The M.D. Meets His Match

by Marie Ferrarella

  She understood what he was saying. That if anything happened to her, Yuri wouldn’t forgive himself. That was part of the reason she liked Yuri so much. Because he cared about her. “No.”

  She needed something more than just rest. “Did Shayne give you any nitrogylcerin tablets?” He saw Ursula wrinkle her brow as she tried to think. “Tiny round pills? You put them under your tongue when you feel an attack of angina coming on.”

  Her face brightened. “Oh, those things. Yeah, I have some.”

  “Where?” he pressed when she made no effort to elaborate.

  “In the medicine cabinet upstairs.” As much as she appeared to like him, it was clear she didn’t like her health being the sole reason she was being fussed over. “But this’ll be over in a minute.”

  April was already making her way to the back stairs. “It’s already been a minute,” she pointed out, her voice sharp to hide her concern.

  She heard Jimmy saying, “It’ll be over faster if you take the pill,” as she raced up the narrow stairs two at a time. She also heard her grandmother giggle, “Oh, Dr. Jimmy.”

  Coming to the landing, April shook her head, not knowing whether to wring her grandmother’s neck for being so stubborn and so blasé about her health, or to just hold on to her as if she was a precious being who would, at any second, be lost to her.

  She walked into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Like every square inch of the upper floor, the small glass shelves were crammed with containers that once held pills and bandage boxes long depleted. Her grandmother hated to throw out anything in case she needed it later.

  They were worlds apart, there, she thought, finally finding the small, dark amber vial of pills. Everything April owned could be tossed into two suitcases.

  Holding the vial in one hand and gripping the banister with the other, April flew down the stairs.

  “I’ve got the pills,” she announced before her foot hit the ground floor. She heard the front door open before she entered the office. “We’re closed,” she snapped without bothering to look toward whoever was entering into the post office. She had no time to play postmistress right now.

  “No, we’re not,” Ursula contradicted feebly. “We’re just consulting. Be with you in just a minute.”

  “Gran, are you all right?”

  Focusing her eyes, Ursula saw her grandson approaching. She immediately beamed at him, thinking how much he reminded her of his grandfather. Max had grown up to be such a fine young man.

  “Of course I’m all right, dear. Or I will be once everyone backs away.” She looked at April and Jimmy. “You’re sucking up all my oxygen. That can’t be good, right, Dr. Jimmy?”

  “Ignoring heart flutters could be far worse,” he told her.

  Shaking a pill out of the vial April had handed him, he held it up to Ursula. With an indulgent sigh, Ursula took the pill from him and obligingly placed it under her tongue.

  Since she hadn’t denied the term he’d used, he figured he’d described the symptom she was experiencing pretty accurately. “How long have these flutters been going on, Mrs. Hatcher?”

  “Not long,” Ursula lisped, trying to keep the pill from slipping out.

  “Too long,” April contradicted vehemently.

  Pushing a wayward lock of black hair out of his eyes, Max looked at his grandmother. This time, he wasn’t about to let her get away with anything, not when it involved her health.

  “About two months,” Max told the man who’d been introduced to him last night as Alison’s brother. “That she’ll admit to,” he added, looking pointedly at his grandmother. It was he and June who had bullied the older woman into going to see Shayne in the first place. But she’d staunchly refused to go for a follow-up visit, or to fly to Anchorage for any tests.

  The look Ursula gave Jimmy was the last word in innocence. She lifted her shoulders helplessly, then let them drop, as if to indicate that she had no idea what her grandchildren were talking about.

  “Don’t let that face fool you,” April warned Jimmy. “She’s sick and she knows it. She also knows that it’ll only get worse, but she refuses to submit to any of the tests.”

  The sweet smile melted into a stubborn expression. “This is my home and I don’t want to leave it so a bunch of doctors I don’t know and who don’t know me can poke around, shake their heads and make mistakes.” She looked from one grandchild to the other before sparing Jimmy a glance. “Lost my second husband that way. Mica trusted everyone and now he’s gone. That’s not going to happen to me.”

  That sounded almost like her own protest, April thought. Except in her case, she’d meant it about falling in love and suffering her mother’s fate. This was a great deal more immediate—and serious at the moment. Her grandmother had to be made to see reason.

  Kneeling beside her, April tried her best to be persuasive instead of impatient. “Gran, medicine’s come a long way since then.”

  “Well, then it can come a little further and come here to me,” Ursula informed her complacently. She looked at the two men standing on either side of her. “Anything’s going to be done, it’s going to be done right here in Hades.”

  “We don’t have a hospital,” April insisted, struggling to not raise her voice. Her grandmother could be more infuriating than a battalion of disobedient children at times.

  “We have a doctor,” Ursula countered. She looked pointedly at Jimmy. “Two by my count.”

  Jimmy shook his head. Though he saw a great deal of beauty in this wilderness his sister had chosen to remain in, he was basically a city kid at heart. “I’m only visiting.”

  Ursula smiled at him. “But you’re here now.”

  Jimmy saw Ursula and April look at one another in momentary silence, each determined in her own way to move the other. If pressed, he wouldn’t have known which one to bet on to win.

  He tried to tilt the odds in April’s favor.

  “Mrs. Hatcher, they have a great deal more equipment at Providence Hospital than Shayne has available to him here. I’m sure he’d fly in with you to Anchorage and be the attending physician.” Alison had mentioned that the hospital listed him as being on their staff so it should be an easy matter to perform the tests on Ursula. “That should make you feel better.” He squeezed her hand. “Why don’t you think about it?”

  Ursula nodded. “All right, dear, I’ll do just that if it makes you happy.”

  Ignoring her brother, hooking her arm through Jimmy’s, April pulled him over to the side. “And while she’s thinking about it,” she rasped in his ear, “Gran could die.”

  “The alternative is to throw a bag over her head and kidnap her and I think the excitement of that might do a lot more harm than good.” Jimmy looked over his shoulder at the older woman. All in all, she seemed to be of rugged, pioneer stock. “Although I don’t know…”

  Rising to her feet, Ursula pushed between them. “Don’t stand there whispering about me and think I don’t hear. You develop wonderful hearing in these parts. At any given time in the winter I can tell you where the snowflakes are falling,” she told Jimmy proudly. “And my eyesight’s pretty keen, too,” she added with a chuckle.

  Jimmy noted with relief that the color was returning to the older woman’s cheeks. A great many patients suffering from angina needed nothing more to maintain a fine quality of life than to occasionally take nitrogylcerin tablets to steady their flutters. Ursula might be one of them, although without proper tests, he wouldn’t be able to make that determination.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “Having a handsome young man fuss over me always makes me feel better.” She looked at her grandson. “That includes you, Max.” Ursula shifted her attention to the young doctor at her granddaughter’s side. Now there was a match she could easily approve of. “Stay for dinner, Dr. Jimmy?”

  He was about to say yes when he saw the expression on April’s face. He didn’t want her to think he was crowding her. “No, I have to be getting back. B
ut thank you. Maybe some other time.”

  “Tomorrow night?” Ursula suggested, making no effort to hide her eagerness. She tried to make the invitation more enticing. “It’ll give you a chance to look in on me and see how I’m doing.” Ursula cocked her head, doing her best to appeal to whatever part of him could be moved to say yes. “Don’t all good doctors look in on people they’ve treated?”

  Jimmy laughed, thoroughly enjoying her. “Taking your pulse and slipping a pill under your tongue isn’t exactly treating you.”

  “It’s the way you did it,” Ursula told him with a wink.

  He’d held out as long as he could. Avoiding looking at April, he took Ursula’s hand in his again and kissed it. “Tomorrow night it is.”

  Ursula held her hand up as if she’d been touched by something special. “April will walk you to the door, won’t you, April?”

  April saw Max’s lips twitch. He was trying not to laugh and doing a damn poor job of it in her estimation. “Gran, it’s twelve steps, I’m sure he can manage by himself.”

  “Managing and being polite are two different things,” Ursula noted pointedly.

  It was easier to give in than to argue the matter. With a sigh, April nodded her head toward Jimmy and fell into step beside him as he walked to the door. Stepping outside, she closed the door behind her, half afraid Gran would begin yelling out instructions.

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “About what?” He glanced through the window at Ursula. The woman had moved behind the counter and was doing something. It looked as if she was ignoring Max who stood talking to her back. “I think she’s charming.”

  “It gets a little thin after a while, but yes, I guess charming might be one word for it.” She spared her grandmother a glance through the window and tried to not let affection soften her determination to do the right thing. “She likes to get what she wants.”

  “As long as no one’s hurt, what’s the harm?”

  “That’s just it. I’m afraid someone will be harmed—her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about talking her into going for those tests at dinner.”

  Easier said than done, April thought. She’d been at it for days and had gotten nowhere. “I’d start rehearsing now if I were you.”

  “Well, for that, I’ll need an audience. What are you doing later on tonight?”

  His smile was slow, like molasses in winter. And like molasses, it coated everything it touched. She found herself backpedaling. “Well, I—”

  To hell with not seeming pushy. He didn’t have all that much time here and he wanted to see her. “I’m sure Luc won’t mind lending me his car. I can be here after dinner.” He saw the excuse forming on her lips. “Or later if you like.”

  Maybe this was a bad idea, she thought. “No, really, I—”

  “If I’m going to be convincing, I’m going to need to rehearse,” he reminded her.

  Yeah, and she had an idea just what it was he wanted to rehearse. “Something tells me you don’t need to rehearse anything at all.”

  He grinned then. She was too smart for him to feign innocence. “Okay, then we’ll think of this as a dress rehearsal—a dry run.”

  She doubted that, too. It would be a full-fledged performance. She could feel anticipation snapping steely bracelets around her wrists, holding her prisoner. “Why is it that when I talk to you, I get the feeling that there’s a lot more being said between us than the actual words I hear?”

  He brushed back the hair from her face that the wind insisted on blowing around. “It’s a complex world we live in, April. Nothing is ever cut-and-dried anymore. Humphrey Bogart would have had a tough time in this world.”

  She blinked, slightly confused. “Humphrey Bogart?”

  “Sure. Casablanca. A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is still a sigh—” The look on her face told him she wasn’t following. “Don’t tell me you don’t know the words to that classic song.”

  “All right, I won’t.”

  “Luc’s got a piano at his place. I’ll play it for you later.”

  “You play piano.” It wasn’t a question, just an astonished statement.

  “Yes.”

  “And perform surgery.”

  He held up his hands, as if examining them for the first time. His fingers were long and slender, perfect for either task. “Not such a huge leap, really.”

  A diplomat, a surgeon and a musician. Dr. James Quintano was beginning to sound like an old-fashioned Renaissance man—or a jack-of-all-trades. “What else do you do?”

  Her mouth was tempting when she turned it up like that. He found he had to hold himself in check to keep from kissing her. “I’ve got more than ten days left on my vacation. Maybe we’ll find out in that time.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The ante has just upped itself. He loved a challenge, always had, always would.

  “Yes,” he promised softly. “We will.”

  Chapter Ten

  Maybe Gran didn’t need those tests after all, April thought, glancing across the table at her grandmother the following evening. Beaming, the older woman was so lit up, the northern lights would pale in comparison.

  Watching her, April sipped a little red wine from her goblet. Maybe all Gran needed was to have good-looking men around to play up to. And to have them pay attention to her the way Jimmy had from the moment he’d walked in through the door and all during dinner. Having him here certainly brought out the color in her grandmother’s cheeks.

  As far back as April could remember, her grandmother had never acted her age. The only time Ursula had come even remotely close to her own age was when she’d laid her daughter to rest. The memory was forever locked in April’s heart. Gran had looked tired and empty that day at the cemetery. But then she had rallied because she was Gran and because she had her and her siblings to take care of. Gran had never been one to indulge herself by wallowing in self-pity. The word “trouper” had been coined with her in mind.

  April swished the last drop of wine in her goblet, watching it coat the sides. Right now, Gran was shining like a beacon. But then, she supposed it was hard not to react with someone like James Quintano paying attention to you. Lord knew, she’d felt it herself and she would have sworn that her heart was a veritable glacier.

  Their eyes met as she reached for the bottle of wine he had brought when he had arrived. So did their fingers. April withdrew her hand as Jimmy picked up the bottle and did the honors, filling her goblet and then topping off his own.

  But then, April reminded herself firmly, it wasn’t her heart that was involved. Just a bunch of stray female hormones, that was all. Hormones were responsible for her reaction, including the little flip-flop of her heart just now when their fingers touched.

  Taking another sip as she watched Gran shamelessly flirt with the young surgeon, April could feel herself growing warm as her thoughts insisted on drifting. Thinking of what might have happened if she hadn’t backed away during the picnic. If she had sunken into that kiss and not retreated at the last moment. They would have made love.

  This feeling was just physical, nothing more, she maintained adamantly. She would have to be made of iron to not have her hormones react to a man who was so good-looking, he made your teeth ache in anticipation—never mind the rest of you.

  She avoided making eye contact with her grandmother, knowing full well what she would see in the woman’s eyes. I’m warming him up for you, April. Don’t toss this one away.

  Gran was nothing if not predictable. But April loved her dearly, anyway.

  “You seem to be, if you’ll pardon the expression, just what the doctor ordered,” April said, walking Jimmy to the door a few hours later.

  Her grandmother had tactfully and strategically withdrawn, saying something about needing her rest. A first since April had arrived. She knew that Jimmy had easily seen through the excuse and to April’s relief, had made no comment on it.

  At the very least, Alison’s brother was a g
entleman, she thought, wrapping her arms around herself. It might be spring in Alaska, but it certainly didn’t feel like spring. She missed Los Angeles with its smell of summer in the air. Here there was the smell of snow in the air. Snowstorms were not unheard of this time of year. On the contrary, they were almost common. She couldn’t wait to get back to a saner climate.

  The comment amused him. “Are you speaking in the first person, or is this a reference to something I seem to have missed?”

  “Nobody could have missed the way Gran was flirting with you. That was good for her.”

  He laughed. The evening had been a complete pleasure for him. He’d enjoyed the company of both women for different reasons. “She must have been really something when she was younger.”

  Nothing got to April faster than having her grandmother appreciated. “That she was. Turned down thirty-five proposals before she accepted my grandfather’s, or so the story goes when Gran tells it. She was seventeen when she married him.” Her mouth curved. “Which is why, I guess, she despairs about me.”

  Jimmy cocked his head, studying her face. He poked his tongue in his cheek. “And you’re a spinster of about, what, twenty-two?”

  Did she look that young? There were times she felt twice as old. “Twenty-five. Next month,” she added after a beat.

  Jimmy splayed his hand across his chest, taking a step backward as he dramatically rolled his eyes. “And you’re still walking without a cane? Another miracle of modern science.”

  She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused, but his smile was infectious. “Don’t laugh, Gran really worries about me.”

  He didn’t doubt it. He felt the unspoken love the minute he’d stepped into the house. “And you really worry about her. I’d say it was a trade-off.”

  He was comparing apples and oranges, she thought. “My concerns are legitimate.”

  And so, Jimmy thought, were Ursula’s. At least to Ursula. “So, you’re single because—what?—you never met the right man.”