McCallum Quintuplets Read online

  This new Maddie even stood up straighter, dammit.

  And when had she learned to flirt? Because that’s what she’d been doing with Blake Ritter. Flirting. Oh, sure, she’d sounded so innocent when she’d told him, “We’re just good friends,” or whatever drivel she’d said while batting her big brown eyes at the guy who’d just kissed her hand.

  Kissed her hand? Ian flexed his hands on the steering wheel, once more feeling the itch on his palms he’d felt when Blake had put on his Sir Galahad act.

  We’ll go to dinner. Fat chance. We’ll go to bed. That’s what Blake had meant. He knew that. Didn’t Madeline know that?

  And then a small voice spoke from behind a recently opened door in Ian’s brain. And just what business is it of yours anyway, bucko? You don’t own her.

  I don’t? Ian silently asked that small voice. Then why do I feel like I do?

  Do the words “selfish bastard” ring any bells? the little voice asked, dripping sarcasm. No? Well, how about these? You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. How about those words? Then, as long as we’re at it, how about dog in the manger? That means you don’t want her, but you don’t want anyone else to have her, either. Which, when you get right down to it, is pretty much a synonym for selfish bastard. Am I getting through here, sport?

  “Ian? You missed the turn,” Madeline said from the passenger seat. “Ian? Do you hear me?”

  “Thanks, Maddie,” he answered, grateful that her voice had finally drowned out that little voice, the one he was pretty sure had to be his guilty conscience. “I, um, I thought we’d take the scenic route.”

  “Ha! You missed the turn, Einstein. Admit it.”

  “Did not, Miss Manners Politeness School dropout,” he countered, happy that Maddie once more seemed to be in a teasing mood.

  “Did so, which-way-did-he-go doofus,” she said…and they were off, laughing and joking with each other as he drove around the block, headed into the apartment complex.

  Madeline had just topped his “Miss Just-shot-the-ball-into-the-wrong-basket” with “Mister Do-you-mean-toothpaste-tubes-have-tops?” as Ian inserted the key in his front door, then stood back so she could enter first.

  Madeline immediately sat down on the edge of the coffee table and bent over to unzip her short boots, kick them off. “Oh, God, I’ve wanted to do that for the past three hours. I hate high heels.”

  “And there goes the glamour,” Ian teased as she stuck out her legs and wiggled her toes. He picked up the boots and set them side by side under the coffee table. “But, please, Cinderella, now that you’re home from the ball, can you wait a little longer to get back into your customary rags? I kinda like the view.”

  Madeline got up, padded over to the minibar in her stocking feet. “Don’t worry, I won’t be going back to my customary rags, as you so sweetly put it. I’ve got a whole new casual wardrobe. It’ll knock your socks clean off, buster.”

  Ian grinned as she disappeared behind the bar, resurfaced with two bottles of soda. “What? No more wine?”

  “Please,” she countered, rolling her eyes. “I’m just beginning to be able to feel my lips again.” Then she frowned, looked at the soda bottles, left them on the bar. “Coffee. I’ll make coffee. Black coffee.”

  Ian followed her into the kitchen, watching as she measured grounds into a filter, then started the coffeemaker. “You’re not drunk, you know,” he told her as he observed her quick, efficient movements. “You’ve just had a good time tonight, that’s all.”

  “And I can’t recognize the difference?” she asked, looking at him owlishly. “Now that’s depressing. How long has it been since I’ve had a good time?”

  “How long? Well, let’s see. You busted your butt for way too many years of college, med school, your internship and residency. You worked day and night for about the last year, getting all your ducks in a row for the new multiple birth wing. Now that it’s finally up and running, you’re working days, nights, weekends. I don’t know, Maddie—how long has it been since you’ve just…let it all hang out?”

  “I may have been twelve,” Madeline said, pulling a face. “That is depressing, isn’t it?”

  “Definitely,” he said, opening the cabinet door, reaching in to grab two coffee mugs. He turned around, the mugs in his hands, and realized that he was standing directly in front of her. “But you had fun tonight?”

  She tilted her head, smiled at him. “Oh, yes, Ian. Definitely.”

  Her smile had a very strange effect on him. It squeezed his heart until it hurt.

  “Coffee’s ready,” Madeline said as she looked at him, as he looked at her. “Ian? Coffee’s ready.”

  “Huh? Oh, okay,” he said, giving his head a quick shake. What was the matter with him? There had to be something the matter with him, because he’d been about to kiss Maddie. He’d really been about to kiss her. And none of that good-pals-kissing-on-the-cheek stuff, either. A real kiss.

  Maddie took the mugs, filled them, then spooned sugar into both of them, one teaspoonful for her, two for him, just the way he liked it. “Here you go,” she said, handing him the mug then walking past him into the living room, oblivious to the fact that she’d almost gotten thoroughly kissed.

  She sat down on the couch, her long legs propped on the coffee table, as usual. She held the mug with both hands as she carefully sipped the hot coffee, watching him over the rim. “Ian? What’s wrong? You seem sort of on edge. Is this about Blake Ritter? Because if it is, don’t worry. I won’t accept his dinner invitation.”

  “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 definit
ely 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 Maddie’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.”