The Magnificent M.D.

by Carol Grace

  “You’re envious of a teenage, unmarried mother?” he asked incredulously. “She’s more likely envious of you. Hayley Bancroft, the cream of New Hope society, with your education and your looks, you’ve got everything.”

  “I don’t have a baby,” she blurted, frantically blinking back the tears that welled up in her eyes as the memories came rushing back. She hadn’t cried the night she lost the baby. She shouldn’t cry now. But she did. She couldn’t stop.

  “I didn’t know you wanted one,” he said with a frown.

  “I don’t.” Her shoulders shook as the tears poured down her face.

  “Are you crying?” he asked. He sounded shocked. As if he’d never seen her cry before. As if she was an ice queen. The girl who had everything. Except a baby.

  She didn’t speak. Couldn’t say anything. Her throat was clogged with the effort to stem the tide of pain and envy and tears. He pulled off the highway and stopped the car. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward him. When she kept her eyes on her hands in her lap, he tilted her chin with his hand and brushed a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. His touch was so gentle she cried harder than ever—loud, unladylike, gulping sobs that threatened to swamp them both.

  “I’m s-s-sorry,” she stammered. All these years. All the tears she’d never shed for herself she was crying now.

  “Sorry for what?” he asked.

  “For being such a wimp.”

  “You’re not a wimp,” he said. Then he gripped her shoulders and kissed away her tears, from her eyes, her cheeks and then he found her mouth. He kissed her gently at first, healing kisses as if she were a wounded dove, so fragile she might break. Then as she got stronger, as she responded like an aroused woman, came hotter, wetter kisses, that stirred her soul and made her heart pound, made her forget the pain and the envy and the sadness. Made her forget everything but him.

  He filled her senses with his masculine scent, part doctor, part town bad boy, with the touch of his clever hands, the hands that could save lives and deliver babies and with the pressure of his mouth on hers. He filled her soul with something else, something that felt like love. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought…would have hoped…but of course it wasn’t love. Sam Prentice didn’t love her. He’d forgotten all about her. Never even tried to get in touch with her all these years. It was lust, pure and simple. For the moment it would have to do. It was what she needed. It made her forget about envy, about her longing for a baby.

  He pressed her back against the passenger door, and she wound her arms around his neck and returned his kisses, desperate to feel the heat from his body, to inhale the all-male scent of him. To wipe out the memories of the pain of her loss and the loneliness that she’d never forgotten. Never would forget.

  These kisses were nothing like those frantic, desperate, clandestine kisses they’d exchanged so long ago. They were adults now, free of constraints, with no one to keep tabs on them. No one who would burst into the playhouse and set off the alarm. No one to set the dogs loose, to chase him over the fence, where he’d ripped his pants before landing safely on the other side, while her parents screamed at him and she’d watched helplessly.

  And yet there was something so achingly familiar, so intimate about his kisses, about the way he cupped the back of her head, his fingers threaded through her hair as if they’d never been apart. Even though they’d never really been together. It was as if they belonged together. He kissed her like a hungry man who’d been starving for the past seventeen years. She knew the feeling. She was just as hungry. Even more so. He slid his tongue along the seam of her lips and teased her until a rush of heat filled her body and she opened to him. Welcomed him. Joined him in the most passionate dance of her life. He made her feel reckless and free. As if anything was possible. And it was. At least for tonight.

  She wanted to make love to him. She wanted to finish what they’d started so many years ago. Because if she didn’t, she would go through the rest of her life as unfulfilled as she had been the past seventeen years. Wanting what she couldn’t have. Wanting him. First because he was the town bad boy, and now because he was a high-priced surgeon she couldn’t afford. But tonight the playing field was level. They could finally have what they’d been denied so long ago.

  She’d spent all this time playing what-if…. What if Grandpa hadn’t told the police about him. What if she’d followed him out of town. What if she’d gotten in touch with him years ago. What if he’d come back. He was back. Not for ever. Not for long. And certainly not for her. But for now he was back. In her house. In her arms. They wanted each other. Not forever. For now. Tonight.

  She knew it; he knew it. So why resist? She didn’t. She gave in to the pressure of his mouth and of his big, skillful, surgeon’s hands that cradled her face. His kisses were nothing like the kisses of a hot-blooded teenager and yet they were everything like it. Everything that happened in the past was part of what was happening now. She kissed him back with all the passion she’d been saving up for seventeen years.

  He moaned in the back of his throat and he dragged her across the seat until she was sitting in his lap.

  “Hey,” he said, tipping his head back to look at her with heavy-lidded, sexy eyes and slipping his hand under her shirt and her lace bra until he covered her left breast. “I can feel your heart pounding.”

  She gasped. His hand was cool on her feverish skin. She buried her face in his chest. “Oh, Sam,” she murmured against the soft wool of his sweater. “I’ve missed you.” He traced his thumb in concentric circles on her breast, then moved to the other until she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. His hands were so skillful, there was nothing he couldn’t do. Nothing he couldn’t do to her. She couldn’t get enough of him. She wanted more from him. She was frantic now, wanting to get rid of her clothes, all of them. So he could touch her all over the way he was touching her now. But somewhere in the back of her brain she realized the door handle was drilling a hole in the middle of her back. And they were parked off the highway.

  “Let’s go home,” Sam said gruffly, reading her mind. He wanted to devour her with his mouth; he wanted to undress her and make her his, if only for one night. But not here. He took a deep breath and untangled her arms from around his neck and forced himself to place his hands on the steering wheel and drive back to her house. She kept one hand on his thigh, which didn’t make anything easier for him. It made him press his foot harder on the gas, it made him reach over and thread his fingers in her hair and pull her as close to him as he could without removing her seat belt. Even though he was flying down the road, pushing his highly tuned engine to go faster, it seemed they’d never get home.

  It wasn’t until five minutes later that he realized he’d referred to the Bancroft House as home. He hoped Hayley hadn’t noticed. Glad her parents hadn’t heard him say that. He grimaced as he imagined what they’d say.

  “It’ll be a cold day in hell before that house is your home, boy,” her father would say.

  “Take your hands off my daughter,” her mother would say. Although at the moment it was Hayley’s warm hand on his thigh, sending a shaft of desire coursing through him, so strong he wondered if he’d make it back “home.”

  He did make it. He parked the car in the driveway. She’d left the lights on in the windows, warm and welcoming.

  “Race you to the front door,” he said, and let her win.

  She leaned against the door, waiting for him, breathless and giddy. He grabbed the key from her hand, unlocked the door and slammed it shut behind them. The house was big and empty, warm and quiet. It smelled like the resin from the pine logs that were piled next to the fireplace. Like lemon furniture polish and cinnamon from the rolls that were rising on the kitchen counter. They stood in the tiled vestibule and studied each other for a long moment. Their haste was forgotten now that they were home. Now that they had the whole night ahead of them.

  “You were great tonight, you know that?”
he said, his arms crossed casually over his chest. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “I can’t believe you delivered a baby.”

  “We delivered a baby.”

  She nodded and gave him a small smile. “I was scared.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted. There was another long silence. “Now what?” he asked. Before he grabbed her, swung her over his shoulder and carried her up the stairs two at a time, he had to be sure this was what she wanted. That she was willing to go through with what they’d started a lifetime ago.

  “We could have a cup of coffee,” she said, looking down at her shoes.

  “Or…” he prompted.

  “We could take a shower,” she said, looking up at him from under her lashes. “I smell like carbolic soap.”

  “Your place or mine?” he asked.

  “Yours,” she said, and took his hand to lead him up the stairs.

  “Have you thought what your parents would say if they could see you now?” he asked, one arm around her waist. His hand on her hip.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  It was a shower to end all showers. He knew before he even stepped into the large, glassed-in enclosure he would remember this one for a long time. Copious amounts of hot water cascaded over her body as he lathered her with fragrant lavender soap from her neck to her knees, his hand lingering on the valley between her breasts, then sliding down to her warm, slick thighs until her knees buckled and she flung her arms around his shoulders so she wouldn’t fall down.

  “Sam, please,” she muttered as the water beat against her back. “I can’t…I can’t…. Let me. It’s my turn.”

  He didn’t want to, but he let her go, carefully, gingerly, with his hands on her shoulders, so she wouldn’t collapse, bracing her until she took the soap from him and started in on him, running her hands across his shoulders, catching the soap in the dark hair on his chest. He didn’t know how long he could stand any more of this intense pleasure. He was fully aroused now and he watched while she took her soapy hands and massaged the length of him. With a huge effort, he reached behind and turned the water off.

  Outside the shower, in the spacious, steamy bathroom, they toweled each other briskly, but inefficiently, missing large areas of skin, interrupted by the need to exchange heated kisses, until they finally staggered into the bedroom, where the sheepskin rug tickled their bare feet. Hayley crawled under the mosquito netting, and lay back on the soft cotton sheet and smiled up at him. Her skin was pink, her hair damp and her eyes glowing with anticipation. Under that net, she looked like someone out of a harem. He’d never seen anyone as exotic. She’d always been beautiful. But tonight she was intriguing, mysterious. He reminded himself this was Hayley. The Hayley he’d known forever. But he never thought it could happen. Not to him. Not with her. After all these years.

  “I’ve been waiting seventeen years,” she said softly. “For you to make love to me, Sam.”

  His heart hammered. He’d been waiting, too. Waiting seventeen years to hear her say that. He wanted to go slowly. So she’d savor, enjoy. He wanted her to feel it had been worth the wait. He already knew it would be.

  If he’d thought she would be shy and wait for him to make the first move, he was mistaken. With a gleam in her eye she tossed the netting aside and reached to dim the lamp on the nightstand. When he braced his arms on the quilt to loom over her, she rubbed her fingers softly through the dark whorls of chest hair, exploring with her fingertips the hair, the skin, the muscles until he was ready to explode.

  When her hands strayed lower to the juncture of his thigh and his belly, he knew he had only seconds before his control snapped. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

  She smiled, and he knew that she knew exactly what she was doing.

  He groaned and covered her mouth with his. His tongue imitated the thrusts of his body as she guided him inside her with her soft hand, until she sheathed him as if she was made for him. She was slick and hot and ready. Just as hot and ready as he was. His thrusts came faster and faster, so strong he was afraid he’d hurt her. But she wanted more. She told him so. So much for taking it slow and easy. So much for foreplay.

  Hayley lost control. Her hips were moving in time with his, matching him thrust for thrust. She had hoped to spend time exploring Sam’s body, fulfilling all the fantasies she’d had for half of her life. But now that he was here, now that he was inside her, filling her, pushing her toward the edge, faster and faster, she flung her arms out and made sounds of joy, of pleasure, of excitement. She couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. She wanted it to go on forever. The intensity was building, building until her body tensed, and she clenched around him with a cry of ecstasy.

  He shouted as he climaxed, his voice filled the room and echoed through the house. Then he collapsed on top of her, his weight and his welcome warmth pressing her down, covering her body. His face was wedged between her neck and shoulder. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight. As if she could keep him there, hold him there forever.

  He rolled over on his side, keeping her close with one arm, rising to draw the comforter up over them with his free hand. He was so close she could hear his heart beat in time with hers, feel his skin damp with perspiration and see the lines around his mouth relax as he closed his eyes. They were joined hip to hip. Face-to-face, they shared a pillow. She tucked her knee between his legs. He groaned—with pleasure she hoped. But she wasn’t sure.

  “Sam?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Tired,” he muttered, and then he fell asleep.

  If she was hoping for a declaration of undying love, or even a comment on what to her was an earthshaking event, she knew better. Sam would never be the demonstrative type. He didn’t know how. Despite his demanding profession he’d obviously had time for women, the kind who didn’t make demands. Who didn’t want a home and children. The way she did. She sighed and matched his even breathing to her own, wishing she could match his insouciance, his casual attitude about relationships and his skepticism about love, because it would make things so much easier.

  In the morning she slipped out of bed early to go clamming. Though he said he would go, she didn’t want to ask him. Besides, he’d promised to order the ambulance for the new mother and baby. After gathering the clothes she’d left in a pile in his bathroom, she paused naked at the bedroom door and took a last look at his sleeping body sprawled under the comforter. The sheets were probably still warm where she’d finally slept. The pillow still indented where her head was.

  With her clothes in her arm, she had to grip the doorknob with her free hand to keep from crawling back into that bed, to absorb the warmth from his body, to wake him with a kiss, to make love with him again, this time slowly and luxuriously. The way she’d meant to do last night. She stood there for a long moment, willing him to sense her presence at the door, to realize she’d left, to feel the loss of her body, wake up, to throw back the sheet and tell her to get back in bed. But he didn’t. He continued to sleep, damn his insensitive hide. So she went to her room, dressed in old jeans and a sweatshirt, found her bucket and shovel and drove to the beach.

  The sun was just rising in a partly cloudy sky, sending shafts of pale sunlight onto the wide beach. The tide was low as promised, and her friends were there ahead of her. The flat, wet sand stretched for miles, and the smell of brine filled her senses and helped cleared her mind of Sam and the magic they’d shared the night before. Or had they shared anything but a physical coupling? Had it been only one-sided? Had it meant anything to Sam but getting it on with his high school girlfriend who hadn’t really been his girlfriend? Would he ever say anything, or just pretend it had never happened? Or would he—

  “Hayley,” Donna called, with one foot on her shovel while her husband wandered farther down the beach. “Snap out of it. There are clams everywhere, just begging you to dig them up and put them int
o your bucket, and you’re somewhere else in a dream world. This couldn’t have anything to do with the return of Sam Prentice, could it?”

  “Of course not,” she said indignantly.

  “Didn’t you have a crush on Sam in high school?” Donna asked.

  “I might have,” Hayley admitted, “along with every other girl in our class. He was forbidden fruit.”

  “That’s for sure. I was scared to death of him,” Donna said. “Besides being the best-looking guy in town, he had to be the most dangerous. The kind every mother warns her daughter about. Is it true he stole a car, was arrested and got knifed the night before graduation?”

  Hayley concentrated on a bubble just under the sand, indicating the presence of a clam below the surface, and dug her shovel in. “That was a long time ago,” she said, neither affirming nor denying it. “He’s changed.”

  “Except for one thing,” Donna said tossing a clam into her bucket with a loud clank. “He’s still gorgeous and he still looks dangerous.”

  If she only knew how dangerous he was. Dangerous to Hayley’s well-being, dangerous to her mental health. No, she couldn’t disagree with that assessment. She decided to devote herself to digging clams instead of discussing Sam.

  “How did you ever talk him into coming back here?” Donna asked after they’d combed the beach, filling their buckets for a while in companionable silence. “I heard he’s a big-time surgeon in San Francisco.” No need to ask who “he” was. Donna was fixated on Sam. Hayley couldn’t blame her. Sam had that effect on people, especially women.

  “Just luck,” she said lightly. “We needed a doctor. I looked everywhere first, then I remembered that Sam was an M.D. And I happened to contact him just as he needed to take some time off from his job. Something not so stressful as surgery. A different atmosphere. Of course, he won’t stay here forever.”