Saving Dr. Ryan. Karen Templeton

inherited both the house and the practice from the doctor who used to live and work here.” He shrugged. “I figure as long as the house isn’t falling down around my ears, that’s good enough.”

      “Spoken just like a man,” she said, her gaze meeting his for a moment before dipping back to her baby, now feeding from her other side. She palmed the tiny head, smiling a little, then glanced around. “Still, there’s a nice…feeling in here, you know?”

      Her wistfulness clutched at his heart. Ryan checked his watch, wondering where his patients were, why they weren’t coming to stop him from hanging himself.

      Why—why?—was he pulling the desk chair over closer to the bed, straddling it backwards and plunking his butt down?

      And when her brows lifted, he heard himself say, “You’ll find I’m a real good listener, Maddie.”

      She looked down at Amy Rose, who’d fallen asleep with the nipple still in her mouth. The temptation to let some of these worries out of her brain, like relieving the pressure on a simmering pot, was nearly overwhelming. She also knew once she started, she would be hard put to hold back. Being truthful was just part of her nature. But she did not want him to feel sorry for her, either. Only she didn’t see how that was to be avoided, once she told him her tale.

      Except he was waiting, and she was being rude now, wasn’t she?

      After Maddie buttoned herself up, she lifted her knees, laying the baby against her thighs so she could watch her sleep. So she wouldn’t have to look into those kind blue eyes any more than was absolutely necessary, where she knew she would see any number of things she wouldn’t want to see. Like judgment. Or worse, pity.

      She skimmed over the first part of her life, about how her teenaged mother had given her up to the foster care system when Maddie wasn’t but three years old; how she’d been shunted from home to home until she came to live with Joe and Grace Idlewild as a twelve-year-old smartmouth with a chip on her shoulder the size of a house, and how they’d been the closest things to parents she’d ever had; how her mother had never come back for her, and how Maddie had eventually given up hoping she would.

      And then how, against her foster parents’ wishes, she’d fallen in love at seventeen with Jimmy Kincaid, a virtual orphan like herself; how the boy—for he hadn’t been but eighteen himself at that point—had given her to believe that, with him, she’d have the one thing she most wanted in the whole world, which was a life, a family, a home of her own. How he’d had such big dreams, about being successful, about making lots of money. And how she’d let herself believe those dreams could be hers, in large part because he’d been the first person she’d ever met who’d had dreams, which had seemed to her at the time much more enticing than determination and hard work.

      Even though she kept her eyes averted, she told the doctor all this without shame on her part, because while she would admit to the foolishness of youth, there had been no shame in being young. Or in having dreams, even if the dreams of her youth had been foolish.

      “Except at some point…” She let out a sound that was half sigh, half laugh. “Well, eventually I realized that Jimmy wasn’t inclined to work for any of his dreams. He just somehow expected them to happen, I guess. But no matter what, there is no power in heaven or on earth strong enough to make me give up my babies the way my mama did me.”

      The doctor’s silence made her finally look over. He was sitting backward on the straight-backed chair, his hands fisted one on top of the other to make a pillow for his chin while he listened, his gaze intense.

      “Even if it meant staying married to an abusive man?”

      “I know that’s how it looks, but he wasn’t always like that. When I got pregnant the first time, you never saw anybody happier than Jimmy. And even when things were rough, he was never mean to me or Noah. Not…not at first. It wasn’t until I got pregnant with Katie Grace…”

      The memories stung more than she’d thought they would. But she’d gotten this far, might as well see it through. Just like she had her marriage.

      “Jimmy’s usual method for dealing with his frustrations was to simply walk out. Which he did more and more, toward the end,” she added on a sigh. “Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days.”

      “And this didn’t bother you?”

      “Sure it did. But he’d always come home eventually, all sorry for what he’d done, and he’d always have some money—and I learned early on not to question where he got it—and I wanted so hard to believe, each time, that things would be better.”

      Her eyes got all gritty feeling; she took a moment until the feeling passed. “I guess I took it on myself that whether the marriage survived or not was up to me. I don’t feel that way anymore,” she quickly added when she saw Dr. Logan’s expression darken.

      “What happened?” he asked quietly.

      “I got pregnant a third time. I know it sounds irresponsible, but I couldn’t tolerate the Pill and Jimmy hated using…you know. So I got a diaphragm from the clinic, but then Jimmy showed up out of the blue one night and maybe I didn’t get it in right, I don’t know…” She grasped the sleeping baby’s tiny hands, smiling when the delicate little fingers automatically grasped hers. “He wanted me to get an abortion. I said no.” She swallowed. “He…didn’t take it too well.”

      “He hit you?”

      Maddie nodded, staring hard at the baby, trying to block out the memory of Jimmy’s anguished face afterward. “I was so…shocked, that he’d actually do that. I mean, it wasn’t like this was entirely my fault, was it? So I threatened to walk out right then and there. Only he started crying, sayin’ over and over how sorry he was, that it wouldn’t ever happen again. I’d never seen him cry before. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve taken him at his word, but…we’d been married for four years by then. He was the only man I’d ever loved. And everybody makes mistakes, you know?”

      Again, the silence. On a deep breath, Maddie lifted her gaze to the doctor’s, seeing in his eyes the one thing she’d least wanted to—that he didn’t understand. “I had to give him another chance, don’t you see? I had two children under the age of four and another on the way. And for a while, things were better. He got a real job, we were doing okay, he stuck around… Then one of his ‘buddies’ came up with another ‘sure thing’. I tried to talk him out of it, but…well. And of course, the ‘sure thing’ didn’t pan out, and Jimmy got more depressed than I’d ever seen him. He still had his job, but it was just on a loading dock down at the Wal-Mart, and…and I don’t know. I got the feeling he just…gave up.”

      By this time, she was talking more to herself than to Dr. Logan. “I didn’t know what to do. How to reach him or anything. He wouldn’t talk to me by that point. He stuck around more, but he wasn’t really there, y’know? Anyway, he was off from work one morning, so I decided maybe it might be nice to run to the grocery store without having to drag two little kids with me. I didn’t normally leave Jimmy alone with the kids, but I wasn’t feeling good and the shopping still had to be done, so I said he’d have to watch the kids. I could tell he wasn’t any too thrilled about it, though. When—”

      She clamped her lips together, even as the tears escaped yet again.

      “Maddie?”

      On a deep breath, she continued, her voice trembling. “When I got home, maybe an hour later, Katie was hiding behind the couch, crying so hard she could barely catch her breath. I found Jimmy b-back in the kids’ bedroom with Noah, who was screaming, screaming…” She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could feel her heartbeat in her temples. “The belt was still in Jimmy’s hand.”

      When she opened them, she found the doctor’s eyes riveted to hers, his face rigid with fury. But he didn’t say a word. So she looked at the baby instead, which only tangled up her emotions even more. “How I managed not to lose the baby, I do not know, because I started yelling at Jimmy like a crazy woman, telling him to get