There was a wild urgency that seized them both, far more intense than had existed even their first time together. His pulse raced as she kissed him over and over again. If there was an aggressor in this, it was April.
It felt as if she was possessed and desperately in need of purging herself of all thought, of everything but this exhilarating feeling coursing through her veins like a continuous plunge down a roller-coaster incline that ran on to infinity.
She made love to him in an abandoned frenzy, as if the end of the world was at their doorstep, waiting to dissolve them both.
He felt the change in her immediately. It was all he could do to keep up with her. She’d taken his breath away the very first moment. Far from lightning in a bottle, he felt as if he was holding lightning in his hand.
“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” he murmured against her ear as he felt her lips against his throat. Shafts of desire, sharp and strong, shot through him. “We can take this slow.”
But they couldn’t.
It was as if he had boarded a runaway toboggan and could only hold on for the ride of his life. The desperation that was driving April had taken control of them both.
The pleasure escalated to an agonizing sweetness that was both her jailer and her prisoner. Delicious sensations battered her body as she felt his lips trail over her limbs, heightening the fire that had been ignited from the first moment.
Unable to wait any longer, she snaked her body over his, reversing their positions. Hands joined with his, nails digging into his flesh, she fit herself over him and initiated the last phase of their lovemaking.
The choice of timing taken from him, he began to move in a tempo that outstripped hers until they reached the highest peak together, their sweat-drenched bodies collapsing against one another like the sides of a bellows once the energy was spent.
The euphoria of afterglow clinging to him, Jimmy lightly caressed her body as it rested on top of his. If anyone had asked, he would have said he was content to remain that way until the last stroke of forever.
Her heart quickened as she felt his fingertips glide along her back.
“I love you.”
Startled by what she’d just allowed to slip out, April sat bolt upright, afraid that he’d heard her.
One look at his face told her he had.
Maybe he’d only imagined it. Maybe he’d wanted to hear the words so badly, had harbored them himself for a while now, he’d actually thought he’d heard her say them.
Gripping her shoulders, he looked at her. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” Upset with herself, with her own weakness, April shrugged off his hands and moved away from him. “Nothing at all.”
He sat up, his eyes pinning her. “Yes, you did. You said you loved me.”
“You’re hearing things,” she denied heatedly. Angry at the senseless slip she’d allowed, April looked frantically around for the clothes she hadn’t been able to wait to shed from her body. “Look, this was a mistake.” All of it. She shouldn’t have let him stay.
Let? she silently mocked herself. More like beg him to stay. Damn it, what was wrong with her? Was she really just as pathetic as her mother? Didn’t she have any pride? Any sense?
Quickly, he pulled on his jeans, sensing that in her present frame of mind, April could take off at any moment. “I don’t think that was a mistake.”
Jerking on the oversize sweater she’d thrown on when she’d rushed her grandmother to Shayne’s house, April swung around to look at him. “I should know what I said or didn’t say.”
Her eyes looked like blue flames. The rest of her, with the bottom of the sweater skimming the tops of her thighs, looked delectable. It was a struggle to keep his mind focused on the argument at hand.
And he had to keep focused if he didn’t want to lose her again. Permanently this time. “Maybe it’s time you stopped running.”
The single word touched off an explosion within her. She was so angry at him, she could have spit. “What do you mean, ‘running’?”
He reached for his shirt without really looking at it, afraid that if he looked away, she would run off. Maybe that wasn’t realistic, but neither was the magnitude of what he was feeling. His parents’ love, his father had liked telling him when he was small, had come slowly. This had come like a fireball out of the sky.
“You are not your mother, April. And I am not your father.”
For a second, she was too stunned to move or to speak. Her eyes narrowed as she fisted her hands at her sides. “Just what are you suggesting?”
At the risk of having her take a swing at him, he crossed to her and put his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened and tried to jerk away, but he tightened his grip. “That if I can get over this feeling that everything’s finite and make a grab at what’s in front of me, so can you.”
Easy for him to say. He could walk away. Would walk away. While she was left with pieces that would never reassemble themselves.
With one unexpected move, she yanked herself away from him. “We did grab at it,” she told him, her voice rising. “We had an affair and now it’s over.”
“Well, maybe I’m not done with it,” he shouted at her back. “Maybe I want it to go on.”
Her heart pounding, she turned from the doorway, aborting her escape. “For how long? You’re leaving, remember?”
He’d been giving it a lot of thought these past few days, ever since he’d returned from the village. Shayne was right, there was something seductively gratifying in being the possible difference between life and death for a patient who had no other recourse. The surgery he’d performed on Ursula had only pushed the balance a little further.
“That’s just it,” he said, his voice lowering to normal again, “maybe I’m not.”
She stared at him. He was staying? No, it was just a ruse, a whim. And besides, it didn’t make a difference to her plans.
“Well, I am.” April tossed her head, trying to add weight to convictions that were turning strangely light and translucent. “Just as soon as I’m sure Gran’s well and taken care of.”
He wanted to hold her. To make her stay put and to admit to what she was feeling. To what he knew she was feeling. Instead he remained where he was. She had to take that final giant step herself.
“You don’t have to leave.”
“Yes,” she retorted fiercely, something almost frantic underlining her tone, “I do.”
Maybe this was useless, he thought. He couldn’t force her to do anything. It wouldn’t count. “I forgot, you have to run.”
It was like waving a red flag in front of a charging bull. “I am not running.”
He knew otherwise. She’d been running all of her adult life. Running from something that could make her happy. He didn’t care about her past, but he did care about her future, even if he wasn’t included. Suddenly he understood exactly what his father had felt about his mother and it was worth everything to feel this way.
“Then stay put someplace for longer than it takes to snap a roll of film.” He came closer to her, tentatively reaching out his hand and brushing back a strand of hair from her cheek. “Stay put where you’re needed and wanted. And loved.”
She wanted to. Heaven help her, she wanted to. But she was afraid. Afraid to stay. Afraid to love. His eyes were holding her still.
“Why are you staying?”
“Because I’m needed here more than I am back home,” he told her honestly. “For the first time in my life, I feel like I really make a difference.” He smiled, thinking of the man who had tried so diligently to talk him into remaining. “Because maybe Shayne needs a break once in a while so he can kiss his wife and hug his kids and feel like a man instead of a doctor.” He was caressing her cheek now, smiling warmly into her eyes. “And because this is your home.”
She tried to shrug him off and found herself immobilized, not because he was holding her tightly but because she couldn’t make herself initiate the break.
; “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Because if you leave, you’ll be back.” He was as sure of that as he was of his own abilities as a surgeon. “And maybe during one of those return trips, I’ll be able to convince you to stay.”
April laughed shortly, feeling tears of frustration and hopelessness gathering in her eyes. She was losing ground and she was afraid. “So we can have a long affair instead of a fling?”
“No,” he told her softly, his fingers playing along the planes of her face, “so we can have a marriage and children. I want kids, April.” He felt his heart swelling. There was a chance. She was weakening. “I want kids with your face stamped on them, with your stubbornness and grace and my determination.”
“I’ve got determination,” she sniffed as she felt herself losing ground at a prodigious rate.
“I’ve got more.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “Because I’m willing to wait this out until you say yes.”
She could all but feel the white flag in her hand. “And if I never do?”
“Then it’ll be a hell of a game.” When he smiled like that, she could feel the warmth clear into her chest. “But you will.”
For the sake of her pride, she tried to keep the game up a little longer. “You’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Damn, but she loved him, she thought as the hopelessness mysteriously began to slip away to be replaced by something stronger. Something with depth and breadth and substance. “And you’ve never been wrong.”
He pretended to think a moment. “Once. In 1995. October twenty-seventh.”
Unable to hold it back, she started to laugh. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
It was going to be all right, he thought, relieved. Jimmy slipped his arms around her. “I am,” he agreed, nuzzling her neck. “About you.”
He was making it very hard for her to think. “So, if I said yes—”
Jimmy raised his head and looked into her eyes. “When,” he corrected.
“If,” she insisted. After all, a woman had to have some kind of pride. “You’d be willing to give up everything and stay here?”
“I already am staying here,” he pointed out. “And the way I see it, I’m not giving up everything.” Jimmy looked at her significantly. “I’m gaining it.”
The stubborn streak that had seen her through so much in her life egged her on a little further before the inevitable surrender. “You drive a hard bargain, you know that?”
He smiled, slipping his hands beneath the edges of her sweater, his fingers grazing the cool flesh of her thighs. “That’s because I mean to win.”
She sucked in her breath. “You’re playing dirty.”
He wasn’t about to deny that. “Like I said, I mean to win.”
There had to be ground rules, otherwise she was just going to get pulled into the vortex and disappear without a trace. “I won’t give up my career.”
He began tracing the outline of her face with his lips. “No one’s asking you to.”
“And I’ll be gone almost all the time…” He reached her neck. “Well, maybe a lot….” His hands were slowly massaging her, sending arrows of desire all through her. “…once in a while.”
“We’ll work it out,” he promised, lightly brushing his lips against hers. “We’ll work out everything.”
He’d won, lock, stock and barrel. And he was right, she wasn’t her mother and he wasn’t her father. He was far too selfless to be compared to the shadow of the man from her childhood. They could make this work. They would make this work.
Hands on his shoulders, she smiled up into his face. “You do drive a hard bargain.”
He had his victory and silently made her a vow that she would never regret saying yes. “Like I keep saying, I mean to win.”
She brought her body closer to his. So close she could feel the sizzle pass from him to her. “Have you got a closing argument?”
“No.” Tugging her sweater up over her head, he tossed it aside and took her back into his arms. “But I have a beginning one.”
And it was a doozy.
Epilogue
Jimmy heard a knock on the door behind him. “Come in.” Glancing up at his patient, he could tell by the admiring look in the man’s eyes exactly who had entered. Only one person would have breezed into his office as if she had an absolute right to be here.
“Hello, April,” he said without turning around.
April stopped dead in the doorway. “How did you know it was me?”
“A husband develops this sixth sense about his wife’s whereabouts,” he told her sagely as he turned around, his serious expression not giving him away.
April laughed. Yeah, right. “We’ve been married less than two months.” Two glorious, lovemaking-filled months that had seen her reassess her priorities. So much so that she hadn’t even given leaving Hades as much as a single thought.
“I’m a fast learner.” He saw the magazine she was clutching in her hand. So that was it. Everything came together. Taking a bottle out of the large medicine cabinet, he handed it to his patient, Dimitri MacGregor. “Take two of these every time you feel the pain coming on, and stay away from fried foods.”
“Right.” Dimitri laughed, passing April as he went to the door. He nodded at her just before he pocketed the bottle and left the room.
Jimmy put out his hand. “Well, let’s see it.”
“See what?” April asked innocently, coyly holding the magazine behind her back. “Maybe I just came to see my husband.”
“You came to preen and we both know it.” He beckoned to her. “C’mon, let’s have a look and see if they did you justice.”
Unable to contain her exuberance any longer, April flipped open the magazine, a well-respected vacation periodical, and turned to the pages that held the photographs she’d worked so hard to get just right. “They did. Look.” She held them up for his inspection.
He took the magazine from her, pride swelling in his chest as he looked at the pages. Splashed across a twelve-page section were photographs April had taken of both Hades and the surrounding area. They captured the terrain with an intimate familiarity that reflected a deep-seated affection.
No doubt about it, she was good. He slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him. “Did your grandmother see this?”
Making herself comfortable in the space created by the crook of his arm, she grinned at him. She would be eternally grateful to him for what he did for Gran. Thanks to him, she’d been strong enough to have her by-pass surgery and was behaving like a teenager again. “She’s the postmistress, what do you think?”
“I think half of Alaska has just been put on alert to buy this month’s issue of The Happy Wanderer.” Jimmy looked down at the last page, where credit for the photographs was given. April Yearling-Quintano. It was a mouthful. And she was a handful, one he knew he would never tire of handling. “Not bad for a woman who can’t stand the place.”
A smile tugged at her mouth. “Oh, it has some redeeming qualities,” April murmured, looking up at him, her light tone belying the excitement and happiness she felt.
But she didn’t fool Jimmy. In tune to her every thought, he knew exactly what she was feeling. Like a woman who had finally, truly come home.
Leaning over, he kissed her.
Bemused, she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. “What was that for?”
“A down payment for later,” he promised her in a whisper that had her blood stirring.
She could hardly wait for later to come.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7031-6
THE M.D. MEETS HIS MATCH
Copyright © 2001 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella
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