A Match for the Doctor Read online

  It was a card-carrying storm, all right, Kennon thought, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.

  “You girls stay here,” Kennon instructed. She slipped out of her wet shoes, not wanting to leave a trail of puddles to mark her path. Her wet jacket suffered the same fate, hitting the tile beside her shoes. “I’ll get you towels and some dry clothes,” she promised.

  Barefoot, Kennon ran up the stairs quickly, hurrying into their bedrooms to collect the items she’d just mentioned. She was back in less than two minutes, handing out towels and placing dry clothes on the stairs for the girls to pick up and change into.

  Madelyn and Meghan lost no time in stripping off their wet clothing and putting on the shirts and jeans that she’d brought down. Dressed and feeling a little better, they took the towels and began rubbing the moisture from their hair.

  In Meghan’s case, Kennon offered to help. Meghan beamed at her, tilting her head toward her for easier access.

  It was an extremely maternal rooted moment.

  Someday…

  “What about you?” Meghan asked, twisting around so that she could get a better look at her father’s friend.

  Kennon waved away the little girl’s concern. “I’m fine,” she assured her easily.

  Madelyn frowned. “No, you’re not,” she protested. “You’re all wet.” It was an observation filled with compassion. “Don’t you want to put on some dry clothes, too?”

  She really did, but there was a basic problem with that. “I don’t have any dry clothes I can change into here.”

  Madelyn quickly pointed out, “Dad’s got clothes. He wouldn’t mind you putting them on,” the girl vouched, sliding the towel from her hair.

  Kennon didn’t know about that. She doubted the man would be thrilled to come home and find her wearing something of his. “Your dad’s clothes are too big for me.”

  Madelyn wouldn’t be put off. “He’s got sweatpants and a sweatshirt. You can wear those,” she said stubbornly. “Dad told me they were supposed to be bigger.”

  “Yeah,” Meghan chimed in. “On purpose.” Not to be outdone by her sister, the younger of the Sheffield girls volunteered, “I’ll go get them for you!” just before she dashed out of the room.

  “No, really, I didn’t get that wet,” Kennon protested.

  Futilely, it turned out, because Meghan was back with her booty almost immediately, the arms of her father’s dark blue sweatshirt dragging behind her on the tiled floor.

  “Here!” Meghan declared triumphantly, thrusting the sweat clothes at her.

  Kennon really didn’t think it was a good idea to wear Simon’s clothes. There was just something far too intimate about that.

  “That’s all right, Meghan. I don’t need to change,” she told her pint-size benefactress, making another attempt to beg off.

  The next moment, she felt Madelyn tugging on the bottom of her skirt, wringing out the corner. Several drops fell to the floor. Kennon had a sneaking suspicion that Simon’s daughters were as tenacious as pit bulls when it came to getting their way. Stubborn to the nth degree.

  She could relate to that, and they were trying to do a good deed. So, for now, Kennon gave in. She’d have plenty of time to change back into her own clothes before Simon came home.

  “Point taken,” Kennon quipped. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”

  Carrying the sweat suit into the master bathroom upstairs, she had just finished stripping off her clothes and climbing into the sweats when she heard the loud, ominous crack of thunder.

  The next second, the overhead bathroom light went out. Less than a minute later, the door burst open.

  Meghan, wide-eyed and frightened, barreled into the newly redecorated room.

  Kennon scooped the six-year-old into her arms and held the little girl close. Meghan was trembling.

  “It’s just a storm, honey,” she said soothingly, stroking the girl’s silky hair.

  “The lights are gone. Everything’s dark and quiet,” she cried, frightened.

  “Where’s…?”

  Kennon didn’t get a chance to finish her question, but she didn’t need to. Walking out of the bathroom, she saw the subject of her aborted inquiry shifting nervously from foot to foot in the hall right outside the bathroom door.

  Madelyn was doing her best not to look as frightened as her sister, but it was easy to see that she was. “The ’lectricity’s gone,” the little girl told her, clearly agitated.

  “It’ll be back soon,” Kennon promised. She walked downstairs again and to the living room, still holding Meghan. Madelyn trailed behind her, closer than a shadow.

  Madelyn looked around uncertainly. The storm had stolen away the sun and everything appeared oppressively dark and gloomy. “You sure?”

  “Very sure. It’s always come back before,” Kennon added. She set Meghan gently back down on the floor. “I tell you what, why don’t we have a campout?”

  Madelyn’s delicate eyebrows scrunched together over her nose in confusion. “But it’s raining outside,” she protested.

  “A pretend campout,” Kennon amended. “C’mon,” she beckoned.

  She led the way to the kitchen. Because of its orientation, the kitchen normally required artificial light by three o’clock. The storm had forced the entire room to be thrown into semidarkness, although there was still just enough light available to make out general shapes.

  She would have to fish her flashlight out of her purse, Kennon told herself. Otherwise, the next time she came into the kitchen, she’d have to resort to the Braille system.

  Moving quickly about the room, Kennon gathered up all the food and beverages that she could. When it got to be too much for her to hold, she pulled out the bottom of the sweatshirt, forming a kind of catchall apron. She deposited the soda cans and food into it.

  Kennon was more than aware that she had two very persistent short people following her every move. Knowing that they were both too frightened to remain alone in the living room, she wasn’t about to send either one of them back to wait for her. Instead, she decided to make them feel useful by putting them to work. She handed each of the sisters some utensils and paper plates to carry back with them.

  When she was finished collecting items, she did a quick survey to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Just as she finished her inventory, there was another crash of thunder. Both girls jumped, then huddled closer to her. She felt like a mother hen protectively gathering her chicks to her.

  “Okay, I think that’s everything. Back to the living room, ladies,” she instructed. She led the way by only a fraction of an inch. Each girl was all but hermetically sealed either to her left or her right side.

  Just before they reached the living room, there was yet another loud crack of thunder. This time it came just on the heels of the flash of lightning. Meghan stopping dead, her eyes open so wide they looked as if they could actually fall out. Game or not, she seemed on the verge of crying.

  “That’s just the angels bowling,” Kennon told her. It was an old legend that she remembered her father telling her when she was about Meghan’s age. Back then she was afraid of the loud noise coming from what she’d taken to be God’s domain. The idea of angels playing a loud game had helped dissipate her fears.

  “Angels bowl?” Madelyn asked, mystified.

  “They absolutely do,” Kennon answered solemnly. “Angels have hobbies, too, just like we do.”

  Meghan looked at her, confused. “What’s bowling?” she asked.

  Crossing to the coffee table and depositing her loot, Kennon laughed. It hadn’t occurred to her that the girls might not know what she was referring to. Bowling wasn’t exactly all that common in this day and age of video games.

  “I’ll have to show you sometime,” she promised.

  Meghan seemed somewhat placated. “Okay.” Surveying the loot on the table, she brightened. “Are we going to eat this stuff?” she asked hopefully.

  “You bet. And you’re both going to help me co
ok it.”

  The girls looked at her as if she was about to pull off a magic trick.

  The electricity went out at the hospital right in the middle of the surgery he was performing. Thank God for the emergency generator, Simon thought. It kicked in almost immediately, allowing him to complete the surgery.

  Still, the diminished power gave the procedure an eeriness he wasn’t comfortable with.

  “Power’s out all over Newport Beach and Bedford,” one of the surgical nurses complained to an orderly as the latter wheeled the patient toward the double-doored recovery room.

  Simon thought of his daughters. Both Meghan and Madelyn slept with night-lights on because they were afraid of the dark. Madelyn had outgrown her fears, but had regressed after her mother died. The girls had to be scared to death.

  The moment he felt that his patient was stable and recovering well from the bypass surgery, despite the unfortunate glitch in power, Simon quickly changed out of his scrubs. Five minutes later, he was hurrying into the parking structure to retrieve his car.

  The trip back to his development turned out to be an ordeal. Since he was in a hurry, he found his patience strained to the limit. With the power failure still very much in effect, every single traffic light had gone out and the principle of stop signs had to be invoked in order to prevent a slew of accidents from taking place. That meant incredible tie-ups. It also meant stopping at each intersection leading up to the freeway.

  He found the same situation in effect when he got off the freeway. Consequently, the trip home took more than three times as long as it ordinarily did.

  By the time he reached his house, he felt as if he could literally snap off the steering wheel with his bare hands.

  His concern for his daughters all but overwhelmed him.

  Simon dropped his house key twice trying to get it into the lock. Biting off a curse, he finally succeeded. He threw open the door, was about to race in, calling out to his daughters, when he heard something that stopped him dead in his tracks.

  It took a moment for the sound to register properly in his head.

  Singing.

  No, he hadn’t imagined it. He heard voices raised in song, singing what sounded like—

  “Twenty-seven bottles of soda on the wall?” he questioned, confused as he took in the scene.

  Kennon and the girls were sitting on a blanket in front of the fireplace. The latter was the only source of illumination in the room, thanks to the fire that had been lit.

  Obviously the logs were not just for show.

  The moment they heard him, the singing stopped. Madelyn and Meghan scrambled up to their feet and launched themselves at their father, forming a tangle of arms and legs, embraces and kisses. They all but brought him down to the floor in their enthusiasm.

  “Daddy, you made it!” Meghan cried happily. “You came home!”

  “I told Meggie you would,” Madelyn informed him in the best grown-up voice she could manage. He noticed, though, that his older daughter sniffled slightly as she said it.

  His arms around both girls, Simon looked over toward the woman rising to her feet in the background. Remnants of what had to have been a meal were on the blanket she had spread out on the rug before the hearth. The warmth of the scene got to him before he fully realized it.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have bothered worrying,” he said, relieved and oddly stirred at the same time.

  His eyes narrowed a little. What was the woman wearing?

  “The girls came through like troupers,” Kennon informed him proudly.

  That was only because she was here, he thought. He doubted that even Edna would have been able to keep them not just calm, but from the looks of it, happily engaged while thunder roared overhead.

  “How did you get them to forget about the storm?” he asked.

  “I know a lot of Girl Scout songs,” she quipped with an infectious grin. “We’ve been singing—and eating—for a while now.”

  She saw the curious way Simon looked at her. And then she realized why. He was probably wondering about the sweat suit she was wearing.

  How could she have forgotten to change back into her own clothes? She’d known he’d be back. The trouble was, she’d gotten caught up in entertaining Madelyn and Meghan. Changing had completely slipped her mind.

  “Can we camp out, Daddy?” Meghan piped up, her small face lit up with hope.

  She was kidding, right? “Honey, it’s kind of wet outside,” Simon tactfully pointed out.

  “No.” Meghan shook her head. “I mean in here. Can we camp out in here?”

  Madelyn added her voice to the verbal assault. “Kennon said we had to ask you, but if you say yes, she said she can put up sheets to make the tents and stuff. Please, Daddy?” his daughter begged.

  “Yeah, please, Daddy?” Meghan echoed, tugging on the bottom of his jacket to add emphasis to her pleas. “Say yes.”

  The days of childhood long behind him, he had a very limited imagination. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to set up a pseudo-camp in the living room, or to use bedsheets in place of the real thing. He had to hand it to the woman, Kennon was creative.

  Not to mention subtly gorgeous in that oversize sweat suit—which, if he wasn’t mistaken, looked extremely familiar.

  “Sure. I wouldn’t want to be the one to rain on your parade,” he said.

  Kennon winced at his choice of words. “No pun intended, right?”

  Simon inclined his head. “Well, maybe just a little,” he admitted. “So, how do we pitch these things?” he asked, setting Meghan down on the floor again.

  He had to be tired after putting in a full day. She didn’t want to impose on him any more than she really needed to. “You tell me which sheets we can use and leave the rest to me.”

  He liked the way she took charge, liked the independence that she displayed. Both were traits he’d always admired in people.

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll go get them for you,” he volunteered.

  The next moment, he went up the stairs to fetch a couple of old sets from the bottom of the linen closet. Sheets that Edna had told him she was storing “just in case.” The nanny never went into any detail as to what ramifications she was applying to “just in case,” but he had a feeling that this would definitely meet with the woman’s approval.

  As Kennon already had.

  Studying her for the next hour or so, Simon began to wonder if there was any challenge out there that Kennon wasn’t up to. She had not only managed to tame the girls’ fears, but had made them cheerful about the ordeal and even hopeful that the storm would last “a little longer so we can camp out like this tomorrow night, too.”

  He had a sneaking suspicion that what they especially liked was the fact that they got notes from him, per Kennon’s request, to their teachers, explaining why they couldn’t bring in their homework. It was more or less a given, actually. Assignments were sent home via email on the computers and since there was no power, there was no email.

  He marveled at how well she rose to the occasion. Rather than resort to something at room temperature, Kennon had made them a regular dinner. Taking the pork loin she’d found in the refrigerator, she’d fashioned a spit and roasted the meat in the fireplace.

  “This is the way it was done when the pioneers made their way west to California,” she told the girls, who watched her every move with awe.

  Eating as if they’d been starving for days, both girls absorbed everything Kennon told them as if it was gospel.

  “Were you a piney-ear?” Meghan asked as she finished the last of her second helping.

  “Pioneer,” Madelyn corrected her with a sniff and a toss of her head. She smiled proudly that she had gotten the word right.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Kennon answered, noting that Simon struggled not to laugh. “But I did read about them when I was around your age.” History had always fascinated her, even before it was a required subject in school.

  “Can we read about them
, too?” Meghan asked, eager to emulate her.

  “You sure can,” Kennon replied. “I think I still have some of those books in my library at home.” She saw the curious expression on Simon’s face. “My dad used to give me history books for Christmas and my birthday.” She knew that probably sounded strange to him. “My father said he wanted me to use my mind.”

  Simon nodded his approval. He was still trying to find just the right balance as a father. Anyone who made it earned his admiration. “Sounds like a smart man.”

  “He was.” Even as she said it, Kennon sighed, wishing that her father had been more accessible to her. She never got the chance to try to bridge the gap. He’d died shortly after her parents had divorced.

  Simon glanced at his watch. It was later than he’d thought. “Time for bed, girls.”

  For once, the girls were too tired to argue. Besides, bed didn’t mean bed, it meant the tent, and they were eager to spend the night inside the structure that Kennon had put up for them. Changing into their pajamas, they were ready for bed in record time.

  Ten minutes into the story that they begged Kennon to tell them, both little girls were sound asleep.

  “Maybe I should try shutting off the power myself once in a while,” Simon commented.

  Suddenly fidgety inside, Kennon gathered up the dirty dishes from the blanket before the fireplace and took them into the kitchen.

  Simon followed her. “Why don’t you leave those for now?”

  It went against her principles, but this was his house, not hers, so she nodded. “All right.”

  Dusting off her hands, she walked back into the living room. The rain began to come down harder, pounding down on the roof.

  “I guess I’d better be going,” she said, looking around for her purse.

  As if to argue with her, another rumble of thunder came less than five seconds after a bright flash of lightning had creased the sky, momentarily lighting up the world.

  He didn’t want her out on the road in this weather. “Maybe you better stay until it lets up a little,” Simon suggested quietly.

  Kennon paused for a moment, wondering if perhaps she was safer out in the storm than in here.