Countdown To Baby (Merlyn County Midwives #2) Read online

  The odd feelings would pass, he assured himself. Neither he nor Cecilia wanted this situation to get all sticky and complicated. With the possible addition of a child, she liked her life just the way it was, and he felt the same way about his.

  Just because she looked so absolutely right in his bed didn’t mean he wanted her to become a permanent fixture there, he assured himself.

  Funny. He usually made pronouncements like that with a bit more conviction.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cecilia must have needed time away from her usual routines even more than she had realized. Though Geoff’s weekend place was less than an hour from her home, it felt much farther.

  Rather than waking at sunrise and going nonstop all day as she usually did, she and Geoff slept late Saturday, then woke to a slow, delicious bout of lovemaking. They had a late breakfast, then walked down to the water to swim and sunbathe and be lazy until heat and precaution against too much sun sent them back inside.

  She discovered something new about Geoff that afternoon. The man was a fanatic about games. Scrabble, Monopoly, Yahtzee, Parcheesi—he didn’t seem to care which game she selected as long as they played. And as long as she made it a true challenge. He loved to win—and he gloated unrepentantly when he did—but he was a good loser, accepting defeat with grace and humor.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she had played games like this, since Eric wasn’t much of a player. Nor could she remember laughing so much in one afternoon—laughing until her sides ached and tears rolled down her cheeks in response to Geoff’s foolishness.

  They fired up the barbecue for dinner, threading chicken and vegetables onto skewers and roasting them slowly over the coals. They ate outside again, taking their time, talking about nothing more serious than the taste of the food and the merits of the music playing quietly on the unseen speakers.

  Cecilia made a specific effort to keep things light, casual. The way it had been between them all day. She didn’t bring up his romantic gestures—or allow herself to wonder how much of that was for her benefit and how much just from habit. She didn’t talk about the clinic and the problems there. She didn’t mention Geoff’s impending business trips.

  She didn’t even discuss their hopes for a baby, since even that seemed like too serious a topic for this utterly relaxed day.

  It was nicer this way. No past. No future. No plans or expectations. It was so delightfully different from her usual carefully planned and scheduled routine. And she intended to enjoy every single moment of it.

  Geoff was the one who finally brought reality into the fantasy. They had gone back outside in the late afternoon when some of the heat had dissipated, and they were taking a stroll through the woods surrounding the house, watching birds and enjoying an occasional spectacular view from the hilltops. He turned to lean against the trunk of a tree as she enjoyed a particularly nice scene of the lake dotted with sailboats and fishing boats, with fluffy white clouds overhead and the blue mountains in the distant background.

  “So when do you think we’ll know?” he asked unexpectedly. “Whether we’ve hit a home run, I mean.”

  She took a couple of beats to shift mental gears. Keeping her gaze focused on that calming horizon, she said, “I assume you mean whether we’ve been successful in making a baby.”

  “Yeah. When should we know?”

  “A couple of weeks, I suppose. Some of the new tests give results very early.”

  “So we could have an answer before I have to leave town?”

  Now he had brought up two serious subjects practically in the same breath. She turned to face him. “Possibly. Of course, there’s a very good chance that it will be negative. The odds against conceiving so quickly are fairly high.”

  He made a show of flexing his biceps. A light breeze ruffled his hair, making him look young and fit and so appealing her mouth went dry. “Don’t forget who you’re dealing with—Mr. Macho. When I’m faced with a challenge, I conquer it. I go about it the same way I play Monopoly. I play to win—no mercy, no acceptance of defeat.”

  Trust Geoff to compare making a baby to playing a board game. And to make light of a topic that was so important to her that she wasn’t even allowing herself to think about it this weekend.

  She desperately wanted that test result to be positive. Of course she did. Once that goal had been achieved she could get back to her own life, and Geoff to his. No more juggling her work schedule and her evenings with him. No more awkward explanations about what they were doing together. No more grand romantic gestures. No more lazy days of swimming, laughing and eating beneath the stars.

  And if she kept thinking along those lines, she was in danger of bursting into tears right here in front of Geoff.

  “I suppose we’d better head back to the house so we can start dinner,” she said.

  He caught her arm when she would have started in that direction and pulled her against his chest. “I think dinner’s going to be a little late this evening,” he murmured against her mouth.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Is it now? And what if I’m hungry?”

  “I certainly hope you’re hungry,” he said with a wicked grin. “I know I am.”

  Not even for a moment did she think he was talking about food. Raising her lips to his, she let herself enjoy the novelty of making out with a good-looking man on a shady mountain hillside.

  She could go back to being sensible and practical Cecilia later, she promised herself. She would allow herself just one more night in fantasyland. And then it was back to the real world.

  The real world was sometimes an incredibly hectic place. A week and a half after Cecilia and Geoff returned from the weekend house, she found herself in the middle of chaos at the clinic. Three women in labor at one time—somewhat unusual even in the middle of the Merlyn County baby boom. A full waiting room, including a few women who’d brought their unruly children with them. A woman who was probably going to be transferred through the connecting glass hallway to the hospital for a cesarean section, since her labor was not progressing well.

  The entire staff was operating at a full run. Cecilia passed Mari, Vanessa, Milla, and Kyle during one full-out dash down the long hallway, and everyone looked as harried as she was beginning to feel. She didn’t know what was going on between Milla and Kyle, but the tension between those two lately was becoming almost palpable. Whether it was smoldering attraction or growing antagonism, she couldn’t say, but there was definitely something building.

  Crystal Hendrix, the nurse whose personal problems were beginning to interfere noticeably with her work, looked more edgy than usual, her eyes shadowed, her hands unsteady. Cecilia couldn’t help wondering if the planets were in some sort of weird misalignment or something.

  Was everyone going through personal crises at the same time? Maybe that would explain her own totally atypical behavior of the past couple of weeks.

  To make the situation even more tense, Detective Collins was back, lurking around like a gray-eyed predator watching for signs of weakness. He seemed determined to pester Mari with a few dozen new questions about the black market drug trade, but Mari simply didn’t have time to deal with him.

  Cecilia nearly collided with the detective herself as she rushed from an examining room to check on the status of a client who was in the transition stage of labor. Murmuring a barely civil apology, she sidestepped around him. She knew the man had an important job to do, but couldn’t he understand that this was a terribly inconvenient time?

  She thought longingly of her weekend vacation with Geoff, which now seemed so very far in the past. She’d been so busy since their return that her time with him had been all too brief. Even last weekend had been filled with professional meetings for both of them, two deliveries that had called her back to the clinic at inconvenient times, and other obligations that had seemed to have little purpose except to keep them apart.

  She should get used to that, of course, since he would be leaving town
before much longer, but she already found herself missing him. At least they had made the most of the time they’d had to spend together.

  Forcing thoughts of Geoff to the back of her mind, she concentrated fiercely on the tasks at hand.

  She was looking for Mari, for consultation about a new patient, when she overheard a snippet of heated conversation between the doctor and the detective. She had followed Mari to her small, cluttered office, where the door was always open to anyone who needed her. But Cecilia wasn’t the only one who had been looking for Mari, apparently. Bryce Collins was already there.

  Posed in a tense face-to-face confrontation, they didn’t see Cecilia when she stepped into the doorway. She ducked quickly back into the hall just as Mari said, “Damn it, Bryce, can’t you see how busy we are? I don’t have time for this.”

  “Make time,” he snapped back, his voice so hard that Cecilia instinctively flinched.

  “How many times do I have to tell you that I know nothing about black-market drug suppliers?”

  “Until you make me believe it. Something’s going on in this clinic. Somebody here knows exactly where those drugs are coming from. And since you’re in charge around here, Dr. Bingham, it’s hard to accept that you’re completely oblivious.”

  After what might have been a gasp, Mari said, “Surely you aren’t suggesting I’ve been deliberately holding back information from the police.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything—I’m telling you that something is damned suspicious around here—and that a lot of the signs are pointing right at you. You have been pretty desperate to raise large amounts of cash for your new research facility, haven’t you?”

  This time it was Cecilia who gasped. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but she hadn’t been able to avoid hearing that rapid-fire exchange. Surely Detective Collins wasn’t flat-out accusing Mari of being involved in drug trafficking. Was the man completely off his rocker?

  Even if Mari had broken his heart in the past, he had to know what an insane suggestion it was that Dr. Mari Bingham, to whom nothing was more important than this clinic and its patients, would have anything to do with something so evil and destructive.

  Cecilia should probably make a hasty retreat, since this conversation was absolutely none of her business. But she really needed to consult with Mari, and she was beginning to believe Mari would appreciate the rescue. Besides, Cecilia was feeling a strong urge to rush to Mari’s defense against this unfair attack, even though she knew Mari was fully capable of standing up for herself.

  But a distraction came in the unlikely form of a young woman with wildly spiked blue hair and a pierced eyebrow. A new receptionist at the clinic, Heather was certainly an attention getter. Nodding to Cecilia, who had stepped somewhat abashedly back out of the way, embarrassed to be caught eavesdropping, Heather rushed to Mari’s office door.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Bingham, but we’ve got a situation developing out there in the waiting room. Some crazy woman is throwing a fit, saying she’s hurtin’ and she needs some Orcadol. She doesn’t have an appointment or anything, but she said she got it here last time, and she needs it again. She’s so strung out that none of us can make any sense of anything she says, so we think you’d better come.”

  Cecilia grimaced. She could just imagine what Bryce Collins would make of that jumbled summons, considering that he already thought Mari had something to do with illegally supplying the powerful and addictive painkiller.

  She stepped into the doorway, determined to do what she could to deflect his attentions. “Mari, when you’re free, I need to consult with you on a new patient. Late-stage pregnancy with a risk of preeclampsia.”

  Mari pushed a hand through her hair, then squeezed the back of her neck in a gesture that made her look even more like her brother than usual. “Thanks, Heather, I’ll be right out. And, Cecilia, I promise I’ll find you as soon as I’m available.”

  “Thank you.” Cecilia turned to the officer then, her voice chilly when she asked, “Can I show you out, Detective Collins?”

  He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “I know the way.”

  She nodded, then crossed her arms and waited, making it clear that she thought he was in the way of business. Heather also hovered nearby, looking curiously from Cecilia to Mari to the scowling detective.

  Collins exhaled sharply, then pointed at Mari. “I’ll be back. And if I find out that you’re involved in this in any way, you can bet I’ll do my job and haul you in.”

  Avoiding his eyes, she moved toward the doorway. “Just go away so I can do my job.”

  He stalked off, leaving the three women to glare after him.

  “Mari, if there’s anything I can do…” Cecilia began awkwardly.

  Mari gave her a weary smile. “Thanks, Cecilia, but I can handle Bryce. Now, Heather, let’s go take care of the crisis in the waiting room.”

  It looked like rain. Skimming down the highway on his motorcycle after escaping from a long, mind-numbingly boring day at the office, Geoff studied the dark clouds gathering over the mountains in the distance. He would bet that was a storm building on the horizon.

  But in the meantime, he could enjoy the ride as he tried in vain to convince himself he wasn’t counting the minutes until he could be with Cecilia again.

  He wondered if he was coming down with something. Did the flu cause a person to walk around in an addled state or muddle his thoughts until he wasn’t sure what was real anymore? How else could he explain his odd behavior of the past week and a half, ever since he had reluctantly brought Cecilia home from the cottage weekend?

  He seemed to be waking with a new sense of expectancy each day. Rather than his usual rather grimly determined morning routines and obligations, he was singing in the shower, spending more time planning nice things to do for Cecilia than thinking about the business concerns that usually occupied nearly every waking minute of his days.

  Odd, that, considering the limited nature of their partnership. Maybe it was because he was confident that the relationship was temporary that he could enjoy it so much, he rationalized. Maybe he saw his time with her as…well, as an emotional vacation of sorts. A chance to have a great time with a beautiful, sexy woman without worrying about where it would all lead.

  Or maybe it was flu.

  He slowed as he approached the city park. Although it was a weekday, there were still a few families taking advantage of the facilities on this steamy July afternoon.

  One particular family caught his attention as he cruised past. The man was tall with brown hair, the woman shorter with darker hair. She was a bit heavier than Cecilia, but the couple still looked oddly familiar. A small child bounced between them, an energetic boy of perhaps three.

  Maybe he and Cecilia could bring their son to this park, he mused. They would laugh as he went down the slide and applaud when he navigated the monkey bars. And maybe that boy would have a little sister to play tag with and to—

  Realizing where his thoughts were taking him, he shook his helmeted head. He and Cecilia weren’t starting a family in the traditional sense. Their plan was to have a child together without sharing anything else in their lives. Cecilia had made it very clear that was all she wanted from him.

  It was all he wanted, too. Right? The joy of a child without the drudgery of marriage?

  And yet—drudgery seemed like such an inappropriate word when applied to Cecilia. She was so fascinating. So intriguing and challenging. And yet so restful. He thought it could very well take a lifetime to get to know every facet of her.

  She fit with him in a way no woman had before her. He couldn’t imagine anyone suiting him better. Not that he was looking for anyone better suited, he assured himself quickly. Everything was just fine for him the way it was.

  He had his family, a successful career, and he could soon have a child to satisfy his natural desire to procreate. What more could he want. Right?

  To be fair, the accident wasn’t caused by his distraction with thought
s of Cecilia. Even with his mind so jumbled, he had followed every rule of the road, obeyed the speed limits, had come to a full stop at every intersection. Unfortunately, the driver of a rusty old sedan wasn’t as careful. Either he didn’t see the stop sign or didn’t see the motorcycle, but he sped into the intersection at the same time as Geoff.

  Geoff saw the car at the moment before impact. It gave him barely enough time to lay the bike down so that he didn’t slam directly into the side of the big car.

  As pain ripped through his left side, he only hoped his reaction hadn’t been too little, too late.

  The pace at the clinic was finally slowing a bit. Cecilia had already delivered healthy twin girls. The C-section was underway in the hospital. The hysterical Orcadol addict was on her way to rehab—though not without causing a major scene first. The waiting room was only half full now.

  Maybe she would survive the day, after all, she thought as she pressed a hand to her aching back. It had been touch and go for a while there.

  She still hadn’t had a chance to talk to Mari. She checked on her next mother-to-be, who was, perhaps, a couple of hours away from delivery. Leaving her in the capable care of her husband and doula, Cecilia made another effort to have a quick conference with Mari. She still needed the consultation, of course, but she also wanted to see if Mari had recovered from the upsetting incident with Detective Collins.

  She turned a corner into the hallway that led to Mari’s office. As she walked that direction, she saw Mari step out, accompanied by a young man wearing an orderly’s uniform. With her back partially turned to Cecilia, Mari pressed a stack of what looked very much like prescription slips into the young man’s hand. He stuffed them unceremoniously into his pocket, turned and disappeared into the stairway at the other end of the hall from where Cecilia stood.

  That had certainly looked odd, Cecilia thought, pausing in her steps for a moment as Mari moved back into her office.

  And then she frowned and shook her head. She blamed Detective Collins for planting even the tiniest seed of doubt about Mari in her mind. There was no reason at all to find anything suspicious about that exchange, no matter how it might have looked to….