The Doctor's Surprise Family
“Holy crap,” a boy’s voice muttered, before the kid scrambled like a wild animal back up the slope.
Dane leaped toward the escapee, entering the trees like a predatory animal, silent, quick. Without a word, he sprang over moldering logs, and ducked grasping branches. Ten feet ahead the kid dodged right and left. Suddenly, he turned and scrambled farther up the hill, and then—abruptly—twenty feet ahead, Dane saw arms, legs and branches whip like miniature windmills. Thunk.
“Ow!” the boy yelped. Gasping and wheezing and clutching his leg, he writhed on a wet bed of leaves.
Dane approached slowly.
“Please,” the boy whispered. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Easy, son.” Dane frowned at the slashed denim along the boy’s left leg. Crouching on one knee, he shrugged from his jacket and laid the garment across the boy’s chest. “Got a name?”
“Y-Yes sir. Blake.” The winded words came out Yea seer bake.
Kaitlin’s son?
The wheezing accelerated. Blake’s face altered, faded, and for an instant Zaakir stared up at Dane.
He swiped a hand across his eyes. He was losing it, and this kid was showing every sign of an asthma attack. “Where’s your inhaler, son?”
“Home.”
Sure, it was. Damn kid, creeping through the woods in the dark and forgetting his lifeline. Dane squashed the urge to give Blake a good shaking. Instead, he scooped the boy into his arms. “Hang on.” Careful of wayward limbs, he trotted through the trees, crossed Kaitlin’s back deck and, while the boy clung to his neck, yanked open the mudroom door.
“Inhaler,” he hollered, storming into the kitchen with Blake wheezing against his chest. “Now.”
Kat didn’t have time to think or ask questions.
The second Dane set her son next to the plate of hard-boiled eggs she’d been slicing for the spinach salad on her big worktable, Kat ran to the dining cabinet and grabbed the emergency inhaler.
“Darn it, Blake,” she said, shoving the tool into his hands. “What have I told you about keeping this with you at all times?” Heart pounding, she forced herself to watch calmly as he tilted back his head and put the instrument to his mouth. Still, she couldn’t help advising, “Breathe deep.”
He rolled his eyes.
She released a shaky sigh. Okay. Not as bad as she’d first thought when Dane banged into her house. Already the first healing puff had altered her child’s skin from pale and sweaty to pink and dry as added oxygen rushed into his blood.
Relieved, she turned to Dane. He stood in a white T-shirt, dog tags dangling from his neck, gloved hands clutching the end corners of the worktable. His dark eyes were fastened on Blake, his expression harsh. Kat’s stomach looped at the man’s scrutiny. Had she misread him after all? “What happened?”
“It was my fault,” Blake interjected before her guest could reply. “I was trying to look into Mr. Rainhart’s window and—and he caught me, and then I ran into the woods and fell and…” When he straightened his leg, she noticed the bloody damage for the first time.
Kat’s pulse bounced. “Oh, baby.” She bent over the torn skin. Deep and raw, the gash measured about four inches along her son’s bony shin.
Removing the desert jacket from Blake, Dane said, “He needs stitches. If you have gauze to wrap the wound, I can ready him for transport to the clinic.”
Ready him for transport? Disregarding the odd turn of phrase, Kat hurried to the cupboard with its stored First Aid supplies. Had Blake told her the truth, or had Dane Rainhart hurt her son somehow, perhaps frightened him into lying?
She nearly dropped the kit when she heard her son whimper. She hurried back as Dane gently straightened Blake’s leg. “Looks like that tree root did quite a number on you,” he said, inspecting the gash.
From what Kat could see “the tree root” had gouged the flesh just below the knee. Blake puffed his cheeks at the sight of his blood-soaked jeans. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Dane placed a gloved hand on the back of her son’s neck. “Lower your head down toward your knees. That’s it.” He waited a few moments. “Feeling better?”
“A little.” Blake raised his head. “I—I didn’t m-mean to spy on you. Honest.”
“That what you were doing?” Dane hauled the knife off his belt and Kat’s heart lurched—until she saw that he meant to trim away the jagged edges of denim from her son’s wound.
Blake gaped while Dane deftly cut a neat rectangular hole. “Kaitlin,” he said, “we’ll need some warm water, a pinch of mild soap and a washcloth.”
She rushed to get the materials. Behind her, Blake murmured, “I—I just wanna be a soldier when I grow up.” She couldn’t catch Dane’s response.
Moments later, she watched as he cleaned Blake’s wound with the gentlest of motions, dipping the cloth into the water and touching it around the torn flesh. When it came time to dress the gash he directed her to cut the gauze—not that way—bind it around the gash—to the left—snip the gossamer ends, and knot them correctly.
If he knew first aid, why wouldn’t he remove his gloves and do the procedure himself?
Shoving him from her mind, she hunted down her stash of Children’s Tylenol.
“Bring your car to the front door,” Dane told Kat after she observed her son swallow the painkiller. “I’ll carry the boy outside.”
“I can walk,” Blake assured. He jumped off the worktable onto his good leg and limped from the kitchen.
Two minutes later, Kat locked up the house. Driving down the lane, she caught sight of Dane in the Honda’s side mirror. Arms crossed, he stood on the bottom step of her veranda, a formidable, forbidding man watching her leave the property.
What do you really know about him, Kat?
He’d had medical training, that was a given. Had he become the military doctor her sister Lee alluded to years ago? Given the desert fatigues he wore, Dane Rainhart had clearly served his country in some capacity.
That being the case, the sadness, the aloofness, the loner attitude seemed to resemble post traumatic stress disorder. Last winter, Lee had pondered the symptoms during her brief relationship with Col. Oliver Coleman before he was killed in action in Iraq.
“You mad at Mr. Rainhart, Mom?” Blake’s question from the rear seat jerked Kat away from the memory.
“Not at all. Why?”
Worried brown eyes filled the rearview mirror. “I was scared at first, but then I realized he was only trying to help. He wasn’t mean or anything.”
“You shouldn’t have spied on him, Blake. Looking through people’s windows is an invasion of privacy and very wrong. You know better. What on earth made you do such a thing?”
“I dunno.” He hung his head; dark hair fell over his smooth brow. “I’m sorry.”
Kat turned out of their wooded lane and onto Shore Road leading into the village of Burnt Bend. “It’s Mr. Rainhart you need to apologize to.”
“I will,” the boy murmured.
The promise did nothing to loosen the knot in Kat’s stomach. Her son had never peered into the windows of her guests’ cabins. Why did he do so now?
She wondered what Dane thought of Blake. She wondered what he thought of her parenting skills. Then she wondered why his opinion was important enough for her to contemplate. The man was part of her past, not her future. Right now, she needed to concentrate on getting her son medical attention. Beyond that, nothing else mattered.
Yet, the feeling Dane Rainhart wasn’t finished with her continued to hover over Kat’s shoulder.
He sat on the cabin steps, watching for her headlights to play peek-a-boo through the lane’s trees, to tell him she had returned home with the boy. The moment her car disappeared, he’d gone for a hard, fast hike through the hilly forest behind her property.
The kid’s chest hadn’t been crushed under the weight of metal. The wheezing was the result of asthma.
The knowledge had punctuated Dane’s every step. Guided by the flashlight, he’d climbed across mossy stones, through thick undergrowth and dodged gnarly tree limbs until his chest heaved, and the whistling sound of her son’s condition subsided.
Now he waited. Without light or warmth from the cabin.
He heard the grumble of a motor before headlights trickled through the forest. Seconds later, she pulled into the carport. Doors slammed. Voices, hers and the boy’s, drifted softly on the night.
A brick of tension dropped from his body. They were home. The boy was okay. Still, he waited. Waited until the big house lay in darkness, except for an upstairs window.
Suddenly, the narrow, rectangular pane beside the mudroom door lit behind its lacy curtain.
Dane rose from the chair when he heard a latch click. Footsteps crossed the deck. Kaitlin? Or the boy, sneaking out again?
He went down the flagstone path.
She stood on the edge of the deck, wrapped in a pale shawl. Damn, she was lovely, like an elf come out to play under the stars.
“Kaitlin?” he queried softly and saw her body jerk.
“Good heavens, you’re a quiet one.”
He hadn’t meant to startle her. Keeping to the delta of the path, he asked, “How’s the boy?”
“Eight stitches. The doctor says he can go to school tomorrow, just no roughhousing on the playground.”
Dane nodded.
A handful of seconds passed. She asked, “Are you a military doctor?”
“Not anymore.”
“A doctor here, then? You seemed to know exactly what to do with Blake’s injury.”
He hesitated. “I was a trauma surgeon in Iraq. Served there since we went in. Left a year-and-a-half ago.” He’d been in the Middle East almost six years. Too damned long to work in a place where you never knew if your next breath would be your last.
She remained silent, studying him as he studied her. Finally, she said, “I was coming to see you, but your lights were off.”
“I like sitting on the porch in the dark. It’s peaceful.”
“I understand.”
He imagined she did. She would need the peace following her husband’s death.
She said, “I want to apologize for my son’s behavior. It won’t happen again.”
“He’s a typical kid. Don’t worry about it.”
“Being a kid is no excuse. He’ll apologize after school tomorrow.”
“All right.”
As she turned to go, she paused. “Would you like to join us for dinner tomorrow? As a thank-you for helping Blake tonight.”
“Help?” The way I helped Zaakir? Dane bit hard on his tongue to sever the memory. “It was my fault he got hurt,” he murmured. “If I hadn’t chased him—”
“We’re all a little to blame,” she replied reasonably. “However, if you’d rather not…”
“I’m surprised you’d trust me after tonight.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” She stepped off the deck and crossed to him. “Dane, I don’t know your past, or what’s eating you. That’s your business. But from what I’ve seen so far, from what I remember, you’re all right. So if you like roast chicken with stuffing, dinner will be at six tomorrow.”
He could smell her on the night air, caught himself lifting his chin an inch to better draw in the scent. “You’d be wise to stay away from me,” he said.
She smiled. “Perhaps. Except I don’t scare easily.”
The night trapped them, a thick swathe of darkness in which he could imagine the heat of flesh slipping along flesh. His gaze seized her, beckoned her, told her a thousand stories.
“Be careful, Kaitlin. I’m not the man you remember.” Turning on his heel, he walked back into the shroud of night.
Chapter Four
A woodpecker rat-a-tatted somewhere in the pines outside his window. He jerked awake, not because of the bird, but because the sun stood well above the trees and the clock read 9:46 a.m.
He’d slept ten hours straight. When was the last time he’d overslept? Not since college when he’d been studying half the night for a physics exam.
His tangled brain took in the tiny bedroom with its one piece of knotty pine furniture housing his underwear and socks. Kaitlin. He was in her cottage.
And, he’d fallen asleep to wake hours later with—he glanced down—the worst arousal he’d had in two decades.
Scraping both hands down his stubbled cheeks, he drew in a sigh, then flung back the downy quilt and set his feet on the rug beside the bed. He needed a shower, a freezing shower.
Naked, he headed down the short hallway to the bathroom.
The kitchen phone rang. Who’d be phoning on the landline? Had to be her.
Down the hall he went and into the kitchen. A glance at the window; no boy peered back at him. Dane picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Good morning,” she sang.
He cleared his rusty throat. “’Mornin’.”
Pause. “Oh, Dane. I woke you, didn’t I?” If he’d needed a shower to cool down two minutes ago, that breathless Oh, Dane doubled the requirement. “I’m so sorry,” she went on. “I’ll let you get back to bed.”
“No, no. Was up reading,” he fibbed. He glanced toward the front door and its half-moon window draped with a frilly curtain that let in the light, but obscured prying eyes. Phone to his ear, he walked over, tried to peer through to the Victorian, and imagined her in that country kitchen with its big worktable.
She said, “I didn’t mean to disturb you—”
Just thinking of her disturbed him. “Kaitlin?”
“Yes?”
“Stop apologizing.”
Another pause, longer this time. Was she remembering his asinine remark last night? I’m not the man you remember. And where the hell had his grouchy tone come from? He’d been raised to respect and honor a woman, to treat her with decency. To do anything less was as foreign to him as giving birth. He just wasn’t built that way.
“I wanted to make sure you were still coming to dinner tonight.”
So, she had been recalling his words.
He headed for his bathroom. “I’ll be there.”
“Good. Um…Is there anything you need from town? Anything for your fridge? I’m doing a grocery run in about ten minutes.”
“No thanks.” The only thing he needed she couldn’t give.
“Okay…. I’ll see you tonight.”
“I’ll be there.”
He waited for her to hang up. She didn’t.
“Aren’t you hanging up?” His voice scratched.
This time her hesitation stretched even longer. “Aren’t you?” she replied softly.
Oh, hell. What could he say? I want to hang up but can’t? I need to hang up before I grab a pair of jeans and go to your back door?
Where he’d kiss her the way he wanted to last night—
“I’m looking forward to seeing you again,” she whispered into his ear, and pictures of her in the night bloomed across his brain.
“You’re all I thought about before I went to sleep,” he confessed.
“Me too, you.” And then she released a long breath as if coming to a conclusion. “However, I’d rather be friends.”
“I’m not interested in a relationship.” Not the kind she deserved.
“That’s good to know.” Relief crept in. “Because it never would have worked. We’re too different.”
She was right, they were; but that didn’t make the truth easier. “Says who?”
“Says me. You’re too intense, too…dark.”
“Dark?”
“You’ve got things inside you.”
How could she know he had Zaakir inside him? Zaakir, who was never going to leave, who would haunt Dane until his dying breath.
Except, last night Dane had been free. For ten hours the ever-present guilt had lifted, flown. Until now, until he realized he hadn’t thought of the boy since yesterday.
He needed to get off the phone. He couldn’t hold her responsible for fixing him, and somehow he knew she’d want to do exactly that if she found out about the darkness that plagued him.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he repeated, because he had promised. Then he set the phone gently in its cradle.
He no longer needed a cold shower.
He’d been working on the Harley thirty minutes when he sensed Kaitlin’s son enter the carport from the backyard. Crouched on a square of cardboard, Dane continued to sweep the battery terminals clean with the small steel brush that was part of his toolkit. Maybe if he ignored the kid, he’d go away again.
“Whatcha doin’?”
No such luck. The boy was here to socialize and Dane wasn’t in the mood, and for damn sure not while he was checking out the bike’s battery. Already memories of another kid and a different battery surged up; he worked to control his breathing, to pinch back the images.
Blake wandered to the cardboard. His sneakers were scuffed, but what Dane could see of the boy’s blue jeans appeared clean. Go away, son. You could get hurt again.
“What’s the matter with the battery?”
“Needs a checkup.” He had yet to look the kid in the eye.
“My mom gets her car checked at the garage in town.”
“Good for her.”
His tone didn’t deter the boy; he squatted on his haunches next to Dane. “Harley-Davidson motorcycles are the best, right?”
That’s it, kid. Go for the power, the look, the sound.
Picking up his flashlight, Dane shone the beam against the clear box to check the fluid in each cell. His pulse rate accelerated. Didn’t Blake realize battery fluid was acidic, what it could do to your skin? Damn it, didn’t they teach anything in school? And where was Kaitlin? Did she know her son was in a place where he could get hurt?
“You need to back up,” he told the boy, pointing to a spot at least six feet away.
“Why?”
“Batteries can be dangerous.”
“Really? My dad once changed the battery in his pickup and he never said that.”
“Ever heard of acid?”
“Uh-huh. We did an experiment in science last fall with acid.”
“Know what it can do?”
“Sure. Can I sit on your bike when you’re done? I’ve never sat on a motorcycle before.”
As he spoke, the boy moved in the direction Dane had instructed. He breathed easier. “Don’t you have something to do?” he grumped. “Like help your mother?”
“Already did. I cleaned my room and collected the trash around the house.”
“Well, maybe there’s something else you could help her with, something she hasn’t thought of.”
“Nuh-uh. She said I could go outside ’cause it’s not raining. And anyway, I like talking to you.” The boy flushed and shot Dane a sheepish grin. “You know…about the Harley an’ stuff. When my dad was alive I was too little to know about motorcycles and anyway he didn’t have a Harley.”
Was the boy was looking for a stand-in daddy? Hell. Knees popping, Dane rose to his full height and gazed down at Kaitlin’s son for a long moment, so long the kid’s grin faded. One sneaker heel began bouncing up-down, up-down.
Ignoring the flare of sympathy in his chest, Dane said in a rough voice, “This isn’t going to work, Blake. I’m the kind of guy who likes his privacy and—”
“I thought I heard voices out here.” Kaitlin stepped into the carport, cutting off Dane’s next words.
“Mom!” The boy waved her over. “Come see Mr. Rainhart’s Harley. Cool, huh?”
“Yes, it is,” she replied, eyes on her son. “Did you apologize to Mr. Rainhart yet?”
The boy hung his head. “Oh, yeah. Sorry for looking in your window. It was a really bad thing to do.”
Dane stood on the other side of the cardboard square wishing Kaitlin would take her son and leave. Family conferences weren’t his thing. Still, he nodded. “No worries.” He looked directly at Kaitlin. “Look, I need to finish up here.”
His message put a small tight smile on her lips. “Let’s go, son. You promised to play with Danny this afternoon, remember?” She darted a look at Dane. “Danny’s Blake’s eight-year-old cousin.”
“Aw…Can’t we wait until Mr. R’s done fixing the Harley?”
“No,” Kaitlin said. “Aunty Lee is expecting you.”
“O-kay.” Shoulders hunched, feet dragging, Blake left the carport.
Kaitlin’s gaze flicked to the Harley. “My son won’t bother you again.” She turned to leave.
Dane stepped around the battery and was in front of her before she got to the door. “It’s not what it seems.”
“You don’t need to explain, Dane. Kids can be intimidating for someone who’s not used to all their questions.”
He let his head fall back on a weighty breath before he said, “It’s not that. I…I had a bad experience with a child.”
A puzzled expression crossed her features. “I don’t understand.”
His memories battled with the yearning to tell all. The memories won. He would not put the quagmire of his past, of Zaakir’s death, on her shoulders. She had enough in her life with an asthmatic son and trying to operate a business without a husband. Still, he couldn’t let her walk away without some kind of explanation.
“A child was hurt on my watch,” he said.
“And you blame yourself.” Her brown eyes, full of commiseration, held his for three thick seconds.
“I need to get back to work.” He strode to the motorbike.
“Dane…”
“Go, Kaitlin. Your son is waiting.”
When her footsteps ebbed, he crouched at his toolkit and with shaky fingers dug out a wrench. Concentrate on the bike. Don’t think of her. Don’t think at all.
Two hours later, when he took the Harley out on the road, her words trailed him like wisps of a ghost. You blame yourself.
Oh, yeah. She was dead-on there.
Carrying a canvas tote filled with fresh produce, Kat walked through the electronic doors of Dalton Foods on the corner of Main and Shore Road. A block up the street, in the library lot, she’d parked her car under the leafless elms. She would make a quick stop, pick up the book Ms. Brookley had called about this morning, then head home to prepare for tonight.
A smile flickered on her lips. She hoped Dane liked baked red potatoes, seasoned with basil and oregano, and shallots and mushrooms in cream sauce. She hoped he liked upside-down pineapple cake. Tonight’s dinner would be beyond special, she rationalized, if for no other reason than to create other memories for him, to take away that emptiness she saw so often in his eyes.
“A child died on my watch.”
Had the child died on the operating table? Had Dane—
“Kat,” a male voice called as she reached the crosswalk to the Burnt Bend Library. “Got a minute?”
She turned to see a stocky man, face shielded by a worn ballcap and a foam cup of coffee in one hand, jog across the street that ran behind the shops edging the boardwalk of the village’s tiny cove. Kat recognized him immediately. Colin Dirks, Shaun’s cousin, from Bainbridge Island. They hadn’t seen each other since Colin’s fishing trawler capsized during a sudden squall. Since Shaun drowned in that squall and Colin lived. Kat couldn’t help the spurt of anger. He’d been the one to coax Shaun away that weekend.
Oh, initially Colin had offered condolences, but then things changed. His calls and e-mails took another slant. Rather than asking about her and Blake, or talking about the man Colin claimed had been like a brother, he wanted to know when was she going to sell him the Kat Lady?
Never, she thought for the hundredth time as she observed him approach with his feigned concern.
“Here with your family, Colin?” she asked, certain he’d come alone to Firewood Island; certain, too, of the reason.
“Nope. They’re home. I was just—” he glanced over his shoulder “—getting a mocha at Coffee Sense before I came to see you. But this is even better. Can I buy you a coffee?”
A snarky retort on her lips, she turned. But then she remembered that this man had been Shaun’s childhood best friend. It wasn’t as if Colin had planned the squall, or the capsizing of his trawler. And Shaun had gone on his own volition that weekend to pitch in when one of Colin’s helpers had come down with the flu.
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