Read Online The M.D.'s Surprise Family by Marie Ferrarella - Free Book Online Page A

time, they were one, sharing a single action. “We did,” she told him, her voice low.
    Obviously her “we did” was different than his, Peter thought.
    What did it matter? There were still a number of hours left before midnight and he never fell asleep before then. Sometimes not even then.
    Peter shrugged, surrendering the small battle, not wanting to waste his energy on it. Moving away from the front entrance, he took a couple of stepstoward the car she’d pointed out to get a closer look at it.
    His eyebrows pulled together. No, his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. He looked down at Raven. “A Ferrari?”
    â€œYou sound surprised.”
    He supposed he was at that. “I guess I pictured you driving around in a VW bus.”
    He tried not to notice the appealing grin that curved her mouth. “Complete with flowers painted on the side?”
    Ordinarily he would have said that she was laughing at him. Except that he couldn’t feel himself taking offense. Her expression was too genial, too deliciously amused.
    â€œYes,” he conceded.
    He watched a shimmer of delight brightening eyes the color of a cloudless, midmorning sky.
    â€œActually, that was my parents’ vehicle—and where my mother ultimately began her company.” She pulled her expression into a serious one, and almost succeeded. “But driving around in something that vintage now would be kind of unsafe, don’t you think?”
    His eyes swept over her. It was like carrying on a conversation with pixie dust. Glittery, shimmery, but if he tried to catch hold of it, there would be nothing in his hands. “I got the impression you didn’t trouble yourself with things like that.”
    Again the laugh—musical, light—went right through him, embedding itself within his marrow. “You have a lot to learn about me, Peter.”
    Peter. Not Dr. Sullivan, or even just Doctor, but Peter. The structure he’d built up so carefully all around him was being torn away with her delicate, bare hands. And again, she was talking as if this was the beginning of a relationship instead of something that was meant, by design, to be quick, fleeting. Over with before it ever really got started.
    â€œYou know,” she was saying after she’d allowed her words to sink in, “I’ve always loved the color red and I’ve loved Ferraris ever since I saw Tom Selleck fold his muscular body up into one on Magnum P.I. ”
    â€œYou watched television?” Something else he couldn’t visualize her doing.
    She could almost read the thoughts as they telegraphed themselves into his head. “Children of neo-hippies got to watch television.” She laughed.
    And then she leaned her head into his, as if about to impart some deep, dark secret only he could hear. The scent of wildflowers and honeysuckle penetrated his consciousness, filling his head even though, logically, the night air should have easily dissipated it. But apparently logic and Raven Songbird could not coexist in the same space.
    â€œBesides, I saw the show on one of the cablechannels. Burned the whole series onto DVD disks,” she confided with a wink.
    He had no idea what she was trying to convey with the wink, only that it went through him with the force of a bullet hitting its target dead center.
    What the hell was going on here? he wondered. Was he coming down with something? During all his years at medical school and in residency, surrounded by sick people, he’d never come down with so much as a cold. It looked as if his luck had run out.
    â€œNever saw it myself,” he muttered when she continued to look at him as if he should know what she was talking about.
    He thought that would put her off. Even at this point, he realized he should have known better. Nothing seemed to put her off. She was like one of those little yellow toy ducks that bobbed upright no matter how hard you tried to sink