The Husband Project

But even among men who accepted the general principle, it was difficult to find one who could wholeheartedly translate that philosophy into his personal life. That was why she hadn’t seriously considered talking to any of her men friends about her desire for a child. She suspected that, despite their good intentions, most of them would conclude that her request implied a whole lot more than a simple favor. And a good many of the rest would feel just a bit threatened since they hadn’t been asked...

Alison realized belatedly that Rita was talking, her soft voice rhythmic and soothing. “Kit and Susannah have been splitting your business calls. Kit’s taken everything to do with the video, Susannah’s handling the singles group and...”

A low, warm voice from the hallway said, “Did I hear my name?” A moment later Kit was standing over Alison’s chair, arms folded and one foot tapping ominously on the hardwood floor.

“What are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be driving yet.”

“Who said I drove?”

“Then please tell me you took a cab. Because if you walked all the way over here—”

“Dr. Williams told me to get gentle exercise.”

“I think she meant to start with a little less than half-mile hikes. Why didn’t you call and ask for a ride?”

“Because you’d have told me to stay home.” Alison smiled at the look of defeat in Kit’s eyes. “Anyway, I’m here now, so I might as well do some work.”

She was extra careful on the stairs which led down to her office on the ground floor, since going down steps was still one of the more difficult things physically, and the last thing she wanted to do was take a pratfall with Kit standing by to say I told you so.

Susannah and Kit had offices on the upper floor, in what had once been bedrooms. But when they’d first toured the building, in the days when it was still a home, Alison had taken one look at the ground-floor study, with its thick walls and high windows and built-in bookshelves, and fallen in love.

She had never regretted her choice. Since it was half underground, the room was always warm and quiet, and being as far as possible from the confusion of the top floor production room was worth the effort of climbing all the way up now and then.

The surface of her black lacquer desk was exactly as she’d left it, bare except for her red leather blotter and a whimsical Chinese vase that doubled as a pen holder. Her projects were laid away neatly in the file drawer below, and she pulled out the most pressing of them. The promotional video she’d been working on for months, intended to draw industry to Chicago, was in the hands of the tape editors, but there was plenty to be done in the next couple of weeks while they finished the final cut.

And then there was the singles club. The outgrowth of a casual brainstorm of Susannah’s months ago, the project had landed on Alison’s desk only because Susannah hadn’t found a sponsor until the week before her wedding. And how would it look to her new husband, she’d asked Alison earnestly, if she started spending a couple of evenings a month in a singles group?

So Alison had inherited the club—a project she still thought was Susannah’s craziest idea yet. But one of Chicago’s finest restaurants had agreed to host and sponsor the club, and now there was no backing out; Tryad’s reputation was on the line, and Chicago Singles would succeed, or else.

She opened the folder, and within minutes she was buried in her work. Even if her heart wasn’t entirely in the project, Alison had to admit that the more deeply she became involved in the singles club, the more possibilities there were.

She didn’t realize how long she’d been working till she stood up to get a notepad from the storage closet out in the hallway and had to grab the corner of her desk to keep from falling. She was light-headed, and there was a nagging ache in her lower back and a sharper one near the half healed incision.

“So much for the idea that you don’t need rest breaks any more,” she told herself dryly as she evicted Tryad’s calico cat from her comfortable nest at one end of the white wicker love seat. The cat glared and stalked off, tail high, and Alison lay down, wriggling around until she found a comfortable position.

The love seat was hardly conducive to naps—but then she didn’t intend to sleep, only to rest for a few minutes. Kit had installed a chaise longue in her office, and Susannah had selected an overstuffed couch, but Alison had deliberately chosen the wicker love seat and matching chair because—white they were cozy and inviting with their feminine, frilly cushions—they were not so comfortable that visitors sat around just to chat.

Her brain kept on ticking, rattling off promotional possibilities for the Chicago Singles. She loved her work, so much that it didn’t feel like a job at all most of the time. And she was comfortable with her life. Of course she wanted a child, and she’d continue to explore her options—but she must have been nuts to have gone off the deep end, that day on Kit’s terrace. She must have still been in shock from her surgery—and from her fear of never having a baby—to have reacted so idiotically.

She hoped Susannah never heard about the incident. She was the one who specialized in crackpot ideas and who seldom thought them through to the obvious consequences. She’d have a good laugh about Alison—practical logical Alison—asking a doctor to help her have a child... and asking on the spur of the moment, without even a thought for the outcome.

Her eyelids drooped, and her mind began to spin.

She didn’t know what sort of a party it was at first. She couldn’t hear anything, and everything seemed to be in black and white. Like an old home movie, that was it.

Slowly the picture cleared, like a projector coming into focus. Now she could see people, party hats perched on their heads, their mouths moving but making no sound. They seemed to be watching her, she glanced down and realized she was carrying a cake, balancing it carefully in both hands. A birthday cake from the looks of things, since there was a fat candle glowing in the center...

A single candle. She looked up eagerly, her eyes searching for the child the birthday cake must belong to. But the crowd of party-goers was dense. Suddenly, however, the group shifted, and people stepped aside to make room for her. At the end of the aisle they’d formed was a high chair, and in it sat a small child, romper-clad and wide-eyed, with a tuft of dark hair sticking straight up. Alison smiled and stepped forward, tripped over her own feet and went sprawling. The candle snuffed out an instant before Alison’s face smashed the thick white icing...

She jerked awake and lay back against the cushions, breathing hard. “Talk about Freudian,” she muttered finally, and pushed herself into a sitting position.

Yes, she’d been acting bizarre that day on Kit’s terrace. It had been little short of insane to blurt out her wishes that way, and particularly to Logan Kavanaugh. When the only experience the man had of her was a sick, argumentative woman who’d left him with a sore and bleeding lip—well, it was no wonder he hadn’t been eager to cooperate. She must have been deranged not to see that before she’d so thoroughly embarrassed herself.

But the fact she’d been crazy to bring it up to him didn’t mean it was a crazy idea. Granted, she’d have been better off to think it all the way through first and do a little more research before choosing a doctor. But the longing was real; she still wanted a child. And the facts hadn’t changed; all her arguments made just as much sense now as they had in the first burst of enthusiasm.

She’d been tempted to rip up his card, but common sense had made her hesitate. Why start from scratch if she could get a referral? And she wouldn’t have to talk to Logan himself; he’d said himself that his office nurse could help...

She’d just dialed the last digit when Susannah’s blond head appeared around the edge of Alison’s half-closed of fice door. “Rita said you were asking about—Oh, sorry. Want me to come back later?”

Susannah’s timing, Alison thought testily, couldn’t possibly have been worse. She started to put the phone down.

Before she could break the connection, however, the line clicked and a low-pitched Southern drawl said, “Obstetrics and Gynecology Associates.”

What a tongue twister. Somebody ought to have-had better sense. Hastily Alison put the phone back to her ear. “I’m sorry. Wrong number.” She hung up without waiting for a response. “I’m finished, Sue. Have a seat.”

Susannah flopped down in the big wicker chair. “I kept a list of the calls I took for you and what I did about them—or mostly, what I didn’t do.” She handed a sheet of yellow paper to Alison. “The majority said their business could wait till you were back in shape.”

Alison ran her eyes down the list. No big problems jumped out at her. “Thanks, Sue.”

Susannah swung around and draped her legs over the chair’s arm. “My pleasure. I also wondered.... You know the painting that was vandalized at the Dearborn Museum?”

Alison frowned. She remembered only vaguely—but her foggy recall made sense; Susannah had mentioned it at Flanagan’s when Alison’s pain was at its worst. “What about it?”

“The artist is coming to town to inspect the damage, and of course as the museum’s official public relations person I’ll have to be there. I wondered, if you don’t have another obligation, if you’d go with me.”

“Why? I’ve never been part of the Dearborn campaigns.”

“Moral support,” Susannah said firmly.

“Nobody can possibly think it’s your fault, can they?”

“Of course they can. I’m the one who suggested that instead of a guest book they hang a plain white canvas and let visitors write their comments with markers. So when the board starts looking for a scapegoat, and remembers that I encouraged the patrons to write on things—”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Since when did that prevent clients from yelling? A week from Saturday, five in the afternoon. Can you go?”

“I think so.” Alison reached for her calendar. “That night’s the first Chicago Singles meeting, so I’d have to go directly from the museum to Coq Au Vin. But maybe I can talk to the museum director about hosting an event for the stupid singles club.”

“Better quit calling it that,” Susannah advised, “or you’ll slip one of these days. I can see it now, on some morning interview show on television... Are you going to have gift certificates for membership?”

“Hadn’t thought of it.”

“If you do, I might get one for our painter friend.”

“He’d think it was a personal apology for the additions to his canvas.”

“You’re probably right.” Susannah yawned. “Kit tells me you and Logan Kavanaugh not only connected—pardon the pun—at the hospital but you spent a whole hour tête-à-tête on her terrace.”

“Did she?” Alison buried her face in a folderful of blank paper and did her best to sound entirely uninterested.

“So what’s going on there?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Come on, Ali. Don’t tell me you’re just going to add him to your string of male pals.”

“Not on your life.”

Susannah sat up with the grace of a ballerina, grinning broadly. “Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. If you don’t want to be friends with the man, it must mean you’re seriously attracted to him.”

Alison put the folder down with a snap and looked levelly at Susannah. “You know, Sue, my life was a whole lot less complicated before both you and Kit went nuts and fell in love.”

“Mine, too, but it was much less fun. So when are you going to see him again?”

“I’m not.”

“Really?” Susannah rose slowly. “Then why were you calling him at the office just now? I heard the receptionist answer. That’s a terrible name for a medical practice, don’t you think?”

Alison choked.

“And why, instead of admitting it, did you hang up on the poor woman when I came in? What, I wonder, didn’t you want me to overhear?” Then Susannah smiled like an angel and walked out without waiting for an answer.

The thinness of the stack of messages waiting for her on Rita’s desk had been a mirage; the fact was that every client Alison possessed—including some she hadn’t heard from in a year—called in the next week. Caught between too much work and the lingering effects of her surgery, Alison even considered installing an air mattress in her office. The main reason she didn’t was that she couldn’t find time to call the store and arrange a delivery.

She yawned as she climbed the steps to the main floor, carrying the final draft of yet another letter to be personalized and sent out to a mailing list of hundreds. She’d leave it on Rita’s desk to be taken care of in the morning, and then she was going home.

Used to the bright lights in her office, Alison was startled by the dimness on the main floor. She’d known it was late, of course—she’d drawn the curtains over her office windows hours ago, and the stillness of the entire brownstone had told her everyone but she and the calico cat. had departed. Still, she’d expected the last bit of twilight to still be trickling through the windows at the head of the stairs. Instead, there was only the yellow light which spilled from the entrance porch through the beveled glass panels around. the front door.

She flipped the hall lights on and crossed toward Rita’s office. A shadow moved on the steps outside, and Alison’s heart jolted. Tryad’s hours were clearly posted on the door; why would anybody be lurking outside now? A public relations office wasn’t even the sort of business she’d expect to draw the attention of any self-respecting burglar...

But if she was wrong about that...there she stood, spotlighted in the hallway.

She dived for the switch to kill the lights. Her eyes were slow to readjust to the dimness, and she’d managed to convince herself that she’d been startled by the movement of a tree branch in the breeze when a face pressed against the glass. The bevels distorted the image, so it wasn’t her eyes so much as the way her stomach tightened which told Alison who was outside. She unlocked the door, pulled it open, and looked up at Logan Kavanaugh.

“So you are here,” he said. “I saw lights on in the basement and then that sudden flash up here, and I suspected it would be you.”

“Congratulations. Does finding me make you eligible for a prize?” She didn’t move aside.

“Are you going to invite me in?”

“Any reason I should? Business hours are—”

“Looks to me like your business hours are about like mine—whatever it takes to get the job done.”

He did look tired, she thought. There was a network of fine lines around his eyes. She stepped back from the door. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“If it’s already made.”

“It won’t take a minute. Believe me, you don’t want to drink the tar that’s left in the pot.”

Logan shrugged. “I’ve no doubt had worse.” He followed her down the stairs and into the big kitchen next to her office.

Alison dumped the glass carafe, rinsed it, and started a fresh pot brewing. “So what brings you here?” She didn’t look at him. “No, don’t tell me. I bet you’re so shaken at being done with work at this hour—my goodness, it’s only eight o’clock!—that you’ve decided to take me on as a patient after all.”

“This was supposed to be my afternoon off,” he said gloomily. “If I was out beating the bushes for anything, it’d be a doctor—we’re short one just now.” He shook his head at the sugar bowl she held up. “I thought perhaps you’d decided on another approach to your problem, since you haven’t called for a referral.”

Alison set a steaming cup in front of him. “I’m amazed, with all those rafts of patients to see, that you’d bother to keep track of me.”

He grinned, and the tired lines around his eyes crinkled with humor. “Purely in self-defense, I assure you. Though as a matter of fact, I didn’t know till today that you hadn’t called.”

Alison poured her own coffee and sat down across from him. “So what was special about today?”

“This came in the mail.” He reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “I don’t suppose you know anything about it.”

His tone, Alison thought, said that he’d already convinced himself differently.

She looked warily at the envelope. The return address was Tryad’s, the envelope identical to the ones they had printed by the thousands. Logan’s name and office address had been neatly typed. She turned it over, looked up at him, and shook her head. “I can’t imagine why you think I’d be sending—”

“Go ahead, open it.”

“The cloak-and-dagger way you’re acting, I’m not sure I want to leave my fingerprints,” she muttered, but she slid the contents out. She recognized the long, narrow card immediately; it was one of the elegant gift certificates she’d produced, good for one year’s membership in the Chicago Singles.

She tried without much success to choke back a laugh. Susannah, she thought, the little matchmaker! The whole notion of gift certificates had been Susannah’s; Alison should have seen this coming. “And you thought I’d enrolled you? No, I can’t take credit for that. Lucky you. It’s a pretty pricey gift, you know.”

“Can’t take credit? Or won’t?”

“I had nothing to do with it. I have to admit I have my suspicions about who’s responsible, but—”

“It’s your signature, Alison.”

“Of course it is. I signed a whole stack of blanks, but they’re not valid till Rita numbers and registers them. She no doubt has a record of who paid the bill. If you like, I’ll ask her tomorrow. I can also—”

“It’s a shame, you know. I was so certain it was you I brought you a gift in return.” From the other inside breast pocket, he took a small, flat white box and set it down on the table beside his cup.

“Very thoughtful,” Alison said dryly. “But I still don’t quite understand why you’d think that I—”

“Because the whole idea sounds like one of your fruitcake plans—and when I found out you hadn’t pursued the medical alternative, it all fit with your twisted logic. What better way to meet a transient population of males than to set up your very own singles club?”

Alison shook her head in confusion. “So I can look over the selection and choose one to father my baby? Oh, please. Even if I was crazy enough to do that, why would I let you in on it?”

“In the hope that I’d feel so bad about the risks you’d be taking that I’d volunteer to help after all.”

“You’d be more likely to issue a general warning in the name of protecting your fellow men.” She tapped the heavy vellum gift certificate on her palm. “I’ll give this back to Rita tomorrow and have her issue you a refund check.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it isn’t polite to return a gift for the money?”

“As a matter of fact,” Alison said dryly, “no, she didn’t.”

Logan extracted the gift certificate from her hand and put it gently back into his breast pocket. “Besides, someone obviously thought I’d find this fun—and who knows? They might just be right. And the least I can do is stand by to give—what did you call it? A general warning to protect my fellow men, wasn’t that it? Thanks for the coffee.” With a theatrical sweep, he bowed and was gone, leaving Alison sitting with cup in hand staring at nothingness.

Finally she shook her head a little and smiled. Let the man have his joke. He wouldn’t show up within miles of the Chicago Singles; he just wanted her to think he might.

She stood up and started to clear the table. Only when she picked up his cup did she realize that he’d gone off without the small, flat box.

I was so certain it was you I brought you a gift in return, he’d said.

If the box had been seated or wrapped, she wouldn’t have opened it. But it was neither, and it would have taken a lot more willpower than Alison possessed to keep from lifting the lid and peeking inside. She wasn’t hurting anything, after all. He’d never even know she’d looked.

On a bed of white cotton lay a silver pin just a couple of inches tall, in the shape of a musician with a flute raised to his lips. The workmanship was delicate, the most beautiful Alison had ever seen. And what instinct had told him that the flute was the instrument she’d always wanted to play?

Her fingertip went out hesitantly. The silver warmed instantly to her touch, and—almost frightened by the pleasure which swelled her heart—she snapped the lid back on the box and put it in the drawer of her desk, where it would be safe till she could send it back to him.

CHAPTER THREE

ALISON ticked items off the list in her head as she laid them out on her desk. Membership booklets to hand out at the Chicago Singles meeting, application forms for those who hadn’t already formally signed up, receipts in case anyone wanted to pay dues, notes for her brief introductory talk...

She reached for her soft leather briefcase and began to pack it. The back door banged and heels clicked on the bare wooden steps from the main floor down to Alison’s office.

“Nice little black dress,” Susannah said as she came in.

“Thanks. It’s not what I’d normally wear to the art museum on a Saturday afternoon, but I won’t have time to change before the Singles meeting.”

“I’m glad you’re not still calling it the Stupid Singles.” Susannah flung herself down on the wicker couch. “You know, I surmise you’re going to enjoy this club a whole lot more than you expect to.”

I’ll just bet you think so, Alison thought, because you don’t realize that I know about Logan’s gift certificate! The comment was the final confirmation of her suspicions that Susannah had been the source of that gift; she sounded entirely too innocent.

“Don’t get me started,” Alison said. “Sorry I’m not ready, by the way. It took longer to get everything together than I’d planned. I could have met you at the museum—there was no need for you to go out of your way to pick me up here.” .

“Oh, no. I asked you to provide moral support, and I’m going to squeeze out every drop of it I can—which includes having you walk into the Dearborn with me.”

Alison put the last of her papers in place and picked up the flat white box which contained the tiny flute player. Though she didn’t for a minute expect that Logan would show up at the meeting tonight, she might as well be prepared; she’d drop the box into the side pocket of her briefcase just in case.

The lid slipped, and the pin tumbled from its bed of white cotton onto the slick surface of Alison’s desk. Susannah swung around. “What a luscious pin! You’re going to wear it, aren’t you? It was made for that dress.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit much for the museum?” The excuse was feeble, Alison knew, but it was all she could think of.

Susannah’s eyebrows rose. “Obviously you haven’t been there for a while, or you’d know that anything goes. It’s perfect. Want me to help you put it on?”

Great, Alison thought. Now I have to start explaining how it’s not really mine, it’s sort of a gift from Logan, but I’m giving it back...and won’t Susannah have a field day with that?

There wasn’t much choice except to explain—and Susannah wouldn’t be easily put off with less than the full story. Unless...she could just wear the thing. What would be the harm? The pin certainly wouldn’t be injured, and if she took it off the minute she was out of Susannah’s sight, Logan would never know it had been out of the box.

Coward, she told herself. But she handed Susannah the small silver figure and stood very still while it was fastened to the shoulder of her dress.

It was apparent the moment they stepped into the Dearborn Museum of Art that everyone knew the famous artist would be inspecting the damage to his work that afternoon, for the museum was as busy as Alison had ever seen it. Most of the crowd was gathered in the main gallery where the damaged painting was, to Alison’s surprise, still hanging. Few of them were looking seriously at the art, and when Susannah and Alison came in, the noise level dropped and all eyes focused on them.