McCallum Quintuplets (6 page)

“But you are going to the open house?”

“Are you kidding? Did you see the address he wrote on the back of that card? The guy has got to have built himself a
mansion.
Of course I'm going. How often do I get to see a mansion?”

Ian walked to the bar, set down his mug, picked up the soda bottles in preparation of returning them to the small refrigerator. “Have aspirations of grandeur, do you?” he asked. “Madeline's mansion. Okay, I admit it. It does have a certain ring to it.”

“Yes, it does, doesn't it? But, no, I don't think so. Who raises children in a mansion? And I'll bet the local mansion-owners' organization frowns on swing sets in the backyard and bicycles in the driveway. Although I do want a house someday, definitely. My balcony just isn't large enough to grow all the herbs I want, and there's
nothing like homegrown vegetables and fruits. No preservatives, no pesticides. We only ate organically grown food in the commune, you know. You've never really tasted broccoli until you've tasted homegrown.”

“I've never really tasted broccoli, remember,” Ian said, faking a horrified shiver. “All green and lumpy. I can't even look at it too long. Hey,” he said, trying to change the subject before Maddie began one of her lectures on the rip-roaring benefits of beta-carotene, “don't you want to open your present?”

Madeline's head came up, and she sniffed like a hound gone on point. “Present? Present? I have a present? I thought dinner was my present.”

“Dinner? For the big thirty-fifth? Oh, I don't think so,” Ian teased as Madeline put her mug on the table, slid her feet to the floor, stood up, approached him with narrowed eyelids.

“Where is it?” she asked him, as there was no obvious big box with a ribbon and bow on it anywhere in the living room. “Come on, Russell, talk to me. Where's my present?”

“Oh, no. It's not going to be that easy. Remember the rules?”

“Ian, you wouldn't! I want my present. I don't want to—oh, all right.” She grabbed his hand and led him over to the couch, told him to sit down. She sat beside him, one leg crossed beneath her, and leaned toward him. Maddie and her new perfume and her big eyes and her—yes, dammit, her cleavage—leaned toward him. She took a deep breath—and there was that cleavage again—let it out slowly and asked, “Animal, vegetable or mineral?”

Ian waggled his eyebrows. “Mineral.”

“No! Mineral? Really?” Maddie wriggled a little on the couch in her excitement. Probably because she hated
him, liked to see him suffer. Worse, she was oblivious to the fact that he was suffering. Just looking at her, having her so close to him, was putting him through the tortures of the damned. But she couldn't know that. How could she know that? Up until tonight, he hadn't known it.

“Second question,” he prompted her.

“Well, I'm not going to ask if it's bigger than a bread box. Not since you said it's mineral. Unless you bought me a hunk of lava, or moon rocks, or something.”

“Damn, why didn't I think of that?” Ian said, slapping a hand to his forehead.

“Very funny.” Maddie tipped her head to one side, obviously cudgeling her brain to come up with the best question she could ask.

“Okay,” she said after a few moments, moments during which Ian wondered if there were any monasteries near Austin, because he probably should go find one, put himself behind locked doors before he just gave up, grabbed Maddie and kissed her senseless. “Second question. Put it on a table or wear it?”

Ian grinned. “We're talking about you, right?” he asked her.

“Yes, we're talking about me.”

“Okay, then the answer is both. Because everything you wear eventually ends up on a table, or a sink, or—and this happens a lot—a floor.”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” Madeline retorted, her forehead wrinkling as she went back to concentrating on formulating what would be her final question.

Ian was caught between this completely unexpected animal attraction and thinking about how the so brilliant, so professional Dr. Sheppard could sometimes resemble nothing so much as a little girl on Christmas morning.
“Come on, Maddie,” he pushed. “There is a time limit, you know.”

She waved her hands in front of her, saying, “I know, I know, don't rush me. Okay, I've got it,” she said then, sitting back slightly, grabbing her bent knee. “Question three. Planned, or just because you had to have one?”

“Huh?”

She rolled her eyes. “I said, planned, or just because you had to have one. Tell me, Ian. My present—did you buy it just for me or just so you had something to give me?”

Were the walls starting to close in on him? Certainly the room was getting smaller, shrunken down to little more than the space needed for one couch and two bodies—one excited…and the other
excited.
And probably about to blow this one, big time.

Ian played for time. “The rule, Dr. Sheppard, is an either-or question. Simple, direct, to the point—or points, since I get to choose between two. Your question comes under the final exam for Psych one-oh-one, and it's an essay question, no doubt about it.”

“No, it's not, Ian. It's either-or, just like in the rules. And besides, it's my birthday. So answer the question. Please?”

He felt one side of his mouth drawing up into a crooked smile. What the hell. He might as well go for it. Wasn't honesty always supposed to be the best policy, or something like that? “I bought it for you, Maddie,” he said. “Just for you, just because I wanted to, okay?”

“Okay,” she said quietly, then sat back, folded her hands in her lap. “No more questions, not that I've been able to guess.”

“Then I can give you the present now? You're sure? And remember, no shaking of the box, turning of the box
upside-down, rattling of the box. None. Or have we forgotten the oil lantern I bought you two years ago? Remember? The one I so helpfully put oil in before giving it to you? I still can't get the stain out of the carpet.”

“I can't spill
mineral,
Ian,” she said, slightly miffed. “Now come on, I want to see my present.”

Ian reached behind him, into the space between the arm of the couch and the cushion, and drew out a fairly flat, oblong box wrapped in red foil, topped with a gold ribbon bow. He still didn't believe he'd gone into the jewelry store, let alone bought Maddie's present there. Not when he'd been certain he was going to buy her a telescope for her balcony.

“Here you go, Maddie. Mineral, smaller than a bread box, bound to be found on the kitchen counter within a week. Happy birthday, honey.”

Madeline looked at him. Looked at the box. Looked at him. Looked at the box.

“Take it,” Ian told her, laughing. “It doesn't bite, honest.”

She took it, held it gingerly, as if maybe he was wrong, and it could bite. “Jewelry? You bought me
jewelry?
Oh, Ian, I—”

“Don't thank me yet, Maddie, you might not like it.”

“Not like it? Ian, how could I not like it? You bought me
jewelry.
Last year you bought me a food processor. Oh, not that I don't
love
it, because I do—but
jewelry?
I think I'm going to cry.”

“Rule six hundred and twelve, Maddie,” he told her. “No crying.”

Madeline blinked rapidly. “I don't think I can promise that, Ian. Not after the last few days I've had. I barely know who I am anymore.”

Ian frowned, confused. “You, too? That is—what do you mean, Maddie? Your clothes?”

“My clothes, yes. My clothes, my hair, the lipstick I'm wearing. Strangers asking me to dinner. Going dancing. You giving me jewelry. I'm probably going to wake up any minute now, but not before I open this present.”

With that, she popped off the stick-on bow, then ran a fingernail beneath the tape holding the paper on the box. Slowly, while Ian fought the urge to grab the box from her, offer her a really cool telescope in exchange, Madeline removed the paper until she was holding the slim velvet-covered box in front of her with both hands.

“Here goes,” she said, drawing in her breath, opening the box. “Oh! Oh…oh,
Ian!
” She touched the bracelet with one hand, stroking its length, not taking it out of the box. “Oh, Ian, I…I…oh, Ian!”

“They call them tennis bracelets, for reasons the salesman couldn't give me,” he said, clearing his throat halfway through the explanation, because something was stuck there, constricting his airway. “He also said all women like diamonds. You do like diamonds, don't you, Maddie?”

He'd been speaking to her bowed head, as she kept stroking the length of diamonds set in gold. And then she lifted her head, looked at him, her huge brown eyes bright with tears. “I can't believe this. Your birthday's in two weeks. How am I going to top this, Ian? Do you even want your own yacht?”

He relaxed, just a little. Smiled, just a little. “So you like it?”

“I
love
it,” she told him as he took the box from her, freed the bracelet from the small elastic bands that held it in place. She put out her right arm, and he slipped the
bracelet around her wrist, fastened the clasp. Lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it.

Hey, anything Blake Ritter did, he could do—and better.

“Thank you, Ian,” Madeline said, using the tip of her left index finger to stroke the diamonds, watching as the bracelet slipped round and round her wrist. “I'm never going to take it off. Never.”

And then she leaned forward, laid her hands on his shoulders and kissed him square on the mouth.

Not that she meant it to be anything more than a friendly kiss. A thank-you kiss. A kiss between friends.

Right?

And who cared? It was a kiss. It was on the mouth. Her hands were on his shoulders.

And his brain went on Stun.

Ian slid his arms around Madeline's back as he drew her closer so that she was kneeling on the cushions, then falling forward, sprawling on top of him as he angled backward until his head was on one arm of the couch.

He pulled back slightly, angled his head as he caught her mouth once more, caught it as she opened her lips, probably to tell him to let her go. He couldn't let her tell him to let her go.

With the tip of his tongue, he traced her lips, skimmed over her teeth…plunged into her mouth. He moved his arms so that his hands gripped her on either side of her waist, tensed as she moved so that she now lay completely on top of him, her right leg slipping between his thighs.

She had to feel him, be aware of how aroused he was, how much this definitely was
not
a kiss between friends, old pals. Buddies.

He let his hands find the hem of her blouse, that softest silk blouse that could be burlap once compared with Mad
die's silken skin. His fingertips burned as he stroked her sides, skimmed his hands higher, found his way across her back to the hooks holding her bra shut.

With a dexterity born of long practice—not that he wanted Maddie thinking about that right now—he opened the hooks. One, two, three. He moved his hands again, wishing he didn't feel so nervous, like a sixteen-year-old in the back seat of his dad's Oldsmobile.

His right hand closed over Maddie's breast, and he swallowed the sigh she breathed into him.

Could this be happening? He and Maddie, together? He and Maddie, about to make love? After all these years…

“What the hell?” Ian tensed, feeling the tingle against his stomach.

Maddie pushed herself away from him, straddling him as she sat up, reached under her blouse, pulled out the vibrating pager she'd clipped to her waistband.

“A pager? You took your
pager
along tonight? You told me you weren't on call. Dammit, Maddie, you're not on duty every last damn minute, you know.”

But she wasn't listening. She was already disentangling herself, those long legs leaving him so that he lay there, feeling angry, frustrated, confused…and not a little stupid.

“It's the hospital,” she told him, heading for the phone, punching in numbers. The perfect professional, just as if she hadn't been lying on top of him fifteen seconds ago, being groped, giving every indication that she was enjoying being groped.

Ian sat up, took in several deep breaths, then stood, went to the minibar to pick up his mug of lukewarm coffee. He watched Maddie as she talked, listened, talked some more, all while holding the phone between ear and shoulder, her left hand abstractedly spinning the diamond bracelet.

“I've got to go,” she said as she put down the phone, reached for her boots. She sat on the edge of the coffee table, struggled into the boots. “Dammit, look at this. Zippers on shoes. I don't need this hassle. It was so much easier with my sandals, but these slacks are too long, so I have to wear the heels. I could have been out of the door by now, if I had my sandals.”

Ian smiled. He couldn't help himself. This was the Maddie he knew, the Maddie he loved. The most down-to-earth, unaffected,
honest
woman he'd ever known. “There's trouble with one of your patients?”

She nodded as she stood up, stamped her feet a few times, quickly downed the remainder of her coffee. “Maggie McCallum. She's spotting, and frightened out of her mind. I'm not officially on call, and I won't treat, since I did have that wine. Zachary Beaumont is already there, but I've got to go. She asked for me.”

“Then you go if you have to, but I'll drive if you do,” Ian said, not that he believed Maddie would stay if he'd asked her to stay. They could talk later, tomorrow. Talk about what happened tonight. If either of them could figure out what had happened tonight. But, right now, and for as long as it took to deal with Maggie McCallum, Maddie's entire mind would be concentrated on her job, doing her job.

“Oh, you don't have to—thank you, Ian. I'd appreciate it.”