Cherished Beginnings

by Pamela Browning

  "Yes," she said. She didn't recall his voice having so much resonance. It was deeper than she remembered. She took a deep breath. "Thank you for sending Golden to me. She's perfect."

  "I hoped she would be. It seemed to me that you might be right for each other."

  "I, um, appreciate your thoughtfulness." Suddenly she felt tongue-tied at the thought of Xan on the other end of the line.

  "I wanted to do something for you." His voice was tight, as though he were suppressing emotion. Maura didn't know what to say, but suddenly there was a lump in her throat.

  "Look, Maura, maybe we could have dinner together tonight," he said, surprising her.

  Her thoughts in a turmoil, she looked around at the jumble of boxes. Her mind felt in as much a jumble as her surroundings at the very thought of seeing Xan again. Anyway, she didn't have time to see him. Supplies had to be unpacked and floors had to be swept if she were ever going to get this clinic in order.

  "Oh, Xan, I appreciate your doing something so nice for me. But I've got so much to do. I'm getting my clinic ready to open."

  "I know," he said. "I've seen your signs. Can't you get away for a while?"

  "Well, I really must finish up here. I'm moving my things in on Saturday. And I'd have to go back to Kathleen's and shower first. I don't know, Xan. It's not a good time."

  "How about if I come over and help you with what you have to do? Then you'll finish early and we can play it by ear after that. If you don't feel like going out, I can toss a meal together at my place. Come on, Maura. How can you pass up an offer like that?"

  She had to laugh at his coaxing. "I suppose I can't." She hesitated. She was tired of all the backbreaking work she'd been doing. She would enjoy being spirited away and forgetting everything for a while.

  Her heart lifted at the thought of seeing Xan again. Impulsively pushing aside all the reasons she shouldn't, she said, "If you really mean it, I'll be looking for you. Are you any good at hanging curtains?"

  "We'll find out. I'll see you around five-thirty." He sounded jubilant, and Maura found herself smiling into the phone. When she hung up, she was still smiling. She couldn't believe how much she was looking forward to seeing him.

  She ironed more curtains and draperies, so by the time Xan arrived, she had several pairs ready to hang. She was standing at the ironing board finishing up the last panel when she saw his Lexus pull up in front.

  Xan bounded up the porch steps and rapped on the door. She wasn't prepared. She'd thought she'd tie up her hair and splash cool water on her hot cheeks before he arrived. She lifted both hands to her face and pushed back damp tendrils that kept falling forward as she ironed.

  "Hi," she said through the screen door. "Come in."

  He opened the door and looked around in consternation. "You're right—you do need help," he said.

  She smiled at him, pure radiance. He had forgotten that smile of hers, so brilliant and genuine. He hadn't, however, forgotten the shape of her or her unself-conscious sexuality, which had taken over his mind in the past few weeks so that he could hardly think about anything else. Her face was slightly flushed and shiny with perspiration from the heat of the iron. He thought she was beautiful.

  "I'd like to hang these curtains before I leave," she told him. "They belong upstairs."

  "No problem," he said. He threaded his way through the clutter of boxes and looked around. "Is this your waiting room?"

  "Yes," she said. She hadn't expected him to be curious about her clinic. She'd thought he'd skirt around the subject. Although, with everything still such a mess, it was a difficult subject to ignore.

  He walked across the hall to the former living room. It was a big, wide room with a polished hardwood floor. Bookshelves held various pamphlets that Maura would hand out to her patients, but there was no furniture because she would teach exercise and yoga classes there. When necessary for group meetings, she would set up folding chairs for her patients.

  "What's this room?" he wanted to know.

  "Education and exercise room," she told him, unplugging the iron.

  He turned around, lifting his eyebrows. "Exercise? What kind of exercise?"

  She hoped he wasn't going to get critical of her methods. She didn't want the evening to deteriorate into arguments about whose ideas about childbirth were right. She wouldn't have agreed to see him if she'd thought that was what was going to happen. "Exercise to help my patients deliver healthy babies," she said. "Will you carry the stepladder upstairs for me? I can manage the curtains."

  He grinned at her. "Okay. Subject closed for the time being. Where's the ladder?"

  She indicated the examining room and preceded him upstairs, feeling overly conscious of his eyes upon her legs. There were three bedrooms upstairs. One would be her sitting room, another her office, and the biggest her bedroom.

  They hung the office curtains first. They were simple panels with fringe trim on the edges and tiebacks. The sitting-room curtains were lightweight and airy and went up fast.

  Xan held the ladder steady as she worked to get the bedroom curtains straight in a room made stuffy by unopened windows and no air conditioning. "Just one thing I'm worried about," she said, trying to fit the curtain rod into its bracket. "The morning sun is going to shine right in these windows. I'm afraid it'll be hot, and on the occasional mornings when I want to sleep late, it'll wake me up."

  "Get light-blocking window shades," Xan suggested.

  "Mmm," she said, finally locking the rod in place. "Good idea." She turned and smiled at Xan as she descended, and then a shadow of movement rippled in the corner of the room. Her eyes widened. "A mouse!" she yelped, and she was so startled that she jumped. She wasn't afraid of mice. It was just that she hadn't expected to see something alive and furry in just that place at that time.

  Her sudden movement was enough to send her slightly off balance. For a precarious second she wobbled, and Xan's free arm went up to grasp her around the waist and steady her. Then her feet were both on the ground and Xan's arm was still on her waist, and she felt herself being drawn inexorably closer. It had been hot in the room before, but now it seemed hotter still. She felt heat radiating from Xan's body and flowing through her body, and she went weak from the force of it.

  "I'll buy you a mousetrap," he said, staring down at her.

  "A cat," she replied, caught in the trap of his eyes. "I'd rather have a cat. For company."

  "I like cats," he said, his voice trembling, and she knew that he wasn't talking about cats at all.

  "Xan," she said, pushing him away, but it was too late for that. His face was dangerously close to hers, so close that she could see straight into the deep dark depths of his eyes. Her heart pounded, and her own pulse beat in her ears. It blotted out every other sound—the chattering of squirrels in the trees, the hum of a faraway tractor in a field.

  And then she lost track of her arms and legs and toes and fingers, all of which seemed unimportant because she could feel only the parts of her body that were relevant to this particular experience. Her lips, now parted and unable to remove themselves from his space; her skin, tingling where his arm circled her waist; and a deep throbbing center of which she had never been aware before.

  His lips touched hers tentatively, and his breath was warm upon her skin. She stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped wanting him to stop. Now she wanted this as much as he did, and her heart filled as he clasped her body close to his and proceeded to kiss her with a tenderness that made her feel cherished and wanted and loved.

  Her arms found their way around him, pressing him closer so that she could feel the lean hardness of him. Their bodies fit with a precision she could never have imagined even if she'd tried. Compared with their passionate coming together on previous occasions, this kiss was thoughtful and caring and full of meaning. It was pleasant and not at all frightening in the way Xan's other lovemaking had been. Yet it made her aware of an empty place inside her that she'd only vaguely been aware of before no
w. So this is what it's all about, she thought, the words singing themselves through her head.

  It was hot in the room, but the heat only made their contact more intense. When finally he released her mouth, she moaned low in her throat, not even knowing that she did. He didn't let her go, only held her in his arms for a very long time so that she could hear the beating of his heart until gradually their breathing returned to normal and they reluctantly pulled apart.

  Maura stared at him, her heart in her eyes, and he thought to himself that never before with any other woman had kissing seemed so perfect and so right. He raised his hand almost reverently and drew one finger across those marvelous, well-shaped lips, now slightly parted in a kind of startled wonder. "You look as though you've never been kissed before," he said softly, overwhelmed by the wholly emotional response he had stirred in her.

  She lowered her eyelids in confusion. Quickly gathering herself together, she wondered if the kisses had been as important to him as they'd been to her. What had he felt? What had he been thinking? Did he know what she'd been thinking? No, he couldn't have.

  She knew herself well enough to realize that something important had happened when he kissed her and that it was crucial to her sense of self. In those moments, she'd accepted herself as a desirable female—nothing earthshaking to the average woman, perhaps, but for someone of her background it was an admission of amazing possibilities. Before Xan, she hadn't thought of herself as anyone a man would want or as an embodiment of feminine charms.

  She had realized, at Kathleen's urging and with a lot of difficulty, that she'd have to look at men in a new way now. But never had anyone told her that she'd eventually regard herself in a new way. So she was unprepared for this stunning moment of self-revelation.

  "You're one of the most fascinating women I have ever met," Xan said, his voice a low murmur. "You are so natural and unassuming that I can almost forget that we hold opposite views on a very important matter."

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "It means we'd better not get into any conversations about the manner in which women should give birth," he said, with a humorous quirk to his mouth. "But somehow I think we'll be able to find other things to discuss, don't you?"

  "Oh, yes," she said glibly, amazed at her newfound ability to fence and hedge with a man clearly accustomed to lovemaking. "Like dinner, for instance." Her sparkling eyes returned his humor with a new kind of assurance, and she knew with a blithe soaring of her self-confidence that she had replied in exactly the right way for this situation and this man.

  She turned and walked ahead of him out of the room and down the stairs, aware of his eyes upon her and happily feeling not at all self-conscious about this or anything else.

  Chapter 7

  It was later that night while she was dressing to go to Xan's villa for dinner that Maura found herself telling a stupefied Kathleen about her growing relationship with Xan Copeland.

  Kathleen, once the most popular girl at St. Bridget's High School, would seem to be the one person Maura could rely upon for advice and encouragement about relationships. Kathleen had always been utterly social, a smiler and a charmer who had pleased the nuns of St. Bridget's most of all by becoming an excellent student. No one was surprised when after high school she won a scholarship to a posh women's college in the East, least of all Kathleen. After a four-year whirl of dating all the most eligible men around, she'd wound up with Scott, a real catch. So why wasn't she thrilled about Maura and Xan?

  "You don't understand men," she told Maura flatly. "And tonight, with Xan Copeland, you're not going to the senior prom. This is a little more serious than that."

  Maura's hairbrush stopped in midstroke and she met Kathleen's eyes in the mirror. "I didn't go to the senior prom," she reminded her sister, purposely taking the remark literally.

  "Oh, I remember it well," said Kathleen with a tinge of irony. "You didn't want to go with either of the boys who asked you, so you stayed home and watched a rerun of The Sound of Music on television. That seemed sort of silly to me at the time."

  Maura set the brush on the marble vanity with a clatter and turned to face Kathleen. Then, shrugging her shoulders and smiling slightly, she went to sit down on the bed next to her. "Kath, it was anything but silly. That night when I watched the mother superior in the movie singing that song about climbing every mountain and finding a dream that will last the rest of your life, I knew I had to find my own dream."

  "And so you did," said Kathleen, moved by the fleeting sadness of Maura's expression.

  Maura stood up. "But the dream didn't last," she said. She walked to the closet, choosing without much thought a front-zippered dress of topaz-colored raw silk. Remembering that long-ago night, she suddenly felt discouraged. The night of that prom had been a turning point in her life, but, as often is the case, things had not turned out according to plan.

  The young Maura's thoughts had been permeated by her mother's idealism, and by the time she was in her senior year in high school she'd been searching for direction. The night of the prom, while her classmates had been dancing their youth away, she'd watched the movie and vowed, "I will tackle the world." At eighteen, anything and everything had seemed possible.

  The good sisters of the nursing order to which Maura was referred by the principal of St. Bridget's were delighted to welcome this starry-eyed idealist into their convent. She had donned the pristine white habit of the order and solemnly promised to give up possession of worldly goods, to obey her superiors, and to remain unmarried. She'd proudly worn a band of white gold on the third finger of her left hand, signifying her status as a bride of Christ.

  Sister Maura had eagerly trained to be a nurse. It was a chance to serve people in a special way, and she knew without doubt that it was her vocation. She accommodated to the rules of her order, and at the impressionable age of eighteen, that wasn't hard to do. Nursing was hard work, and it brought her down to earth soon enough. But her ideals still flew like a kite in the wind, ready to be reeled in at the right time.

  "Ten years in the convent," Maura said, almost as if to herself. "And then to leave it. I can't shake the idea that I've thrown away the chance to serve people in a really special way."

  "Nonsense," Kathleen scoffed. "You'll change enough lives in Shuffletown with these midwifery ideas of yours. Anyway, you're just having an attack of the guilts for leaving the order."

  "Mmm," said Maura. "You know, Kathleen, I still can't really talk about it. Not even to you." Unconsciously her thumb felt for the white-gold band on her ring finger. She still couldn't get used to its absence.

  How hard it had been to leave the people she had served as a midwife when she belonged to the order! But she couldn't have stayed, not when her dream was in conflict with the wishes of her superiors. She would never forget the austere, tight-lipped gaze of the mother superior on the day she'd handed Maura her ultimatum. To think about it now still made Maura want to weep for the loss of the ideals that had been so important to her.

  It had happened so gradually, Maura's rebellion against the rules. Leaving the convent to conduct home births, she'd discovered that she liked being the person in charge at birthings and the one to whom everyone looked for guidance and advice. As time went on, it had become increasingly difficult for her, when she returned to the convent each time, to switch back into the obedient Sister Maura she was expected to be. In the end, her vow of obedience had been the one vow Maura couldn't countenance.

  And so, finding the stance of the convent hierarchy on this particular vow untenable, she fled, carrying the shreds of her dream with her. She longed to find a place where she could mend the tatters into some sort of whole again and where she could be the kind of midwife she wanted to be. She had found Shuffletown, where she was needed.

  But Maura wasn't going to indulge in feeling sorry for herself. The past was over, and her future looked bright. She fluffed her hair out over the collar of the dress. She'd begun a new and perhaps better
life, and tonight she was seeing Xan Copeland.

  Kathleen, watching her sister's face, knew she had to make Maura see how concerned she was about her adjustment to the real world. She chose her words carefully. "Maura, there are a few things you should know about Xan Copeland," she said earnestly. "The first is that you shouldn't get involved with him. I know he's extremely good-looking and—"

  "Why shouldn't I get involved with him?" Maura was openly curious.

  Her sister's very innocence stiffened Kathleen's resolve. She spoke swiftly. "Xan sees many women. They lose their hearts to him, but he never takes any of it seriously. And then he's out of their lives, leaving them sadder but hopefully wiser. Maura, I don't want to see you hurt."

  "I honestly don't see how that can affect me," Maura countered. "I'm not going to fall head over heels in love with him. You know me better than that."

  Since her approach didn't seem to be working, Kathleen tried another tack. "I thought you and Xan were adversaries," she said. "I mean, didn't you tell me that you're at odds about childbirth methods?"

  "Adversaries?" said Maura. "That's a strong word. Anyway, whatever hostilities over childbirth methods might have existed between us have been defused." She gave her hair a final fillip with her brush and decided to explain. "Xan knows that Dr. Urquehart has agreed to be my medical sponsor, so that takes the pressure off him. And as sort of a peace offering, I think, Xan did the nicest thing for me today," she said. "He sent an R.N.—Golden Prescott—to my clinic to see me. She's going to be my assistant. And he was kind enough to help me hang curtains upstairs. I don't know that Xan and I are ever going to agree about birthing methods, but we've reached a sort of a truce. And I do like him, Kathleen."

  Kathleen's troubled gaze took in her sister's bright happiness, and she realized that no matter what she said, Maura wouldn't understand. Maura had lived apart from the real world for too long. She didn't realize how changing mores and lifestyles had made the old ways of dealing with relationships obsolete. And she was clearly dazzled by Xan's attention.