Maura smiled and shook her head. "I hate shopping, and besides, the only clothes I'll need for what I'm going to be doing is a good supply of clean smocks and a few pair of yoga pants for when I'm teaching pregnant women their exercises. Give up on me, Kath. I'm not going to stay here with you and Scott on Teoway Island, even though you're a most accommodating host and hostess."
Kathleen's eyebrows flew up in alarm. "You're not? Where are you going?"
"Don't look so horrified. It's important to me to live among the people with whom I'm working."
"Maura—" Kathleen was clearly about to protest.
"Don't Maura me." Maura kissed her sister swiftly on the cheek. "And don't expect me back any time soon. I have no idea how long this project of scoping out possible homes for my birth center will take."
"I was about to ask you to go with me to a luncheon and my garden club meeting," said Kathleen, impatient with Maura's cheerful unwillingness to become a part of normal Teoway Island society.
"Such frivolity is not my idea of an afternoon of fun," chided Maura, sweeping her midwife's bag off the chair where she'd tossed it last night. She blew Kathleen a kiss. "See you later," she said, breezing out of the room.
"Good luck," Kathleen called bemusedly after her sister. Frivolity! She couldn't wait to repeat this conversation to Scott. The activities Maura considered frivolous were considered normal everyday pastimes for Teoway Island women. Scott would consider Maura's reluctance to get involved as just another attempt by his nonconformist sister-in-law to forsake worldly glory. Which, Kathleen thought, was all very well and good. But certainly this was an unrealistic attitude in the real world to which Maura had returned.
As Maura stepped outside into the morning air, its softness freshened by a wispy salt-scented wind, she had no such thoughts on her mind. The most important thing this morning was to first figure out the situation with her car.
The key hung from the minivan's ignition. Maura checked the space above the visor in case Xan had left a note or a bill, but there was nothing. As a matter of habit, she opened her midwife's bag for a routine check of the contents.
And it wasn't her midwife's bag.
It was a medical bag, all right. Black on the outside, stethoscope on the inside. And other objects, too, but they weren't her objects. This was a doctor's bag.
Stunned, she looked at the outside of the bag. It could have passed for her own. She recalled last night, with Xan fumbling with the saddlebag in the dark and pulling out her bag. He had put her bag in his saddlebag at the Bodkins' place, she remembered it clearly. It was when she had seen the twin moons in his eyes.
This medical bag must have been in his saddlebag then; in his right-hand saddlebag. He had put hers in the left.
He had given her the wrong bag. And that meant that he must have hers! She rummaged through the bag. Yes, here was his card, Alexander Copeland, M.D. Xan would be needing the bag, and she should see that he got it.
She drove first to the Shuffletown business district and bought a length of plywood to slide beneath Annie Bodkin's sagging mattress. Then she stopped at the grocery store. When she pulled her minivan up in front of the old shack, Cindy came dancing outside to escort her inside.
"Little Maurice is just fine," Annie assured her. Annie was sitting up in bed looking pert and pleased.
Quickly Maura checked the baby, and then she checked Annie. Annie was recovering, and the baby was alert and energetic.
Maura and Cindy unloaded the bed board from the back of the minivan, Maura cursing the nice clothes she wore and wishing she'd worn her usual blue jeans instead. "The bed board is going to keep you from getting a backache," she told Annie as she remade the bed.
"Sure do thank you," Annie said gratefully. "I've got to get back on my feet soon. I need to find me a job."
Ascertaining that Annie had worked as a housecleaner until recently, Maura promised to mention to Kathleen that Annie was looking for work. Kathleen might have some friends on Teoway Island who needed help.
"Anything I can ever do for you, just let me know," Annie told her gratefully.
"You can do me a favor," she told Annie as she started a nutritious stew bubbling on a back burner of the old stove. "I want to open a birth center where I can coach pregnant women on nutrition and exercise and help them to have their babies at home if they choose, just the way you did yesterday. I need a large house or office. Do you know of one?"
Annie thought for a moment. "There's a big old farmhouse about two miles from here," she told Maura. "I think it's for rent. There's a lady at the real estate agency down the road who might be able to tell you something about it."
And so, after pulling off the borrowed apron and instructing Cindy in the completion of the stew, Maura went straight to the real estate office. There she met a plump and interested woman named Grace Murdock, who took her idea for a birth center to heart and said, "Come on, I'll show you that farmhouse right now. It sounds perfect for y'all."
Grace, a lively and talkative lady, drove her vintage compact car down the bumpy unpaved road, explaining as she clung gamely to the vibrating steering wheel. "It's a farmhouse without its own farm. The owners died, and the surrounding land has been bought by developers, who are waiting until financial conditions are more favorable before they do any developing. They've leased the land, so cotton fields run right up to the house, but that may not bother you. For most people, the place is too far out in the country."
"I like the country," Maura assured her, remembering her days in the city. Peace and quiet seemed very appealing after that.
The farmhouse that would become the McNeill Birth Center turned out to be ideally suited. The house was bordered on three sides by a porch, which put Maura in mind of nothing so much as a wide, comfortable lap. The front yard was amply shaded by six immense pecan trees inhabited by a family of friendly chattering squirrels.
"It's perfect," said Maura, captivated by the big, sunny rooms. She and Grace headed back to the office immediately, and Maura waited while the lease was prepared. She signed it on the spot.
By the time she left the real estate office, her head was full of plans. Ideas danced an Irish jig through her mind. She'd go back to Teoway and find a solitary spot on the beach where she'd make lists of the things she'd need and decide on the best way to divide up the space into exercise and examining rooms as well as living quarters.
Then her glance fell on Xan's medical bag. What she should do immediately was track him down and exchange bags with him. But remembering her breathless passion of the night before, she'd feel uncomfortable doing that. She was sure that by this time Xan knew he had her bag.
He'd seek her out because he needed his bag more than she needed hers right now. She'd explain the situation to Kathleen the best she could, and when Xan called, she'd let Kathleen, who was unfailingly adept in awkward social situations, make the exchange. This plan would save Maura the embarrassment, after last night, of seeing Xan again.
In a hurry to get to the cool beach, Maura drove toward Teoway Island as fast as the speed limit allowed, pausing briefly at the Intracoastal Waterway as the old sideways-swinging drawbridge swung closed, then continuing to the Teoway Island entrance, magnificently landscaped with showy red and yellow zinnias.
The temperamental brakes locked as she brought the minivan to a stop under the palmetto trees at the side of the O'Malleys' driveway, sending Xan's medical bag rocketing between the two front seats.
"Hey," said a sleepy voice from the nether regions of the minivan, "a fellow can hardly sleep while you're driving so dangerously. I wish you'd learn to apply brakes as carefully as you deliver babies."
Incredulously she swiveled in her seat. Her eyes met those of an indignant Xan Copeland, who was struggling to sit up on the cot in the back of her minivan and quite obviously stifling the urge to yawn. Judging from the way his hair fell so loosely over his forehead and from the half-staff look of his eyelids, he was just waking up from a midday nap.
Chapter 5
"I won't ask you the obvious question," she said when she was able to overcome her amazement at finding him there.
"Go ahead," he urged. Now he lurched toward the front of the minivan where he squeezed between the front seats and settled himself opposite her. His eyes twinkled mischievously.
"Well, then," she went on, "suppose you tell me why you're sleeping in my car."
"Because after I brought you home last night, I was called out to deliver a baby, and I didn't get much sleep. And because I found out I had a bag that didn't belong to me, which meant that you had mine."
"And then?"
"I spotted your vehicle in the real estate agency parking lot after I left my office at noon, and I thought I'd wait for you to return so we could exchange bags. I remembered you had a cot in here, so I couldn't resist the chance to nod off for a few minutes. How was I to know that you'd abduct me?"
"Abduct you?" sputtered Maura.
"It's a good thing it's my regular afternoon off or my office staff would be incensed. They don't like it when I disappear without a trace. By the way, what are you doing this afternoon?"
"I'm going to the beach. Here, take your bag. I don't suppose you have mine handy?"
"Indeed I do. It's at the foot of the cot." He paused. "Say, I'm going to the beach, too. I'll wait for you on the boardwalk. Can you be there in fifteen minutes?"
She fixed him with an exasperated look. "Xan, I have serious thinking to do. I don't want to share my time with anyone, I just want to be alone."
"And after I went out of my way to help you yesterday, too. How's the car running?"
"Beautifully, thank you. I appreciate everything you did. How much was the garage bill? I'll write you a check."
"There's no bill. It was only a broken fan belt. If you want to even things up, all you have to do is meet me at the beach. I'll try not to interfere with your mental processes. You can be as alone as you like. Just let me sit and look at you." He was flirting, heaven help her.
"Xan, I don't see how I could possibly think things through if you're there," she protested.
"I'm only proposing adding myself to you for an hour or two, nothing heavy. What do you have to think about, anyway?"
"Setting up my practice in midwifery," she said in her own direct way, figuring that he wouldn't press her after that.
"Good," he said. "That's exactly what I want to talk to you about."
This surprised her. "Honestly?"
"Yes. Let's go to the beach together. It'd be a chance for us to talk." He had dropped the flirtation and now seemed so sincere that she considered it. "There are some things that you should understand before you go ahead with these plans of yours," he insisted.
"It's too late for you to change my mind. I'm going to establish a practice in midwifery in Shuffletown no matter what. I have financing and I've signed a lease."
His heart plummeted. Still, maybe it wasn't really too late. "Then you'd better hear what I have to say about the Shuffletown community and why I know I'm right when I tell you that women are better off with hospital births."
If he had thrown down a gauntlet, it couldn't have been more of a challenge. And if he wanted to tell her why he was in favor of hospital births, she'd have a chance to refute his beliefs with her own impassioned defense of home births. "All right," she said. "I'll meet you on the boardwalk in fifteen minutes."
Xan's smile showed his relief, but there was an underlying gravity, too. "It's a deal."
"Can I drive you home?"
He shook his head. "I live on the ocean side of the island. It's only about a five-minute jog. Anyway, you'd better save your vehicle for more vital transportation problems."
"Let's hope it's not going to break down anymore. And here, you might as well take this," she said, handing his bag over.
He got out of the minivan. "I'm glad to get it back," he told her, looking up at her through the window. "I'm sure I'd look ridiculous in that smock you wear." His eyes sought and held hers as they both grinned.
He'd disarmed her totally. She couldn't stay annoyed with him, she thought helplessly to herself as she let herself into the house. It would be better if she could. For she knew, even if he didn't, that there was no future for the two of them, at least not in a traditional, romantic man-woman relationship. She wasn't going to let personal feelings get in the way of her mission here. She'd already proven unworthy of her vocation and her order. But she wasn't going to prove unworthy of the poor people who needed her, ever again. Not even for Xan Copeland.
* * *
After a few moments' thoughtful hesitation in front of her closet, Maura pulled out the black swimsuit Kathleen had bought for her. Maura had finally consented to owning the black one-piece tube because she had thought it was sedate.
However, combined with her shape and her tawny coloring, it made her look slinky and voluptuous, with a decidedly seductive effect. She didn't stop to put on a cover-up and was totally unaware of her allure as she hurried across the street and along the wooden walk across the dunes, looking for Xan.
Xan was waiting for her, leaning against the rough railing beside the steps to the beach and gazing out over the wide expanse of sand. The ocean was calm today, but the flat sea bottom extended far out, creating waves that rolled inward upon themselves at a steady pace, one after the other.
Maura caught her breath when she saw Xan. He exuded maleness by simply standing there, his hair blowing in the wind. He wore a narrow blue band of a swimsuit, and its taut outlines left little to the imagination. The clothes he usually wore had done nothing to show off his long muscles, his golden tan, or his sinewy legs.
Maura had a flashing unbidden vision of her own long legs smoothly intertwined with his beneath cool white sheets. Touching in that way would be perfectly natural... and then she brought herself up short. What she was thinking of was an invasion of her private space, and even, most likely, would lead to an eventual invasion of her body. She couldn't even imagine such a process, at least not in connection with herself.
Xan had known that Maura would look gorgeous in a swimsuit, but still he was surprised as he watched her approach. Her hair flickered like flames in the afternoon sunlight. He hadn't realized that her waist was so tiny that he could probably span it with his two hands, and it curved outward so beautifully into her hips that she seemed sculpted, created by an artist with an inspired eye for proportion.
"We could walk down the beach for a while," he said in greeting. His eyes gleamed in welcome.
"All right," she said, following him down the stairs to the sand.
Summer was a busy time on Teoway, the season when families and their children arrived to spend time and plenty of money on a vacation to rival any for food and facilities and just plain fun. There were bicycle trails through the woods and the ruins of an old mansion to explore, but the wide sandy beach was by far the most popular recreation area. However, the crush of people thinned out considerably as Maura and Xan strolled toward the deserted southernmost end of the ten-mile-long island.
"Tell me about yourself," Xan said suddenly when they had left everyone else behind.
This startled her. She hadn't expected to be spotlighted. "What do you want to know?" she hedged.
"Where you were born. Your background. All of it." He gazed down at her, and she felt a tug of remembrance as his eyes met hers. They looked misty, and she knew he was thinking about last night.
"I was born in Chicago," she said. She swiveled her head and stared resolutely forward.
"Irish?"
"Kathleen and I grew up Irish-American with all that our Irishness implied," she said.
"And what was that?" he asked curiously. His own background was old-family Charleston, and he couldn't imagine growing up any other way.
"Big parties with green beer flowing freely on St. Patrick's Day, parochial schools, and my first communion in St. Bridget's Roman Catholic Church, with me wearing the white communion
dress when it was new, and Kathleen complaining about the yellowed hand-me-down when she had to wear it two years later for her own first communion."
"Go on," he encouraged.
"We always ate steaming hot oatmeal on cold Chicago winter mornings, because McNeills always eat oatmeal in the winter. We'd go as a family to confession every Saturday night, and then Dad would take us all to Feeney's ice cream parlor for peppermint ice cream afterward. Oh, there are lots of memories. I like thinking about those days, even though it seems very long ago."
"Your mother, what was she like?" He couldn't help asking questions. In his fascination with her, he had to know everything, absolutely everything about her.
"Mom was Fiona Grady, and she married Chicago's most confirmed bachelor John McNeill against everyone's advice when she was eighteen. She tamed him, they say. I was born a year later, and Kathleen two years after that. We would have undoubtedly been a big family if Mom hadn't come down with what was always referred to in whispers as 'female trouble' and had an operation."
Maura remembered that time. She'd been four years old and frightened at her mother's white, pinched face when she came home from the hospital.
But Fiona had recovered, and she had gone on to preside over a family that was famous throughout their neighborhood for its individualism. Maura was the quiet one and passionate about her faith. Kathleen was a butterfly, trailing scads of admirers from the time she was in kindergarten. Their father was a man's man who never let anyone push him around.
And Fiona was a born do-gooder. Instead of belonging to the altar society and learning how to starch and iron the altar cloths to the priest's satisfaction, Fiona surprised everyone by joining the anti-pollution movement before it was fashionable to do so. Her leadership abilities soon surfaced, and she was much in demand as a speaker at rallies all across the U.S. The cause took up every spare moment and then some, but Maura and Kathleen grew used to her frequent absences, and Maura learned at a surprisingly early age to cook the family oatmeal without lumps, a technique Fiona had still not managed to perfect.
Cherished Beginnings Page 6