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“Well, I’ve heard residency’s pretty tough. Kind of like boot camp for doctors. You like it?”
She smiled but it was fleeting. Did she like it? “Does anybody like boot camp?”
He chuckled. “Good point. There must be a sense of satisfaction when you’re doing your best, but it’s not the same as liking it, is it?”
She sighed, and was rather disturbed at how heavy and dispirited it sounded. “No, it isn’t.”
He reached out and covered her hands briefly, and she stared down at the large, square back of his hand, the tanned skin sprinkled with golden hairs and webbed gracefully with veins. Sinewed, strong, the tapered fingers sensitive; she liked his hands. “You sound awfully unhappy, Dr. Mary. Why are you doing it?”
From nowhere a pressure welled up inside her, and suddenly the urge to confide in someone, a stranger who had no expectations of her and no demands, became irresistible. She sighed again. “I had good reasons once. I think I still do. I love taking care of people, especially children. I love seeing them get better and knowing I’m one of the reasons why. It’s just that sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone about doing it the right way.”
Everybody was so supportive of her. Her grandfather had encouraged her every step of the way. Victor had offered her lots of guidance in her career choices. Even Tim had brought her coffee and rubbed her shoulders during late-night study sessions when she had been in medical school. She couldn’t let them down, not after all that they’d done for her.
It’s just that she wondered sometimes when she was going to find time for her own life. Sure, she wanted to take care of people, but when was she going to get the chance to take care of her own children? After two frenetic years of residency would come a busy career.
The times when she and Victor had talked cautiously about a possible future together, he had always evinced satisfaction with how things were going. He liked the idea of having a wife who was as career oriented as he was. He liked the respect and prestige, and the life-style. Lots of people managed two demanding professions in their relationships. Was that too much to ask?
Chance said quietly, “It’s easy to get bogged down in a career and forget you’re a human being.”
Mary turned to look at him. He looked so remote, attention trained on the road, half of his expression covered by the dark glasses. Was he talking about her, or himself? A career in journalism, traveling all over the world—how many opportunities could he have had for a normal life, wife, kids.
Good Lord—could he be married? With an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach, she sneaked a look at his left hand. No ring, and no tan line, either. But some men didn’t wear rings.
If he was in his late thirties, he could have three or four marriages by now, and any number of kids. Mary could just picture them, blond hair dripping into their sad eyes, wanting their daddy to stop flirting with her and come home to them. She gritted her teeth, revolted by the image.
Now, wait a minute. Find a nice roundabout way to ask him. “Have you—found time for a career and maybe marriage, too?”
His lips twitched. “Plenty of career, but no marriage. Not yet. I’m one of those men that got bogged down. One day I got home, walked into my apartment in New York, and everything was covered in dust. No food in the fridge. Hell, I couldn’t even keep a cat. Everybody I knew was a work contact. I’d lost touch with most of my friends years ago. That was when I decided to slow down. Nobody ought to work that hard.”
Her depression stopped riding her shoulders and blew out the window, and she gave him a sunny smile. “I thought about becoming a pediatrician, but that would be four more years of training on top of what I’m doing now. And then I’d spend all my time taking care of other people’s children.”
“And when would you find time to have any fun?” he asked dryly. “Let alone have any children of your own.”
“Well,” she said self-consciously, “yes.” So what. She could admit that she wanted children. That was a perfectly reasonable desire. A lot of people wanted children; it wasn’t as if she was hinting at anything.
And fun. What a pretty, simple, three-letter word that was, but what a concept. When was the last time she could say to herself, gee, I had fun?
Then the realization shook through her: she didn’t have any idea whether Victor wanted children or not. That was such an elemental knowledge of another person, but in the two years they had gone out together, the subject had never come up. And Mary couldn’t even make a good guess based on what she knew of his personality.
Victor and she were practically engaged. He was certainly by far the most serious relationship she’d ever had. In college she’d dated a few times, but she was mostly preoccupied with her schoolwork and her brother, who had needed her to be a surrogate mother. He didn’t even remember their parents, who had died in a car crash when she was seventeen and Tim was only five. She hadn’t had time for more than casual relationships, but Victor, who was also a doctor, and understood the stresses of her life, had pursued her with patience. She’d not only been flattered by his attention, but comforted by the companionship.
They reached the turnoff and began the long drive through the wooded twenty-acre estate to the large house. The clock on the Jeep’s dashboard read almost eight o’clock. The sun had set behind the tree line, and it was growing dark. Chance removed his sunglasses, pulled the Jeep to a stop, and regarded the sprawling manor house with raised eyebrows. Some of the windows were well lit, but the shadows outside were spiky and dark.
“You live in that?”
Mary started to chuckle. “Yes,” she said, “I know. It’s a monstrosity, isn’t it? But my great-grandfather was so proud of it.”
“There’re about three or four different plans going on. What’s it look like from the back?”
“Worse. There’re a couple of pavilions, an over-grown topiary garden, an arched bridge that doesn’t span anything, an unsuccessful artificial pond that turned to swamp around World War II and a rotting boathouse. It must have been something in the roaring twenties, but now it’s a little sad, like an abandoned carnival. Every two years or so, my grandfather swears he’s going to tear it down and build something more sensible.”
“I saw something like it in a horror movie once. All these college kids were being chased around by a maniac with a meat cleaver.” He cocked his head. “I don’t think I could sleep in that place.”
She covered her mouth and giggled at the image of such a tough, self-reliant man huddled wide awake in bed with the night sweats. “It’s not so bad when you’ve been raised in it. Then you don’t know anything different, you see. I always hoped to find a secret passage, but I never did. The attic is a wonderful place to play on a rainy day. It’s huge and filled with all kinds of junk.”
He shook his head, smiling, and opened his door. The song of crickets and the fresh smell of the woods filled the night air. Mary opened her door, as well, then realized that he was coming around to her side of the Jeep.
She looked up at him, her heart starting another idiotic tap dance. The creases on either side of his mouth were deepened by his smile, and he reached out for her with both hands. “Such a fancy manor house,” he drawled, twin devils laughing in his eyes. “It must be bringing out the genteel in me.”
Eyes riveted to his reckless face, she held out her hands, but instead of taking hold of them, he took her by the waist and lifted her lightly out of the Jeep. At some point her feet touched the ground. She wasn’t sure when; all of her attention had plummeted to the warm, firm grasp of his hands that nearly spanned her middle.
They stood very close together. Somehow her hands had found their way to grip his upper arms. The heat from his lean torso and legs radiated through her light cotton dungarees, and she caught the merest hint of his scent, clean and redolent of fresh air and very male.
Mary was fixated, electrified. At no time during her sheltered life had she experienced anything like the sensations that rioted through her. The shape of his down-bent head against the sky was a hieroglyph with archetypical meaning, and the shadowed, intent expression on his face made her stare in wonder.
Chance murmured, “Walk you to the door, Mary?”
It was so old-fashioned. Genteel. She was enchanted. “Thank you,” she breathed. “Oh, and thank you for bringing me home, too.”
“My pleasure.” After holding her a pulsing moment too long, he turned and slid one hand to the small of her back as they strolled to the porch. “I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”
“Me, too.” She stared at the steps hard, willing herself to negotiate them properly and not do something stupid like trip and fall flat on her face. That was hard to do when her knees seemed to have a mind of their own. They paused at the door.
“Are you planning to go watch the fireworks on the beach tonight, or are you calling it a day?”
“I—haven’t made up my mind yet.” She wasn’t that tired after all. The celebration didn’t start until ten. She could have some more coffee, a shower, maybe a quick nap, and she got to sleep in as late as she liked tomorrow. Just an hour or two, for Tim’s sake. “Are you going?”
“I thought I might.” His low voice was somewhere between gravel and velvet, a fascinating combination: dangerous and smooth. “Perhaps I’ll see you there, then.”
“That’d-that’d be nice.”
Nice?
He had never removed the hand from her back. Now he brought up the other one and stroked her cheek lightly with the back of his fingers. The sensation was so liquid, so gentle, she nearly melted into a puddle at his feet. Then, slowly, his head came down and his mouth covered hers.
Her eyelids drifted closed, and the world went somewhere else, as the shape and the pressure of his mouth eclipsed everything. After a long, timeless moment, gripped by some mysterious suspense, she parted her lips and touched her tongue to him, and tasted him. He tasted like fresh air and something else, something that was entirely, uniquely himself.
Then his hand shifted to cradle the back of her head, and he kissed her deeply. His tongue thrust into her mouth and stroked at hers, delving in hard, and she moaned in surprise, in delight.
This is what it all means, this explosion of flavor and intensity of feeling; she kissed him back, eagerly, shakily, falling into this new eroticism and drowning in it.
Chance sucked in a hissing breath, pulling back just long enough to stare at her with eyes that glittered hot like a raptor’s, and then he plunged down again and ravished her mouth.
She clung to his shoulders mindlessly. He had turned her inside out, and all her nerve endings were raw, exposed to the warm summer breeze. When he ran his hand up her back to press her closer against his body, it was like being jolted with a strong electric current.
“…why haven’t you come in yet—hey! Mary? Who the hell are you kissing?”
The young, imperious voice penetrated her heated mind slowly. It.apparently did the same for Chance, who lifted his head. She made the oddest, most shocking sound when his mouth left hers. It sounded so needy, so like a whimper. Through blurred eyes, she saw his nostrils flare, and his hand, at the nape of her neck, spasmed tight in an instinctively possessive grip.
Two observations, then: Tim was at the front door, now sounding offended. And she was clinging to Chance like a limpet. She dropped hold of him fast, they fell away from each other, and she turned to Tim defensively.
“Why—why—are you spying on me, Tim?” She was having trouble getting her breath back. God, she was having trouble getting any kind of presence of mind back.
She turned to look at Chance, who had whipped away, putting his back to the two of them. As she watched, he ran both hands through his hair, pivoted back toward the scene again, and regarded Tim’s lanky frame with narrowed eyes. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
She watched shock go over Tim’s bony face. Then the boy drew himself up very tall—and he was, too, much taller than she was—and he shot back snottily, “I’m her brother, you moron.”
“Tim!” Mary exclaimed in a shocked voice. He stalked over to wrap a skinny, protective arm around her, glaring at the intruder.
“And Victor’s on the phone for you,” Tim added pointedly to her.
Chance put his hands on his hips. He looked composed again, almost remote, except that his eyes were dilated black as sin, and his expression was tight. “Who the hell is Victor?”
“Her fiancé,” snapped Tim defiantly.
Mary sputtered as she ogled her brother. “What has gotten into you?” she demanded. Then she said emphatically to Chance, “He’s just a friend!”
Chance frowned sharply. “I thought you said you were her brother.”
“I am!”
“No, I mean Victor!” she exclaimed.
His eyebrows shot up. Was that an evil gleam in his eye? “Victor is your brother?”
“No, he’s her fiancé!”
“He is not!” She punched Tim in the side. “Timothy, stop it! Victor is just a friend. This little demon is my brother.”
“Your very protective brother, I see.” Chance stepped forward and held out his hand. “I’m Chance Armstrong. I gave your sister a ride home from the hospital.”
“Chance?” muttered Tim, his leery gaze sliding sideways to hers. Something undefinable seemed to pass between the man and the boy. Mary couldn’t decipher it. Whatever it was, it was decidedly a male thing, something in Chance’s unwavering, cool gaze that made Tim’s bristling slowly die down. He reached out uncertainly and received a firm, no-nonsense handshake from the older man. “I, er, how d’you do?”
Oh, now he remembers his manners, she thought distractedly. But she noticed Tim still hadn’t let go of her.
Chance looked at Mary and gave her a nod. “I’d better be going,” he said quietly. “See you later?”
“I—yes, see you later.” She held out her hand. He gave her fingers a brief, hard squeeze, and then he strolled down the steps and to his Jeep.
Tim led Mary inside. She watched over her shoulder as the Jeep’s headlights came on and Chance drove away.
“Mary? What are you looking at? You were really kissing that guy. I’ve never seen you do that. Did you forget what I said? Victor’s on the phone—unless he’s hung up by now.”
“Hunh?” Mary murmured dreamily. “Oh, of course.”
Tim was right. She’d never been kissed like that before. What kind of a kiss was that anyway? It was the kind that sucked your soul out of your body.
Hey, she wanted to call out to the man who’d just left. You forgot to give my soul back.
Instead she went in to answer the phone.
Some time later…
“Mary?” Tim’s voice. “I brought you coffee like you asked. Mary, are you awake?”
She fought her way out of a black hole, toward wakefulness and the sound of her brother’s voice. “Mmm, ’s the coffee. Oh, thank you, baby.” She lifted her head off the pillow, eyes still glued shut, and he kissed her face several times.
One thing she cherished about Tim was that they had always shared an uncommonly close bond, and he was unusual for a prickly fourteen-year-old boy, because he’d never become self-conscious about physical displays of affection. If anything, Tim hovered too much.
Look at how he’d barged out onto the porch earlier that evening, for example. The memory boiled out of the mud in her head, and she groaned.
She tried her mouth again, and this time it worked a little better. “I’ve got to shower. I’ll never wake up, Timmy, if I don’t get a shower.”
“I’ll get the shower going, so the water’s nice and hot for you,” he crooned, and her bed bounced as he leaped up to lope away.
He was so excited. Mary sat up, stretched, and yawned so hard it felt like her jaw cracked. Last year Tim had gone to the fireworks celebration with his best friend’s family, but this year the Thompsons were on vacation in Florida, and he had nobody else to go with but her. And he was too young to go by himself.
Tim bounced back into her bedroom. “It’s ready! And Victor’s going to be here in half an hour.”
She winced at his too-loud voice. “Okay, Tim. Thank you. Go on now, let me get ready—and remember, we’re only going to stay until midnight. Victor’s only had a nap, and mine wasn’t long enough—”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “A couple of hours’ll be great. Just get moving, or we’ll miss the beginning.”
He left, and Mary shuffled around her large, comfortable bedroom, feeling like an old woman. Rescue workers could go weeks on five-minute naps every three or four hours—she could surely make it through the evening after her hour nap. After several minutes in a refreshing cool shower, she was feeling more like herself again. It wouldn’t be for long, and it was going to be—fun.
As a graduation present from her grandfather, Mary’d had her bathroom and bedroom redecorated. She stepped out of the shower into a pretty collection of greens and peaches. She quickly made up her face, applying blusher, eye shadow and mascara lightly, and then she dithered over which perfume she wanted to use.
Why are you going to so much trouble? she asked herself suddenly. She stared hard at her bright-eyed reflection. Victor’s seen you at your worst many times.
You know why, Mary, and it’s not for Victor.
It was because of that kiss, because of a “maybe see you later” kind of arrangement with a man you hardly know, a man who’s way out of your league, you’ve admitted that much. A man probably just playing around—what if he kisses everybody like that? A man who is just—flirting.
And what’s more, if you’d had your wits about you earlier when you had Victor on the phone, you would have called off the evening with him and gone ahead to the fireworks with Tim. Alone.
Have you gone insane?
The lecture wasn’t working. No matter how sternly she talked to herself, the excited young woman in the mirror didn’t calm down. She selected at random a perfume bottle from her collection on a nearby shelf, and sprayed some on her neck and wrists. Then she waltzed into her bedroom, humming—what to wear? Oh, a soft, flowered linen skirt with a matching rose sleeveless top, delicate sandals and a plain gold necklace. And the hair, oh, leave it loose and fluff it out, all nice and pretty, there.
You should be wearing shorts, fool.
I don’t care, I don’t care.
What if he’s not there? She stopped in midwaltz and her shoulders drooped. Two long hours, and Victor’s going to think you dressed up for him. Oh my. Both hands crept up to her face. And what if he wants to kiss you?
Tim. Tim will be there. Victor wouldn’t want to embarrass him. That’ll be all right.
What if he does show up? She started to dance again, then stopped dead in her tracks.
