A Weaver Holiday Homecoming

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  And only when Gretchen Keegan had two teenage daughters barely a year apart in age with no father for them around, and a diagnosis of cancer, had she broken that silence. Gram and her mother had only had a short while together after that.

  “She had a beautiful smile and she sang when she cooked,” she finished abruptly, and turned away from him. “I started out in med school with grandiose ideas of finding a cure for cancer, of course.” Her attention fell on the clipboard with no small amount of relief, and she picked up the pen lying next to it. “But along the way I realized I was better suited for a different course.”

  “Delivering babies?”

  “Yes.” She focused on the forms and, striving for some semblance of neat penmanship, began filling in the lines. “I know it might sound clichéd, but there’s nothing like helping to bring a new life into the world.”

  “Including Chloe.”

  Her hand suddenly shook, turning her letters into an illegible scratch. She nodded, unable to form a simple “yes” and rewrote her street address above the messy scribble.

  “It can’t have been easy.”

  She angled her chin, staring hard at the form and the signature line at the bottom of it for the responsible party.

  She wished he would drop it.

  Knew that he wouldn’t.

  “Letting my sister die? No.” She scratched her signature over the line and set down the pen. “It wasn’t easy.”

  Chapter Seven

  Mallory barely had a chance to see the frown cross Ryan’s face before the rattle of a wheelchair yanked her attention around to see Chloe being wheeled into the room.

  Her daughter’s arm was splinted and resting on a pillow in her lap. Her blue eyes were shadowed, her face unusually pale.

  It took everything Mallory possessed to keep another rush of tears at bay. “Hey, baby.” She crouched next to the wheelchair and smoothed back Chloe’s bangs. “How’re you doing?”

  “I wanna go home.”

  “I know. Soon.” She leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then rose to face the acne-skinned technician from radiology. “I’d like to see the films, Richie.”

  The young man swallowed, looking nervous. “Dr. Jackman will go over them with you, Dr. Keegan.”

  Mallory eyed him. “I’d like to look at them, first.” She was a physician with privileges at the hospital, something he well knew.

  “Sorry, ma’am. Policy.” The kid quickly ducked out the door.

  Swallowing her irritation, she ran her hand down Chloe’s hair again. They’d given her some pain medication already, but had kept the dose as mild as possible. “Are you in pain?”

  “Ever had a broken arm?” Ryan asked wryly.

  He hunkered in front of the wheelchair, looking into Chloe’s face. “Hurts like something nasty and eight-legged, doesn’t it, sweet pea?”

  A wisp of a smile touched Chloe’s lips. “What’re you doing here?”

  He gently wriggled the toe of her green boot. “Wanted to see for myself how you were doing.”

  A knot formed in Mallory’s throat at the pure delight that suddenly shone out of Chloe’s face. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  There was a mile-wide streak of gentleness in him that Mallory could recognize, even if he didn’t want her to, and it made her feel weepy in an entirely different way.

  “Hey there.” Rebecca Clay stuck her head through the doorway and her warm gaze immediately fastened on the sight of her son and Chloe. “I heard what happened. How’s the patient?”

  Since Rebecca had directed the question at Mallory and not Ryan, she answered, telling his mother that they were still waiting for the radiology report. “Otherwise,” she said, rubbing her hands over her crossed arms, “she seems pretty perky.” Which was something attributable in no small way to Ryan’s presence, she was certain.

  “Speeding along radiology might be something I can help with,” Rebecca said wryly.

  She cast another glance at Chloe and Ryan, and Mallory felt a squeeze inside her at the longing that Rebecca was trying—and failing—to mask.

  She strongly suspected that longing was rooted in more than just Rebecca’s desire to get to know her granddaughter more fully. “Ryan’s been great,” she offered. “He’s been waiting with me most of the afternoon.”

  Rebecca smiled. “It’s good to have company,” was all she said. “I’m due at a meeting, but I’ll check on radiology for you first.”

  “Thank you.” She wished she could divine the reasoning behind the palpable distance between Ryan and his mother. “I’ll…I’ll let you know what they find,” she offered, and was glad that she had.

  “I appreciate that.” Rebecca looked touched as she quickly departed.

  “That was generous of you,” Ryan said without expression.

  She wanted to ask him why he hadn’t offered to keep his mother informed, but Chloe’s presence had her refraining.

  “Did you ever break your arm?” Chloe was asking him.

  “Twice.” For Chloe, he grinned. “I’ve also broken my leg and more ’n a couple of ribs.”

  Mallory strongly hoped her daughter didn’t take after him in the broken-bones department.

  “What about you?” She realized Ryan was asking her the question.

  “Never broken a single bone,” she said, and ironically felt she was on the outside of some elite group in which only he and Chloe were members.

  More restless than ever, she headed toward the doorway, her high heels clicking on the tile, with the intention of finding John Jackman herself.

  But the gray-haired man appeared before she reached the doorway. He held open the door, waiting for her to join him in the corridor, away from Chloe’s hearing.

  “Distal radius fracture,” he said, cutting right to the chase. “Undisplaced. Pretty classic, given how she fell.”

  Relief made her feel dizzy. “No surgery, then.” It might have been necessary if the fractured bone had been misaligned.

  “Nope.” He smiled slightly. “Splint until the end of the week and bring her back for another film to see her progress. We’ll cast her then if the swelling is down enough. Courtney will be by in a few with the release orders.” He patted her arm and turned to go, clearly a busy man, but he stopped and glanced back at her. “Heard about your work on Rhonda Danson, yesterday. Good job.”

  She smiled weakly. The last thing on her mind at the moment were patients. Maybe that made her a poor doctor.

  Something that Nina would undoubtedly agree with.

  “Thanks.”

  She returned to the emergency room and two sets of blue eyes turned toward her. She focused on the youngest, least disturbing pair. “The good news is we can leave soon. Bad news is you’ll have to come back later this week to get a cast and in the meantime, obviously, no swinging from the monkey bars.”

  “I was just showing Jenny Tanner how Purple Princess flies from her castle tower to—”

  Mallory lifted her hand. “I don’t want to know. Were you following the rules on the playground?”

  “Well, not ’xactly, but—”

  “No, not exactly.” This was another part of parenting that was no fun. “The rules are there for a reason, Chloe. To help prevent accidents just like this. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.” Chloe’s chin sank, glum.

  Mallory could sympathize. She felt glum, herself. She always did whenever she had to chastise her daughter for something. But she’d do what it took if it meant protecting Chloe.

  She still couldn’t keep her stern expression in place, though, and leaned over her daughter, pressing their foreheads together. “I love you, okay? And I don’t like seeing you get hurt.”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” Chloe whispered.

  “I know.” She rubbed her nose over Chloe’s and straightened.

  Ryan was watching them, his jaw oddly tight, but the moment he realized she’d looked toward him, his expression relaxed.

  T
hen Courtney reappeared to collect the paperwork that Mallory had completed and gave her another set to sign in exchange. “Not that you’ll need them, but here are instructions on how to care for her arm this week, what to watch for, etc., and some tips for alleviating her pain.” She handed over a stapled packet of papers. “I’ve written her return appointment on the top sheet.”

  “Thanks, Courtney.” Mallory folded the papers in thirds and slid them into her pocket. Then she draped Chloe’s coat around her daughter’s shoulders.

  The young nurse smiled and pulled a bright orange sucker out of her pocket. She handed it to Chloe and took hold of the wheelchair. “Ready to blow this pop stand, kiddo?”

  She thought she heard Ryan make some sound, but when she looked, he was merely pulling on his leather jacket. His expression unreadable, he followed them through the double doors to the waiting room.

  “I’ll bring my car up to the curb,” Mallory said, moving ahead of Chloe and Courtney.

  She dashed out into the chill, which was considerably more noticeable now than it had been when she’d raced to the hospital several hours earlier.

  “Where’s your coat?” Ryan’s voice followed her as she reached her car.

  She dashed a snowflake off her cheek and yanked open her car door. “I forgot it at the office.” Her keys were in the ignition, right where she’d left them, but when she turned them, nothing happened but a halfhearted groan from the engine.

  She exhaled and dropped her head onto the steering wheel. “What else can go wrong with this day?”

  “Sounds like the battery,” he said.

  “Probably.” She didn’t move.

  “I have jumper cables in my truck.”

  She finally lifted her head. “You’re going to get tired of rescuing me pretty soon.”

  He pulled off his coat and tossed it on her lap. “At least this kind of rescue I can pull off.” He pushed the car door shut.

  Which left her to wonder what kind of rescues he hadn’t pulled off.

  Her hands closed around the soft leather coat as she watched him jog back to his pickup, illegally parked near the emergency entrance.

  A few seconds later, he was driving around near her car, positioning the front of his truck alongside the hood of her car. “Pop your hood,” he said, through the window, while doing the same with his truck.

  She fumbled around for the latch and evidently took too long, because he opened her door again, reaching inside himself, down near her knee. She barely heard the soft release of the car’s hood, because she was altogether sidetracked by his closeness.

  The only thing she seemed able to think about was that kiss, and the fact that his head was presently only inches from hers.

  “Do about as much tinkering with cars as you do with plumbing?” His voice was low. Tinted with a dry humor that was all the more appealing for its rarity.

  “Pretty much,” she admitted faintly.

  His focus dropped to her mouth and her heart seemed to stop.

  In that moment, she felt acutely aware of everything around them. The low rumble of his truck engine still running; the whisper-soft feel of a snowflake that drifted through the open door to land on her hand and melt; the distant slam of a car door.

  “I’ll tell you when to turn it over.”

  He had the most amazingly shaped lips. “Turn what over?”

  “The engine.”

  She blinked, yanked out of whatever mesmerizing spell he seemed to weave just by breathing. “Okay.” She rolled her eyes in exaggeration, as if that would prevent either one of them from noticing her burning hot cheeks. “Duh.”

  His lips curved a little as he straightened, and she realized he had the faintest of dimples beside the corner of those spectacularly formed lips.

  “Put the coat on,” he advised, interrupting her wayward thoughts yet again before nudging the car door closed.

  She decided that working the coat around her shoulders while still seated behind the wheel was ever so much more preferable to being caught ogling him some more.

  It took him no time at all to lift the hood of her car and then he disappeared from view for a moment; poking his head around the edge of the uplifted hood to tell her she could try starting her car.

  She turned the key and the engine immediately fired to life. He let the hood drop back into place, holding the thick jumper cables in one hand. “Keep the engine running until you get home,” he said. “I’ll follow you.”

  The offer was meant to be reassuring, she felt certain, but the only thing it accomplished was to send nervous anticipation zinging through her all over again.

  He returned to his truck, which she realized had a smoother-sounding engine than her much newer car, and she drove around to the hospital doors. She stopped long enough to pick up Chloe from the wheelchair that Courtney had wheeled out of the hospital and, once she’d fastened her daughter’s seat belt around her, drove out of the lot.

  “Is Mr. Ryan your boyfriend?”

  Mallory’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she shot Chloe a startled look. “No! Of course not. Why…why would you even ask that?”

  “’Cause he’s always around now, and Miss Courtney said she thinks he must like you a lot, ’cause he’s not around nobody that much. She told me he’s her big brother, you know.”

  “I know.” The reflection of his ancient truck behind her car seemed to consume her rearview mirror.

  “If you and him had a baby, then I could be a big sister.”

  “Chloe!” She let out a shocked laugh. “Mr. Ryan and I are not thinking of doing any such thing.”

  “But I wanna be a big sister. And you wouldn’t have to get married.” Her daughter seemed to think that would make the scenario more attractive. “Even though you said that’s where babies come from. I know, ’cause Lea Rasmussen in my class said her cousin was getting a baby and she wasn’t married. And Grammy said my other mommy didn’t ever get married, too. That’s how come I don’t got a daddy.”

  “Don’t have.” Her hands felt suddenly damp around the fleecy steering wheel cover, the leather of Ryan’s coat that she wore almost suffocatingly warm. “And when were you and Grammy talking about all of this?”

  Chloe leaned her head against the door as if her spurt of energy had dwindled. “I dunno. When I was little.”

  “Ah.” Mallory didn’t know whether to be amused or disturbed, and fell somewhere in between. She slowed to turn onto her street and glanced at the rearview mirror again.

  Ryan was still there. Large as life.

  Her hands strangled the steering wheel a little more. “Why didn’t you ask me about your daddy?”

  “’Cause you get sad.”

  “I do get sad that your other mommy isn’t here. She was my big sister.”

  “Yeah.” Chloe flopped her head onto her other shoulder, looking up at Mallory with her enormous blue eyes. “But you also get sad ’cause you don’t got your own daddy.”

  Her jaw slid around a little as she absorbed that. “Grammy tell you that, too?”

  Chloe shook her head. Her lashes drooped a little more. “Uh-uh. Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

  Tenderness plowed over her. “Sure.”

  “Can I have a puppy?”

  She smiled slightly. Chloe’s effort did as much to prove how resilient she was as anything could. “Nice try. What would we do with a puppy when we have to go back to New York?”

  “We could stay here instead.”

  Mallory bit the inside of her cheek at that one. “What about your friends back home? Don’t you miss them?”

  “I like Jenny Tanner. She’s my bestest friend, ever. And here we have a yard for a puppy.” Chloe’s voice was matter-of-fact.

  “We talked about this before we came to Weaver,” Mallory reminded her. “I’m only filling in for Dr. Yarnell until he gets back.”

  Staying in Weaver on a permanent basis had never been part of the plan.

  Chloe just gave her
a look as if to say that was a poor excuse in her opinion. Fortunately they’d arrived at the house, and Mallory turned into the narrow driveway that ran alongside the yard to the separate garage located just behind and to the side of the house. She drove past George the Great, who had begun sporting a scarf of shiny red Christmas garland in the past twenty-four hours and a red Santa hat that was now turning white with snow.

  Instead of parking on the street as he usually did, Ryan turned into the driveway, too, and followed her all the way back. Before she could get out of the car to swing open the garage doors, though, he’d climbed out of his truck and was walking past her car, gesturing to stay where she was. He pulled open the heavy wooden doors of the old-fashioned garage with enviable ease, then stood to the side while she drove inside and parked.

  She climbed out of the car and walked around to the passenger side, feeling awkward over his unexpected assistance. “Thanks.”

  She opened Chloe’s door and carefully helped her out. “Can you walk okay?” She didn’t want to chance Chloe slipping on the snowy ground, but she also didn’t want to jostle her arm by trying to carry her.

  “I’ll get her.” Ryan reached around her and easily scooped Chloe into his arms before she could protest.

  Mallory had to swallow hard at the sight of him carrying her.

  Since she’d brought Chloe home from the hospital as a newborn, carrying duty had been pretty much hers, and hers alone.

  Now faced with the very real possibility that those days were going to change, she wasn’t sure at all that she was prepared.

  She tucked Chloe’s coat more securely around her before he carried her out of the garage, then quickly retrieved her purse and briefcase from the backseat. Like the keys she’d left in the ignition, they, too, had remained forgotten in the car at the hospital while all of her focus had been on Chloe.

  Her boots skidded on the frozen ground as she darted ahead of them up the back porch steps to open the door, but Kathleen must have seen their arrival. She was already waiting with the door open when they reached it.