by Val Daniels
“Hope you both enjoy them, dear,” Eleanor said. “I’d just be careful who else you share them with.” Pleased with how she sneaked in a cleverly worded, last warning. “Have a good day,” she added as if she hadn’t made it impossible.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR the next week, with her car in the shop, Dan had blocked out a section of his morning to drive Alicia to school. They’d made arrangements with Brad to pick her up after classes and bring her home.
“Maybe I should just take you back to work and take your car,” Alicia suggested on the third morning. “Then I could pick you up after work.”
Dan furrowed his smooth brow, obviously weighing the pros and cons. “You know how irregular my schedule is,” he finally said. “You’d end up sitting at the hospital every day waiting, for who knows how long.”
“I can think of worse things,” she murmured, but didn’t push it. She had been thinking of worse things since her little “talk” with Eleanor Marks. Especially since Dan had totally avoided her since the day of the accident. He hadn’t even been home for dinner the past several evenings. Her imagination was working overtime.
“Like what?” he asked as he pulled up in front of the General Education Building where most of her classes were held.
“Nothing,” she said, reaching for the door handle.
Dan’s hand covered hers and held it momentarily. “I think I’m beginning to know you a little bit,” he said softly. “Nothing in your vocabulary usually means something.”
“It’s just that I don’t think we’re doing a very good job of putting up the front you insisted on when we got married,” she said. “I thought me picking you up from work might help.”
“When have we had the opportunity to ‘put up a front’? We’re rarely together, at home or anywhere else.”
She could feel his warm breath against her cheek. It sent sensations skittering down her neck. “See? It was nothing,” she repeated. She started to pull the door handle again and his hand tightened.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes yet,” he explained. “Stay. We’ll put on a good front now.” She turned her head to look at the mix of students, in various states of hurry and in different size groups, going to and from the building. No one seemed to be paying the least bit of attention to them as his lips brushed her ear, down the side of her neck.
“I thought you had appointments and needed to get back.” She nearly choked on the words as he feathered a kiss on the angle of her jaw. “That’s tickles,” she whispered, scrunching as far away from his mouth as her window would allow.
“Good.” He propped himself above her, one arm across the back of her seat and the other on the dash.
She suddenly felt surrounded, overwhelmed by him. She’d forgotten how broad and tempting his shoulders could be, how dark and mesmerizing his gaze was when it focused only on her. She felt her tightly held grip on reality slip for a moment.
“It isn’t going to be much of a show with only one person participating,” he said lightly. He pointed to his lips. “You could kiss me here.”
There wasn’t anything “make-believe” about the way his light, taunting kisses made her feel. But his teasing words made her furious. “It was your part of the marriage agreement,” she reminded him. “I don’t really care what the rest of the world thinks.” This time she got the door open before he stopped her, pulling it closed again.
“Why did you bring it up then, Alicia?”
“Several people have hinted that I should guard our relationship a little more closely,” she exaggerated. With Eleanor Marks busily spreading her theories, Alicia was sure “several people” was an accurate, or even low, estimate by now. “One of the neighbors even hinted that I shouldn’t be so eager to accept your mistress as a guest in our home,” she finished arrogantly.
She saw his jaw tighten. A little muscle quivered under the pressure there. She noted that his cheeks were slightly pale under his winter-faded tan. “Let me guess? Eleanor Marks?”
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe not.” His lips compressed in a tight line. “I hope you told her I wasn’t the one who brought Maggie to our home,” he said. “Melanie brought her the first time.” He ticked off one finger. “And you invited her to stay the other night. But not once since our marriage, have I invited her home.”
“I didn’t say you had.”
“So how does coming to dinner—with you, my lovely wife, in attendance—took even remotely like I’m entertaining a mistress?”
She was treading on thin ice, but couldn’t seem to stop wanting to goad him. “Yes...well...I just thought you should know the neighbors are commenting. And though everything seems innocent and innocuous, the talk does makes me wonder what’s going on away from the house.”
Alicia wondered if she’d gone too far.
For a long moment Dan was statue-still, then he abruptly leaned away from her, against his door. “Is this a test, Allie?”
“Wh...what do you mean? What kind of test?”
“You told me you didn’t care where I did my tomcatting—I believe that was the expression, wasn’t it?— as long as you didn’t have to know about it. Are you saying you’ve changed your mind? That you want to know? That you do care now?”
“I’m telling you that I don’t want to know.” Suddenly she was very sure she was going to be late for class. And his silence made her feel guilty and petty, but she couldn’t find the words to apologize. She didn’t dare let him see her eyes, though she could feel the intensity of his on her. How could he help but see... “You wanted people to think ours was a normal marriage,” she reminded him, concentrating her attention on gathering her books. “I thought you might be concerned that people are talking.”
“I care,” he said.
“I just don’t want to be accused of letting down my part of the bargain.”
“In a town like Providence, people do expect a certain amount of visibility from the local doctor and his wife.” He touched her one more time, running the back of his long finger the length of her neck. “I’d assumed you didn’t feel up to getting out and about, but I guess we’ll have to make more of an effort.”
“Whatever,” she said stiffly.
“Brad’s picking you up today?” he confirmed again.
She gnawed at her lower lip and nodded.
“I’ll see you then.” With a quick kiss on the cheek, he opened her door. “You’re going to be late for class,” he said, and she finally found the strength to move.
There had to be a way to end this, Dan thought frustratedly all afternoon. Somewhere, deep in his soul, he still believed Alicia loved him. She exhibited all the signs. At least all the physical signs, he amended his thoughts.
When he’d touched her this afternoon, her breath had shortened, he’d felt the pulse in her neck fluttering much too quickly. She’d shown all the classic signs of arousal. The ones he could observe anyway. And the very thought of the other ones, the ones he couldn’t see with her wrapped up like a mummy in the heavy coat he’d gotten her for Christmas, set his pulses racing and made his breathing shallow.
Damn! She still affected every one of his senses crazily. And surely he could use her reactions to him to—
“Something wrong?” Bill said from the door as Dan crashed the patient file he was holding against the desk.
“No,” Dan admitted. “Except my concentration,” he added sheepishly. “I’m trying to read this lab report on Mona Jackson and figure out what our next course of action should be. I’m not having much luck.”
“Figuring out the next step? Or reading the report?” Bill asked wryly.
Dan didn’t even answer. He rose from the desk and swung to the window. “You want to give it a try?”
He heard Bill pick up the folder. “Looks pretty much like we hoped it would,” Bill commented a minute later. “And not too complicated. The fluid around the joint is finally clear. Looks like we increase the physical therapy and gradually ta
ke her off the antibiotics.”
Dan turned back to his partner in time to watch Bill scrawl something across the chart. “Okay, that problem is solved,” Bill said, perching himself on the edge of Dan’s desk, one leg dangling, the other firmly planted on the floor. “Now, do you want to talk about the real problem?”
“Alicia,” Dan said without preamble. “Good Lord, tell me what to do about Alicia, Bill. I just don’t know any longer.”
“Give me a hint,” Bill said. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing! Not a damn thing,” he added under his breath. “It’s almost worse than before. At least when we first got married, she was furious with me and refusing to listen or talk or anything. Now she’s just...there. I’m walking on eggshells, anticipating a major crisis and hoping it will come soon, before I explode. And she is calm. She doesn’t react to anything I do.”
Bill furrowed his multilined forehead. “That’s very unlike a pregnant woman,” he commented. “At the very least, those hormones are usually in there, stirring things up and keeping things volatile.”
“Tell me about it,” Dan said. “But that’s not happening here. And at least when she’s reacting to me, I know where I stand. Do you know what she did the other night?” He started again as Bill opened his mouth to comment.
“What did she do?”
“She invited Maggie to stay for dinner.”
Bill did a great imitation of shock. “Oh, my. That’s horrible! Appalling!”
“Oh, cut it out, Bill. I’m serious. I just don’t know what to do anymore and in another couple of months, the baby’s going to be here, and I have no idea what will happen next.”
“What about Maggie?”
“What about Maggie?” Dan asked when Bill didn’t explain.
“Maybe you should consider getting rid of her. A good receptionist isn’t that hard to find.” Dan knew Bill offered the suggestion reluctantly.
“What would that do? Besides make Maggie miserable, too,” he added. “Surely, she’s been through enough.”
“It might be the one reassurance you could give Alicia so she could finally let down her guard and let the two of you start patching things up. And you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think Maggie would be fine. Contrary to what you might think, Maggie’s strong. And having to move out of her safe little niche might be the best thing for her in the long run.”
Dan thought about it for a moment. “Can’t do it, Bill. You know that. Besides, there’s no guarantee—”
“And that’s your biggest problem,” Bill interrupted. “If I remember right, you were double-checking for some sort of guarantee the night this whole thing got twisted. In case you haven’t realized it, life doesn’t come with too many guarantees—especially if you’re dealing with women.” Bill turned and sauntered to the door. “Go home, Dan. Use the time you’ve got left before the baby’s born to your best advantage. Take Alicia out to dinner tonight and romance her, seduce her...”
“Is it safe now?”
Bill raised his brows. “Alicia’s known that for the last two months. Everything about her pregnancy is progressing normally.” Bill waited to see if he had answered Dan’s question. “It sounds to me like the two of you need to talk more than you need to do anything else.”
Dan could only agree silently.
“And you need to decide what it is you want before you expect too much from Alicia.”
“I know what I—”
“Are you sure?” Bill waited for a moment, then waved the chart they’d been looking at earlier. “I’ll take this back to the nurses’ station for you. Go home, Dan, and let things get out of hand.” He chuckled. “See you in the morning.”
Dan’s heart pounded frantically, just thinking about what Bill had said. He knew what he wanted. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. He just seemed paralyzed to do anything about it. He was afraid of how Alicia would react. Or what she might do.
And why hadn’t she told him Bill had given her the okay to make love?
Because she thinks it isn’t applicable, he answered his own question. It wasn’t part of their bargain. Leaving the office, driving home, all passed in a blur. It was only when he was sitting in his own driveway, waiting for the garage door to go up that he started thinking logically again.
The one way he could always get Alicia to respond was on a physical level. Their reactions to each other were almost automatic. With Bill giving them the green light, he needed to get to her that way. He would start knocking down the walls Allie had carefully constructed between them, first physically, then emotionally. And then maybe he could hope that things would work out the way he wanted in the future.
“Allie,” he called as he entered the side door from the garage.
“In here,” she answered—from the dining room, he thought.
The kitchen and family room were dark as he made his way through. A patch of light spilled out into the small hall, turning the hardwood floor golden. He heard Allie giggle and paused, smiling at her good mood. Then he heard a deep voice murmur something unintelligible. And the mellow glow that had settled over him dissipated like a puff of wind. Allie laughed again.
He drew a deep breath and counted to ten, clamping down on the sudden, unexpected jealousy rising in his chest. In his heart, he knew nothing untoward was going on. Alicia wouldn’t have answered his earlier call so blithely, so absentmindedly. But heaven help the man who had made her laugh so easily when he couldn’t even make her smile anymore.
Alicia looked up as he stepped into the light. “Oh, Dan.” She did smile at him, and it took the edge off his anger. “I’m sorry, I lost track of time. I haven’t even thought about dinner.” She looked at the young man spotlighted in the fixture hanging from the middle of the ceiling. “I’m sorry, Rob,” she apologized. “I didn’t realize how late it was getting. I guess we’ll have to call it quits, but I think I finally understand most of it, thanks to you.”
The man she called Rob began gathering the books that lay scattered and open across the table. He was about twenty. His dark hair held a sprinkle of leftover sunshine, exactly right for the time of year it was. Dan thought enviously of a time when his would have still been sun-bleached, too. But that was back when his biggest pressure was what he and his buddies would do after the sun went down. Rob looked like he didn’t have a care in the world—except Dan’s wife. And Dan suddenly wanted to do the man bodily harm. He managed to greet the kid civilly as Alicia introduced him, but not as her husband, he noticed.
“And this is Rob Atterly,” she finished the formalities. “He brought me home today,” she explained.
Rob extended his baby smooth hand and Dan gave himself points for not giving in to the temptation to crush the younger man’s bones. Especially when Rob’s, “Nice to meet you, sir,” suddenly made him feel old and feeble.
“I thought Brad was picking you up,” Dan commented.
She shrugged. “Rob offered to help me study for my economics class so I called and told Brad not to come.”
He followed behind as Alicia walked her fellow student to the door and watched with great interest as Rob took his leave in the VW Dan hadn’t even noticed sitting in the drive.
Alicia turned on him immediately once the door closed and Rob was gone. “Is something wrong?”
“Should there be?” he asked.
Alicia sidestepped around him, cradling her protruding tummy as she reached for and flipped the light switch in the foyer. “Not that I know of,” she said as the harsh light drenched them.
“You and Rob sounded like you were having a good time,” he said awkwardly. He tried to smile, to recapture some of the lightheartedness he had interrupted.
“I guess we were getting pretty silly.” They stared at each other for a long moment. “I’ll go get dinner,” she finally said.
“I thought we’d go out.”
“Oh, I’m not really hungry. We stopped and picked up a pizza on the way home. For him, it was an afterno
on snack, but it left me feeling full. If you don’t mind, I planned to zap you some of the roast chicken left over from last night. Maybe I’ll eat a little soup or something later if I get hungry.”
Dan felt his spirits take another dive. “Allie...” he started, but didn’t know what else to say. Her eyes were wide as she gazed up at him. “Allie, I’d love to have some company.”
Her shrug was unenthusiastic. “Sure,” she conceded. “I’ll sit with you while you eat if you’d like. And you can keep me company while I get it ready for the microwave, I guess.”
His frustration with the strain between them boiled over. “Allie, we didn’t get married so that I would have someone to prepare my meals and wait on me.”
“I don’t mind.” She started to go.
“A meal waiting when I get home wasn’t what I expected when we got married,” he tried again.
“It makes me feel useful,” she said simply. “Hannah cleans the house and does laundry twice a week. And you insisted on paying my tuition, even though I don’t have the usual living expenses anymore.... Please don’t think I mind. I’m getting more than I ever anticipated getting from our arrangement.” Her mouth moved as if she would say more, then she clamped it closed.
“I wanted to take you out to dinner this evening.” He caught her arm and swung her gently back to face him. He felt her soft intake of air as he moved a step closer. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said this afternoon. About how people may perceive our marriage. You’re right. We need to be seen together more.”
She gazed up at him with those wide hazel eyes. Her lips looked lush and inviting. Her tousled hair made her look fresh out of bed. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she and Rob—He quickly banished the idea from his mind. Rob had left in an ancient and topless VW. How else would Allie’s hair look when she’d ridden home with the boy/ man in his rat trap?
“I thought about it, too. I think maybe that’s why I’m not doing so well in economics,” she said with a crooked self-conscious grin. “I tend to think about everything in class except what the professor is lecturing about.” She brushed her fly-away hair back from her brow. “I know I overreact to every little thing someone says. You were right. We’re still newlyweds. People probably don’t expect us to be out having a whirlwind social life.” Her hands made a fluid curve around her stomach. “Especially with me in this condition,” she added nervously.
