Saving Dr. Ryan by Karen Templeton Read Free Book Online Page A

she?”
    â€œTo put it mildly.” Ryan pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, fished out a twenty and a five. “Let me settle up for her room.”
    But Hank shook his head. “Forget it. In fact, if she needs a place to stay—”
    â€œNo,” Ryan said, too quickly, tucking the bills back into his wallet. “I need to keep an eye on her. And the baby, you know.”
    Hank gave a nod, then a sigh. “Pretty thing,” he said, which just about surprised the life out of Ryan. Far as he knew, it had been a long time since Hank had noticed a woman. Much less mentioned one. And that he’d notice this one, in her ninth month, skinny as a rail, with two other kids to boot…well, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and Ryan wasn’t about to figure out why it bothered him, but maybe it meant Hank was coming back to life.
    Which was a good thing, right?
    â€œI suppose she’d clean up okay,” Ryan said nonchalantly, climbing behind the wheel.
    Hank’s long, craggy face actually split into a grin. A grin. A grin the likes of which Ryan hadn’t seen for longer than he cared to remember.
    He gunned the truck to life, more irritable than he had any right or reason to feel.

Chapter 3
    I vy and the kids rushed out the back door just as Ryan pulled up, the midwife going on about taking the kids with her on her rounds, she’d just been waiting for Ryan to get back so Maddie wouldn’t be alone. And that she’d updated Maddie’s chart, it was on his desk, everything looked real good.
    Then they were gone in a blur of dust and engine growls— Ivy’s battle-scarred Ford pickup had a good five years on Ryan’s—leaving Ryan with a fresh pot of coffee and profound relief that Ivy’d taken the kids away for a bit. Keeping an ear out for Maddie and Amy Rose was one thing; watching two little kids while seeing to his patients was something else. He’d lost his last nurse/receptionist to marriage and a move to New Mexico not a month ago, had yet to replace her. Sometimes he had a temp in to help, but he usually found it less problematic in the long run to wing it on his own. His paperwork was suffering some, but he told himself he’d catch up, one of these days. Years.
    Ryan got himself another cup of coffee and wended his way toward the haphazardly connected group of four rooms that made up his office. The house sat on a double-sized corner lot, three blocks from the center of town. Back in the twenties, a back parlor and summer porch had been converted into an office/exam room and waiting room with its own entrance. Later on, somebody got the bright idea to build a breezeway linking the original office to the detached garage, which had served double duty ever since as auxiliary exam and file rooms.
    The layout didn’t make a lick of sense, architecturally speaking, but it suited Ryan’s purpose well enough. And that was all that mattered.
    He’d peeked into the waiting room on his way to Maddie’s room: no one yet. Good. He only had a handful of actual appointments today, but every fall, soon as school started, there were the usual rash of coughs and colds, not to mention the playground boo-boos and football injuries. About due for the first round of strep, too, he imagined.
    The door to the back bedroom was slightly ajar; Ryan slowly shouldered it open, saw that Maddie was asleep. He’d intended on just setting the suitcases down and getting out of there, except one of the cases wasn’t as flat on the bottom as he’d thought so that it fell over onto the wooden floor with a bang! loud enough to set him back five years.
    Maddie twisted around in the bed, her eyes soft and unfocused. The room smelled of sunshine on clean linens, the sweet scent of newborn baby. An odd sensation that managed to be vague and sharp at the same time sliced through him as a stray shaft of sunlight grazed the top of her head,