A Mother For His Child

by Lilian Darcy

‘So why didn’t you tell me that was the problem, Danny-guy?’ Will shook his head and laughed. ‘Like that’s a sensible question when you’re two years old! Come here, little man!’

  He pulled his son off Maggie’s lap, held him high for a moment then crushed him in his arms and kissed him resoundingly, still laughing. ‘I love you! Don’t you ever do that again, OK? You’ve made your mouth all sore. Are you ever going to do that again?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Good boy. I must tell Sonia. No coins to be left around.’

  Daniel laid his head on Will’s shoulder.

  ‘Looking tired,’ Maggie said softly.

  ‘I should think so!’ Will didn’t look at her. He kissed his son again and bent to tuck him into bed. ‘Here’s Poddy for you to hug. Want a song?’

  “‘Hush, Little Baby”.’

  ‘OK, I’ll sing “Hush, Little Baby”.’

  Maggie went out of the room and down the stairs without a word. If Will noticed she was gone, he probably wouldn’t care. She felt angry suddenly, and when he appeared two minutes later she couldn’t hold back the flood of words.

  ‘You won’t even let me give him a hug! When I ask about him at work, you dismiss the question with a one-word answer, as if you don’t think I’m interested. Or as if you don’t want me to be. When we get together, it’s always at night, after he’s asleep. For sex, in other words.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  She ignored him. ‘What harm can a hug do? Maybe I should be flattered that you think being in my arms is that potent and dangerous. I want you to let me into his life, Will!’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘Let you into his life? With an occasional hug?’

  ‘More than that!’

  ‘You’re damned right there’s more! Having a child—especially a child like Daniel—isn’t like picking up a lamb at a petting zoo, Maggie.’

  ‘Do you really think you need to tell me that? Any kind of relationship has to start somewhere. With a hug or two. I want to start. I need to, if this thing between us is going to be anything more than a quickie now and then, when we can squeeze one in. But you won’t even let me get a foot in the door!’

  Will closed his eyes. He felt too tired for this tonight. Maggie didn’t know what she was asking. Or should he give her more credit than that? Maybe she did know. He knew that both of them were getting more deeply into this than he’d intended. All the tension that had built between them years ago had still been lurking in the background. And he was finding that he knew her better than he’d realised. Liked her more. Admired her more. Respected her more. He wanted her in his life as a professional partner and as a lover.

  Not as a wife. Not as a mother for Daniel. Dear lord, he wasn’t anywhere near ready to fill those roles again, and wasn’t sure that he ever could be. He didn’t want her to hug Daniel, to play with him, to earn his love. Daniel didn’t consciously remember losing his mother, but he was getting older now. The next time he lost someone he had been taught to care about, he would feel the loss.

  ‘I’m not going to set Daniel up to be hurt, Maggie.’ The emotion was as thick as glue in his throat.

  ‘Why do you think I’ll hurt him? Don’t you trust—?’

  ‘It’s not about trust,’ he cut in. ‘I do trust you. I can’t imagine that you’d ever let him down if you could possibly help it. It’s about…What do they say in the military about classified information? That it’s given on a need-to-know basis? Well, that’s how I feel about the people in my son’s life. The only people I want to let in, at this stage, are the people who really need to be there. You don’t. We can have the kind of relationship we want without it impinging on Daniel at all, and—’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ she said icily. ‘Say that sentence again, Will, and this time don’t use the word “we”. The kind of relationship you want. That’s what you’re talking about.’

  She turned on her heel, and was halfway to the front door before he fully registered the fact that she was planning to leave. A sickening wave of rebellion and regret hit him and he strode after her, reaching for her.

  ‘No, Maggie.’ She had her arms folded across her chest, hugging herself as if she were cold. The gesture was familiar to him now. ‘We have to finish this.’

  ‘It is finished.’

  ‘You never said that what we’ve started wasn’t working for you.’

  His hands came to rest on her shoulders. She didn’t pull away, but she was glaring at him fiercely.

  ‘It was working,’ she said. ‘It is. But I want Daniel to be a part of it. I don’t want to feel that we can never have lunch, or go out for a boat trip—those things we did when you were first here with him two months ago—because I’m somehow a danger to your child. Or because all you need from me is one thing—sex—and that can be slotted conveniently into the hours after dark. That’s—’

  ‘Not what I want either,’ he told her urgently. ‘I’m sorry. It’s more than that. Much more, and I put it all very badly just now. But…’ he took a deep breath, and knew it wouldn’t be fair to her if he didn’t say this ‘…it can’t include Daniel. Not yet. Walk away, if that’s what you have to do. I’ll understand. But I…just can’t…be the one to compromise on this. Not after what happened with Alison.’

  She searched his face with her blue gaze. He wasn’t even sure if she’d taken in that last, muttered sentence of his. ‘Do you want me to walk away?’

  ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I don’t. Not at all. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t blame you if you did.’

  ‘You really know how to issue a challenge, don’t you, Will Braggett?’ Maggie whispered. She took a deep, unsteady breath, her arms still across her chest, and felt the way his gaze dropped to her breasts.

  ‘You always do this,’ he said. ‘You don’t know how it makes you look.’

  ‘Round-shouldered, probably!’ she joked shakily.

  ‘Vulnerable…’

  ‘I—I expect so.’

  ‘And sexy,’ he added.

  Startled at the word, she looked up at him.

  ‘Yes, believe that!’ he said. ‘Look how it lifts your breasts and makes them look so full. Are you still here, Maggie?’ he whispered, bringing his mouth to within an inch of hers. ‘Or are you leaving?’

  ‘I’m still here. I won’t walk out just yet.’

  ‘Can’t tell you how glad I am about that. I want you here. I want you.’

  ‘Yes. I want you, too,’ she answered him, wondering what he’d say if she replaced ‘want’ with ‘love’.

  Earlier tonight, she’d surrendered to his strength. She’d felt protected. Now, as so often in her life, she was the one who had to find the courage—the courage to cling to something that held no promises. For the moment, she could do it, but she didn’t know how long that would last.

  ‘I want you, too, Will,’ she repeated, as her mouth brushed his.

  He kissed her, pulled her hips close against his body, then trailed his mouth across her jaw and down. His hands were warm and sure on her breasts through her silk top. Maggie couldn’t suppress her responsive shudder, or control the way her nipples peaked and hardened inside her bra. His thumbs found them, slid over them, back and forth. He slipped bra straps and top from her shoulders, then just kept kissing her, while the silk slid slowly down her arms and the satin cups fell slowly forward.

  He dipped his head to fasten his hot mouth to one nipple and then the other, lifting her fullness with his palm. Her bra was a useless impediment, halfway down to her waist. He took her nipple between his teeth and pressed gently, then lifted his head, still cupping her breast as if to show her the evidence contained in the darkened, puckered pink of its tip. ‘Look how responsive you are! I love that.’

  She gasped and couldn’t speak as he held the taut, pointed nipple against his hand and made slow, erotic circles of its areola with his thumb while she watched every movement.

  She hardly knew how they reached the bed
, nor whose hands undressed who. Her mouth was hungry and feverish on his skin, tasting him, exploring his pulse points and his unique pattern of satin-smooth skin and silky male hair.

  Will’s arousal was hard and insistent against her lower belly and between her thighs, and she thought raggedly, I’ll never get close enough. Even when he’s inside me, it won’t be close enough.

  She wrapped her legs around him, urging him with whispered words to complete their joining. Her fingers raked through his hair and she flung her head back onto the pillow as he began to move rhythmically on top of her, then arched up to kiss him again.

  ‘Wait…wait,’ he urged her.

  ‘No. Please, don’t make me be patient! I can’t!’

  She was already throbbing, desperate and almost crying with need. He couldn’t hold himself back either. Managed to only long enough to reach for protection and get it into place with her eager, caressing help. Their climax, moments later, was a shared entwining of raw, wordless sensation which left them both breathless and spent.

  Held hard in arms that were still tight and convulsed with the immediate aftermath of his release, Maggie felt a wave of love and need wash through her like some alien force.

  Oh, dear God, tell me how I’ll bear it if I ever have to do without this man in my life! she prayed feverishly. Tell me how I’d go on eating, laughing, breathing without Will Braggett in my life!

  I don’t think I could.

  What this meant about the future, she hardly dared to think. All she knew was that she couldn’t afford to lose her courage now.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘HAVE you laid in a good stock of candy for this afternoon, Dr Lawless?’ Marilyn asked. She was bringing her employer a post-lunch mug of coffee.

  ‘Candy?’ Maggie’s mind was a blank for a moment, then she remembered. ‘Oh, lord, Hallowe’en!’

  ‘That’s why your appointment list ends at three today,’ Marilyn reminded her.

  Maggie and Mark had made a point of ending early on Hallowe’en, so they could enjoy dispensing candy in their own time, instead of dealing with kids turning up in costume in the practice’s waiting room.

  ‘Dr Braggett showed me little Daniel’s costume,’ Marilyn went on. ‘He’s going to be a brown velvet kangaroo. If he’s willing to put it on.’

  ‘Is there some doubt?’

  ‘Apparently. I’m sure he’ll get over it. I want to see pictures!’

  Maggie bit her lip. ‘I’ll have to run to the store for some chocolate bars.’

  ‘I have some for here in the office if we get any early birds.’

  After her office closed, Maggie usually sat on her front steps to dispense her candy, snug in a coat and hat and gloves. She would watch the parade of children stop at each house. There would be shy little three-year-old fairies and superheroes, holding a parent’s hand, too young to remember when they’d done this last year. There would be cheeky ten-year-old ghosts and witches, tallying the contents of their pumpkin-shaped baskets with greedy glee.

  This year, she’d hardly thought about it. Will hadn’t mentioned Daniel’s kangaroo costume to her, although she’d spent yesterday evening at his house. As usual, in deference to his protective attitude towards Daniel, she hadn’t stayed the night. It was just over two weeks since their flare-up on the subject, and she was no longer sure whether her willingness to stay in the relationship came from courage or weakness. Her own mother had put up with a disastrous marriage for thirty years. Sometimes it was braver to get out…

  Meanwhile, her patients’ lives went on. Will had told her what he knew about Tyler Bailey’s genetic IgA deficiency, and she’d phoned a paediatrician colleague to hear a second opinion, which had backed up Will’s knowledge in full.

  It was an important problem, but not the serious impediment that she had at first feared. Chest infections needed prompt treatment to ward off permanent lung damage later in life. Blood transfusions would be a danger, as Tyler’s body would treat the IgA antibodies in someone else’s blood as a hostile foreign substance and would go into anaphylactic shock. There was a strong indication that he should receive treatment for asthma—the ‘silent’ type, which could be every bit as dangerous as the more dramatic attacks which led to diagnosis earlier in life. A Medic-alert necklace or bracelet was advisable also.

  Kathy Sullivan had come in the previous week for another long appointment to talk about pain relief and strategies for increasing her mobility. The combined effect of rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia was debilitating, but she was feeling more on top of her illness at the moment and wanted to get a new routine in place, ready to combat the next bad stretch. Her hair was coloured a rich burgundy and stretched back from her face in a series of corn-row braids, finished with clicking wooden beads at the ends.

  Maggie saw Matthew at the same time. His recovery had been slow, but was now almost complete. He would be returning to school next week, after physical therapy had dealt with his initial difficulty in regaining mobility.

  Vince Licari was still in hospital, fighting a serious infection in his crushed leg. He was responding to a battery of antibiotics, however, and should be discharged soon. Ray’s wife Helen had come in for a routine appointment this morning and had filled Maggie in on her brother-in-law’s condition before announcing happily, ‘I’m pregnant!’

  ‘And still married?’ Maggie teased. ‘Ray thought you and Gina would both be very angry about what happened, since you hadn’t wanted them to go up there with the chain-saw on their own.’

  ‘Well, we would have been angry, only they gave us such a huge dose of total panic first that we didn’t have any room left for any other emotions.’

  Ten minutes after Marilyn had reminded her about Trick or Treat, Maggie was taking a moment to scribble some notes between patients. She was still wondering in the back of her mind, Lollipops? Chocolate bars? Candy canes?

  Marilyn buzzed through to tell her, ‘There’s someone on the phone for you, Dr Lawless. She won’t give her name, but says she’s in the area, and that she’s an old friend.’

  ‘That’s odd, a so-called friend who won’t give her name.’

  ‘Yes, I thought so. Shall I tell her you’re not available?’

  Maggie sighed and said, ‘No, put her through.’ She didn’t like to reject a caller out of hand.

  ‘Maggie?’ said a familiar voice.

  ‘Alison!’ At some level, suddenly, she wasn’t surprised. It seemed obvious that Alison would, of course, call her at some stage now that she was in partnership with Alison’s ex-husband. ‘How are you?’

  She knew that her tone wasn’t quite natural. She felt awkward about this. Will took up so much space in her thoughts at the moment, and this was Will’s ex-wife. Daniel’s mother, too. Will had spoken cryptically about ‘what happened with Alison’. Apart from that, he’d let very little slip about his feelings for Maggie’s old friend, and she hadn’t dared to ask. Suddenly, she needed to know more.

  ‘My office manager said you were in the area…’ she went on carefully, prompting the other woman.

  ‘Yes, and I’d like to see you, Maggie. We need to talk. Is this afternoon good for you? Say, three-thirty?’

  ‘It’s Hallowe’en.’

  ‘Oh, do you have a party?’

  ‘No, but I usually like to sit out and watch the kids coming past, and—It’s OK,’ she interrupted herself. ‘Three-thirty is fine. I wish you’d told me ahead of time that you were coming!’

  Alison gave a significant laugh. ‘Do you?’

  Good point. What would she have done with the information? Spilled it to Will? Where did her loyalty now lie?

  Determined to keep an open mind and give what she owed to an old friend, Maggie chose to ignore the innuendo beneath Alison’s question. ‘It would have given us more time to catch up,’ she said steadily. ‘I know you’ve had a difficult time. When are you heading back home? Maybe on the weekend we could—?’

  ‘No, I have to leave first thing
tomorrow. I’m really at a conference in New York City. I’m just here at the Craigiemoor for one night. Meet me in the lobby and we’ll go to the bar or something.’

  ‘No, wait in your room, Alison, because I can’t guarantee to the minute when I’ll get there. I’m on call, and if anything crops up…’

  It was lucky she’d said it, because something did. Marilyn put through a panicky phone call at twenty past two from an isolated house on the opposite shore of the lake.

  ‘Dr Lawless, it’s Sharon Muhler.’ She sounded breathless, shaky and terrified. ‘Jamie can’t breathe. Frank’s taken the truck. I was going to get the boat, but I tripped going down the steps. I think I’ve broken my ankle.’ She began to gasp and sob.

  ‘Slow down, Sharon,’ Maggie said. ‘It’s Jamie’s asthma?’

  ‘Yes, and his inhaler’s not doing anything. He doesn’t sound wheezy any more but he’s struggling. He can’t even talk. I think he’s going to die.’ She gasped again. ‘And we’re stuck here. I can’t walk.’

  ‘You don’t have the nebuliser?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘I’m coming across, OK? Just keep him calm, as calm as you possibly can.’ Maggie cut the connection without waiting for a reply. She buzzed straight through to Will and told him urgently, ‘Drop everything now. We’ve got a patient with severe status asthmaticus across the lake who can’t get to the hospital, and I have no doubt that it’s life-threatening.’

  Her heart was racing. When an asthma patient couldn’t talk…

  ‘What do you need me to do?’ The steady question calmed Maggie’s rising fear just a little.

  ‘I’ll start the boat,’ she said, ‘if you can get the oxygen kit, nebuliser, drugs. Call the ambulance and meet me at the dock.’

  ‘There’s a water-rescue team—’

  ‘Based too far south for this. We can be a lot quicker.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  Maggie gabbled the story to Marilyn, who began to reschedule their waiting patients straight away. At the dock, she had to force herself to breathe steadily, knowing she’d flood the outboard motor or make some other elementary mistake if she let her fear take over. She had the engine warmed up and idling and the boat untied by the time Will arrived with the equipment. The little craft rocked as he passed it down to her, and rocked harder as he leaped in.