Saving Dr. Ryan

by Karen Templeton

  “Tag!” She poked him and took off across the yard. “You’re it!”

  Not that her short legs would do her much good if Ryan came after her, she realized as she dashed through one of the leaf piles. She glanced over her shoulder and squealed.

  Oh, Lord—he was coming after her all right, huge wads of leaves fisted in both hands. And judging from the look on his face, he was going to make her pay but good. Laughing breathlessly and waving to the kids gawking at her as she zipped past, she took off around the house, squealing again when she heard Ryan’s boots pounding behind her. She ducked behind a sixty-foot spruce in the backyard, pretending to be trapped, laughing, laughing…only to dodge him at the last second, sprinting back around to the front, Ryan hot on her heels.

  And he was laughing, too.

  “Come back here, you little twerp!”

  “Who you calling a twerp?” she hollered back, only to let out another yelp when he got close enough to shower her with leaves, some of which got into her mouth. Now laughing and sputtering, she stopped just long enough to re-arm, taking off again…and tripped right over a leaf-smothered tree root. Too close to stop, Ryan plowed right into her, knocking both of them down.

  They landed with a whoomph, panting and laughing so hard, Maddie’s lungs screamed for air. She was vaguely aware of the kids beside her, Katie Grace’s sweet little face right in hers, asking if she was okay.

  She was, however, extremely aware of Ryan’s leg straddling hers, his leaf-speckled face inches away, the way the skin crinkled up at the corners of his eyes, even as his laughter wound down. Then concern flared in his eyes.

  “Oh, Lord, Maddie—are you all right?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, although she did wonder if maybe she’d hit her head on the root because, frankly, her entire thought process had shut down. For all she knew, she could have a dozen broken bones. All there was, right at this moment, was his body on top of hers, strong and solid and warm and safe, his fingers gently brushing leaves from her hair, his breath puffing over her face.

  And something in his sweet blue eyes that made her heart foolishly want to believe in dreams again.

  Then she squinted at his…face…

  “Eeek! There’s a spider in your eyebrow!”

  Ryan bolted to his knees, swiping at his forehead. Then he frowned at his hand. “Got it.”

  “Lemme see, lemme see!” the kids said, barreling right over her in their excitement to see dead bug guts, only to make disgusted “ewwww” sounds when Ryan showed them. Then, their attention span all used up, they took off again to the other side of the yard.

  Slowly, Maddie propped herself up on her elbows, chuckling at Ryan’s continued scrutiny of his inadvertent victim. “Only you would feel sorry for a spider.”

  Ryan brushed the spider’s remains from his palms, then looked down at her, his expression …wistful? “Only you would dare to start a game of tag with a man who’d almost forgotten how to play.”

  She pulled herself all the way upright, hugging her knees with one arm while picking bit of leaves out of his hair with her other hand, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like her entire insides weren’t just a’shimmyin’ and shakin’ for all they were worth.

  “Thought maybe it was high time somebody jogged your memory.”

  Her breath caught as Ryan sighed, then slowly—oh, so slowly—traced one warm knuckle down her cheek.

  “We’re bad news for each other, Maddie Mae.”

  She hesitated, her gaze briefly meeting his before returning to his hair. “Why?” she said, barely able to keep her voice steady what with all this shimmying going on inside her. “Because I make you laugh?”

  “Yes. Because you make me laugh.”

  Suddenly exasperated, with him, with herself, with the world at large, she sprang up, brushing leaves off her butt as she walked back to the house. And this time, she didn’t stop until she was all the way inside.

  Chapter 10

  The next ten days passed in a blur, what with getting Uncle Ned settled in and it finally hitting Maddie that she’d never done an entire Thanksgiving dinner on her own before and just how much work it was going to be. She didn’t have much time to think about anybody, let alone a certain blasted doctor who was wreaking havoc with her good sense.

  But if she’d learned anything from her experience with Jimmy, it was that there was no sense in getting moony over a man who wasn’t any good for you. And at least she’d had youth to blame then. At seventeen, what did she know? But she wasn’t seventeen now.

  Unfortunately, since her heart seemed determined to fight her brain on this issue, Maddie became more determined than ever to jar Ryan Logan out of his stupor and get him dating again, so she and her wayward heart could get on with her life. Of course, finding somebody for Ryan and getting him to actually go out with that somebody were two entirely different things.

  But you never knew.

  Thus she took it as an encouraging sign when she walked into the kindergarten classroom for Noah’s parent-teacher conference and realized, oh, for pity’s sake—she’d completely forgotten about Taylor McIntyre, Noah’s teacher. Attractive, thirtyish, ringless, not to mention intelligent, friendly and in a service profession herself. What more could anybody want?

  So when Maddie discovered that Miss McIntyre wasn’t planning on going home to Texas for Thanksgiving…well, it would have just been downright inhospitable on her part not to invite her to dinner, wouldn’t it?

  Maddie then swore to herself she’d back off and let nature take its course.

  She also swore to herself that she had no right to get upset if it did.

  When the alarm shrilled at five-thirty on Thanksgiving morning, Maddie jumped, groaned, then lay there pressing her pounding heart back down inside her chest, wondering what on earth had possessed her to plan dinner for one o’clock? And of course, Amy Rose, who had been sleeping through the night for some weeks, decided last night that waking Mama up every two hours was much more entertaining. Yawning so widely her jaw popped, Maddie hiked herself up on one elbow, listening, but all she heard was Amy Rose’s soft, even breathing.

  Great. Now she slept.

  Maddie’s breasts ached a little with wanting to feed the baby, but having done so no less than four times during the night, she figured playing cow could wait until she got this dang turkey in the oven. Stumbling around the bed, she stripped off her nightgown and yanked on the same pair of jeans and sweatshirt she’d been wearing yesterday, not bothering to put on a bra (she’d stopped leaking a month ago and besides, she didn’t figure the turkey would much care) or run a comb through her hair. She did, however make a quick sidetrip into the bathroom to do her business and brush her teeth, although she didn’t suppose the turkey would much care if she had morning breath, either.

  By this time, she could pretty much keep both eyes open simultaneously, although she still hung on to the banister more tightly than usual as she descended the stairs—

  Was that coffee she smelled?

  Telling herself exhaustion was making her hallucinate, she pushed open the kitchen door, only to let out a yip when she found Ryan sitting at the table in the semidarkness, sipping his coffee. Thank goodness he hadn’t turned on his music. Mozart this early would’ve sent her right over the edge.

  Tucking her arms over her midsection against the early morning chill, and ignoring the coffee she couldn’t have as long as she was nursing, she glowered at the shadowy male shape in front of her. “Ryan Logan, you don’t have the good sense God gave you. What in tarnation are you doing up at this hour?”

  “Figured you might need help getting the turkey into the oven…damn it, Maddie—” His hand shot up to shield his eyes from the sudden glare when she switched on the overhead light. “Warn somebody before you do that.”

  “Serves you right for scaring me half to death.” She shuffled over to the counter and grabbed the cutting board, which slipped from her hand, making a godawful clatter a
gainst the Formica. “And why, exactly, do I need help getting the turkey in the oven?”

  “Maybe because the damn thing’s bigger’n my truck. There’s no way you can lift that without spraining something. How much does it weigh, anyway?”

  “Twenty-three pounds,” she snapped, dragging celery, onions and mushrooms out of a crisper drawer. “Although I don’t suppose it occurred to you how it got in the refrigerator to begin with. Not to mention into the grocery buggy—” she slammed down the celery “—from the buggy into my car—” and the bag of onions “—and finally, from the car to the kitchen.” She jangled open the utensil door, rattling around inside it for a good five seconds before she found the knife she was looking for.

  After a pause, Ryan said, “And here I always thought you were a morning person.”

  “Long as it’s dark, it’s still night in my book.”

  Ryan slowly got up from the chair, stretched, then lumbered over to the refrigerator. “I hate to point this out, but this whole shebang was your idea.”

  Maddie decided not to tell him he was losing points fast. Except then a glass of orange juice appeared in front of her.

  So she stopped banging and clattering long enough to gulp down the juice, which she had to admit perked her up some. Then she flicked a glance in Ryan’s direction as he hauled the enormous bird out of the refrigerator, deciding maybe letting somebody else wrestle with a dead bird that weighed nearly as much as her three-year-old wasn’t such a bad idea. With her luck, she’d probably have ended up on the floor pinned underneath the dang thing, where nobody would have found her for hours, soaked in turkey juice and breastmilk.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “You can help.” Then she waved the knife at him. “But as soon as this bird’s in the oven, you’re to go right back to bed, you hear?”

  “Only if you don’t need me to help with something else.”

  “Trust me,” she said, knife now whomping against wood as she sliced celery, “the best thing you can do for me is stay out of my way. If I’m going to make an idiot of myself, I’d rather do it without an audience, thank you.”

  He thunked the still wrapped turkey into the sink, fumbled in the nearby drawer for a pair of scissors to slit the plastic. “Thought you said you knew what you were doing?”

  “In theory, yes. I helped Grace do Thanksgiving every year I was there. Just never handled the whole thing on my own.”

  Ryan discarded the shredded turkey wrapper in the garbage, then frowned at her. “Then how come you’re doing it now?”

  “I told you. As a way of sayin’ thank you.”

  “And?”

  Her brows lifted but she didn’t lose her rhythm. “Who says there’s an ‘and’?”

  Underneath his sweatshirt, his shoulders hitched as he removed the neck and package of giblets from assorted turkey orifices. “Just figured there was in your case.”

  She thought on that a moment, then said, “Okay. I guess I see this as kind of a rite of passage. Doing Thanksgiving officially makes me a woman.”

  “I’m supposed to run cold water over this, right?”

  “Hey. You’ve done this before.”

  “Just this part. With my mother. Nobody else’d get up this early. Past this point, I’m clueless.” Then he said in a low voice, “And by the way, I’d say you’ve officially been a woman for some time, Maddie.”

  She froze. Here she stood at five-thirty-something in the morning, braless, showerless, her hair looking like an abused doll’s, and unless she was sorely mistaken, the onion-and-raw-turkey-scented air was crackling with sexual electricity.

  Of course, she could be hallucinating, being still half-asleep and all. After all, only a blind man would want her in her present state.

  “And here I wasn’t sure you even thought of me as a woman, Dr. Logan.”

  She could feel his gaze searing the side of her face. Then he reached over to get the foil roasting pan she’d picked up when she bought the turkey. Several more seconds passed while he loaded fowl into pan, washed his hands.

  Maddie just kept on chopping.

  Except she started at the touch of Ryan’s fingertips on her chin, gently turning her face to his. And before she could catch her breath…he did.

  His morning whiskers tickled a little, but in a nice kind of way. But his lips…oh, my. Oh, my, my, my… And oh, was she ever glad she’d brushed her teeth.

  Then it was over, and he was walking away, and all she could do was stand there, staring stupidly at his back.

  “Ryan?”

  When he reached the door, he twisted back, his hand clamped on the frame. He looked…shell-shocked. “Holler when you’re ready for me to put the bird in the oven,” he said. “I’ll be in my office.”

  Her mouth twisted, Maddie frowned at the window at the lightening sky.

  This did not bode well for the rest of the day.

  What the blue blazes had just come over him?

  Ryan jerked back his desk chair and crashed into it, then rammed his head into his hands.

  Hey, Logan—it was just a kiss.

  Yeah, well, he could tell himself it was just a kiss from now until Doomsday but that didn’t change the fact that he had kissed her, and he had wanted to, and God help him, he wanted to again. And again. And maybe a hundred thousand times more after that.

  On a groan, Ryan dragged his hands away from his now pounding head long enough to peer at the calendar on the back of his desk. Ever since their tumble in the leaves, he’d ordered his errant longings to lie down and shut up. And every…damn…time he’d hear her laugh or see her smile or catch a whiff of her scent in a room she’d just been in, those errant longings reared their horny little heads and laughed themselves stupid. New Year’s was five weeks away, give or take. Five more weeks of having Maddie around where he could see her and smell her and want her…

  He’d go insane. Completely, out-of-his gourd, insane.

  Of course, if he’d managed to exercise any sort of control back there in the kitchen, he might have had half a chance of retaining some semblance of sanity. But nooooo, he had to kiss her.

  And he thought her baby was a lip magnet.

  A slight noise made him look up to see Mama Lip Magnet standing in his doorway, arms crossed, brows dipped, looking half-perplexed, half-pissed. Make that three-quarters pissed. If he’d ever entertained the slightest doubt about her not being a child, that expression alone would have cured him of his misconception.

  If the way she kissed hadn’t already.

  “Turkey time?” he said, hoping against hope this was all a bad dream.

  “Depends if you’re talking about the one in the kitchen or the one sitting here in front of me.”

  He sighed. “I suppose I had that coming.”

  “Yes, you did. You want to explain what that was all about?”

  “I…” Frowning, he shook his head. “No.”

  “No, you don’t? Or, no, you can’t?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “Men,” she muttered, spinning on her heel and tromping down the hall.

  Long about ten o’clock, Ivy called. “I’m so sorry to do this to you at the last minute, but I can’t come.”

  Maddie practically fainted. “Oh, no, Ivy…don’t say that. I neeeeed you.”

  After a long silence, the midwife said. “That sounds ominous.”

  Oops. “Um, I could just really use the moral support, is all. Besides, who’s going to pick up Mildred?”

  “Oh, I can bring Mildred, don’t you worry about that, but…” She lowered her voice. “Dawn showed up out of the blue a few minutes ago—”

  “So bring her. What’s the big deal?”

  “Cal.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake—that was, what, ten years ago? And nothing even happened, did it?”

  Ivy sighed. “I know, but…”

  “He’s a big boy, Ivy. I’m sure he can handle being with his ex…whatever she was for a couple hours. Besides, it’s not like
you’ve got fixings for Thanksgiving dinner in your house, since you’re supposed to be having it here—”

  “She’s apparently engaged,” Ivy said in an even lower voice. “And he’s with her.”

  Maddie stopped zipping long enough to think about this for a minute. Then she flapped her hand and said, “Unless the man has fleas, bring him along, too. Like I said, Cal will just have to cope. Or if he is carrying a torch, maybe that will cure him.”

  Just like she was having to cope with thinking about Ryan and his kiss when she didn’t want to be thinking about Ryan and his kiss and shouldn’t be thinking about it because she was a grown woman and grown women didn’t hyperventilate over a single kiss.

  Not even grown women who’d only been kissed by one other man their entire lives.

  “If you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure. So we’ll see you at one.” That crisis was no sooner resolved, however, when Noah called from the living room.

  “Mama! Katie Grace just barfed all over the floor—!”

  “When the hell you plannin’ on servin’ this meal, gal?” Uncle Ned came thumping into the kitchen, effectively blocking her exit. “I’m like to starve to death—”

  “Have a roll or something. That’ll hold you until one—”

  “One? I’ll be dead by then!”

  Maddie tamped down the urge to bonk him one with her wooden spoon. “I sincerely doubt that, old man. Besides, I fixed you oatmeal an hour ago.”

  He screwed up his face. “Oatmeal! Tryin’ to poison me, more like! Bacon and eggs, that’s what I need! A man’s food, not this sissy stuff—”

  “Mama!”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

  She shoved past Ned and out of the kitchen, only to run smack into Ryan, who was already carting Katie off to…well, she had no idea what he was going to do with her, and right now, she didn’t much care.

  “Looks like she got into a bag of cookies or something,” Ryan said, looking at her, but not quite. “No fever, no pain. Just ten gallons of half-digested Oreos all over the living room floor. You go on back to whatever you have to do, we’ll be fine.”