Banner O'Brien Read Online Free PDF Page A

is this?” she chimed, letting the huge wreath rest against the skirts of her soft azure dress.
    Adam held out one arm in a dashing gesture of introduction. “Melissa, meet Dr. Banner O’Brien. O’Brien, my sister, Melissa.”
    Relief sang through Banner’s system, and her assumed smile became genuine. “Hello,” she said, as Adam helped her down.
    Melissa’s delighted gaze swung from Banner to her brother, and an unspoken “Ah-ha!” rang in the air.
    Adam tossed a look of mock sternness in his sister’s direction and then tucked Banner’s hand into the crook of his elbow before starting toward the open door of the house.
    “When did you get back?” he asked of Melissa, who hesitated on the step to hang the wreath on a waiting hook.
    “Why, Adam, how nice of you to ask!” retorted Melissa. “You were supposed to meet the steamer, remember?”
    A look of exaggerated chagrin moved in Adam’s face and his broad shoulders as Melissa joined them in the entryway. “You’re here,” he observed expansively, “so I don’t see the problem.”
    “You wouldn’t,” drawled the girl—Banner guessed she was about seventeen years old—rubbing her hands together as though the holly wreath might have left dust on them. “If it hadn’t been for Jeff, I would have had to walk.”
    “Horrors,” said Adam, and his hand came up to touch Banner’s hand, where it still rested in the crook of his arm.
    Melissa took pointed interest in the gesture and studied Banner with mischievous eyes. “Are you really a doctor?” she wanted to know.
    Adam’s eyes linked with Banner’s as he guided her out of the entryway, with its black-and-white-tiled floorand its tall clock. “Yes,” he said, in a voice that made his colleague’s heart cavort wildly between her throat and her midsection. “Shamrock is really a doctor.”
    So he had accepted her, then. Inwardly, Banner rejoiced. “Could we see the hospital now?”
    Adam nodded, ushering her through a massive dining room that boasted mahogany-paneled walls, a crystal chandelier that must have measured at least six feet across, and a fireplace big enough for three or four men to stand up in. The furniture here was heavy, but not ornate, and the overall impression was one of easy, longstanding wealth.
    “Before Papa built this house,” Melissa announced, “he and Mama lived in a cabin right on this very spot.” She tapped the long, highly polished table with the knuckles of one hand. “He used to say that my brothers were all born right where Maggie sets the mashed potatoes.”
    Adam paused and gave his sister a dour look. “Speaking of Maggie, why don’t you find her and tell her that Dr. O’Brien and I will want something to eat when we get back from the hospital.”
    Melissa looked as though she was going to argue—she would obviously have preferred to tag along after her brother—but then her aquamarine eyes registered understanding and she turned, in a whirl of finely sewn skirts, to prance off toward a door on the other side of the room.
    Grinning, Adam led Banner through an archway and onto the covered walk she’d seen from outside. It had glass walls and a smooth wooden floor, and snow whispered past on both sides.
    At the end was a broad room boasting eight empty, immaculately made beds and a huge iron heating stove.
    “This is the infirmary itself,” Adam said. “Usually, there are half a dozen patients here.”
    Banner looked around, both impressed and puzzled. “Is there just the one ward?”
    Adam’s eyes were as merry as the big wreath Melissa had hung on the front door. “You’re wondering whether or not women patients have to share the ward with men,” he guessed, quite accurately.
    “Do they?”
    He chuckled. “Of course not, Shamrock. We get very few female patients, given the backward attitudes of their husbands and fathers. When a woman is brought here, I usually put her in one of the guestrooms on the other side of the