by Val Daniels
“How long do you expect my sister to put up with this?” he asked.
Dan’s voice sounded muffled by comparison. Alicia couldn’t make out what he said in reply.
“That’s rich,” Brad said sarcastically. “Well, don’t you worry about her. Or that baby. She’s getting out of here just as soon as it’s born.”
This time, Dan’s voice was clearer—and angry. “I don’t think our marriage is any of your—”
“You’re right,” Brad interrupted. “What I think shouldn’t be your concern. My sister should be. And you obviously don’t think enough of her or your baby to give up your lover.” Brad paused for air. “Well, we don’t need you, you son-of-a—”
“Brad!” Alicia rushed into the room as Brad moved a step nearer to Dan. “Brad!” she exclaimed again.
She didn’t need to see Brad’s face to see the fury in his eyes. She knew that posture well. Her big brother, her protector, was obviously protecting her from...
Maggie! Maggie was sitting near the couch. Paper and files littered the floor around her. One file, she held defensively to her chest. Her face was very pale.
Brad had heard the rumors, Alicia realized.
“What do you think you are doing?” She tugged Brad’s arm, turning him to face her.
“This son-of-a—”
“He’s my husband,” she said quickly. “And this is his house.”
“He should at least have the decency—”
“They’re doing some kind of paperwork, Brad. That’s obvious, even to me. Look around you.” A breeze picked up, swelling the lightweight curtains into a fluttering wing that batted at thin air. “They are allowed to come here to work. That antiseptic atmosphere at the hospital must get pretty old,” she added.
“You’re right,” Maggie agreed. “We were sorting through and updating some of these old files for permanent storage. I hope you don’t mind...” Maggie gave Alicia a wistful apology mixed in a half smile.
Dan looked at Brad, then wearily back to her. “We don’t ever seem to have time to do some of this during office hours, but it’s Saturday. I thought you might like some company.”
“I do. I did. Your mother rescued me,” she said. “We went shopping, out to lunch.”
Brad harrumphed behind her.
At least she could be as gracious as Laura would have been. “I’m glad you came here,” she said to Maggie, who looked svelte and beautiful in her body-hugging leggings and pale blue oversized sweater. It wasn’t the sort of thing she would ordinarily wear to work. They must have been to Maggie’s already.
She suddenly felt overwhelmingly ungainly and awkward. It was hard to keep up the gracious act when she had on her most attractive maternity outfit. Suddenly it seemed like sackcloth.
“Let me see Brad to the door and you two can get back to whatever you were doing.” She really did need to get Brad out of there. His face was red, his fist still clenched. “Come on, Brad.”
Brad reluctantly stomped toward the front door.
He whirled on her the moment they were outside. “Why are you putting up with that, Allie?”
“Putting up with what, Brad?” she asked blithely as she walked in front of him down the sidewalk.
“Him flaunting his relationship with that... that...”
“Maggie has been wonderful,” Alicia defended. “Who do you think rescued me the day of my wreck?”
He snorted.
“And you knew this was strictly for the baby when you encouraged me to marry him.”
“I didn’t believe it was going to be this way,” Brad said frustratedly. “The whole town is talking. You don’t know how many times I’ve defended the bas—”
“And calling him names won’t help,” she stopped him. “For the baby’s sake, please try to remember that he is my family now. Our family now,” she amended. “And I can’t gripe. Look what I’m getting out of the deal. He made me go back to school. He’s paying for it.”
“Boy, you have all the excuses for him down pat,” Brad said bitterly.
She looked up at him helplessly. She wanted to burst into tears.
“Dammit, Alicia, I feel so guilty. Do something.”
“What? What am I supposed to do? Maggie’s a part of this family, as much as if she’d been born into it. I’m the interloper here.”
“You’re his wife.”
She straightened, stiffening her spine. “Go home, Brad, and quit worrying. I made my bed. Now I get to lie in it,” she said. “Isn’t that what you always warned me about when I was in high school?”
“Detentions for constantly being late to class are a little different.”
“This bed is just a little harder,” she said, trying to restore his sense of humor and hers, as well. They were beside his car. “You didn’t say why you’d come by,” she said.
“No, I didn’t, did I?”
“Are you going to?”
“No,” he said abruptly. “I’m not in the mood for what I was going to suggest,” he added, reaching up, touching her hair.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“It’s no one’s fault, Brad.”
“Then why do I feel so damn guilty?” he repeated.
“Don’t. I’m doing fine and you’re listening to too much gossip.” She managed a smile. “This is all exactly what it seems. They’re just working.”
His mouth twisted. “I know,” he finally said, “but what else is going on? And you defending the jerk makes me want to strangle you.” The last he said with a half smile.
“It won’t be for much longer,” she said. “After the baby is born, I’ll find a job. After that, it will just be a matter of getting an apartment and moving out.”
Somehow, that seemed to comfort him. She raised on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “ ’Bye, Brad,” she said, shoving him toward his car door in a broad hint.
He shook his head. “I’ll watch the rental section in the paper,” he offered, and she smiled, knowing that little bit of action would make Brad feel like he was doing something. “Our couch makes into a bed,” he said. “It’s available if your bed gets to be too hard.” He waited for a reaction. She mouthed her thanks.
With a last nod as he climbed into his car, he puttered out of the drive and into the street. He was gone before she could get the lump out of her throat.
She glanced at the house. It looked cold, despite the white bricks glimmering in the thin, late winter sun. She reluctantly went in, hesitated in the hall, heard the whisper of low voices from the family room and went straight to her room.
She threw herself across the bed. She’d only been in the room a couple of minutes when she heard Dan come down the hall.
“Alicia?” Dan stopped beside her bedroom door and she scrambled quietly to the bathroom. “Allie?”
“I’m in the bathroom,” she called in as cheerful a tone as she could muster.
She heard the outer door open. She plastered her back against the wall and wished she’d closed the door.
“I’m going to run Maggie home.” Dan’s voice sounded closer. She held her breath.
“I’ll be right back,” he added when she didn’t respond.
She could feel him wait. “I’ll be here,” she said. That seemed to do the trick. “I’ll be right back,” he said again. She heard him step back outside and go down the hall.
Only when she heard his car start and back out of the garage did she come out and fall across the bed again.
She remembered the hurt on Maggie’s face. And Dan’s confusion, tempered by a defensive set of his chin. And Brad’s outrage. How many more people was she going to make miserable before this was all over? she wondered. And how much longer could she stand the pain?
CHAPTER NINE
THE house was extremely quiet when Dan returned home, so Alicia could hear his every step as he walked through the rooms. When it came, his tap on her door echoed hollowly down the hall. “Alicia?”
<
br /> She shifted higher onto the bed, into the shadows and against the headboard. “What?”
“Can I come in?” He didn’t wait for an invitation. As he moved toward her she caught a whiff of the light musky after-shave he wore when he wasn’t scheduled to see patients.
“Allie?” Curling into a tighter ball, she pulled the pillow higher, closer to her chest, letting the top of it provide a low wall between them. “I found your note earlier. Do you always leave them?”
“Usually.” She semi-shrugged. “Not for school and things. Only if you won’t know where I’ve gone.”
“It’s very considerate. You should have told me. I would have made sure I always do the same.”
Her spine stiffened. “That would be nice,” she admitted in a strangled tone.
“Especially when I get called out at night?”
She tried to see him without letting him see that she’d been crying. She didn’t want him to catch her crying.
“I shouldn’t have I brought Maggie over,” he apologized.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does if it hurts you. That’s the last thing I want to do.”
“Brad overreacted. If he hadn’t been here, that scene never would have happened. Do you think I want you to shun your friends?” She moved an inch, relaxing a bit.
Then he settled beside her on the edge of the bed and her defenses went up again, the pillow went even higher. “I had hoped you and Maggie would like each other, eventually become friends, too.”
“I like Maggie.” She buried her forehead in the soft cradle the pillow made against her knees. He lightly touched her hand. “How could I not like Maggie?” she asked, rearranging the hold she had on her hands around her knees as an excuse to escape his touch. “How could anyone not like Maggie?”
“I thought the two of you—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She didn’t want to talk about Maggie. She didn’t want to talk at all. She buried her whole face. Maybe he would get the hint and leave.
“After you found out you were pregnant, when we talked about getting married, I refused to answer your questions about what happened in my office.”
She groaned inwardly. She couldn’t talk about this now.
“Remember?”
How could she forget? She nodded.
“You wouldn’t listen the first time I tried to explain and I was angry at you for that. I was wrong. I should have tried until I was blue in the face, until you did believe me. Maybe we wouldn’t have made such a mess of things. I want to explain now. Will you listen, Allie?”
“How will it change anything?” she said after a minute.
“We could wipe the slate clean.” His arm came between her and the pillow, his hand curved affectionately over the baby she carried. “We can’t start totally brand new, we have too much to remind us of where we started.” The bed moved as he moved closer.
“Alicia, please look at me. How can we talk with this between us?” He tugged at the pillow.
She hugged it tighter but obediently lifted her head. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the headboard.
She heard his frustrated sigh and didn’t care.
“I will do anything I need to to make this work. Whatever it takes. If the rumors are hurting you, just say so. That’s one of the reasons Maggie and I came here to work—we expected you to be here—and we thought it might actually help stop them. Then I found your note and we thought you would be here soon. But I will do anything you want me to, Allie, even if it means shunning old friends. If that’s what you want, just say so.”
I want you to love me. She heard the hitch in his breath as she finally looked up. His eyes followed the dried trail of tears, the smeared mascara, staining her cheeks. I don’t care about the rest of it, she wanted to say, but knew she never wanted to hear Maggie’s name tied with his in the same breath. She didn’t want him to say “we” and mean Maggie and him.
“You’ve been crying.” His voice was a whisper of horror, as if seeing her cry was his worst nightmare. “Oh, Alicia, I can’t stand it when you cry.”
She couldn’t let him think what he was thinking. “I know. Silly, isn’t it. I just feel like such a blimp,” she said. “The shopping with your mother didn’t help, then Maggie looked so...wonderful.”
He examined her with his eyes, disbelief mixed with humor. “You’re beautiful, Allie,” he reassured her. “How can you think anything else?”
She had him believing that was why she was upset and to her dismay, she burst into tears again.
“Oh, Allie...” He tossed the pillow aside and pulled her into his arms. They tightened and she felt helpless to do anything but press herself to him and accept the comfort he offered. He stroked her hair like she was a child. Her reactions were anything but childlike as her breasts flattened against his chest. She forced herself to stern the flood of tears.
“I hate being such a baby. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she whispered.
He laughed softly again and she pushed him away. His grip loosened until she was far enough for him to cradle her face between his palms. Then he brushed away the last of her tears with his thumbs.
“Oh, Allie, I thought this was about the scene with Brad and Maggie.”
She gazed up at him, her lower lip quivered. “Maybe partially,” she admitted.
He smiled again and kissed away one last tear. “I keep forgetting how flaky pregnant women are.”
“Thanks,” she said sarcastically, trying to suppress the desire for him that surged through her. He had to quit looking at her that way. She’d never needed or wanted him to make love to her more than she did right now.
She knew her upturned mouth parted, beckoning him. He responded with a tender kiss on each of her closed eyes.
“We need to talk,” he murmured huskily, then kissed her instead.
She clung to him as if she were drowning. She knew she should be pushing him away but her body refused to listen. Could she push away food if she were starving? And she’d never been as hungry for him as she was right now.
His tongue explored the contours of her mouth. His quiet sigh seemed to promise blissful fulfillment of her fondest fantasies.
Then a car’s brake screeched on the road outside, and the sun went behind a cloud, chilling the room slightly. The subtle interruption was enough to bring her to her senses. She gently pushed away from him.
He released her reluctantly. “We still need to talk.”
She nodded. “But not right now,” she said. “I can’t think right now.”
He grinned. “Me, either,” he said, his voice holding all sorts of innuendo as he stood and put some distance between them.
That wasn’t what I meant, she wanted to protest, but—
“We’re out of time anyway,” he said turning his arm to glance at his watch. “We have that dinner tonight.”
“Oh, no,” she groaned, “I can’t go. Not tonight. Please Dan—”
“I don’t intend to go without you. I accepted the Chamber of Commerce’s invitation to speak only because we agreed we needed to get out more together. As a couple,” he added. “Remember?”
She remembered too well the day the invitation had come. It was the day after her wreck. The same day Ms. Marks had come. “Then I guess I’d better get ready,” she said, waiting for him to leave so she could.
“We have about forty minutes.”
“I’ll be ready,” she promised.
Damn, she was tired of trying to use good common sense.
His touch lingered on her skin as she soaped herself in the shower. And her mind wouldn’t quit working with the pieces of the puzzle that her life had become.
There were still some pieces missing. What? She was certain there was a connection between what his mom had told her this afternoon and everything that had happened since.
But what was it? And why hadn’t she been willing to listen to what he had to say about him and Maggie that ni
ght—
No! She wasn’t going to dwell on that again. He still cared about her. But he cared about Maggie, too. He “hoped” they would be friends.
She knew, almost without a shadow of a doubt, that he wasn’t sleeping with Maggie. Almost. She didn’t think so. But it wasn’t necessarily because they didn’t want to.
And Dan had obviously wanted to make love to her. But that could very well be a comfort thing. Doctor Dan, the Bandage Man, didn’t like anyone to be in pain.
And he’d always been willing to let their marriage go on like a real one. That’s probably why he and Maggie were holding back. So what was holding her back? Wasn’t a real marriage with Dan what she wanted more than anything on earth? Who was to say that it wouldn’t all be okay? Didn’t she want her baby to have a “normal” life in a normal family?
She pulled one of the outfits his mother had bought her this morning out of the closet and eyed it skeptically. It was a bit springy for late February, but it certainly overshadowed anything else she had. And today had been unseasonably warm, she justified as she put it on.
This exactly fit the occasion, she thought, admiring her image in the mirror. Even if it didn’t exactly fit the season. The flowing, cream-colored skirt whispered against her slender calves. The loose top with its three-quarter-length sleeves and delicate silk embroidery at the shoulders, skimmed the growing bulge of her stomach. The overall effect was casual elegance—perfect for a young doctor’s wife, happily anticipating the birth of her first child. She was the idyllic picture of the fairy-tale life she had dreamed of when Dan had first asked her to marry him.
And maybe that was it. Maybe she still expected too much. Maybe she should accept whatever he offered and close her eyes to anything he felt for Maggie.
For the millionth time in their relationship, she had to wait for him. She guessed that was one of the prices anyone would pay for falling in love wi—
And that was it, she realized. The missing piece.
“You look... perfect,” he said. She spun to face him as he joined her in the family room.
Love. He never mentioned love. Never. Not since Maggie had announced her divorce. That was what bothered her, what made it impossible to forget what she’d seen. He’d said it often, almost excessively, during their engagement. Was it there in his eyes? She saw the flare of desire, but that had always been there.
