Miracles. Part 16

She didn't want him to leave. She wanted him to give her his heart. She wanted him to let her love him for the rest of their lives. She wanted them both to have what they needed and wanted most in the world. But neither of them would have anything if she did or said something that made him think she'd become part of his biggest problem.

Thirteen.

Getting to work the next day took Kate a little longer than usual. She discovered Sam was hungry in the mornings. Ravenous, actually. And brazen about it, too.

"Katie, you have the most incredible b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"And you have the most . . . incredible mouth."

"You like my mouth on you?"

"Oh, yes, it's-"

"Lift up a little . . . that's it . . . so I can . . ."

"Mmm. Oh, Sam, that's good. It's . . . What are you doing?"

"Giving you more of what you like."

"But you- Oh . . . oh, my . . ."

"Open up these pretty thighs for me, Katie."

"Sam, I . . . Oh, Lord, that's . . . But, Sam, you can't-"

"I sure as h.e.l.l can. Honey, you're so soft. Soft and . . . hot."

"But it's not . . . I'm not . . ."

"And you taste . . . mmm, like us."

She groaned as her will to argue and her inhibitions about such intimacy were deftly shattered; her fingers clutched at his hair, holding him to her, and in what she thought must be a disgracefully short time, he showed her how silly her objections were. It was more than sensual pleasure, though, that he gave her. It was her womanhood-or rather, the right to enjoy the full measure of it, a right she'd never truly understood and that no other man had been man enough to allow her to claim.

She hadn't stopped shaking from that first shattering climax when he plunged into her with a breathtaking volley of hard, deep thrusts that quickly sent her soaring again. But when she opened her eyes from that second time to see him gazing down at her, she knew by the look in his glittering crystal eyes- and by the undiminished vigor of his erection still filling her- that they weren't finished yet.

With a moan of surrender, she begged, "Oh, Sam, I can't-"

"I think you will."

"But I should get . . . up and-"

"Honey, you come so easy."

And he was having a wonderful time proving it.

"Sam, you're- How can you . . . Oh, Lord . . ."

"Watching you is amazing, you know that? You just don't hold back anything. Do it one more time for me, Katie. Just once more. Then we'll take a shower. I promise."

It wasn't until they were in the shower, though, after he'd made a torrid production out of washing her hair, that he found his own release. With her back against the tiled wall, her legs wrapped around his waist, and his pulsing s.e.x buried deep inside her, Kate felt the shudders ripple through him as he growled against her throat. His low, rumbling sound of profound satisfaction made her own body as fluid as the water sluicing over them, and she instantly spiraled off with him a final time.

Yet again, the physical pleasure was only part of it. This was the man she'd wanted so badly to know -the one who wanted to fulfill her until her bones turned to water and she could do little more than moan. The one who, last night had wanted to "make love"-and whose lovemaking had moved her to tears. And Kate knew that nothing, nothing on the face of the earth, could have given her more pleasure than seeing him this way. The way he'd been this morning: confident, bold. A little arrogant. Relaxed. And so obviously happy.

She intended to do everything in her power to keep him that way. And, after all, making him happy was making her happier than she'd ever been in her life.

At ten, Kate sent Sam home with a promise to stop at the cabin after she saw Lynn Nielsen that afternoon. Then she went to the office, where she met Doc for their regular post-weekend conference.

"So, except for a trip out to see the Nielsen girl, I spent the weekend putting in spinach and broccoli and watching the ballgame." Doc sat back in the squeaky leather desk chair to lace his fingers together over his belly. "I did get some phone calls, though, that I want to talk to you about."

Sitting in the chair next to his cluttered desk, Kate was looking over his notes on Lynn. "Who were they from?" she asked.

"Well, there was one Sat.u.r.day morning from Evan Resnick, the audiologist who saw that nephew of yours last week."

"Oh?"

"Said he'd never seen anything like it. Not so much as a decibel of hearing loss evident, and no trace of nerve damage."

"It certainly is amazing, isn't it?" With her attention still directed on the medical chart, Kate smiled to herself.

"Resnick thought it was more than that. He called it a miracle." Pausing, Doc added, "Which is the same word the vascular surgeon at Marquette used to explain why that man c.o.o.ney is still alive."

Her gaze flashed to his briefly, held for a second, then dropped once more to the chart. "Straun called?"

"About an hour after I'd hung up with Resnick," Doc confirmed, his tone far too intent for her comfort. "Said he was sorry it'd taken him so long to get to me-he was off on vacation last week. But he had to call, he said, to tell me what a fine a.s.sociate I have. He can't figure out how you kept that man alive on a piddling 250 cc of Ringer's. Given the amount of time before you got to him, and the number of arteries and veins that had chunks out of them, and the fact that he was in severe shock"-Doc shook his head-"it does seem miraculous."

Kate closed Lynn's chart and laid it on the desk. She wasn't a good liar, and she loathed the idea of lying to Doc, or even of keeping something from him that was clearly his concern. Yet as she rose and walked over to open her knapsack, lying on the table beside the supply cabinet, she knew that was what she had to do.

"I think 'miraculous' is putting it too strongly," she said.

"I don't know. There seems to be a lot of it going around."

"A lot of what?"

"Miracles. Ray c.o.o.ney, Francis . . ." Doc's chair creaked, and she knew he'd swiveled around to watch her. "And you."

She stopped with the supply cabinet door half open. "Me?"

"Your ankle. I admit, I didn't think much about it. It looked normal to me. I just figured you'd made a mistake. But that was foolishness on my part because you don't make mistakes very often. And I've never once heard you exaggerate about anything, least of all your own problems. So if your ankle was as bad as you said it was, well, then, doesn't it seem like a miracle that it got better overnight?"

Tossing a laugh over her shoulder, Kate pulled the cabinet door open and reached for a pack of surgical gloves. "Of course, I was wrong about my ankle. Heavens, everything that day seemed ten times worse than it probably was. I mean, I was scared to death, sitting there in that storm, and I was soaking wet by the time Sam found me, and"-she shook her head, sticking the gloves into her knapsack-"well, it was just an awful day."

Several long moments pa.s.sed in silence as she continued to stock her traveling medical kit. Through the open window of the office came the sound of Laura Graff calling her three-year-old to come put her shoes on. A truck, loaded with lumber from the mill, drove by on its way out of town. Finally, Doc broke the silence.

"Kate, is there something you ought to be telling me?"

His simple question made her hands tremble as she buckled the knapsack closed. "About what?" she asked. When he didn't answer, she glanced to see him studying her.

"Maybe you could start," he said, "with what you think I should say when a Hopkins-trained vascular surgeon tells me my a.s.sociate is a miracle worker."

"Oh, Doc, really!" She glanced at her watch, picked up her knapsack, and looped it over her shoulders. "You tell him thank you very much, and forget it."

"I might have been able to forget c.o.o.ney," he replied. "Maybe I could have chalked up his recovery to luck and the man's own const.i.tution, though Straun says he's got an ulcer and some other things that don't support it. But let's let that one go. Then there's your ankle, and maybe I could forget that, too, if I believed you were so upset you could have misjudged how bad it was. But when I get to Francis"-he shook his head-"no, I can't forget that one. And in the long run, I can't forget three separate, miraculous recoveries in the same week."

Rolling her eyes, she started toward the door. "This is really getting silly."

"Is it? Then tell me how to explain these things. I thought if anybody could, it would be you, since one of them was your own injury, and you were there the other two times."

"Doc, you're asking me to explain the impos-"

He waved her off with an impatient gesture. "Kate, I'm an old man, and I've been doctoring for a lot of years. I've seen miracles. I don't need you or anybody else to tell me what they look like. And I've learned not to make excuses for them because miracles don't need excusing." He looked at her from under his furrowed brow. "But if they start happening too often, and if they seem to happen when one particular person has been in the vicinity, well, it makes me wonder if that person has something. Something special. I think you know what I mean, Kate, and I was hoping you'd do me the courtesy of giving me a straight answer."

She let go of the doork.n.o.b, her eyes widening in genuine horror as she thought she understood the direction of his thoughts. "Oh, now, wait just a minute! You think I cured Francis and fixed my ankle and- " Abruptly, she turned back toward the door. "This is crazy. You're talking nonsense, and I've got other things-"

"What you've got is four hours of appointments, starting in half an hour, so I don't know where you think you're going."

She froze, her hand on the doork.n.o.b. Behind her, she heard his chair squeak as he rose.

"Relax," he said. "I'm leaving. Besides, I don't think there's much you could say I haven't already figured out."

What was that supposed to mean?

She stood staring at the door, frantically looking for an answer to the question, while, behind her, she heard Doc making preparations to leave.

"I was going to tell you about the other phone call I got," he said. "Came from a doctor out in California by the name of Martin Anderson."

Kate whirled to face him, her heart pounding at a rate that made it impossible to keep the anxiety out of her voice. "What did he want?"

Doc looked her up and down, then gave a half-disgusted grunt. "So, you know who he is, do you?" He began sorting papers on his desk as he continued. "What do you think he wanted? He was looking for Sam. And when I said Sam didn't have a phone, he asked for an address. I gave him mine and said I'd forward a letter for him, if he wanted to send one."

"How did he find Sam?"

"Called his father in Detroit. Apparently Sam sent his folks a letter last week-didn't tell them where he was, but there was the postmark, of course. Anderson looked up the post office, then got the name of the local doctor. Interesting, don't you think, that he did it that way, sooner than getting, say, the state police to track Sam down?"

"Is he-" Kate broke off, hearing the panic in her tone. Drawing a shallow breath, she tried again. "Is that all he wanted? An address?"

"Well, that would have been the end of it," Doc said, "except he started asking me about my practice, about the area. Seemed a mite long-winded for prime-time long distance. But he's a pleasant sort of fellow -a little excitable, but bright- and Earl Carver was late for his appointment, so I chatted with Anderson until Earl came in. Then, when I said I had a patient waiting, Anderson got nervous. He hemmed and hawed for a minute or two." Doc paused, a medical chart in his hand, to turn his head slightly toward her.

"Then he said he'd appreciate it if I didn't mention to Sam that he'd called."

Her gaze followed as Doc crossed the room to stick the chart into the filing cabinet. "What did you tell him?"

Closing the cabinet drawer, Doc shot her a somewhat indignant look. "Well, I asked him why, of course. He said to forget he'd asked, but that if I was going to tell Sam about the call, would I give him a message? He didn't want Sam to know he'd called without knowing why, because it might worry him. Well, then, I started worrying, wondering if there was some medical reason Anderson needed to talk to Sam." Mumbling a little as he headed toward his desk, Doc said, "The man's a neurologist, and I began having visions of untreated epilepsy and malignant brain tumors. But Anderson said Sam was fine. Absolutely healthy. And besides, he wasn't Sam's doctor. He was his friend-so he said."

Reaching for his black bag on the desk, Doc paused to look at her. "Is that right, Kate? Is Martin Anderson Sam's friend?"

She nodded. "Yes, he's . . . Yes." Taking a step away from the door, she asked, "But what was the message?"

Doc picked up his medical bag in one hand and hooked a thumb in his suspenders. "He said he was trying to find out if Sam was all right. Said he knew how bad things had been for him in California before he left, and he was sorry for whatever part he'd played in that. He hoped things were better now. And he hoped Sam would stay in touch and not worry that he'd tell anyone else where he'd gone. He swore he wouldn't. He wanted Sam to know that he wished him well-he said that several times."

She held Doc's gaze, waiting, but when he didn't continue, she ventured cautiously, "And that's all he said?"

"Yes." He arched an eyebrow. "Should he have said more?"

"No."

"And is Sam all right? Or is Anderson justified in being worried?"

Kate swallowed hard and answered, "He's a lot better than he was when he left California."

"You've seen quite a bit of him lately, haven't you? Starting the day you hurt your ankle. And the next day-the morning Francis recovered his hearing. And Bob Bradley mentioned to me after church yesterday that Sam was with you at the campgrounds when you were there with c.o.o.ney."

Doc paused, and she knew what was coming.

"In fact," he added slowly, "maybe I ought to have a talk with Sam about our recent outbreak of miracles. Maybe he could shed some light on it for me."

Kate felt the tears welling up in her eyes. "Doc, please, don't," she whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

He was angry, and she didn't blame him, although his words were not unkind as he asked, "Don't what? Don't talk to Sam?"

She knew he didn't expect her to answer. With a deep, tired-sounding sigh, he walked past her toward the door, saying, "I think you've got the same problem Martin Anderson has. The man's worried sick, and I knew there were things he wanted to say but didn't. And I didn't know how to tell him without saying it outright that he didn't have to protect Sam from me finding out something I already knew."

Pausing with his hand on the doork.n.o.b, Doc looked at her. "But I understood Anderson's hesitation. The man doesn't know me from Adam. And he didn't know I'd already been faced with some of the results of Sam's having picked Bourner's Crossing as a good place to . . . shall we say, hide his light under a bushel? But I have to admit"-he raised his chin in a look that broke her heart-"I'm a little disappointed you don't trust me any better than Martin Anderson does."

"I do," she said quickly, one tear rolling down her cheek. "I'd trust you with my life."

Doc's indignation lasted half a minute longer; then, slowly, it faded, replaced by the calm understanding she'd grown to expect from him.

He sighed again. "But it's not your life we're talking about, is it? And I don't suppose I can fault you for that."

She took a step toward him. "Doc, I . . . I'm sorry. I promised."

"And I'm sorry for being impatient." c.o.c.king one eyebrow, he added, "But I would appreciate it if you could get out of that promise sometime soon so we can talk about this sensibly. Or have Sam talk to me himself. Because I'd hate to go blundering into another conversation like the one with Anderson and wind up making a mess of things for Sam . . . or for you."

"For pity's sake, you don't have to worry about me. I'm not-"

"I don't suppose the fact that you bounced in here this morning looking prettier and happier than I've ever seen you has anything to do with Sam's Jeep being parked in front of your house all night."

Kate felt a sudden heat creeping into her face. When Doc merely looked at her as if to say, what did she expect, her gaze slid away.

"I guess Sarah was up with the birds, checking," she grumbled.

"I don't know. Probably. But I saw the Jeep myself."