The M.D. Meets His Match

by Marie Ferrarella

  “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

  “At times.” He continued to follow her. April stopped near the edge of the bank. “When you’ve been working in an ER for almost thirty-six hours straight and the emergencies and the people just keep on coming until it almost feels like one case blends into another, you could really do with a chunk of solitude.”

  That was when, whenever there was a moment to spare, he’d go up to the roof to try to be alone. But even then, the sounds of the traffic below reminded him that there was no peace to be had.

  “Not me.” She’d had it with the isolation and the solitude. “The noisier the better.”

  If noise was all it took to make her happy, it could be found in Hades, he thought. “The Salty was pretty noisy last night.”

  There was no denying that. But that was not the usual case. “And it took almost every citizen in Hades to create that impression. Otherwise, there’s almost nothing to Hades but solitude.” She could remember a time when solitude all but defined her life. She hadn’t minded it at first, because she hadn’t known any better and she’d shared it with her father. But when he left, all it did was mock her and remind her that he was gone. That he hadn’t loved her enough to remain. “When I was little, we lived near the mines. There wasn’t a soul for miles. Nothing but ice and silence—except when my parents were arguing.” And they’d argued a great deal, she remembered. “I hated that. When I heard them, I kept hoping for some other noise to blot them out, but there wasn’t any. In the cities, there’s always noise to blot out the sound of raised voices.”

  She realized she was saying too much again, giving him far more of a view into her past than she had ever intended or was comfortable about.

  April shrugged, trying to seem casual as she took the basket from him and set it on the ground between them. “Besides, there aren’t many choices in Hades.”

  “Alison told me that there’re at least seven men to every woman here.”

  It took her a second to realize he’d misunderstood her meaning. “Why would any woman want a man who was satisfied with living in Hades?” Raising the lid, she looked in and took out the tablecloth.

  Not waiting to be asked, Jimmy took a corner of the tablecloth and helped her spread it on a bed of grass that was so brilliantly green it didn’t even seem real to him. “Oh, I don’t know. I’d say that any man who could make it out here was rugged and resourceful, not to mention a stable individual.”

  He certainly knew how to put a favorable spin on things. “Is that another term for stick-in-the-mud?”

  He laughed, releasing the corners he was holding. “Is that how you see it?”

  “That’s how I see it.”

  She dusted off her hands before looking into the basket to see exactly what it contained. Jean-Luc had taken it upon himself to turn a corner of the emporium he’d bought into a lunch counter. Word had it that he liked to cook and was pretty good at it. The aroma of fried chicken greeted her, teasing her stomach.

  Just as Dr. James Quintano teased her senses.

  “The people who remain here are afraid to go out into the world to try their hand at it,” she explained, backing up her argument. “Staying with what you know is safe.”

  He knew she didn’t have anything against surprises. This was proof. “And you don’t like to play it safe.”

  On her knees, she took out the foil-wrapped chicken and set it beside the basket. “There’s no excitement in it.” Rummaging around inside the basket, she found two plates.

  He knelt beside her, so close that they could both share the same breath. “And excitement’s important to you.”

  “Very important.”

  She was having trouble keeping track of the conversation again. The words were meant to be a strong declaration. Instead they had emerged as a soft whisper that hovered on her lips before gaining flight. She could feel her heart beating, could feel the wind ruffling every hair on her head.

  Could feel his eyes on her and his nearness as it radiated, reaching out to her.

  Still on his knees, Jimmy cupped his hand along her cheek. “We’re in agreement there,” he told her, the words drifting toward her softly.

  Almost as softly as his lips when they touched hers.

  She felt her body quickening, tightening in anticipation. It had been a long, long time since she’d responded this way to a man. Like an alarm poised to go off. Her hands tightened around his shoulders as she braced herself for the disappointment that was to come. His kiss couldn’t continue like this, couldn’t bring her the whisper of a promise as it had last night. Last night had been tinged with beer and noise and everything had been a little blurry. She had to have overestimated the power behind his kiss, romanticizing it each time she found herself thinking about it.

  She hadn’t overestimated it.

  If anything, she’d toned it down.

  Either that, or he had somehow managed to infuse even more power, more passion, into it than he had the evening before. Breathing hard, April melded her body against his as he pulled her closer.

  No doubt about it, Jimmy thought. The lady just got better.

  He knew it was his unquenched desire that was coloring the picture for him, and that he wouldn’t be able to get a proper perspective until after he’d made love with her, but it gave him something to look forward to.

  He pulled back and looked at her. “Yes.”

  “Yes?” she echoed. “Yes, what?”

  “Just yes,” he breathed, slowly running the back of his hand along her face, his thumb along her lower lip. He could see the pulse in her throat beating fast. As fast as his own heart. “Yes to anything you might want to ask.”

  Definitely something to look forward to, he thought.

  “What else did Jean-Luc pack in the basket?” The question sounded inane to her ear, but she was desperate for diversion. Anything to get her mind off the way she was melting inside.

  “I have no idea.” Definitely not anything nearly as exciting as what he’d just sampled, he added silently.

  Chapter Eight

  It took longer than she was happy about for her pulse to return to normal.

  April gave herself a host of excuses, but there were none that actually held water. Her pulse wasn’t galloping like a young colt out of the starting gate because she was worried about her grandmother, or because there hadn’t been anyone in her life for a long while. The truth of the matter, pure and simple, was that she was attracted to James Quintano. Intensely attracted. Whether it was when she caught him looking at her, or when his hand brushed against her, every contact stirred something inside her. Something that, each time it was stirred, grew that much closer to bubbling over.

  He probably got that a lot, she thought, women being attracted to him. She could tell by the easy way he conducted himself, by the confidence she saw in his eyes. Not smirking, or superior, just a man who knew what the score was in every situation. A man who was comfortable with himself and for whom the world held little to no mystery. If they had both been part of Hades, she would have avoided any contact with James Quintano like the plague. The last thing she needed was to get her head all muddled and her emotions tangled up by a man. She had far too much self-respect and backbone for that, yet there was no sense in taking undue chances.

  But they were from two different corners of the world, meeting by chance and with a finite itinerary. That put an entirely different spin on the situation.

  It made it safe.

  After all, what was the harm in enjoying something she knew had no consequences attached to it? she argued with herself. Something that definitely couldn’t flower or grow into something potentially hurtful? Something that couldn’t whither and die long before she was ready to see it do so?

  Rather than be harmful to her well-being, what she was feeling right now was a good thing. It meant she was alive and could take pleasure where she found it. And at least in this case, there was no chance of pleasure taking her hosta
ge.

  So she pressed her lips together, tossed her head so that her hair went tumbling over her shoulder in a blond shower and fixed him with a knowing smile.

  “Was that the appetizer?” To show she was amused and unaffected, she busied her hands and unwrapped something she’d taken out of the basket. She had absolutely no idea what.

  “Depends,” Jimmy allowed slowly. He took out a stack of napkins, his eyes never leaving her face.

  Her pulse still hadn’t settled down to a regular beat. That annoyed her. “On what?”

  Their eyes met. Waves of anticipation went through her. Her fingers pressed a little too hard against the foil, denting whatever was beneath.

  “On what you want the main course to be,” Jimmy told her, his voice soft, silky.

  “What I want,” she echoed. She wasn’t accustomed to men who put their own needs second.

  His smile widened just a shade, seeping into her. “I make it a point to never do anything a lady doesn’t want me to do.”

  There was that supposed altruistic bent again. As if she believed it. “That’s very accommodating of you.”

  She watched one shoulder rise in a careless, self-effacing shrug, then fall again. “I try.”

  Okay, let’s see how far he’s willing to play this. Her eyes narrowed just a little, scrutinizing him. “How hard?”

  “As hard as is necessary.” His eyes still on hers, he tangled one hand in her hair, curving his fingers along her face. “You know, it’s a wonder that they ever let you leave Hades.”

  There went her heart again, beating like the drummer in a drum solo. “Why?”

  Was she being coy? he wondered. She didn’t strike him as the type. He realized that he wasn’t exactly sure what April Yearling was thinking and that excited him. There was a thrill to the unknown, as long as you didn’t let yourself get pulled in too far.

  “What with the shortage of women here and you looking like a long, tall, cool drink of water on a sizzling hot day, I would have expected any one of those men in the Salty Saloon last night to have set a trap for you and run off to some inaccessible place to keep you all to themselves.”

  Her voice was low, breathy. And exciting. “We’re not exactly that primitive here.”

  He noted that she’d said “we” and wondered if it was an unconscious slip or just force of habit. Did she still think of herself as part of this town? He’d been under the impression that she’d felt nothing could have been further from the truth. More mystery. He loved a mysterious woman.

  “You kind of made it sound as if it was.”

  It was her turn to shrug. She nearly looked away, but that would have been cowardly and that was the absolute last thing she ever intended to be. “I get a little carried away sometimes, I guess.”

  He smiled at her, reaching into the basket again. His hand came in contact with the long, slender neck of the bottle of wine Luc had packed. “Just a little. Every place has its good points.” And right now, he was looking at one of Hades’s best points, Jimmy thought.

  “I suppose,” she allowed. She tried to remember a time when she was happy here, when she hadn’t minded living in a place like Hades. That would have been before she could see what loving someone so much could do to a woman. Before her father left and her mother had fallen apart. “It’s just harder to find here than in other places.”

  “I would have thought it wasn’t all that hard to detect here.” He gestured toward the river. “It’s the scenery—”

  “Don’t let that fool you,” she warned with a laugh that had no humor behind it, looking around her without seeing what he saw. “Most of the time the weather can be harsh and unforgiving. You freeze in the winter—literally—and just when you’ve given up hope of seeing daylight for more than just an hour a day, summer comes. Summer with its endless days, minuscule nights and mosquitoes so big you could saddle them and compete in the Kentucky Derby.”

  She’d been hurt here, he thought. Hurt badly. No one talked about a place in those terms unless something had happened to them there.

  “I can see why you never made it as a travel agent,” he quipped, trying to keep the mood light. “With all that going against it, why do some people stay?”

  He wasn’t asking anything she hadn’t wondered about a thousand times herself. Why had they remained when her father wanted to leave? Why hadn’t they gone with him? Water under the bridge, she told herself.

  “They like to be challenged, I guess,” she said carelessly. Then added more seriously, “Or they’ve never known anything else and are afraid to try something different.”

  He knew people like that. People who wanted to soar but were too afraid to release their hold on a perch to attempt it. They spent their lives in regret. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”

  April took the bottle of wine from him and began to look through the basket for a corkscrew. “Something like that.”

  “And you left at eighteen.”

  “Yes.” He was good, she thought. The way he asked questions would have made her think that he was actually interested in the answers instead of just passing the time the way she knew he was. “I was going away to college—the first in my family to do so.” Finding the corkscrew, she began twisting it into the cork. “Gran was so proud she could have burst. The only thing marring it for her was that I wasn’t going to one of the two colleges in Anchorage.” She twisted the corkscrew down to its base. “Or any of the other three that are in Alaska. I was going away to UCLA.”

  He gave a low whistle. “Tough school to get into.” Taking the bottle from her, he gripped the handle and yanked out the cork. “I’m impressed.” He paused as she took one empty glass and held it up to him to fill. “What made you choose California?”

  “As far away from snow as I could get at the time.” The first filled, she offered him the second glass. “And it was someplace my father always talked about going.” There’d been a side trip to Seattle first, but since Jimmy was from there, she decided not to share that with him. He might make more of it than it was. Just coincidence, nothing else.

  With the flat of his hand, he pushed the cork back into the bottle, then took the glass she held out to him. He touched the rim to her glass in a silent toast. “So you went to look for him.”

  About to take a sip, she looked at him, her eyes narrowing again.

  “No,” she denied a little too firmly. “He just made it sound nice, that’s all.” She forced her voice to sound lighter, as if they were talking about any one of a number of things rather than something painfully close to her heart. “Someplace you couldn’t get marooned no matter how hard you try.”

  “They have earthquakes.”

  She couldn’t tell by Jimmy’s smile if he was laughing at her, or was just amused by something he’d thought of. “Not as often as we have snowstorms,” she countered. “Do you know that sometimes Hades is snowed in for over six months of the year? That the only way out of here then is by plane? The roads are completely impassable in the winter.” She closed her eyes. “I can’t tell you how many times we were stranded when I was growing up.” The memories became too vivid. She opened her eyes again. “It was awful.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, being stranded doesn’t sound so bad.” He looked at her significantly. “As long as it’s with the right person.”

  She didn’t have to be a clairvoyant to know what he was thinking. He was thinking like a man. “Spoken romantically like someone who’s never gone through the horrors of cabin fever.”

  Taking a deep sip of his wine, he held up his hand as if under oath. “Guilty as charged.” His eyes shone as he looked at her.

  He was tossing back her own phrase at her. April took another sip of wine before saying, “You’re having fun at my expense.”

  Shaking his head, he corrected her. “No, I’m just having fun.”

  Suddenly, for no reason, or maybe because she caught herself wanting to kiss him again, she felt her temper f
laring. “Is everything a joke to you?”

  “No, not everything,” he replied slowly, as if giving the accusation serious consideration. “But if you don’t find the humor in things, you spend your life crying.” His voice grew just a shade more serious. “I’ve seen things when I was in the ER that have made me question what we’re all doing here. The pain, the suffering…”

  He let his voice trail off. “And then I bring a new life into the world and realize that there’s some kind of purpose I don’t understand.” He raised his eyes to hers again. “So I take the smiles where I can, try not to think about the rest and definitely try to not get serious about anything except my work.”

  He was telling her that he didn’t get serious about the women who passed through his life, she thought. Which was perfect because she didn’t intend to get serious about any man who came into hers. No matter how good-looking he was or how attracted to him she might be. She was never going to allow any man to have power over her the way her mother had surrendered power to her father. Intentional or not, he’d sucked the life out of her when he’d left.

  That wasn’t going to happen to her. Loving a man only set you up for the inevitable dire consequences of loneliness when he left. It was best not to begin if that was the end that was waiting.

  “I guess we think alike, then,” she said.

  “Great minds usually do,” he teased.

  Her body heated. She felt as if he’d physically touched her even though he hadn’t budged an inch. “So what am I thinking right now?”

  He slipped his hand into her hair, cupping the back of her head and tilting it ever so slightly. So that her lips were in front of him. He could feel his own excitement mounting. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt it to this degree.

  “You’re wondering if I want to make love with you. The answer’s yes.”

  There went her pulse again. Throbbing and sending echoes throughout her whole body. Humor was the only way to deal with this. Humor before he saw the extent to which he was affecting her.

  “You’re very good.”