Perfect Chance

by Amanda Carpenter

  “I love you,” she heard herself say, and caught up with it a moment later. Panic washed over her. As soon as she’d said it, she realized it was true, but she hadn’t thought it through and had no idea what his reaction would be. Isn’t that just typical, she thought with horror. No brakes between brain and mouth, everything I’m feeling and thinking right out there for anyone to see. She hid her terrified face in his shirt.

  One large hand came up, trembling slightly, to caress the back of her head. He took several deep, even breaths. “Precious Mary,” he whispered, enfolding her as he bowed to brush his lips against her temple. A pause. “I’m very much in love with you.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes, and she pulled back to search his face frantically. Had she heard that right? His expression was somber, still razor-edged with arousal, and his eyes were stripped. “My goodness, you mean it,” she blurted out.

  His face creased in a smile. “Of course I mean it. I love the way you can’t hide anything you’re thinking, and how much family means to you. I love the way you light up with pleasure at the simplest things, and your enjoyment at the fair. I loved watching you pet the horses, and how I could open up to you, and I even love the storm clouds and how bossy you can be.”

  “Bossy,” she murmured, even as a sunburst of joy streamed through her. “I’m not bossy.”

  “You are, too, when you’re feeling self-confident enough. You can’t fool me, Mary—I can see right through you, and I love your pretty little bones.” He brushed the hair off her forehead, turning intense. “And I especially love your innocence. I’m glad you’ve never been with anyone else. You belong with me.”

  She quickly turned to nuzzle his hand, whispering, “I love everything about you. I think I did from the very first day. I just couldn’t believe that it could happen that quickly and still be something that would last.”

  “We can make it last,” he said huskily. “Marry me.”

  She sighed and closed her eyes, resting her cheek in his palm. “Okay.”

  His hand jerked spasmodically. Then he muttered, “You’d better mean that.”

  “I do—I know it’s awfully soon, but we’ll be careful—we’ll make sure it’s right.” She whispered, “I trust you.”

  He kissed her hard, a long, luscious, sensual mixture of tenderness and desire, and then he growled, “I want to make you pregnant. I want you to quit that damn job, and marry me, and have my baby. I want to watch you sleeping in the morning, with your hair spread over my pillow.”

  She groaned, loving the images he painted, running her hands greedily over his chest. “I want it, too.”

  He shuddered. “Dammit, we’ve got to stop this. I can just see Tim or your grandfather wandering down here for a midnight snack.” He pulled back and gripped her hands. “Listen to me, baby. We’ve got time. I want you to think about this. I know you’re saying that this is what you want, too, but you’d be giving up a lot—and I have to know that you’re sure. If you marry me, it’s forever. I won’t let you go again. Do you understand?”

  I am sure, she almost said. But something in his taut posture made her stop. “You’re right,” she said gently. For his sake, she would think about it, even though she knew her answer wasn’t going to change. “We have time.”

  He pressed a kiss to her fingers. “I’ll call you. And don’t hang up this time. If you do, I won’t be responsible for my actions.” One corner of his mouth crooked up. “Talk to you tomorrow.” He turned and left quickly.

  Mary sat for a while on the kitchen counter, staring at the floor while her head whirled madly. She noticed the two full glasses of wine, picked one up and drained it, then drank the other. Two proposals in one week. She hiccuped. And a fistfight. She squinted. Well, almost.

  It hadn’t happened. None of it had. Her alarm clock was going to go off in a minute, and she would be late for work. She pressed her fingers against her lips, which still throbbed, and hiccuped again. Not quite the same as pinching. She fell off the counter, lurched over to the phone, and dialed. The desk nurse at the E.R. answered, and Mary demanded, “Am I late for work?”

  “Dr. Newman?”

  “Y-yes. Is this Paula?”

  “Yes, are you all right?”

  “I’m—” Hic! “—fine. How are you? Am I late?”

  A rustle of paper. “No, Doctor. You’re due in at three tomorrow afternoon.” The nurse’s voice had turned amused. “Have a good time.”

  “Thank you,” Mary slurred with dignity. “I shall. Good night.”

  She replaced the receiver slowly and hung on to it. That settled one question: she wasn’t late. But was she dreaming? She pinched herself hard and winced. Ow! It was real; everything that had happened that night was real. Chance was in love with her; she was in love with him. They were going to get married and have babies and spend the rest of their lives together.

  Her eyes grew heavy-lidded, and one hand came up to cup her own breast. He’d held her there so exquisitely, and he’d pressed against the cradle between her legs as if he’d come home.

  She left the kitchen to waltz serenely up the stairs to her bedroom. Things weren’t exactly settled between them; as long as he’d asked her to think about things, there would always be that question in his eyes, something vital he held back from her. So she would think about things.

  And what did she think about things? Why, she thought things were fine. She thought she’d never seen such a pretty bedroom like hers, and she was sure she’d never felt so wonderful in her life. She felt loved and desirable and wanted. She felt…beautiful.

  She still didn’t know much about him.

  That was all right. They could get to know each other better while they were engaged. Already she felt she could instinctively predict so much about him. He would have a horrible temper when roused, and it would be a frightening sight if he ever lost control. But even in his worst temper, he would be careful, would take care. Protectiveness was imbued in every part of him; he couldn’t do anything else.

  But he wanted her to quit her job. Shouldn’t she be more concerned about that?

  I didn’t like it anyway, she told herself happily, as with languid, dreamy movements she stripped off her dirty clothing and floated into her bathroom. I had all but decided to quit on my own, for reasons that have nothing to do with how I feel about Chance. And besides, even if I quit now, it’ll just give me more time to decide what it is I really want to do. If I want to do anything besides keep house and look after our children.

  Our children.

  I want to make you pregnant.

  The memory of how he had said those powerful words rippled through her, causing another gush of heated desire. She leaned against the tiled wall as the warm water from her shower washed away the dirt from the fair.

  He and Tim got along so well, and after just one meeting, her grandfather had already begun to soften toward him. It seemed so perfect—wasn’t it possible that everything would come together in one miraculous moment of epiphany, where she could look around at all the definitions in her life and see the pattern of her future as it was meant to be?

  Mary believed it was. After all her caution, after all the adult years of holding back, of doubt and waiting, finally she believed.

  She shook herself alert, stepped out of the shower, toweled dry, and quickly brushed her teeth. She had to hurry and go to bed. She had a lot to do in the morning. She had to call Cassie, type her resignation for the hospital, and be ready for Chance when he called. She had to decide the best method for being ready.

  She climbed into bed, still so excited she was convinced she’d never go to sleep, and fell effortlessly into a darkness as soft as feathers.

  Chance didn’t call the next morning.

  Mary typed and retyped her resignation on the personal computer in the study. A good night’s sleep hadn’t shifted her conviction that the residency just wasn’t right for her. Finally she settled on a draft that she felt comfortable with, printed it out, and s
igned her name to it with a flourish.

  Tim asked her curiously how her evening with Chance had gone. Wonderful, she sang, as she cooked him and her grandfather breakfast. Janice didn’t come in on Sundays, and Mary loved to cook for her family when she had the time. Soon she would have much more time on her hands for all the things she loved and all the people she loved to do them with.

  Wallis harrumphed grumpily and looked worried. It didn’t stop him from polishing off five large pancakes and several strips of bacon, however, though he did make a few comments about how his eldest grandchild and cosseted baby girl was dancing and singing and carrying on. She patted his cheek affectionately and told them she was quitting her job at the hospital.

  That was enough of a bombshell to divert their attention. After answering their many questions and concerns, she was both shaken and pleased to find how relieved Wallis was, while Tim was frankly ecstatic.

  “Been having a few doubts of my own about you slaving away your youth,” her grandfather told her.

  “I know, Grampa,” she said with a sigh. A thought had occurred to her: would she have listened to her doubts earlier, and quit while she was still in medical school if she hadn’t listened too much to Victor? She put that aside for now; what was done was done. “It would have been different if I’d had more sense of a vocation, but I don’t. Maybe I will someday. Or— maybe I’ll look into qualifications for setting up a day-care center. I think I’d really enjoy that.”

  “You know you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to,” he said for perhaps the thousandth time. “I’ve always just wanted what would make you happy.”

  “We’ll see. There’s time.” And she drifted into the kitchen, humming, to help Tim with the dishes.

  She still didn’t hear from Chance by noon. Lunchtime came and went. She called Cassie, and they had a long, involved, heart-to-heart about marriage and the future. Cassie promised to come over for lunch the next week, and Mary hung up after the talk more convinced than ever that not only was she ready for the engagement with Chance, but that she and Cassie were also going to be the best of friends. Then she went into the study to read some of her medical text-books. She made a few decisions about just what she wanted and planned to stop at the hospital pharmacy sometime that day.

  There was still no word from Chance by the time she had to get ready for work. She found his number in the phone book and dialed it, but all she got was a busy signal. At two o’clock Mary was starting to droop. At two-fifteen she decided there wasn’t any reason to hang around at home anymore and so she left. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she was positively wilting.

  He forgot. He didn’t forget; he changed his mind. But no, Cassie said he wouldn’t do that. What could have happened?

  Victor had the day off on Sunday, and at least that was a relief. Since she’d arrived early, she handed in her resignation, stopped at the pharmacy, then went down to put her purse in her locker and got to work.

  After a long, intense afternoon, she finally managed to get a coffee break and went to relax for a few precious moments in the doctor’s lounge.

  And stopped in the doorway. There on the rectangular table in the middle of the room were three long, shiny boxes tied with wide pink ribbons. She walked over slowly, saw the envelope on top with her name on it, and tore it open.

  The card inside read: “Got tied up on the phone. Something I couldn’t get out of. Am frustrated as hell, and I miss you. All my love, Chance.”

  Inside the boxes were three dozen long-stemmed red roses, their petals lush, perfect, heavy with fragrance. She held them to her nose and breathed in their scent for a long time. Then she tucked her note carefully away, asked one of the nurses on duty to get her something to put the flowers in, and waltzed back to work.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “DO I LOOK all right?” Mary asked, nose-to-nose with her reflection in her bathroom mirror as she checked her makeup for any minuscule signs of unevenness. There were none, for what she wore was subtle and painstakingly applied. A light application of peach blusher along her high, delicate cheekbones, the merest touch of dark blue eye shadow making her eyes gleam like aquamarines, one coating of mascara and lip gloss.

  “You look great.” Tim lounged against the open doorway, lanky arms folded across his chest as he studied her. “Big date, huh?”

  Mary fluffed tawny bangs anxiously and inspected her small, even white teeth, then sighed. She wasn’t going to make her appearance any better by fretting. This was as good as it got. “You could say that.”

  It was early Tuesday evening. Chance was picking her up in a few minutes to take her to dinner with his parents at their restaurant. Caught in the whirlwind of working out her notice at the hospital, she hadn’t had time to see him since their explosive date on Saturday night, although she had talked with him on the phone Monday and earlier that day. Both conver-sations had been long and warm, and had left her filled with longing. Both times he had told her he loved her. She needed to look into his eyes and see that it was true.

  “You’ve really fallen for him, haven’t you?” Tim said.

  Mary smoothed the skirt of her ankle-length, red shirtwaist dress, checked her matching low-heeled pumps, then glanced at Tim as she turned away from the mirror. What should she say to him? Chance had not brought up marriage since Saturday; true to his word, he was giving her time to think. They had nothing agreed upon between them, and Tim liked him so much that if anything went wrong and they didn’t get together, she knew he would be much more disappointed than he had been about Victor.

  She didn’t want to raise his hopes, but she didn’t want to lie, either. She said simply, “Yes.”

  His eyes lit up and he grinned happily. “That’s so cool,” he said. “And he likes you an awful lot. He asked all sorts of questions about you when we went to the fair. You two could really be something.”

  There was no way to keep his hopes from being raised. He was busy doing that all on his own. She sighed, “Oh, Timmy. I—I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  He scooped up her purse from the foot of the bed and handed it to her. “Sure.” He paused, then said awkwardly, “Don’t mind what happened on Saturday. I think Grampa does like him, too. He’s just being careful, you know?”

  “We all need to be careful, Timmy.”

  Fifteen minutes later she opened the front door to greet Chance, and that wise admonition flew right out of her head.

  The sight of him hit her like a blow to her middle. Dressed in a tailored navy blue suit, cream shirt and dark tie, his blond hair smooth and gleaming, he radiated masculinity and elegance. The suit was unexpectedly sober, conservative, the classic lines high-lighting the corded grace in the bones of his wrists, hands and the chiseled planes of his face. It was such a definitive change from the tough, teasing man she had come to know, she felt her perspective on him shift again. He was a man with so many facets, a man who had struggled to come to terms with himself and had won, it would take a lifetime to get to know him properly.

  He looked at her, compulsively down the entire length of her body, and his hazel gaze lit with a fierce, smoky flame. The bones of his face seemed to compress and sharpen, and suddenly the conservative elegance of the suit became just what it was: a camouflage for other people in a civilized setting. Somehow without even speaking he managed to strip himself of the veneer and reveal to her what lay hidden underneath. For her sake it was leashed for the moment, that predator that had slept for so long and had only now stirred slumberously back to life, and it was ravenous..

  Mary clung to the doorknob as his dark voice, melted chocolate and gravel, curled into her. “Mary, you are beautiful. Do I need to come in and make polite noises to your family?”

  She shook her head dumbly; she had no words.

  He held out his hand to her. “Then we should go.”

  Only then did she truly understand. He was magnificent and he was terrifying. He would take her outside of the
self she had known and make her into something new. She could refuse. She could back into her house, shut the door on him, and hide in the shell of her tidy, comfortable life.

  Then she smiled, an odd, helpless smile. The only way she could refuse was if she could somehow journey out of the vast labyrinth that was him, for she knew she was inside him.

  Her soul had not gone on a shelf. He had wrapped himself around her protectively, courageously, and had put her in the safest, most precious place he knew of: behind his barriers against the world, deep into the very heart of him. She knew it as surely as she could see the remnants of Saturday’s vulnerable questioning in his eyes. The predator was awake and ravenous for her. Her had himself sternly, adamantly on a leash for her. Everything he had said and done in the past week had been for her.

  Mary could no more refuse him than she could refuse to breathe. She reached out her hand and was encompassed, and gently he drew her out of her house, and she came to him dancing.

  The Falcon Club was one of the premier restaurants in Cherry Bay. Somehow it managed to combine artistry with unpretentiousness. The cuisine on offer had an international flair, and the decor was very plain, with pieces from local painters hanging on the walls, glossy hardwood floors and white-covered tables adorned with candles and fresh flowers. It was one of Mary’s favorite places to dine, but she had never met the owners. She entered the restaurant with her hand tucked snugly into the crook of Chance’s arm, viewing everything with a fresh perspective.

  He led her over to a table tucked away from the others, in the corner of the restaurant with a breath-taking view of the bay. There was an older couple already seated at the table, drinking wine and talking quietly. They rose to their feet as Chance and Mary approached.

  Chance covered her fingers with his, squeezing lightly. “Mary, this is my mom, Carmen, and my dad, Johnny. Mom, Dad—this is Mary Newman. Don’t scare her away, will you?”