him. Blue has an incredible zest for life. I’d like for him to be able to run through it, not restricted in any way.”
He was a realist, weighing the downside rather than the up. Whatever optimism he’d once possessed, the car accident had taken away from him. “That might not be possible.”
Raven refused to allow any negative thoughts to enter into this. She had to believe the surgery was going to be a success. Anything else was unthinkable.
“It will be possible, Dr. Sullivan, if you come on board.”
Just yesterday, he thought, she’d been skeptical, doubting not his ability but his heart. He wondered if he should tell her that he didn’t have one. “Despite my emotional distance?”
“After due consideration, I don’t think that’ll be a problem. You see, Blue likes you.” They’d talked about it last night and the boy seemed perfectly willing to put his fate in Sullivan’s hands. She placed a lot of stock in rapport. “If Blue likes you, you can’t help but like him back.” That, to her, was a given. She’d never met anyone who hadn’t warmed to the boy, usually instantly. “It’s a gift he got from my mother.”
“Whether I like him or not has nothing to do with the surgery.”
There was a knowing look in her eyes he found annoying. As if she was privy to some secret he wasn’t allow to know. “I disagree.”
Peter frowned as he typed in his password. She’d almost made him forget it. When was the last time that had happened? He was nothing if not organized.
“You’re free to disagree until the cows come home, that doesn’t alter the outcome.”
She laughed, a wave of nostalgia undulating over her. “Until the cows come home? I haven’t heard that expression since I was a little girl—and they really did come home.” She saw his eyebrows knit themselves together in a quizzical wavy line despite plainly visible efforts to resist curiosity. Maybe the man was a little more human than he liked to think. “We lived on a farm. My parents wanted the simple life.”
“Songbird, Inc. is a Fortune 500 company.”
“They wanted the simple life,” Raven repeated, emphasizing the crucial word, “but it kind of got complicated along the way.” Her parents had been wonderful people, taken much too soon. She wanted the whole world to know just how noble, how good they really were. Even this cynical man. “Not so they lost any of their initial values. They just had a lot bigger house to place those values in toward the end. My mother actually did sew every prototype, every new garment she created.”
He paused, trying to imagine the life the woman in his office must have led. It was probably something of a merger between latter day hippies and the captains of industry.
“What did your father add to this mix?”
“He played guitar while she sewed.” If she closed her eyes, she could almost see him. Sitting by the white stone fireplace, playing one of the songs he’d written while her mother worked on a loom, creating the fabric that would eventually find itself fashioned into a dress or a blouse or a scarf.
Nobody lived like that, he thought. Raven Songbird probably gleaned the scenario from some afternoon movie written for TV. One in which the woman worked while the man sat noodling around on some instrument or other. “Very productive.”
There was that cynical tone again. Hadn’t this man ever had a good day in his life? “Actually, it inspired her.”
Peter heard the defensive note in Raven’s voice. He realized it probably sounded as if he was criticizing her family. She had enough to deal with. “That wasn’t meant to be critical.”
“Yes it was,” she contradicted, then followed with an absolving smile. “But you can’t help that. You’re from a whole different world.” Considering what he did for a living, he probably had no idea what “mellowing out” meant. “There’s a great deal of pressure involved in working toward becoming a doctor.”
“There’s a great deal of pressure once you become one, too.” Peter stopped abruptly. He had no idea why he’d added that or why he’d shared a single feeling with this diminutive woman who somehow still managed to come across as slightly larger than life.
Needing a diversion, if only for a second, he punched in several letters on the keyboard. His schedule for the next two months appeared on the screen. He scanned it. It was more than full. Work, although not his salvation, kept him from dwelling on his loss and the way his days and evenings felt so hollow. And the times when a fourteen-hour day wasn’t enough to fill that hole, several times a year he volunteered his services to Doctors Without Borders, a nonprofit organization that provided free medical care to the poor of the world.
As it stood right now, there was hardly enough room on his schedule to fit in a breath, much less another challenging surgery. He glanced up from the monitor. By all rights, he should turn Raven Songbird away. Give her and her vivacious personality a referral.
But as he began to frame the words, he made the mistake of looking at her. Specifically, at her eyes. There was something eloquent and tender within the blue orbs, not just the humor with which she peppered her words, but something more. Something that made him feel that if he turned her and her brother away, he would be guilty of an unspeakable crime.
Peter was far more surprised than she was to hear himself say, “Why don’t you bring Blue back tomorrow morning and we’ll see about getting back on the right footing.”
He watched, mesmerized as the smile on her face blossomed until he felt as if it spread to him, as well.
“What time?”
He had consultations lined up back to back both at the hospital and in his private office across the street from Blair. The two open three-hour blocks had surgeries packed into them. There wasn’t even time for lunch. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d eaten in snatches, between patients. “How does seven in the morning sound?”
“Early.”
He sighed, thinking, looking for an alternative. His last surgery was at five. If all went well, it would end at eight. “There’s nothing open until—”
She didn’t let him finish. Her bright smile cut through his words before he could get them all out. “Early’s good,” she assured him. “I’m usually up at five. Blue doesn’t sleep in much later than that.”
“Five?”
“Five.”
“Voluntarily?” He tried not to stare at her mouth. The smile made it difficult not to.
She nodded. “It’s a holdover from living on the farm. You had to be up early to take care of chores before school started.”
He shook his head and laughed, realizing that for the first time in weeks, he was actually amused by something. “This is beginning to sound like pages from Little House on the Prairie.”
Raven’s laugh echoed in the wake of his. He found himself liking the sound a little more each time he heard it. He usually wasn’t aware of laughter, because he usually wasn’t aware of any kind of happiness, other than when he told members of a family that the patient would pull through. Ordinarily, he left that sort of thing up
