Saving Dr. Ryan

He never got back to Dallas.

Hank took one look at Ryan and swore, the effect somehow not all that intimidating around a mouth full of toothpaste suds. “She had the baby?”

“I won’t even ask you how you figured that out.”

“Hell, Ry—” Hank ducked back inside his apartment adjacent to the office, a hellhole if ever there was one, and strode back to the bathroom. Ryan followed, shutting the door behind him. As usual, some opera singer was holding forth from the CD player.

“She was in her ninth month,” Hank was saying over the sound of running water and an emotionally distraught soprano. “Her car’s not here this morning. And you are. Doesn’t take a genius.”

Ryan, however, hadn’t really heard that last part, fascinated—in a ghoulish kind of way—with the state of his brother’s apartment. The only refined thing about it was the music. While none of the Logan brothers would win any housekeeping awards, from the looks, and smell, of things, Hank seemed determined to see just how bad his place could get before it ignited from spontaneous combustion. Layers of dirty clothes, moldering fast food containers as far as the eye could see, dishes stacked like drunken acrobats in the sink—the place redefined dump.

“For cryin’ out loud, Hank—why don’t you pay Cherise an extra fifty bucks to clean up in here once a week?”

From the bathroom, he heard spitting and rinsing, before Hank reappeared, laconically buttoning up a denim shirt. Dry heat hummed from a vent under the no-color drapes, teasing the hems. “I do. She comes tomorrow.”

“I take that back. Make it a hundred. And remind me to make sure her tetanus shots are up to date.”

Hank grunted.

“And how’d you know Maddie Kincaid was in her ninth month, anyway?”

His brother had let his cop-short hair grow out—a lot—but he still moved with a kind of taut awareness, as if he expected the bad guys to pop out from behind his Murphy bed. His eyes as dark as Ryan’s were light, Hank tossed his brother a glance as he rifled through a pile of clothes on an ugly upholstered chair, looking for something. “I asked. She said three weeks yet.”

Lord. Hank had probably frightened her into labor. “The baby had other ideas.”

Hank found what he was looking for—a belt—and threaded it through his jeans. “How’d she find you?” He dug in his pocket for a stick of gum, a habit taken up after Ryan finally convinced him to give up smoking. The wrapper drifted to the floor after he poked the gum into his mouth.

“I have no idea. She and the kids just showed up.”

“Huh. You take her to the hospital?”

“I was doing well to get in position in time to catch the baby. That’s why I’m here. To get their things.”

Hank nodded, snatching a spare set of keys off a hook by his door. He grabbed a leather jacket from the back of a dinette chair and opened the door to the biting cold.

They walked the short distance in silence, gravel crunching underfoot, their breath frosted in front of their faces. Hands rammed in his pockets, Ryan glanced around. You couldn’t exactly say Hank’d been singlehandedly restoring the place to its former glory, since that was a word one would never have associated with the Double Arrow, even in its heyday. But he was definitely restoring it, shingle by shingle. A dozen single-room units out front, a half dozen two- and three-room cottages down by what the previous owners generously called a “lake.” The single rooms were pretty much done; Ryan imagined it would take another year, maybe two, before the cottages were ready for occupants. At least, the two-footed variety.

It was a pretty spot, actually, especially this time of year with the ashes and maples doing their fall color thing. With a little effort—okay, a lot of effort—Hank could turn the motel into someplace folks might actually want to stay.

The scrape of a key in a lock caught Ryan’s attention; they stepped inside Unit 12, Ryan breathing a silent sigh of relief that the room seemed—and smelled—clean. A little strong on the Pine-Sol, but that was okay. Calling the county health authorities on his own brother wasn’t high on his list. Especially as Hank could still probably beat the crap out of him, if he had a mind to.

The twin beds were both undone, a denim jumper and blouse neatly laid across the back of the desk chair. One suitcase was open on the metal-and-strap rack, the contents still more or less intact. Ryan quickly gathered the few stray items, including a plastic soap case and toothbrush from the bathroom sink, haphazardly folding the clothing before stuffing everything into the open case, then clicking it shut. Even without really looking, though, he could tell the clothes were worn and faded. For a woman with such intense pride, her predicament must be eating her alive.

Ryan hauled the cases out to the truck, Hank meandering wordlessly behind. To tell the truth, none of the brothers had much to say to each other anymore. Which was a shame, he supposed, since they’d been close as kids, even though they’d tormented each other like any normal siblings.

Hank stood with his arms crossed, the stiff breeze messing with his hair. “Now what do you suppose makes a woman that pregnant up and leave wherever she was?”

Ryan settled the cases in the truck bed, turned back to his brother. Little had caught Hank’s interest since his return, other than this rat-trap. But damned if Ryan didn’t catch a whiff of genuine intrigue about Maddie Kincaid.

“Desperation,” he said simply. “Husband’s dead, she’s got no money from what I can tell. And her only living relative is here.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“Ned.”

Black brows shot straight up. “McAllister?”

“Yep.”

“Damn. She really is havin’ a bad string of luck, isn’t she?”

“To put it mildly.” Ryan pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, fished out a twenty and a five. “Let me settle up for her room.”

But Hank shook his head. “Forget it. In fact, if she needs a place to stay—”

“No,” Ryan said, too quickly, tucking the bills back into his wallet. “I need to keep an eye on her. And the baby, you know.”

Hank gave a nod, then a sigh. “Pretty thing,” he said, which just about surprised the life out of Ryan. Far as he knew, it had been a long time since Hank had noticed a woman. Much less mentioned one. And that he’d notice this one, in her ninth month, skinny as a rail, with two other kids to boot…well, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and Ryan wasn’t about to figure out why it bothered him, but maybe it meant Hank was coming back to life.

Which was a good thing, right?

“I suppose she’d clean up okay,” Ryan said nonchalantly, climbing behind the wheel.

Hank’s long, craggy face actually split into a grin. A grin. A grin the likes of which Ryan hadn’t seen for longer than he cared to remember.

He gunned the truck to life, more irritable than he had any right or reason to feel.

Chapter 3

Ivy and the kids rushed out the back door just as Ryan pulled up, the midwife going on about taking the kids with her on her rounds, she’d just been waiting for Ryan to get back so Maddie wouldn’t be alone. And that she’d updated Maddie’s chart, it was on his desk, everything looked real good.

Then they were gone in a blur of dust and engine growls— Ivy’s battle-scarred Ford pickup had a good five years on Ryan’s—leaving Ryan with a fresh pot of coffee and profound relief that Ivy’d taken the kids away for a bit. Keeping an ear out for Maddie and Amy Rose was one thing; watching two little kids while seeing to his patients was something else. He’d lost his last nurse/receptionist to marriage and a move to New Mexico not a month ago, had yet to replace her. Sometimes he had a temp in to help, but he usually found it less problematic in the long run to wing it on his own. His paperwork was suffering some, but he told himself he’d catch up, one of these days. Years.

Ryan got himself another cup of coffee and wended his way toward the haphazardly connected group of four rooms that made up his office. The house sat on a double-sized corner lot, three blocks from the center of town. Back in the twenties, a back parlor and summer porch had been converted into an office/exam room and waiting room with its own entrance. Later on, somebody got the bright idea to build a breezeway linking the original office to the detached garage, which had served double duty ever since as auxiliary exam and file rooms.

The layout didn’t make a lick of sense, architecturally speaking, but it suited Ryan’s purpose well enough. And that was all that mattered.

He’d peeked into the waiting room on his way to Maddie’s room: no one yet. Good. He only had a handful of actual appointments today, but every fall, soon as school started, there were the usual rash of coughs and colds, not to mention the playground boo-boos and football injuries. About due for the first round of strep, too, he imagined.

The door to the back bedroom was slightly ajar; Ryan slowly shouldered it open, saw that Maddie was asleep. He’d intended on just setting the suitcases down and getting out of there, except one of the cases wasn’t as flat on the bottom as he’d thought so that it fell over onto the wooden floor with a bang! loud enough to set him back five years.

Maddie twisted around in the bed, her eyes soft and unfocused. The room smelled of sunshine on clean linens, the sweet scent of newborn baby. An odd sensation that managed to be vague and sharp at the same time sliced through him as a stray shaft of sunlight grazed the top of her head, turning her dull brown hair a rich, golden color. And she had on one of his shirts, he noticed, that blue plaid that had gotten all soft, just the way he liked it.

“One problem with this hotel,” he said, his throat suddenly dry, “is the lousy room service.”

Maddie smiled, slowly and lazily, and his heart just hopped right up into that dry throat. “Hardly,” she said in that scratchy little voice of hers, before carefully pushing herself upright. Her just-washed hair was all feathery and soft around a scrubbed face, making her look more than ever like a child.

Only not.