Martin’s wife, gone in the blink of an eye, her life along with that of her unborn child snuffed out. The whole direction of his life changed in a way he could have never foreseen. Looking into the future was like looking at an incompletely developed Polaroid film. Blurry, barely recognizable images. And yet for this uncertain tomorrow she had banished any chance of happiness today.
Tears burning in her throat, she gathered her folder and camera from the desk and headed for the elevators. Dammit, she loved him. Loved him with every part of her being. To hell with tomorrow, she wanted to fall into his arms today, sink into the feeling as if it were a featherbed. It was like being on a diet and craving chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream. Once in a while, the urge proves irresistible. Enough! She punched the button for the fifth floor. The food thoughts had to stop.
She got off the elevator and headed down the corridor to the NICU conference room where the holiday reunion was going on. The noise from inside filtered into the corridor. More than one hundred children and their parents were expected at the annual event which, Derek had pointedly remarked to her, also drew heavy media coverage.
As she pushed open the double doors, Catherine scanned the room, transformed with balloons and streamers and packed end to end with parents, staff and exuberant children. At the far end she caught a glimpse of a TV crew partially surrounding a tall figure in green scrubs. For a moment she froze and then the figure turned and she saw it was one of the other neonatologists. Relief left her weak in the knees. And desolate with disappointment. She took a deep breath and worked her way through the crowd. It will get easier, she promised herself, once he leaves. Once he’s on the other side of the country.
Eager to turn her mind to something else, she waved at the reporter from the local NBC affiliate. Three TV crews and a radio reporter had called to say they were attending. Earlier that morning she’d set up photo sessions for the print media. More coverage than Derek had managed to draw the previous year, she realized with grim satisfaction. If she had to leave Western, she would go in a blaze of glory. It was one of the few thoughts from which she could draw much consolation.
“THIS PLACE LOOKS LIKE a tornado struck.” Tim Graham stood in the door of Martin’s office and surveyed the half-filled packing boxes stacked around the room, the desk littered with disposable coffee cups and orange peel. “You look kind of rough yourself. What d’you do, camp out all night in here?”
“Just about.” Martin ran his hand across his chin. He’d already packed up most of his books and papers. News of his imminent departure had spread through the unit like an epidemic. People had dropped in all morning to say goodbye. Once the decision had been made, he’d really wanted to leave immediately, but had reluctantly agreed to stay until the end of the month when one of the other neonatologists returned from a family emergency.
Graham cleared off a packing box from a chair and sat down. “Got much more to do?”
“This is about it.” The few possession he had on the boat, already listed with a broker, were packed. He would drive the Fiat to Boston.
“You’re lucky you don’t have a wife and kids,” Graham said. “When Ruth and I moved here from Phoenix…” He rolled his eyes. “A garage full of bikes and roller skates and God knows what else. I never want to go through that again.”
Martin glanced at the Christmas gift one of the receptionists had left on his desk. A glass globe with a tiny figure inside it, surfing on a plastic ocean. Miniature palm trees fringed the shore. A reminder of California, she had told him. He lifted the globe, turned it upside down, then set it back on the desk. It struck him that at one time he would have related to the figure locked inside. Isolated, contained in his own world, closed off from the life going on all around.
He tried to find that same detachment now, but something protective had been torn away, and the raw, aching emptiness hurt more than he would have believed possible. Twice that morning, he’d started up to the public relations office, then turned back, reminding himself that this was what Catherine wanted. The intercom buzzed on his desk, and the unit secretary reminded him that his presence was expected at the NICU reunion.
Minutes later, across the packed conference room, he spotted Catherine. Watched her until a woman carrying a smiling red-haired toddler in a blue velvet dress approached him and blocked his view.
“Dr. Connaughton.” The woman smiled. “I heard you’re leaving Western and I wanted to be sure you got to see Debra.” She held out the child for his inspection. “Two pounds at birth. Amazing, isn’t it?” Her smile broadened. “But I’m sure with all these kids around here, there’s no way you can remember.”
He glanced at the woman’s name tag, moved his head to avoid the cookie the toddler was trying to force into his mouth, and apologized for his bad memory. Across the room, he saw Catherine talking to a female reporter he recognized from the first press conference he’d done. Both women glanced over in his direction. He forced his eyes away from Catherine, smiled at the mother and child and tried to remember what she had asked him. She patted his arm.
“I’m not going to take up any more of your time.” She began to move away. “Good luck. Where is it you’re going?”
“Boston.” He watched as Catherine, a camera crew in tow, worked her way through the crowd to where he stood. She wore a dark green wool dress that hugged the lines of her body, and her hair was piled up in a knot on the top of her head the way it had been that night in the van. The night she had begged him to make love to her. She moved closer, her eyes studiously avoiding his, her bottom lip caught in her teeth.
And then she was there in front of him, addressing his left shoulder as she explained that the reporter at her side wanted an interview with him. Wisps of hair brushed her cheek. She’d chewed off her lipstick. He didn’t respond to her request, just kept his eyes on her face until she slowly looked up at him. Seconds passed, neither of them looked away. For a moment it seemed they were alone in the room, oblivious to the noisy, squealing children all around.
“I’ll do it on one condition,” he finally said. “Which I’ll explain later.”
Selena Bliss laughed. “How can she agree to something if she doesn’t know the terms?”
“It’s okay.” Catherine held his gaze. “I accept.”
SHE STOOD OUTSIDE the conference room, her back against the wall, arms wrapped around her leather folder. A few feet away, Selena Bliss interviewed Martin about the reunion. She heard him talk about improved outcomes for premature babies, the miracles of modern medicine. Once, he glanced over at her, held her eyes for a moment. The charge had shot through her body. She felt suspended somehow, on a different plane from all of those bustling around her. Everything in soft focus, but the tall man talking to Selena Bliss.
The crowd from the conference room began to trickle out. Finally, Selena finished the interview and left with her crew. A moment later, Martin walked over to where Catherine stood. Without a word, he glanced over his shoulder at the exit door, pulled it open with one hand and, with the other, pulled her into the deserted stairwell. Then he backed her against the wall, put his hands on either side of her shoulders and kissed her hard. His tongue in her mouth, body pressed up against hers, he kissed her until she thought her knees would give way.
When they finally parted, he kept his hands on the wall, stared into her eyes. “I think we should finish what we started the other night. I want to make love to you, Catherine.”
“If that was the condition—” her voice was ragged “—I’ve already accepted it.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen.” His eyes searched her face. “Saturday night, I decided you were probably right about Boston and maybe you are. Maybe we’re all wrong for each other, but…I’m so bloody miserable without you. It’s like an unbearable pain and there’s only one thing that will help it.” His lips brushed her throat and she arched her neck back. “What are you doing tonight?” he asked softly.
“Nothing. Gary’s
picking up the kids later today. He’s got them for Christmas.”
“Christmas.” He shook his head as though suddenly aware of the date. “So you’ll be alone?”
She nodded. “You, too?”
“No. I’ll be with you. Let’s just forget about everything else. Can we do that? No talk about tomorrow, or next week. Just us in the moment?”
Shaking with desire, she stared into his eyes, drank in the details of his face. Then he kissed her again and her brain ceased to function. “Tonight,” she managed to say a moment later.
“Tonight then,” he said, and kissed her again. “Merry Christmas.”
FULL FUNCTION DIDN’T RETURN to her brain for hours. Even when Jordan dropped into her office to congratulate her on the press coverage for the NICU reunion. Even when Derek called to say that he’d heard Martin was leaving Western and would she reconsider her resignation and stay on. Even when she’d shocked herself by agreeing to do so, but only as assistant manager. She’d briefly snapped out of her trance when he’d agreed to her terms, but before long her mind was counting down the hours to the moment she would see Martin again.
On the way home from Western, she joined the last-minute throng of holiday shoppers at the mall. For a moment she lingered at the door of a brightly lit store, then impulsively, her face warm, she stepped inside. Lingerie surrounded her, billowing in creamy drifts of lace and silk from shelves and displays, pouring out of gift-wrapped boxes, clinging sinuously to mannequin bodies. Along one wall, stylized silver torsos wore shimmering panties in rainbow colors. On another, they sported jungle motifs—zebra stripes, leopard spots, monkey paws.
Like a tourist in an exotic and foreign country, Catherine stared at the women all around her. Watched as they touched, discarded, selected. Were they all anticipating a Christmas Eve seduction? From a drawer overflowing with frothy garments, she withdrew a confection of peach silk. Panties, constructed entirely of satin ribbon, designed only to be untied. Suddenly overwhelmed by it all, she hastily selected an armful of lingerie, found a cubicle and stripped off her clothes.
Clad in only her own white cotton panties, she looked critically at herself in the full-length mirror. Turned sideways. Peered over her shoulder at her rear. Definitely no reed-thin mannequin. In a charitable mood, she could see her body as womanly. Large breasts, rounded hips. Gary had called them childbearing hips. Less charitably, they were broad. Would Martin be disappointed? She tried on a lacy cream camisole, discarded it. A peach bra, from which her breasts burst like overripe fruit. A diaphanous slip that clung like a casing to her belly and hips.
The pile of discarded items grew. With her fingers, she combed her hair about her shoulders, licked her lips. In truth, she no longer had any idea how her body looked. Its image had been wildly distorted, first by Gary’s disinterest, then by his abandonment. Now, in the dressing room’s artificial light, her skin looked sallow, her body fleshy and soft. Gripped by panic, she quickly dressed, suddenly seeing herself as a mediocre gift, made attractive by its paper and ribbons, but, unwrapped, a disappointment.
She hastily separated a black lace bra and panties from the jumble of lingerie and started for the cash register. Still not too late to call and cancel, a voice in her head reminded her, even as she fished for the credit card in her wallet. Better to leave him with an illusion. She handed her card to the sales assistant in a Santa hat.
THE CASE OF NERVES lingered even as she sat across from Martin in the Spanish restaurant he’d chosen. Sprigs of mistletoe adorned pictures of bullfighters, festively dressed diners toasted each other with sangria, and she was yakking on, endlessly, about paella. “They use this special pan to make it.” She touched her fork to the round shallow pan on the table between them. “In some parts of Spain, they put the pan right on the fire and just eat directly from it.”
“Not a bad idea.” Martin stuck a fork in the mixture of seafood and rice and grinned at her.
She watched as he extracted a shrimp and ate it in one bite. Martin wasn’t the only reason she was rushing to fill the silences. A fight with Gary when he’d come to pick up the children hadn’t exactly been a tension reducer. When Peter heard she was spending Christmas Eve with Martin, he’d decided, suddenly, that he didn’t want to go with his father. Gary had accused her of trying to alienate the boy’s affections. She suspected that Peter was jealous and the thought tore at her.
She drank some wine. A candle in an earthenware bottle flickered, dripped ribbons of wax. “Paella’s a regional sort of thing,” she rattled on. “Every area uses ingredients that grow locally. In an inland area you might get sausages and pork, for example. On the coast, you’d have fish.” God, this was ridiculous. Someone make her shut up. A waiter in a short red jacket and black trousers moved between the tables. Catherine looked at Martin.
He winked.
She stared at the pile of shrimp tails, the empty mussel and clam shells and racked her brain for something to say. All the fantasizing about making love to this man had come down to this. She was scared to death. A busboy removed the dishes. On his heels a waiter arrived to ask about dessert. He reeled off a list of offerings that included a dense, chocolatey and highly caloric confection she’d first tasted in Valencia.
“I usually cover my ears at this point,” she said, although on her own, she would have ordered three of everything. Buried her face in chocolate goo. “Anyway, I’m stuffed.”
“Ah, come on. This is Christmas Eve. I think you should indulge.” Martin glanced at the waiter. “One of the chocolate things and a couple of cognacs.”
“You’re wicked.” Catherine shook her head at him, tried to relax. “Dissolute.”
“One of my better qualities actually.” He put his elbows on the table, leaned forward, eyes on her face. “Are you all right? You seem a bit tense.”
She grinned, relieved to have it out between them. “You could say that.”
“What is it? The kids? Us?”
“All of it.” She looked at him. “But especially the us part. All I’ve been able to think of is being with you tonight, and now I’m suddenly panicking…I don’t know, it’s not like I’m twenty and flawless. There are bags and sags.” She stopped. “Jeez, even with the wine I’m getting embarrassed.”
“Catherine.” He caught her hands. “I’m not twenty and flawless either. I wouldn’t even want twenty and flawless—”
“I know…neither would I.” She laughed. “It sounds so stupid now, but I went shopping earlier today.” She told him about the lingerie shop experience. “And I just sort of freaked.”
He grinned, shook his head and stared at her for a moment. “You don’t have a very accurate perception of yourself, do you? You’re a good-looking woman. Desirable, sensuous…”
She looked at him, bit her lip. “Thank you.”
“I mean it. It’s difficult for me to even imagine why you’d worry.”
“Maybe it’s a woman thing, I don’t know.”
He moved his glass on the table, looked at her. “Listen, if you’d rather not—”
“No, I want to. God, this is ridiculous. I’m coming off like some blushing teenage virgin—”
“Well, you’re blushing—”
“I know, my face feels as though it’s on fire.” She sat back in her chair as the waiter brought the cognac and dessert, drank some water, let the ice melt in her mouth.
Martin raised his glass. “What shall we drink to?”
“Christmas.” She touched her glass to his, watched his face for a moment. Imagined spending other Christmas Eves with him. No. Not allowed. “Tell me what you’re thinking right now,” she said, mostly just to block out her thoughts.
“Given your concerns—” he met her eyes “—it might not be wise.”
“Tell me.” She held her glass in both hands, stared at him over the rim. “Come on.”
“Of ripping off your clothes, throwing you onto the bed and making love to you for most of the night.” His knees touched hers. “
And then waking up in the morning with you next to me and doing it all over again.”
She swallowed. Desire fought nerves and won hands down. God, she wanted him. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“Tell me.”
She slowly licked chocolate mousse off her spoon, stared into his eyes.
“Really?”
“Mmm.” The tip of her tongue circled the bowl of the spoon. “I wasn’t sure you spoke that language.” She smiled slowly. “But I’m glad you do.”
He slipped one shoe off and, his eyes on her face, ran his foot up the inside of her thigh. She spread her legs slightly, wriggled against his toe.
“If you keep doing that,” he said, “I might have to take you right here.”
She glanced around the crowded restaurant, then her eyes went back to him. “Right on the table?”
He swallowed. “Uh-huh.”
Her face went hot. “No clothes on?”
“Completely naked.”
“Spread out across the table?”
He nodded, watching her eyes.
“Do you think anyone would mind?”
He grinned. “Who cares?”
She glanced down at the front of her dress. Her nipples were erect against the fabric. “Look at me.”
“You should see me.”
They both spoke at once. “Let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“CHEZ CONNAUGHTON.” Tie undone, jacket opened, Martin put his arm around Catherine’s shoulders, and they walked down the wooden gangway to the boat. At the bottom, they stopped and kissed. Her hands in his hair, tongue in his mouth. He tasted chocolate, wine. Heat.
“I just want you to know…” She smiled into his eyes. “That at this very moment, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend Christmas Eve than being here with you.”
The Doctor Delivers Page 24