Marie Ferrarella - The M.D. Meets His Match

The stranger’s smile widened, becoming even more unsettlingly seductive and convincing April that she’d hit the nail right on the head about him. This was no doctor, this was an opportunist at the very least.

“After all the money my brother invested in medical school, I’d better be able to do more than just ‘play’ doctor.” He took another step toward her. “I’d damn well better be able to be one.”

The suspicion didn’t abate. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing about Hades that would lure a person to come visit it. Hades wasn’t known for anything, had no natural wonders to offer in exchange for the hardship of seeking it out, and it was as far off the usual route as was humanly possible without falling off the edge of the earth.

Yes, the coal mines were still productive, and nicely so, but if the man’s hands were any indication, the only kind of physical work he had probably ever engaged in was ridding women of their outer clothing. And quickly, too, no doubt.

April raised her chin, tucking her hand behind her back. “What’s a doctor doing in Hades?”

“Visiting,” he answered succinctly. Why was she so skittish? Jimmy wondered. It was just her wrist he was offering to examine, not the rest of her. Although that would undoubtedly be richly rewarding. “I won’t charge you.”

A glint of anger highlighted the suspicious light in her eyes. “For what?”

Had she lost the thread of the conversation? She didn’t strike him as the simple type, but looks were deceiving, even mouthwatering ones such as hers. “For looking at your wrist.”

She snorted, retreating behind the huge, scarred oak desk that had belonged to Gran’s father. Mail was still scattered along its surface. She had work to tend to and this was wasting time.

“Good, and I won’t charge you for looking at yours,” she retorted.

Although, all things considered, April secretly allowed, the stranger’s wrist would have been the very last thing she would think to look at. The rest of him was a good deal more interesting and arresting than his wrist. Apart from a handful of men, her brother included, the male population of Hades would not have stopped any hearts. This man certainly would.

Stop hearts and set pulses racing, and she had a feeling he knew it, too. He was about a foot taller than she was, with dark black hair and eyes the color of the waters off the cape in the spring. The way he held himself, with an easy, comfortable grace, reminded her of one of the Native Americans who’d come into the post office when she was a little girl. Gran had told her he’d once been a chief of a tribe that had since died out. To her, the man had seemed larger than life.

That was undoubtedly what this man was, too, larger than life. Except in his case, that description would involve his own view of himself.

Well, she had better things to do than to stroke his ego. Deliberately, she looked down at the mail on the desk.

As he watched the woman in front of him, Jimmy’s grin widened a little more. She had spirit, no question about it. He liked that. There was nothing duller than a woman who just fell into his arms. Ever since he could remember, he’d always enjoyed a challenge. It kept him on his toes and made him feel alive.

He leaned an elbow on the desk, as comfortable as if he’d been coming here for years. “You know, you’re the first unfriendly person I’ve met in Hades.”

If he was trying to embarrass her, he was going to have to do a lot better than that, April thought. “Good,” she sniffed, turning her back on him. “I never liked being part of the crowd.”

That had been his first impression of her, Jimmy thought. Someone not part of a crowd. He leaned forward, watching the way her bottom strained against her jeans as she bent over the mail bag. He had a keen knack for being able to cleanly divorce himself from his professional side outside the hospital. And this lady certainly deserved his undivided attention.

“Oh, you might be in a crowd, but you’d never be taken for being part of it. You’d stand out no matter where you were.”

April looked at him over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing. “Is that supposed to impress me?”

“No, that’s not supposed to do anything,” he told her with such unabashed honesty, she could almost believe him. “It’s just an observation. So far, we’ve ascertained that you stand out in a crowd, you’re unfriendly—” his eyes flickered to her wrist “—and you wrap bandages worse than a first year medical student.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that he and his observations were free to leave the post office at any time, preferably now. But the words never had a chance to emerge as the man took charge of the moment as well as her wrist by taking the end of the bandage and deftly unwrapping it.

April caught her lower lip between her teeth to keep the startled yelp of pain from escaping her lips.

Pulling her hand out of his grasp would prove to be hurtful, so she left it where it was. Instead she glared at him. “Just what do you—”

The wound appeared to be first degree and didn’t look infected. Still, he bet it smarted more than a little. “That’s rather angry-looking.”

That wasn’t the only thing, she thought indignantly. Just who the hell did he think he was? “You want to see angry-looking, just raise your eyes a little, mister. Just what do you think—”

The door swung open behind them. “Jimmy, what’s taking you so—” The woman entering the post office stopped abruptly as the sight registered. “Oh, I should have known.” A dimple melded into her expression. “Can’t let you out of my sight, can I?”

Startled, April looked up to see Alison LeBlanc crossing to them. The dark-haired woman she’d met briefly when she’d gone to see Dr. Kerrigan about her grandmother flashed a rueful smile at her.

Seeing them side by side, April was struck by the similarities between the two people in her grandmother’s post office. Although Alison was a good deal shorter, their coloring and the way they held themselves was almost startlingly identical.

April looked from one to the other. “Are you two related?”

Her would-be healer laughed. “Only by the cruel whimsy of fate.” With one hand still firmly holding April’s, he wrapped his arm around Alison’s slender shoulders and gave her a quick hug. “This is my baby sister.” There was teasing affection in his eyes as he regarded Alison for a moment. “She’s turned out rather nicely, all things considered.”

Alison shot him a withering look that somehow still managed to give the impression of affection. “If you mean considering that you were my brother, you’re dead-on. I turned out nicely thank-you-very-much despite you, not because of you.”

A faint pang drifted through April. This, she thought, she was familiar with. Or at least she had been before she’d moved away. It was the kind of relationship she’d had with her own two siblings, especially with Max. There were times when she truly missed it, though she would admit that to no one because to do so would mean she was vulnerable. If there was one thing she refused to be in any manner conceivable, it was vulnerable. She knew what vulnerability did to a woman.

Alison looked at her apologetically. “I’m sorry, I hope Jimmy hasn’t been bothering you. I just sent him out to get the office mail. I should have realized that once he got a good look at you, he’d forget what he came for and try to charm you the way he does every other woman he encounters.”

Just as she thought. The man was all flash, no substance. April congratulated herself on her perception.

Rather than look annoyed at having his game plan revealed, the way April would have expected, Jimmy merely laughed.

“I wasn’t trying to charm her, I was doing a consultation.” To prove it, Jimmy raised the now bandageless wrist he was holding. “The lady seems to have injured herself.”

Alison quickly examined the wound. “I’ve got some ointment for that at the clinic.”

“Gran’s got some in her medicine cabinet,” April countered, indicating the upper floor with her eyes.

“Make sure you put it on,” Alison advised. “What happened?”

“Nothing to merit all this fuss.” Thoroughly embarrassed now, April tucked her wrist behind her back again. She changed the subject before Alison felt compelled to pursue the matter. “So I take it he’s really your brother?”

“Until I can find someone to take him off my hands, yes. He’s here visiting me.”

Jimmy nodded to confirm his sister’s statement, his eyes still on the tempting postmistress who wouldn’t give him a tumble. “I wanted to see firsthand just what it is that keeps her here, other than Jean-Luc and that stubborn streak of hers that never lets her admit she’s wrong even when she is.”

Alison pursed her lips in a mock frown. “It’s a family trait.”

Jimmy was quick to agree. “Right, our sister Lily has it, too.”

Beneath that devil-may-care attitude there wasn’t a more stubborn member of the family than Jimmy, Alison thought. It was Jimmy who made a point of volunteering his time at homeless shelters, telling none of them. She would have never known if she hadn’t accidentally seen him at a shelter herself. The only notoriety he wanted was that of a playboy, but he was far deeper than that. He had a heart that cared and which was every bit as important as his skilled surgeon’s hands. But that was the part of him he wanted no one to know.

“Like you don’t,” Alison replied.

He made his appeal to April, not his sister. “I am the soul of reasonableness.”

Alison merely sighed, shaking her head. She turned to April. “If you give me Shayne’s mail, we’ll be out of your hair,” she promised.

It struck April as odd to have the doctor referred to so familiarly, but then she’d forgotten the townspeople’s penchant. Everyone in Hades was on a first-name basis with everyone else.

“Right here.” Reaching over the counter to the tallest stack, she pushed it toward Alison. “There might be more.” April glanced at semifull sack on the floor. “I haven’t finished sorting today’s pouch yet.”

“Because of the hand,” Alison concluded.

April spared Alison’s brother a look that said it all. “Because I was interrupted.”

If there was a mild accusation in that statement, Alison seemed to ignore it. She merely smiled easily and glanced affectionately at her brother. There was no mistaking the pride in her eyes. “You’ll find that Jimmy does that a lot.”

That sounded ominously like a promise to her. Or at the very least, a premonition of things to come. “Why, is he staying on?”

The next question that came to her lips, if the response to the first was affirmative, was “Why?” but she told herself that it was none of her business. If Alison’s brother actually was a doctor, having him here would certainly be a welcome relief to Shayne. If her visit to the clinic had been any indication of the way things normally went there, Hades’s only physician was completely overworked.

“Just until my ship sails,” Jimmy informed her blithely. “Cruise ship,” he interjected when the quizzical look on April’s face remained. “I’m just here for two weeks.” It occurred to him that he hadn’t even given her his name—or gotten hers. “James Quintano.” Leaning over the counter, he put his hand out toward her.

April paused a moment before finally placing her hand in his. With Alison watching, she couldn’t very well remain aloof, although it might do the man some good to see that there were women who didn’t fall into his lap just because he was good-looking.