“I wanted you to read me a story.” He opened one eye a tiny bit, but Matt was certain he couldn’t see.
“Sorry. I got home late. We’ll read it tomorrow night.”
“Becca says it’s her turn.”
“Then we’ll read two stories.”
Ben smiled, closed his eye and snuggled into his pillow. “Night, Matt.”
“Night, sport,” Matt said. The peculiar feeling grew more intense.
“I love you,” Ben murmured as he drifted off to sleep.
That did it. A man could only take so much.
Matt sat down on the bed and brushed away the first tear to roll down his cheek since he was four years old. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Chapter Sixteen
“She says it’s just indigestion,” Ethan told Matt, two nights later, “but it seems a lot worse this time.”
Josie Woodhouse lay in her bed, her body so twisted by pain Matt could hardly examine her.
“Have you called her doctor?” he asked Ethan.
“Yes, but Mama insisted I call you first.”
“We ought to wait for Dr. Kennedy.”
“He’s not coming. He said to give her a double dose of her usual medicine and call him in the morning.”
Matt hadn’t formed a positive impression of Dr. Isaac Kennedy, but this destroyed any willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Has your mother had the physical examination I recommended?”
“No. Dr. Kennedy didn’t think it was necessary.”
“If she had, this could have been prevented,” Matt said.
“What could have been prevented?”
“I think your mother has an ovarian cyst. We’re going to have to take her to the hospital immediately. We can get an X ray there. If it is a cyst, we’ll have to operate as soon as possible.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. That’s why I recommended a complete examination. That’s why we’re going to take an X ray. You get your car ready. I’ll telephone Dr. Kennedy to meet us at the hospital.”
Several hours later, after admitting Josie to the hospital in Woodstock, Matt explained the X ray.
“There’s no question,” he told Ethan. “It’s a cyst. I’ll have them set up the operation as soon as possible.”
“How soon will that be?”
“I can’t say. We have to find a surgeon first.”
“Why can’t you operate?”
“I’m not her doctor.”
“Dr. Kennedy isn’t here. Mama wants you to do the operation.”
“You don’t know a thing about me.”
“Liz told me you plan to be a surgeon, that you’ve been studying for years. Everybody knows you were on your way to a big hospital when you got sent here by mistake.”
“Yes, but—”
“Please do the operation. Mother’s an old crab, even mean at times, but she’s all I’ve got. I can’t lose her.”
“It’s not a dangerous operation. Any staff surgeon can do it.”
“So you won’t do it?”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
He didn’t know himself. Operating on people he didn’t know was easy. It was nothing more than solving a problem. But it never occurred to him that anybody he knew would trust him with their life. That seemed downright dumb now that he thought about it, but that’s what it was.
“Nothing. Tell your mother I’ll be honored to do the operation.”
Matt drove the last miles between Woodstock and Iron Springs. The sun had been up for hours, the day was well under way and he hadn’t had a minute’s sleep. He was too tired to appreciate the clarity of the morning, the coolness of the air. He had no time to waste enjoying the panorama of mountainsides covered in a mantle of rich green or the pristine water that tumbled over rocks in the stream that ran alongside the road.
He was too busy cursing himself for breaking one of his most basic rules and becoming involved with his patients. If he’d done what he’d always done, he wouldn’t have been spending several hours each evening with Josh and his family. He wouldn’t have spent the whole night with Josie Woodhouse. Nor would he be driving back to his office, facing a full day of work, so tired he couldn’t see straight.
He slammed on the brakes and cursed again. A buck stood in the middle of the road, imperiously staring at Matt, daring him not to slow down.
“Move, you great big lice motel!” he shouted out the window when he came to a stop. “I don’t have time to admire your great rack of horns.”
The buck ignored Matt. Just as Matt was about to honk his horn, a doe slipped out of the brush next to the road. Two fawns tumbled down the bank behind her. She walked across the road without looking at Matt, confident the buck would protect her. She bounded up the far bank, and the fawns scrambled up behind her. The buck gave Matt one more look, almost as if to say, “There, you stupid human, you didn’t think I was standing in the middle of the road for nothing, did you?” then sprang up the bank after his family.
Matt started his car forward, but not nearly so fast this time. The oddest thing had happened. For some reason, he suddenly felt good. Almost wonderful. And it had taken a deer to make him see it.
He felt good about helping Josh and Josie. It had been emotionally draining, it had been physically exhausting, it had taken up all his spare time, but he felt good about doing it. There was more to being a doctor than just making people well.
People trusted him because he was a doctor. Not because he was personally worthy of it, not even because he had done anything to deserve it. They trusted him because he’d promised to do the most important thing one human being can do for others, help preserve their lives and the lives of the people they loved.
The magnitude of that trust, the responsibility, nearly overwhelmed him. It made his goal of becoming rich and famous seem cheap and tawdry. It put him in the same category as everybody in Gull’s Landing. They wanted only to put him somewhere and forget about him. He’d wanted to treat his patients like that, to use them to achieve his own ends without any concern for theirs.
The problem was he’d never learned to care about people. It didn’t matter that the people of Gull’s Landing didn’t care about him. The problem was with him. If he didn’t fix it, what the rest of the world did wouldn’t matter.
But he hadn’t failed. Not completely. Not yet. He did care about Josh and Josie and all the other people of Iron Springs. He really didn’t mind all the work he’d done studying charts. He really didn’t mind being dragged to picnics, church, even chicken dinners.
The car suddenly lurched as the left front wheel hit the narrow shoulder. Jerking his attention back to his driving, Matt pulled the car back on the road. He shivered as he looked at the yawning abyss beyond. He was exhausted. He should have rented a motel room in Woodstock and gotten some sleep. But it would throw the office into chaos if he missed a whole day. He had a full schedule of patients.
Besides, he didn’t want to skip the office. These people needed him, and that was important. It was something of a surprise to realize that. He’d always thought doctors were interchangeable, that patients wouldn’t care as long as they got proper care.
Josh Worsley and Josie Woodhouse had dispelled that theory. Matt still couldn’t get over the fact they had turned to him. How could they trust him after only a few weeks? He’d spent his whole life distrusting people, suspecting their motives, avoiding any emotional involvement with them. Yet this little community hidden away in the mountains had turned to him, accepted him with trust from the start.
He pulled into his parking space behind the clinic, rubbed his eyes. No use trying to puzzle through it. He had work to do.
“How’s Josie?” Salome asked the minute he walked in the door. She was wearing fluorescent turquoise today. It hurt Matt’s tired eyes just to look at her.
“She’ll have to stay at the hospital a few days,” Matt said, “but she’ll be as good as new
in a couple of months.”
“Good. She can be a pain in the behind, but I’d miss her.”
“That’s no way to refer to Mrs. Woodhouse,” Sadie said.
“Woodhouse, Smoodhouse. She’s a pretentious old bat, and you know it.” Salome directed a critical gaze at Matt. “I never thought I’d say this. Beefcake, but you look like hell.”
“He’s worn-out,” Sadie said, “what with spending a couple of hours every night with Josh and now staying up all night operating on Josie. You want me to cancel your morning appointments?”
“No. Just keep bringing me cups of black coffee.”
Matt headed back to his office. He stopped at the coffee machine.
“He looks dead on his feet,” he heard Sadie say.
“He’s got no business seeing all these people,” Salome replied. He heard the rustling of pages as she thumbed through a book, probably the appointment book. “Half these people could just as easily wait until tomorrow.”
“I’ll call some and see if they’re willing to postpone,” Sadie volunteered.
“I’ll do it,” Salome said. “You’re such a pushover you’ll end up with more appointments instead of less. They won’t give me any backchat.”
“You can’t bully them,” Sadie said.
“They bully Beefcake, wanting to see him for everything from a hangnail to a runny nose. They can damned well wait for a change. Tell him his patients from eleven to twelve-thirty canceled. That’ll give him time for a nap. It kills me to see him so tired he looks almost ordinary. Hell, how am I going to get hot flashes if we work him so hard he turns ugly?”
Matt carried his coffee into his office and closed the door, a smile on his lips. He didn’t know how it had happened, but the sense of community that had closed around Liz when she came back, that had closed around Josh’s family when he fell ill, had now closed around him. He was no longer an outsider. He was in.
He belonged.
“Nothing’s wrong, David.”
“Then why did you call? You never call.”
She’d waited until Matt and the kids were outside. If things went wrong, she didn’t want anybody to know she’d had this conversation. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about letting the kids visit, but I think it would be better if you and your wife came here. The kids need time to get to know you and your wife. I know you’re their father, but you have to realize you’re a stranger to them. This will give them a chance to get used to you in a comfortable environment. That may not seem important to you, but they’re little children. They get frightened when they’re in a strange place.”
Silence.
“Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Will you do it?”
“It won’t be easy to get away.”
Good. She wouldn’t mind if he put this off for years.
“I’ll have to call you.”
“Good.”
“Thanks, Liz. I appreciate it.”
She decided not to tell him she was following Matt’s advice, that if she had her way, he’d never see his children. But Matt had said the kids needed their father, that she’d scar them emotionally if she kept them apart. If anybody would know about that, it would be Matt She wouldn’t do any favors for David. She’d do anything for her children.
The tension inside Liz had been building for the past three days ever since that evening on the porch when she’d nearly let Matt seduce her. He’d apologized, said he’d do it all over again if he got the chance, kissed her in front of the kids to prove it and headed off to work. Since then, she’d been the one to hide from him, to be relieved he spent so many nights with Josh Worsley.
But the crisis over Josie Woodhouse had turned everything around. Between visiting Josh, checking on Josie, coping with Dr. Kennedy’s anger at being at fault over a missed diagnosis, and trying to catch up on his office visits, she had hardly set eyes on Matt for three days. When she did see him, he was too exhausted or preoccupied to do much more than eat and collapse into bed.
She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ceased to be interested in her, if his desire for her had burned only briefly, if her refusal to let him go any further had caused him to strike her off his list. She didn’t believe he was that coldhearted, but she had to know. So she had waited up for him tonight.
He was frowning when he entered the house, but he smiled when he saw her.
“Is Josh any better?” she asked.
“I can’t tell,” he replied. “Everything depends on the chemotherapy. If it doesn’t work, they will try a bone-marrow. But he doesn’t have any brothers and sisters, so the chance of finding a match isn’t good.”
“What are his chances of being cured?”
“That’s impossible to say.” He came over to her, lifted her chin with his hand so he could see her face better. “What’s worrying you?” he asked.
She didn’t know how she could have thought he was insensitive or had forgotten her. Only a person who cared could have looked into her eyes and known she was worried.
“I’m worried about us.”
“I thought you said there couldn’t be any us.”
“Okay, I’m worried about you and me.”
“Don’t. I care for you very much, but we’ve each set our hearts on mutually exclusive goals.”
That was the confirmation Liz had wanted. Matt did care for her, but he recognized they could never have a future together. Yet the very minute she got confirmation, Liz couldn’t accept it. It was impossible for her to think of living without Matt.
“I care for you very much,” she said. “I really do, but I can’t sleep with you just for sex. It would hurt too much.”
“I understand, Liz. I don’t like it, but I understand. But if you keep telling me how much you care, I’m liable to drag you up those stairs and make love to you all night long.”
Liz found it difficult to believe how powerfully his words affected her. It was all she could do to keep from throwing herself into his arms.
“I think it’s important to say how we feel, to get it out in the open.”
“Why?”
“I need to hear you say you care for me. Even if words are all you can give me—all I can accept from you—I need that.”
“I don’t understand. If you don’t tell me you love me, then I can pretend you don’t. But if I know you love me, how am I supposed to stand here and keep my hands to myself?”
“Because you love me,” she answered.
“That would be the very reason I couldn’t do it.”
“A woman would—”
“Don’t tell me what a woman would do. I’m not a woman. My inclination when I see something I want is to take it. It may not be right, it may not be fair, but that’s what instinct tells me to do. Do you think I could declare my undying love, then walk away to separate bedrooms? How can you do that? What are you women made of?”
His intensity frightened her a little. The only time David had ever been this wrought up, he’d hit her. But Matt was on the edge of losing control because he cared for her, because he wanted her so much he could hardly stand it. Maybe she wasn’t built as much like other women as she thought. She’d like nothing better than to go upstairs with him this very minute.
But she couldn’t. If a single breath of scandal reached David, he’d be down on her in a second with a court order for the children. She kept telling herself to think of the children. No matter what she wanted, no matter what her body screamed for, think of the children. And think of what it would mean to her afterward. How much greater the pain would be when he left. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, do that to herself.
Gradually she felt herself grow more calm, under control.
“I guess what I wanted to say was that my feelings for you are more than just sexual attraction. You are a very attractive man. I’m sure I’m not the only woman whose dreams you invade each night. But as important as that is, it’s the rest of you I find so appealing. Your kindnes
s, your thoughtfulness and your genuine caring. You’re better with my children than their own father ever was. You were from that very first day. It’s because you care. That’s a very attractive quality, even more attractive than your beefcake backside.”
“Are you trying to turn me off with flattery?”
Liz laughed even though she didn’t feel much like it. “I’m saying there’s something worthwhile about you that still will be worth loving when you start to look old and ugly like everyone else. Isn’t there something about me that appeals to you besides my legs?”
The surprised look on his face caused her heart to plummet.
“Forget I asked that question. I was married long enough to know when a man looks at a woman, he doesn’t see beyond her face and the shape of her body.”
“You’re wrong,” Matt said. “I never thought about it before because that’s all I wanted to see. But you’re different.”
“How?” She didn’t need much. Just a crumb would do.
“You’ve got spunk. I don’t always agree with what you do, but when you believe in something, you go after it full tilt. You’ve got courage, too. It wasn’t easy to tackle that heart-attack case alone, but you didn’t hesitate. It couldn’t have been easy to leave a comfortable existence and come back here without an education or a job, especially with people like Josie hounding your every step. You haven’t gone around feeling sorry for yourself. You turned down Ethan, the answer to all your problems, because you didn’t love him. Not everyone can do that. It’s pretty special.”
It was all Liz could do to keep from crying. This was a man she could love with all her heart, and she couldn’t have him. It wasn’t fair of God to tease her.
“But what I admire most is the way that, in the midst of all the upheaval in your life, you’ve created an island of calm and security for your children. I don’t say they don’t miss having a father, but they are remarkably happy in spite of it.”
She was crying.
“But I’ve got a very personal reason to think you’re pretty special. I came to Iron Springs a bitter and angry man. I’d closed myself up into a tight little ball, where no one could ever get to me. You cared enough to keep prodding me until I came to my senses.
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