The M.D.'s Surprise Family (6 page)

But this wasn't a commitment. This was some thing different.

For a moment longer she allowed the kiss to deepen, allowed the sensation to quicken every pulse in her body. And then, because she knew that if it went on even a breath longer, she might not be able to regain her footing, might not be able to stand, much less think clearly, Raven pulled back.

Her heart was hammering so hard, she was ninety-eight percent certain it would lodge itself in
her throat, preventing her from talking. She cleared her throat for just that reason, to make sure she still could.

 

She'd kissed him.

The thought throbbed through his brain as more and more functioning parts returned. He struggled to keep them from floating away again.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, looking at her. “Why did you kiss me?”

“Because you needed me to,” she replied without blinking an eye. Inside, there were banked questions of her own. Questions such as, Had he been as affected by the kiss as she had? Had the world trembled for him the way it had for her? Or had the strain of worrying about Blue, about what could happen to her brother if things went wrong, finally made her crack?

“I need you to?” He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“You seemed so alone—”

He gestured toward her impatiently. “I was standing here with you.”

“You can be in the middle of a crowd and still be alone.”

He didn't like the fact that she was playing Gypsy fortune-teller with him. Worse, he didn't like the fact that she seemed to be reading him so well. Because she was right on target, which was waging hell on his resolution to keep his distance from the
world at large. He wasn't about to let any of it in, ever. The price was too high.

And what he hated most of all was that the desire to take her back into his arms, to kiss her again with the same feeling, the same passion he just experienced, was still alive, still thriving in his veins, urging him on.

He shrouded himself in anger. It was the only weapon he had.

“I don't need to be psychoanalyzed, Raven.” Because she'd unsettled so much inside of him, he glared at her. “We'll get along a lot better if you keep that in mind.”

“It wasn't a matter of psychoanalyzing you,” she told him gently. “It was more a case of one kindred soul connecting with another.”

“And that's how you connect?”

She gave a half shrug, one shoulder rising, brushing against her hair. “Beats paper clips.”

She'd called them kindred souls. He was no more like her than he was like a mermaid. Trying to get a grip on his thoughts, he shook his head and laughed dryly. “You really are something else, aren't you?”

The trouble was, he was beginning to suspect that he didn't know what that something else was. He didn't like the unknown.

Not answering him, Raven watched him for a long moment. “So,” she finally said, getting back
to her original subject, “will you come to the house and tell Blue?”

The light dawned. She'd tried to entice him. “Was that what the kiss was about? To make sure I'd come talk to your brother?”

If he expected her to look guilty or embarrassed at being caught, he was disappointed. She appeared to be neither.

“No. That was strictly about you. And maybe a little about me,” she allowed. “You're not some adolescent to be coerced into doing something because someone kissed you.” Raven paused for a second, as if weighing something in her mind. “If you don't feel up to it, I'll tell him myself. It's just that I think he'd rather hear it coming from you.”

Peter watched the wind ripple through her hair, playing with strands before moving on. She had let him off the hook. The woman knew just how to maneuver, he thought. She would have made a hell of a general. “Give me a few minutes to get to my car,” he told her. “Then you can go ahead and lead the way to your house.”

Turning on his heel, he still didn't miss the smile that came to her lips. It almost made the capitulation worth it.

O
bviously not all neo-hippies took a vow of poverty, Peter thought as he approached the place where Raven lived. He'd seen smaller, less impressive castles. The driveway was comprised of countless tiny, colored rocks that were arranged to form the company's logo—a white dove soaring through a crystal-blue sky. He almost hated parking his vehicle on it.

She was out of her car and at his side before he had a chance to close his door. There was pleasure and more than a hint of surprise on her face.

“I didn't think you'd follow me all the way,” she confessed. “I kept looking in the rearview mir
ror to see if you'd suddenly decided to make good your escape.” She sounded as if she was only half kidding.

“It crossed my mind,” Peter conceded.

Despite the nip in the air, she'd driven her car with the top down. He had to admit that the sight of her hair whipping around as she drove had been a compelling, enticing picture.

But her hair wasn't why he'd followed her. Once he said he would do something, he kept his word. Without a family to mark his passage, Peter felt that his word was all he had. His word and his work. He meant for both to stand for something.

She flashed a grin. “Glad it was only passing through.”

Taking his hand as if they were old friends instead of two people who didn't know each other a few days ago, Raven led him to the front door. She glanced over her shoulder to see his reaction and nodded in silent agreement when she caught his eye.

“It's a little over the top,” she allowed. “My father bought it for my mother the day she told him she was pregnant with Blue. He wanted to do something spectacular for her.” Fond memories left their mark upon her features as she remembered. “He cried when she first told him, he was so happy. Said there was no greater miracle than a baby.”

“No,” Peter agreed quietly, thinking of Becky,
remembering how he'd felt the first time he'd held her in his hands, “there isn't.”

He was rewarded with a smile that went straight to his gut, as if fired from a high-powered rifle. He really wished she'd stop doing that, stop detonating all these small land mines inside of him. It was getting in the way of his thinking.

“Isn't he asleep?” Peter asked, realizing that while it was early for him, a child of seven might very well already be tucked into bed.

She laughed and shook her head. For a while, bedtime had been an issue between them, but then she'd decided to raise him the way her parents had raised her, by giving Blue his own head in the matter.

“Not yet,” she assured Peter. “He doesn't really seem to need much sleep and he likes to stay up with me, so most nights, I let him fall asleep on his own and then just carry him off to bed.”

That sounded more in keeping with the lifestyle he attributed to someone like her. The thought vaguely amused him because he'd never really known anyone quite like Raven and her bohemian way of life. His own life had been strictly regimented. Growing up without a mother, the only parenting skills he'd known were his father's. Larry Sullivan was a former Marine turned dock worker whose entire life ran on discipline and punctuality. Other things, such as love, never entered into the
mix. He felt his mother died because it was the only way she could get away from his father.

Peter caught himself watching how Raven's hips swayed gently as she walked across a blue-and-white marble foyer.

“I'm home,” she called. Her voice seemed to echo up the wide spiral staircase.

A middle-aged woman with thin ribbons of gray running through her jet-black hair came from the rear of the house. Her face was round and perfect for the warm, genial expression she wore.

“He's in the media room, Raven.”

“Thank you, Connie.” About to dash off, Raven halted in midstride, remembering that these two did not know one another. She gestured from one to the other. “Oh, Consuela, Peter. Peter, Consuela.”

The woman inclined her head. It was obvious that the dark eyes were taking complete and strict measure of him, despite the friendly smile on her face. Consuela nodded acknowledgment, then continued on her way to the kitchen.

“Connie looks out for Blue when I'm not around and kind of keeps up on things for me. She's been with us forever,” Raven told him as she led the way to the back of the house. And then, because it was important to Connie, even though she was no longer within earshot, she added, “She used to play backup for a band.”

“Of course she did,” he muttered. At this point,
Peter was beginning to feel that he would believe almost anything Raven told him. Coming here to this house was not unlike stepping through the looking glass. Instead of rabbits hurrying by with pocket watches in their hands, there were aging rockers.

But the evening was young. The rabbit might still turn up.

Raven opened a door just off the family room and gave him his first peek into the media room. It looked exactly like a miniature movie theater, complete with tiered theater seats arranged in rows of four. Twenty seats in all faced the largest screen he'd seen outside of a movie house.

Maybe inside of a few, too.

Raven read his expression. She inclined her head toward his, whispering in his ear so as not to interfere with the on-screen dialogue. “Dad wanted to make it three times this size, but Mom liked things cozy.”

Cozy was definitely not the first word that would have popped into his head. Unless it had to do with the person at his side.

“Right,” Peter responded after a beat, pulling himself back from the wave of heat traveling through him thanks to her proximity and the effect her warm breath drifting along his skin had on him. Being around her was making a jumble of his thought process.

His antenna going up, the lone figure in the first
row turned around and saw them. The beatific smile instantly spread along his small lips. Without a second thought, Blue abandoned the movie he was watching. He rushed back to where they stood.

“Dr. Pete, you're here.”

The boy was way too informal for him, Peter thought. But at least Blue attached the title of “Dr.” to his greeting, which was more than Raven had done when she'd introduced him to her housekeeper.

He glanced toward Raven. It was as if everything about her was trying to strip away the insulating layers he kept around himself, the ones that kept him safe from the rest of the world. From the pain that he kept at bay 24/7, every single moment of his life. Kept at bay until such time as it wouldn't eat him alive.

That time hadn't come yet.

Blue still beamed at him. “Raven said she'd bring you by.”

Obviously the woman didn't have a drop of humility in her. And she seemed to run completely on confidence. He eyed her now, knowing he should have been annoyed at being taken for granted this way. But for some reason the ire didn't come.

“Oh, she did, did she?”

Raven shrugged out of her pea coat, leaving it slung across the back of one of the seats. “I had a hunch you wouldn't say no.”

Hunch. So that was what she called her brand of arrogance? Peter couldn't help wondering just what lengths she would have ultimately gone to, to get him to come along so that she could continue to look like the heroine to her brother. She might appear like something that would be found floating along on a warm summer night's breeze, but he was getting the definite feeling that the lady was as tough as nails.

An iron butterfly. That was probably the best way to describe her.

Climbing up on a seat in the last row, Blue winced ever so slightly before straightening. The action was not lost on Peter. Most children the boy's age would have whimpered and begun to cry, complaining of the pain he knew Blue had to be experiencing. Yet the child in front of him seemed determined to tough it out. Brother and sister had a lot in common, he thought. For one thing, they were both stubborn as hell.

There were worse traits to have.

Blue looked at him eagerly. “What?” he asked.

“When are you going to fix me?”

Peter cleared his throat. “I'm afraid it's not that simple.”

No, don't go into it, don't start explaining,
Raven thought, suddenly worried.

“If you boil away all the explanations, it is,” Raven told him cheerfully as she interrupted any
thing he might have had to say. She gave him a warning look that clearly told him not to go into any kind of elaborate detail, especially none concerning the odds and the possible downsides of the surgery. She forged ahead to the one question on her brother's mind. “How soon can you schedule him?”

Peter looked at her for a long moment. He wanted to give her one last chance to back out. “You're certain?” he asked. He was fairly sure she hadn't examined the matter closely, other than deciding to go full steam ahead.

Raven exchanged looks with her brother and then took the boy's hand in hers. “We're certain, right, Blue?”

“Right.” Blue looked straight at him as he made the declaration.

Maybe he was just overtired, but it didn't sound to him as if the boy was parroting his sister. Instead it was as if he was just echoing his own feelings on the subject. Blue seemed to have had a hand in making the choice to go ahead with his surgery.

But if Blue was clear about what he wanted, Peter still had misgivings.
Did
the boy truly understand what was at stake? Did he know the possible outcome of the surgery if it wasn't one hundred percent successful? Or even if it was, even if he removed all the tumors, other things could go wrong.

But he'd done his talking to Raven and he
couldn't say anything to Blue. It was too much to lay on a small boy's shoulders.

Peter suppressed a sigh. This situation brought home how much he didn't like having children as his patients. It was bad enough having in his mind the specter of what could possibly happen when he operated on an adult. A child had an entire lifetime shimmering ahead of him. A lifetime that might not be lived or enjoyed.

Just as Becky had never gotten to live hers. The thought came out of nowhere, assaulting him. Wounding him.

Raven immediately saw the change in his expression. He looked as if he was in pain. She placed her hand on his arm, calling his attention away from whatever it was that was doing this to him. “What's the matter?”

He shook the thought, the moment, away. He had no idea why, but taking on this case had become much too personal for him.

Peter looked at her blankly. “What?”

“You have an odd expression on your face.” It was gone now, but she knew that whatever he'd been thinking had upset him. “Can I get you something?”

Yes, get me my life back. Get me back the life I lost. It's not fair, not fair to let me see what I could have and then to take it away from me in a blink of an eye.

He straightened his shoulders. “No,” he told her quietly. “I was just thinking how unusually mature your brother sounds.” It was a good lie, he thought, and it fit the moment.

Blue raised himself up on his toes, as if that could help him grow the added inch. He grinned at the unintentional compliment.

“Gets it from me, don't you, puppy?” Raven laughed, tousling her brother's hair. In response, the boy giggled and suddenly sounded the way a seven-year-old should. Gleeful and happy.

At that moment something prompted Peter to make a silent promise that the boy was going to have his childhood unencumbered by a wheelchair. Peter focused on this promise as it became, for the time being, his one sole reason for living.

His eyes shifted toward Raven. “Call me tomorrow morning,” he instructed her. “We'll schedule his surgery then.”

Blue moved in front of him, blocking his exit. “As soon as possible?”

The pain had to be getting to him, Peter realized. No one willingly embraced the idea of surgery unless they were in the throes of pain and felt there was no alternative.

Awkwardly, he laid his hand on the boy's shoulder, fleetingly connecting with him. “As soon as possible,” Peter echoed.

There were too many feelings here; too much go
ing on. He needed to clear his head, to find some solitude. Peter began to back away. But he should have known that the perfect getaway was not within his reach, not with Raven anywhere in the vicinity.

Abandoning the media room, she blocked his path. “You can hang around and watch Roger Rabbit,” she offered, nodding back into the media room. She laughed at the expression on his face. “Or make your own selection. We've got an entire library of movies.”

He sidestepped her, only to be blocked again. “I don't really watch movies,” he told Raven. “Not enough time.”

“That's the beauty of DVDs and tapes,” she told him as she threaded her arm through his. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Blue return and settle back into his front row seat to watch the rest of the movie. To his surprise, Raven began walking toward the front of the house, as if she already knew that he wasn't going to be talked into remaining tonight. “You can stop anytime you want to and then resume watching whenever you get the chance.”

“Maybe some other time,” he told her.

“Okay.” Very slowly, she withdrew her arm. He was acutely aware of how every inch of it rubbed along his arm. Though he wore a jacket, he could still feel her. “I'll hold you to that.”

With a sigh, he stopped at the front door.
“Why?” he asked. “Why would you hold me to that? Why do you want me to watch Magnum Detective—”

“‘Magnum P.I.,'” she corrected, doing her best not to laugh at him.

He took no offense at the laughter in her eyes. What worried the hell out of him was the sudden, almost overpowering urge to sweep her into his arms and kiss her. He just didn't behave that way. And even if he'd
ever
been that way, everything was different now in this solitary world he'd dwelt in since Lisa's death. He
couldn't
feel that way about anyone else.