Copyright 2015 by Colleen French
All Rights Reserved
Originally Published by
Zebra Books
Kensington Publishing
New York, NY
Smashwords Edition
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FIRST LOVE
Jarrett tried to collect his thoughts. Over the years he’d planned what he would do, what he would say if Maggie ever showed up on his doorstep. But when he’d rehearsed, he hadn’t taken into account the feelings that would accompany her arrival.
Seeing Maggie like this after all these years brought a flood of emotions he didn’t want to deal with right now—ever, if he could help it. He had expected to be angry with her. What he hadn’t expected was the strange tightening in his chest that was something akin to want, need. He experienced a sense of loss he hadn’t felt in a long time. A sense of longing.
No woman had ever touched his heart the way Maggie had, not in all these years . . .
MAGGIE’S BABY
Colleen French
PROLOGUE
Talbany General Hospital
Talbany Beach, Delaware
The Present
Dr. Maggie Turner walked down the brightly lit hospital corridor and dug into the pocket of her white lab coat for the half-eaten candy bar she knew was in there. She pulled out a pen, alcohol wipes, a syringe, and a pair of gloves before she found the candy.
A broken femur had kept her from the dark chocolate confection. Another foolish college kid—too much to drink, a balcony on his parents’ half-million-dollar third-story condo. She knew the scenario all too well. The little jackass had a blood alcohol level of .15. The boy who rode in the ambulance with the kid said his friend had claimed he could fly. He was lucky he hadn’t broken his back and wound up in a wheelchair. Damned lucky.
Maggie bit into her rich chocolate dinner. She’d wash it down with the flat Diet Pepsi she’d left in the physician’s lounge.
“Maggie.” Dr. Jeb Marshal glanced up as he passed her, his Mont Blanc pen poised.
“Jeb.” She nodded cordially. He was a geeky kind of guy with long arms and legs. But he was pleasant enough and he kept his hands off her, which was more than she could say about another male colleague, who would go unnamed. And to his credit, Jeb was one hell of a cardiologist.
“Slow night?” he asked, glancing over the frames of his tortoiseshell glasses.
She raised one shoulder and let it fall. “The MI you saw, an ear infection, two sunburns, and a balcony flier.” She nodded, satisfied. “Very slow night.”
“Just wait. The full moon is coming.” He raised an eyebrow, Groucho Marx style.
Maggie laughed, but made no further comment. Jeb turned at the end of the hallway and disappeared.
She smiled to herself as she passed exam room four, headed for the physician’s lounge. Jeb had a bad crush on her. All the nurses in the ER were twittering about it.
Of course, Maggie wasn’t interested. She was married, for God’s sake—a wife and a mother.
Thoughts of three-year-old Jordan and his chubby cheeks made Maggie smile again. She hadn’t seen him all week but she had a long weekend coming up, the first in months. Little Jordan and her husband were coming from DC to stay in their beach house.
It was a pain in the ass, this commuter marriage, but it was working for her and Stanley. There had been no decent job offers in the DC area, and Talbany General had offered her an excellent position in the ER and interest-free loans to pay what she still owed for med school. Maggie certainly couldn’t have asked Stanley to leave his job and move to the beach, and Stanley hadn’t offered.
Actually, if Maggie allowed herself to admit it, she missed Jordan more than she did her husband.
She ate the last square of chocolate and crumbled the wrapper in the palm of her hand. She wasn’t ready to admit her marriage was a failure, probably doomed from the start. She wasn’t ready to give up. It’s the distance between us, she kept telling herself. His business. My job here in the ER, with its twelve-hour shifts. Having a toddler and two full-time jobs is enough to make anyone’s relationship rocky.
Maggie tossed the candy wrapper in a garbage can behind the registration desk from the foul line taped on the floor for an easy basket.
“Good shot, Dr. Turner. We could use you on the staff team. Carney’s Body Shop tore us up in the semis.” A CNA passed her, carrying a suture tray—probably for her flier, who had a scalp laceration over his eyebrow. Maggie had left Jason, a physician’s assistant, to do the sutures. He needed the practice.
“Thanks.”
“Dr. Turner, Dr. Turner, line one please,” came a mechanical female voice over the intercom.
Maggie picked up the nearest wall phone, wondering if that same unemotional voice worked the intercom in every hospital in the free world. She was certain it was the same voice she’d heard at Hahnemann every day and night of her residency. “Dr. Turner.”
“Please hold.”
There was a click, followed by another.
“Maggie?” Stanley sounded like he was talking to her from the bottom of a well. She knew right where he was, getting onto the Beltway. Right between towers, she suspected. The reception was always bad there.
“Hi, Stanley. Why didn't you call my cell?” She leaned against the white wall, staring at the green stripe on the floor that led patients toward the lab. A young woman in blue scrubs was busy mopping the floor, the antiseptic smell of her detergent wafting down the hallway. Maggie turned her back to the cleaning lady, selfishly not wanting to share her phone call.
“Tried. Twice.”
She grimaced, fishing her cell out of her pocket. Sure enough, she'd missed two calls from Stanley in the last ten minutes. “I guess I didn't feel it vibrate. How’s Jordan?”
“Good. Just picked him up from daycare. We’re going out for dinner. Meeting a friend.” His voiced faded out, and then back in again. “—wanted to tell you we’ll be in late Friday night. I've got a meeting. I'm thinking ten.”
“Okay. Can I speak to Jordan for a minute?”
“Sure,” he said, then louder, “Talk to Mommy.”
“Jordan?”
“You have to talk louder than that, buddy. So your voice reaches up front to the microphone in Daddy's car, right?”
“Mom-mee!” her son shouted
Maggie broke into a warm smile. “Hi there, pumpkin. How was Miss Jean’s today?”
“Good, Mommy.” His voice went in and out. “…Drew a dinner-saur today. Jessie ate my jelly sam-ich.”
“Oh, no! Tell me, was it a big dinosaur you drew?”
Suddenly she could hear his voice clearly, a voice that no longer sounded so babyish to her. He was growing up quickly, too quickly. “It was a T-rex.”
“I bet you did a great job.”
Jordan was fascinated with dinosaurs. During their last long weekend together, she and Stanley had taken him to the Museum of Natural History in DC to see the dinosaur bones.
“With purple teeth,” added the toddler.
<
br /> “Wow.” Maggie’s eyes widened. She was being paged again. “Well, Mommy has to go.”
“To fix sick people?”
“That’s right,” Maggie said. “To fix sick people. Now you save the picture for my refrigerator. Daddy’s bringing you to the beach this weekend.” She paused. “I really miss you, Jordan.”
“Miss you, Mommy.”
Maggie’s throat constricted. “Jordan, I love you.” He didn't answer. Jordon?”
“Sorry,” came Stanley’s voice. “Daniel Tiger on my iPad wins again.”
She sighed. “That's okay. I'll see you guys Friday. I can tell him in person and get a hug with it.
“Right. See you Friday.”
The phone clicked and the connection was broken.
Maggie gripped the receiver. She considered calling back. She wanted to tell Jordan she loved him. She never got to tell him often enough these days.
But she hung up the phone, feeling silly for her sudden wave of emotion. She’d just wait and tell Jordan she loved him in person on Friday. It was only two days away.
“Dr. Turner.”
Maggie looked up to see a nurse in a yellow-flowered scrub top rush by. “Got two near-drownings coming in. Jet ski accident on the bay.”
“More college kids?”
She nodded. “Who else?”
Maggie sighed, falling into step beside the nurse. Heaven help them. It was only June. It was going to be a long summer.
For the next two hours, Maggie worked on the two Jet Ski accident patients. One was admitted with a skull fracture and a punctured lung. The luckier one was sent home with abrasions and contusions and one arm in a cast.
Tossing her green disposable gown into the garbage as she exited the trauma room, Maggie headed for the physician’s lounge, determined to get a sip of the Diet Pepsi she’d opened hours before. She checked her Timex. It was nearly ten p.m. The drunks would start rolling in, in another hour or so.
She pushed through the door of the physician’s lounge. The room, decorated in early Salvation Army, was empty. It smelled of coffee, stale donuts, and sleepless nights. A half-eaten pastrami on rye sat in its paper wrapper beside an abandoned bottle of apple juice. There were piles of newspapers and magazines everywhere. The cushions of the worn couch were still indented from the last fatigued occupant.
She heard the perk of the coffeemaker and smelled its contents as thick, dark brew spurted like an arterial vein into the glass pot on a table near the phone. At least someone had had the decency to start a fresh pot. Coffee was the lifeblood of the nightshift ER staff.
Maggie crossed the worn green carpet and opened the fridge in search of her soda. She pushed aside half of a cantaloupe. There it was, with her name penned over the logo as if she were still in nursery school. She guessed some things never changed. She closed the door and leaned against it as she took a sip. The soda had lost its fizz, but at least it was cold.
“Dr. Turner?”
Maggie looked up to see a six-foot-five state trooper removing his Smokey the Bear hat. The lounge door swung shut behind him. The young man looked as if he was barely out of the academy. His clean-shaven face was pale.
“What can I do for you, trooper?” She took another sip of the diet soda, still leaning casually against the refrigerator. In her line of work, she dealt with the police way too often.
He exhaled and looked away, and she realized his eyes were filling with tears.
Maggie lowered the can from her lips and glanced at the name badge on his pressed uniform shirt. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. A trickle of fear ran down her spine. “Trooper Eames?”
The trooper looked back at her, seeming to gather himself. “Dr. Maggie Turner?”
She nodded and approached him, suddenly feeling as if she were moving in slow motion. For some reason, she had an immediate and desperate need to cover his mouth, to keep him from speaking.
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Turner, but there’s been an accident on the DC Beltway . . .”
Maggie heard the mechanical intercom voice. Someone had called a code blue. CCU. Second floor.
Maggie shook her head. The soda can slipped from her fingers. She heard it hit the floor, felt the splash against her khakis. She was still walking toward the trooper, but it was taking so damned long to get to him. His words were still tumbling out, words she’d spoken herself to victims’ families.
“Your husband and son—”
Maggie shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “I just spoke to them on the phone. Jordan drew a T-rex.”
“The paramedics did all they could, doctor.” Tears were now running down the trooper’s broad cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” Maggie said. Her voice was firm, but numbness was washing over her—a numbness she recognized all too well. “No, not my Jordan. Not my little boy. You’ve made a mistake.”
“I’m afraid not, doctor. They were . . . dead on arrival at the city hospital. Your sister,” he glanced at a slip of paper in his hand, “a Mrs. Lisa Jones, already identified the bodies.” He looked up at Maggie. “I’m supposed to take you there. Is there someone I can call to ride with you?”
Maggie fell to her knees on the stained green carpet, clasping her hands in prayer. “No,” she begged. “Not my baby.” She bowed her head, hot tears streaming down her face. Her heart was breaking; she could feel the agony as real as scarred flesh and muscle tearing. Suddenly the past came screaming back, jumbling with the present until there was no difference between this child and the last.
“Not my baby,” she repeated. “Dear God, not again . . .”
Chapter 1
June 19, 1999
“Not again.” Seventeen-year-old Maggie Turner stood in front of the cracked mirror on her dresser, her head upside down as she brushed out her reddish-blond hair. “I just talked to him twenty minutes ago.”
Maggie’s mother, Ruth, stood in the doorway, the phone in her hand, the cord stretched taut from the kitchen. She covered the receiver with her hand; a non-filter cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. “If the McKay boy wants to talk to you, you take the phone.”
Maggie rolled her eyes as she raised her head and flung her hair over her back. Ruth Turner was obsessed with the McKay family—with any family in Belltown, for that matter, who had a house with a pool and an automatic lawn sprinkler system. She encouraged her daughter to make friends with the girls from wealthy families, encouraged her to date their brothers. She insisted Maggie take golf, tennis, and horseback riding lessons so she would “fit in.”
Maggie sighed, grabbed a hair tie from a cracked dish on her dresser, and pulled her mane of hair back into a ponytail. Of course, she was secretly pleased Jarrett McKay was calling her three times a day. Pleased, heck. She was ecstatic! Now if he’d only ask her out.
Maggie took the phone from her mother’s hand and gave her a “back off” stare. Ruth threw up her hands in surrender and retreated down the hallway in her yellowed nurse’s aide uniform, a cloud of cigarette smoke billowing behind her. She worked the swing shift at the local old folks’ home. She also moonlighted, sitting with elderly patients in their private rooms late at night. The good thing about the job was that Maggie and her sister Lisa had free rein in the evenings to come and go as they pleased. As long as they didn’t disturb their father, who was usually asleep in his chair in front of the TV, no one was there to hand out ultimatums or assign chores.
Maggie ducked into the bathroom and closed the door, pinching the phone cord; supposedly they were getting cordless phones anytime now. She dropped the lid on the john and sat down on the faded orange cover. “Jarrett? What’s up? I just talked to you a few minutes ago.” She caught a piece of her ponytail and wound it around her finger. She was so nervous she could barely keep her voice steady.
“I know, but now I’m calling back because . . .” His voice was warm and sexy.
“Because?” Maggie held her breath. This was it. This was what she’d been waiting f
or. He was older than Maggie and had just finished his freshman year at Georgetown University. Maggie would be going into her senior year in high school in September.
“Because why?” Maggie repeated, barely able to contain herself. It was so hard to act cool about this whole dating thing when she’d had so few dates. Her mother was so particular about whom she hung around with that she’d had very little chance to date at all.
“Only the best for my daughter,” Ruth Turner had said again and again as she turned down one would-be suitor after another. Joey Matuchi’s parents owned a seafood market. “You’ll spend your life stinking of fish,” Ruth had said. Jerry McDonald’s father was a town cop. “Late nights and piss-poor pay.” Ruth Turner was determined her daughter wouldn’t end up in a thousand-square-foot, two-bedroom bungalow, taking a second job to pay the property taxes.
“I called you back because I just got my birthday present from my parents,” Jarrett said.
“I didn’t know it was your birthday.” She brushed her bangs with her hand. It was so hot in their house. Maggie and her sister had been begging for another room air conditioner for weeks; there was only one for the whole house and it wasn't big enough. Ruth said they couldn’t afford it right now. “Nineteen, wow. An old geezer. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Ah, I don’t know. I’m not into birthdays. But anyway, listen—you’ll never believe this. My dad got me a car!”
“A car!” Maggie jumped up. “You said they said you couldn’t have one. Something about earning your way in the world.”
“They wanted to surprise me.” His excitement came over the phone line. “And Maggie, it is such a cool car. Wait till you see it!”
“What is it?”
“A ’68 Ford Mustang convertible.”
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