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minutes, I’ll go get our stuff together and we’ll be ready.” To Mrs. Kinncaid, she said, “Thank you so much for your hospitality. You have an extraordinary home.”
    The woman laughed and waved a hand. “It was our pleasure. Maybe you’ll come to visit sometime. And I suppose extraordinary is one way to describe it.”
    “Museum is a better description,” Gavin muttered.
    Ryan chuckled.
    She smiled at him, and turned back to Gavin.
    Gavin caught his breath at her grin. Two dimples deepened her cheeks. That floral scent he’d detected last night and the day before at the hospital had floated into the room the moment she’d walked in. And it teased him from across the table now. Her eyes were a soft brown color, like the color of whisky. Though he thought maybe they lightened when she was angry, or he seemed to remember them being more amber yesterday when they were insulting each other in the maternity ward.
    Taylor shifted and answered something his mother said. Early morning sunlight shot red fire off her hair, which she’d pulled back into a braid.
    The dress she had on was something else. It was made out of some filmy material and seemed to glide over her skin. Hell, every time she’d picked up her fork and moved forward, he’d watch it bunch and pull over her chest. The sleeveless dress showed off pale shoulders with a smatter of freckles.
    “Is that okay with you, Doc?” she asked, drawing his attention.
    Gavin shook his head. “What?”
    “Leave in half an hour? You’re mother wants to show me something.”
    Great, now Mom was showing her things. He knew what his mother was thinking earlier with all the divorce questions and children. Lord, ever since Aiden and Jesslyn were married and had the twins, he was expected to go next.
    Marriage? No. Too big, too long term, too much commitment on both sides.
    Hell, he couldn’t get enough time to eat most of the time, let alone sleep. What would he do with a wife?
    His ex dating partner--he didn’t think of them as his girlfriends until after several dates--
    had yelled at him last night and dumped him because she was pissed he couldn’t spend more time with her.His family might joke about all his women, but he was lucky to date the same woman four or five times without work getting in the way. And women seemed to be funny about that.
    Wanted hearth, home, and leashes. It was fine for a pregnant woman to want him to deliver her baby at four a.m. But if she was the doctor’s lover, let alone wife, she might have something to

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    say about it.
    “Hel-leewww,” Taylor said.
    Gavin shook off his thoughts again, wondering why in the world he’d thought of marriage in the first damn place.
    Leave, half an hour. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. Sorry, I was thinking of something.”
    He watched as the other three left the room. What about her rubbed him wrong? Ever since he met the woman, they’d bickered. And he generally got along with women.
    Gavin gave up trying to figure it out and went to get his stuff.
     
    * * * *
     
    Gavin grinned as he drove through the streets to Taylor’s house. Lunch had been entertaining and informative. They’d left later than he’d planned and Gavin decided to take them to lunch. Taylor had, of course, declined. Was the woman always so contrary? Though after he’d talked her into lunch, a sort of truce seemed to reign. He’d noticed several things as Ryan wolfed his burger and Taylor ate her salad. He picked up on the fact that Ryan wasn’t Taylor’s biological child, more from what wasn’t said than what was, but he had yet to figure out the dynamics. Ryan was exuberant, full of factoids, and liked to hum classical music, yet the boy was often guarded. Sometimes he seemed hesitant to do things and Gavin caught him either asking or looking to Taylor for permission. He wondered at that. Was it simply shyness or was it more?
    Gavin was curious about Ryan, but he didn’t know how to broach a subject that he had no