Maura squeezed Samantha's hand. She herself didn't know the incredible happiness of giving birth, but she had experienced it vicariously hundreds of times. It never failed to leave her uplifted and filled with joy.
This time, however, her elation was soured by the knowledge that she'd soon have to face up to Xan, and she had plenty to say.
Chapter 9
Xan found Maura afterward in the staff lounge. Their eyes clashed over the top of a cardboard cup. She was drinking hot chocolate and dreading the condemnation that was sure to come.
He stood glaring at her in the harshness of the fluorescent overhead light. They were separated only by a narrow table. "Well?" he said. "Who goes first—you or me?"
"It might as well be you," she said, lowering the cup and crumpling it before tossing it in a nearby trash can. She waited.
"Your dislike of procedure here was quite obvious," he said, leading with a remark calculated to put her on the defensive. It was something she didn't appreciate.
"What did you expect? You know how I work," she shot back.
"We'd agreed that you would be only an observer," he retorted, but there was an underlying weariness in his tone.
"I could hardly stand by and watch Samantha suffering." She met his eyes without blinking.
Xan dismissed this assertion. "Maura, there's always a certain amount of pain that goes along with having a baby. I've been told that it's the most easily forgotten pain in the world. I don't want my patients suffering any more than you do. But it goes with the territory." Now his eyes sparked with a dangerous green light.
She leaned forward on the table, resting her weight on her hands. She spoke quietly but emotionally. "Samantha didn't need to be suffering in that way. Placing pillows under her back lifted her so that the delivery could progress. The delivery room nurses should have done it, but they didn't. I did a minor thing, but it helped. Admit it, Xan."
"Admit it? Maybe. But you should have asked my permission. I can't fault you for making my patient more comfortable, but you were supposed to be an observer, Maura."
"Then let me tell you some of the other things I observed," she said, preparing to count them off on her fingers. "First, Samantha was scared. Two, her fear inhibited the birth process because it made her tighten her muscles. Three, you could have relaxed those muscles by the application of hot compresses, an idea that never occurred to you. Four, she needed to hold her baby in her arms for more than a few minutes. Not wanted, but needed. Didn't you see the tears in her eyes when the nurse carted the baby off to the hospital nursery? Don't you have the compassion to see that mother and child belong together in those important first moments after birth?" Her words were impassioned. She utterly believed in them.
"Are you quite through?"
"For the moment, yes. But I'll always believe that, no matter what, the beginning of a new life should be cherished."
Xan ran a hand through his hair and sighed.
"All right. Here's what I have to say. And most other obstetricians would tell you the same things."
"Go on." She had known that this airing of their professional differences was inevitable. They might as well get it over with.
"First, most women are apprehensive during their first experience with childbirth, and Samantha was no exception. Second, tightened muscles or not, the birth proceeded normally and she has a fine, healthy baby."
"She also has an episiotomy to heal from," Maura shot back. "Perineal massage and hot compresses could have prevented the need for it."
Xan ignored her and continued. "Third, there wasn't time to apply compresses. My delivery-room team has enough to do without wringing out wet washcloths. And fourth, it might be nice for a new mother to hold the baby for longer than Samantha did, but our procedure dictates that the baby be observed in the hospital nursery for four hours after birth. Samantha had a safe delivery. That's what's important—not these cherished beginnings you're so fond of."
"What about emotions? Aren't they important to you?"
"Don't ask me about emotions! I'm a doctor, not a damned psychologist!"
"You're a doctor, not a robot! How about showing some sensitivity toward your patients?"
By this time, their exchange had become a shouting match. A passerby peeked into the lounge but tiptoed away when he saw what was going on.
Xan's chest heaved, and he shook his head. "It's no use, Maura. We have different views. Get your things. I'll take you home."
Her shoulders sagged. Despite her fervent speeches, she hadn't convinced Xan of anything. Dispiritedly she followed him as he stalked out of the room and down the lonely long hospital corridor.
Outside, the drizzle had increased to a downpour. The bright lights of the parking lot reflected from the rain-dimpled puddles. Xan ran through the rain to get the car, pulling it up in front of the door.
Maura climbed in, only slightly wet after her short dash to the car. She glanced at Xan from the corners of her eye. Rain slicked his hair across his forehead, and his eyebrows resembled wet feathers. His cotton shirt clung to his back and upper arms.
They didn't speak. Their progress was measured by the tick-swish, tick-swish of the windshield wipers. Xan drove slowly because of the heavy rain. Far away a bolt of dull lightning cut the nighttime sky, and thunder rattled the car windows.
The rain seemed to be thickening as they pulled out on the Shuffletown highway, and soon it was so torrential that they could barely see the road ahead of them. Water driven by the strong winds gushed across the pavement. The wind whacked the rain against the car in great sweeping gusts.
"I'm going to have to pull over," said Xan tersely. "I can't drive through this."
Maura said nothing, just watched as Xan slowed the Lexus to a complete stop. She heard the slap of wet weeds on the car's underbelly as he drove off the asphalt onto the shoulder of the road.
He opened the front windows slightly for air, and the air felt cool and smelled like dust. Then he turned off the engine, and the windshield wipers stopped their sweeping. Finally he switched off the headlights and reached for the control that would ease the car seats backward to give them more legroom. If they had to sit there in the rain, they might as well be comfortable while they did it.
He never should have taken Maura to the hospital. Xan knew that now. At the time it had seemed like a good idea. He'd wanted to see her, and he didn't think she'd agree to a date with him, not after that night at his house when it had taken all his restraint to let her go. He'd known she would accompany him tonight if it had something to do with her calling, and anyway, he was proud of the way he interacted with his patients. He loved his work, loved everything about it.
He was dedicated to bringing good medical care to the patients at the Quinby Hospital and intended to continue. He'd watched Maura deliver a baby. She had made an art of it. Well, he approached delivering babies as a science, as any good doctor would. And he was damned proud of that.
He glanced at her. She was staring at the runnels of rain creasing the windshield. His heart softened at the sight of her clean, uncluttered profile. Her head was regal on the long stem of her neck, crowned in brilliant red-gold like the daylilies in the exclusive Teoway Island flower beds. She was so unknowingly beautiful and so uncommonly self-assured. He found himself caring for her as he had cared for no other woman. His feelings for her were built on admiration and respect and a gut feeling that the two of them were very much in tune, despite their different philosophies.
Xan cleared his throat. "Maura, about what we said back there," he began, framing an apology in his mind.
She wouldn't let him finish. "There's nothing more to be said," she told him. She wasn't cold, or even cool. She was just Maura. He would have expected her to sulk or argue. Except Maura wasn't like that.
He sighed, determined to try again. "All right. We won't talk about it. When are we going furniture shopping?"
She swung her head around, wafting the earthy fragrance of wet hair to
ward him. He liked the scent of it. It reminded him of the fragrance of her skin that night in his bedroom.
"Go furniture shopping? Oh, Xan, there's no point in carrying this any further. We're on opposite sides of the childbirth issue. Let's just drop the whole relationship, all right?"
He felt a stab of dismay. He shook his head firmly. "No, ending the relationship is definitely not all right. I'm willing to admit that we don't see eye to eye professionally. But I'd like to see you again."
Maura let herself be drawn into the intensity of his gaze for a moment, then fought her way out of it before it sucked her under. "There's no point in it." She spoke decisively, as if there could be no argument.
He took a deep breath. "Maura, I like you very much, and it's seldom that I meet a woman as intelligent and as compassionate as you are. I enjoy talking with you and I'm physically attracted to you. As far as I'm concerned, there's every reason to keep us going."
"I see," she said. "You have it all figured out, so very rationally. This, therefore that. I was right. You don't have any emotions."
"I damn well do have emotions," he said, beginning to get annoyed. "One of them is anger. Why do you keep accusing me of having none?"
"Because you don't show them, that's why!"
"So what do you want me to do? Tell you I'm madly in love with you? We hardly know each other, and if you get your way, we never will!"
Her nerves felt coiled tight as a spring. She let the silence grow, and after a while it no longer felt threatening. She caught her breath when he raised a finger and traced its way downward from her cheekbone to her jaw. He was looking at her with incredible longing, and she found herself wanting to experience the wonderfully delicious sensations she felt whenever she was in his arms.
Xan caressed the curve of her lower lip with the same lazy fingertip, imprisoning her eyes with his. Her lips parted reluctantly before his finger tentatively touched the tip of her tongue. She savored the taste of him, feeling the heat of her arousal spreading through her body in widening ripples. After a moment he continued the tracing of her features with his finger, bringing into being a yearning so strong that it became a growing, aching need. She closed her eyes for a moment, wanting to ease away from that need, and when she opened them he had narrowed the space between them and his lips were closing on hers.
If there was frustration inside her, it melted away as she became aware of the softness of his lips. Whatever harsh words had passed between them counted for nothing in the hazy drifting easiness of being swept away on a gentle tide of lethargy. And then gradually their heartbeats accelerated, their breath grew more frantic. Xan's kisses unleashed the passions that she had checked for so long, and they battered at her resistance like the wings of frenzied birds longing to be free.
She found herself clutching at him, spanning his shoulders with spread fingers taut with urgency. And throughout the fierce craving onslaught of his kisses, she kept thinking, this can't be happening! Not to me!
But it was happening. Her own clothes picked up the dampness and began to cling to her skin where they touched his wet clothes, and still he held her tenaciously, his mouth eager upon hers, and savage.
While he could still think, when he first began kissing her, he thought about how long he had waited to kiss her since that last time, and how many times he had dreamed of doing it again. He wanted her, all of her, inch by inch. And he wanted her to know him. And then he didn't think anymore.
The rain curtained them from the rest of the world. They were encapsulated, isolated, far away from everyone else. Their breathing fogged the car windows so that they couldn't see out, and it was just the two of them together.
The male textures of him were so new to her as her hands found his hair, caressing and then winding themselves into the wet strands, finding their way to curve around the nape of his neck, then traveling slowly and tantalizingly down his backbone to rest lightly at the hollow just above his hips.
His mouth released hers and burned little breathy kisses along her throat, and her lips pressed against his damp skin and tasted warm rain. Outside, the storm lessened and the rain drummed more quietly on the roof, tapering off until it was no more than a mist.
"I know you need time, my darling," he whispered close to her ear. "But I don't want to wait much longer."
She buried her face in his wet shoulder, and she couldn't tell if the moisture on her cheeks was rain or tears.
"Nothing to say?" he asked gently, tipping her face so that he could look at it. He wished he knew how to communicate his longing to her, to tell her how very much he wanted her.
"What if—what if I told you that it wasn't going to happen?" she breathed.
Xan said nothing for a moment before speaking very carefully. "Then I would ask you why you are making me hurt for you. You are, you know." His eyes spoke volumes in their intensity.
He couldn't have said anything that would have shaken her more. She hated hurting anything ever. She knew this was a different kind of hurting. But did that make it different? For she was hurting, too—aching for want of him.
Carefully, as though she were very fragile and precious, Xan disengaged himself from her and hitched the car seat forward. Maura retreated to her own seat, smoothing her hair back and not daring to look at him. He drove her home on rain-slick roads, and they didn't speak even when she fumbled with the door latch and let herself out. She ran up the steps of the farmhouse and slipped inside as quickly as possible. Overcome by her own thoughts, she sank down on the stairs and buried her face in her hands.
A sexual relationship would be a veering from her course, and she was dedicated to her mission here in Shuffletown. Yet it suddenly seemed crystal clear to her that, unless something happened to stop it, she was indeed about to embark on a love affair. The aftershocks of this certain knowledge shook her for days afterward. She still needed time to come to terms with the idea of herself as Xan's lover.
* * *
The next evening as twilight spread shadows over the field behind the farmhouse, Maura pulled on a sleeveless top and yoga pants before unrolling a mat on the commodious side porch where bumblebees darted in and out of the nearby rosebushes.
She planned to practice refreshing yoga exercises to clear her mind and relax her body. When she felt totally free of tension, she'd think about the things she'd been putting off thinking about. She had just finished a series of hollow breaths, a technique that induces calmness, and was lying on her back inhaling the roses' fragrance when something furry brushed up against her feet. It meowed.
She sat up and found herself face to face with the scruffiest cat she had ever seen. It wasn't at all pretty, with its patchy gray tiger-striped fur and kinked tail. "Poor thing," she said sympathetically, reaching to scratch it behind the ear. It closed its eyes and let out a heartrending meow. "I suppose I'll have to feed you," she said. "It doesn't look as though anyone else ever does."
The footstep beside her startled her, and she looked up at Xan Copeland, who was staring down at her and the cat with a bemused expression. "If you're feeling in the mood to be kind to strays," he said, "will you take on another one? No one feeds me, either." He smiled at her engagingly, feasting his eyes on her.
"I was going to feed this poor animal the chicken livers that I cooked for pâté. Would you like some?" There was teasing in her look, but her heart turned over at the sight of him.
Xan grimaced. "Hardly. Don't you have some leftovers or something?" He sat down on the double-sized Pawley's Island rope hammock which Golden had strung up on the porch for the comfort of waiting fathers. He looked at her hungrily, and she knew he was hungry for more than dinner.
"Did you bring this cat?" she said quickly to distract herself from his presence. "I didn't hear you drive up."
He nodded. "That's because we both came on little cat feet. I brought her for your mice. Remember?"
She couldn't possibly have forgotten that night. But she hadn't seen a mouse since, and she'd
forgotten that Xan had said he'd get her a cat. "She's such a sad specimen," she said, her heart going out to the poor thing. Concentrating on the cat made it possible for her to dismiss Xan's eyes, which made his feelings for her so very obvious.
"I found her hanging around the garbage cans outside the hospital. Considering her condition, I thought she needed the services of the McNeill Birth Center."
He was right. The cat's sides were bulging, sure sign of an advanced pregnancy. Maura stopped rubbing the purring cat behind the ears and stood up quickly. Right now she'd welcome an activity. "Come on, both of you. I'll see what I can find in the refrigerator. Beggars, however, can't be choosers." She bent and picked up the cat, cradling its ample body between her breasts.
Xan tipped himself out of the hammock and followed her inside to the kitchen. Maura opened the refrigerator door. "There's leftover spaghetti, cooked and mixed with sauce, if you'd like that."
"Sounds wonderful. Do you know that's the ugliest cat I've ever seen? It looks boneless, too."
Maura regarded the cat, which was focusing yellow unblinking eyes upon her face. "You're right."
"I hope you know something about birthing kittens."
"I think cats take care of those things themselves," she said, setting the cat on the floor, where it proceeded to twine through their legs, purring in anticipation. Maura found the chicken livers and set them down in a bowl. The cat began to gulp them down voraciously.
"Speaking of birthing," Xan said slowly as Maura dumped cold cooked spaghetti into a pan to warm it, "the chief of staff at the hospital, Raymond Lyles, called me into his office today."
"Oh?" Maura kept her eyes on the spaghetti.
"Dr. Lyles asked me my opinion about setting up birthing rooms in the hospital. He mentioned giving family-oriented childbirth care, complete with midwife labor coaches."
She glanced at him, eyebrows raised. "What brought this big change about?" she asked.
"You want the long version or the short one?"
Cherished Beginnings Page 13
