Miracles. Part 4

"I'll take you to the hospital."

"But-"

"No buts."

"Okay, but-" Her breath caught, then left her in a sigh. "Well, I jus' don' know what t' say."

That bought her a crooked smile. "Try, 'Thanks, Sam, I appreciate it.' "

There was no arguing with this man. He was more bullheaded than she was. With a tiny smile, she repeated his words.

"That wasn't too hard, was it?" he said softly.

She yawned again. "Sam, you've been awful nice. I really do 'preciate it."

"You're a nice lady. You don't deserve to hurt."

Something in his tone caught her attention, something very determined, but her mind was too foggy to figure it out. It was getting harder and harder to keep her eyes open. She let them drift closed on a whisper. "Guess it was my turn."

"Is that how it works? We all take turns hurting?"

"Seems like it . . . sometimes. Other times, seems like there're people who get . . ." She trailed off, half asleep, then finally added, ". . . more than their share."

"Which is why it's a good thing there are people like you around to take care of them."

"Sam, you really are a nice man. Don' know why you preten' t' be so . . . What're y' doing?"

"Just looking. Relax."

He'd lifted the ice pack from her ankle, and she felt the brush of warmth as he laid his hand on her swollen, chilled flesh.

"I won't hurt you, Katie."

"Doesn' hurt. Feels good. Kinda funny, though."

"You've had an ice pack on."

"Hmm. Makes your hand feel . . . hot."

Very hot. But it was a pleasant sensation, completely absorbing and not at all painful, and she sighed at the luxury of being touched with such tenderness. Who would have thought, she mused, that he could be so tender? Who would have thought, after all the hard things he'd said, that he could express, or even feel, such compa.s.sion? Oh, but he did feel it, and he somehow made her feel it, too, in the simple touch of his big, strong hand.

It seemed an eternity pa.s.sed. Surely she'd slipped off to sleep and was dreaming. It was a lovely dream, filled with scenes of happy times, childhood memories she hadn't thought of in years. Sunshine on Lake Superior. Walks in the red-gold world of an autumn woods. Her mother's laughter.

The best memories, though, were the babies. Images of her much younger self holding her brother Josh, when he was an infant, sent a wave of pleasure wafting through her. There were other babies, too-tiny strangers, still wet and naked from their mothers' bodies-and one after the other, the memories of helping those new beings along their journey into the world flashed through her mind. What a gift it was to hold those precious pink bodies. What a humbling, thrilling moment when they slipped, helpless and wrinkled, into her hands. The touch, the flesh-on-flesh contact: She felt it even then, along with the awe and reverence that went with knowing she was the first person, the very first, to see and hold the new life.

She clung to those treasured memories. They were what she lived for, what she couldn't do without. They were also what broke her heart.

Kate sighed, vaguely aware that she wasn't dreaming anymore and that Sam had taken his hand away and replaced the ice pack. She sighed again, sorry that he'd stopped touching her, yet filled with the oddest floating sense of well-being.

"You go to sleep, Katie," he said. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Okay. But you won' like me any better."

"What kind of nonsense is that?"

'T'morrow. I'll be a wreck again. You won' like me any better than t'day."

"Honey, I liked you fine today."

"Didn'. Made you mad."

"It wasn't you, Katie. I told you that. Now go to sleep."

She had little choice. With a final shuddering sigh, she gave up her last hold on awareness. Not however, before one final irrelevancy crept through her mind. He called her Katie. She'd never liked the name, but she hadn't bothered to correct him. Of course, he' d call her anything he wanted, regardless of what she said. Still, there was something about the way he said Katie that made her inclined not to dislike it. He made it sound different. He made it sound . . . special.

Three.

"Doc, I promise you, I haven't lost my mind. Last night that ankle looked like an overgrown eggplant." Kate sat on the edge of her small kitchen table, her left leg extended below the hem of her denim skirt as she offered the ankle for inspection.

Bill Cabot's pale blue eyes studied the appendage through the thick lenses of his black-framed gla.s.ses. Clucking his tongue, he shook his head. "Well, Kate, what can an old man say? Ruth Davenport called at seven and sent me scampering over here before I'd even drunk my coffee. She had me believing gangrene had set in, and here I find you bouncing around as if to say the woman's gone senile on us."

"I don't know about gangrene," Kate said, chuckling, "but it's true, I couldn't have walked last night if my life had depended on it. Doesn't make a bit of sense."

Wiggling her bare toes, she flexed the ankle in every direction, but it didn't hurt any more than it had an hour ago- which was not at all. She'd woken up and jumped out of bed before she'd even remembered the injury. Yet the swelling was gone, and her skin was a healthy pink with not a bruise in sight. If she hadn 't found yesterday's disheveled clothes neatly arranged over the shower rod, including the ruined jeans, she' d have wondered if she'd dreamed the entire incident. Somehow her ankle had recovered overnight, and while she found it awful darned strange, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"I think you were looking for an excuse to get a whole, uninterrupted night's sleep."

"Hmph!" Kate hopped off the table, tugging down her plum-colored knit top, then picking up her empty coffee mug to carry it to the sink. "I'll remember that the next time you ask me to take your calls because your knee's bothering you."

"You'd doubt my word about my knee? Shame on you, girl!"

"Besides," she scoffed, "I haven't got a reason to complain about night calls. There aren't that many."

"You wouldn't complain if there were. Which brings me to something I've been meaning to discuss with you." Setting his coffee mug down on the bright yellow place mat, Doc turned in his chair to wag a finger at her. "You're a workaholic, Kathleen Morgan. Worse than I am, and that's saying a lot."

She put the milk in the refrigerator as she replied. "I'm no such thing. I just like what I do."

"Ruth told me you fixed dinner for Sarah Winfield three nights last week."

"Gretchen Brown and I agreed to help Sarah out in the evenings, but Tommy came down with an ear infection last Monday, and Gretchen couldn't do it."

"And yesterday morning you went grocery shopping for Laura Graff."

"For pity's sake! Laura's nine days from her due date, David can't take off work to shop, and Mr. D.'s closed by the time he gets off. I was just being neighborly."

"Maybe. And maybe you need something to occupy your time besides taking care of your neighbors."

Kate groaned, swiping toast crumbs into the sink with a sponge. "Doc, please, let's not start this again. Tell me how your talk went with the supply house. I've got about half a dozen disposable gloves left, and only one unit of Ringer's lactate. Are we going to get our order soon or not?"

"Don't change the subject." Doc arched one bushy eyebrow. "You aren't seeing Scott Gibson anymore, are you?"

Kate had known the question was coming, and she braced herself for the worst. "No."

"Good."

She gave Doc a startled look.

"Scott's a good sort," he explained with a sigh. "But he's got no grit-no spirit. He'd never know what to do with a willful woman like you. You need a man who knows his own mind."

She couldn't resist a smile. "He knew he liked my blueberry cobbler."

"Hmph. And what did you get out of it?"

"Well . . ."

"I'll tell you what you got." Doc tapped his fingertips on the tabletop for emphasis. "Every Friday night at eight-thirty, Scott walked out your door-after you'd fed him supper-and you got a buss on the cheek like the ones my brothers and I gave Aunt Letty when we left her house after Sunday dinner."

"Doc!"

"Don't look at me like that, girl. You know Sarah sits over there at her window, watching everything that goes on in this town-not that there's much to see. I can't imagine Scott's notion of a good-night kiss made Sarah any dizzier than it made you."

Kate gasped, but her indignation soon turned to mild re-proach-which then became a reluctant grin. "Doc, you're terrible."

He smiled, a little too smugly. "That's what my Lydia used to say. But I never did think it made sense to waste time, beating around the bush. And you don't have time to waste. Not unless you're planning to settle for lukewarm pecks on the cheek for the rest of your life."

Kate wasn't planning to settle for a pa.s.sionless existence, but sometimes she was afraid that was how it was going to work out-pecks on the cheek or no kisses at all. Still, if she'd really resigned herself to that, she'd have been married long ago. Scott wasn't the only man who'd liked her blueberry cobbler. The problem was, she didn't want to marry someone who was more interested in her cooking-and in how well she listened to him talk about himself-than he was in her.

All her life she'd attracted men who wanted her to tell them what to do, and when and how to do it. They wanted her to be nice, not s.e.xy. Gentle, not pa.s.sionate. And, honestly, how pa.s.sionate could a woman feel about somebody she constantly had to rea.s.sure? Her girlfriends in college had told her it was her own fault men looked at her not as a lover but as a shoulder to cry on. She had to "a.s.sert her s.e.xuality," they said. Learn to flirt and be more mysterious. Stop being so straight-forward-and straitlaced. Well, so, she'd tried. And the results had been disastrous.

At thirty-one, she was a lot less unsure of herself than she'd been at twenty-four. She realized her mistake with Rick Sommers had been one of naivete, poor character judgment, and confusion over the difference between l.u.s.t and love. She also knew that just because she'd made one mistake didn't mean she had to make another one. But there were moments . . . moments when she thought of the men she'd dated since Rick, moments when she thought about how lonely it could be some-times-how many mornings she made breakfast, wishing there were someone to share it with . . . how many winter nights she lay in bed, watching the snow pile up against the windows, wishing there were a warm, strong body lying next to hers . . . At moments like those, she wondered if maybe the pain she lived with as a result of that one mistake had made her too careful. Too wary.

Maybe she was too picky, too. But then, what good would it do to marry a man like Scott Gibson? She wouldn't be alone anymore, but she'd be more lonely than ever.

"Well, I've had my say on the subject-for now, anyway."

Kate breathed in relief when Doc levered himself out of the kitchen chair, hitching his trousers over his belly and picking up his black bag.

"I've got to go fight with that smart-mouthed clerk at the supply house," he said. "Tell him to get that order out here before we have to start tearing up bed sheets for bandages. And Bert Andrews is coming in at nine. I think you and I have pretty much covered the ground as far as the weekend goes, so I guess we can dispense with our meeting. Are you going to see that new niece of yours today?"

She uttered a bewildered laugh. "Last night I didn't think so, but I guess I am, after all."

He nodded in approval, heading in the direction of the front door with her following him.

Pa.s.sing under the archway between dining and living room, he glanced at her. "I forgot to ask-how was the Nielsen girl yesterday? You got there, didn't you?"

"Yes . . ."

Doc's thick gray eyebrows drew together. "Something wrong?"

"I'm afraid Lynn's doing too much," Kate admitted. "She's nineteen years old, she's never been sick a day in her life, and she's having a hard time accepting the idea that pregnant ladies in their third trimester get tired and need to slow down a little."

"Hmph." Doc's comment was to the point. "She ought to get out of that ramshackle hole she's living in, with no phone and no decent road, until that baby's born."

"I agree, but she feels she has to help Erik. My guess is, if he doesn't get the camp in shape to open by deer season, they'll lose it. And since he's doing all the work, it's slow going."

Reaching the front door, Doc shook his head. "The place is a mess. Has been since Andy Tibbs abandoned it. Trust a pair of foolish kids to think they can make something of it again."

Kate sighed. "Lynn and Erik are just young and naive. They've got to prove everything to themselves, the hard way."

"Well, we all know how that goes," Doc muttered as he turned the doork.n.o.b. "Maybe you should have her- Well, what's this?" He opened the door wide. "You've got a visitor."

"Sam!" Her cheeks dimpled, and her lips curved into a welcoming smile. "Good morning."

Sam hesitated on seeing her, gave her a quick once over, then scowled as he mounted the last step to amble across the wide front porch.

"Katie, what are you doing on your feet? I expected to find you in bed, groaning."

"Me, too." Her smile deepened as she held open the screen door and motioned him inside. When he brushed past her and she caught that straight, leather-and-soap male scent, the b.u.t.terflies set to fluttering in her stomach. They added a hint of nervousness to her voice as she said, "Sam Reese, this is Dr. Bill Cabot. Doc, Sam's the man I told you brought me home last night."

"The man who carried you home," Sam corrected, his eyes still traveling over her as he shook the older man's hand. "Good morning, sir. Katie, what the h.e.l.l are you doing standing on that ankle? Trying to ruin it for life?"

"It's all-"

"Dr. Cabot, last night this woman had an ankle you'd have thought was-"

"Sam, it's all right!" Kate waited until he turned from Doc to scowl down at her, then she left his side to walk halfway across the room. With a whirl on her toes that made her calf-length skirt ripple out from its gathered yoke and her braid wrap around her shoulders, she turned to meet his stunned look with a grin. "See? My ankle's fine. No swelling, no pain."

His eyes narrowed. "Come on."

"Really." She nodded. "But I'm glad you're here to tell Doc I'm not crazy. He thinks I made the whole thing up."

Suspicion was etched into every harsh angle of Sam's expression. "I don't get it. That ankle was a mess. I saw it myself. At least . . . Well, h.e.l.l, who am I to say?"

With a final look at Kate's bare feet as she walked toward him, he shook his head. "Sir, Katie's not making anything up. I came to take her for an x-ray. I thought she should go last night, but she was set on waiting."

"I'm not doubting you, Sam," Doc told him. "And Kate would be the last person I'd expect to hear crying wolf. But joints are funny things. I've been prepared to put a cast on more than one ankle I was sure was broken, only to find it wasn't. Just count your blessings that you don't have to make the trip to Ironwood this morning."

"Thank goodness!" Kate exclaimed, then immediately felt a pang of disappointment when she realized that meant she wouldn't be spending the morning with Sam.

In the clear light of day, without pain blurring her vision, it was impossible to ignore the charged, intensely male energy he transmitted or to deny how much he stirred her senses. Nor could she keep from noticing how well his jeans hugged his long legs and stretched across his narrow hips. His jacket was unzipped to reveal a dark T-shirt molded to his chest, and as her gaze skimmed over him, the memory of that chest, with its strangely alluring mixture of tanned flesh, muscle, crisp hair, and scars brought a flush to her cheeks.

At the same time, another memory intruded-Doc saying Scott Gibson's kisses hadn't made her dizzy. No, Scott hadn't made her dizzy. But Sam Reese could. If she let him.