The Couple Most Likely To

“Mmm, I wish I had more to tell you, but it was only pretty recently that I found out he existed. He’s single, he’s traveled a lot. You’d know what a successful doctor he is because you’ve seen his résumé. My in-laws never—but never!—speak about that branch of the family, and Robbie and the other kids have learned not to, also. It gets my father-in-law too upset.”

“There’s obviously some major grievance from the past.”

“Which Jillian is determined to heal. She feels like a fraud as a social worker, I think, urging families to work together, when there’s such a rift dividing her own. She persuaded Jake to come back to Portland, and I get the impression that wasn’t easy. I think we all support her in theory, but it’s going to be an emotional business. Speaking of Jillian, here she is again.”

Just as had happened an hour ago, Jillian came briskly in Stacey’s direction. This time, she didn’t have Jake Logan with her.

“We have a child with behavior problems that she’s looking into,” Nancy explained quietly. “He’s a sweetheart but very hard to manage.” She said to Jillian as the social worker reached them, “You’re here for Aidan’s assessment?”

“Almost not late, this time!”

“I’ve been telling Stacey about what you’re trying to do to bring the Logan cousins back into the family fold. She knew Jake in high school—”

“Stacey, you didn’t mention that before,” Jillian cut in, her face showing added interest. “Were you good friends?”

“Um…”

Yes, the very best, until we got to the point where we couldn’t even be in the same room without anger and hurt overflowing in a huge mess. That’s not friendship. Only lovers work that way.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” Jillian said, apparently reading too much in her face. “It’s just that there’s a Logan family potluck dinner happening tomorrow night at his new place, and we both agreed we wanted to dilute the atmosphere by inviting some other people.”

“It’s a good idea,” Nancy agreed.

“Please come!” Jillian urged her.

“Because my last name’s not Logan?” Stacey smiled.

“Exactly!”

“Do come,” Nancy said. “You don’t have the twins this weekend. And you know Jake. It would be nice for him to see a familiar face since he’s newly back in town.”

“Give me the details,” Stacey said, and she saw from the reactions of both women that they really did want her to come. They were obviously nervous about the event, and she wondered just what had happened long ago to keep the two branches of the family so estranged from one another. “And what do you need me to bring?”

They agreed on a chicken casserole, and Jillian said again that it would be nice for Jake, nice for all of them, because the event should turn into a party, it shouldn’t be some dry, sparsely attended family confrontation.

Going back to her office at last, Stacey admitted to herself that her own thoughts about the potluck dinner were far more selfish. She never knew what to do with herself when the twins had gone to John’s.

Tonight she would relax with a glass of wine, get a spicy take-out meal that the twins wouldn’t have enjoyed, take a hot bath uninterrupted, read a book with soft music playing in the background. Tomorrow she’d run errands without the need for hauling two kids in and out of car seats. She’d do the house cleaning chores she never had time for during the week, then maybe she’d drop in to see a friend.

And by late tomorrow afternoon she’d have gotten all of that need for freedom out of her system and she’d start missing Max and Ella the way astronauts missed gravity, or cave explorers missed light. Her love for them was so powerful and fundamental, it provided the anchor point for her whole universe.

She almost had vertigo when the twins went to John’s.

She’d felt an alarming and unexpected degree of vertigo seeing Jake this afternoon, also, but since they were inevitably going to run across each other around the hospital, they both might as well bite the bullet and get used to it now. She would definitely go to the potluck dinner at his place tomorrow night.

“I did as we agreed and invited a few extra people,” Jillian told Jake on Saturday evening, at just before six.

She’d arrived at his newly rented house a little early, as she’d promised to do, bearing not only the agreed-upon chocolate mud cakes for dessert, but wine, napkins, extra silverware…most of the party supplies, in fact. She had to send him out to her car to bring in two more bags.

“Great place,” she told him, when he returned.

He’d rented a modern log home on a generous acre of land on the hilly outskirts of the city. The property had peace and space and warmth, as well as the easy freeway access to the hospital that he would need when racing to a delivery in the middle of the night.

He’d rented furniture and hired a professional interior designer to add some finishing touches, and in forty-eight hours the place had gone from bare and echoey to fully furnished, before he’d moved his personal belongings in here on Wednesday. Despite the designer’s expert eye and attention to detail, Jake wasn’t totally happy with the result, however. Something was missing.

“You didn’t have to bring all this,” he said to Jillian.

“Well, I did have to, with all the extra people.” She shrugged and smiled, laughing at herself a little.

“So just how many non-Logans did you invite?”

She ticked them off on her fingers. “Brian and Carrie Summers. They adopted through Children’s Connection and it went so well for them that the birth mother, Lisa, is still a big part of their lives. She’s become a real friend, so she’ll be here, too. And Stacey, whom you know. She and her husband…ex-husband,” she corrected quickly, with a regretful expression, “conceived their twins through IVF treatment at the center. That’s not a confidence I’m betraying because she’s very open about it. And Eric and Jenny asked if they could bring…”

But Jake didn’t hear who Eric and Jenny were bringing.

Stacey and John had conceived through IVF.

For some reason, he reacted to this news with a powerful surge of complex emotion. His thoughts whirled. He and Stacey had had no trouble conceiving by accident seventeen years ago. But then Anna’s birth had been so horrible. Stacey had bled too much afterward. They’d both been so upset and bewildered. She hadn’t realized her postpartum flow was greater than normal, and of course he had no medical knowledge at that point. Neither of them realized soon enough that she had an infection and needed antibiotics.

“Want to help set out the glasses?” Jillian asked, and he nodded absently and set to work, needing only a fraction of his concentration for the mechanical task.

Stacey had had to listen to some typically insensitive opinions from her mother after the birth—that the loss of Anna was “for the best,” that in future “maybe you won’t be so thoughtless.” He’d been rocked by the sense of a burden lifted warring with his genuine grief. They were both a total mess at that point. Had Stacey been scarred physically as well as emotionally by Anna’s birth and death? Was this why she hadn’t been able to conceive naturally with her husband?

How long had they been trying before they’d resorted to IVF? Treatment for infertility could put an enormous strain on a couple’s marriage. The divorce made more sense to him, now.

He looked up from the current task he was working on—arranging platters of crackers, cheese and dips; he didn’t even remember Jillian asking him to do it—and there was Stacey herself, following Jillian into the kitchen with a big, glass-lidded casserole dish in her hands. He wanted to confront her with a hundred questions about her marriage, the fertility treatment, the divorce, and almost had to bite his tongue to keep them back.

He’d never felt such a powerful need to make sure that someone was all right. It stunned him that he could still feel so protective toward her, that he obviously at some level considered he still had, oh, visiting rights to her heart, the way Dr. Jake Logan, specialist in ob-gyn, had visiting rights to Portland General Hospital.

“Hi, Jake,” she said, her eyes huge and bright and…yeah…aware. Nervous. It must show in both of them.

She wore a short-sleeved cream top in some silky, lacy fabric that clung to every curve on her body. A full skirt in a light, patterned fabric swished around her legs and emphasized the swing of her hips when she moved. Her cheeks were pink from the cold outside air between her car and the house, and her honey-toned hair glistened with drops of rain like diamonds scattered over gold.

“Hi.” His voice didn’t come out right. His body felt angular and awkward, and forbidden parts of it throbbed.

“In the oven?” Jillian asked her, talking about the casserole.

“Yes,” Stacey said, “because I made it this morning and it’s chilled from the fridge. Don’t make the temperature too hot, though.”

“Jake?” Jillian gestured at the sleek stainless steel front of the wall oven, with its row of control knobs.

“Do I know how to switch it on? No clue.” He stepped toward it just as Stacey put her casserole down on the countertop and did the same.

They stood side by side, studying the situation. He knew he’d swayed too close to her, but he couldn’t help it. It felt right, standing close, where he could smell her sweetness and glance down at her pretty profile. He noticed she didn’t move away. Her skirt brushed his legs.

Chemistry, again.

Memories.