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“Give yourself a break here. The way it looks to me, his only problem is he’s just like his dad. He wants to take care of his family. There are a lot worse things in this world than that.”
“Well, I know, but—”
“What I want to know more about is the kindhearted, good-looking pediatrician with the red hair.”
Ryan tried not to wince. “Did I say she was a redhead?”
“Yep.”
Ryan shifted on the picnic bench. Pizza Pete ought to think about getting some cushions for the damn things. “There’s nothing more to tell. I liked her. She was very…understanding about the whole episode.”
Tanner wasn’t fooled. “Right. Understanding.”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“You’re interested.”
“All right. Maybe I am. But where can it go? I work a sixty-hour week, and I’m always thinking I should spend more time with the kids.”
“It doesn’t have to go anywhere. You ask her out, that’s all. If you have a good time, you ask her out again.”
“Right, but—”
“I’ve got it. The Heart Ball.” The Heart Ball was a major annual fund-raiser put on by the Friends of Memorial. “It’s two weeks away. Have you got a date?”
“No, but—”
“You are going, aren’t you?”
“Of course.” He was on the agenda, as a matter of fact, to give a little look-how-far-we’ve-come speech about the new wing.
“So ask her,” Tanner said. “Do it today. I want a commitment, and I want one before our family-size pepperoni pizza arrives.”
Ryan decided he’d better make a joke of this. “Commitment? That’s an interesting word, coming from you.”
Tanner’s eyes went dark as the middle of the night. And Ryan felt like a jerk. Tanner had always played the field. And Ryan had always ribbed him about it, just as Tanner always gave him a hard time for being a one-woman man.
But commitment jokes were in bad taste these days. Tanner had a big problem concerning the issue of commitment. He was dealing with it as best he could, but the whole situation had him tied in knots.
“Tanner, I—”
Tanner shook his head. “Don’t apologize. Sometimes, the truth hurts. That doesn’t mean you can’t tell it.” He drummed up his best give-’em-hell grin. “Besides, I know your tricks. And they’re not gonna work this time. We’re talking about you right now. You and a cute little redheaded M.D. And that date you really do need for the Heart Ball.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think, act.”
“Tanner. I’ll think about it.”
“Well then, think fast. Here comes our pizza. And don’t look now, but three hungry kids are headed this way.”
Ryan did think about it. For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. He thought about how he had no business getting involved with anyone right now. He thought about how, if he did get involved with someone, she ought to be like Patricia, a woman ready, willing and eager to do big-time duty on the home front.
And he thought how he’d met a number of women in the past year or so who would have been happy to try to fill Patricia’s shoes, lovely, graceful women who had good educations and undemanding careers. Women who would have done their best to mother his children and take care of him, too.
He’d had zero interest in the subtle overtures of those women.
He also thought about what Tanner had said.
It doesn’t have to go anywhere. You ask her out. If you have a good time, you ask her out again….
That night, once the kids were finally settled into bed and Lily had retired to her room, Ryan let himself out the back door, sprinted down the driveway and around to the front porch of the little house.
Chapter Four
“Oh!” Ronni said, when she opened the door. “Ryan. Hello.”
“Hello.”
Ronni stared. He looked so…pulled together. So unbelievably handsome and self-possessed. He was wearing chinos and a soft, dark-colored sweater.
Her own attire consisted of a stretched-out sweatshirt, black leggings with a little hole in the knee and a heavy pair of gray thermal socks. Her hair was a mess, sticking out all over the place the way it always did when she went too many hours without combing it. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, either, since she’d only spent the day puttering around, putting things away.
Just like last night. She’d been a walking fashion emergency then, too, with her hair coming out of its braid, her boots dripping water all over his Oriental rugs. He’d end up thinking she always looked like something the cat wouldn’t bother to drag in the house.
Not that it mattered.
No, it didn’t matter at all.
He was her temporary landlord, and nothing more. Not a man she hoped would notice her as a woman, not a man for whom she would want to look her best at least two-thirds of the time.
And what was he doing here, anyway?
She gulped and resisted the powerful urge to start patting at her hair and straightening her sweatshirt. “Um. Come on in.”
She fell back and he entered the tiny entrance hall, which was really much too small for two people. He smelled of some nice aftershave—a lot fresher than she did, of that she was certain.
She gestured toward the kitchen a few feet away. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks.” He went where she pointed, pulled out a chair and sat at the quaint country French table, which his gracious and beautiful wife had chosen with such loving care. A notebook computer and a stack of medical journals and scribbled pages of notes cluttered the surface.
“You were working?”
“Just brushing up a little.” Ronni leaned against the blue-tiled counter by the sink, feeling too edgy to sit down herself. “Friday, one of my three-year-olds came in with an itchy, scaly-looking rash on her face and the backs of her knees. Infantile eczema. I prescribed an antihistamine and ordered a few tests for common allergies, but it never hurts to examine other options—can I get you something? Coffee? Or something else?” She’d fit in a trip to the supermarket a few hours before and picked up the basics. She even had napkins now. She’d be ready when Lily came knocking—probably first thing tomorrow morning, armed with fresh-baked croissants or fragrant cinnamon rolls, and more tales of her perfect, lost daughter, more reminders that her son-in-law was a busy, busy man.
Ryan shrugged. “I’d take a beer, if you have it.”
“Beer?” Too bad she hadn’t thought to buy any.
“Wrong choice, huh? Never mind. I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
“Positive.”
So much for refreshments. Back to the original question. What was he doing here?
A smile so faint it was little more than a shadow lifted the corner of his mouth. “You’re wondering why I’m here, aren’t you?”
“Well, as a matter of fact…”
“I’d like to take you to the Heart Ball.”
She was not prepared for that. Not prepared at all. “The Heart Ball,” she repeated, like a fool. Like someone who’d never heard of such a thing.
“Yes. It’s the twelfth. Of February.”
She knew that, of course. The Heart Ball was a very big deal in Honeygrove. It took place every year, around Valentine’s Day. Memorial’s auxiliary put it on and most of the doctors in town made an effort to attend.
He was looking at her so intently. “You have a date,” he said, his tone flat.
“I…” Lie, her mind ordered. Tell him you do. But she didn’t have a date. And she just couldn’t lie about it. “No. No, I don’t have a date.”
“Then?” He waited, his face composed, his eyes anything but.
The problem was, she wanted to say yes.
“If you say no, you’ll destroy me.” He spoke lightly, but still, somehow, the statement rang true.
And she found herself thinking, Why not? It’s only one evening….
“Come on.” There was that shadow of a smile again, haunting the edges of his mouth.
It actually might be fun, she rationalized. And it was an event she really should attend. Both Marty and Randall had been after her not to back out this year.
“Say yes.”
“All right, yes.”
“There. Was that so difficult?”
The question sounded rhetorical, but she answered, anyway. “No. It wasn’t. Not at all.” In fact, it had been much easier than it should have been—given that she was a woman with a plan for her life. A plan that did not include a man at this point.
But one date. For the Heart Ball. What harm could that do?
He stood. “Well. I guess I should let you get back to that rash.”
She should have said, Yes, I really do have to work now.
But she didn’t. She asked him, “So how was Pizza Pete’s?”
And then he asked her how she knew about that.
And then she had to tell him of Lily’s visit—the bare facts of it, anyway. That Lily had returned her anorak and brought along a nice lunch. That they’d had a pleasant conversation and Lily had mentioned that he and the children were off with his brother at Pizza Pete’s.
That was just the beginning.
It was so strange. Once they started talking, they somehow never seemed to stop. He told her more about his job. He really did seem to love his work as much as she loved hers.
She’d just never met a man who was easier to talk to. Time seemed to melt away, as it had the night before. When she followed him to the entrance hall and said goodbye, it was almost 11:00 p.m.
Lily made no appearance at Ronni’s door the next day. Not that Ronni would have been likely to know if she had. She was up at six and out the door by seven. She didn’t get home until eight-thirty that night.
On Thursday, she bought a new dress to wear to the Heart Ball. She had no time for shopping sprees, really. But still, somehow she managed to fit in a trip to the mall between her office hours, the three patients she needed to check on at Children’s Hospital and the stop at her condo, where she argued with the electrician and tried not to have a fit when she saw they’d delivered the wrong bathtub—a pink one, for heaven’s sake. She had ordered cobalt blue.
At eight o’clock that night, when she finally got back to the guest house, she hung her new dress in the closet and reminded herself again that it was only one date.
Her beeper went off about five minutes later. She called the office exchange and got the number: a distraught father calling to report that his six-year-old daughter, who’d been suffering from the flu, had been vomiting with scary regularity for the past several hours. Ronni made arrangements to meet them at Children’s Hospital.
It was well after midnight when she once again pulled into the long driveway beside the imposing brick house. A big black Lincoln swung in right behind her. Ryan. His headlights shone hard and white through her rear window, almost blinding her as she glanced in the rearview mirror.
Ronni blinked, focused front and kept going, steering her little Toyota around the curve to the front of the guest house and nosing it into the small carport there. She grabbed her purse and emerged from the car, shivering a little as she stepped out into the cold night air.
Ryan’s headlights had vanished. He had pulled into the garage, near the main house, on the opposite side of the drive.
Ronni shoved her car door shut. It closed with a ka-thunk that sounded way too loud in the late-night stillness. She went around the end of the car and came out from under the shadow of the carport.
Once she reached the driveway, she paused, knowing she was easily visible in the light from the pole lamp about thirty feet away at the rear edge of the property. She was waiting. She shouldn’t have been, but she was. Hoping he might decide to stroll back here and—what? Keep her talking all night again?
Take her in his arms and kiss her until she couldn’t think straight?
Oh, stop this, she ordered silently. You don’t need to talk all night. You don’t need to be kissed. You need to go inside, Ronni Powers. Go inside right now.
But she didn’t move. She just stood there.
And she heard footsteps. Coming in her direction. Ryan appeared around the curve of the driveway, so tall and commanding, in a finely cut suit, with a wool town coat slung casually across his wide shoulders. He saw her and kept coming, stopping at last just a few feet from where she stood.
“Working late?”
She clutched her purse a little tighter, wished she were taller, wished her lipstick hadn’t worn off hours ago. “It’s part of the job—and I could ask you the same question.”
“You’d get the same answer. A meeting ran over. And I had a few things to catch up on.”
She smiled at him cautiously, wanting to ask him inside—wondering what was the matter with her. She’d said yes to one date. But no more. It was supposed to be a casual thing.
Casual.
Hah!
