Saving Dr. Ryan

“I’d say you need me, Dr. Logan. You need me real bad.”

Ryan had never seen a pair of eyes that could manage to look so innocent and so not…at the same time.

And hiring Maddie Kincaid to be his assistant was a plan that made sense. On the surface.

But…

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re worried about us being together in the house for too long. That I might start getting ideas.”

“No, it’s not that.”

She half laughed, half sighed. He told himself that she was sitting too far away for him to feel her breath on his face. That the last thing he wanted was to feel her breath on his face.

She went on. “After what I’ve been through, marriage is the last thing on my mind. Trust me.”

He did.

Oh, hell. It wasn’t her he didn’t trust….

Dear Reader,

“In like a lion, out like a lamb.” That’s what they say about March, right? Well, there are no meek and mild lambs among this month’s Intimate Moments heroines, that’s for sure! In Saving Dr. Ryan, Karen Templeton begins a new miniseries, THE MEN OF MAYES COUNTY, while telling the story of a roadside delivery—yes, the baby kind—that leads to an improbable romance. Maddie Kincaid starts out looking like the one who needs saving, but it’s really Dr. Ryan Logan who’s in need of rescue.

We continue our trio of FAMILY SECRETS prequels with The Phoenix Encounter by Linda Castillo. Follow the secret-agent hero deep under cover—and watch as he rediscovers a love he’d thought was dead. But where do they go from there? Nina Bruhns tells a story of repentance, forgiveness and passion in Sins of the Father, while Eileen Wilks offers up tangled family ties and a seemingly insoluble dilemma in Midnight Choices. For Wendy Rosnau’s heroine, there’s only One Way Out as she chooses between being her lover’s mistress—or his wife. Finally, Jenna Mills’ heroine becomes The Perfect Target. She meets the seemingly perfect man, then has to decide whether he represents safety—or danger.

The excitement never flags—and there will be more next month, too. So don’t miss a single Silhouette Intimate Moments title, because this is the line where you’ll find the best and most exciting romance reading around.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Saving Dr. Ryan
Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KAREN TEMPLETON,

a Waldenbooks bestselling author and RITA^® Award nominee, is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty diapers are not mutually exclusive terms. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasizing about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

She loves to hear from readers, who may reach her by writing c/o Silhouette Books, 300 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10017, or online at www.karentempleton.com.

To country doctors everywhere, whose selflessness epitomizes the best in human nature.

Acknowledgments

To Oana Nisipeanu, M.D.,

who answered my medical “hows?”

to Kelli Garcia,

for giving me a virtual peek inside a small-town doctor’s office;

to Debrah Morris and Linda Goodnight,

for being my “tour guides”

to Northeastern Oklahoma and for making me fall in love with that part of the world, sight unseen;

to JoAnn Weatherly,

for answering my questions about geriatric hip fractures.

Any goofs are mine, not theirs.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Chapter 1

“Keep your shirt on! I’m coming, I’m coming…dammit!”

His big toe now throbbing, Ryan Logan continued down the dark stairs in his stockinged feet, all the while fumbling with the buttons to the flannel shirt he’d dragged on over his tee at the doorbell’s first shriek. He yawned so widely his jaw popped: he hadn’t gotten to bed but two hours ago, at three-thirty. Which meant his blood wasn’t yet moving fast enough to ward off the damp, late September chill that permeated the old house. Judging from the rain still battering the roof, there’d be no sunrise.

He’d no sooner plowed one hand through his hopeless hair when the bell blatted again. On a muttered curse, he yanked open the front door: the two little kids standing on the porch jumped a mile. Ryan’s heart twisted—the pipsqueaks were soaked through, the boy’s dark eyes glittering in terror and excitement underneath a fringe of scraggly bangs. Pale fingers gripped closed a stringless, nothing-colored hooded sweatshirt, his other hand hanging on for dear life to the shivering little blonde beside him. Ryan had never seen either of them before.

The boy stumbled backward a little, taking the girl with him. His eyes went wide and his mouth sagged open, but nothing came out. It dawned on Ryan how scary he must look.

“It’s okay, son,” he said, squatting down. Wasn’t anything he could do about the bed-head, but he could at least reduce his six-foot-two frame into something less intimidating. He lifted his voice just enough to be heard over the rain pummeling the porch overhang. “What is it?”

“You the doctor?”

“Sure am.”

The trembling child glanced back into the rain-drenched darkness, then at Ryan, still warily.

“Mama said to come.”

With a nod, Ryan leaned over to grab his boots off the mat by the door. He was wide-awake now: odd hour calls came with the territory when the closest hospital was forty-five minutes away.

Both floor and kids flinched when Ryan stomped his foot firmly inside the first boot. “Sorry,” he said, sparing them both a quick smile. The boy couldn’t have been more than five or six, his sister—Ryan assumed—maybe three or so.

“She said to hurry,” the boy said.

Ryan shoved on the other boot, grabbed his denim jacket off the stand by the front door and shrugged into it. “Where is your mama?” he asked, clamping his broad-brimmed hat on his head with one hand, snatching his black bag off the hall table with the other.

A beanpole arm flailed out. “D-down there. In the car.” The bright eyes glanced back at him over a chin quivering from both emotion and the raw autumn chill, Ryan guessed. “She said to tell you the b-baby’s comin’.”

Oh, Lord.

Ryan dropped the bag back on the table and pulled the dripping children inside. He took a precious moment to crouch in front of them again, gently squeezing the boy’s shoulder, smiling into the little girl’s huge, frightened eyes. “Stay right here,” he softly commanded, then bolted out into the driving rain before the boy had a chance to protest.

The steering wheel bit into Maddie Kincaid’s palms as she choked back a bitter scream. Despite the piercing, damp cold inside the old Impala, sweat drenched her flannel nightgown underneath her car coat. The pains had come on so sudden, her only thought had been to get out, get help. She hadn’t even bothered to put on socks—if she could’ve bent over to begin with—and now her feet felt like Popsicles inside her canvas slip-ons.

The pain crested, passed. On a deep, panicky sigh, she leaned her head on the back of the seat, determined not to cry, even though it was highly unlikely anybody’d hear her over the hammering rain and wind. She’d never meant to send Noah and Katie Grace out in the storm, but they’d been gone before she could stop them. At least she’d remembered seeing the office sign in front of the slightly dilapidated, two-story house when she’d passed it yesterday. Something to be grateful for, at least.

But—a blast of wind plastered another layer of leaves to the windshield—what if nobody was home? What if she had to deliver this baby herself, right here, and take care of two other children besides?

Something like a laugh tried to well up in her throat. Just when you think things can’t possibly get any worse…

“Oh, God, oh, God, oh God,” she whimpered, rolling her head back and forth, only to suck in a sharp breath when the next pain began clawing its way through her belly. Her labor with the first two had been nothing like this. Especially Noah’s. All that walking, trying to get things moving—

The scream escaped this time as fire blazed through her crotch. She tried to get on top of the contraction, to focus her breathing, as the searing pain obliterated everything but itself—

The car door flew open, sending chilled air and wet leaves swirling inside; a large male hand landed on her rock-hard belly, provoking a little yelp. She glanced over, registering little more than pale eyes, a hard-set mouth and prickly cheeks, all shadowed by a cowboy hat. “Where’re my kids?” she managed through clenched teeth.

“Inside. Safe.”

“Alone?” Fear surged through her, more intense even than the contractions. “They’re scared to death of bein’ in a strange place by themselves! They’re—”

“Fine,” the man said quietly. “How far apart are they?” His voice was gentle, low. Totally lost on her. Sheets of water drummed relentlessly into the mud by the car, on the Impala’s hood and roof, irritating her no end. She realized the man’s hand still rested on her distended belly.

“I hope to heck this means you’re the doctor.”

“Looks like this is your lucky day, ma’am.” He removed his hand; she glanced over, saw he was squatting by the open car door. Rain streamed off his hat brim. “So.” Patience weighted the single word. “How far apart—?”

“I don’t know,” she bit out. “Constant, seems like.”

“Can you walk?”

“You think I’d’ve let my kids out in this rain if I could?”

No sooner were the words out than a pair of strong arms slipped around her, lifting her up and out of the car. With a little cry, Maddie tucked her head against the solid, firesmoke-scented chest, trying to avoid the pelting rain. The doctor cocooned her inside his jacket as best he could, plopped his hat on her head, then gently shifted her in his arms to slam the car door shut.

“Hang on,” he shouted over the din. “I’m gonna get you to the house as fast as possible, okay?”

Huddled underneath the coat, the precariously angled hat, Maddie nodded weakly, the pain mercifully subsiding for the minute or so it took for the trek to the house, set back from the road maybe a hundred feet or so.

But only for a minute. The instant they got inside, another contraction vised every muscle from her ribs to her knees. She bit her lip to keep from screaming in front of her babies, standing wide-eyed in the old-fashioned vestibule as the doctor swept her past them and down a narrow hallway. She was barely aware of the children’s sneakers beating a tattoo against the bare wood floor as they followed, Noah asking her over and over if she was all right.

“I’m fine, sugar,” she managed, somehow, even though she couldn’t see him. Still, she winced a little as the doctor lowered her onto the edge of a bed covered in a heavily textured bedspread, flinching in the sudden flash of a bedside lamp being turned on.

“You feel like pushing yet?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Means we got a minute.”

He helped her out of her coat, then disappeared. Seconds later, he was back with a pile of linens, what looked like some shirts or something, and his black bag, which he thunked onto the nightstand. Noah and Katie Grace stood rooted to the spot a few feet away, Katie with her thumb in her mouth. Water dripped from both their heads, had turned Noah’s gray sweatshirt—two sizes too big, but she’d found it for next to nothing at some yard sale—nearly black. Maddie moaned and struggled to get up. “They’re all wet—”

Another pain slammed into her, grabbing her breath. She doubled up, falling onto her side into the bed, mortified and aggravated and plain scared out of her wits. Her eyes clamped shut, but a tear or two still escaped. Through her nightgown sleeve, she felt a warm, steady touch, which she had to admit did calm her some.

“I’ll take care of it,” the doctor said. “You just concentrate on having this baby, you hear?” She managed a nod, the bedspread rough against her cheek. “Good. Water break yet?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Here—” A thick, white towel appeared in her line of sight. “In case it does while I’m tending to the kids.”

Maddie struggled to protest, but her body had other ideas. The next few minutes were reduced to disjointed impressions—a radiator clanking, rain slashing against the window, wet clothes plopping on the floor as the doctor soothed her frightened children. The fact that nobody had appeared to help him out. Like a wife or housekeeper. Or something.

Suddenly she felt a painless but decisive sensation in her lower belly, like a pin pricking a balloon; she barely managed to stuff the towel between her legs to catch the gush of warm liquid. She swiped at a tear trickling down the side of her nose, hating the thought of a stranger taking care of her children. Of her. That she had no choice in the matter.

More fluid seeped into the towel with the next contraction. Maddie only half watched, silently panting, as the doctor wrapped her children in warm blankets, settling them into an overstuffed armchair in the corner of the room, close to the sizzling radiator.

She heard the change in his voice, knew he’d seen.

“You two just snuggle up for a bit while I check out your mama. All right?”

“Yes, sir,” she heard from Noah, and relief trickled through her. He tended to be skittish around most men these days. Especially ones as big as Dr. Logan. Not that Maddie could blame him for that, she supposed.

Again, the doctor vanished, reappearing maybe a minute later. He fussed with something or other nearby, then turned to her, his thick, damp hair a dull gold in the weak light. He raked one hand through it, raising a field of curved spikes on the top of his head.

“I put the kids’ clothes in the dryer,” he said, his gaze snagging on the towel indelicately wadded between her legs, which for some reason provoked a low chuckle.

Maddie squeezed shut her eyes, breathed through the next wave of pain. “What’s so blamed funny?”

“My timing, looks like.” He grabbed another towel, replacing the first one. She opened her eyes to catch his nod in approval as he briefly inspected it, tossed it into a plastic tub. “Fluid’s clear. Good sign. Now let’s see what’s what.”

The next few minutes passed in a blur as the doctor palmed her belly, pronounced the baby in the correct position, then prepared both the bed and her for the birth. All the while, his face remained expressionless, his manner calm, efficient, unembarrassed, even when he helped her remove her soaked panties. Several pillows now at her back, Maddie watched him fish his stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff from his bag, noted how his height was offset by a kind of wiryness, that his movements were sure and graceful. She began to relax, at least enough to say, “You know, I don’t normally let a man remove my underwear without getting his name first.”

“Logan,” the doctor said, amusement—she hoped—making his mouth twitch. “Ryan Logan. The degrees are up in my office.” He jerked his head to the right. “On the other side of that wall.” She saw his attention flicker briefly to the kids, both of them already out like lights, Noah snoring softly. Dr. Logan looked back at her, barely smiling. “Looks like they’re down for the count.”

She nodded, licked her lips. Figured she may as well preempt the first round of questions. “I didn’t do that to him.”

“I didn’t figure you had. You want some water?”

Maddie nodded again; Dr. Logan poured a glass of water, handed it to her. “Just a sip, now—”

“I know, I know.”

She sipped, handed him back the glass, catching the compassion in his expression. And a boatload of questions, waiting off to the side. He picked up a cordless phone, punched a number into it. “Calling for reinforcements,” he explained. “The midwife. How far along are you?”

“I think I’m about three weeks early—”

He frowned, then spoke to the person on the other end. “Hey, Ivy, got a surprise delivery about to happen over here, was wondering if you’d… Uh-huh.” He laughed softly, etching creases at the corners of his eyes, then sobered. “Small, from what I can tell. Early, a bit. But the head’s engaged, she’s a multip… No, I haven’t. Thought I’d wait for you to do that.” He turned to Maddie, his expression unreadable. “Third baby?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How long you been in labor?”

She opened her mouth to answer, only to be strangled by another pain. Dr. Logan leaned over to massage her shoulder, his kindness adding yet another layer of achiness to the twenty worries already suffocating her.

“Yeah, they’re real strong,” he said quietly into the phone, his eyes locked with hers, silently coaching her through the contraction. “And she’s got that look on her face…. No, not yet, but I wouldn’t wait, if I were you. Membranes ruptured, maybe ten minutes ago? I doubt she’s gonna have a long second phase. Yep, door’s unlocked.”

He disconnected the phone, set it on the nightstand. When the pain subsided, she noticed the severely dipped brows, the firm mouth turned down at the corners.

“Okay, let’s back up here a second—you think you’re three weeks early?”

She didn’t miss the edge to the question. “Yes.”

“Labor came on quick then, I take it?”

“An hour ago, maybe…ooooh!”

Without thinking, she grabbed his hand with the next contraction, squeezing shut her eyes, swallowing down the howl threatening to strangle her. She felt Dr. Logan’s free hand cradle her hard belly, the other warm and steady under the pressure of her fingers. Floating over the pain, his voice eased her through the contraction.

“Minute and a half. Good.” She looked up, grateful to see his expression had softened some. He was younger than she’d at first thought, she realized with a bit of a start. A lot younger. Mid-thirties, maybe. Weren’t country doctors all supposed to have white hair and potbellies?

The bed creaked a little when he eased himself onto the edge. Not looking at her face, he pushed back her nightgown sleeve, strapped the blood pressure cuff to her arm. “By the way, I’m not in the habit of removing a woman’s underpants without knowing her name, either.” A pair of wire-rimmed glasses appeared from his pocket; he snapped them open before settling them into place. “So,” he said, pumping up the cuff. “You are?”

“Miserable.”

He smiled a little, squeezing the bulb until she thought she’d lose the circulation in her fingers, frowning slightly as the needle hitched, dropped. “Pressure’s a bit high, Miserable.”

“Might have something to do with my bein’ a little stressed at the moment.”

He grunted. Strong, smooth fingers slipped around her wrist. He focused on his watch. “New in town?”

“You could say that. And my name’s Maddie. Maddie Kincaid.”

“And…is there a Mr. Kincaid?”

The wedding ring had been one of the first things hocked, not that it had brought much. Still, Maddie found it interesting he wasn’t making assumptions one way or the other. “Not anymore—oh, Lordy!”

“You ready to push?” she thought she heard the doctor say, but since she already was, the question seemed moot.

Ryan grabbed a set of disposable latex gloves from his bag and snapped them on. So much for waiting for Ivy to do the internal. Yes, he was the doctor, but he was also a stranger. And this gal didn’t need any more on her plate right now, that was for damn sure. But she shouldn’t be pushing before he knew if she was fully dilated or not.

“Sorry,” he said, slipping down the sheet. “I really need to—”

“It’s okay.” Marbled knuckles gripped the sheet as she panted out, “But it’s not every man I’d let do this on the first date.”

Biting back a smile, Ryan quickly examined her, relieved to find all systems go. And her blood pressure wasn’t dangerously high, just enough to bear watching. Not that deliveries made him nervous—he’d done his fair share over the past ten years—but he wasn’t real excited about doing an out-of-hospital birth with an underweight woman, three weeks early—she thought—whose case he didn’t know.

“You can go ahead and push now,” he said, leaving the sheet up and peeling off the gloves.

“Like you’ve got any say in it,” she got out, just before her face contorted again. But not with pain this time. With determination.

Ryan wriggled into a fresh pair of gloves, deciding against asking her if she wanted to get the kids up. They were zonked, nobody needed the distraction right now, and if she’d wanted them up, he had no doubt she would have made her wishes known.

Three pushes later, the baby’s head crowned. No surprise there.

“Pant, Maddie, pant! Don’t push, you hear me? Pant the baby out…yeah, like that, good. Baby’s real small…the idea is to birth it, not launch it into orbit.”

For a split second, her startled gaze met his and she looked as though she might laugh…only another surge diverted her attention.

“Pant, honey! That’s right, that’s a girl… Good, good…okay…here we go…!”

He steeled himself for her screams…but they never came. One of his patients had likened giving birth to squeezing a cannonball through the eye of a needle, an image which had pretty much burned itself into his mind. Maddie Kincaid, however, either had the highest pain threshold known to womankind or was possessed of a will Ryan decided he did not ever want to tangle with.

Two blinks later, a tiny, perfectly shaped head slid out, the cord loosely wrapped around the baby’s neck. Ryan easily untwisted it, helping the little thing to rotate before easing first one shoulder, then the other, out from underneath the pubic bone, then presented Maddie Kincaid with her new daughter—five and half pounds, tops, of flailing determination, red and wrinkled and bald, but with a set of lungs capable of waking the dead in three counties.

With a sound that was equal parts laugh and sob, Maddie thrust out her arms. “Give her to me! Is she okay? She must be okay if she’s cryin’ like that, right?”

“She’s fine,” Ryan said, trying to ignore the strange, burning tightness in the back of his throat that assailed him every time he delivered a baby. He quickly suctioned the perfect little nose and mouth, wrapped little missy in a clean towel and laid her on Maddie’s stomach. He should probably get to the Apgar scoring, but God knows millions of healthy babies had been born over the years without being graded like eggs the minute they were born.

“You’re a peanut, but you’re a real perky little peanut,” he said softly, rubbing the tiny thing’s back through the towel. Then he looked at the skinny, scrappy woman who’d just produced the now-quieter infant squirming in her arms, and something inside just melted, like when your muscles get all tense but you don’t even realize it until someone tells you to relax. “You done good, Mama. Shoot, you didn’t even work up a good sweat.”

Silver eyes, full of delight and mischief, briefly tangled with his. “Widest pelvis in the lower forty-eight,” she said, her grin eclipsing the entire lower half of her face.

And the thought came, This is no ordinary woman.

A moment later, in a flutter of skirts and long salt-and-pepper hair, Ivy Gardner burst into the room, took one look at the situation and said, “Figured you’d get the fun part, leave the cleanin’ up to me!” Except then the two-hundred-pound woman, her hair barely caught up in a couple of silver clips, swept over to the bed. “I’m Ivy, honey,” she said to Maddie, her expression softening at the sight of the baby. “Oh…wouldja look at this cutie-pie?” She let out a loud cackle. “Boy or girl?”

“A girl. Amy Rose.”

Ivy grinned. “Amy. Beloved.”

“That’s right.”

But Ivy had already turned her attention to other matters, massaging Maddie’s abdomen to facilitate the expulsion of the placenta, all the while cooing to the new baby and praising her mama.

Ryan left them to it. Ivy Gardner had delivered more than five hundred babies in the last twenty-five years, had never lost a one. Or a mother, either. And right now, he figured his patient could use some mothering herself.

His heart did a slow, painful turn in his chest as he peeled off his gloves, staring out the window. The rain had stopped, he realized, the sky pinking up some in the east.

And Ryan found himself beset with the strangest feeling that his life had just changed somehow.

He glanced over at the two children, stirring from sleep on the chair. It plumb tore him up, seeing those three—now four—in the condition they were in. What had brought Maddie here, with two small children and as pregnant as she was? She didn’t look like she was much more than a kid herself, although he supposed she was at least twenty or so. Except for the mud on the bottoms of their jeans, the kids’ clothes had been clean enough, but they were worn, probably secondhand, the little girl wearing her brother’s hand-me-downs, he guessed.

His gaze drifted back to Maddie. Scraps of light brown hair, the color unremarkable, grazed her cheeks and neck, the shoulders of her faded nightgown. Paper-thin, freckled skin stretched across prominent cheekbones, a high forehead, a straight nose. When she spoke or laughed, her voice was rusty. When she gave a person one of her direct looks, it was like staring into a bank of storm clouds.

And those storm-cloud eyes clearly said, “I’m more than life has ever given me a chance to be.”

Right now, those eyes were fastened on her newborn child, the harsh angles of her too-thin face aglow with the rush of new-mother love. Born too soon, the infant wasn’t quite “done” yet, but he was sure Maddie didn’t see the wrinkled, ruddy skin, the bit of hair plastered to the head with vernix, the little face all smushed up like a dried apple. The infant yawned, and Maddie giggled.

“You’re a funny-looking little thing,” she whispered, and Ryan almost laughed out loud.

“Mama?”

Ryan turned in time to catch another sleepy yawn. Noah’s hair had pretty much dried by now, sticking up all over his head in a mass of little horns. Ryan could relate.

“Hey, grasshopper,” he said, scooping the child off the chair, blanket and all. “Come meet your new sister.”

For an instant, the child cuddled against his chest. Too sleepy to protest, probably. He smelled sweet. Clean. Whatever was going on in Maddie Kincaid’s life, she’d given her children baths last night. An effort which had probably brought on the premature labor.

Ryan set the child, still huddled under his blanket, on the bed at Maddie’s knees. The boy rubbed his eyes, yawned again. Then frowned. “Another girl?”

“Oh, now, hush up,” Maddie said over a weary, but relieved, laugh, as Ryan deposited an owl-eyed, silent Katie next to her brother. “There’s nothing wrong with girls, silly billy—”

“Good Lord!” Ivy peeled the back of the blanket from the boy’s shoulder. “What on earth do you have on?”

“Their clothes were all wet,” Ryan said, “so I stuck ’em in the dryer. Figured they’d be okay in my shirts for a little bit.” Ivy lifted eyebrows at him. Ryan shook his head—don’t ask.

But Noah was busy angling his head at his sister, his brow beetled. “You positive she’s a girl? ’Cause she sure don’t look like one.”

Maddie reached up and ruffled his hair. “Yes, baby, I’m sure. If you don’t believe me, you just go on ahead and ask the doctor.”

“You think maybe Daddy might’ve liked her better’n Katie Grace an’ me?”

The room went so silent, you could hear the muted thumping of the dryer, clear out in the pantry. Standing at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed, Ryan didn’t move, not reacting when Ivy’s gaze shot to his. But he saw the flush leap into Maddie’s translucent, speckled cheeks, and anger suddenly knifed through him as he remembered the scars he’d seen on the child’s back. They’d been old, healed up for some months, but they hadn’t been the result of any accident.

Maddie blinked several times, then swallowed, obviously trying to figure out what to say. With her free hand, she reached up, drew her firstborn down onto her chest to place a fierce kiss in all those spikes. “Doesn’t matter now, baby. Only thing you have to remember now is how much I like you and Katie. And I love all three of you with all my heart, forever and ever and ever. You hear me?”

Ryan’s eyes burned. How many times had his own mother, gone now nearly twenty years, said the same thing to one or the other of her three sons? Except then Noah, as kids will, switched the conversation to more practical matters by announcing he was hungry.

Ivy beamed. Feedin’ and birthin’—the woman was in her element now. “Well, I just bet you are, sweetie. And Mama, too.” She turned questioning brown eyes on Ryan. “I didn’t figure you’d have anything decent in that kitchen of yours to make breakfast, so I brought my own fixin’s, if that’s all right.”

He feigned a hurt expression. “I’m not a barbarian, Ivy. There’s eggs. I think. And coffee.”

“Oh, well, then,” Ivy said on a huff. “As if you could give a nursing mother coffee, for goodness’ sake. Not to mention children.” Elbows pumping, full skirt flapping around her calves—this one had mirrors and embroidery all over the bottom tier—Ivy sailed toward the bedroom door, turning back when she hit the doorframe.

“Noah and…Katie, right?” The kids turned to her with synchronized nods. Ivy held out her hand. “Let’s go see if your clothes are dry yet before you trip in those T-shirts. Then you can help me make pancakes.”