“That’s because you’re you. But Chloe isn’t you, and she’s not going to change.”
Paige thought about that, then sent Nonny a small smile and a shrug.
“Still you hope?” Nonny said.
Paige’s smile turned self-mocking. “Maybe one year, by some quirk of fate, it’ll just hit them.” She studied the snow. “But you’re right. We shouldn’t go out driving in this. How about I build a fire and we’ll play Scrabble?” That demanded concentration. It would take her mind off the phone.
Nonny scowled. “You always win.”
“I’ll let you make a blank out of one letter per turn.”
Nonny liked that idea. So did Sami, who had great fun poking at the letter tiles. Paige still won the game, but by that time Nonny was thinking about lunch and after lunch Sami went in for a nap and Nonny dozed off on the living room sofa.
Planting herself before the fire and out of sight of the phone, Paige picked up her knitting. She was finishing the afghan Mara had started for Sami. It seemed the perfect thing for Sami to bond with and then take with her to her next life. A gift from Mara. Via Paige.
Kitty wandered into the room. She had spent the morning as she always did, roaming the house, perching on one windowsill or another, clicking her teeth at anything that looked as if it might be a bird. Now she sat at Paige’s feet and stared at the yarn as it came out of the skein. Every few minutes she pounced, took the yarn in her mouth, and shook it. When Paige gave a tug she released her hold, sat back, and stared at the new yarn coming out.
Paige set aside the knitting and scooped her up. She was getting bigger. Her fur was longer now and softer. Paige enjoyed the feel of her at the foot of her bed each night. There was something nice about reaching down to touch her and about the purr that started up when she did it.
“You going to get rid of her, too?” Nonny asked. Her eyes were open, though other than that she hadn’t moved.
Paige felt the blunt edge of the question, particularly the “too.” “It’s not a question of ‘getting rid’ of her. It’s a question of finding her a proper home.”
“Are you still looking?”
“Theoretically. But I keep forgetting to ask. She demands so little.”
“Are you willing to keep her?”
Paige rubbed kitty’s neck. Kitty closed her eyes and raised her chin for more, which Paige promptly gave. “I may do that by default. She’s here. It may be more of an effort to find her a home than to keep her.” Hearing her own words, she looked at Nonny. “I know what you’re thinking, but the same is not true about Sami. You don’t keep children by default. Sami is a human being. She’s a responsibility that gets bigger the bigger she gets.”
Nonny didn’t say anything. Nor did she look away.
“I’m a full-time pediatrician,” Paige protested.
“Not full-time, now that you’ve hired a fourth.”
“Then three-quarters time. Plus Jill. Plus helping organize the Mount Court kids to help around Tucker,” which she felt was a wonderfully worthy cause. “Plus being on call once the mountain opens for skiing. Plus reading. Plus knitting. My life is still demanding, Nonny. Children aren’t in my game plan. Not for a while, at least.” When Nonny simply lay there staring at her, she set kitty down. “I know what you’re thinking, but if the biological clock runs out, it runs out. I won’t rush into something that I’m not ready to do.”
Nonny neither moved nor spoke.
Paige sighed. “Look, I know I’m not giving you the answers you want, and I’m sorry to be imposing on you with Sami this way—”
“Don’t use that word!” Nonny hollered, sitting up with a speed Paige wouldn’t have expected from a woman her age.
“But it is an imposition.”
“Damn it, Paige, that’s the trouble with you! You’re so smart when it comes to most things, but when it comes to parenthood you’re way off the mark.” She had pushed her small self from the sofa and begun to pace. “Not that it’s your fault. Chloe and Paul made you feel like an unwanted limb. Growing up, you were good as gold for me, because you didn’t want to be a burden, and you’re still apologizing every time you ask me to do something. Still apologizing.”
She stopped in front of Paige with her hands on her hips. “For God’s sake, Paige, people who love people want to do things for them. Why haven’t you learned that? Have I ever complained? Have I ever said I’d rather be playing bridge? My coming to baby-sit for Sami isn’t a task. It’s a privilege. It’s a joy. Yes, it’s work, but a labor of love. No obligation. No onerous task. No grotesque plague on my time. I want to baby-sit. And if you were truthful with yourself, you’d admit that you want to keep Sami. You adore her. She adores you. You have ample resources to raise her in comfort. But you’re frightened of making the commitment, because you think of it as something that will smother. You mother everyone else’s children, but that doesn’t count, because you can leave them all behind at the end of the day. Well, let me tell you,” she scolded as Nonny rarely did, “you leave behind the pleasure, too. No pain, no gain, as they say. You come home to an empty house, which, by the way, will seem twice as empty now that you’re used to having Sami around.”
She started to turn away but turned right back. “And I’ll tell you something else. That empty house will seem three times as empty when you’re fifty, and four times as empty when you’re sixty, and by then it will be too late. I know.” Turning on her heel, she left the room.
Paige waited for her to come back. After a bit, she went into the kitchen and made a pot of fresh mango tea, thinking that the smell of it steeping might lure Nonny down. When it didn’t, she poured herself a cup.
The snow continued to fall. Paige watched it, sipping her tea, thinking that everything Nonny said made sense but that old habits died hard. It was one thing to tell herself not to feel that she was imposing, quite another not to feel it. She had always tried to be self-sufficient, precisely to avoid that dilemma.
As for Sami, Paige didn’t know. She just didn’t know. She supposed she had the time to be a mother. She supposed she had the intelligence and the resources to be one. And the love. Yes, she had that. She did love Sami. But it was such a responsibility. More than doctoring or foster parenting. Much more. She had always assumed she wasn’t cut out for motherhood, which was one of the reasons why she had become a doctor.
Or had she become a doctor to give her an out when the weight of the responsibility loomed?
The phone hadn’t rung. It would be nighttime in Siena. If it didn’t ring very soon, it wouldn’t ring at all.
She finished her tea, rinsed the cup, and set it on the drainer. Then she looked at the snow again and felt a sudden, dire need to be in it. After putting on her insulated running gear, a Gortex parka, a wool hat, and mittens, she left a note on the kitchen table for Nonny and set off.
The streets had been plowed but were deserted. She had them to herself, running at the side or the middle, as went her whim. It wasn’t until she had reached the center of Tucker, rounded the hospital block, and started back down Main Street that she encountered a moving vehicle. It was Norman Fitch.
“Nasty day to be out,” he called out his window.
“Actually,” she breathed, “it feels great.”
“Snow’s not stopping for a while. We’re expecting up to a foot. You’d best be heading home. Be dark before long.”
But Paige wasn’t heading home yet. She had hit her stride and was feeling too good to stop. If her parents chose to call so late, it would be their loss.
She made a tour of the streets behind the center, running up one and down another. The snow was mounting underfoot and her sneakers were getting wet, yet still she ran on. She headed north out of town, where the road was broad and beautiful, rolling through stands of trees whose arms held the snow in lieu of leaves.
In time she began to feel a chill, but her feet beat a rhythmic tattoo on the snow, and her will wasn’t yielding to either cold, wetness, or encroaching dusk.
By the time she turned in under Mount Court’s wrought-iron arch, she was starting to tremble. That was when she felt a qualm, but it was too late to turn back. She couldn’t make it home. She didn’t want to.
Since the drive had been first cleared, another several inches had mounted up. She plodded through them, tired now and laboring, but determined. She passed the academic buildings, the administration building, the library, and the first of the dorms. She turned onto the path between the second and third and, in the distance, saw the completed frame of the new alumni house, but she ran on to the Head’s house and struggled up the low steps. Stopping at last, panting, she rang the bell.
Noah answered the door wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants, with his round, wire-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of his nose and a pencil between his teeth. He took one look at her, tossed the pencil aside, and hauled her in by the arm. “Brilliant,” he declared, as he swung the door shut. “Absolutely brilliant.” He pulled off her hat and mittens and set to picking at the zipper of her parka through the snow that had crusted there. “What in the world possessed you to run all the way out here?”
“Don’t know,” she said through chattering teeth. She was shifting from one foot to the other, too cold to stand still but unable to undress, which was fine, since Noah was doing it for her. “It wasn’t conscious. I just ran. My feet took me here.”
He had freed the tab of the zipper and was tugging it down. She turned from one side to the other to free her arms from the parka. Then she held his shoulder when he knelt to pull off her sneakers. “This’ll all melt in your hall,” she warned.
“Fine. I need an excuse to resand the wood. Do you know how much snow’s out there?”
“They kept plowing. It wasn’t so much.”
“It’s twenty-two degrees out. And you’re wearing these skimpy running pants.” After tossing aside the second sneaker, he took her hand and led her up the stairs and through the bedroom she assumed was his to the bathroom, where he turned on the shower. While he waited for it to heat, he pulled off her turtleneck jersey, then her running pants. He muttered a pithy oath when he saw her legs, which were bright red from the cold. When steam had begun to fog the door of the shower, he opened it and shoved her inside, underwear and all.
The warmth was heavenly. Paige’s muscles ached. Her skin stung, then tingled. She held her face to the spray, turned, and let it pour over her head. Parts of her body that had been numb began slowly to revive. With the increased sensation, she pulled off her underwear, dropped it in a corner, and returned to the full force of the spray.
She was thinking that she might just stay in Noah’s shower forever when the door opened and he joined her. His glasses were gone, and his clothes, but it seemed the best thing to happen to her that day. Without a second thought, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
If there was a birthday gift to be had, this was it. She had been wanting him forever, it seemed, and the waiting only enhanced the pleasure she felt. She was tingling now from the inside, all the more so when he circled her hips and lifted her so that their mouths could meet.
Their kiss was as wet as the shower. Paige lost herself in it and in the kisses that followed, each one sweeter, deeper, more consuming—and frustrating. For every kiss, every touch, she needed more. She strained closer, moving her hands through his hair and over his skin, craving the kind of possession for which her dreams had left her wanting.
Taking her weight on his thighs, he braced her against the shower wall, touched her breasts and swallowed her cries, and still it wasn’t enough. She was feeling desperate, feeling that if she didn’t have more, she might die. That was when she felt his entry.
The scraping glide, the fullness, the sense of every loose end of her life coming together, touched off a million tiny explosions inside her, and that was before he began to move. When he did, she could only catch her breath and hang on. Her body shook in a trail of orgasmic shocks, one dovetailing the next, never quite ending but going on and on and on.
She was gasping against his ear, trembling in the aftermath, when she realized that he was rock still and hard all over. She drew back, wiped the water from his face, and, with a hand on his cheek, met his eyes. They were as hard as his body, but hot and hungry.
“I can’t finish,” he ground out, “until I put something on.”
“No need,” she whispered. She slid off him and took him between her hands, and while she gave everything she could to his mouth, she stroked him below. It didn’t take long. He was as primed as she had been—from dreams? she wondered, but didn’t ask. That would have involved confessions and deeper discussions than those she was prepared to hold. Rather, when he came with a long, guttural cry, she held him until he could breathe again, then bathed him, then let him towel her off and lead her to his bed.
She was thinking how beautiful his body was, how well proportioned and manly, and that she wanted him again. But when he should have slid under the covers and taken her in his arms, he simply perched on the sheets, punched out a phone number, and looked at her while he waited for the other end to ring.
“Hey, Nonny, it’s Noah. Paige is here.” He listened. “She’s fine. I’m just warming her up.” He listened more, then asked, “Any problem if she spends the night?” He listened a final time. “Sounds good. We’ll see you then.”
Paige didn’t move.
Looking at her all the while, he hung up the phone and said, “It’s time we stop fooling ourselves. Something’s going on between us, and I don’t know as it’s pure lust.” His mouth curved. “But I’m willing to explore the pure lust theory for a while.”
He reached for her as he slid under the covers, and if she had objected to anything he had said or done, she would have promptly forgotten. The coming together of their bodies was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was so strikingly new and special, so provocative, so incendiary, that to deny it would have been to deny her very existence.
The exploration was slower this time. It was a hand here, glancing over skin and through hair. It was a tongue there, tracing and taunting, dancing away when the arch of a body sought more. It was the visual study of a tactile response and the seductive effect of a word, a hum, a sigh, and the joint rise of breathing and need until only completion would do.
This time they climaxed together, then lay for a long time, reluctant to move. A sweet lethargy owned Paige’s body. She felt warm and safe and incredibly at peace.
Noah stretched against her. He kissed her forehead and said in a crusty male voice, “When I applied for this job, the trustees asked me about my morals. They were concerned because I was single. Seeing how it’s isolated up here. And the sweet young locals are always hungry for fresh meat. Wonder what the board would say if they could see me now.”
Paige grinned against his chest. “I’m not a sweet young local. I’m a doctor. And this is the very first time I’ve come here.”
“Why did you?”
She raised her eyes. “Nonny didn’t tell you that?”
“Tell me what?”
She settled in again, running her thumb over the hair that trailed down the center of his chest. It was darker than that on his head, the color of warm maple against his skin. “It’s my birthday. I figured I deserved a treat.”
“Your birthday. No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
“Did Nonny bake a cake?”
“No. Mara was always the one who did that. Last year she made a monstrosity of a cake, brought it into the office, and set it up in the waiting room where everyone who walked in could take a piece.” She fell quiet, thinking of Mara, feeling lonely to be growing older without her.
Noah’s arms tightened. The comfort was welcome, but it didn’t divert Paige’s thoughts. After a time she said, “She had a way of making everyone happy but herself. She was like the clown who was crying inside. So sad. Something I don’t ever want to be. So when I started feeling sorry for myself this afternoon—bec
ause the snow had spoiled my plans, and Nonny was cross with me, and my parents hadn’t called—I went out for a run. And ended up here.”
He ran his hands through her hair. It was a lulling gesture. When she hummed her pleasure, he kept at it. Within minutes she was asleep.
* * *
Noah dozed, but not for long. He had no desire to sleep away as intense a pleasure as Paige Pfeiffer. For a time he just looked at her, studying her features as she slept, savoring the curl of her body against his, the swell of her breast, the sweep of her thigh. In time he kissed her, because to be near her this way and not do it was painful.
She came slowly awake, saw him, and smiled.
“You’re tired,” he whispered.
“Not that tired,” she whispered back.
“Hungry?”
“Starved.”
“Can I make you a birthday dinner?”
Paige found the thought of that eminently pleasing. “Sure. If you want.”
“I want,” he said, but he made no move to leave the bed. Instead he came over her and kissed her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Then he kissed the tip of her chin, then under it, then her throat, then the pulsing spot at her neck. The pulsing picked up as he worked his way down her body, over her breasts, her ribs, her belly, until she was a writhing mass of nerve ends waiting to connect, and when they did, when his tongue brought her to a release as no man ever had, she was too scattered to realize it.
But later, after he had indeed left the bed and prepared her the most simple, most kind, most delicious birthday dinner she could have wanted, she knew that something special had happened. She had tasted something, a nameless something that threatened to upset the order of her life as neither Mara’s death, nor Sami’s arrival, nor Nonny’s moving in had yet.
One part of her wanted to run as fast and far as she could, but she didn’t move. She stayed in Noah’s bed, made love with him over and over through the night, and when he drove her home the next morning through the winter wonderland that Tucker had become, she let him kiss her a final time.
“This isn’t over,” he warned as though reading her mind.
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