A Mother For His Child

They ordered, ate, drank. The meal was delicious and beautifully presented, the setting was gorgeous and their waiter attentive. Respecting her on-call status, she refused more than a half-glass of wine, but the evening itself was intoxicating enough. Will had never shown any doubt about how to keep a woman entertained.

Distantly, Maggie watched their conversation unfold as blue darkness spread over the mirror-still lake. It wasn’t going so badly now. It was nice. She forgot his promise to ‘explain’ about his lateness, the significant way he’d said, ‘We’ll talk.’ She stopped watching for chinks in his armour, opportunities to catch him out.

She decided that people did change and grow and mature after all. At last. With hard work. She wasn’t quite the same belligerent, awkward young woman she’d been ten or fifteen years ago, thank goodness. She didn’t have to curl herself into a ball like a porcupine, showing only her spines. She could handle Will Braggett now.

‘But you haven’t noticed that that’s exactly opposite to the statement you made five minutes ago!’ she said triumphantly to him, to cap what she considered to be a lively and satisfying exchange.

He smiled in a lazy way. ‘Know what, Maggie?’ he said. ‘I think you’re even more terrifying than you used to be.’

‘Terrifying…’

‘Do you ever give a man a break?’ He was still smiling, his eyes liquid and dark. He might have been flirting if he’d been with any other companion. But he wasn’t flirting with her, she was sure of that. ‘No, of course not!’ he answered himself. ‘Maggie Lawless, relentless defender of her own principles.’

Ouch! The sharp prick of a shattered illusion.

It was a dismissal far more than a compliment, and she recognised the fact at once. He didn’t deliver the line with a sneer, because charming Will Braggett never sneered. That sexy, kissable mouth wouldn’t have known how. But still his words had the power to make her falter in her tracks and turn right back into that prickly, belligerent porcupine after all.

‘Take it as an attack if you like,’ she said crisply. ‘You’re the one who seems to feel you were vulnerable.’

He shrugged, as if it was far too wearying, and too far beneath his dignity, to cross swords with an intelligent female. His face closed and he covered his mouth for a moment. Was that a stifled yawn?

‘Why did you bother to do this?’ she blurted out, stung by the idea that, beneath his charming façade, he might…actually be bored by her? His problem!

‘You could easily have gotten away with coffee, or nothing at all,’ she went on. ‘Instead of this ridiculous meal. I haven’t been in touch with Alison. I didn’t know you were going to be in the area, and even if I had…For heaven’s sake, Will, we’ve never been able to stand each other. Was this an ego thing for you? The one woman you’d never been able to wrap around your little finger, and you couldn’t resist trying one last blast of charm? Get it straight, Will. You don’t impress me. You never have, and one expensive meal isn’t going to change that.’

She almost stood up and stormed out, then and there. Actually got as far as pressing both hands to the table to propel herself to her feet. At first Will looked shocked at the blunt barrage of her words. This was somehow satisfying to Maggie, but then the shock drained away to leave a grey, tired bleakness she’d never seen in his face before and…

She dropped back into her seat, falling hard. Not only had she never seen the bleakness, she’d never even considered that he had the depth of character to feel something like that. The gods had smiled upon him since birth, hadn’t they? His parents were successful and well-to-do. He’d topped his classes without visible effort. His divorce from Alison—who was as attractive, bright and successful as he was himself—was surely the only glitch in the glittering, perfect mechanism of his life.

Poor man, she might easily have drawled, how tragic it must be to have to live such a Camelot-like existence!

Only this wasn’t the face of a man who’d lived all his life in Camelot.

‘Is that really true, Maggie?’ he said, his voice low. ‘Was it as strong as that? You couldn’t stand me? That night at Gerry Berkov’s party when we sat out by the pool and talked, I thought…that we respected each other, at least. You used to get on my case about not treating Alison the way she deserved—about being late to pick her up, forgetting her birthday and not calling her when I said I would—and you were right about that. I was a jerk about things like that when I was twenty.’

‘Yes, you were,’ she agreed, masking her dismay with a confident nod.

‘And if that’s the sum total of what you feel for me then, yes, tonight has been a complete waste of my time as well as yours. That wasn’t intended as an attack just now. I was teasing you. And I guess I was trading on the fact that there was a little bit more between us than a shallow, trivial sort of dislike. I’ve always respected you. I thought that maybe two worthy and well-matched adversaries could make peace after all this time.’

‘Trading on?’ She picked up on the phrase straight away. Ignored that other very interesting phrase, ‘worthy and well-matched adversaries’. ‘What do you want from me, Will? Of course, I should have realised. You said we’d “talk” over dinner. You want something. A favour. But what is it?’

Her pager vibrated again. With a sound of impatience she pulled it from her pocket, set it on the table and ignored it. A few minutes wouldn’t hurt. She was a family physician, not a microsurgeon or a trauma-team doctor. Real emergencies went right to the hospital in an ambulance. They didn’t call her. She wanted answers from Will before she followed up on her patient.

But he wasn’t buying that. Watched her hand as she pushed the pager aside while her eyes were still fixed on him. There was a little twist to his lips.

‘Aren’t you going to call your service?’ he drawled. ‘Don’t you have to deal with that? Couldn’t it be important?’

She recognised how exactly his questions parroted her own self-important phrasing to him earlier and saw the smile on his face. A wicked, tempting smile now. Teasing her again? It softened those dark eyes still further. It invited much more than a mere smile in reply. It was seductive, damn it, even when he wasn’t trying! She burned yet again.

It would have been so refreshing if time had taught her how to act rationally with this man!

‘OK. I’ll deal with it,’ she said. ‘And then I want some straight talking from you, Will.’

‘You’ll get it,’ he promised. A habitual confidence rang in his tone. It was clear that, whatever he wanted from her, he hadn’t come crawling.

Once more, she sought the quiet alcove beside the still-life painting to make her call, but this time the outcome wasn’t as simple. It was another case of fever in a child, a fourteen-year-old.

‘I’m worried about him, Dr Lawless,’ Kathy Sullivan said. ‘He’s vomited twice, and he feels so hot. He says his joints hurt, and so does his neck.’

‘Does he have a rash?’

‘I haven’t noticed one. But I’ve kept him in the dark because the light is bothering him, so maybe there is something.’

‘Could you check for me, Kathy?’

‘Surely, if you’ll wait.’

‘I’ll be here.’

Maggie heard the clatter of the phone and Kathy’s slow, heavy footsteps. She came back a minute or two later. ‘There is a little bit of something on his chest,’ she said. ‘Looks like poison ivy. He was clearing the yard for me yesterday.’

‘I’m going to come over and take a look at him. Has he been away on camp or anything?’

‘No, not yet. That’s right at the end of summer this year. What is it you’re thinking, Dr Lawless?’

Meningitis. She didn’t want to say it. Neither did she want to wait. The symptoms were ambiguous, and the disease was most common in children under the age of five, but it was frequently fatal if treatment was delayed.

‘Let’s wait until I take a look at him, OK?’ she told Kathy, then put down the phone and hurried back to the table. ‘I need to leave,’ she told Will. ‘I shouldn’t be long, but it can’t wait.’

‘Let me come along,’ he suggested at once, already on his feet. ‘I’ll tell the waiter we’ll be back for coffee and dessert. They know I’m staying at the hotel.’

‘There’s no need—’

‘There is. I want to.’

He strode off and found their waiter. She didn’t linger, but he caught up to her quickly. It was a warm summer evening, and neither of them needed jackets. In fact, Will had taken off the jacket of his suit and it hung from one finger.

‘What’s the problem? What kinds of things do you usually get called out for?’ he asked.

She sighed. Why did he want this detail? OK, she’d give it to him.

‘It varies,’ she answered. ‘Depends on the patient’s circumstances. In a case like this, I’d normally tell the child’s parents to drive him straight to the hospital emergency room, then I’d call the ER to let them know he was coming, but this is a single mother. She’s not well, she doesn’t have much money, she has very basic health insurance cover—no ambulance—and she doesn’t drive. Her brother comes up from Albany every weekend to help her with shopping and stuff. I like her, and—’

‘Do you have many patients in that sort of situation in your practice?’

‘Some. This little family is one of the best. My heart goes out to the mother and her son every time I see them. They only live a few minutes’ drive from here. Tonight I want to save them an ambulance trip to Wayans Falls if it’s not necessary, and I want to start giving Matthew treatment while we wait for the ambulance to get here if it is.’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Some form of meningitis, but it could just be flu and poison ivy. Why are you asking all these questions, Will?’

She risked a glance at him, and wished she hadn’t. He was frowning, and his mouth was straight and closed. She could have touched him if she’d reached out her hand, asked him with soft concern to tell her what was on his mind…

‘Because I’m interested in joining your practice, if you’ll have me,’ he answered calmly.

It almost knocked the ground out from under her feet.

CHAPTER TWO

‘BUT you’re an orthopaedic surgeon,’ Maggie told Will blankly. He matched her pace easily as she hurried towards the car. It was parked in the guest parking lot, a minute’s walk from the main entrance.

‘Not quite,’ he answered. ‘I changed direction several years ago, before I finished my residency. Switched to family practice instead.’

‘Alison never wrote me that. I’d have remembered because…’ She stopped. Because it seemed so unlikely. Family practice wasn’t a prestige medical speciality. He and Alison had both been concerned with prestige.

She glanced across at him, but it was quite dark now. The long fingers of blue and gold light dancing on the black lake water didn’t make much difference to the thickness of the night here in the shadow of the sprawling hotel, and she couldn’t see his face.

‘Alison wasn’t thrilled,’ Will answered carefully. ‘She tended not to advertise the switch.’

His tone was neutral, but Maggie was left wondering if their divorce had been as amicable as Alison’s smoothly worded card last Christmas had suggested.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘I told you, she wasn’t happy about it.’

‘No, why did you switch, I mean? It’s…um…not a very common path.’

He laughed. Oh, she wished she could see his face! What were those wicked dark eyes doing? Glimmering or sparking?

‘You mean it’s a very definite drop in status?’ he said.

‘That, yes.’ Why deny it? He wouldn’t expect her to. ‘You always cared about status.’

‘I thought I did. Shall I say something saccharine? Say that I came to realise I cared much more about people instead? Something like that?’

‘Spare me!’ she drawled.

‘OK.’

‘No, say it,’ she revised. ‘Was that the reason?’

‘No, it was the hours that did it. I wanted a life. None of the orthos I knew actually had one.’

‘I’m sure many orthopaedic surgeons do,’ she offered primly. ‘It’s a matter of choosing your priorities. And for some, in any case, it’s a question of vocation and they just couldn’t be happy doing anything else.’

‘Maybe.’ Will shrugged.

They had reached her car, which was dark and new and American-made. She had bought it last year. The alarm and automatic lock whooped electronically as she pressed a button on her key-ring. Will knew she was in a hurry, didn’t open the door for her, just slid himself into the passenger seat in tandem with her own movement. Maggie buckled her seat belt, started the engine and threw the vehicle into reverse.

Feeling alarmed and confused, she told him, ‘You can’t be serious about joining my practice.’

‘Can’t I? It’s what I want. What I need,’ he corrected, as if the distinction was important.

She filed the word away, as something else to question him on later if he didn’t explain its use himself. For now, she just wanted him to keep talking, and he did.

‘The location is ideal. You didn’t look for a new partner after Mark died, did you?’

‘No.’

‘But that’s not because you were short of patients. Your books are overflowing, and you’re turning new patients away. You need someone. I can understand your hesitation. You and Mark must have worked well together. But it’s time, isn’t it?’

‘That’s not about your needs, it’s about mine,’ she pointed out, her defensive instincts still strong.

Maggie could smell the fresh maleness of him and was distracted by an absurd need to identify it. It was no pungent drenching of aftershave, just something clean and simple and subtle. Sandalwood shampoo? Hotel soap? A faint whiff of chlorine, too. He must have taken a swim in the pool, and hadn’t quite showered off the residue.

They drove out of the hotel grounds and across the bridge which connected its island setting to the shore. Through the open car window came the sound of ropes playing music against the metal masts of boats in the night breeze.

‘Yes,’ she finished reluctantly, ‘it’s time I looked for a new partner.’

She wasn’t looking forward to the process.

‘So you have an opening,’ he pointed out, his voice confident, ‘which is what I need.’

‘When you called, you said you’d be “in the area”. I got the impression you had business here.’

‘I do. An interview at a practice in Wayans Falls. But I like your set-up better.’

‘How do you know that? And how did you know about my patient load? Have you been…?’ She shifted in her seat and sat up straighter as she made a turn, ready to put on a cloak of indignation.

He cut her off. ‘Have I been checking you out? Yes, but nothing sinister.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that!’

‘I called your office and asked for an appointment. I was told that, as a new patient, I’d have to wait at least six months. I was referred to a practice in Ticonderoga and one in Warrensburg. Your sign, out front, lists you as the sole practitioner. It was pretty easy to fill in the blanks.’

‘You’re avoiding my question, Will. Why Picnic Point? For that matter, why New York State? It’s a long way from Arizona.’

He ducked the question. ‘How far is this patient’s house?’

‘Just up the hill, here, off a side street. Technically, we’re still in Cromer’s Landing. Will, you have to—’

‘This needs time, Maggie. There’s a lot to say.’

Dear lord, he’d dropped into that serious voice again! The one that undermined her because it forced her to liberate him from the convenient box she’d placed him in so many years ago. She didn’t want to know that he could talk this way. She’d never heard him do so before.

‘I know you want better reasons,’ he went on just as soberly. ‘There are better reasons. Reasons that are going to make me tell you more about the collapse of my marriage than I remotely want to.’

‘And more than I’ll want to know?’

‘You and Alison were close.’ Not exactly a direct answer. ‘Can we wait until we’ve seen your patient?’

She couldn’t help trying for more from him. ‘This is the reason for the divorce, then? Alison didn’t want to move?’

‘No, you were right before about the reason for the divorce.’ His tone was very light.

She couldn’t tell if he was serious. He couldn’t be. It was just a line. What had she ever said or hinted about what she thought of his and Alison’s divorce and the reasons behind it? Nothing! She had her own scenarios, of course. None of those scenarios showed Will in a very good light. She hadn’t been uncomfortable about that fact until now.

But she couldn’t give the matter any more of her attention. They’d just turned into Kathy Sullivan’s driveway. Kathy herself was silhouetted against the light that came through the screen door as Maggie and Will came up the concrete path that led to the entrance of the weathered clapboard dwelling.

‘Is that you, Dr Lawless?’ she said, peering out. The old door creaked.

‘Yes, it is, Kathy,’ Maggie called back. ‘And I’ve brought—’

‘Dr Braggett,’ he cut in, smiling. ‘Will Braggett. Dr Lawless and I are looking at the possibility of me joining her practice.’

No, we’re not!

Maggie bristled, but no one noticed.

Will grabbed the screen door which Kathy had pushed slightly ajar, held out his hand for her to shake, ushered Maggie past him and then entered the front hallway himself. The series of fluid actions, on top of his confident explanation of his presence, took just seconds and left Maggie—as usual—breathless with something she wanted to call outrage.

Wanted to. Couldn’t, in all honesty. He wasn’t deliberately attempting to overshadow her or crowd her out—he just did this charm stuff too well.

Kathy was smiling, too. ‘Well, that would be just great, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘Dr Lawless needs someone.’ Then her face fell. ‘Come on in. He seems real sick. More than just flu, and it came on so fast. He was fine this afternoon. The rash is getting worse, and it’s such a funny colour. It don’t look like poison ivy no more.’

She led the way, leaning her swollen hands heavily on a four-footed walking frame. She’d put on a little more weight. Maggie registered the painful stiffness of her walk, and the two inches of streaked grey showing at the roots of her long, braided coppery hair. Kathy’s great pride was her beautiful thick hair, and it was never the same colour for more than six months at a stretch. When she let the grey grow through like this, it meant the pain had been pretty bad. She had rheumatoid arthritis as well as fibromyalgia and struggled to maintain her quality of life.

Fourteen-year-old Matthew was lying on the couch in a darkened living-room. The television flickered in one corner, providing the only light, but his eyes were closed and he wasn’t watching. Maggie slipped past Kathy and went immediately to him, touching the palm of her hand to his forehead.

‘I’m going to have a look at you, Matthew, to see why you’re feeling so bad,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll have to turn on the lamp here.’

He didn’t reply. He was burning up, beneath a heavy quilt, and didn’t even acknowledge her touch. She turned on the table lamp, lifted his T-shirt and found the spreading patch of rash. It was purple and blotchy, and her heart sank. Had she been too concerned with saving Kathy’s budget when she’d decided against calling an ambulance at once? This wasn’t poison ivy on top of a dose of flu.

Kathy was hovering in the background, and Maggie had to tell her, ‘I think he’s pretty sick, Kathy. He needs the hospital. I’m glad you called me early and didn’t wait this out.’

‘What is it, Dr Lawless?’

‘I’m afraid it looks like meningitis, Kathy.’

‘I’ve heard of that.’

‘There are several different types, some more dangerous than others. The meningococcal type is spread by saliva, and it’s so hard to get kids not to share drink bottles and lip salves, and that sort of thing.’

‘I’ll call the ambulance,’ Will said behind Maggie. ‘Where will I find the phone?’

‘Kitchen wall,’ Kathy answered.

‘Kathy, you’ll want to come too, won’t you?’ Maggie said.

‘Can I?’

‘Of course you can,’ She touched Kathy’s arm. It was trembling. ‘Do you want to put together a few things you might need overnight, and make sure you’ve got some cash?’

Kathy nodded, her mouth working. ‘Is he going to be OK?’

‘He’s going to get the best possible treatment, starting right now.’ It was all she could promise.

Kathy made her slow way out of the room. Maggie opened her medical bag, and then heard Will’s return.

‘You’re not going to wait for the ambulance?’ he said. ‘It’s on its way.’

‘No, I’m not waiting. I’ll put in an IV and run in as much fluid as possible. And I have some new antibiotic samples in my bag. Could you check them for me?’

‘See if any of them are worth a try?’

‘Yes.’ She racked her brains. ‘Can’t remember what’s there.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty well up on that stuff.’

‘I’m glad you’re here, Will.’ The words just slipped out. Will was probably as surprised by them as Maggie was, but he didn’t say anything.

Maggie got an IV kit out of her bag, found a good vein in the back of Matthew’s hand and swabbed the area. He stiffened and hissed as she slid in the cannula, but didn’t jerk away. Yes, it was safely in. She taped it in place and began to run in the fluid. There was nowhere to hang the IV bag.

She held it awkwardly until Will said, ‘Wait a second.’ He slipped through to the kitchen and appeared again with a wooden-backed kitchen chair.

‘Hang it on this. Ambulance should be here soon, and the hospital knows he’s coming. Can I look at those antibiotics now?’

‘Please. They’re all oral. I don’t know if it’s worth it. He needs intravenous.’

‘At this stage, let’s go with the idea that it can’t hurt.’

‘How much time did I waste by not calling the ambulance immediately?’

‘Five, maybe ten minutes. It’s not significant, Maggie. The fact that Kathy called early is the important part. If she’d waited till morning, or even another hour or two…Kids do recover from this.’

‘Some.’

‘Let’s try this. It’s broad spectrum, and pretty powerful.’ Will produced a sample packet of capsules and they managed to get Matthew to swallow one successfully.

The ambulance arrived within minutes, just as Kathy made her way back down the stairs. She put her swollen hand to her throat when she saw her son being carried out on a stretcher. Will held up the IV bag and Maggie took Kathy’s overnight bag and helped her to the vehicle.

‘I didn’t close up the house,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘I’ll take care of that for you, Kathy,’ Maggie soothed.

She expected Will to wait in the car, but instead found that he was following her back into the house as the ambulance pulled away, with sirens rising.

‘Better check that everything’s switched off,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look upstairs.’

Maggie found some soup sitting in a pot on the stove. She poured it into a plastic container and put it in the fridge. Will appeared in the doorway just as she closed the door of the ancient appliance.

‘Any idea where she’d keep new batteries?’ he asked.

‘Batteries?’

‘The smoke alarm upstairs is yelping at me, which means it’s about to give out. And I bet the wiring in this place isn’t that great.’

‘No, probably not,’ she agreed. ‘Let’s try the drawers.’

Cutlery, dish towels, paper bags…Will reached the drawer next to the one Maggie was checking, and as he pulled it out she felt the brush of his arm on hers, like a streak of warm paint. He said ‘Aha!’ a moment later, flourishing the small, box-shaped nine-volt battery.

‘Oh, good.’ Maggie’s voice came out a little too high, and she stepped back out of the thick potency of his aura. Will had no idea he did this to her, thank goodness!