Читать книгу The Prodigal M.D. Returns - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 9

“What are you really doing here?” Shayne asked as he closed the door to his den. Shayne had brought Ben into the small room, sealing them away from the rest of his family. He looked at him now, waiting for an answer.

Taking a seat on the creased dark-brown leather sofa, Ben looked around. And remembered.

The somewhat cluttered rectangular room, smelling of lemon polish and wood, hardly looked any different from when they’d played “fort” years ago, huddling beneath the scarred oak desk, pretending they were manning a fortress against some mysterious enemy. Back then the room with its stone fireplace had been their father’s den and had smelled of cherrywood, the pipe tobacco their father favored.

Ben glanced at the wall adjacent to the fireplace. The floor-to-ceiling bookcase was jammed with books. His parents’ library had been augmented with the medical books they both had pored over in school. His eyes came to rest on one shelf near the bottom. Instead of technical manuals or the classic literature that had belonged to their parents, the shelf housed what appeared to be a host of well-handled children’s books.

His brother’s life had a good balance to it, Ben thought. Unlike his own.

In his opinion, the last hour or so had gone rather well. Better than he’d anticipated when he’d first walked in. The children, Shayne’s son and daughter from his previous marriage and the five-year-old product of his present union with Sydney had all taken to him.

Granted, the two older kids had been a little wary at first, and he could see they had their father’s cautious approach when it came to people and trust. But the little one was different. She had climbed up onto his lap almost immediately, winning him over faster than he could win her. By the time he’d finished eating the meal Sydney had insisted on placing before him, Ben felt pretty certain he had been welcomed back into the family fold.

By everyone except the man he’d wounded most.

Crossing one ankle over a thigh, Ben selected his words with care. He’d made peace with the fact that a great deal of effort was needed before Shayne would believe his sincerity. Before Shayne would stop looking at him warily, as if waiting for him to bolt.

But that was okay, Ben thought. He was prepared to go the distance. If Shayne wanted him to jump through flaming hoops, he’d jump through flaming hoops. He owed Shayne that much. And more.

“I already told you,” Ben replied amiably. “I came back to apologize. And to make amends,” he added. He watched as Shayne paced about the small room, never taking his eyes off his older brother.

“Suppose, for the moment, that I were to believe you.” No clue in Shayne’s voice let him know which way he was leaning. Turning sharply on his heel, he pinned Ben with a look. “Just how would you go about doing that?”

Ben met his gaze head-on, never wavering. “By staying here. By doing what you originally planned and working beside you at the clinic.”

The words struck a faraway chord, nudging at memories that had belonged to the idealistic man Shayne had once allowed himself to be before seeing how foolish that was. He’d since made his peace with reality, striking an acceptable middle path. And then had become incredibly surprised when Sydney had come into his life and he’d discovered that life actually had more to offer. But this wasn’t about him; this was about Ben. And Ben was about irresponsibility.

Shayne’s eyes narrowed as he glared at his younger brother. He wasn’t going to be taken in so easily. “When was the last time you practiced medicine?”

An easy grin slipped over Ben’s lips. “I don’t have to practice, I’ve got it down pat.” Seeing the exasperated look on Shayne’s face, Ben immediately raised his hands in complete surrender to ward off any words or rebuke. “Sorry. I could never resist that line.”

Shayne’s face darkened. “Medicine’s not a joke, Ben. Especially not here.”

Ben’s expression sobered. “No, it’s not. You’re absolutely right. And to answer your question, last week.” He saw Shayne raise an eyebrow quizzically. “That’s when I last practiced medicine. Last week. Wednesday.”

Shayne waited for the punch line. When it didn’t come, he provided it by recalling Ben’s old tricks. “Playing doctor with a willing woman—”

“Has its rewards,” Ben concluded freely. “But I wasn’t playing, Shay,” he insisted. “I was part of a medical group in Seattle. My specialty is pediatric care.” He didn’t add that it was a very lucrative practice. That by coming here he had walked away from an income that totaled almost half a million dollars a year. Shayne was not impressed by statistics like that. To Shayne it had always been about the healing, nothing else. “There were four of us in the partnership,” he explained. “Andrew Bell specializes in orthopedics, Will Jeffries is an internist and Josiah Witwer is a cardiologist.”

“And your specialty is children,” Shayne repeated.

Ben couldn’t tell if Shayne was interested or just going through the motions. He did know, though, that he’d missed Shayne. Missed him more than he’d ever realized. Missed, too, how good Shayne’s nod of approval had made him feel. He needed that nod again.

“Yes,” Ben answered, then added, “We’d all overlap, taking over if someone was away. But mostly we stuck to our fields of expertise.”

Shayne nodded, his expression stoic. “Pay’s good, I imagine.”

There was no point to lying. “Pay’s great. But this isn’t about the pay, Shay,” Ben insisted. “This is about coming back. About finding a place for myself.”

No one knew better than Shayne how persuasive Ben could be. His charm had gotten him out of many sessions of detention, out of well-deserved punishments. He had a glib tongue and a Teflon body. There was no place for either in his clinic.

Reaching for the decanter of brandy he kept on his desk, Shayne poured a small glass for Ben and then one for himself. “We don’t need someone who wants to put on a hair shirt for a week and then take off—”

“I’m not going to take off,” Ben said, interrupting him. The smile on his lips had faded just a little. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I’m good, Shayne. You know that. I’ll do whatever you need.”

Shayne sat down on the edge of the desk and sipped his brandy slowly, watching his brother over the rim of his glass.

“What happened?” he finally asked.

Ben shrugged carelessly. “I grew up.”

“I mean to Lila.”

Ben took a breath, as if to brace himself against the words. Against the memory. “She left me,” he said simply. Raising his glass in a silent toast, he took a healthy sip before lowering it again. “That was part of the growing process.”

“Left you,” Shayne said slowly, as if digesting the information. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” It still felt incredibly painful, more than a year later. It had taken him a year to get his act together, to take his feelings out of deep freeze. “One morning I rolled over in bed and reached out for her, but she was gone.” There’d been just the shortest of notes to say that they were different people now and she was leaving because she was bored.

Shayne watched him for a long moment. He couldn’t help feeling just the slightest bit vindicated. “Hard being disappointed in someone you thought you could count on, isn’t it?”

He had that coming, Ben thought. But even so, he couldn’t help the defensive response that rose to his lips. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, but you should have known better than to count on me back then. You were always the stable one.”

Being the stable one was a quality that, though expected, was so easily taken for granted. At times, he felt like a roof, there to give shelter and never to be noticed. Not like Ben. “And you were the one everyone doted on.”

“And the one nobody took seriously,” Ben said. He took another long sip of brandy. The guilty feelings that had haunted him, that had brought him here, refused to be sublimated.

Shayne laughed shortly. “You didn’t want to be taken seriously.”

That was the boy he’d been. But he wasn’t a boy any longer. “I do now.” Putting down his glass, Ben looked his brother in the eye. “Whatever it takes, Shay. Whatever it takes,” he repeated with feeling. “I want to stay in Hades.”

Shayne gave no indication as to whether or not he welcomed his brother’s presence. The suspicious glint in his eyes remained. “Someone suing you for malpractice?”

Ben shook his head. He had that coming, too, he supposed. That and a lot more. Time and again, he’d taken Shayne’s trust and abused it. But he was here now and he was going to prove himself. No matter how long it took. “I’m a good surgeon, Shayne. A good doctor.” His record was without blemish. Whatever else he might have been, he was always dedicated to his profession. “You could use the help.”

“I have the help,” Shayne countered. He poured himself a little more brandy, topping off Ben’s glass. “Since you’ve been gone, I’ve taken on a nurse practitioner and she lured her brother to come settle here. He’s a heart specialist. Jimmy Quintano.”

Silence wove its way around the corners as Ben absorbed what his brother had just said. He’d never thought that anyone would actually come here. When he was growing up, everyone wanted to leave Hades. Everyone but Shayne and his friend Ike.

“Then the answer’s no?” Ben finally asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Shayne said, warming the glass between his hands. “You can join me at the clinic. But we go by my rules.”

Ben felt the way he had as a kid in the dead of winter when he finally saw a ray of sunshine slicing through the eternal darkness. He grinned at his brother. “Whatever you say.”

“The first thing I ‘say,’” he told Ben, finishing his drink, “is that the clinic opens at seven.” He received the expected response from Ben, who looked properly sobered by the piece of information. “Something you’d like to say about that, Ben?”

Ben gave him a completely innocent look that didn’t fool his brother for a moment. “Yeah, can I catch a ride with you?”

Shayne snorted. “Seeing as how you’ll be sleeping in the guest room tonight, I don’t suppose that’ll be a hardship.”

Unable to contain his enthusiasm, Ben rose to his feet and embraced his brother. Shayne endured the contact, neither returning the embrace nor moving back to terminate it.

“It’s good to be back, Shayne.”

“We’ll see, Ben. We’ll see.” The look on Shayne’s face as they separated told Ben that his older brother was far from being won over yet.

But he would be, Ben promised himself silently.

He’d never been a morning person. Ever.

The two cups of extrastrong black coffee that were now infiltrating his veins, attempting to jolt his bloodstream into some semblance of attention, helped a little but not nearly enough. The swaying of the Jeep as Shayne drove them into town the next morning was all but lulling him back to sleep. It was a struggle to keep his eyes open.

When he realized that his lids had shut, he jerked his head up, but not before Shayne spared him a look. “I can still turn around and drop you off back at the house, Sleeping Beauty.”

Ben shifted in his seat. “Nope, I’m fine.”

Shayne laughed. “Yeah, for a zombie.”

Busted, Ben yawned and stretched, rotating his shoulders. “Just takes me longer to come around, that’s all.” Shayne had always been just the opposite, getting up in what amounted to the middle of the night as far as he was concerned. Like the marines, his brother got more done before eight in the morning than most people accomplished all day. “Besides, I’ve always done my best work after twelve.”

Shayne gave him a knowing look. “Yeah, I know.”

For once he wasn’t referring to anything that had to do with the fairer sex. He was being serious. “You know what I mean.”

Shayne merely slanted a glance at him before pulling his Jeep into the first parking space located directly at the rear of the clinic.

They were here. He hadn’t even realized it, Ben thought. Shayne had taken the shorter route, not through the town but the back roads, and they had approached the whitewashed, single-story building from the rear.

Getting out, Ben took in the building with its fresh coat of paint. The paint wasn’t the only thing that seemed new. He followed Shayne up the back stairs as he unlocked the door. “Is it my imagination or—”

“We’ve added on,” Shayne told him. “A couple more exam rooms,” he specified, “and an O.R. for minor surgery. Anything major we still send them on to Anchorage General.” That was one of the reasons he and Sydney had a single-engine plane, so that patients could be flown to the city if need be.

“More exam rooms,” Ben echoed. “Is the town really growing?”

“Some,” Shayne allowed. Walking in first, he waited for Ben to cross the threshold, then shut the door again. The clinic was almost eerily quiet. “We’ve had some new blood come in.” Shayne went into his office. He took out his lab coat and put it on. As an afterthought, he reached in for his spare one and held it out to Ben. “And fewer people leave.”

Ben slipped on the white coat. Almost like old times, he thought. “That new blood, is it responsible for the restaurant and emporium I saw when I was driving through?”

Shayne smiled to himself. By regular standards, the town was almost standing still. But as far as the citizens of Hades were considered, they were experiencing a building boom. An actual firehouse had been constructed less than a year ago, joining a renovated movie theater and a very small hotel.

“In part. Ike and Jean Luc have been investing in the town and adding buildings here and there.”

“Ike? You mean the bartender at the Red Dog Saloon? Your friend, Ike LeBlanc?” Growing up, Ike and Shayne had been friends. He remembered the man as being outgoing and gregarious, while his cousin, Jean Luc, had been the quiet one. He couldn’t picture either as entrepreneurs.

Shayne nodded, straightening the collar on his lab coat. “He’s branching out.”

Following Shayne into the main reception room, Ben shook his head. He never thought progress would come to Hades, a place that had seemed frozen in time when he’d lived here. “I’ve missed a lot, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, you have. But you can catch up.” Shayne realized that he shouldn’t count on his brother so soon. Ben had a long way to go before he proved himself dependable. “If you’re serious about staying.”

“Very serious.” Whatever else Ben was going to say was temporarily placed on hold as he looked out the window that faced the front of the clinic. He saw a willowy-looking blonde holding on to two little girls. The twosome seemed determined to pull as far away from each other as possible, taking their mother with them. He glanced at his watch again. A shade before seven. “Looks like you’ve got patients.”

Shayne glanced at the appointment book that Alison had left opened for him on her desk. Right beside it was a computer tower holding the exact same information. Sydney teased him and called him her lovable dinosaur, but he’d always preferred paper and pen. It made him feel more hands-on and in control of a situation. Software could whimsically swallow up all the information just when he needed it most.

“That would be Heather and her two girls, Hannah and Hayley,” Shayne told him.

“Heather?” The instant he repeated the name, bits and pieces of memories came flying back to him. Memories he realized he had all but forgotten. Memories that made him smile.

She looked thinner, he thought. And prettier, although definitely more harried.

“Heather Kendall. Ryan,” Shayne clarified. He couldn’t remember if Ben had left Hades before or after Heather had married Joe Kendall.

Ben stepped away from the window but continued to look at the woman and her daughters. All three were unaware that they were being observed.

“I know who she is.”

Ben’s quiet tone caught Shayne’s attention. He vaguely recalled that there’d been something between Ben and Heather, but then, at one point or another there’d been something between Ben and every female under the age of fifty in Hades. Never mind that the men outnumbered the women in Hades by seven to one and any woman had her pick of men. Every female Shayne knew of had chosen Ben at one time, and he had chosen them.

About to unlock the front door, Shayne paused, looking at his brother. “You okay?”

Ben shook off the memory of one exquisite night by the lake and skin softer than silk.

“Like I said, I’m fine.” He flashed a grin. “Nothing more coffee won’t help.”

“Coffeemaker’s in the back,” Shayne told him. “Feel free to pitch in. Alison hates making coffee.” Flipping the lock, he opened the double doors and smiled down at the two energetic little girls. “Hello, Hannah, Hayley.” He looked up at Heather. “You’re early.”

As she struggled with her daughters, who were now tugging harder, not just to avoid each other but to get away altogether, Heather offered Shayne a smile that was just a little weary around the edges.

“I know. Lily’s giving me the morning off, but Beth just called me to say that she’s not feeling well and won’t be coming into the restaurant. That leaves Lily juggling the breakfast crowd on her own.” Lily had been good to her, coming to her rescue when Joe was killed in the cave-in and offering her a job. She’d been the world’s worst waitress, but Lily had stuck by her. Leaving her in the lurch was not the way to repay her. “I hate doing that to her.”

Shayne shook his head. “If I know Lily, she’ll get Max to wait on tables.”

Max Yearling was Hades’s lone law enforcement officer. He was also Lily’s husband. Like Jimmy Quintano, Lily had come to Hades by way of Alison, who in turn had found her way to Hades because of Luc. Luc had gone to Seattle on vacation and on his first day there, had come to her rescue when someone had attempted to mug her. It was because of Luc she’d learned about Shayne and his clinic. Eager to make a difference, she’d come up to the tiny town to work. Her siblings had come to visit. And one by one, each had lost their hearts, not just to the land but to the people bound to it.

Shayne smiled to himself. In a way, the town’s history was like one long, intricate nursery rhyme, with one family member following another. Hades now boasted of four Quintanos, three of whom were married to Yearlings, while Alison, who had come to him originally to become an accredited nurse practitioner, was now married to Jean Luc.

“I’d rather she didn’t. I need the job,” Heather told him, only half joking.

Hannah, her six-year-old, was struggling to break free and make a dash for the front parking lot. “I don’t want a shot,” Hayley protested vehemently, her lower lip quivering as tears began to fill her eyes.

“No shots today,” Shayne promised. “Just a check-up to see if that nasty rash you and your sister have been passing to each other has finally cleared up.”

“A nasty rash?” Ben repeated in mock disbelief as he came forward. He looked from one girl to the other, appropriately wide-eyed. “You two girls don’t look as if you’d have a nasty rash.”

“We did,” Hayley, the more outgoing of the two, declared. She pointed a finger at her older sister. “Hannah got it first because she was playing in the bushes Mama told her not to.”

Fear faded as Hannah took offense, embarrassed in front of the stranger. “Was not.”

Hayley fisted her free hand at her waist the way she’d seen her mother do. “Was, too.”

Ben got down on one knee, refereeing. “I bet that old bush just jumped up at you and grabbed you, didn’t it, honey?”

The excuse clearly appealed to Hannah, who nodded her blond head vigorously, sending her curls bouncing up and down. “Uh-huh.”

“Gotta watch out for those magical bushes,” Ben agreed. “They’re fast. Where did it grab you?”

Hannah never hesitated. She pushed her sleeve up immediately, exposing her right arm. She pointed to an area that had been an angry pink only a couple of days ago. “Right here.”

Still on his knee, Ben examined the area carefully. “Looks like it’s gone to me.”

“Mama rubs this yucky stuff on us,” Hayley told him, moving aside her own sleeve to show him that her skin was clear as well.

“That’s because she loves you.” Ben looked up at Heather. “Right, Mama?”

Heather forced herself to nod her head, her eyes almost glued to the man talking to her daughters. Her voice had deserted her around the same time that the temperature in the room had gone up twenty degrees and the lights had suddenly dimmed to the point where she had to struggle to keep from slipping into darkness herself.

She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, its cadence echoing the refrain that kept repeating itself in her head: He’s back.

Ben’s back.