A Mother For His Child

by Lilian Darcy

  ‘That’s something you might try some time,’ Will said calmly.

  She frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Not thinking about why,’ he answered. ‘Just feeling what you feel. Not fighting it because of some idea you’ve got in your head about what you ought to feel. Or ought not to. You’re still confusing me, Maggie.’

  She froze. ‘Where is this coming from, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to talk about it?’ he drawled. ‘Yesterday, Maggie. It’s coming from yesterday.’

  ‘We did talk about it.’

  ‘Maybe I’ve got more to say.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  She expected him to keep pushing, but he only shrugged. After they’d finished bowling—Daniel scored a strike and a spare—they headed back towards Picnic Point, stopping on the way for ice cream. Daniel had plain strawberry, Will had some elaborate concoction involving fudge and chocolate-chip cookie dough, and Maggie had a scoop of coffee and one of hazelnut.

  ‘Very good ice cream available in upstate New York,’ Will said, as if this was another serious reason why he should join her practice.

  ‘You can get good ice cream all over the United States,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I think it tastes even better closer to the manufacturing source. If I was here for longer, I’d take Daniel across Lake Champlain to Vermont and we’d do the tour of the factory.’

  ‘It’s fun,’ Maggie agreed. ‘Mark and I did it a few years ago.’

  She wanted the mention of Mark to take away this terrible sense of delight in Will’s company, but it didn’t work. She’d loved Mark, and she’d grieved, but much of that grieving had taken place while he’d still been alive. She’d had the bitter-sweet good fortune to have the help of Mark himself in coming to terms with his loss.

  And he’d urged her more than once, ‘When this is over, when you’ve had some time, find someone else.’

  She remembered one particular time he’d said it, during his very last weeks of life, lying on the couch while the fall colour blazed outside.

  ‘Find someone else. Don’t wait for too long. You should have children. You should have passion, Maggie!’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  ‘I am! How can I help it? I’m going to lose you!’

  ‘No. That’s not…what I meant.’

  She remembered that Mark had closed his eyes and drifted into sleep, exhausted at that point, before he’d been able to explain any further. She had shied away from bringing the subject up again the next time they’d talked. Now, suddenly, she regretted it.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he’d urged her.

  Not of his death? Then of what?

  ‘Finished, little guy?’ Will was saying easily.

  Daniel nodded, his mouth and chin covered in soft, sticky pink.

  ‘Shall we head up to your place now, and I’ll go out again to pick up some take-out later on? There’s a Chinese restaurant in Warrensburg, isn’t there?’

  Maggie nodded. ‘Maybe a couple of them. Haven’t been there for a while. Or I could cook. Spaghetti? Does Daniel like that?’

  ‘Let’s see how he holds up. I may need to give him eggs or something, and we’ll eat later.’

  They had driven in separate cars so that Maggie wouldn’t have to drive Will and Daniel back to their hotel later in the evening. When they reached her place, Will told her, ‘He almost fell asleep in the car, so I think I will have to feed him early. It’s five-thirty already, and he’s had a busy day. If he has a late nap now, he’ll be up until midnight. Can I invade your kitchen?’

  ‘No, you can play with him in the living-room while I cook,’ she said firmly. ‘Go through and get the box of waiting-room toys, if you like. And how does he like his eggs?’

  ‘Poached. One will be enough. With toast fingers.’

  ‘It sounds so good I’d have it myself if take-out Chinese didn’t sound just a little bit better!’

  They grinned at each other, and even the safe topic of Daniel and his dinner suddenly wasn’t so safe any more.

  Within half an hour, the little boy was fed and getting grumpy and sleepy. Will found a storybook in the box of toys and read to him on the couch while Maggie responded to a call from her answering service. When she came back, Daniel was asleep in a nest of bright cushions and Will was in the act of sneaking his arm out from beneath one warm little head.

  As soon as he stood, their eyes met and held. She knew he was holding the contact deliberately. Wanted to look away from those dark depths but couldn’t. Didn’t manage to until, with a welcome jolt of reality, her stomach rumbled loudly.

  She seized on it and said quite fiercely, ‘I’m so hungry!’

  ‘Well, yes, there’s that,’ he agreed, as if it wasn’t at all what he wanted to think about.

  ‘We’d better order something. I have a menu somewhere. In a drawer. I’ll…’

  She didn’t finish, just got herself clumsily out of the room, feeling her heart galloping in her chest. When she’d found the menu, she used it like a shield, and darted the possible options at him defensively. Fried rice? Shrimp? Something with noodles?

  ‘I’ll pick it up,’ she said. ‘In case Daniel wakes up.’

  ‘I doubt he will.’

  ‘Or in case I get called out.’

  ‘OK, yes, that makes sense.’

  But it didn’t happen. She arrived safely back with their meal and they ate out on the deck. It was a gorgeous evening. The late August air was dry and clear and balmy, and people were still out in boats of all kinds. A group of children splashed and shrieked at the little curve of public beach several houses to the north.

  Maggie had a small glass of wine. Too small, surely, to make her feel like this? She was flushed and fluttery and aware of every pulse point in her body. Weak, too. Scared. Not in control.

  She thought back on the shifting pattern of their interactions since Friday night and the panic only grew stronger. She was a mess when Will Braggett was around! A complete mess. The cloak of sharp-tongued intelligence she pulled around herself in order to deal with her attraction to him was pathetic. If Will hadn’t seen through it successfully in his early twenties, he certainly saw through it now, and he didn’t trouble to hide the fact.

  Look at him! Look at the way he was smiling at her! Without Alison here to command her loyalty, the only real defence she’d ever had against him was gone. What was she going to do about it?

  ‘I—I think we should talk about why you’re here,’ she began. Lord, she couldn’t manage a fraction of her usual directness and clarity. She’d grown worse with the passage of the years, not better! ‘We’ve…uh…had a couple of days. We’ve both had a chance to get to know each other again and to think.’

  ‘Cut to the chase, Maggie,’ he growled. He was watching her steadily.

  ‘OK.’ She took a deep breath, felt heat fill her cheeks and prickle beneath her armpits. ‘I don’t think it could work. I think you should look elsewhere.’

  He was silent for about five seconds, then said, ‘Not because we can’t exchange a civil word. That’s not why you’re saying this.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed.

  ‘We’ve done pretty well at that today.’

  ‘Yes, we have. With a little help from Daniel. He’s gorgeous, Will. You make a great father. I should apologise for not seeing years ago that there was a lot more inside you than I gave you credit for.’

  ‘Apology received, accepted and filed.’ He took a breath. ‘OK, Maggie, then it’s because we kissed.’

  Oh, hell!

  ‘Yes.’ She stared down, blood pounding in her ears.

  This time, his silence went on for much longer. Finally, he said softly, ‘Look up, Maggie.’

  ‘Uh…’ She managed it, at the same time as she felt his forefinger stroke her upturned wrist, from the crook of her elbow down to her palm. He was leaning towards her across the table.

  ‘That’s not a very good re
ason, you know.’ His eyes had darkened perceptibly and his lips were parted.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I—I know.’

  ‘In fact, I’d argue it’s a reason for reaching the opposite decision. We’re adults, Maggie, and we’re free to feel this way.’ He leaned closer and said at last, very distinctly, ‘Two separate issues, but in both cases I know exactly what I want. Take me on as a partner in your practice some time within the next couple of months. And for tonight, come to bed with me.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘COME to bed with me.’ The words echoed over and over in Maggie’s mind.

  The only shock came in the fact that Will had actually said it. Fifteen years since they’d first met when they’d both been just eighteen, he’d plucked all that nameless, painful, hostile awareness out of the air, forced it into words and spoken them aloud.

  Which was, yes, a shock.

  Maggie’s sharp inbreath was too jerky to qualify as a gasp. She grazed her front teeth roughly over her bottom lip.

  ‘Will, w-what do you think that would s-solve?’ she stammered. ‘After all this time.’

  It didn’t even occur to her to protest a lack of desire. Four of his fingers were tracing patterns on her wrist now, sending tendrils of need snaking and coiling all the way up her arm and radiating through her body.

  There was no pause before his reply.

  ‘Are we talking about solving anything?’ He stretched his other arm across the table and brushed his thumb across the lip she’d just savaged with her teeth for the second time. ‘Don’t,’ he instructed her absently, as if he’d been talking to Daniel.

  She laughed awkwardly in response to his question. ‘I guess we’re not.’ She stood up awkwardly, ready to flee to the greater privacy of the house, and he followed her, making a mockery of her attempt at escape.

  ‘We both want it,’ he said, turning her into his arms. ‘Isn’t that enough? Hell, it blew me away when I realised that the other night! And it’s good! There’s nothing in the way. The partnership is a separate issue, which you need to make a decision on once I’m back in Arizona. That’s in the future. This is happening now. Let’s go to bed now.’

  He bent to touch his mouth to her stretched throat, and laced his fingers behind her, at her waist. She felt her strength ebbing, and arched her back. His lips trailed lower, reaching the dent between the two wings of her collarbone. She shuddered as he moved lower, giving the hot moisture of his mouth to her skin where it met the round neckline of her clinging T-shirt.

  He rocked her hips in his hands, slowly easing her against him, and already she could feel his arousal, a hard, emphatic punctuation point to his whispered words. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  He sketched in blunt, urgent terms exactly what he wanted to do to her when they got there and, instead of shocking her, it made every nerve-ending in her body crawl with need. Here was a man who wasn’t afraid of targeting his goals.

  But what about her fear? With a new clarity of outlook, she could see it sitting in front of her in all its terrible detail, like a strange, misshapen fruit. If she embarked on a sexual relationship with Will Braggett, she would be vulnerable, the way her mother had been in her long, miserable marriage, and the way Maggie herself had shied away from becoming when she’d married a friend rather than a lover.

  And she was terrified of that vulnerability.

  What had she said to Will just a couple of hours ago, though? ‘The best way to conquer your fear is to go even faster.’ She might have known those challenging words would come back to haunt her!

  ‘Help me, Will,’ she whispered to him fiercely, not remotely knowing what she was asking him to do.

  She grabbed fistfuls of fabric at his waist, needing his hard body. Her hands roamed over him, over the strong knots of his hip bones, the taut stretch of his thighs.

  ‘Just answer, Maggie,’ he begged. He captured and imprisoned both her hands in his and brought them up between their two bodies, cushioned against the fullness of her breasts. ‘Just say yes or no, that’s all you need to do.’

  He kissed her once, twice, three times, his mouth breaking the contact immediately and deliberately, every time she moved and parted her lips, so that she was left panting, chasing him with her mouth and her tongue, wanting more.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed at last, dizzy with the effort of finding her courage. ‘Oh, yes…’

  She saw the satisfaction and certainty blaze once more in his face. He picked her up and swung her around, set her unsteadily on her feet then put his arms around her and practically dragged her inside the house. Or she dragged him. They closed and locked the sliding door, then stopped to kiss hungrily, both of them tasting of wine.

  His hands engulfed her breasts, and the barrier of the rust-red T-shirt and smooth cupped bra did nothing to lessen the electricity of his touch. She was throbbing in places she’d forgotten about, and places she’d never discovered before.

  ‘Upstairs,’ she said, and seized his hand.

  The room she led him to was the one she’d used in the last months of Mark’s life and ever since—at first because his nights had been so difficult he’d no longer allowed her to suffer through his disturbed sleep and then, after his death, because it had been too painful to think of moving back to the bed they’d shared.

  Shared, and, yes, made love in, once a month or so, with more affection than passion. That had satisfied her then.

  She liked the guest double at the end of the corridor where she slept now, with windows that looked north, like the ones in Mark’s office. As they passed the master bedroom, however, she saw Will’s quick glance through the open door and felt her first moment of doubt.

  Should it be there? Would that seal it somehow? Or show it up as a disaster? They passed the room and she pointed ahead. ‘Here is where I sleep.’

  ‘You won’t be tonight,’ he growled. ‘If I have anything to do with it, you’ll barely sleep at all.’

  Maggie had never surrendered her body like this before. She hadn’t known it was possible to become so lost in physical sensation. His hands were masterful and impatient as he undressed her, peeling her T-shirt over her head, un-clipping her bra, covering her breasts and lifting them to his eager, lowered mouth.

  When he drew hard on each nipple in turn, she gasped, and when he thrust his hands inside the back of her jeans she ached for him to touch her even more intimately. Clumsily, she tried to pull down her front zip, but he took her hands away.

  ‘Let me do it,’ he said. ‘Oh, heavens, Maggie, you’re so beautiful, I can’t wait to see the rest of you!’

  She lay there, too overwhelmed to move, and watched him pull off his own clothes. He wore his nakedness with ease, and she was stunned at the male perfection of his body. Every muscle was cleanly drawn, every stretch of skin smooth across the strong bone structure beneath.

  Maggie lifted her arms, impatient for him, and he stretched and lowered himself slowly on top of her. His weight felt so right, and his mouth was perfect. They rolled sideways to lie against each other and she kissed him over and over. His lips, his throat, the tiny points of his nipples in their soft thicket of hair. His response was intense and complete. No games. He was feeling all of this as strongly as she was.

  By instinct, he seemed to know how to pleasure her, finding the secret places where she was most sensitive and taking his sweet, sweet time to build her need to breaking point. In the end, she heard herself begging, ‘Don’t make me wait. I’m ready. Please, Will…’

  Their release came in unison, and left her still pulsing in its aftermath. She could feel her heart thumping against his curved back as they lay together, and wondered if he felt it, too. His eyes were closed and he didn’t speak.

  There was no going back now. Pressed against him so intimately, she had no doubt of that.

  A possibility that had teased at her awareness for almost fifteen years had finally become real, crystallised into a wild hour that she knew she would remember for the res
t of her life. No matter what either of them decided about the partnership, making love with Will was going to be, on the intricate map of her emotional life, far too important.

  ‘Dr Mead called here three times this morning,’ Rebecca Dawson told Will.

  He frowned. The manager of Phoenix’s Cactus Valley Child-Care Center had taken him into her private office to give him this information, and now she was watching him with a troubled face.

  ‘I wasn’t sure what to tell her,’ she went on.

  ‘Alison knows Daniel and I are leaving today,’ he answered. ‘I’ve kept her fully informed. What did she want?’

  ‘The first time she asked if Daniel was here today. Then she asked if you were here. Then she wanted to know what time you were picking him up.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I told her, yes, Daniel was here and, no, you weren’t here yet and, no, I didn’t know what time you were coming for him. I hope that was all right.’

  ‘It was fine. You did the right thing,’ he assured her.

  He wasn’t sure what Rebecca thought, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d had formal, court-sanctioned instructions not to release a child into the care of one of its parents, and to give as little information as possible about that child over the phone. She was probably far more at ease with the situation than he was.

  Hell, he hadn’t wanted it all to end like this! Alison had been the one who’d taken the custody issue to court as soon as they’d separated. Alison was the one who had wanted all or nothing, turning their flawed little boy into a possession to fight over. She’d been the one who’d essentially kidnapped Daniel during one of her court-assigned weeks with him, had refused to give him back, had threatened Will with violence and attempted to prevent him from ever seeing his child at all.

  She’d done more than that. Will didn’t want to dwell on it, but couldn’t help the litany of her desperate actions from tolling itself in his head anyway. Harassing phone calls all through the night, vicious letters, a police restraining order taken out against him—which she had then been the one to violate. The police had arrested him, until he’d been able to prove that she’d been the one who’d had initiated the contact.