A Mother For His Child

Last patient of the day. And, as was the case more often than not, she’d been running a half-hour behind for most of the afternoon. It happened when she was the only doctor in a practice that really needed two. She often had to squeeze in extra patients who really needed to be seen. It was well after six already.

Not a problem, normally, with the quiet, ordered life she’d led here for the past two years. Tonight, though, she was having dinner with Will Braggett, of all people, in less than an hour. He had called out of the blue last week, his voice rough, musical, careless, confident and astonishingly unexpected.

‘I’ll be in the area. Any chance that you’re free to meet?’

She’d said, yes, fine, no problem. Had imagined a quick coffee, for old times’ sake.

No, for Alison’s sake. Will’s divorce from Maggie’s old college room-mate and close friend had apparently been an amicable one.

Although why bother even with coffee when Maggie and Will had strenuously detested each other for years? she wondered.

And then he had suggested a Friday night dinner, in that typical far-too-confident way of his. Would she meet him at the Caprice restaurant at the Craigiemoor Hotel at seven? He’d already made a reservation.

Of course he had!

Caprice was easily the most expensive and exclusive dining establishment within a radius of a hundred miles or more, just as the Craigiemoor was the most expensive and exclusive resort hotel. The place occupied its own island in Lake George, linked to the mainland by a picturesque bridge. Maggie had only eaten there once before, nearly three years ago. With Mark, celebrating their second wedding anniversary. Just two months later, Mark’s aggressive form of prostate cancer had been diagnosed.

‘Is that why I’m sorry I said yes to this? Because it’ll remind me too painfully of Mark?’ she murmured to her reflection ten minutes later, after she’d changed her clothing and brushed her hair to a dark sheen.

Didn’t let herself answer the question.

Ten minutes, she decided, really wasn’t long enough. And neither was this dress. The stiff cream line of its hem flirted sexily with her knees, when it would have been far more compatible in a staid relationship with her lower calves. Also—tonight, suddenly—cream was not her colour. It wasn’t assertive enough.

Dissatisfied, she wrenched the back zipper open again. Halfway down, right at the tightest spot, it got caught in the fabric. It took her five minutes and a strained muscle in her neck to get it free, and in a bad mood she then dived into the safest, simplest outfit she owned, with her jaw already aching and tense.

It was a pair of black linen trousers and a matching sleeveless top, with a round, open neckline and a closely fitted shape. Not dowdy, but not a show-stopper either. The outfit was, however, far more her than cream silk and lengths of nylon-covered leg.

Maggie had always been quite aggressively herself in the company of William James Braggett. Intelligent, uncompromising, argumentative, sure of her ground.

On the surface, at least.

In return, he’d barely spared her the time of day. Well, no, that was an exaggeration. Certainly, though, he’d never appeared to take her seriously in any way. Apart from one solitary occasion…

Late. She was definitely going to be late.

Her pager vibrated as she was adding some defensive length and blackness to her lashes and, nervous, her hand slipped and streaked an ugly blob of mascara onto one eyelid.

‘Ugh!’ A rough flourish with a moistened cotton ball only made it worse, and her eye stung. She’d have to start again, after dealing with the pager.

Her medical answering service reported a call from the mother of one of her patients, and she returned it straight away. The ten-month-old had a fever. It was fairly high, at a hundred and two Fahrenheit, but some questions calmed both her own concerns and those of the mother. It was probably the start of a simple cold. The baby’s older brother and sister both had one.

Maggie put down the phone, swabbed the mascara off her eyelid with make-up remover and completed a sketchy version of her make-up, resisting the temptation to try for glamour. She wasn’t glamorous. Never had been. Her mind was her strength, not her body. Why pretend to Will Braggett, of all people?

That phrase kept cropping up in her thoughts, annoying and disturbing her. Did she really still have him under her skin, after so long, like some irritant chemical?

Apparently she did, because when she finally turned into a parking place outside the stately and exclusive hotel, she was aware of an emotion that could only be described as glee as she noted that the time on the dashboard clock now read seven twenty-two. Yes, that definitely counted as late.

Unpunctuality was a power play she normally scorned to indulge in, but just this once, since it was Will—of all people—and, anyway, it hadn’t been deliberate…

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said to her, nine minutes after this.

Maggie threw back her head and laughed. ‘In the space of five seconds, Will Braggett,’ she jeered lightly, ‘you have just taken me back in time about eight years!’

Still laughing, she took in his dark, impossible and totally masculine good looks, which had only improved with the seasoning effect of the years. Thick, short-cropped hair showed off the neat shape of his head. Brown eyes and long lashes created a liquid impression of tenderness and warmth. His mouth was made for kissing, or murmuring in a woman’s ear.

There were laugh lines around it now, too, showing the teasing humour she’d always refused to respond to. His build, in contrast, gave him a very definite aura of power. Finally, she registered that his charcoal suit fitted him like armour, his smile dripped with charm and he was thrusting a very pretty bunch of white daisies in her direction.

She remained unimpressed. Tilted her head to one side and looked at him from beneath her lashes. ‘Is that part of the apology?’

He frowned, and looked—but this was impossible—taken aback. ‘No, I bought them earlier.’ His voice dropped a little. ‘Maggie, I really am sorry about being late. I’ll explain while we eat.’

Maggie took the flowers, feeling the heat rise in her face. How had she managed to let him wrong-foot her so soon?

‘They’re lovely,’ she said. She hid her repentance by looking down at the simple blooms.

‘I thought they’d suit your place better than hothouse roses.’

She angled her head once more, and met those dark eyes. ‘How do you know…?’

‘I drove by it this afternoon,’ he explained. ‘You have a great setting, and that log-cabin look to your house fits it so well. Your practice is under the same roof as your home, right?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘But listen, let’s talk properly when we get inside. Our reservation is for seven-thirty. I was thinking we’d have time for a drink at the bar, but…’

She felt his hand beneath her elbow, guiding her confidently towards the restaurant, and all the old, unwanted feelings came flooding back. The wall of alien, chemical desire slamming into her like a rogue wave the moment he was near her. The seething irritation and shame at her own weakness in responding to a man she considered so…so…shallow and arrogant and unsubtle. The determination that he should never, ever guess that she wasn’t nearly as immune to him as she pretended to be.

For heaven’s sake, she thought in sudden panic, why hadn’t she just invented another commitment when he’d called last week? She had been Alison’s college room-mate. Both of them had been bright and ambitious, and both of them had scorned the frequent feminine tendency to hide the fact. They’d been close all through four years of premed studies and four years of medical school, but their internships had taken them in different directions. Contact over the past few years had dwindled to an annual Christmas card.

She knew that Alison and Will were divorced. Sad. They’d seemed like the perfect couple, with Alison’s classic, cool blonde beauty and Will’s dark good looks. Beyond Maggie’s disappointment that yet another modern marriage had failed to stay the distance, however, it meant that she and Will had no reason at all for any further connection. Why had he called? And why had she accepted?

Ah, yes, why had he called? Will wondered. That was what Maggie—now the cool, intimidating Dr Lawless—had to be thinking. He could feel it in the stiffness of her body as she walked beside him, and he’d heard it in that cynical, and perhaps exultant laugh of hers when he’d apologised for being late.

She’d always loved catching him out. She watched for opportunities, and never let one pass. She had never believed in his sincerity. Basically, she’d never understood him at all, and he knew this was partly…mostly…his own fault. She’d unsettled him for nearly eight years of regular contact. He’d deliberately played up to her poor opinion of his worth, and at the same time he’d experienced an unparalleled sense of impotence whenever they’d rubbed up against each other.

Metaphorically, of course.

The back of his neck prickled as he realised what a sexually suggestive phrasing he’d just used in his thoughts, and he wrenched them back to the question of why he’d called her, why he’d proposed dinner and why he’d proposed dinner here.

He had an interview scheduled for Monday morning at another family practice in the region, but it was located in a city centre, and that wasn’t what he was ideally looking for. In her annual Christmas card to himself and Alison several years ago, Maggie had written with enthusiasm about her own practice on the shore of the northern reaches of Lake George in the Adirondack mountains, several hours’ drive north of New York City.

She’d penned a vivid sketch of the spacious wooden house with an attached suite of professional rooms. She’d spoken with love about the wide windows looking onto the lake, the surrounding grandeur of tall trees and spreading grass, and the summer flowers which painted accents of colour. In fall, the mountains flamed a hundred different colours as the leaves changed, she’d said. In winter, the long, island-dotted lake was frozen solid enough to support a car. It was a beautiful part of the country.

She’d talked about the private boat dock, the motor launch, the canoe and the little sailboat.

‘Mark and I are just like the characters in The Wind in the Willows,’ she’d written in her bold hand. ‘Eight months of the year, we spend half our free time simply messing about in boats.’

Her description had stuck in his mind, even then, when he hadn’t yet been looking for something such as she’d described. Over the past year, his need to get away from Arizona, a long way from Arizona, had grown acute—more than enough to overcome his reluctance at subjecting himself to fearless, opinionated, maddening Maggie Lawless once again. He’d remembered the one night when their connection hadn’t generated sparks of hostility but sparks of something very different.