A Marriage Worth Fighting For

A Marriage Worth Fighting For
Lilian Darcy

“Do you love me now?”

What answer could she possibly give? “I don’t know.”

Incredibly, they were still touching. Hands joined, bodies brushing lightly together.

Marriage did that, apparently. It made you so familiar with each other’s bodies that you could hold each other and talk about divorce and the non-existence of love at the same time.

“Let me prove it doesn’t have to take seven minutes,” he said softly.

“No …”

“Why not?” Before she could say anything, he added quickly, “No, don’t answer. I know what you’ll say. That if we make love, I’ll think it’s more proof that I’ve won. I don’t want to prove anything.”

“Then what do you want?”

A thick beat of silence, while he struggled to strip back the layers. “I just want you.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the final book in the MCKINLEY MEDICS trilogy! If I had to pick a favorite out of the three, it would be this one. Alicia and MJ are in such a different situation to that of most romance heroes and heroines, and it was both a challenge and a huge satisfaction to write their story successfully. I really hope you enjoy it.

It’s such a great time to be a reader. Even just a few years ago, if you’d loved this book and were looking for more of my work, it would have been a tedious process of searching the internet, clicking through an order system and then waiting for the books to arrive in the mail, or the hit-and-miss of browsing second-hand bookstores. Let’s not even talk about how we found books before the internet!

Now, though, when you find an author you love, much of their backlist is just a couple of mouse-clicks away, whether on the Mills & Boon website or elsewhere. So if you did love this book, take a look at my website, www.liliandarcy.com, where you can find out more about my backlist, and join me in celebrating the feast of books we can now read, from all our favorite authors.

Lilian

About the Author

LILAN DARCY has written nearly eighty books. Happily married, with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and traveling. She currently lives in Australia but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at PO Box 532, Jamison PO, Macquarie ACT 2614, Australia, or e-mail her at lilian@liliandarcy.com.

A Marriage

Worth

Fighting For

Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Chapter One

Dr. Michael James McKinley Junior’s life came crashing down around him at seven o’clock on a Wednesday evening in October.

Ironically, he was home considerably earlier than usual. He was feeling content. Happy, even.

Entering the lavishly lit and decorated lobby of his building, he anticipated the moment of homecoming at a level of detail that he would have been embarrassed about if anyone had known.

It would unfold something like this:

Alicia would hear his key in the door and come to meet him, giving a little cry of pleasure and surprise. He’d suggest a meal out, and she would hurry away to change and freshen her makeup and hair. The kids would still be awake. He could spend some time with them, while Alicia readied herself.

The procedure always took a while, but the results were worth it. She was just about the most stunning woman he had ever seen. After nearly seven years of marriage he still thought so, and when he entered a social gathering with her on his arm, he felt the aura of success around both of them like a magnetic field.

So, yes, he would have to wait for Alicia to work her beauty magic, and that would be fine. He could help Nanny Maura with … well, with whatever she did with the children at this time of the evening. Their bath. Their bedtime story.

He felt he ought to know what they would be up to in their routine, but it seemed to change every few months, and it was hard to keep track of such things when he was so rarely home at an hour when they were still awake. Kids grew so fast. He had the idea Alicia had told him recently that Tyler was on the verge of giving up his daytime nap.

Or maybe he already had. MJ couldn’t remember.

He took the elevator, thinking that he had better be quiet when he entered, in case Tyler was already settling into sleep. While the thought of his two-year-old son bouncing excitedly out of bed to greet him was a pleasing one in his own head, he realized that Alicia and Maura might not think of it the same way. Tyler was an exhausting little dynamo, and if he became overtired or overstimulated he was even worse.

No, he absolutely must not disrupt the sleep routine with Tyler purely for a father’s selfish reasons.

At the apartment door, he registered that things were indeed pretty quiet in there. He slipped his key silently into the lock, turned the handle slowly so that it didn’t make a sound and tiptoed inside.

There were no lights switched on against the gathering night, and no sounds. Still convinced that he was arriving at his children’s bedtime, he crept through to the sitting room, expecting to see the night-light glowing in its socket in the hallway, or to hear the soft voices of Alicia and Maura telling Abby and Tyler good-night.

But the apartment was dark and silent. The sunset fading in the sky outside provided the only source of light, and the traffic in the canyons of the Manhattan streets below made the only sounds. No one was here. His pleasing fantasy of a warm greeting, twenty minutes of parental quality time and a relaxed evening out evaporated and left a feeling of fatigue and irritation.

He’d been at the hospital at six this morning, in surgery at six-thirty. He’d eaten lunch on the move, hadn’t had a break all day, and then when he’d glimpsed the possibility of an early departure, he’d tied himself in knots to make it happen. As a reward, he could easily have accepted fellow surgeon Oliver Marks’s casual suggestion of a quick drink instead of hurrying home to his family. Would it really have been too hard for Alicia to text him with a warning that she and the children might not be home? His arrival at this hour wasn’t that rare, was it?

He checked his phone to see if he’d missed something, but, no, she really hadn’t left a message. What the hell was she thinking? He didn’t ask much of her in that regard, for heck’s sake, and he gave her a truckload in return.

Anger rising, he went into the kitchen and flicked on a light. His gut ached with hunger, he registered, and it probably wasn’t helping his mood. There’d be something in the refrigerator to hold the hunger at bay until he knew if his dinner plan with Alicia was going to come off.

He actually had his hand on the refrigerator door handle when he saw the note on the gleaming black granite countertop, pinned down by his favorite coffee mug. He swung away from the prospect of food and picked it up. Okay, Alicia, so you did leave me an explanation, but why on earth didn’t you text, so I could—

It’s not working, MJ. And you’re never here. There’s no point saying this in person, and I doubt you’ll care. I’ve taken the kids to Vermont for some time out. I’ll talk to a lawyer in the next few days about a divorce. A.

He stood with the piece of paper in his hand. His empty stomach dropped like a stone and his temples throbbed in shock and disbelief.

Alicia had left him.

“You see, there’s green fields and little towns in Ireland, just like this,” Nanny Maura explained to Alicia in the same tone she might have used to explain her preference for coffee over tea. Her Irish accent was strong. “I came to America for a taste of city life, like. I don’t want to be stuck in the country. You didn’t tell me you were gettin’ a divorce when we were packin’ to come up here. I thought ’twas just for a few days.”

Alicia felt a weird and close-to-hysterical desire to laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. Tell her nanny she wanted a divorce before she told her husband? Good plan! Add “Oh, by the way, I’m leaving my husband” to her daily list of instructions about activities and errands? No problem! Be fair to the nanny, while her life was in tatters and her children didn’t understand what was going on? Easy peasy!

But she recognized that Maura had a point. There was a huge difference between New York City and rural Vermont.

And maybe she didn’t even need a nanny now that she was here. It would be better, really. Maura was just another person she didn’t want seeing her cry. And she’d left her schedule of beauty treatments and shopping trips and charity lunches behind in Manhattan. She would have plenty of time for hands-on child care.

“When would you like to leave?” Alicia asked, not sure of the answer she wanted to hear.

This had already been a painful interview, conducted once the children were safely asleep upstairs. She’d broken the truth to Maura—that there was a reason for the larger-than-usual amount of luggage they’d brought, and for the lack of the text messages to MJ that she would normally have sent if she was going up to his brother Andy’s with the kids for a few days, as she’d done once or twice. Leaving now … on the thruway.