The Doctor's Medicine Woman

His grip was firm and warm and…secure.

She had to force herself not to step back in surprise at the thought. Why would that descriptive term come to mind? But she didn’t have time to linger over the unsettling question.

“Please,” he said to her softly, “call me Travis.”

She offered him a professional smile. “Only if you’ll call me Diana.”

He nodded, holding onto her hand for what she felt was a little longer than necessary. Then every inch of her skin prickled with awkwardness and her palm felt distinctly chilled when contact between their hands was broken.

“Congratulations on the successful adoption of Jared and Josh,” she said.

“Thanks.” He then added, “I think.”

Was the aside his attempt at good-natured teasing? she wondered. His own self-doubt? Or was he rebelling against her presence being forced on himself and the boys?

“I’m not sure yet that the adoption is successful,” he said.

“Be assured—”

Diana looked toward the Council table as her grandmother spoke to Travis.

“—the adoption is complete. Now that you have agreed to accept Diana’s help, we are happy to release the boys to you.”

The doctor’s immense happiness seemed to fairly pulse from him, Diana observed. But the frown on his brow quickly returned.

“For how long?” he asked.

The Council, as a whole, looked confused by his question. But it was Diana’s grandmother who continued to speak on their behalf.

“Forever,” she told him. “Or at least until Jared and Josh reach maturity.”

“No, no,” he said. “I wasn’t referring to the boys. Um…no offence to Ms. Chapman—”

“Diana,” she softly reminded him. Surely they could be on a first name basis and still act professionally toward each other.

At her prompt, his mouth curled slightly at the corners as he cast her a quick glance, and Diana got the nerve-racking and overwhelming sense that, if this man were to ever truly smile at her, his face would be transformed from merely handsome to utterly and breathtakingly gorgeous.

He directed his gaze at her grandmother. “Just how long will I be expected to…” His words trailed into a brief and awkward pause. He tried again. “How long will Diana be with me and the boys?”

The elderly woman nodded her understanding. “In two short months the boys will turn six. It is the Kolheek tradition to hold a naming ceremony on—or close to—a child’s sixth birthday.”

Diana watched Travis shake his head.

“Naming ceremony? But the boys already have names.”

“Kolheek names,” the Council woman explained.

Knowing she could clarify in a way he would understand, Diana offered, “Long ago, the infant mortality rate was very high. Parents discovered it was best to wait—”

“That is the rationalization given by cultural professors at colleges and universities.” Diana’s grandmother enunciated the words with gentle but firm disapproval. “The real reason is that the Kolheek believe a child should have the chance to develop a personality before he is gifted with a name.”

A patient smile tugged at the corners of Diana’s mouth. This wasn’t the first time she and her grandmother had clashed over her academic cultural studies of the Kolheek people.

“Had you given me a chance, Grandmother, I’d have explained fully.”

“I know you would have,” her grandmother granted. “But the day is quickly passing. And surely the good doctor is anxious to collect his children.”

Now Travis was smiling. At the Council. Diana could sense the warmth of it, but because she stood slightly behind him and to one side, she could not see his face and was only left to wonder if her thoughts about how a smile would transform his features was true or not. Somehow, she felt deprived.

When next her grandmother spoke, the woman’s voice was louder, more formal than it had been just a moment before, and Diana knew an edict of the Council was being declared.

“Our Medicine Woman will live with Dr. Westcott and the boys until such time as she deems them ready to be named. She will teach the children all she can of the Kolheek and the essence of what it means to be part of The People. She will prepare Jared and Josh for their naming ceremony, and she will perform that ceremony.” After the very briefest of pauses, she added, “Then we shall see what fate has in store.”

Diana shot her grandmother a curious glance. What on earth had she meant by that last peculiar statement?

The flight back to Philadelphia was packed with business travelers and vacationers, but Travis paid little attention to his fellow passengers—except the two young boys sitting beside him. Jared and Josh were craning to see out the small window on what was so very obviously their first trip in an airplane. Jared chattered away excitedly, while Josh just seemed to silently take in everything with his huge, dark eyes.

All Travis had to do was look at the boys and his chest swelled with pride, his heart with paternal love. He’d thought the fatherly feelings would take time to develop, that becoming the boys’ daddy would have to grow on him. However, he’d discovered rather quickly when he’d picked up the children at the orphanage this afternoon just how wrong he’d been.

Jared and Josh already knew Travis as he’d been to visit them twice a year since arranging their operations—and more often since he’d started the adoption process—so that made the meeting less stressful for everyone concerned. Upon being told that Dr. Travis, as the boys had referred to him until now, was taking them home to live with him, the boys’ reactions had made Travis’s heart literally ache with throat-closing emotion.

Jared had grinned and seemed to accept the situation eagerly. He’d asked if Travis was really going to be his daddy. The question had made Travis nearly strangle with the surprising magnitude of love that surged through him. He hadn’t been able to answer with anything other than a silent nod.

Josh’s reaction had been poignant, too, but in a very different way. His silence was profound, his large, chocolate eyes shadowed with some emotion Travis couldn’t quite identify, but that he suspected was suspicion. And fear. Travis had wanted desperately to comfort the boy, embrace him, assure him there was nothing to be afraid of. However, he’d been worried that becoming physical too soon would only compound the child’s fear. Trust would come in time, Travis was certain.

The child’s misgivings were abated somewhat when Jared had tossed his arm over his brother’s shoulder and had said, “It’s going to be okay, Josh. You’ll see.”

Although Jared’s chin had lifted with what looked like much bravado, Travis hadn’t missed the anxiety lacing the boy’s reassuring remark. He’d wanted to hug the boys to him, to tell them they needn’t worry another second, that he’d move mountains to see that they were loved and well cared for. But he’d stifled the urge, silently noting again that trust—like Rome—wasn’t built in a day.

The boys’ meager belongings had been packed into one suitcase and they had spent a tearful half hour saying goodbye to the friends they’d made at the state home and the staff there that had cared for them for the first five years of their lives. Travis had patiently given the children as long as he could before telling them they had to get on the road to the airport.

At the mention of airplanes and runways, Jared had come alive with excitement. Josh did his best to underplay his feelings about all this commotion, but Travis knew the child was just as eager for this new experience as his brother.

As he now watched the boys press their faces against the small, double-paned window, Travis sighed. The trip to the reservation had been pretty close to perfect. He’d come home with the boys…

The sigh he now expelled was filled to the brim with doubt and agitation. He wasn’t really angry that he’d had to agree to Diana Chapman’s presence in his home for the next couple of months. He agreed with the Kolheek Council’s opinion that Jared and Josh needed some roots. They were young. And impressionable. They needed a sense of heritage. A heritage that Travis couldn’t give them because he didn’t have it himself.

He looked across the aisle at the woman’s arrow-straight, black-as-midnight hair, her tawny skin, noble cheekbones, perfect nose.

What was it about Diana Chapman that unsettled him so? Was it because she was a Medicine Woman? Someone living the very culture he was so totally ignorant of? Or was it because she had been forced on him? Because she was someone he’d see as an invader in his house? In his new family? Or, a quiet voice silently stressed, was it because she was too darned beautiful for words?

She turned her head, her nut-brown eyes connecting with his, and she caught him staring for what seemed the umpteenth time since they’d boarded the plane. Awkwardness crept over him, thick and straining. What was it about her that made him feel so…rough and unrefined? Ham-fisted, even?

Her dark, steady gaze was trained on him, and he felt the silence swell and grow even more awkward than it had been only a moment before. The urge to reach up and tug at his collar welled up in him like an unreachable itch, but he firmly squelched it.

Her quiet dignity, her almost patrician manner, was what had him feeling so damned uncouth.

Say something, you idiot, his brain silently poked him like a stick. Say something that will bridge this difficult stillness.