by Anna Adams
“I’m not. I’ve been preoccupied. I can’t turn over my patients when I’m so—”
“Patrons, and I think you’re trying to distract yourself. What’s troubling you?”
Greta opened her mouth. Fear ran through her gaze and she gave up. “I can’t talk about it, but you might be right. Maybe I am using this place to avoid thinking about my own predicament.”
“Are you sick?” Sophie felt a little like Gran, jumping to conclusions, but something serious had to be wrong. “Is Grandpa?”
“Nothing like that.” Greta came around the desk and hauled Sophie to her feet. “I won’t burden you. It’s a matter I need to work out for myself. I like to fix what I’ve broken on my own.”
“You don’t have to. You have a large family and too many friends to count. If I can’t help you, talk to someone who can.” Having finished high school at sixteen, undergrad work at nineteen and her residency at twenty-four, Sophie had worked with women who’d considered her too young to understand their dilemmas. “Try Aunt Eliza or Aunt Beth.”
Alarm tightened Gran’s face. “No, and don’t you talk to them, either. I don’t need anyone’s advice, so don’t you go and sic the family on me.”
Sophie surrendered, putting both hands in the air. “I won’t, but you need to talk to someone. You aren’t yourself.”
“I’ll work my way through it. How do you think I managed before you came home, miss?”
A smile took Sophie by surprise. “You haven’t called me that in years. And you were clearly on your best behavior when I came home before now.”
Greta returned a grudging smile. “I lured you back here. I admit it.”
“But now that you’ve won, you don’t want me to work?”
“All right, you win, you win.” Greta rubbed her forehead. “We’ll discuss the patients tomorrow.”
“No.” Sophie took a stack of files from her grandmother’s desk. “You’ll go through these and you’ll assign me half the patients—patrons. We’ll never get used to that.” She settled the stack in front of Gran and then went to the cold fireplace. “I’m going to light this. We’ll be here another hour, and whoever’s on duty at the front desk can make sure the place doesn’t burn down after we leave.”
“Thank you, sweet. I appreciate it.”
“Do you have matches or a lighter?”
“In the break room.”
She found matches and a mug of the fragrant, fresh coffee that a satisfied p-a-t-r-o-n had donated to the refreshment room. Sophie added a moist pumpkin-walnut muffin and thought about tucking in with her grandmother, but she didn’t need the comfort food or the calories.
She sniffed Gran’s impromptu snack, enjoying it vicariously as they discussed the cases she’d be handling. Their talk evolved. They laughed over the new doorbell Ian had installed and the fact that the cabin was quickly becoming home.
“You’ve both begun to settle in,” Gran said.
“I haven’t had time to think, you’ve kept me so busy.”
“Not too busy? Are you feeling well? When do you have your first appointment with Dr. Sims?”
“Next week, but don’t mention it to Ian if you see him. He’s going to be out of town, and I don’t want to reschedule.”
“I’m glad he wants to go with you.”
“I’m carrying his baby, too.” After the words spilled out of her mouth, Sophie stared at her grandmother.
“You’ve just now figured out he has an equal stake?” Gran laughed out loud. “Maybe you’re not such a great physician, after all. We have to read our…patrons’ minds. Why are you reluctant to reschedule if Ian wants to accompany you?”
“He’s supposed to be gone for a couple of days, but sometimes that stretches into more time away. I just want to make sure everything’s all right.”
“You’re feeling healthy?” Gran adjusted her silver-rimmed glasses for closer inspection. “You know what we tell our patients. Science is fine, but we care how the mother feels, too.”
“I’m fine, but I’m due for a checkup. Ian can come to the next one.”
“Why’s he taking this job now? He should be with you and the baby.”
“It’s what he does, Gran.” She held back a sigh. She was going to miss him. She’d grown used to sharing the little house.
Her dread as the day drew nearer meant he was becoming part of her life. Funny, she hadn’t considered the painful aspects of a working relationship—longing for an absent husband.
“You’re going to miss him? Excellent.”
“You’re smug.” Sophie patted her grandmother’s long fingers. Greta nodded in agreement, so self-satisfied she made Sophie laugh.
“I’d think you’d be glad you don’t want your husband to leave. You weren’t so sure of him at first.”
Sophie tensed. She wasn’t Greta Calvert’s granddaughter for nothing. Despite recent events, she kept her personal life mostly off-limits. “I’m working at the marriage, but I’ve also just realized he’ll always be leaving me and the baby as long as he keeps this job. And later, when our daughter is older, I’ll have to explain why Daddy works so far away so often.” She rubbed her stomach absently. “Not to mention the fact he makes his living throwing himself in front of people who are in danger of being hurt or killed.”
Greta stacked her files neatly. “I thought the point was to keep anyone from being hurt, including himself. Has he been injured in the past?”
“I don’t think so.” Why hadn’t she asked? “I might not want to know.”
“You’re afraid and that’s natural, but Ian can put your mind at ease if you talk to him. He faces danger every time he goes to work. He’ll know how to explain his job to you so that you don’t have to be afraid.” Greta tapped tomorrow’s files on her glass-topped desk again. “You just have to know when to ask for help, dear.”
Sophie waited for her to realize she’d analyzed a problem that must be a family trait.
“What?” Greta asked, apparently mystified.
Sophie leaned across the desk and wrapped her arms around her slender grandmother. “We’re both intelligent women, but we share a blind spot.”
Greta removed herself from Sophie’s embrace as if she were offended. “Explain. That makes no sense.”
“It wouldn’t to someone who’s attained your years and success without ever asking another living soul for assistance.”
Greta cracked a wicked Calvert grin that had softened almost every face Sophie loved most.
“I’ve asked,” Gran said. “But I’ve never been cheerful about it.”
IN THE MIDDLE of knotting his tie for dinner at Seth and Greta Calvert’s house, Ian stopped to admire the blue streak of swearing that came through Sophie’s door. Trying not to laugh, he crossed the hall and knocked.
“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t zip this skirt.”
“I like it when you talk dirty,” he said without thinking. Well, flirting had to come up between them eventually. He reached for the door handle. “Mind if I come in? I’ll help you.”
“Thanks, but I’m changing.”
“Maybe you should buy new clothes.”
“Where? I could pick up some overalls at Kleman’s Bargain Basket, but Bardill’s Ridge hardly features shopping.”
“You could come with me to Knoxville when I fly out tomorrow.”
Silence met his suggestion. He didn’t push.
“That’s a good idea. I could drive you over if Gran doesn’t mind.” She opened the door, swathed in a black dress that crossed in a low vee over her breasts and then floated toward her calves. “What if we’re wrong about the reception?” She plucked at the material and then let it flutter out of her fingers.
“Your grandmother told you to dress.” Her newly voluptuous body distracted him. He wanted to touch her, to feel his baby’s movement beneath her bare skin, but he never reached her in time to feel a hint of movement at all. In a normal marriage, he’d have the right to sleep beside her and expect th
e occasional kick in the kidneys from his unborn child. He forced himself to meet her eyes. “If you showed up in a pair of those Klemen store-bought overalls, she’d lecture you.”
Sophie padded across the wooden floor and a pale Oriental rug to rummage in her closet. “Are you making fun of Gran?”
“I don’t think so. I like her even when she’s bossing us around. What are you looking for?”
“The wrap that goes with this. I’m not showing off my bulgy belly all night.”
Ian’s good humor faded. “Why?”
She locked one slender hand around the door frame and turned, hearing the hurt in his voice. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m just out of sorts, and I feel fat. Sorry.”
During the past week, she’d lost the drained look that had worried him the week before. Her face seemed thinner, more vulnerable, but maybe that was the heartfelt apology in her green eyes.
“You look more beautiful than ever to me.”
A smile slowly lifted her mouth, stretching the skin across her high cheekbones. “I’m going to assume you don’t have to say that, and you’re not under the influence of my cleavage, even though you’re staring.” Ignoring his embarrassed grimace, she dove back into the closet and then grabbed something with a shout. Turning, she spun the diaphanous wrap around her shoulders. “And thanks. I needed to hear it.”
“Since I’m in your good graces, can I hold your hand?”
She took his. “I’d be grateful. I haven’t worn high heels in about five months, and my center of gravity’s gone south.”
“You don’t look that pregnant for almost twenty-nine weeks.”
“I feel it—especially in these shoes.”
The heels were high and pointy with thin straps that clasped each ankle in a completely insufficient black-velvet hug. He cleared the lust from his throat. “I’ll go in front of you, just in case.”
“I plan to fall on you if I topple down the stairs.”
“It’s good to have a plan.” He released her hand, fearing his palm might be sweating like a school-kid’s. She rested her fingers against his shoulder. He’d like to think she wanted to touch him, not that she really needed his help. Whatever her motives, she let him take her hand again as he led her through the front door and then locked it behind them.
“You’ve got your surprised face ready?” she asked as he opened her side of the car for her.
“I’m not going to practice it for you.”
“That’s okay. We need to look sincere, not practiced.”
“You could be wrong. This may just be dinner with Seth and Greta.”
“I hope not. Every time anyone in my family asks us over, I expect them to jump out and yell ‘surprise’ at us.” She pulled the seat belt over her shoulder.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said, bemused and somewhat charmed by her concern that he put on the right show.
“I’m not like the others. My family, I mean.”
“Yeah?” He’d like to see anyone come between her and “the others.” He shut her door and crossed around the hood to get in on the driver’s side. “How are you different?”
“I didn’t live here full-time.” She wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
“Living with your mother made you different?”
“I’m the outsider, the visitor.” She looked away as if admitting her doubts was almost too difficult.
Ian switched on the car. “It’s all in your head. No one treats you like a visitor. Visitors are pampered. Your father threw you at me, and your grandmother disapproved of both of us. They didn’t care if their opinions sent you all the way back to D.C. that first day.”
She turned her head so fast her hair swung over her shoulder. “You don’t get it, but I’m glad you clumped the two of us together.”
“How else would I think of us? You’re hard to convince.”
“I’m honest.” She waggled her hands impatiently. “And I can’t explain the way I feel. Everyone who’s lived here all his life is part of the main group. I’m a single and my mom is another single, and we all get together, and I can feel the difference in the way they treat me. They’re a little gladder to see me, a little doubtful I’ll stay, a little more careful with my feelings.”
She made him nervous when her true emotions broke the surface. “Let’s get back to you and me,” he said. “When are you going to stop being surprised I see us together?”
She faced the dark in front of them. His headlights picked out branches and grass, the occasional bloom. He couldn’t see her face clearly. “I don’t know,” she said.
“This is our home. I’m your husband. You’re my wife.” He hit the switch to set the lights on bright. “You should practice repeating all that in front of a mirror. I’d like to know you believe it, too.”
“Do you practice?” She sounded as if she wanted the answer to be no, which it was.
“I don’t have to. I already believe.”
He’d never meant anything more. He glanced at her. A small smile touched her mouth before she gave her attention to the windows.
“You know, I think I’ll ask my dad about having some gravel hauled up here.”
“Gravel?”
“It keeps the road from washing away on such a steep hill.”
“I’ll talk to him tonight.”
“If he’s there,” she said. “He won’t be if it’s just dinner with Gran and Grandpa. I say tonight’s the reception because she knows you’re leaving. She’ll want it out of the way.”
“She thinks like you, then. Business first?”
Sophie’s mouth gleamed, moist in the moonlight. “I guess she does.”
He broached a subject that had bothered him more as his departure neared. “I wonder if you should ask Greta or Molly to stay with you up here.”
“Huh?”
“While I’m gone.” The car finally rocked to a halt on level ground. “With this lousy road and the lack of neighbors, I don’t like leaving you alone.” He glanced at her. “I’d say that whether you were pregnant or not.”
A battle ensued in her eyes. With a shrug she offered a smile. “The big forest scare you, city boy?”
Nodding, he turned the car onto the ridge road. “Maybe a little. I’m not expecting a horror movie, but you might lose power or the phone, or you could need something you can’t reach.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. My dad would laugh at me if I asked someone to baby-sit. Gran would think I’ve gone soft. And I really don’t need a keeper.”
“I’m trying to take care of you.” Why wouldn’t she let him?
“I’ll be fine till you come home.”
Home. Her soft voice reached across the car and wrapped him in an acceptance he hadn’t known from her since their wedding. It distracted him from her refusal to accept his advice, but it felt good.
“Something’s changed your mind about me,” he said.
“Working with Gran every day, I see how reluctant she is to let go of the reins, and I think she and Grandpa have argued about it. They disagreed about the time she spent up here when I was a kid, but she always said she had to put in extra hours to make the place succeed. There were the employees and the young girls who’d have no place to go if she failed.” Sophie paused as if reluctant to reveal the next part. “I’ve started to wonder if I’m a little more like her than I knew, and I figured you and I don’t need to rehash the same argument for nearly sixty years. Every couple has an argument. The one they come back to, but I’d like to break that habit early. I want to accept you.”
Relief slapped him with head-rocking force. Their child stood a better chance at a well-adjusted life if he and Sophie could dismantle their defenses and make their quiet truce a marriage.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Sophie asked.
“I’m glad,” was the truth and the best he could manage. His throat felt too tight, and he didn’t want to make wild promises she might later think he’d
broken, such as I’ll stop trying to overprotect you because you’re carrying my child, or, We’ll make this marriage real. We’ll learn to love each other.
“I guess that works.” Sophie twisted to face the window, a hint of testiness in her tone. “Sounds like something any guy in these mountains might say after a woman’s bared her soul.”
Ian laughed. He couldn’t stop it in time to worry that laughing might offend her. As if he’d touched her, she turned back to him, and the dim light painted her bewildered smile. Maybe he looked as dazed as he felt, because she laughed, too. And he’d never heard sweeter music.
THEIRS WAS THE ONLY CAR in Gran and Grandpa’s driveway as Ian parked.
“I guess I was wrong,” she said. “No one else is here. Apart from the fact I’m afraid I’ll let them see we already know, I’m starting to worry the surprise will shock me into labor when it comes.”
“Can that happen?”
“No. I’m grousing.”
He appeared to sag in relief. But he quickly righted himself. “The food will be good.”
“And we don’t have to cook it. Always a benefit.” She opened the door and climbed out, making sure her shawl was clear of the door.
Her grandparents’ two-storey brick house rambled along the side of the ridge, the somewhat misshapen product of more than a hundred years of Calvert building whimsy. As they reached the stairs that led to a wraparound porch, lights flashed on all over the hill.
“Motion sensors,” Ian said as Sophie jumped. “I like that.”
“Tell Grandpa you approve. He was probably hoping to keep us from tripping and breaking our necks, rather than shining a light on a burglar, but he’ll be proud you think he’s safety conscious.”
“Keeping you from breaking your neck is a safety measure.”
“I won’t always be pregnant.” It was hard to think beyond when the baby came. She couldn’t blame him for suspecting she’d be perennially pregnant, too.
“Give me your hand. These treads are narrow.”
He’d hauled her up and down stairs all night, but honestly, she liked the rough texture of his palm against hers. In fact, she gripped his fingers more tightly than she needed to. Not that she’d admit it if questioned.