One Secret Too Many

by Vanessa Grant

  ‘My patient, and the OB-GYN man is out of town.’ His arms gripped her, hard, and she drew her leg up so that they could be close all along their lengths, so that he could have whatever warmth was hers. She felt a massive shudder go through him and didn’t know what to do except to hold on more tightly. The silence grew too long, but she could feel that he was not resting, that the tension was still all through him.

  ‘Sam, what happened?’ He buried his face into the fine softness of her hair. ‘They were out for a drive. He—her husband had been out of town, looking for work. He’d just got back and they were celebrating.’ Sam swallowed, said hoarsely, ‘I didn’t know that till later, talking to him after— He had found a good job, and they had a baby coming in a few weeks. They got a baby-sitter for their two kids and went out. They were driving out to the picnic site at Telegraph Point.’ He shuddered. ‘That was where he had proposed to her. Five years ago.’

  The woman had died, perhaps on the operating table. Alex didn’t know the details, and she wasn’t sure if Sam was going to be able to tell her, but she knew that he had done everything he could to save Celia. He was holding her very tightly, but she managed to free herself enough to press soft lips against his cheek.

  ‘It was no good from the beginning.’ His lips found hers and she drew his kiss into her, trying to give him whatever she could of herself, hoping something would help. He whispered against her mouth, ‘We couldn’t stop the bleeding, Oh, lord, Alex! I tried everything, but—’

  She kissed the tears away from his cheeks, ran her fingers through his hair and pressed her lips against his eyes. He said dully, ‘Alan thought there was a chance for the baby. I delivered it—C-section. It was a boy. If anyone could have saved it, I think Alan would have.’ His hands sought the softness of her curves. She didn’t think he realised that the tears were flowing down his cheeks. ‘Alex, I—I keep trying to think, to—If there was anything else I might have done. If— She was so damned happy the last time I saw her!’

  She rubbed the hard rigidity of his back, smoothed the harsh lines of his face with her lips. Slowly, she felt the tension leaving him, felt him stroking her through the nightgown as if touching could heal. Then his hands stilled on her. She could hear his breathing deepen and he slept, holding her closely against him. A car drove past outside and light swept around the room, reflected and twisted by the glass of the window. She saw his face as the light moved across it, smooth except for the one scar high on his cheekbone. Very vulnerable.

  She slept then, lightly, aware of his touch, half waking each time he shifted. As the sky lightened, waiting for the sun to rise, she felt him move away from her, heard a breath that was almost a groan. She opened her eyes. He was leaning on his side. propped on one elbow, staring down at her. There was no smile on his lips. His eyes were very dark and deep. She stared up at him, losing herself in his eyes, seeing things she had not seen since that night they met.

  The blanket was tumbled around her waist, the thin white nightgown twisted around her, pulled tight under her breasts. His eyes left hers, following the lines that curved to her breasts, her hips, the round swelling that was their child growing inside her.

  His hand touched her shoulder, fingers drifting down to brush the soft roundness of her breasts. She felt her nipples growing rigid as he touched her, saw his quickly indrawn breath as he stared down at her. Then his palm brushed over the turgid peak. of her breast and she gasped, feeling the heat surging everywhere, all through her. She felt her lips parting, her eyes closing, hands seeking the curling hairs on his upper chest.

  He stroked the tingling, swollen nipple, then drew his hand slowly, lightly, along the curve of her abdomen. She shivered, eyes opening to stare up at him. His lashes concealed his feelings and she wished sharply that she had the slender curves he had made love to four months ago.

  ‘Alex,’ he whispered, his lips bending to touch hers, moving to caress her breast through the nightgown. ‘I want to see you.’ His voice was hoarse and muffled. ‘Please. . .’

  She trembled as he pushed the thin nightgown up. He lifted her slightly, drew the wispy fabric over her head and threw it away, not bothering to look where it fell. Her fingers found the curling hairs of his chest and clenched, making him gasp as he stared down at her. She closed her eyes, embarrassed as she had not been when he made love to her under the trees.

  ‘Oh, lord, darling! You’re so—’ his hand trembled, touching the roundness of her breast ‘—so incredibly beautiful.’

  He was very gentle, his lips and his hands seeming to know how incredibly sensitive her flesh had grown with her pregnancy. He touched nan kissed, making her tremble against the rigid need she could feel in him.

  She groaned aloud when he took the peak of her breast into his mouth, his tongue moving gently, driving her insane with a stroking that stirred her right through to the centre of her womanhood. She laced her fingers through his hair, feeling the strength and passion of him, pulling his head up and opening her lips to his, giving him everything in her kiss, feeling her breasts squeezed hard against the muscles of his chest, his hair rough against her softness, his leg hard against her thigh as his hand moved down to her hips, pulling her close to feel his need.

  She thought she would die of needing him, wanting him. ‘Please,’ she whispered, her hands slipping down over his shoulders, his back, touching the rigidity of his abdomen. ‘Please love me,’ she begged, unable to keep the words back.

  He silenced her with his mouth on hers, then she lost track of the room, the rising sun, the world. There was only Sam’s hands, Sam’s lips, Sam’s touch taking her beyond the edge of the world. She knew only the rough gentleness of his fingers as they brought fire to her skin, the soft moistness that was his mouth, the hardness that was his man’s need.

  When she was crying out his name, spinning beyond help, he drew her up over him and she felt his hands on her hips, the hard ridges of the muscles of his thighs. Then he thrust deep into her and she was clutching his shoulders, kneading his chest with heated hands, swept with him in a rising crescendo that climaxed, shaking them both to their foundations, leaving them trembling in each other’s arms in a spinning aftermath that slowly transformed itself into warmth and closeness and security and . . . sleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘HERE,’ said Dr Box, tearing the paper from his prescription pad. ‘I want you to pick this up at the chemist. Sam felt you should have an additional iron supplement, and I’m inclined to agree. Your blood count’s not drastically low, but—’

  ‘Sam?’ She stared down at the paper with its half-legible writing, feeling her pulse pounding just from the sound of his name.

  ‘Sam,’ he agreed, grinning at her across the desk. He had examined her, and everything was fine except for the mildly low iron count. ‘I hope you’re planning to be a good patient, because I can tell you that it’s hell having a doctor as an expectant father. He’s going to be dogging my footsteps until this baby’s born.’

  Sam had promised her that no one was going to be in any doubt as to who was the father of this child. Certainly her doctor had no doubt. She smiled a little and he said sourly, ‘You’d better marry him. It might improve his temper.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said, her fingers trembling as she put the paper away.

  ‘Four weeks,’ he called after her as she left. ‘And be sure you get in here on time. And take those pills.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised.

  She didn’t see Sam, but she heard his voice through the door to one of the examining rooms. Yesterday she had fully intended to come to this appointment and ask Dr Box for the name of a good doctor in the Victoria area, near Aunt Lexie’s empty house. She had hoped that she could get in and out of here without seeing Sam. Now she felt a sharp pain of disappointment that he was behind that door, that she would have to go away and wonder whether he would come home early tonight.

  He had not called her on the telephone this morning. She had waited, hop
ing he would call, but the phone had been silent all morning except for a brief call from her agent.

  ‘The publisher wants to know when you’ll be submitting that next book. How about it? How’s it going?’

  She had closed her eyes and tried to think about the book, the chapters that had been unfolding so quickly a few days ago. ‘Two months,’ she promised tentatively, telling herself that she would get back to work soon. Tomorrow. Or next week. As soon as she could think murder again.

  There would be no ferry, despite the fact that she had woken this morning alone in Sam’s bed. He must have left very quietly, careful not to wake her. She had wanted to be up with him, making the breakfast that he always skipped.

  She knew that his slipping away before she woke was not a good sign. He had not kissed her to wake her. She knew why. He had woken remembering the night before, remembering that she had seen his pain and sorrow over losing Celia Mallory and her baby.

  She had been blind until last night, thinking of herself and her own problems, afraid of what other people might think because she was the pastor’s daughter and she was having a baby. It had taken last night to open her eyes, seeing how afraid he had been of letting her see his hurt and his need. He was terrified of rejection, of letting himself be seen to have emotional dependencies. He was always giving to other people, but afraid to ask anything for himself. She bad been so busy feeling sorry for herself, seeing Sam as strong and invulnerable. She had been blind to his real needs. Maybe he would never be able to say the words to her, but he loved her, and he needed her.

  Today he might push her away in a defensive reaction. She was almost positive that he was avoiding seeing her now, at the clinic. Or was she being paranoid? Dr Box had talked as if Sam knew she was coming today, but maybe. . .

  She swallowed, walking quickly down the corridor to the waiting room. It didn’t matter. Even if he pushed her away, avoided her, she was not going to go away. Not now. She would be waiting for him when he came home. If he was uncomfortable around her, she would somehow put him at ease. Dinner, she decided. She would buy something nice for dinner, and ask him to have a game of chess with her afterwards. He enjoyed relaxing in the living room after dinner, listening to the stereo and talking in low, easy voices.

  Neil had told her over breakfast that he was going out to dinner with a college friend, then taking in a movie. That meant she would be alone with Sam. She would be careful, casual, as if last night had not happened. After a while he would relax.

  Maybe he would reach across the chess table and touch her hair as he sometimes had. If he touched her, moved to kiss her, she would let him know without words that she was available for him. Maybe—

  No! She must not expect anything. If she let the wants loose she might be begging him for everything, anything he could give. She wanted to be in his bed every night, making his breakfasts in the mornings. She wanted to be what he came home to, his love. She wanted to hold his child in her arms and see him watching as if the woman and the child were everything he would ever want.

  ‘Mary!’ It was Mrs Bramley, waving a piece of paper, her greying hair wild around her cap, calling Alex back as she started to pull the door open. ‘Here! Dr Dempsey left this for you!’

  Everyone in the waiting room seemed to be staring at her as she walked back towards the receptionist. Someone came through the front door and a gust of wind came in, pressing her loose jacket against her, emphasising the curve of her pregnancy.

  Well, let them see. They probably all knew in any case. It would be common knowledge that Mary Houseman was losing her figure, and there would be no trouble guessing why. It was going to be a beautiful baby. Her baby, and Sam’s. She hoped it was a boy with dark unruly hair. She smiled a little as she took the envelope from Mrs Bramley’s fingers and the woman smiled back, saying obscurely, ‘Dr Dempsey said to tell you his car’s out back in the parking lot.’

  She couldn’t open it there with everyone watching. She made her way out, and avoided tripping over the toddler who was dragging a toy bus across the floor. Outside, the sun was almost painfully brilliant. She wanted to tear open the envelope, but she was afraid.

  Coward. She would go to the restaurant across the street and have a cup of coffee, sit down and take a deep breath. Then she would open it. She went four or five steps, then her fingers tore the envelope open, feeling a bulge through the paper. He had written Alex Houseman on the front of the envelope. Inside, on a prescription form, the dark ink said simply, ‘Have dinner with me tonight? Please. I’ll pick you up at six. Use my car and I’ll take your scooter home.’

  His car keys were there. Last month he had insisted that she stop riding her bicycle, and she knew that he did not like her riding the scooter either.

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ he had asserted one night when she had been stubbornly resistant to his insistence that she stop riding it at least until the baby came and let him get her a car to take its place. ‘If you ever got hit by a car—’

  ‘I’m careful,’ she had countered and he had finally dropped the argument, but she knew that it bothered him.

  She closed her hands around the keys. In a way she had been shutting him out, too, by refusing almost everything he offered. She had felt that she could only accept things for the child, that she must maintain her independence. She had been determined that she would take nothing more than she had to—unless he offered love. Selfish woman, she thought, staring down at the paper, seeing his name printed on the top of the form and his words written to her. ‘Please,’ he had said. Love was the word she had been holding out for, but it was not there. She remembered his eyes, his arms around her. He loved her. She had to believe that because it had been in his eyes and it was in all his actions.

  She went back into the waiting room, threaded her way past all the people. She recognised one or two of the women and she smiled at them. They smiled back and one said, ‘Hello, Mary.’ She would be the first one on her telephone when she got home tonight, probably telling Emily Derringer all about it.

  Amazingly, Alex found that she did not care.

  She put the keys to. her scooter on the desk in front of Mrs Bramley and said, ‘Would you give those to Dr Dempsey. He’s not going to be able to get my scooter started without them.’ The woman looked up, startled, and Alex added, ‘And tell him I’ll be waiting for him at six.’

  She felt her heart pounding as she went out, and she knew they were all staring at her, but she felt good, as if she had done something wonderful.

  She eased his car out of the car park very carefully. She had never driven it before. It was smooth and powerful and very responsive. She drove it three blocks to the chemist and prayed that no one would come screaming through a stop sign and hit her. It would be terrible if she bashed up Sam’s car. She was positive that he had never before let anyone else drive it.

  If he offered to buy her a car again, she thought she had better accept. She supposed he could afford it, and it was impossible for her to drive this beautiful white beast every day. She grinned at the thought of Dr Dempsey tearing around town on her scooter. Definitely not the image of a professional doctor, yet he had said that he liked to dress the part when he was working.

  She found herself giggling as she locked up the car, imagining him in leather motorcycle jacket, jeans and leather boots. It was easy to imagine, and he would look great dressed like a biker-sexy and. . .not very medical.

  She laughed aloud and felt love for him sweeping over her. Sam, she thought as she dropped his keys, scrambling in a puddle of water to retrieve them. The keys were just on a plain ring and she thought that she might buy him a key-ring if she could find something nice in the chemist.

  She almost careened straight into Emily Derringer’s back as she came through the doors into the chemist. Automatically, she ducked quickly around the end of the first aisle, out of sight of Emily, her heart pounding with panic.

  Then she stopped, staring blankly at the rack of chocolate bars in fron
t of her. Emily. How many times in the last few weeks had she seen that immaculate head of hair and turned away before she was seen herself? She couldn’t run away from one gossipy woman all her life. She took a deep breath and tried to feel calm and courageous, tried to tell herself it wasn’t going to matter when Emily turned that cold, critical gaze on her.

  All right. She would make it quick. She picked up a chocolate bar from the rack in front of her. Something to buy. a reason for being here. With a faint tinge of hysteria she realised that this was the same chemist where she had run into Emily while buying the pregnancy test kit.

  She paid for the chocolate and accepted it back, bagged and stapled. Now she was ready for a quick exit. Emily was in the next aisle. Alex moved quickly towards her.

  ‘Mary!’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Derringer.’ She pushed her hair back, said hurriedly, ‘Nice to see you.’

  She was going to move away, quickly, but amazingly the woman was smiling, saying, ‘I’ve been hoping to run into you. How are you?’

  ‘I—fine.’ There was nothing in her eyes but warmth and that was impossible.

  Emily was several inches taller than Alex. She frowned a little, looking down and saying, ‘Come and have a cup of tea with me. There’s a restaurant next door and I—’ -

  ‘Oh, no, thank you.’ Alex shook her head, edged away. ‘I’d better go. I—’

  ‘Please, Mary!’ Emily had a paperback book in her hands. She pushed it back into the rack beside her and said urgently, ‘I really do want to talk to you! I’ve been hoping I’d run into you.’

  No one could withstand a determined Emily Derringer. Alex gave up trying, and found herself swept out of the chemist and into a booth in the small restaurant next door. It couldn’t last forever. She would listen, harden herself and somehow look as if she didn’t care. Then it would be over, and she would escape, go home and wait for Sam.

  ‘Now,’ said Emily with determination as the waitress left them with a steeping pot of tea and two empty cups waiting. ‘Tell me. Are you certain that you are all right?’