A Mother For His Child Page 6

  Nice was an understatement, Will considered. It was around nine, and the August morning sun shone on the water and on Maggie’s glossy dark hair. The wooden planking of the deck already gave off warmth and the beguiling aroma of sun-baked timber. The mountains on the far side of the lake were soft and blue in the distance, while the closer slopes that jutted upward from the opposite side of the road looked lush and cool.

  The trees were clothed in brilliant, late-summer green, while Maggie provided a striking counterpoint of colour in a pair of white drill shorts and a clingy red cotton sweater. Her legs were bare and smooth and brown, and if she was wearing anything beneath the sweater except a remarkably smooth and shapely bra, it didn’t show.

  Will took his eyes off Maggie’s figure, caught her look in his direction and raised his brows. What could he do to help? said the look.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she answered. ‘Things are more hectic here than I’d planned this morning. I’ve called the hospital, and Matthew Sullivan is responding well to treatment, so that’s good news. It looks like he’s going to pull through, but I won’t get a chance to get down and see him for a while yet after all.’ She tilted her head. ‘Um, I guess this is one way for you to get a feel for the practice. Maybe we’ll be able to look over the office suite soon.’

  ‘No hurry,’ he answered.

  Whatever she intended, his plan was to spend the day. He wasn’t going to let her brush him off. Neither was he going to let her reach a quick decision, even if it was in favour of what he wanted. The whole issue was too important.

  She disappeared inside, and he entertained the kids. Daniel decided to get silly, galloping around the deck’s big picnic table and making faces and noises. The older two children giggled. Tyler asked with a half-smile, ‘Is he always like this?’

  ‘If he was,’ Will answered cheerfully, ‘I wouldn’t have the energy to get up in the mornings.’ Beyond his easy smile, he was already watching for the possibility that Daniel would overheat. The drink of juice and the shady hat he was now wearing wouldn’t be enough to keep him cool for long.

  ‘He’s funny,’ Tyler added, not smiling now. Will wondered what there had been in his innocent sentence to drain the pleasure from the boy’s face. Surely he hadn’t sensed Will’s own underlying concern?

  Lily spoke suddenly, giving him his answer. ‘Our dad’s ill. He doesn’t get up in the mornings sometimes. He’s got MS. He’s resting right now. He has to rest a lot.’

  ‘Lily!’ her brother muttered, frowning. ‘You don’t say stuff like that to strangers.’

  She shrugged. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s our business, OK?’

  She looked chastened for a moment. ‘OK.’ Seconds later, she had brightened again. ‘We live on an island.’ She turned to her brother. ‘Is it OK to say that?’

  It was his turn to shrug. ‘Sure.’

  ‘You can see it. It’s over there.’ She pointed across the lake, and Will looked.

  Daniel made another silly noise. Will went inside and found a pitcher of iced water in the fridge. He coaxed Dan to have another drink, then got a small terrycloth towel out of the diaper bag he’d brought. Dampening it, he wiped his little son’s face, neck and arms to keep him cool. Water acted in exactly the same way as sweat, cooling by evaporation.

  ‘Here’s your baby brother, guys,’ Maggie announced, some minutes later. She carried the swaddled baby in her arms, and behind her came the tired blonde mother, still moving awkwardly. ‘Here, Laura.’

  With the baby in the crook of one arm, Maggie slid a low, sturdy, wooden Adirondack chair out from the shade of the house. It was stained a rich oak colour, like the deck itself, and had a padded seat and back cushions. She slipped an extra doughnut cushion onto it as well, in deference to Laura’s sore perineum. When Laura had sat down, Maggie laid the baby in her arms and the older children crowded round to look.

  Maggie turned to Will.

  ‘Bring Daniel along, and we can take a look around the office suite,’ she said. ‘Laura, if you don’t mind, Dr Braggett is interested in seeing how my practice works, so I’ll leave you alone for the time being.’

  ‘The kids’ll look after me,’ she said.

  ‘Are you this accommodating with all your patients?’ Will asked a minute later.

  They had reached the professional suite. It was cool in here, which was a plus. There was a big box of sturdy toys in the waiting room, and Daniel fell upon it as if he’d never seen blocks and wooden trucks before in his life. His brrm-brrm noises and the clatter of falling towers provided a backdrop to the adult dialogue.

  ‘Shouldn’t I be?’ Maggie countered Will’s question at once. She was reacting to his cool tone, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to sell himself to her by softening his concerns.

  ‘Thin end of the wedge?’ he suggested. ‘There are people who make a vocation out of exploiting the good will of conscientious doctors. Living under the same roof as your practice, I’d have thought it was a risk.’

  ‘Word will get out, you mean?’ she suggested dryly. ‘Everyone will come here for the free juice and baby delivery service? I’ll have patients camping on my lawn, and I’ll have to extend the dock to make more boat parking. People will want their blood pressure taken at midnight, with a cup of complimentary tea thrown in.’

  He ignored her mocking tone and repeated firmly, ‘It’s a risk.’

  ‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘I’m aware of it. I’m aware that I have scheduled drugs on the premises, and that I live alone. I take precautions.’

  ‘Like what?’ He almost made a comment about the brief shorts and clingy sweater. Was that sort of casual attire precautionary on a doctor? Provocative was more the word.

  Only if he said that, he’d have pretty much admitted that her outfit was provocative to him, and that wasn’t the subject under discussion right now. He had begun to conclude that soon it might need to be.

  ‘The place is fully alarmed,’ she answered him. ‘The drugs are kept in a locked safe. I’m on excellent terms with my neighbours, who’ve looked out for me wonderfully since Mark first became ill. And if I go out of my way for a patient, I make sure they don’t spread the news around. I’m aware of the risks, Will, and thanks for the depth of your concern.’

  Her tone made it clear she thought he was only looking for something to criticise, or a way to cast himself in a good light. She confirmed the latter idea with her next words.

  ‘If you’re trying to convince me that your protective masculine strength would be an asset to the practice, you’ll have to come up with a better argument.’

  ‘I thought we were going to stop this sort of stuff,’ he growled.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed shortly. ‘So did I.’

  ‘You mean you think I started it?’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘I hadn’t intended to start an argument.’ He felt his jaw tighten, and tried to get back to what he’d first said, and why he’d said it. ‘Would it be unreasonable of me to want to know if I was considering a partnership with a doctor who couldn’t set boundaries?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ she answered. ‘But is it unreasonable of me to ask you to seek that information in a more direct and less aggressive way? There’s nothing about the way I run this practice that I want to hide, Will.’

  They glared at each other. Maggie’s eyes were bright with anger and her hair went wild as she lifted a hand to flick it impatiently back from her face. Her mouth looked to be very firmly closed, but then, as he watched, he saw the tiny, nervous lapping of the pink tip of her tongue against her full lower lip.

  Good grief, it’s about the chemistry! he suddenly realised. That’s why she fights me all the time, and that’s what she’s fighting.

  The idea blew him away.

  Testing it, he leaned across the waiting-room desk, aware of the power of his own masculinity and using it consciously. She immediately took a step backwards, in the direction of the big bank of file cabinets, as i
f six feet was the minimum safe distance to maintain between them. Having established what he wanted to know, he straightened a little.

  ‘Listen,’ he said carefully, ‘I’ve just been through a major defeat…’

  She nodded. ‘Your divorce.’

  OK, so she understood that. That was a plus. Although she couldn’t know the extent of what had happened, and how he felt about it.

  ‘I’m not admitting to another one just yet,’ he went on. ‘I think this partnership could work. So what if we disagree sometimes? That can be healthy. Debate and questioning is healthy.’

  ‘Is it healthy the way we’ve always done it?’

  ‘I don’t dislike you, Maggie. Let me make that clear. I never have, or I wouldn’t be here. You’re much too…interesting to dislike. There are whole conversations I’ve had with you in the past that I’ve never forgotten, because they were interesting. And that’s true for you, too. I know it is. Of all the people who went through medical school with you, I’m the last one you’d ever forget. Isn’t that true? And we can build on that, don’t you think?’

  Maggie didn’t answer him directly. ‘Let me show you the offices and the examining rooms.’ It was at best a provisional acceptance of his argument, he could tell.

  Deliberately, he probed a little further. ‘Am I getting too personal?’

  She looked at him, and he saw the spots of colour in her cheeks. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged defensively. ‘Let’s keep it professional. We’re talking about a professional relationship.’

  ‘OK,’ he agreed, although he was tempted to argue that there was no such thing. Between professional and personal, the boundaries were always blurred. Maggie must know that, since she had once been in partnership with her own husband.

  She turned towards the short corridor that led to the second office, unused since Mark’s death. Will followed her, wondering how much she still grieved.

  Was grief part of what made her so uncomfortable inside her own skin? Her shoulders were squared back so hard it must hurt. He could hear the hiss of her breath between her teeth. When she reached the office, she opened the door and stood back, leaving him to his first impressions. Behind them, Daniel was still absorbed in the box of toys.

  ‘This office would be yours,’ she said, unnecessarily.

  He entered and she followed him at a slight distance.

  ‘It looks northward, not towards the lake,’ he observed.

  ‘You can see the lake through the trees. My bedroom has the same outlook upstairs. You can also see the mountains to the west. That’s what Mark liked.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell me more about him,’ Will said, although the office was already adding to his store of knowledge about the much older man who’d married Maggie.

  It was very much a man’s room. There was a large-mouthed bass mounted on a piece of driftwood on the wall, telling him that Mark Elliott had been a fisherman. There was also a series of framed prints showing medical scenes as painted by the old masters. Scholarly books on a shelf reflected a keen interest in the history of his profession. On the desk, there was a photo of Maggie herself, framed in cherry wood. It was a graduation picture, and showed her in cap and gown, her face proud and serious as she held her rolled parchment degree close to her chest.

  No, Will thought at once. That’s wrong. He shouldn’t have chosen a picture like that. It should be a glamour shot or a holiday snap, and she should be smiling.

  ‘Should I have said cheese?’ she asked, having followed his frowning gaze.

  ‘It’s traditional.’ He picked up the photo and looked at it more closely. Her eyes were huge and lustrous, her skin glowed and her closed mouth showed off its full, pretty shape. Maybe Mark had been right to see something special in this shot.

  ‘Mark was proud of what I’d achieved.’ She pulled the photo from Will’s hand with a possessive tug and placed it back on the desk, her words cutting into his thoughts.

  ‘You couldn’t achieve it while smiling?’ he said, looking down at her. He could do so with ease, since she couldn’t be more than five feet four, to his six feet two.

  ‘I was smiling in some of them,’ she answered, as defensive as ever. ‘This was the one he chose.’ She added fiercely, ‘Now you’re attacking Mark, and his judgement?’

  ‘You brought it up. I was thinking it, I guess, but I wouldn’t have said it.’

  ‘Oh, this is ridiculous!’

  ‘It is! Hell, yes, it is.’ He felt his voice catch with frustration. ‘And maybe there’s only one way to deal with it.’

  The whole thing was way overdue, he realised. There had been a period, years ago, when he and Alison had broken up for a while. Perhaps he should have trusted the chemistry he’d felt and asked Maggie out then. Alison would have considered it a betrayal, but she’d been the one to end their relationship. He could have pushed Maggie, delved deeper into what all that bristling hostility of hers had really meant, but he’d been too callow, in his early twenties, to see how mixed her signals had been. Just as he’d been too callow to understand that the thing Alison had hurt most when she’d broken it off had been his pride. No, if he had pushed, the whole thing would, no doubt, have been a disaster.

  Now, however, the time had well and truly come.

  She hadn’t moved away, so it wasn’t hard. They were both standing beside the desk. He put his hands on her shoulders, that was all. His thumbs rested on her bare, warm skin while his fingers touched the smooth cotton knit of her sweater. He ached, at once, to feel every contour of the flesh beneath, but wasn’t going to risk reading her wrongly. He would give her plenty of time.

  She could have pulled back, but she didn’t. As in the photo, her eyes looked huge with feeling. What feeling? Not anger. Not yet.

  After a long moment, he slid his arms around her, bringing his chest close against those rounded, giving breasts. At once, his groin began to tighten and fill. Maggie drew in her breath sharply, and her hands came up to push—no, pull—against his hips. He couldn’t work it out. Her breasts were still nudging his chest but she was straining away from the pull of his hands. What was she saying? Yes and no at the same time? This far, but no further?

  He ignored the ambivalence of it and bent his head. Again, he took it slowly. He let her feel the warmth of his breath on her temple before he went lower, let her feel the nudge of his nose and the whisper-soft brush of his mouth across her cheek. Afterwards, she would never be able to argue that he hadn’t given her time.

  As he claimed her lips at last, he heard her make a little sound in her throat. Again it was impossible to interpret. Protest, or pleasure?

  Make up your mind, Maggie.

  He said it with the pressure of his mouth on hers. Make up your mind. Resist this, if you can. Tell me it doesn’t feel good, if you can. And if you can’t tell me that, then kiss me back. Part your lips. Touch your tongue to mine and taste me. Lift your hands and curl your fingers in my hair.

  She answered him the same way—with her body—her signals still frantically mixed. Her closed eyes, her ragged sigh and her softened limbs all told Will that this was pleasure. But her fists were balled tightly, pressing against his ribs. She was arching her neck, trying to turn her head away, and she was shaking.

  ‘Tell me to stop!’ he whispered urgently, daring her. Confident of her response now, he took the fullness of her bottom lip between his teeth and nipped it gently, felt her answering shudder of need. ‘If you don’t want this, if you don’t want me in your life in any way, now or ever…’ he covered her mouth with his once more and drank the taste of her, blurring his words against her lips ‘…then tell me to stop, and I promise I will.’

  He slid his hands inside the fabric of her brief shorts, found the creases at the top of each thigh and traced the tender line there with his fingertips. His chest nudged deliberately against her breasts, and one brief downward glance through his lashes told him that her nipples had hardened like stones
.

  ‘But make it clear that you mean it,’ he finished.

  She didn’t answer. Her arms wound around his neck and he felt her weight sag against him. She burrowed her forehead into his shoulder for a moment and her breathing went in and out with the rhythm of a steam train, as his fingers continued their seductive exploration of her upper thighs. Then she lifted her head, cupped his jaw between her hands and pressed her mouth to his once more. Her lips were parted, swollen and eager.

  ‘Don’t stop!’ she gasped. ‘Don’t!’

  Almost as soon as she’d stopped speaking, they both heard movements coming from the corridor outside. Adult footsteps, and the sound of a stick. Maggie dropped her arms and leapt back as if she’d been burned. Will had to push a fist deep into one front pocket of his pants to hide the extent of his arousal.

  They were both still breathing raggedly when Curtis Bailey appeared in the open office doorway. He had a red mark on his cheek and his eyes looked bleary from sleep.

  ‘I didn’t intend to fall asleep,’ he said.

  He was a handsome man in his forties, and his disease was apparent, to a casual glance, only in his use of a stick and his slightly awkward gait. Maybe its strongest manifestation, however, was in the look of chronic, smouldering frustration that tightened his mouth and shadowed his green eyes beneath a thatch of prematurely greyed hair.

  ‘You probably needed it,’ Maggie said to him brightly. ‘Laura got all of you out of bed pretty early this morning.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Curtis asked. ‘I looked in the other room, but she and the baby had gone.’

  ‘They’re both up on deck with the other kids.’

  ‘Our friends should be here pretty soon, so is there any reason why we can’t all go home then?’

  ‘It should be fine,’ Maggie assured him.

  She sounded like her usual self, but Will wondered what was going on inside her in response to the way he’d kissed her. For himself, it felt like the best thing he’d ever done.

  ‘I’ll come out this evening and check that Laura and Joel are doing fine,’ Maggie continued to Curtis. ‘And I’ll see them again in the morning. With your friends there, and Laura’s parents later on—’