The M.D. Meets His Match

by Marie Ferrarella

  “That’s my girl.” Settling back, Ursula beamed, satisfied. She watched her oldest granddaughter cross to the stairs, affection welling up within her. April was a good girl, if somewhat misguided. “April—”

  One foot on the stairs, April stopped to turn around. “Yes?”

  Feeling slightly awkward, Ursula lowered her eyes and picked at the yellow-and-white daisies crocheted within the throw. “Did I ever tell you how much I appreciate your coming back to mind the store?”

  April’s smile broadened. “Yes, Gran, you told me. And you know I’d do anything for you.”

  “I know—” She strained to listen for the sound of movement downstairs. “So go see who it is.” She raised herself up slightly, so that her voice would follow April down the stairs. “And if you don’t know where to find something—”

  “You’re right here to tell me,” April called back, finishing a statement she had heard over and over again growing up. Unlike their far frailer mother, Gran had always promised to be there for them, to show them the way no matter what. And she had. April and her siblings had come to believe that Gran was going to go on forever. Being confronted with a different kind of scenario was difficult to come to terms with. “Yes, I know.”

  April looked around the small outpost as she reached the bottom of the stairs. As if she couldn’t find absolutely everything there was to find in this room within a matter of seconds, she thought. If the post office were any smaller, her claustrophobia would have kicked in.

  As it was, the room that housed all the incoming and outgoing mail for Hades could be referred to as small with just cause. She could turn the whole area upside down in a matter of mere minutes if she wanted to.

  Gran’s hearing was as good as ever, she thought. Someone had entered the post office while she’d been upstairs. The small bell attached to the door hardly made a sound worth listening for, but Gran was apparently still tuned in to it.

  “May I help you?”

  Shoving her hands into the back pockets of her faded jeans, April addressed the words to the back of a head she didn’t immediately recognize. When the man turned around, she found she didn’t recognize his face, either. She had to admit that it felt a little unusual not knowing the man. Before she’d left Hades, there hadn’t been a face she didn’t know, at least on sight.

  She would have remembered this face.

  With the trained eye of a professional photographer, she studied him quickly from head to toe. He looked to be several years older than she was, but at the same time, he had a face that appeared as if it would remain perpetually youthful even in old age. He had the kind of eyes, blue and intense, that would twinkle well into his nineties.

  They were twinkling now as they took slow, careful measure of her. She could almost feel them passing over her body.

  She knew the type. Handsome, charming, and as trustworthy as a barrel of snakes after a nine month fast. She’d met more than a few of those in her travels. Men like that made an exhilarating date for an evening, but after that, their charm wore thin. As did any promises they might make in the heat of the moment. Just like her father.

  She had no use for that type of man.

  Still, she couldn’t help wondering who this man was and what had brought him to such a sleepy little place as Hades. It wasn’t as if Hades was exactly on anyone’s beaten path and it definitely wasn’t a place someone would happen on as they were passing through, at least not in this century. A hundred and fifty years ago, prospectors with dreams of getting rich quickly would ride into town, eyeing the hills that were directly behind it. But that hadn’t happened for close to eighty years if she was to believe the stories Gran had told them.

  For the first time since arriving in town yesterday, James Quintano, Jimmy to all his friends, found his appetite whetting. Not that he’d arrived in Hades to have his appetite even mildly aroused. He’d come because Alison was here and he’d promised to return to visit his sister and her husband ever since he’d boarded the plane right after her wedding. Hades wasn’t a town a man would come to look for a fling or a pleasurable interlude. There was a different breed of people here. Decent people who worked hard and played even harder because those times were precious and rare.

  It was also a town, he’d quickly realized, where a man had his work cut out for him if he wanted female companionship of any kind. Alison had told him the odds were something like seven to one against him. Not that he’d ever had a hard time finding willing women. He had a hard time not finding willing women. It had been that way for him ever since he’d found puberty a little after his eleventh birthday. He’d grown tall early, began shaving early, and discovered love early. The birds and the bees had had nothing on Mary-Sue Taylor.

  Thoughts of Mary-Sue and her successors faded from his mind, as did the woman who was to have accompanied him on the Alaskan cruise before fate in the guise of an apparent family emergency had stepped in.

  Habit had him glancing at the blonde’s left hand. He found it encouragingly unadorned.

  Finished with his appraisal, Jimmy smiled and answered her question. “I certainly hope so.”

  And then he saw her wrist. His initial scrutiny had missed that because she’d had her hands tucked into her back pockets, making her jeans strain against her torso and distracting him. Now he saw that there was a makeshift bandage wrapped around her left wrist. One that looked as if it was about to come undone with the very next movement she made.

  He nodded at it, coming forward. “What happened to your wrist?”

  She looked down at it grudgingly, the stranger’s question bringing with it a fresh wave of pain. She’d been trying to put herself beyond that. It was an injury sustained this morning because, as always, she had been moving too fast. But fast was the only tempo she knew. Away from Hades, there was always so much to do that moving fast was a necessity to staying on top of things. Her mind elsewhere, she’d brushed too close to the skillet and been awarded a red badge of courage in the form of a wide, angry blister.

  “Nothing. Just a case of a frying pan not moving out of my way,” she said with a careless shrug.

  As she reached for the pile of envelopes she’d abandoned earlier, the bandages began to loosen in earnest, coming completely undone.

  “I can take a look at that for you,” Jimmy volunteered, already reaching for her hand.

  Instinct, both inbred and acquired, had her pulling her hand away. Suspicion creased the brow beneath her wayward bangs. “And just why would you want to do that?”

  He didn’t usually meet with resistance when he reached for a woman’s hand. Jimmy’s smile widened. “Well, for one thing, I’m a doctor.”

  Chapter Two

  April looked suspiciously at the tall, darkly handsome man standing in front of her, still keeping her wrist very much to herself. Medical treatment in Hades came via Dr. Shayne Kerrigan and, recently, his nurse, Jean-Luc’s wife, Alison. Shayne had been trying, unsuccessfully, to lure another doctor to Hades ever since his brother, the only other doctor within a hundred-mile radius, had left town to follow his heart’s dream—a woman named Lilah who had a wandering soul. Shayne had begged, pleaded and cajoled would-be seasoned physicians and doctors fresh out of medical school to no avail. The idea that one would suddenly just pop up in the middle of town without fanfare and an abundance of rumors preceding him, rumors Gran was always the first to be privy to, was completely beyond belief.

  Wariness infused by her wanderings in the city took hold. April eyed the tall, muscular man carefully.

  “You mean, you want to play doctor, don’t you?”

  The stranger’s smile widened, becoming even more unsettlingly seductive and convincing April that she’d hit the nail right on the head about him. This was no doctor, this was an opportunist at the very least.

  “After all the money my brother invested in medical school, I’d better be able to do more than just ‘play’ doctor.” He took another step toward her. “I’d damn well better b
e able to be one.”

  The suspicion didn’t abate. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing about Hades that would lure a person to come visit it. Hades wasn’t known for anything, had no natural wonders to offer in exchange for the hardship of seeking it out, and it was as far off the usual route as was humanly possible without falling off the edge of the earth.

  Yes, the coal mines were still productive, and nicely so, but if the man’s hands were any indication, the only kind of physical work he had probably ever engaged in was ridding women of their outer clothing. And quickly, too, no doubt.

  April raised her chin, tucking her hand behind her back. “What’s a doctor doing in Hades?”

  “Visiting,” he answered succinctly. Why was she so skittish? Jimmy wondered. It was just her wrist he was offering to examine, not the rest of her. Although that would undoubtedly be richly rewarding. “I won’t charge you.”

  A glint of anger highlighted the suspicious light in her eyes. “For what?”

  Had she lost the thread of the conversation? She didn’t strike him as the simple type, but looks were deceiving, even mouthwatering ones such as hers. “For looking at your wrist.”

  She snorted, retreating behind the huge, scarred oak desk that had belonged to Gran’s father. Mail was still scattered along its surface. She had work to tend to and this was wasting time.

  “Good, and I won’t charge you for looking at yours,” she retorted.

  Although, all things considered, April secretly allowed, the stranger’s wrist would have been the very last thing she would think to look at. The rest of him was a good deal more interesting and arresting than his wrist. Apart from a handful of men, her brother included, the male population of Hades would not have stopped any hearts. This man certainly would.

  Stop hearts and set pulses racing, and she had a feeling he knew it, too. He was about a foot taller than she was, with dark black hair and eyes the color of the waters off the cape in the spring. The way he held himself, with an easy, comfortable grace, reminded her of one of the Native Americans who’d come into the post office when she was a little girl. Gran had told her he’d once been a chief of a tribe that had since died out. To her, the man had seemed larger than life.

  That was undoubtedly what this man was, too, larger than life. Except in his case, that description would involve his own view of himself.

  Well, she had better things to do than to stroke his ego. Deliberately, she looked down at the mail on the desk.

  As he watched the woman in front of him, Jimmy’s grin widened a little more. She had spirit, no question about it. He liked that. There was nothing duller than a woman who just fell into his arms. Ever since he could remember, he’d always enjoyed a challenge. It kept him on his toes and made him feel alive.

  He leaned an elbow on the desk, as comfortable as if he’d been coming here for years. “You know, you’re the first unfriendly person I’ve met in Hades.”

  If he was trying to embarrass her, he was going to have to do a lot better than that, April thought. “Good,” she sniffed, turning her back on him. “I never liked being part of the crowd.”

  That had been his first impression of her, Jimmy thought. Someone not part of a crowd. He leaned forward, watching the way her bottom strained against her jeans as she bent over the mail bag. He had a keen knack for being able to cleanly divorce himself from his professional side outside the hospital. And this lady certainly deserved his undivided attention.

  “Oh, you might be in a crowd, but you’d never be taken for being part of it. You’d stand out no matter where you were.”

  April looked at him over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing. “Is that supposed to impress me?”

  “No, that’s not supposed to do anything,” he told her with such unabashed honesty, she could almost believe him. “It’s just an observation. So far, we’ve ascertained that you stand out in a crowd, you’re unfriendly—” his eyes flickered to her wrist “—and you wrap bandages worse than a first year medical student.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him that he and his observations were free to leave the post office at any time, preferably now. But the words never had a chance to emerge as the man took charge of the moment as well as her wrist by taking the end of the bandage and deftly unwrapping it.

  April caught her lower lip between her teeth to keep the startled yelp of pain from escaping her lips.

  Pulling her hand out of his grasp would prove to be hurtful, so she left it where it was. Instead she glared at him. “Just what do you—”

  The wound appeared to be first degree and didn’t look infected. Still, he bet it smarted more than a little. “That’s rather angry-looking.”

  That wasn’t the only thing, she thought indignantly. Just who the hell did he think he was? “You want to see angry-looking, just raise your eyes a little, mister. Just what do you think—”

  The door swung open behind them. “Jimmy, what’s taking you so—” The woman entering the post office stopped abruptly as the sight registered. “Oh, I should have known.” A dimple melded into her expression. “Can’t let you out of my sight, can I?”

  Startled, April looked up to see Alison LeBlanc crossing to them. The dark-haired woman she’d met briefly when she’d gone to see Dr. Kerrigan about her grandmother flashed a rueful smile at her.

  Seeing them side by side, April was struck by the similarities between the two people in her grandmother’s post office. Although Alison was a good deal shorter, their coloring and the way they held themselves was almost startlingly identical.

  April looked from one to the other. “Are you two related?”

  Her would-be healer laughed. “Only by the cruel whimsy of fate.” With one hand still firmly holding April’s, he wrapped his arm around Alison’s slender shoulders and gave her a quick hug. “This is my baby sister.” There was teasing affection in his eyes as he regarded Alison for a moment. “She’s turned out rather nicely, all things considered.”

  Alison shot him a withering look that somehow still managed to give the impression of affection. “If you mean considering that you were my brother, you’re dead-on. I turned out nicely thank-you-very-much despite you, not because of you.”

  A faint pang drifted through April. This, she thought, she was familiar with. Or at least she had been before she’d moved away. It was the kind of relationship she’d had with her own two siblings, especially with Max. There were times when she truly missed it, though she would admit that to no one because to do so would mean she was vulnerable. If there was one thing she refused to be in any manner conceivable, it was vulnerable. She knew what vulnerability did to a woman.

  Alison looked at her apologetically. “I’m sorry, I hope Jimmy hasn’t been bothering you. I just sent him out to get the office mail. I should have realized that once he got a good look at you, he’d forget what he came for and try to charm you the way he does every other woman he encounters.”

  Just as she thought. The man was all flash, no substance. April congratulated herself on her perception.

  Rather than look annoyed at having his game plan revealed, the way April would have expected, Jimmy merely laughed.

  “I wasn’t trying to charm her, I was doing a consultation.” To prove it, Jimmy raised the now bandageless wrist he was holding. “The lady seems to have injured herself.”

  Alison quickly examined the wound. “I’ve got some ointment for that at the clinic.”

  “Gran’s got some in her medicine cabinet,” April countered, indicating the upper floor with her eyes.

  “Make sure you put it on,” Alison advised. “What happened?”

  “Nothing to merit all this fuss.” Thoroughly embarrassed now, April tucked her wrist behind her back again. She changed the subject before Alison felt compelled to pursue the matter. “So I take it he’s really your brother?”

  “Until I can find someone to take him off my hands, yes. He’s here visiting me.”

  Jimmy nodded to confirm hi
s sister’s statement, his eyes still on the tempting postmistress who wouldn’t give him a tumble. “I wanted to see firsthand just what it is that keeps her here, other than Jean-Luc and that stubborn streak of hers that never lets her admit she’s wrong even when she is.”

  Alison pursed her lips in a mock frown. “It’s a family trait.”

  Jimmy was quick to agree. “Right, our sister Lily has it, too.”

  Beneath that devil-may-care attitude there wasn’t a more stubborn member of the family than Jimmy, Alison thought. It was Jimmy who made a point of volunteering his time at homeless shelters, telling none of them. She would have never known if she hadn’t accidentally seen him at a shelter herself. The only notoriety he wanted was that of a playboy, but he was far deeper than that. He had a heart that cared and which was every bit as important as his skilled surgeon’s hands. But that was the part of him he wanted no one to know.

  “Like you don’t,” Alison replied.

  He made his appeal to April, not his sister. “I am the soul of reasonableness.”

  Alison merely sighed, shaking her head. She turned to April. “If you give me Shayne’s mail, we’ll be out of your hair,” she promised.

  It struck April as odd to have the doctor referred to so familiarly, but then she’d forgotten the townspeople’s penchant. Everyone in Hades was on a first-name basis with everyone else.

  “Right here.” Reaching over the counter to the tallest stack, she pushed it toward Alison. “There might be more.” April glanced at semifull sack on the floor. “I haven’t finished sorting today’s pouch yet.”

  “Because of the hand,” Alison concluded.

  April spared Alison’s brother a look that said it all. “Because I was interrupted.”

  If there was a mild accusation in that statement, Alison seemed to ignore it. She merely smiled easily and glanced affectionately at her brother. There was no mistaking the pride in her eyes. “You’ll find that Jimmy does that a lot.”