Cherished Beginnings (4 page)

But then, when the first flash of recognition had passed, she was stunned to see a look of grudging admiration on his face. She tried to get a handle on her runaway thoughts, to see this from his point of view.

She was sure that he didn't think she belonged here, but she had handled a difficult delivery well, partly out of instinct, partly out of her finesse as a midwife. She had reason to be proud of herself, but it was clear that she'd better explain.

She drew a deep breath and let go of the bed, unsure whether her knees were operative. They held her up, which was more than she expected. She motioned toward the door with her head, dreading the confrontation with him, and he followed her as she walked very carefully, putting one foot deliberately in front of the other, into the other room.

"Dr. Copeland, about what happened," she began uneasily, turning to face him.

Interrupting, he said, "Call me Xan. And don't apologize. You were good in there."

As luck would have it, he was going to be nice about it. It wasn't what she had expected from him at all. She managed to smile in relief as she brushed a wisp of hair off her forehead. "Thanks," she said. A pang of guilt speared through her as she thought about running out of his office earlier. Tired as she was, she was still aware of his all-too-virile attraction. To distract herself from his sex appeal, she said, "Do you mind if I fix tea?"

"Not at all," he said. "May I help?" He was letting her remain in charge. This too surprised her.

"You could find a teapot," she said as she set out the cups. She was unaccustomed to doctors doing her bidding.

He rummaged in an old cracked cupboard until his fingers closed around the spout of a pot. He handed the pot to Maura, who poured boiling water over a handful of dried herbs and set the teapot aside to steep.

As she worked efficiently and with practiced economy of movement, she observed Xan Copeland surreptitiously out of the corner of her eyes, thinking that it was no wonder she hadn't recognized him when he first came in. Now he wore an ordinary knit shirt, not the shirt and tie and white coat he'd worn in the office today. He hadn't buttoned any of the buttons on his present shirt, and sprigs of tightly curled black hair sprang through the placket.

After he found the teapot, he stood watching with his arms folded over his chest, muscular arms, and his shoulders were so broad that she thought he should probably have bought the next size larger shirt. Below that his jeans looked well-worn. And he should have bought a larger size in those, too.

"What are you doing here?" he asked flatly.

Uh-oh, here it comes,
she thought with dread. She braced herself for condemnation—or at the very least, criticism. "Nothing I'm not qualified to do," she said.

"I could see that," he assured her. He smiled reluctantly, and when she smiled back in surprise he realized in equal surprise that they were sharing this experience. He felt a specific feeling, almost as though a specialized nerve was shooting the message to his brain and other vital places that this woman was one he wanted to know better—much better.

It was twilight now, birds chirping in the surrounding woods as they flew home to roost. "Come out on the porch," he said persuasively, suddenly wanting her to be comfortable. "It'll be cooler there."

Concern for her patient overrode any consideration of her own comfort, and Maura sent an anxious look toward the doorway. "Annie needs to be checked every ten minutes or so."

"I know that," he said warmly. "Come on, you look exhausted." He guided her toward the door with a sure hand on her upper arm, a touch that, despite her fatigue, reawakened her senses.

Xan liked the way she walked as she preceded him out the door. Her walk was a glide, very smooth, with nothing of the coquette about it. He had never seen such magnificent hair, a complex of reds reflecting light from every strand so that its swinging weight seemed electrified in its radiance.

Two very ordinary slat-backed rocking chairs occupied the porch. "Oh, my, does it ever feel wonderful to sit down!" she exclaimed fervently as she lowered herself to one chair and he sat on the other.

"How long have you been delivering babies?" he asked.

"Several years," she said, trying to get in the habit of looking at a man in a different way from the way she always had before. Here in the twilight the color of his eyes was no longer in question. They were a deep and mossy shade of green, and at the moment they were scrutinizing her, taking everything in. His overt examination made her feel even more self-conscious.

"I guess I could take this smock off now," she said, grappling with the button and loop in back. She'd thrown it on hurriedly over the print blouse on loan from Kathleen.

Without saying a word, he stood up and, standing behind her chair, reached for the button. The move startled her, and as their fingers brushed she yanked her own hands away.

"Please don't jump like that," he heard himself saying as he pushed the button through its loop. "I only wanted to touch your hair, your splendorous hair. Unbuttoning this smock for you provides the perfect excuse." Quickly and unexpectedly he ran exploratory fingers up the back of her neck and fanned them through the strands of auburn divided on either side of the smock fastening. Then, sensing her stunned shrinking away from him, he raked his fingers downward and let the heavy tresses fall back into place.

The blush rose upward from somewhere in her stomach region, heating the skin of her chest, staining her neck. Still, she didn't say anything because she was too shocked at this touching of her person to object. No one in the past had ever reached through her invisible cloak of dignity to touch her, and most particularly not in such an overtly sexual manner!

To hide her confusion, she bent slightly forward to shrug out of the smock as Xan returned to his chair, and the motion inadvertently tugged the neckline of her blouse out of place to reveal the soft, smooth swell of the top of her breasts swinging unfettered beneath the thin fabric.

It was the glimpse of that womanly part of her that did him in. Xan knew in that moment that he wanted to ensure that there would be other meetings in other places more conducive to—well, what? He had been about to think the word love, but love wasn't something he ever thought about. Women, yes. Lust, yes. After all, he was thirty-eight years old, and no one expected an eligible bachelor to be a saint. But love?

Xan made it a policy never to date his patients. He wasn't sure, since Maura ran away before he'd actually examined her, if she could be considered a patient. "Why did you run away this afternoon?" he asked.

She could never tell him that. Not in a million years. "Because I changed my mind," she retorted, willing the blush to fade.

"Something wrong with my office staff? Something about me that offended you?" His voice was gruff, and his eyes burned into her as though they could see the very corners of her soul.

"I—had another appointment," she said weakly.

"There must have been more to it than that. Since you're a midwife yourself, I can hardly imagine that you would be squeamish about the physical part of the examination."

"No, of course not," she said. "I had another appointment. Can't we let it go at that?"

He paused to think about it. "For the time being, I suppose we can," he said, relenting out of kindness. She appeared shaken. He looked at her, reappraising her. He'd thought she was sensible, and he still thought so. But there was a vulnerability in her gentle, soft eyes. He liked the way her magnificently high and elegantly constructed cheekbones curved precisely into long planes ending in a strong jaw and squared-off chin. Despite the vulnerability, it was altogether a face of strong character. She must have a good reason for being evasive.

"Well, then," Xan said lightly, "let's talk about something else."

"Must we talk?" she said, her voice trembling even though she fought to control it. "I'm exhausted."

"You're all wrought up from the emotion in there," he said, gesturing toward the door of the cabin. "Talking will help coast you down from that high you're on."

"So you know about that," she said, surprised.

"Of course. I feel it myself. Often after a difficult delivery I go home so revved up I can't sleep. It's then that I wish there was someone to talk to so I could wind down."

"You have no one?"

"I live alone," he said, and the conversation paused for several beats while she took in the significance of this statement. Then he said more quietly, his voice low, "How did you happen to be here when Annie needed you?"

"The question I have is, how did you happen
not
to be here when she needed you? She's your patient." Maura met his eyes with a boldness that he would not have expected from her. Nor would she have expected it from herself a few short months ago. But now such audacity was emerging as part of her character.

She had put him on the defensive, but he respected her for it. In fact he would have had the same question if their places had been reversed.

Quickly he told her how Cindy had called just before he'd had to report to the hospital and how he hadn't seen Annie Bodkin since the first two times she'd visited him for prenatal care. "Really," he told her, "I'm glad you were here."

His eyes shone with sincerity, and Maura was astonished. She'd expected him to be jealous of her competence or, at the very least, overly defensive.

"I wouldn't have been here either if my minivan hadn't broken down," said Maura.

Xan recalled that when he'd been looking for the Bodkins' house, he'd been curious about the scabrous vehicle with its splayed and worn tires. He'd thought it looked out of place parked on the lonely stretch of road. "Is your car the minivan next to the Shuffletown highway with Pringle's Florists—We Deliver on its side?"

Maura laughed, easing up a bit. "That's right. I've only had it for a couple of months. I'm going to paint over the Pringle's Florists part, but I thought I'd leave on the We Deliver."

"You're so right—it is appropriate," he said, and they laughed together. It made him happy to see her relaxing and letting go.

When they'd stopped laughing and the silence grew up around them, he said carefully, "Sounds as though you're stuck here with no way to get home."

"I guess so. Just one thing—do we consider Annie your patient or mine?" There was a hint of trepidation in her voice.

"Ours," he said immediately. "Hey, don't you understand I'm not going to make trouble for you? You did a fine job. Why don't you continue to care for Annie and her baby if it will make you happy?"

Maura suddenly saw clearly that she was going to have to revise her opinion of Dr. Copeland's lackadaisical attitude. It was plain to see that Xan Copeland was a warm, caring physician, as dedicated as they come. Never mind the machismo, never mind the overwhelming sensuality. Underneath the perfect packaging, he was exactly the kind of doctor she would choose to supervise her practice. Ah, but if only he would!

How could she work around to that question? And even if he would, did she want him to? It would mean close contact with him from time to time, and she wasn't sure she could handle that.

But first things first. "If I'm going to continue to care for Annie and the baby, I won't be able to leave for a while," she said. "I'll need to watch them for a couple of hours to make sure everything's okay with both of them. In fact," she said, "I'd better look in on them now and take Annie a cup of that tea I brewed. Would you care for some?"

Xan would have rather had a cold beer, but looking straight into Maura's level brown eyes—and he hadn't seen too many brown-eyed redheads in his time—he surprised himself by saying, "Sure."

After she took Annie the tea, Maura poured a cup for herself and one for Xan. "I had to sweeten the tea with sugar because that's all there is," she apologized as she handed him the cup. "I would have preferred honey."

"Oh? Are you one of these health-food freaks, into alfalfa sprouts and things like that?"

"Do you have something against alfalfa sprouts?"

"Only that I can't eat them without getting them caught between my teeth," he said.

She stared at him, deflected from her defensive stance by his humor. Then she started to laugh. "Well, try the tea. It's a special herbal blend and very relaxing."

"If I relax any more, I may fall out of this rocking chair," he said.

"In California, we'd call you laid-back," said Maura before realizing that she'd revealed too much.

"In South Carolina, it's called lazy," Xan shot back. "Anyway, is that where you're from? California?"

"Yes," she said in a tone that precluded any further inquiry about her past. She stood so abruptly that the rocking chair tipped forward and smacked her against the back of her knees. In obvious agitation, she walked to the end of the porch and stared out into the dark woods.

Xan sipped the tea slowly. So she was from California, and she didn't want to talk about it, he thought. Interesting.

"I've been thinking," he said carefully. "I can check your car for you, see what's wrong. Maybe I can get it running again."

She turned toward him quickly, relieved at the change of subject almost as much as at his suggestion that he investigate the minivan's mechanical problem. "Would you? I—I don't understand much about automobiles, and I'd be so grateful."