The Prodigal M.D. Returns
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Marie Ferrarella
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15
Chapter One
The warm, late-June breeze ruffled Ben Kerrigan’s dark-blond hair as he raised his hand to knock on the door of the rustic, two-story house that stood just outside of the town of Hades, Alaska. This was the house where he had grown up. The house he had abruptly left early one morning seven years ago.
He’d been standing on the porch for the past few eternal moments, and he’d already raised his hand twice. His knuckles had made no contact with the weathered wood either time. Instead he’d dropped his hand to his side, as if all the energy had drained out of it.
Cowardice was something new for him.
For most of his thirty-four years, he’d sailed swiftly and happily through life. He’d had so much zest, it all but oozed out of him. Yes, there’d been mistakes, a whole host of them. God knew he would be the first to admit that, but somehow he managed to continue sailing because somehow, almost magically, difficulties always managed to get smoothed over.
A rueful smile twisted his lips as he stared at the door. In large part, the “smoothing over” had been due to Shayne, his older brother, the brother who had watched out for him, who’d raised him from the time their parents had died. Shayne had been the one who’d worked like a dog to put Ben through medical school so that when he graduated, he would return and work alongside him in the tiny medical clinic that was the only one of its kind within a hundred-mile radius. It was Shayne who had always been there to pick up the slack, the pieces, to fix whatever it was that needed fixing for him.
He hadn’t seen Shayne for seven years now.
Hadn’t seen Shayne or heard from him. Not since he had left town with Lila when she’d unexpectedly told him that she’d marry him, but only if they left Hades. That was seven years ago.
So he left with her. He’d run off, leaving Shayne to cope not just with the myriad of patients at the clinic, but with the two children that his ex-wife’s recent death had deposited on his doorstep—two children he hadn’t been allowed to see since almost infancy.
Then there was the woman that Ben had asked to come up to Hades. To marry him. That had evolved almost without his realizing it, at a time when his relationship with Lila had seemed impossible. The woman had written to him, commenting on an article he’d written in a travel magazine. He wrote back. One thing led to another and it turned into a love affair rooted in words. Photographs had been exchanged, but they had never laid eyes on each other before he’d proposed and she had accepted.
Looking back, he knew he’d been impetuous, but that was the way he’d always conducted himself. That word, more than any other, best described him. Impetuous. He’d tried to work on this in recent years. Especially this past one, after Lila walked out on him again.
The back of his neck prickled and he rubbed his hand over it, shifting uncomfortably, but remaining where he was. In front of the door. Knowing he had to knock, yet not being able to quite get himself to do it.
Having Lila walk out on him had taught him that being impetuous sometimes carried with it undesirable consequences. Waking up alone in their house had accomplished what years of Shayne’s lectures hadn’t. It had brought home the fact that he needed to become a little more responsible.
Hell, a lot more responsible. And he had, as time went on. Remaining in Seattle, he’d managed to attach himself to a very lucrative medical practice.
Working there with four other partners soon gave him everything he’d ever wanted.
Everything except a feeling of satisfaction.
Satisfaction continued to elude him, and this bothered him no matter how much he told himself it didn’t.
As each month passed, his feeling of emptiness became stronger.
And the women who passed through his life didn’t seem to matter. Sadly, they became interchangeable, their faces never leaving an impression on his mind. On his soul. Something else gnawed away at him. Something that went beyond primal appetites. He realized that there had to be more to life than this.
Ben began to think of himself in terms of the main character in Coleridge’s epic poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Though his outward demeanor never changed, inside was a different story. Inside he needed to atone for what he had done. He needed to find peace.
And then one evening, it came to him. He understood the source of his unrest. And, quite possibly, saw the source of his eventual healing.
On one of the public stations, there’d been a week devoted to Mother Nature’s natural disasters. Leading off had been a story about cave-ins. One of them had lasted perhaps a whole ten seconds and had occurred in Hades, his hometown. It wasn’t even a recent cave-in, just part of some old footage captured by a local station about mine cave-ins around the country and how they still occurred with more frequency than anyone was happy about.
That night, as he sat on the edge of his chair, recalling events from his childhood, he thought of Shayne. Shayne, who’d undoubtedly been in the thick of it, working madly to help with the wounded. Shayne, battling to make things right, the way he always did, and doing it almost single-handedly. Because that was the way Shayne was, a little larger than life and working for the good of others.
Ben had switched off the set and sat in the dark, thinking. Wrestling with his conscience. Shayne had always been there for him. It was time to be there for Shayne.
On the trip from Seattle to Hades, the last leg of which had been on a private plane he’d managed to hire for the drop-off, Ben had gone over this scenario more than a hundred times in his mind. He would appear on Shayne’s doorstep, knock and then be enveloped in a reunion. He figured there’d be an initial awkwardness, quickly followed by his own heartfelt apology and Shayne’s swift forgiveness. Shayne had forgiven him before.
He’d been confident that things would go back to the way they had once been.
But now that he was standing here, with the sun still casting shadows on the ground despite its being close to nine o’clock at night, he wasn’t so confident anymore. The cheerful, devil-may-care attitude that had been the hallmark of his entire life had almost entirely deserted him. In truth, his confidence had been in rather short supply this past year, although he’d done his best to hide it.
Ben stared at the door. Damn it, he should have remained in contact with Shayne over the years. He should have sent a card that first Christmas, a card with a lengthy apology for having left his brother with such a mess to deal with. He’d been almost narcissistic then. He wasn’t now.
Yet hindsight didn’t change the past.
And each year that he hadn’t sent that card or made that apology had made it that much harder for him to reestablish contact. Under normal circumstances he might not be making this attempt now.
But that cave-in program had brought things home to him in large, glaring letters and, what was more important, he now had a sense of his own mortality. A month ago he’d almost become a statistic. Another statistic in a lengthy list of traffic fatalities. He had been in the same kind of accident that had claimed the lives of his parents all those years ago. He felt as if someone or something was putting him on notice. He had allowed too much time to go by and wanted to spend the rest of his days with the only family he had: his brother, Shayne.
He needed to set things right. If that meant crawling, so be it. He’d crawl. Shayne had earned it.
Taking a deep breath, Ben raised his hand, and this time he knocked. Knocked hard. Before his courage fled again, before his arm returned to the consistency of overcooked spaghetti.
He heard a noise on the other side. Shayne, he thought. He hoped he hadn’t woken him up. Shayne was prone to grabbing catnaps whenever he could. There were huge demands placed on the town’s only doctor.
A fresh wave of guilt swept over Ben. I’ll make it right, he vowed. Shayne wasn’t going to have to shoulder this alone anymore.
As the door opened, Ben’s mind suddenly went blank. He searched for the right words that would put the past behind them and allow them to move forward. And yet, he couldn’t form an appropriate greeting. Especially when Ben found himself looking not at his brother but at a woman. A slender, petite woman with long blond hair, lively blue eyes and a heart-shaped face that seemed to exude warmth. The breathtaking sight nudged at something buried deep within his memory banks. But at the moment he couldn’t capture the elusive fragments.
“You’re not Shayne,” he heard himself say rather dumbly.
Sydney Elliott Kerrigan stopped drying her hands and stared at the man standing rather uncertainly on her doorstep. Strangers were not a common occurrence in Hades. The town and its surrounding area were not exactly on the beaten path. Outsiders did not usually trickle in unless to visit a relative.
Yet, as she looked at him, some vague familiarity fluttered along the perimeter of her memory, softly whispering that this man was not a stranger. She knew him. But from where? When? Seattle? No connection sprang to mind. She replied, “No, I’m not Shayne,” to his surprised statement. Her smile widened as she struggled to place his face in the pages of her memory. “Are you looking for the doctor?”
Ben made no answer and wondered if he had the right house. He took a step back to glance at the front of the house, even though he knew in his soul that he hadn’t made a mistake, hadn’t lost his way.
But if this was still Shayne’s house, who was this? She wasn’t anyone who’d been living in Hades when he’d left town.
Sydney drew in her breath as her memory clicked into place.
The tall man standing before her, now slightly older and more sober looking, had been in the photograph she’d held in her hand as she’d gotten off the plane seven years ago. She’d come to Hades looking for a new life. Looking for happiness. On the strength of his letters and his proposal, she’d quit her job, terminated the lease on her apartment and packed all her worldly goods into a moving van to send them off to Hades.
Her heart stopped for a moment as recognition took hold. This was the face of the man who’d wooed her to come out here and be his wife.
The face of the man who had not been here to meet her plane or her.
She needed one final verification. “Ben?”
How did she know him? Had Shayne mentioned him, shown her a picture? “Yes, I—”
And then Ben stopped, his eyes widening ever so slightly as, out of the blue, his mind made a connection.
“Sydney?”
But even as he asked, he knew who she was. Sydney Elliott. He’d seen exactly one photograph of her. She’d sent it to him in one of her long, eloquent handwritten letters. Curiosity outweighed his guilt. What was she still doing here after all this time? He had just assumed that Shayne would have met her plane the way he’d requested, explained the situation to her and then sent her back home with airfare and apologies.
Before he could speak further, Ben found himself enveloped in the woman’s warm embrace. Stunned, his breath caught in his throat before he awkwardly put his arms around her.
Had she been waiting here all this time for him?
No, that wasn’t possible. That went beyond the patience of Job and slipped straight into the realm of pure fantasy. There had to be some kind of explanation.
Maybe he’d made a mistake.
“Who is it, Sydney?” Shayne Kerrigan called out to his wife as he walked into the living room from the kitchen. Dog-tired after the hours he’d put in at the clinic, he sincerely hoped that this was a social call instead of someone needing his professional help.
Loosening her embrace, Sydney stepped back and looked at Shayne. “Have we got a fatted calf we could put on the spit?”
He dearly loved his wife, but he wasn’t in the best of moods right now. Frowning, he came forward, crossing to the door. “What are you talking about, woman? What—”
Shayne stopped dead, staring at the man who was standing beside his wife. He felt as if he’d just seen a ghost.
And was still seeing him.
“Hello, Shayne.” Ben flashed a broad smile at his brother. His insides felt like Jell-O. He supposed it was a sign that he’d grown up. He was no longer ignoring the consequences of his actions. And he certainly didn’t feel himself to be the center of the universe. Though he wanted to shake his brother’s hand, he found himself unable to move.
Shayne squared his shoulders, his face darkening. “What are you doing here?”
“Standing in our doorway,” Sydney replied cheerfully. She obviously wanted to be the peacemaker. Hooking her arms through Ben’s, she drew him across the threshold and into the house. “Come in, Ben.” Releasing him, she closed the door behind her brother-in-law, acting as if there was no history, no awkward past to overcome. “Have you eaten? We finished dinner a couple of hours ago, but there’s plenty to—”
Shayne had not moved an inch since recognition had set in. “Get out,” he ordered, his voice low, his lips barely moving.
Sydney’s head jerked around in Shayne’s direction. Bad blood or not, she seemed stunned to hear her husband’s inhospitable words. Shayne had been a taciturn man when she’d first arrived, as warm as one of the intricately carved totem poles that could be found dotting the harsh terrain. But beneath the hard exterior, she had discovered the soul of a man who cared, who was there for his neighbors and his patients, giving more than he ever thought to get back.
Locked within himself at an early age, Shayne had never been able to express his feelings in any way verbally other than what amounted to a monosyllabic growl. His caring came out in the way he tended to the sick and the wounded. Sydney had been the one who had helped him out of his self-made prison, who had helped him bond with the two children who hardly even knew their father.
During the seven years that she had been married to him, Shayne had slowly become more at ease with himself. While no one could have accused him of exactly being warm and toasty, his enormous capacity for compassion was no longer a matter of question but of record.
She frowned at him now. “He’s your brother, Shayne.”
Shayne looked at his wife in surprise. “He’s the man who ran out on you, Sydney—on both of us—with nothing more than a note.” His anger growing, he glanced at his younger brother. “One lousy note and nothing more. Not in seven whole years,” he emphasized, moving closer to Ben. Cutting Sydney out of his line of vision. “What’s the matter, Ben? Are you in trouble? Do you need money? Is someone after you? Some woman you promised the moon to and who isn’t satisfied with being left behind like some discarded tissue?”
He had that coming to him, Ben thought. That and a great deal more. And if Shayne gave him a chance, he’d say so. He’d apologize in every way he knew how. Life was too short to leave things the way they were.
“No, I just wanted to see you. To tell you I was sorry.”
Shayne gave no indication that the words made any impression on him. His brother continued to glare at him. “And then what?”
Ben felt as if he was standing at the very edge of a cliff, overlooking choppy waters. Any moment he could lose his footing and fall off. But he hadn’t come here to play it safe. He’d come here to make amends.
“That’s up to you.”
Shayne snorted, shaking his head. Unconvinced. He knew Ben could turn on the charm and let it flow like others turned on a faucet. He’d seen his brother do it over and over again, avoiding penalties for his actions from the time he was old enough to widen his soulful eyes.
“Very tender, Ben, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
“Shayne.” Sydney tugged on his arm.
“Damn it, Sydney, this is the man who jilted you. Who treated you as if you were just so much disposable dirt.”
“This is the man who’s responsible for the greatest happiness I’ve ever known,” she informed Shayne firmly. “If it hadn’t been for Ben, I would never have come up here. I would never have been in a position where I couldn’t just pick up and go back to what had been my home. If not for Ben, I would never have met our two beautiful children, never been blessed with having them in my life.”
Her eyes held his. “If not for Ben, I would never have met you.” Her voice softening, she laced her fingers through his, her eyes never leaving his face. “I would never have given birth to our daughter or been as sublimely happy as I am right at this very moment.”
The news hit Ben like a ton of bricks. The town’s men outnumbered the women seven to one. Given Shayne’s personality, he’d never thought his brother would get married. Ben’s jaw dropped as he looked from the petite woman to his brother. “You married my brother?”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” Sydney said with a laugh that warmed the room. “Shayne was very lost.”
Originally, she’d intended to remain until her furniture arrived. She was going to tell the movers to turn around and take everything back to Seattle. But by the time her furniture came, she had lost her heart to the stern doctor and his two motherless children. There was no way she would ever have gone back.
“And he definitely needed a woman’s touch, because he wasn’t doing all that hot on his own,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes.
“I would have been fine,” Shayne informed her, softening despite himself. “In time.”
She slid her arms through her husband’s and leaned into him. “There’s not that much time available in the whole world,” she teased. And then, feigning a look of innocence, she asked, “Can he stay, Shayne? Please?”
The anger was already fading. When it came to Sydney, Shayne found he had trouble saying no. Even when he felt he should.
And when he allowed himself to admit it in the secret places of his soul, he had missed his brother a great deal. Worried about him and wondered what he was doing and where he had gone. It was like a wound that had refused to heal. Not knowing, not having any answers, had kept it that way.
“Yeah,” Shayne mumbled grudgingly, his eyes still only on Sydney. “He can stay.”
