The Husband Project

A moment later Logan Kavanaugh pulled a straight chair up beside her. Today the green scrubs had given way to easy-fitting charcoal trousers and a white shirt with faint gray pinstripes. “I just stopped in to see how you’re doing.”

“I’d rather be at the football game.”

He grinned, and his dark green eyes sparkled. “Wouldn’t we all?”

Alison looked at him a little more closely. Under the humor in his face, she could see the marks of tiredness; there were lines around his mouth and faint shadows under his eyes. And, she noted with a tinge of guilt, there was not only still a tiny bump on his lip, but she could see the half-inch-long red line of the cut. “I suppose you’ve been delivering a baby?”

“Now and then,” he said. “I think the count stands at seventeen since my last day off—but it’s possible I’ve forgotten a couple. It’s been a very long week.”

“You’re on duty all the time?”

“In theory, no. But—for instance—a few months from now, when Kit goes into labor, can you imagine what she’d say if she called to tell me and I said, ‘Good luck, I’m sure you’ll like the guy who’s on call, and I’ll stop in tomorrow to check on you’?”

“Point taken.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees and hands tented together. “I also came in to apologize for my unprofessional behavior yesterday.”

Alison frowned. “I don’t quite—”

“For one thing, making that crack about not wanting to be alone in a room with you and a scalpel. Though I was only your doctor for about three minutes, and I’d technically turned you over to Sara by then, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You had reason to be provoked. I’m really sorry about your lip.” Alison took a deep breath. “Look, thanks for seeing me yesterday. You’re obviously very busy, and I know I wasn’t exactly an ideal patient.”

“You mean because you wanted to argue about the diagnosis? Just out of curiosity—what did you think it was?”

She looked out the window. “I’d eliminated everything except ovarian torsion.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. It’s not at all common for an ovary to twist, you know, and it’s just about as dangerous as an acute appendix.”

- “I know,” she said, and drew a deep breath so she could go on.

A hint of laughter crept into his voice. “That must be an extremely detailed medical guide you’ve got—or has the popular press made torsion the disease of the week?”

Alison was furious. “I am not a hypochondriac, Dr. Kavanaugh,” she said tightly. “I didn’t cast around for an interesting disease, I simply looked up my symptoms, and that’s what I found. I’m an - intelligent and informed woman—”

“—Who doesn’t know the difference between an appendix and an ovary, but thinks she’s an expert anyway.”

“What was it you were saying just now about unprofessional behavior?” Her voice dripped sweetness.

He ignored the interruption. “Do you have any idea how close you came to—” He shook his head, rubbed his hand across the back of his- neck, and stood up. “Never mind. I’ll let Sara jump on you about the risk you took by not seeing a doctor till it was almost too late. She’s getting paid to yell at you about taking proper care of yourself. I’m not. Goodbye.”

Forgetting her incision, Alison tried to leap up from her chair, and fell back, eyes wide, too startled even to swear. She sagged back against the pillows and tried deep breathing to ward off the stab of pain.

Logan had left the door standing wide open, so Kit didn’t knock. She burst in, dumped an overnight bag beside the bed, and leaned over Alison to give her a gentle hug. “Now this is more like it. You’ve even got some color back, I see. I met Logan in the hallway, but he seemed to be in a hurry. You didn’t slug him again, did you?”

“I didn’t slug him last time, either,” Alison pointed out. “It was an accident.” She eyed the overnight case—the last time she’d noticed, it had been on the top shelf of her bedroom closet—and raised an eyebrow at Kit.

“Your purse was still in Susannah’s car, so I stole your keys,” Kit said blithely. “I figured the cats needed feeding—”

Alison winced. “I can’t believe I forgot about my cats.”

“I not only fed them, I played with them—which is why I’m so late. And I picked up some clothes for when you’re ready to go home.” Kit perched on the edge of the bed. “I brought your medical guide, too. I thought you’d probably want to read it again, in light of the new developments. If you like, I could try to catch Logan so he can show you where you went wrong.”

Alison rolled her eyes. “No. thank you. That man is incredibly egotistical.”

A voice from the doorway corrected her. “That man is incredibly good.” Sara Williams strolled across the room, chart in hand. “Feeling better? The nurses tell me you’re doing quite well, so there’s no reason you can’t go home. There are a few restrictions, of course—the discharge nurse will give you a list. Do you live alone?”

Alison started to nod, but Kit intervened. “I’m taking her home with me for a few days.”

The doctor nodded approval, and hardly a moment later she was gone. Kit shook her head. “And I’ve always thought Susannah was a whirlwind,” she muttered.

“I can manage on my own, Kit. You don’t have to baby-sit.”

Kit had stooped to pick up the overnight bag. Very deliberately, she set it on the end of the bed and turned to Alison. “Sometimes, Alison, you don’t seem to need anybody at all.”

The somber note in Kit’s voice brought tears to Alison’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, furious at herself. Surely she wasn’t going to turn into a wet sponge, dripping all over the place at the least provocation! Quietly, she said, “Thanks, Kitty. I don’t want to go home alone.”

As they drove across Chicago to Kit’s lakeside high-rise, Alison wasn’t listening to her friend’s chatter. She was still hearing the unusual soberness in Kit’s voice as she said, Sometimes you don’t seem to need anybody.

But I do, Alison thought. I need somebody to love.

From the guest room of Kit’s condo, Alison stared down at the enormous expanse of Lake Michigan. The water was clear and blue under the morning sun; a light wind whipped up gentle frothy waves and bulged the bright sails of the armada of boats—at least a hundred of them. Alison could count so many not only because the condo was so high and the air so clear she could see almost all the way across the lake, but because the effort of taking a shower had worn her out so thoroughly that all she could do was drop into the armchair by the window and rest.

Eventually, however, she pushed herself up from the chair, put on a set of soft knit exercise clothes, and walked down the hall to the kitchen.

Kit looked up from the chopping block where she was dicing green onions and ham. “Good morning, Ali. How about an omelette?”

“You don’t need to pamper me.” Alison dropped into a chair beside the breakfast bar. “Surely you’ve got enough to do with your brunch to prepare.”

“You’re certain you don’t mind? I can still cancel it, you know.”

“No, you can’t. When you invite ten people for brunch, you can’t change your mind two hours beforehand.”

“They’d understand.” But Kit sounded a little less than convinced.

“Well, I wouldn’t. You’ve had this planned for weeks. Cancel and I’ll really feel like I’m imposing on you.”

Kit shrugged. “You already know better, so there’s no point arguing about it. Shall I set a place for you? You’re looking much better this morning.”

“And make your numbers odd? Now that would be a disaster,” Alison teased. “I’ll spend a couple of hours lying in one of those canvas chairs on the terrace, hiding behind a ficus tree and reading a book. So party on—you won’t disturb me a bit, and your guests won’t even know I’m here.”

The terrace was beautiful; it stretched the length of the Websters’s spacious condo and looked out over the lake. Alison chose a chair on the comer just outside the guest room, as far as possible from the elegant living room. If Kit’s brunch guests spilled out onto the terrace, she’d have plenty of warning, and she’d just slip quietly back into her bedroom.

She tried to read, but the light novel she’d found on the guest room shelves didn’t have the power to draw her in. Instead she found herself gazing at the waves, forming and breaking in a hypnotic rhythm, rolling toward the horizon as they always had and as they would, for eternity.

Eternity. She’d come a littte closer to it yesterday than she wanted to think about, and of course there wasn’t any need to dwell on that, now. The danger was over, and she’d been very, very lucky.

However, the reason she’d put off seeing a doctor—the reason she’d hidden behind denial instead of taking care of herself—was just as real now as it had been a few weeks ago when she’d picked up her medical guide, looked up her symptoms, and realized the threat which hung over her head.

The threat that she would no longer be able to have a child.

Alison would never forget the sick horror of that instant. She’d always known, of course, that she wanted a child—at least one, maybe several—but she hadn’t realized till then exactly how desperate that longing had become.

When she stopped to think about it, however, the timing made perfect sense. Her two best friends were focused on family right now; with Kit celebrating her first pregnancy and Susannah newly married and starting to think about children, the subject resounded throughout Tryad at the drop of a paper clip.

With all that going on, it was no wonder Alison’s biological clock had started to tick. The oldest of the trio by a couple of years, she was getting uncomfortably close to thirty. If she was going to have a child at all, the time was soon. It was no wonder she’d been so frightened when her medical guide suggested that she’d already put it off too long.

But fortunately her fears hadn’t been real. Once her recovery from the surgery was complete, she’d be in her normal excellent health. There was no reason she couldn’t have a child.

Of course, there was one minor problem. She was unmarried, and there were no prospects in sight. Which wasn’t to say there weren’t plenty of men in her life—but that was a different matter.

She got up from her chair and went to lean on the waist-high wrought-iron terrace rail, thirty-five stories above the lake. Kit will have a hard time child-proofing this place, she thought idly. It would be far easier to make her own row house safe...

Absorbed in her daydreams, she didn’t hear footsteps coming slowly across the terrace.

A deep, soft voice was the first warning that she wasn’t alone. “Not thinking of climbing over that fence, are you?”

Startled, Alison twisted to face him, forgetting her incision.

Logan Kavanaugh crossed the intervening distance in a couple of steps and slipped an arm around her.

He’d actually put on a jacket and tie for Kit’s brunch party, Alison noted, even as she said irritably, “You don’t have to restrain me. I’m not suicidal.”

“That’s good. Sara told me she took particular care to leave you a scar that’ll look cute with a bikini, and I’d hate to see her work wasted.”

Alison rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet.”

He hadn’t let go of her, she realized. His arm was still around her shoulders. She could feel the rough tweed of his sleeve even through the lightweight knit of her exercise suit. And was it a sudden warm lake breeze which stirred the hair at her temple, or his breath? He seemed to have forgotten how close he was standing.

Well, that problem was easy to fix. She’d give him her best glare and say something cutting...

She looked up at him, and in the split second before she opened her mouth she saw the answer to her problems.

“Dr. Kavanaugh,” she said abruptly. “Will you help me have a baby?”

CHAPTER TWO

ALISON was absolutely certain of one thing; no amount of sarcasm could have made him let go of her any more quickly than that simple statement did.

Logan’s arm dropped as if he’d suddenly realized her shoulders were coated with acid, and he backed away till he was leaning against the terrace rail, a safe distance from her. A casual observer would no doubt think his .professional control was undisturbed, for his face was calm. Alison knew better; she could see the incredulity in those brilliant green eyes.

“For heaven’s sake,” she said testily. “You’re a doctor who specializes in women. You must know how—” For the first time, she realized that there. was an entirely different interpretation to her question than the one she had meant.

He obviously saw the double meaning hit her, for a sparkle of humor appeared in his eyes. “If you’re asking whether I know where babies come from, I am familiar with the basics.”

“I’m sure that’s quite a comfort to your patients.” Alison’s voice was chilly. “Let’s get this straight, however. Don’t flatter yourself that I had you in mind as a potential father.”

“And that,” he murmured, “is quite a comfort to me. Do I understand that you want to use a medical procedure usually reserved for infertile couples in order to have a child?”

Alison relaxed just a little. “That’s it, yes.”

“Well, excuse me if this is a stupid question—but why not just go about it in the old-fashioned way?”

“I don’t see any need to explain. Will you help me or not?”

He looked thoughtful. “Without an idea of what’s going on inside your head? I’d sooner bodysurf across Lake Michigan on a stormy day.”

“And if I explain?”

“Depends on the explanation. To be perfectly honest, I’d still put the odds at about seven to three against, but I’m willing to listen.” He folded his arms across his chest and settled his hip against the terrace rail as if he was prepared to stay there all day.

Alison drew a long breath, hesitated, wet her lips. It shouldn’t be so difficult to say the words, she told herself. Her reasons made perfect sense; any intelligent person could surely understand why she’d come to this conclusion. But her tongue felt numb and three times its normal size.

Partly, she realized, her paralysis was because of the way he was studying her. The last time he’d looked her over, in the emergency room, he’d been watching for symptoms. Now he wasn’t—unless of course he suspected she was a mental case—and though his gaze was no more personal, it was an entirely different kind of survey.

And she was entirely different, too. She wasn’t twisted with pain, flat on her back, her hair mussed and sweaty and her face stark white. She wondered what he thought of the difference.

He shifted slightly against the wrought iron. “If you’re going to tell me that there isn’t even one man in your life, forget it. I don’t buy it.” Another man might have give the line a suggestive twist, or turned it into a compliment. Logan made it sound like the stock report.

Annoyed, Alison said, “Of course there are men in my life. In fact, that’s part of the problem—there are too many men.”

His eyebrows soared. “Oh, this ought to be good,” he muttered. “No, let me guess. They’d all be hurt if you chose one of the others, so to keep things in balance you’re looking for an anonymous donor. Of course, this makes perfect sense.”

Alison glared at him. “I have an incredible number of male friends,” she began. “The key word being friends. I’d like them all to still be friends when this is over. If I had even a short-term affair with one of them, the whole situation would change.”

“Well, now that you mention it—”

“Once there’s a more intimate relationship, it’s impossible to return to real, ordinary friendship.”

“And there’s not a single one of your friends you’d sacrifice for the cause?” Logan murmured.

“There’s also the problem that whichever man I chose would know he was the father of my child, and that could create all sorts of difficulties.”

Logan snapped his fingers. “I have it. If you expand this short-term affair to include all of them, everybody would still be on equal terms with you, and none of them would know who—”

Alison raised her voice. “This is hardly the sort of professional discussion I was looking for, Dr. Kavanaugh.”

“Not even you would know. It’s the perfect—” Logan broke off. “Of course, I suppose they could all line up for DNA tests... Sorry. You’re right, of course. I’ll try to stay focused. Do go on.”

“The father of a child has certain rights.”

“To say nothing of responsibilities,” Logan murmured.

“That doesn’t concern me. Financially, I can support a child easily. I could even take a baby to work with me. And I have no doubt that I’ll be a good parent.”

“Singular. Have you considered that maybe the kid would like to have a father, too?”

“Wouldn’t they all? The fact is, some kids are better off with only one parent. In a good many cases it isn’t having a single parent that’s the problem, it’s being torn apart by the conflict between mother and father.”

Logan didn’t seem to disagree; at least, he stayed silent.

“And I’d be better at the job than most. If you’re worried about who will teach my little boy to pitch a baseball—I will. And I can do anything else that comes along, too.”

He began to applaud. “Brava, brava!”

“I just want a child,” Alison said mulishly. “I don’t want to give some man the right to interfere in my life—and my child’s—for the next eighteen years. I don’t want to mess around with every-other-weekend visitations and arguments about when the kid needs a haircut. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Obviously you’re going to tell me why it isn’t.” he murmured.

“I’d gladly agree never to ask for financial support in return for a promise not to seek parental rights.”

“Now you’re talking. I suspect a lot of men would think that kind of a deal was pretty inviting—they could have all the fun and none of the responsibility.”

“But that’s just it. I know my promise is good, but how could I know he meant what he said? And even if he felt that way now, how could I be certain it would continue?”

“Make him sign something,” Logan suggested.

“Do you honestly think that would do any good? If he came back in a year or two or five and wanted to mess up my child, what’s going to stop him from suing me? All you have to do is read the front pages to know it’s a lot harder for the courts to terminate a father’s rights than it used to be. Even adoption isn’t always final these days.”

“Alison, this is a charming argument, but—”

She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me, but I haven’t suggested you use my first name. Or do your patients call you Logan?”

“Quite a number of them do. In any -case, it’s a moot point, since you’re not my patient and you’re not going to be.”

Disappointment trickled through her. “You won’t help me?”

“Even after hearing all your so-called reasons, I still don’t see why you need medical intervention to carry out the most natural process on the face of the globe. Besides, I’ve decided just now that as a patient you’re more than I want to handle. I’ll give you my card, and you can talk to my nurse for the names of some other doctors who might be more inclined to cooperate.”

He moved away from the terrace rail, reached for his wallet, and extracted a business card. But he-didn’t hand it to her; to Alison’s utter astonishment he picked up her hand and raised it to his lips. “I must thank you, however, for taking me into your confidence. It’s been—”

If he said entertaining, Alison thought, she’d kick him in the kneecap.

“Truly memorable,” Logan murmured. He put the business card in her palm, folded her fingers, over it, smiled down at her, and was gone.

The walk from her row house to work had taken longer than she’d expected, so Alison was later than usual when she climbed the front steps of the brownstone which housed the offices of Tryad Public Relations. And though she wouldn’t have admitted it even under torture, she was far shakier than she’d expected to be. It was taking longer to snap back after her surgery than she’d thought it would.

From the porch next door, the twin to Tryad’s, Alison heard a soft scuttling sound as Mrs. Holcomb retreated into her house. Though Tryad’s offices had been next door, sharing a common wall, for three years now, Mrs. Holcomb still obviously considered Alison a stranger. And though the woman was no longer the textbook example of a recluse—in fact, she’d loosened up quite remarkably since the days when no one ever saw her outside at all—she still scampered for cover if surprised. But at least she’d speak to Kit and Susannah from time to time.

The idea that the old lady might actually be a bit afraid of her piqued Alison. “I’m just as nice as Kitty and Sue,” she muttered. “You’d think she’d give me a chance, at least.” She smiled at her own self-pity—why should she expect Mrs. Holcomb to be the one who made the first move?—and pulled open Tryad’s front door.

It felt like a year since she’d been there, though it was scarcely more than a week. Alison stopped just inside the door to get her breath and bask in the quiet atmosphere she loved so well. Sunlight spilled through the stained-glass panel above the front door and lavishly spread a rainbow of colors across the beige carpet on the stairs and the golden oak floor of the hall. Upstairs, from the front office, she heard Kit’s laugh. The aroma of fresh coffee wafted up from the ground-floor kitchen and mixed with the scent of photocopies still warm from the machine near the receptionist’s desk.

As Alison came into the front office which had once been the brownstone’s living room, the secretary jumped up, almost knocking over a vase of flowers. “You’re back!”

Alison fielded the vase and sniffed a half-open red rose. “Very nice, Rita,” she said. “I hope the flowers are a romantic gesture, though, because if someone’s sending bribes and trying to hire you away from us we’ll have to do something drastic.”

Rita colored gently; her pink cheeks made her hair look even more silvery than usual. “My son sent them for my birthday,” she said. “I thought you were going to be gone another week.”

Alison shrugged. “I was very bored, and every time I tried to follow doctor’s orders and rest, one or the other of the cats decided to jump up on my lap. Given the choice of sitting at a desk or having a Persian napping atop my incision, I decided I might as well come back to work.”

“Well, you look as if you’re about to drop,” Rita said critically.

“Will it make you happier if I sit down to read my messages?” Alison took a thin sheaf of pink notes from the basket marked with her name. “There aren’t many, for a whole week. And here I thought I was indispensable to the firm. ,.

“Those are just the personal ones, people who called here when they couldn’t get you at home.”

Alison wasn’t really listening. Most of the messages were short, just friends and clients offering a few words of encouragement and the wish that she’d be back in top form soon. But her friend Jake had called with a doctor-patient joke which Rita had patiently transcribed, right down to a punch line which made Alison groan.

And Rob Morrow had phoned to ask her to the opera. When he’d heard why she was out of the office, he’d left a tongue-in-cheek message that he’d heard some fancy excuses in his day but having surgery to avoid sitting through Rigoletto was the best one yet.

She smiled and put the sheaf of messages down. Just reading them had left her feeling warm and comforted. Her friends were special, indeed.

And there’s not a single one of them you’d sacrifice for the cause? Logan had asked.

He’d sounded just short of sarcastic, but Alison was even more convinced that she’d been right not to turn to her male friends. She was genuinely fond of each of them, or they would no longer be in her life—and she wasn’t willing to take any risks with those relationships.

Few mates, she had found, were able to comprehend the simple concept that men and women could be friends without sexual feelings getting in the way. She didn’t for a minute suppose that Logan Kavanaugh understood that, or he wouldn’t have asked such an idiotic question.