The baskets were ingenious coils of pliable sweet grass. "The workmanship is beautiful," said Maura, reaching out to trace her fingers along the spiraled fiber. It felt stiff to the touch.
"I'm glad you like it. You're likely to be paid in such things when you start your practice."
"I'll welcome anything anyone wants to give me in lieu of money," she said, thankful for the O'Malley Family Foundation grant that enabled her to say this. "It's not easy to furnish a place from scratch. And," she went on, hoping to make light of it, "scratch isn't comfortable to sit on."
He looked down at her, puzzled. "Don't you have furniture? Left over from before?"
"No," she said rather abruptly, and she eased herself out from under his arm and walked down the hall to the place where another quilt, this one a faded red-and-pink patchwork design, hung.
"You'll have to buy some furniture, then," he said. "What kind do you like?"
She massaged her elbows, thinking of the ultramodern, too-clean lines of the furniture that Kathleen and most of her friends preferred. As a nun, she'd always looked at items in terms of their usefulness. Now, through Xan's eyes, she began to understand about the pleasurable possibilities of things she had taken for granted—furniture, art. There was a whole world of taste waiting for her to discover it. The thought tantalized her.
"I guess in furniture I'd like something with a little bit of character," she said thoughtfully. "Antiques, perhaps." Antiques would fit in well with the atmosphere of her farmhouse. And the patina of years on someone's discarded but once-loved furniture would give Maura herself a sense of ongoing history. She'd felt rootless ever since she'd cut herself off from the convent.
"Then you'll have to let me go shopping with you. I know some of the best places. Not the tourist traps in the downtown historic area, but tiny shops where the markup isn't high."
"I'd like that," she said. She looked at him curiously. "I'm surprised that you know about antiques."
"I learned from Aunt Lucy. Most of her things had to be sold, but I managed to save a few of the pieces I liked. Look at this," and he took her hand again and drew her into what turned out to be a bedroom.
His bedroom, she thought nervously. She'd never been in a man's bedroom before. This was a particularly handsome one, dimly lighted by a lamp on the serpentine-front dresser and decorated in restful shades of green with peach accents. A huge four-poster bed covered with a white spread crocheted in a popcorn pattern dominated the room. Narrow wooden blinds, slanted to afford a view of the beach, masked the tall window.
"The bed is magnificent," she said, taking it in. Its mattress was so high off the floor that it had to be reached by three portable steps that had clearly been made just for climbing into this particular bed. The stair treads were covered with finely worked needlepoint pads, each bearing the Copeland family crest.
"It's called a rice bed," Xan told her. "See the rice plants carved into each of the four bedposts? It was in use on the Copeland rice plantation outside Charleston back in the 1700s."
Just looking at the bed made Maura nervous about Xan's designs on her. She turned away toward the corner of the room, focusing on a painting on the wall. It was a pen-and-ink drawing of a Charleston street scene. It made her think that she'd need pictures, too, for her living quarters. She hadn't thought about furnishings for her farmhouse nearly enough, but she'd have to if she were going to make the house a real home. Suddenly, having a real home of her own, her very own place in the world, seemed urgently important.
"What is it like, living alone?" she asked, unaware of the poignancy of her question.
Xan's eyes shot toward hers and softened. "Lonely, sometimes," he admitted. He moved closer to her, his front to her back, blocking her exit from the corner. Her hair tumbled across her shoulders, wine-dark in the soft light from the lamp. Her hips swelled outward from the supple curve of her waist, and he ached to slide his hands around that waist and slowly smooth them downward.
"I'll have to get used to it, I suppose," she said, and then she couldn't speak anymore because she felt his intention and her body was responding despite her willing it to go on talking as before.
His hand beneath her hair was not at all unexpected. "Maura," he said, his voice deep in his throat, his breath caressing her abundant fall of hair, "I can't go on being near you without having something more."
She closed her eyes against the wave of warmth that swept upward from the region of her stomach, all thoughts of decorating her home swept aside. She was swirling in great sweeping circles, circles that encompassed her past, her present and her future, around and around, confusing her.
Who was she? Was she that Maura who had entered the convent at eighteen, sure of herself and her dreams? Or was she the Maura who had left California and the convent, her dreams shattered, bravely trying to pick up the pieces and go on with her life? Or was she the Maura who stood here, immobilized by one touch from Xan Copeland?
Before she met Xan, she had never felt lust. She'd dated some guys in high school and made out with them, but she'd never experienced love. She had no way of differentiating between the two emotions and no past experiences to set guidelines or limits. Despair at her own ignorance wrenched her heart, and at the moment, she felt like an utter fool.
In the meantime, Xan had narrowed the space between them. His fingers slid slowly down the sides of her neck, paused at the hollow of her throat to tarry over her throbbing pulse, and moved surely to capture her shoulders. Her head tipped backward of its own accord, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier until they closed. She inhaled deeply, his scent filling her nostrils and lingering seductively at the back of her throat.
"Sometimes," he said softly into her ear, his words no more than a warm breath, "it's terrible living by myself. I don't like waking up alone, Maura."
Her head now rested against his shoulder. His arms wrapped her close as his hands found their way to her breasts. They stroked gently, reverently. She arched backward into the feeling, so exquisite and pleasureful and threatening to overcome propriety.
"I love touching you," he whispered close to her ear. "You're so solid. All woman, but very vulnerable. Oh, Maura, be my woman." It was a heartfelt plea. He sensed her struggle for control, a struggle that was losing its fight for space amid her confused emotions. "Don't fight it," he urged. "Let me. Just let me."
She submitted to the languid ease of it. It was so pleasant to flow along with him, swept into a tide of passion and loving that offered sweet oblivion to everything else. He rained kisses upon her throat, wet kisses that trailed exquisitely to the planes of her face and the angle of her jaw. She heedlessly sought his lips with hers, turning her face to his in mute offering, and, still behind her, he cupped the exposed curve of her cheek so that her lips might not escape while he drank his fill urgently.
She felt his passion straining against her, only half aware now of anything else but Xan. She revolved slowly within the circle of his arms until she faced him, staring at him unblinkingly, her eyes moist with longing.
Hands pressing her hips to him, he bent his head to kiss her perfect mouth, drifting his lips downward to the open throat of her dress, and Maura understood now for the first time her power as a woman. There was something heady about that power. She touched her lips to his dark hair and drew its scent into her nostrils, exhilarating in all her womanly power and in him.
It could have ended with the two of them tossed among the billowed covers of that great high ancestral bed. It could have, but it didn't because of the zipper.
It was the sound of the zipper that brought Maura to her senses and made her aware again of things beyond herself. The rasp of the slide over the teeth and the parting of the front of her dress brought her up short.
She had been swept off her feet by an experienced practitioner of the art of seduction. She, who knew nothing of such things; she, whose convent background precluded the usual man-woman relationships; she, who was about to make a fool of her
self and expose her very innocence. For she was innocent and untouched by any man—and she was afraid she wouldn't know how to make love to Xan Copeland.
She twisted away, at the same time conscious of a gut feeling that she should have gone through with it in spite of everything. For suddenly and unmistakably she knew that she had been made for giving to a man in a special way that had been denied to her until now. The knowledge shook her to the foundations of her soul. In all her soul-searching and self-examination, in all her intimate knowledge of herself, she had never realized that this forceful yearning, this passionate longing, was part of her makeup.
Xan's hands remained on her shoulders, holding her so that she could not escape. "Maura, what's wrong?" he asked. He couldn't understand why she'd pulled away. She was ripe for the taking. It was obvious from the look of her heavy eyelids and the passion flaming in the depths of her eyes, from the flare of her nostrils and the parting of her lips.
"Xan, I can't," she breathed, and in a blaze of anguish he feared that she was thinking of the other man, the one she'd left behind.
He dropped his hands, and then with a determination that rose up inside him with an intensity of passion and longing, he crushed her to him, smothering her brief cry against his broad shoulder. "You can," he said fiercely, "and you will. If it's time you need, you can have it. I have lots of time. But make no mistake—I want to make love to you." He spoke raggedly, and then he shifted his weight backward, pressing her close with the arm around her waist but gripping her face in his other strong hand, gazing into her eyes with an expression so fierce that she tried to shrink away from him.
Her throat muscles were tight and aching with the strain of it, but she managed to say, "You don't understand, Xan, please." Doubt and confusion chased each other through her brain, making her wonder if she was doing the right thing.
"I understand more than you think I do," he said, releasing her. "I didn't, however, figure you for a tease."
"I'm not a tease," she said indignantly. "There are other considerations, Xan. I—I need your patience," and here her voice dropped to no more than a whisper. But her look was so direct that Xan knew with a pang of instant comprehension that she was experiencing an inward struggle of the first magnitude. The other man, then—she was thinking of him.
Xan backed off, defeated. But he didn't intend to stay defeated. "I thought about it a long time before I asked you to come here for dinner," he said with deliberate frankness. "I didn't know if you'd accept the invitation or not."
"Well, now you know," she said, and then wished she hadn't said it.
He nodded, studying her. "I know only as much as you'll tell me," he said, waiting. It was an invitation, bald in its curiosity.
Maura didn't speak. She'd been a fool to let things reach this point. Xan deserved an explanation, but she wasn't capable of giving it. If she had misled him, then she was sorry. She shook her head dumbly, unable to reply.
"Just for the record," he said dryly, "I don't make a pass at every woman who stays for dinner."
"Only the ones you lure into the bedroom?" she said, and then instantly regretted her uncharacteristic foray into the refuge of sarcasm.
"I don't usually have to lure them into my bedroom," he said darkly. "Nor do I use my collection of African-American art to get them here. You were interested—the first person who has ever shown any real interest, I might add. Anyway, there are other more exciting places to accomplish what we almost accomplished. Or didn't you know that?"
She clutched the two sides of the dress together, unsuccessfully trying to conceal her naked breasts from his eyes. She shook her head in confusion. She'd better get out of here before things took a turn for the worse.
When she moved to brush past him, Xan's finger on her cheek restrained her. It caressed the softness of her skin with a tenderness that told her he wasn't angry. A rush of relief overwhelmed her, and then he kissed her gently on the mouth. His hands reached for her breasts, but instead of touching her, his fingers found the zipper slide and slowly tugged it upward, drawing the two sides of her bodice together so that she was decently covered.
She stopped to swallow sudden tears. He was being so kind about this, so understanding, almost as if he knew the whole story.
Watching her, wanting her, he dropped his hands and moved aside. Sometimes, he thought, in order to hold on to a person you had to let that person go. And he very much wanted to hold on to Maura, no matter what.
Chapter 9
After that night, she didn't see Xan for days. Still, he lodged in her thoughts the way a pebble lodges in a shoe—a discomfort, but not a disabling one. The thought of him and of that night in his bedroom was distracting, and she didn't like being distracted.
It wasn't as though she didn't have enough to keep her busy. There was the McNeill Birth Center, with curious women dropping by to find out exactly what services Maura offered, then signing up for nutrition or exercise classes. There was Golden, whose willing hands and happy spirit Maura came to depend upon. There was Kathleen, who dropped in periodically to reassure herself that Maura really wanted to stay in Shuffletown and really did not wish to return to the pleasures and comforts of Teoway Island.
One day while Kathleen was there, Maura opened an email from their parents. She'd put off informing them that she'd left the convent until she established her birth center. It would be like Fiona and John to come home to address what they might consider a big mistake on the part of one of their offspring. Fortunately, her parents' trip had taken a few unexpected turns, and they'd been out of contact for weeks at a time.
"What do they say?" asked Kathleen, peering over Maura's shoulder as she sat at her desk.
"Wait," Maura said abstractedly, running her eyes down the lines of print. She blinked away sudden tears as Kathleen leaned closer.
Kathleen skimmed the computer screen. "Mom says that whatever a daughter of hers decides to do, she's behind her one hundred percent," she said, synopsizing aloud. And then, "Mom's proud of you for standing up to the mother superior for your right to conduct a practice in home births." Kathleen looked sideways and grinned at Maura. "What else would you expect from Mom? Isn't she wonderful?"
"Yes, and thank goodness I've avoided rattling her social conscience. It would have been just like her to chain herself to the fence outside the convent and refuse food or water until the mother superior changed her mind."
"Remember when Mom lived in a giant redwood for a month so the lumber company wouldn't cut it down?"
"And the time she liberated all those rabbits from the cosmetic testing facility?"
"Ah, the memories," Kathleen said with a touch of irony, and they both laughed.
Maura sighed. "Now for Dad," she said, scrolling down.
She began with a little choked laugh. "Dad says he never thought I ought to be in that convent in the first place and that he hopes I'll have a little fun and not feel that I have to wear myself out providing home births to everyone who wants one. And he can't figure out why I'm so fascinated with pregnancy and deliveries, anyway. Is it because my mother wasn't pregnant all the time like every other woman we knew? It wasn't her fault she had an operation that put her out of commission, he says. And why don't I meet him and Mom in Anchorage so we can—"
By this time Kathleen was laughing out loud. "Does he really say all that?"
Beginning to laugh herself, Maura closed the email. "It's good to know I have their support. There was a nun, Mary Szemski, who left the convent the year before I did. We heard that her family disowned her—they considered her leaving the convent a disgrace. Can you imagine? In this day and age?"
This made Kathleen look more serious, too. But then she brightened. "Hearing from Mom and Dad made me forget my other errand, which is to tell you that a friend of mine has hired Annie Bodkin to clean her house."
"That's welcome news! Come on upstairs and tell me all about it."
They both traipsed up the wooden stairs to the sitting room,
where Kathleen looked around uncomfortably and said, "Sitting room isn't exactly the right term for this place. Haven't you noticed, Maura, that there's no furniture in here?"
Maura tossed her head impatiently. "Hike yourself onto that windowsill, then, for a few minutes. I need to go through my files to find the brochures I stashed away." She pulled a box from the closet and sat on the floor.
Kathleen found a perch on the windowsill as Maura made stacks of informational material. She filled Maura in on Annie Bodkin's new job and then asked, "Are you expecting a large group for your presentation tonight?"
"I've posted flyers in many local gathering places and, well, I'm hoping," said Maura. She lifted a hand to show Kathleen that her fingers were crossed.
"I can't imagine what Xan Copeland is thinking about your approach to his patients," remarked Kathleen. She watched Maura as she bent over the boxes, her face hidden from view.
Maura's position allowed her to rearrange her facial expression before she spared Kathleen a too-casual look. "He's probably wishing they'd never heard of me," she said. "I saw two expectant mothers yesterday who were Xan's patients. They're going to switch over to me. He can't be too happy about that."
Kathleen's forehead wrinkled into tight little lines. "Maura, is it absolutely necessary to take Xan's patients away?"
"I'm not taking them. They come of their own accord. Women today—even the women in Shuffletown—are more conscious of themselves and their bodies than ever before, and they want to involve themselves in the birth experience. They like what I'm offering." She knew she sounded testy, but she couldn't help it.
Kathleen twisted a loose thread on the buttonhole at her wrist. "I saw Xan last weekend," she ventured finally.
"Oh?" Maura stood and dusted off the seat of her jeans. "Come on, we can go downstairs now."
Kathleen clattered down the stairs in Maura's wake. "Xan said to tell you that he's ready and willing to take you shopping for furniture. All you have to do is give him a call. And I must agree," she said with a glance over her shoulder at the bare sitting room, "that you do need furniture."
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