  From within her silver frame on top of her husband's dresser, a pretty dark-haired woman still round with recent pregnancy smiled shyly at the camera. With motherly pride and maternal joy, she supported the baby on her lap. Love encompassed them, as shining and plain as the halo on an angel. Her beaming eyes invited the photographer—Patrick, Kate assumed—into their magic circle.

  Meeting the dead woman's expectant, happy gaze, Kate felt more like an interloper in Patrick's house, in Patrick's life, than ever.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  «^»

  Patrick was still grinning as he hung up the pay phone in the ball. In spite of his reluctance to impose on Kate, he liked imagining the brisk lady doctor in his house, in his bed.

  Bridget MacNeill came out of the waiting room. Her steps were firm. Not a strand of her salt-and-pepper hair was out of place. But the crow's-feet punctuating her expression appeared deeper than usual, and her smile was tired. Patrick frowned in concern.

  She slipped her fingers into the crook of his arm. "How's everything at home?"

  He covered her hand with his large one. "Fine. Jack's sleeping."

  "Sean mentioned you have a—friend?—staying at the house."

  He hedged, unwilling to expose his involvement with Kate to his mother and yet grateful for anything that would distract her from her worry. "Not a friend, exactly. Jack's doctor."

  Bridget's eyes, blue as his own, widened speculatively. "Jack's doctor makes house calls?"

  He was in for it now, Patrick realized. United in crisis, the family would once more feel free to meddle in his personal life. Resigned, he started to walk his mother back to the waiting room. "Remind me to kill Sean when we get to the hotel okay?"

  Bridget chuckled. "Now, Padraig, you know it's not his fault. None of you boys could keep a secret if I had a mind to get it out of you." Her fingers tightened briefly on his arm. "Except you."

  Patrick shrugged. "That's because I don't have any secrets."

  His mother sniffed, unconvinced. "Is she young?"

  "Not old. My age, maybe a little more."

  "Pretty?"

  "I guess." How could he describe the potent combination of strength and insecurity that drew him to Kate, the soft body and hard-as-nails attitude, the crisp speech and compassionate brown eyes? "She's prickly as hell."

  Bridget put her head to one side. "So, not that young, not particularly pretty, but still … special?"

  Patrick narrowed his eyes at her.

  She smiled sunnily, not the least bit intimidated. "I think she sounds wonderful. It's about time you found someone."


  "Mom, you're way ahead of me here. We're not— It's not like that. Kate's just helping me out."

  And he was just trying to get her into bed, but he wasn't confessing that to his mother.

  Bridget nodded as if she understood. "That's very generous. I imagine with her job at the hospital— She is with the hospital?"

  "Yeah."

  "I imagine she doesn't have a lot of free time."

  "No. But she makes time for her sister's family." And that, too, was part of what drew him. He admired the way Kate shouldered responsibility without any thanks that he could see. He thought of the cans of tuna she'd carted to her sister's, the space blaster her nephew toted around. Her sense of commitment was as deeply ingrained as his own. Like a fellow Marine, he would trust her with his life. He could trust her with his son.

  "She's got somebody to cover for her on Monday," he added. "After that, we'll see. I thought I might go home Monday night, once we know…"

  Once we know if Dad's going to be all right, he thought but did not say. Memories of another hospital vigil beat at his brain, pounding to get in.

  In the first weeks of Jack's recovery, his whole family had come down to be with them. Patrick had registered their presence, even drawn instinctive comfort from the gathering of the clan. But for him, reality had narrowed to the cot where Jack lay swaddled, battling for breath and life. Patrick had poured his own spirit into the fight, willing his own strength into his infant son. An exclusive bond had formed between them which even his family's love could not touch.

  His mother turned, stopping him just outside the waiting room door. "I do wish that Lynn were here to support Con," she fretted.

  Lovely, leggy Lynn was Con's high-priced fiancée.

  Patrick shrugged. "He explained that. She had a scheduling conflict."

  Bridget snorted. "What kind of conflict lasts for three days? And over a weekend, too." She shook her head. "I am so glad you came. So thankful."

  "No big deal, Mom. I wanted to be here."

  "They look to you, you know," she confided, gazing up at him earnestly. "They're strong, but they look to you."

  He squeezed her hands. "Yeah, well, all those years I spent fixing their sandwiches and beating their heads in had to count for something."

  "It's more than that, and you know it. Of all my sons, you're the one most like your father. If anything happens—"

  "Nothing's going to happen, Mom. Dad's going to be fine."

  Grimly, Patrick hoped he was right. He had already learned firsthand the fickleness of death and the cost of survival.

  * * *

  "Kate, you know I'd love to help you out," said Owen Roberts, the burn unit's attending physician. His telephone voice was faintly apologetic. "But those schedules were made up a month ago, and I've been covering for Gerry all weekend."

  He was going to say no. Kate gripped the receiver tighter, torn between letting Patrick down and betraying her need to a senior member of the hospital staff.

  "Couldn't Ernie fill in for me tomorrow?" she asked.

  "Too much responsibility for a resident," Owen said firmly. "I know he can handle the admissions, but in an emergency we need another surgeon on call."

  She couldn't argue with him, and she hated to beg. She tried so hard to keep her personal life completely separate from her professional role. Swaim was always quick to point the finger at women doctors who placed the demands of their families over what he perceived as their duty to the hospital.

  But now Jack needed her. Patrick was depending on her. She had no choice.

  "Please, Owen," she said. "I'll take the Fourth of July." Owen chuckled. "Four days of fireworks accidents? You must be crazy. Or desperate."

  Both, she thought. She glanced through the kitchen doorway at Jack, lying on his stomach on the family room floor, his sneakers waving in the air. The pieces of their interrupted board game were scattered around him.

  "Please," she said again.

  He sighed. "My wife will never forgive me. She wanted to go golfing tomorrow. What's so all-fired important? Got a hot weekend?"

  Kate stiffened at the jocular insinuation and then forced herself to relax. She'd laid herself open to Owen's speculation by asking him for a favor. But there was simply no way she could tell the attending physician that she was disrupting the unit's schedule to baby-sit a patient. Swaim's patient.

  "No, I… It's personal," she said.

  She counted twenty heartbeats while he digested that one. "Okay," he said at last, reluctantly. "I'll see what I can do."

  Relief made her gush. "Oh, thank you. I appreciate this, Owen, I really do. If—"

  He cut her off, almost as uncomfortable with her uncharacteristic outburst as she was. "I know, I know, I'm a swell guy. See you Tuesday. I'll square it with Swaim. I hope it's worth it, Kate, whatever it is."

  "Yes. Thank you," she said again.

  Worth it? she wondered, hanging up the phone. Who could say? She didn't really belong here in Patrick's house, with Patrick's son.

  Although sometimes, folding Jack's T-shirts into neat little thirds, seeing her razor rest beside Patrick's on the edge of his sink, she almost felt as if she did. But then the pile of paperwork she'd brought from the hospital spilled over into supper time, or she entered Patrick's room under the eyes of his smiling, dark-haired wife, and she knew that she did not.

  He was coming home tomorrow. Her good deed would be over. She could go back to the hospital and her empty apartment, she would go back to being Jack's sometime doctor.

  Rejoining Jack in the family room, Kate told herself she was relieved. She wasn't cut out for family life. Her own mother complained constantly that her older daughter lacked a woman's instincts. She'd never satisfied her sister's need for a confidante. She didn't have the time or temperament for a child, and she'd never been good at intimacy.

  "My turn?" she asked, squatting on the floor.

  Jack nodded and scooted over to make room for her.

  Kate spun. "Six."

  Together, they counted. "One. Two. Three… Oh, darn," she said as her game piece ended at the top of a slide.

  Jack giggled and swooshed it to the bottom of the board. "Dr. Kate?"

  She watched him spin. "Mm?"

  "Do you think I'm ugly?"

  Her heart stopped with the brightly colored wheel. Shocked, she stared into those solemn blue eyes, at that pointed chin and sensitive mouth. There was already a promise of strength in his shoulders and his one good hand that reminded her poignantly of Patrick.

  Kate cleared her throat. "No," she answered truthfully. "No, I don't."

  "I have a scar."

  From somewhere in her medical training or her heart, she searched for the words to answer him. "You have a scar. Billy has freckles. Everyone looks different."

  "If I have an op'ration will my scar go away?"

  She weighed her reply, forced to balance her medical knowledge against Jack's ability to understand, her professional judgment against his father's decision and Swaim's likely promises. Lying would have been simpler.

  "No. Just like an operation wouldn't make Billy's freckles go away. It could help," she added. "It could give your ear more shape. And sometimes the doctor can make changes in the scar's appearance to make it less noticeable. But one operation won't make a big difference to how you look."

  The boy pulled on his lower lip, brows drawn together, digesting this.

  "On the other hand," Kate continued, "the scar doesn't make any difference at all to the people who love you."

  He twisted his neck to look at her. "Do you love me?"

  Her heart wrenched and wrung. "Yes," she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. "I guess I do."

  Jack grinned. He flopped along the floor and rolled his head into her lap.

  "I love you, too," he mumbled into her blue jeans.

  She hadn't expected to hear those words. She hadn't known she needed to. They made her heart expand in her chest, crowding h
er lungs, stealing her breath, shattering forever the image created by her own mother's belittling words. Her hand lifted, hovered, and then touched his close-cropped hair.

  Kate bit her lip. It was going to be pretty damn hard to maintain her professional distance after this.

  * * *

  Bridget cried in the arms of her oldest son. "It's so stupid," she sobbed.

  Patrick held her, supported her. He understood her reaction better than she knew or he could ever show. "Ssh, Mom. It's okay."

  She lifted her head from his chest, blue eyes seeking reassurance. "I'm just so relieved. He did say your father would be all right?"

  Con, across the room, must have heard, because he left his discussion with the doctor to come over.

  Patrick welcomed his arrival. Three years separated the brothers, but they'd won their share of school yard battles together. Patrick knew him as a methodical thinker and a vicious fighter. The middle brother in age, the middle one in height, he'd carved his place as the cool and brainy one, earning a scholarship to Harvard and a vice presidency at some hotshot financial group specializing in old money and new investments. In the past few days, while Patrick supported their mother and Sean played the clown to distract them all, Con had handled communications with the hospital.

  Now he patted Bridget's shoulder. "As long as Dad watches his diet and takes his blood pressure medication, he'll be fine. The operation went great."

  "Come on, Mom, don't cry. They're letting you in to see him," Sean said.

  "Let's give thanks to God," Bridget said, smiling around at her sons. "And then I suppose I'd better thank the doctors."

  Patrick released her. As she crossed the waiting room to talk to the surgeon, a huge weight lifted from his shoulders. His father would be all right.

  The burden inside him eased, but nothing grew to replace it. He was empty. Numb. Even as Patrick clasped Con's hand and took Sean's punch on his shoulder, he felt curiously disassociated from his family's joy.

  Con frowned. "How are you doing, bro?"

  Patrick forced a grin. "Can't complain."

  His brother's cool blue eyes regarded him astutely. "That's your problem. You never could."

  It took Patrick a moment to decide that Con was joking.