“Suppose, for the moment, that I were to believe you.” No clue in Shayne’s voice let him know which way he was leaning. Turning sharply on his heel, he pinned Ben with a look. “Just how would you go about doing that?”
Ben met his gaze head-on, never wavering. “By staying here. By doing what you originally planned and working beside you at the clinic.”
The words struck a faraway chord, nudging at memories that had belonged to the idealistic man Shayne had once allowed himself to be before seeing how foolish that was. He’d since made his peace with reality, striking an acceptable middle path. And then had become incredibly surprised when Sydney had come into his life and he’d discovered that life actually had more to offer. But this wasn’t about him; this was about Ben. And Ben was about irresponsibility.
Shayne’s eyes narrowed as he glared at his younger brother. He wasn’t going to be taken in so easily. “When was the last time you practiced medicine?”
An easy grin slipped over Ben’s lips. “I don’t have to practice, I’ve got it down pat.” Seeing the exasperated look on Shayne’s face, Ben immediately raised his hands in complete surrender to ward off any words or rebuke. “Sorry. I could never resist that line.”
Shayne’s face darkened. “Medicine’s not a joke, Ben. Especially not here.”
Ben’s expression sobered. “No, it’s not. You’re absolutely right. And to answer your question, last week.” He saw Shayne raise an eyebrow quizzically. “That’s when I last practiced medicine. Last week. Wednesday.”
Shayne waited for the punch line. When it didn’t come, he provided it by recalling Ben’s old tricks. “Playing doctor with a willing woman—”
“Has its rewards,” Ben concluded freely. “But I wasn’t playing, Shay,” he insisted. “I was part of a medical group in Seattle. My specialty is pediatric care.” He didn’t add that it was a very lucrative practice. That by coming here he had walked away from an income that totaled almost half a million dollars a year. Shayne was not impressed by statistics like that. To Shayne it had always been about the healing, nothing else. “There were four of us in the partnership,” he explained. “Andrew Bell specializes in orthopedics, Will Jeffries is an internist and Josiah Witwer is a cardiologist.”
“And your specialty is children,” Shayne repeated.
Ben couldn’t tell if Shayne was interested or just going through the motions. He did know, though, that he’d missed Shayne. Missed him more than he’d ever realized. Missed, too, how good Shayne’s nod of approval had made him feel. He needed that nod again.
“Yes,” Ben answered, then added, “We’d all overlap, taking over if someone was away. But mostly we stuck to our fields of expertise.”
Shayne nodded, his expression stoic. “Pay’s good, I imagine.”
There was no point to lying. “Pay’s great. But this isn’t about the pay, Shay,” Ben insisted. “This is about coming back. About finding a place for myself.”
No one knew better than Shayne how persuasive Ben could be. His charm had gotten him out of many sessions of detention, out of well-deserved punishments. He had a glib tongue and a Teflon body. There was no place for either in his clinic.
Reaching for the decanter of brandy he kept on his desk, Shayne poured a small glass for Ben and then one for himself. “We don’t need someone who wants to put on a hair shirt for a week and then take off—”
“I’m not going to take off,” Ben said, interrupting him. The smile on his lips had faded just a little. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I’m good, Shayne. You know that. I’ll do whatever you need.”
Shayne sat down on the edge of the desk and sipped his brandy slowly, watching his brother over the rim of his glass.
“What happened?” he finally asked.
Ben shrugged carelessly. “I grew up.”
“I mean to Lila.”
Ben took a breath, as if to brace himself against the words. Against the memory. “She left me,” he said simply. Raising his glass in a silent toast, he took a healthy sip before lowering it again. “That was part of the growing process.”
“Left you,” Shayne said slowly, as if digesting the information. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” It still felt incredibly painful, more than a year later. It had taken him a year to get his act together, to take his feelings out of deep freeze. “One morning I rolled over in bed and reached out for her, but she was gone.” There’d been just the shortest of notes to say that they were different people now and she was leaving because she was bored.
Shayne watched him for a long moment. He couldn’t help feeling just the slightest bit vindicated. “Hard being disappointed in someone you thought you could count on, isn’t it?”
He had that coming, Ben thought. But even so, he couldn’t help the defensive response that rose to his lips. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, but you should have known better than to count on me back then. You were always the stable one.”
Being the stable one was a quality that, though expected, was so easily taken for granted. At times, he felt like a roof, there to give shelter and never to be noticed. Not like Ben. “And you were the one everyone doted on.”
“And the one nobody took seriously,” Ben said. He took another long sip of brandy. The guilty feelings that had haunted him, that had brought him here, refused to be sublimated.
Shayne laughed shortly. “You didn’t want to be taken seriously.”
That was the boy he’d been. But he wasn’t a boy any longer. “I do now.” Putting down his glass, Ben looked his brother in the eye. “Whatever it takes, Shay. Whatever it takes,” he repeated with feeling. “I want to stay in Hades.”
Shayne gave no indication as to whether or not he welcomed his brother’s presence. The suspicious glint in his eyes remained. “Someone suing you for malpractice?”
Ben shook his head. He had that coming, too, he supposed. That and a lot more. Time and again, he’d taken Shayne’s trust and abused it. But he was here now and he was going to prove himself. No matter how long it took. “I’m a good surgeon, Shayne. A good doctor.” His record was without blemish. Whatever else he might have been, he was always dedicated to his profession. “You could use the help.”
“I have the help,” Shayne countered. He poured himself a little more brandy, topping off Ben’s glass. “Since you’ve been gone, I’ve taken on a nurse practitioner and she lured her brother to come settle here. He’s a heart specialist. Jimmy Quintano.”
Silence wove its way around the corners as Ben absorbed what his brother had just said. He’d never thought that anyone would actually come here. When he was growing up, everyone wanted to leave Hades. Everyone but Shayne and his friend Ike.
“Then the answer’s no?” Ben finally asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Shayne said, warming the glass between his hands. “You can join me at the clinic. But we go by my rules.”
Ben felt the way he had as a kid in the dead of winter when he finally saw a ray of sunshine slicing through the eternal darkness. He grinned at his brother. “Whatever you say.”
“The first thing I ‘say,’” he told Ben, finishing his drink, “is that the clinic opens at seven.” He received the expected response from Ben, who looked properly sobered by the piece of information. “Something you’d like to say about that, Ben?”
Ben gave him a completely innocent look that didn’t fool his brother for a moment. “Yeah, can I catch a ride with you?”