The Doctor Delivers

IF YOU HAD ANY SENSE, Catherine thought as she whirled around the room in Martin’s arms, when this dance is over you will thank him very nicely and make a quick exit. That would be the safe thing to do. The sort of thing that Julie and Peter’s mommy would do. The sort of thing that the Catherine Prentice she thought she knew would have done. But his arms were around her, and her chin rested on the rough tweed of his jacket and her lips were tantalizingly close to the skin of his neck, and the Catherine Prentice she thought she knew, the cookie-baking, homework-checking, PTA president Catherine, had gone AWOL. In her place was this strange, barely recognizable woman. A woman whose body turned into mush every time she looked into Martin Connaughton’s eyes.

“What do you think?” He pulled away slightly to look at her. “Pretty bad, aren’t I?”

“The worst.” She smiled up at him. “My feet will never be the same again.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“No.” Never, she thought as couples glided around them, shadowy and indistinct in the spangled light. She was bewitched. The evening had become this magical shimmering thing that much later she would unwrap and slowly examine like a precious gift. He pulled her closer, his long body hard against hers, hummed softly in her ear. Outside, as he’d asked about the children, the real Catherine had briefly returned to issue warnings, but he’d taken her hand and the words had melted like snowflakes in the sun. The music played on and, caught up in the dreamlike spell, they danced and danced. When the band played its last number and the lights were raised, she felt as though she’d awakened from a trance.

Minutes later, they were back out in the dark night, the air cool on her overheated skin. Reality slowly returned. As they stopped beside her pale blue Plymouth van, she felt like Cinderella. Her magic coach had turned back into a pumpkin.

“Very glamorous.” She grinned at Martin. “Probably couldn’t guess I had kids, huh?”

“What have you got in there?” He peered inside the window. “Toys and bikes?”

“Pretty much.” She unlocked the door and slid it open. On the carpeted floor were red and blue plastic crates of toys. One marked Julie, the other Peter. Two smaller cartons contained books. Pegs on the wall of the van were hung with jackets. She watched his face as he looked around, his expression rapt.

He turned to her. “It’s all so…organized.”

Catherine laughed at his interest. “Well, it’s easier that way. Keeps them occupied when we’re driving.” She reached under the seat and pulled out two smaller cartons. “See. Cookies. Pretzels. Sodas. Helps cut down on impromptu fast-food visits,” she said with a grin.

“You go on a lot of outings, do you?”

“We go to the beach. Camping. Sometimes we go up to the mountains. My mother has a cabin in Big Bear.”

“And do you have campfires? Cook marshmallows? That sort of thing?”

“Uh-huh. Sing songs, the whole shtick.” She laughed, suddenly self-conscious.

“What?”

“I’m just surprised that you find it interesting. I love doing this kind of thing, but…” She bit her lip, already sorry she’d embarked on the story. “Their father always made me feel that it was the only thing I was capable of doing. He used to call it my Becky-Home-ecky stuff. I guess it never seemed particularly interesting or valuable.”

“You’re wrong about that,” he said.

A moment passed and they stood together looking at each other and she realized she was holding her breath. The Martin Connaughton she’d first seen that morning was not the man with whom she’d spent the last few hours and she wondered who exactly the real one was. If it was the man standing before her now, with this look of tenderness on his face, she could be in big trouble. Very big trouble.

But a moment later, as if a curtain had been drawn, the look was gone.

“Ten o’clock tomorrow?” Unsmiling, he inclined his head slightly. “I’ll see you then.”

As she pulled out of the parking lot, Catherine felt as dazed as if she’d been hit on the head with a baseball bat.

BY THE TIME Martin drove into the Long Beach Marina, the bewitched feeling he’d had with Catherine was mostly gone, dissipated by the two messages he’d had from the unit. One was a new admission, the other an update on Holly Hodges, whom he’d twice caught himself calling Kenesha. Nothing about her condition reassured him. He had called for a neurological consult because he suspected that, in addition to all her other problems, she was bleeding into her brain.

Still a glow lingered, a small pinpoint of light in the dark. He stopped at the row of marina post office boxes to collect his mail and strode down the wooden gangway whistling.

Fog had fallen like a gray shroud over the water, cocooning the dense thicket of sailboat masts. Among them was his own dwelling, an old forty-foot Coronado sailboat. It had once provided diversion for weekend sailors on jaunts to Catalina and Mexico and needed some cosmetic work, but it suited his needs just fine.

It occurred to him as he jumped aboard that the way he’d felt as he’d talked to Catherine, he would have agreed to speak to the press, WISH or no WISH. The thought both exhilarated and unnerved him and was still on his mind as he bent down to put the key in the padlock. Then a movement behind him made him look up and do a double take.

Valerie Webb stood in the shadows watching him, a small smile on her face.

“Greetings.” Valerie moved into the marina light’s cool glow. A silvery veil of moisture covered her red hair and pale trench coat. “I was hoping you wouldn’t be too late. It’s a touch chilly out here.”

“Val.” Martin pulled himself up, the padlock still in his hand. “What the hell are you doing here?” His mind scrambled for an explanation, then he remembered that she’d done the press briefing. It seemed an unlikely reason for her visit, but he thanked her, apologized for not having done so earlier.