What Matters Most (3 page)

He stared at her. “Me? I’m graduating in June, and I’m class valedictorian. I got a couple of scholarships to college, but if I go away, I don’t know what will happen to my mama.”

The last patient left at twenty past ten. Melanie walked into the office and looked at the doctor, who looked tired. “That was your last patient, Dr. Ferguson. Let me tell you, tonight you definitely earned your wings.”

He looked at her in a strange way. Lights seemed to dance in his eyes, and then his hypnotic eyes darkened from brown to umber. She could have sworn that she saw naked desire flash in those eyes. Only for a second, but it was there.

“You’re the one,” he said. “You were supposed to leave here at eight o’clock.”

“How could I? If I’d left you here alone to take care of all those people, I’d have a hard time forgiving myself. Anyway, they needed us. I’ve already tidied up, so I’ll see you Thursday at five.”

“A few of the patients have serious problems. I’m beat, but I feel great,” Jack said. “Have a seat while I call a taxi. You’re not going home alone at this time of night.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that she did so regularly, at least three times a week, but decided against it. The man winked at her, and in a self-mocking manner said, “I know I’m bossy, but don’t take it personally. I mean well. If I become overbearing, tell me to back off.”

“I can’t imagine you being overbearing,” she said, mostly because sitting there talking with him, just the two of them, made her nervous. In the stillness of the office, he seemed so powerful.

“Well, I can be.” He rested his head on the high back of the tufted leather chair and laughed. “I certainly can.”

Good Lord, the man is something to look at,
Melanie thought. And when he laughed, stars seemed to dance in his eyes. When he abruptly stopped laughing and gazed at her, she knew that her facial expression reflected her thoughts of him. And he’d seen it. She got up to leave.

“Stay,” he said. “The taxi will be here in a minute.”

Still wearing his white coat, he locked the office, walked to the taxi with Melanie and paid the driver. “Thanks for your help. I don’t think I could have gotten through this without you,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Good night.” She was glad to leave. For the past five hours, she’d had a warm, tingly feeling every time she was near him—and she’d been close to him constantly all evening long. She released a long breath. Maybe in time, she’d get used to being around a man like Jack Ferguson. She certainly hoped so.

Jack carried the supper that Vernie, his housekeeper, left warming for him into the living room on a tray and sat down in front of the television to eat it. He’d barely begun to enjoy the meal of chicken, dumplings and string beans—one of his favorites—when the phone rang. He got up, looked at the cordless phone, saw the caller ID number and sat back down. He didn’t feel like dealing with Elaine Jackson. He tuned the television to a talk show and enjoyed his supper while making a mental note to find out more about Melanie Sparks’s personal life. Thirty-one years old and just getting her bachelor’s degree. There had to be a reason.

“You’re out of your mind,” Jack’s father, Dr. Montague Ferguson, insisted when they met for their usual Wednesday lunch. “It never occurred to me that you were serious. I and my father before me built the Ferguson name. And in the medical profession, that name stands for something. I want you to forget this madness and stick to your own private practice. Nobody over there in that neighborhood can afford to pay you. And since when did you think you had to solve the world’s problems? You’ll regret this. When your patients hear about this they’ll desert you in droves.”

Jack lifted his shoulder in a slight shrug. “Like rats from a sinking ship, eh? Not to worry, Dad. These rich women love to tell each other that I’m their doctor. It’s like saying they drive a Lamborghini. They’ll stick with me as long as that red Porsche sits in front of my office every morning from ten-thirty to twelve-thirty.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Montague Ferguson added.

“If a doctor is six feet, four inches tall, single and knows how to smile, rich women—married or not—will always have some kind of ailment—real or imagined. And if they don’t, there will still be people who really do need me.”

Montague eyed his only child as though seeing him for the first time. “When did you get to be so cynical?”

Jack’s smile emphasized his physical resemblance to his father. “I come by it naturally, Dad. Seems to me a physician is supposed to care for the sick, not just the wealthy who are sick.” He chuckled to soften the remark. “I’m sticking with it, Dad.”

After waiting half an hour for a bus, falling asleep past her stop and having to take a bus back, Melanie arrived home from class after midnight. She skipped up the stairs, ran a tub of hot water, added some bath salts and got in, feeling as if someone had just dropped heaven into her lap.

“Forty-two more days,” she sang out, “and I’ll be a registered nurse. I’ve been a waitress, babysitter, typist and Web-page designer, and I don’t mind hard work. It’s been worth it. Finally, I’m doing what I always wanted to do. I’m a nurse, and I’ll soon be a registered nurse.” She kicked up her heels, splashing the water on the floor, and then created waves with her hand.

The warm water lapping over and around her body gave her a tingling sensation, and she had a sudden feeling of loneliness. In times past, she had longed for someone to care for and who cared for her, a faceless someone who would lift her out of her loneliness. But now she imagined a face to sate this longing, a face that belonged to Jack Ferguson. She’d had admirers, plenty of them. But she let nothing stand between her and her goal of becoming a registered nurse. Moreover, the men who had pursued her hadn’t made her pulse race and her heartbeat accelerate like a runaway train as Jack Ferguson had done the moment she saw him.

She got out of the tub, refreshed, dried her body, and looked in her drawer for a teddy, her favorite sleepwear. She thought better of it and slipped naked between the cool sheets. She ran her hands over her breasts and belly, wondering what Jack Ferguson would think of her body. Suddenly, she sat up. She’d never done anything like that before.
I’m losing my mind. The man is my boss, and I had better remember it.

At work the next Thursday, Jack helped her put things in perspective when he surprised her with a personal question.

Jack had never been shy about getting answers to probing questions or going after anything else he wanted. He didn’t invade a woman’s privacy. But Melanie Sparks not only interested him, she was spending too much time in his head and he wasn’t sure he liked it. She entered the examining room where he stood studying the results of a test. Her fragrance came close to making him weak in the knees. She smiled at him the same way she smiled at all the patients.

“Miss Sparks, what did you do before you entered Towson University? You’re at least ten years older than most students.”

Her eyes slightly narrowed, and she didn’t try to hide the fact that his question irritated her. “I worked. Do you know how long it takes to save twenty thousand dollars when you’re working at low-paying jobs? Well, Dr. Ferguson, that’s what I was doing, working to save money to go to school and help pay my father’s expenses.”

His face creased into a deep frown. Testy, was she? “I see. You certainly were determined.”

“Determination is a part of my character, Dr. Ferguson.”

With her back to him, she opened a bottom cabinet drawer and removed a pair of surgical gloves. As she stood, her uniform outlined a pair of beautifully shaped hips. Going or coming, she got to him, but that didn’t mean he had to do anything about it. Still, he had an unusual urge to delve into her background, to understand her, to know everything about her. He knew himself well enough to appreciate that he hadn’t had such curiosity about any other woman.

“If you thought my question was out of place, Ms. Sparks, I apologize. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

She turned and looked at him, but she immediately averted her gaze. “It’s all right. I know you didn’t intend to make me feel bad. It’s just…” She shrugged, trailing off at the end of the sentence.

“It’s just what?” He took a step toward her and, to his amazement, she stepped backward. He stopped himself just before he asked her if she was afraid of him. Women usually offered themselves to him almost as if it were their duty, but it only disgusted him. With her gentle, nurturing sweetness and—he was learning—her quiet strength, Melanie Sparks moved him as no woman had. Yet she kept him at a distance. And a good thing, too. She was his employee and therefore off-limits.

He repeated the question, but she smiled and said, “Nothing. I’d better get back to Mrs. Tate before she thinks I’m ignoring her.”

He watched her swish out of the room, her head high and shoulders back, a queen unaware of her regal bearing. He laughed. If that was how he saw her, he was in trouble. The thought cooled him off and tamed his libido.

He made notes on the patient’s chart and attached the lab report. Somehow, he had to instill in his South Baltimore patients the importance of coming to him at the first sign of illness. If they didn’t have money, they didn’t want charity, and they usually came to him only in desperation.

“Ms. Sparks, we have to approach this problem differently,” he said when they had seen the last patient. “Since most of the patients come at the beginning of office hours, it would be good if you would give them a short talk about the importance of coming to the doctor as soon as they have symptoms and not waiting until they become really sick. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, and I’ll spend five or ten minutes on it every Tuesday and Thursday till they get used to the idea.”

He sat on the edge of his desk, thinking that he should be exhausted, but he wasn’t. In fact, he felt good, as if he’d finally earned the money he’d made that morning in his Bolton Hill office.

She walked into the office and stored some drugs in the cabinet. “You must be exhausted.”

“Actually, I’m not. There’s something refreshing about knowing you’ve helped people in need.”

She looked at him with an expression of admiration and appreciation for his efforts. “That doesn’t begin to describe what you’re doing here, Doctor. Already, these people love you, and well they should.”

He thought of his mother and her wish for him. “I’m only doing what I should do, Ms. Sparks.” He wanted to share his true feelings with her, but he couldn’t. He dialed the cab company and ordered a taxi to take her home. “Come on, I’ll see you to the taxi.”

Melanie stood beside Jack at the door, waiting for the taxi. She didn’t want to look at him, because she knew his gaze was on her. It was enough that he stood so close that the sleeve of his white coat brushed her arm.

“It’s a beautiful night,” he said of the moonlit and star-studded sky. “If it made any sense, I’d go for a walk.” She looked up at him then. She couldn’t help it, because she had detected a plaintiveness in his voice. He stared down at her, his eyes dark and stormy, and the heat in his gaze sent tremors plowing through her body. She grasped his arm for support, and he steadied her. The taxi arrived at that moment, and she heaved a deep sigh of relief. Heaven alone knew where they were headed.

Chapter 2

J
ack drove his Town Car into his three-car garage and entered his house through the kitchen that adjoined it. Gray-blue marble-topped counters sparkled against chrome appliances and pale blue brick walls. Vernie, his housekeeper, would have been happy with much less. He thought about what it had cost him and how rarely he saw it and wondered if a man experienced a mental metamorphosis when he neared age thirty-five, because he’d been thinking a lot lately about what he had that his patients in South Baltimore couldn’t even imagine having.

“I’m just tired,” he told himself, checked the warmers he’d had built into the electric stove and smiled at the sight of beef stew, garlic mashed potatoes, turnip greens and sautéed green, yellow and red peppers. He filled his plate, poured a glass of red wine, sat down and concentrated on filling his long-empty belly.

After an enjoyable meal, he left the kitchen as neat as he found it and went upstairs to his bedroom. The red light blinked on his telephone, but when he phoned his answering service and found that he had no emergency calls, he checked his answering machine.

“Please call me the minute you get in. I rang your service and your personal cell phone a dozen times. Where are you? It’s Elaine.”

He wasn’t about to call anyone other than his father at fifteen minutes past midnight, and he’d do that only if he knew his father needed him. He liked Elaine a lot, but she had a tendency to be controlling, and that accounted in part for the fact that he was still a bachelor. That and the fact that he imagined himself with a more feminine woman who was naturally sweet and sexy. Elaine’s sexiness sometimes seemed to him contrived. Several times he’d started to tell her that if a woman wanted to control a man, she shouldn’t be so obvious about it, especially if he was the man.

When his phone rang at six o’clock the next morning as he was heading for the shower, he kept going, thinking that Melanie would understand a doctor’s need for rest and wouldn’t call him so early knowing he’d had only a few hours of sleep. He went back to the phone and looked at the caller ID to verify his suspicion that Elaine was the caller. He thought back to the previous day and the wallop he’d got when he’d looked at Melanie Sparks for the first time. She hadn’t displayed her sexuality like the Monday wash drying on the line. She didn’t have to. It was an intrinsic part of her.

Melanie communicated softness, sweetness and comfort. And her eyes! He shook himself out of his reverie. Melanie Sparks worked for him, and he didn’t dare dream of how giving she would be if he were ever wrapped in her arms.

Having forgotten about the phone call, Jack dressed, got into his Porsche and headed for the hospital. Still, Melanie Sparks preyed on his mind. She had handled his patients as if they were her own children, filling out the forms, answering questions, reassuring them and relieving him in other ways. And she knew a thing or two about medicine. They worked together as if they had done it for years. It was as if God liked what he’d started and sent him precisely the help he needed, for Melanie understood people and their needs far better than he did. She suited him as perfectly as did his hands and feet.