Home To The Doctor

For everyone who dreams of going home…

and realizes that dream

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

As a doctor, Morgan Kelly was more than familiar with the male body and couldn’t really remember the last time she’d looked at a man as anything other than a patient or a curiosity. But as she walked alone on the hard sand of the beach on Shelter Island in Puget Sound and lifted her face into the cold December air, she stopped in her tracks. A naked man was standing thirty feet above her.

At least she thought he was naked. He was on the decking of a guest house on an exclusive estate, and the wooden railing hit him just below his waist. From the distance and in the rapidly failing light of the day, she couldn’t make out his features enough to know if she recognized him or not, but she definitely could tell his stomach, chest, broad shoulders and strong arms were bare. The temperature had to be in the fifties, but he didn’t seem to notice at all. It was as if the bitter wind blowing over the choppy, dark waters of the sound didn’t exist.

He stared out across the sound to the mainland of Washington State before he glanced north, then south. For a fleeting moment she was certain as his gaze came toward her, that he saw her, a lone figure, all five feet three inches of her in her faded college sweatshirt, jeans and heavy boots, her flame-red hair pulled into a ponytail. But he didn’t react to her presence if he did. Instead he looked back across the waters playing around her boots.

He cupped his hands at his eyes, and she thought she saw a dark mark on his left shoulder, then thunder sounded and she looked away to the heavy gray of the sky above. A few centuries ago, the noise would have been the roar of a cannon that famed pirate Bartholomew Grace would have fired at his enemies who dared to disturb the peace of his Shelter Island refuge. The original owner of most of the island, old Bartholomew had come here every fall, staying until spring, either to celebrate his victories if he’d had a successful campaign in the south, or to recoup from his losses if fate had turned against him on the high seas.

But this wasn’t where Bartholomew would have been scanning the horizon; he would have been in one of the turrets of the main house. She’d only seen the house from her father’s boat when they’d been on the sound, and from a distance it looked for all the world like a castle. Its multiple turrets towering in the air, the home was built out of rock, stone and dark wood. This stranger had to be staying in the guest house she’d been told was on the property.

Instead of pirates occupying the house and land now, Bartholomew’s descendants, Anthony and Celia Grace, did, along with their only child, Ethan. They’d lived on the island for as long as Morgan could remember. But since she’d left ten years ago, things had changed. She’d heard that Ethan’s parents had taken off to Europe about five years ago and had been back only once or twice. Their son seemed to have inherited the estate, but he returned sporadically, too. The thought that he was the man at the railing came and went; Ethan Grace wouldn’t be staying in the guest house.

Most of the year he lived on the mainland and, depending on who you asked among the locals, that meant Seattle, or Los Angeles, or San Francisco or New York. Maybe he had residences in all those places; he certainly had the finances to live wherever he wanted. He’d taken over as head of the corporation his grandfather, then his father, had run, and according to her own father, that company “ate up and spit out everything in its path.” He’d made a comment about the pirate’s occupation being revisited on his descendants, and that Ethan used money and the law as his weapons while Bartholomew had used gunpowder and swords.

She’d walked these beaches all of her life before she’d left for college, but this was her first exploration since her father had asked her to come home. She’d arrived a week ago and loved to be finally doing what she called “beach wandering.” She paid no attention to the Private Beach signs she’d passed before seeing the man. Maybe he was an early arrival for the big wedding reception Ethan was giving for his friend Joe Lawrence, another islander who had come back about six months ago.

There was a lot of gossip from her father’s patients and the people she knew in town about Joe’s wedding to Alegra Reynolds, the founder of the Alegra’s Closet boutiques. They’d marry privately, then have their reception at the Grace estate. Some of the locals had been sent invitations, but Morgan wasn’t among them. No reason she would be; neither Joe Lawrence, nor Ethan Grace had been in her circle of friends in the old days.

There was a flash of lightning in the east, then more thunder rolled across the heavens, shaking the air around her. She looked up and down the beach, then decided to head back. She stepped toward the water and couldn’t resist looking up again. The man was still there despite the growing cold that was cutting through her sweatshirt and his decided lack of clothes.

She exhaled, unaware until then that she’d been holding her breath, then she turned to the water. She was reluctant to go back to the office and check the phone service. She had her cell phone in her pocket, but even so, she felt the weight of the responsibility of being the only doctor on the island at the moment. Her father was on his first vacation in years—one unplanned when a good friend had invited him to visit—and she’d agreed to come back and take over his practice until he returned. Simple, right? But it was anything but simple.

She watched the lights on the mainland flashing to life through the gathering mists of dusk, and could smell the hint of rain in the air. She liked rain. She liked the moods of the island. Maybe the weather wouldn’t be good for the upcoming reception, but it would be good for her. Even the rich Graces couldn’t control the weather, especially on Shelter Island.

She finally turned to walk back up the beach, deciding to go directly to the office. But she had only taken a few steps when she was startled by a loud crash that had nothing to do with the impending storm, but it did come from above her. A deep male voice yelled at the same time, and although she couldn’t quite make out the words, she had no doubt from the tone, that that might be for the best. She turned and moved closer to the water so she could get a better angle to look up at the decking.

She stared hard, trying to make out any movement, but all she could see were lights that were on in the house now. She turned to leave, but as soon as she took a step, another crash came from the house. It sounded like glass breaking this time, along with something heavy hitting an unforgiving surface. But this time, there was no yelling, just the low sound of foghorns over the water and the cry of a night bird in the air.

She could have kept walking, and would have if she hadn’t finally heard someone scream in anger or pain or both. That drove her to change all her plans. She looked around and spotted a series of broad steps that led to the top of the bluffs defined by lights so dim they were little more than a blur. Jogging over to the well-fashioned stairs in the rock wall, she grabbed the cold damp metal railing that ran up one side.

She climbed as quickly as she could, not at all sure what she’d find at the top, but images of a naked man lying prone on the deck, bloodied and in pain, flashed in her mind. She’d look to make sure everything was all right, then she’d leave. Being a doctor, she’d learned that you offered help first and worried later about the details. The worst that could happen was that some burly bodyguard would “usher” her off of the estate.

She stepped out at the top onto an expanse of deep emerald grass, dotted by thick ferns hugging the ground and wind-twisted pines along with madrone trees. The main house, which was two hundred feet back from the bluffs and beyond a stone terrace, loomed high into the dusky sky, looking like some monstrous castle as it had from the waters. Light through the multipaned windows was concentrated in the central area, creating a series of glowing strips. Heavy drapes that covered French doors were partially pushed aside. In the low light, the structure looked foreboding and unsettling. It didn’t look like home sweet home at all.

To her left and fifty yards or so along the bluff’s edge, Morgan saw the guest house that overlooked the beach. At least that bit of structure wasn’t hidden behind trees, shrubs and ferns. She spotted a portion of the deck to the left and a stone walkway that cut a meandering path through the ankle-deep grass and separated to go to the back toward the deck and to the front of the house. She hurried along the path, avoiding the low limbs of old trees, and hesitated at the fork, finally choosing the direction of the deck.

She took two wooden steps up onto the deck that seemed to shoot right out into the air, with no visible signs of the heavy supports she knew were below it. Interior light spilled out of a pair of open French doors, and showed at least one reason for the crashes she’d heard. What had been a huge potted plant moments ago was now a heap of broken pottery, scattered soil and a huge, thick-leafed tree of some sort lying askew. She crossed to the mess, and carefully picked her way around the pottery shards, to get to the open doors.

She grabbed the door frame and almost stepped in, but stopped when she saw the second cause of the noise—a heavy leather chair had been upended along with a small side table. A lamp that had probably been some sort of Tiffany antique was shattered beyond hope of restoration. Broken pieces of bright glass scattered in a wide arc on the polished wooden floor.

She looked into an expansive room with polished wood floors, furniture in supple leather and dark woods arranged in front of a stone fireplace to the left, and more antique furniture set to get the most of the view of the sound. Paintings on the rough plaster walls were either great prints or the originals. She’d bet on them being originals.

She carefully stepped past the chair and to one side of the broken glass, then called out “Hello?” before noticing traces of dirt smeared on the floor as if something had been dragged through both messes. Whatever had done the damage had been heading to steps that led up to a set of partially ajar doors. She touched the closest door and it swung back silently.

“Hello?” she called again, and was slightly surprised when she heard a muffled response from a deep male voice.

“In here.”

She took the steps in one stride and found herself in a huge bedroom space. She barely noticed the heavy antique furnishings or the fact that the area was a true suite, with open rooms off both sides and a circular staircase near the middle of the room that led upward to another level.

All she really saw was the man from the porch sitting on the dark, polished wooden floor at the foot of a bed that would have been appropriate for Bartholomew Grace’s boudoir. It was huge, made of dark, intricately carved wood, with heavy drapes at all four posts and a mattress that sat a good three feet off the floor. She focused on the man slumped against the side of the bed, the partial cast on his left leg and his skin, which was sleek with sweat despite the definite chill in the room. His eyes were closed tightly, and his face looked oddly flushed and pale at the same time. She knew that look—he was in real pain.

She hurried over to him, crouched and automatically took in his rapid breathing, his clenched jaw and erratic pulse. At some point she realized he wasn’t actually naked but wore a pair of khaki shorts. He also wasn’t just anyone. He was Ethan Grace.

“What’s going on?” she asked, knowing that he’d been aware of her presence when he didn’t flinch at the sound of her voice or even open his eyes.

“Get my medication. It’s in the bathroom.” He rasped out the order.

She didn’t take any offense at the rude demand; pain changed everything. “Of course,” she said, “but first, let me get you up off the floor.”

She scooted closer and reached out to him. She might only weigh a hundred and ten pounds at the most, but she was used to lifting patients twice her size. She’d guessed he was around a hundred and ninety pounds, maybe six feet two or three inches tall. She hadn’t seen Ethan Grace for years, but she had no doubt she was helping the man who owned all of this. And that man didn’t have a smudge on his upper arm but a tattoo, which surprised her as she looked at the four-inch-long dagger with a snake twined around it. Beneath it was the script “Do It.”

When she touched the tattoo, he jerked at the contact and his eyes flew open. Deep brown eyes, almost black. He looked confused, then said in a tight voice, “What in the hell?”

His dark brown hair was clinging damply to his flushed face that seemed all sharp angles and his jaw was shadowed by the beginnings of a new beard. He looked strong and capable, but she knew that even the strongest man couldn’t help himself when pain took over. She tried to be reassuring as she said, “Okay, we can do this,” while carefully straddling his legs and attempting to push her hands under his arms.

His skin was hot to the touch. No wonder he had the doors wide-open. She needed to get him in bed, then find the medication he mentioned.

“Mr. Grace, I’m going to get you up and onto the bed.” She braced herself, took a deep breath and pushed as hard as she could with her legs. But nothing worked.

Even with his dead weight, she could have lifted him, but he barely moved up before his momentum pulled her back and toward him. She felt her feet slip on the hardwood floor, and in that moment, she knew that she was going to fall onto him.

Deliberately she let go of him and threw herself to her right as far as she could so her legs wouldn’t make more contact with him than they already were. She tumbled to the floor, hitting her shoulder hard, but as she landed she knew that she’d managed to keep off of his legs.

She twisted to look at him, saw those black eyes on her. She was sitting on the floor by Ethan Grace, in a guest house and trying to figure out how to get him into bed.

ETHAN WASN’T SURE what the hell was going on. It seemed that there was a woman with him, a stranger, almost sitting on top of him and calling him Mr. Grace. This small redhead wasn’t Natalie. No, Natalie was in L.A. on a case. Or maybe she was in Europe. He couldn’t remember. And Natalie never would have worn a sweatshirt and jeans and certainly wouldn’t have called him Mr. Grace. His mind was so damn foggy from the pain. Then the woman was pulling him, making pain shoot up his leg, making him almost nauseated.

She was suddenly gone as if she’d fallen off the edge of his world, and he was back on the floor surrounded by the throb of bone-deep pain. No, she was still there, close by, talking in a breathless voice. “I’d say that didn’t go well.”

What hadn’t gone well? He frowned, then she was in front of him again, crouching over him, her hand on his forehead, her fingers pressed to the hollow of his throat. “You have to get into the bed,” she was saying. “And you have to help me.”

Forget the bed. “Who are you?” he muttered, each word causing him more agony.

“I’m a doctor,” she said.

He closed his eyes tightly, trying to control his pain, as well as blot out the weirdness of what was going on in front of him. He had to be hallucinating. A doctor? With flaming-red hair? A doctor in some sort of sweat outfit? A doctor who’d been trying to sit in his lap? Ethan forced himself to open his eyes again and focus. “How?” he said, intending to ask her how she got here.

But she said, “Tons of medical school and hard work.” He couldn’t have smiled to save his life. “Now, you have to help me get you into bed.”

Sure, and he could fly if he jumped off the deck, he thought. He couldn’t move, let alone get onto the bed. If he even tried to sit straight, the pain increased. “No, I…”

She was standing over him again, and he tried to focus on her, but his vision was blurry and the world had a halo of gray around everything. “I’ll help you, but you have to help me,” she said, and her hands were on him again, at his chest, slipping under his arms. “Push as much as you can and try to lean toward me.” He realized her cheek was against his, and her mouth was by his ear. “All right?”

Before he could agree or disagree, she was actually lifting him up. He was amazed that this tiny person who was supposed to be a doctor managed to get him into the cool linens of the bed. Pain burned through him when he hit the sheets, but the next instant, it eased and he found he could actually breathe. Was he doing it all himself, or imagining the doctor was doing it for him? Had he hallucinated the whole thing? Catching his cast on the plant, the fall, then trying to get inside, another fall, then this woman sitting in his lap?

“It’s okay,” she whispered from somewhere above him, but he couldn’t even muster the strength to open his eyes for a moment. “It’s okay.”

His good leg was being raised onto the bed, then his broken leg was miraculously positioned on the bed, too. The pain was circling him now but no longer cutting in to him. He kept breathing as evenly as he possibly could. He didn’t move until he felt a hand on his forehead, a soft touch that was gone quickly. “Where’s your medication?” she asked him.

Without opening his eyes, he muttered, “Bathroom.”

He could sense the emptiness where she’d been or where he’d imagined she’d been when she left. Just when he thought he’d lost it, that there was no one here but him, the red-haired doctor was back. She slipped a hand under his neck and shoulders, helped him up a bit, then said, “Open your mouth, Mr. Grace.”

“Ethan,” he mumbled right before he did as he was told and felt two pills fall onto his tongue. Then the coolness of a glass rim was against his lips and cold water slipped down his throat.

She lowered him gently onto the bed, and in a moment, she was speaking to him. “Put your arms around my neck. Hold on and let me maneuver you up and back so I can adjust your leg.”

When he opened his eyes, the blurred image was breathtaking. Brilliant hair, blue eyes, hands on his shoulder, her breath brushing his clammy skin. Put his arms around her? He didn’t hesitate. He slipped his hands onto her shoulders and behind her neck. He felt her hair brush his bare skin as she shifted, practically hugging him to her with one arm.

He heard her whispering over and over again, “Just a bit farther, just a bit, just a bit.” He felt his hands start to slip, and he tried to get a new grip on her, but it didn’t work. His hands balled up her sweatshirt, and she was falling toward him, the way he’d thought she had on the floor. But this time she didn’t just disappear to one side; she landed on his stomach and chest. The scent of flowers seemed to be everywhere, and the weight of her on him wasn’t painful at all.

If it all was a hallucination, it was one hell of a hallucination, he thought. She slipped away from him again. He didn’t have the strength to reach out for her this time. It was all he could do to open his eyes and look up to find her bending over him. “The pills should work quickly,” she said in a soft voice that seemed to drift around him.

“Where…” He licked his lips. “Where did you come from?”

“The beach. I was walking.” The words echoed in the room as if bouncing back off the fog that was creeping into his line of vision. “I heard the crashes and thought you needed help.”

Help? That fog was creeping closer and closer, the way it had off the sound so many times. But he was in the guest house. And there was a woman with him. Not Natalie. Standing over him, with the gentlest voice and touch.

He closed his eyes again when it became too hard to keep them open. “I fell,” was all he could get past his lips.

“I heard,” she murmured as her hand touched his forehead, smoothed back his hair. “Can I call someone?” Her voice seemed farther away and muffled now.

“No,” he said. “No.” He settled deeper into the grayness. “Just need sleep.”

There was no voice now, and he had that same feeling that he’d had before, that empty sensation when he knew he really was alone. Whatever had happened, it was done. Whatever he’d dreamed or hallucinated was gone. The woman, whoever she was or hadn’t been, wasn’t there, and he fell into a sleep that came in a rush of relief from the pain.

Chapter Two

Ethan woke slowly and did what he had done every morning since his accident—he kept his eyes closed, measuring the pain to test the levels of discomfort he’d be facing that day. This time he felt a dull throb that ran the length of his injured leg, from his foot to his hip, but it was bearable. Then he remembered the fall and the aftermath. He opened his eyes to glance around the bedroom in the guest house, where he’d moved to from his suite in the main building basically to avoid the confusion of the preparations for Joey’s wedding reception.

He’d been tired of the chaos everywhere, and had yet to understand why so many people were needed to pull off a party that would last for two or three hours tops, two weeks from now. He’d do anything for Joe, but enduring the insanity all around him while he was healing and trying to work hadn’t been possible. So he’d taken over the guest house on the bluffs.

And regretted ever driving himself in the Jaguar. He should have waited for James Evans, his assistant and friend for the past ten years, to come back from a late-day appointment. Then Ethan wouldn’t have been outside his corporate building when a car swerved to miss a pedestrian and broadsided him as he’d pulled out of the underground parking and onto the street. The speed hadn’t been great and the Jaguar had been heavy enough to take the impact, but if he hadn’t gotten out right away to check the damage, he wouldn’t have gotten pinned between the two cars. The other driver had jumped out of his car and forgotten to put it in Park. Before Ethan knew what was happening, he had a broken leg.

“You’re pretty lucky to get out of it with a simple fracture,” his doctor had told him. When Ethan had challenged Doctor Maury Perry’s definition of lucky, the man who had been his physician for over ten years had shrugged philosophically. “You’re alive, it’s a clean break and you won’t be off your feet too long. You’re damn lucky, Ethan.”

Ethan had never bought in to the idea of luck. If luck had been involved, there wouldn’t have been an accident. He exhaled, assured that the pain wasn’t going to get worse any time soon, and twisted his head to see his medication and a half-full glass of water by the bed.

An image flashed in his mind of someone lifting him, giving him pills and cold water. Then he remembered. Tripping. Falling. The pain exploding. Almost crawling into the house. The table and chair crashing to the floor, the lamp breaking. The red-haired woman coming to him out of nowhere, helping him, sitting on top of him. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d dreamed it, or maybe the pills had made him hallucinate. But he wasn’t imagining being in bed with his broken leg raised on a couple of pillows. And his prescription and water were right by him.

Had the doctor done that?

He raised himself carefully on one elbow to look around. He was sure the chair had fallen over, but now it was sitting by the door, right along with the side table. The only clue he had that the accident had happened at all was the missing Tiffany lamp, which he remembered shattering.