Suddenly (30 page)

“Half the town was there. Broken bones is the least of it.”

“The balcony fell right down on the ones underneath. Horrible. Horrible.”

“Shoulda known it would happen, place was so old.”

“Too old to be having a concert with jumping and foot stomping and all.”

“Jamie’s in big trouble, lawyer says.”

“Serves him right, th’ old coot.”

“They should make him add a new wing to Tucker General. I hear it’s filled to brimming.”

“But how many’s patients and how many’s family?”

“No matter. Everyone’s trying to help. We don’t have enough nurses. I hear they bussed some in from Hanover.”

“And doctors from Abbotsville. Every one of ours has been working round the clock.”

Sara leaned forward. “Do you think Dr. Pfeiffer is there?”

“Probably,” Noah answered. “One of her partners would have called her.”

“Her baby-sitter was going to that concert. I wonder if she was hurt.”

He shrugged and shook his head. He had no way of knowing. But he kept thinking about it, and about Paige, through the afternoon while he and Sara put up the new wallpaper in the bathroom. It was a hard pattern to match. He kept waiting for Sara to complain, but she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, so when he was feeling distinctly cross-eyed, he called for a break.

On the pretext of seeing if she was home and, if so, getting the scoop firsthand, they drove to Paige’s.

“I think she has company,” Sara said when they found two cars in the driveway.

“That’s okay. We won’t stay long. If she’s here, she’ll be tired.”

“Dead asleep,” her grandmother said, introducing herself only as Nonny and seeming to know just who they were. “But you’re welcome to come in and visit with Sami and me. We like having guests.”

Noah gave Sara an inquiring look. She shrugged and said, “I like Sami.”

So they went inside. Sara was the one to ask about Jill and was upset when Nonny told what had happened. “Will she be in the hospital long?”

“For a little while, I’d guess.”

“Is her family with her?”

“I’m sure.”

“Who will baby-sit Sami while Dr. Pfeiffer’s at work?”

Nonny tipped up her chin. “Me. Oh, she hasn’t acknowledged it yet, but she will. I’m the best baby-sitter around.”

“I can baby-sit,” Sara offered. She was sitting on the floor opposite Sami, rolling her a ball.

Noah was thinking that she looked happier and sounded more affable than she had in a while. He could imagine that it was this house, which had a warmth to it. Or maybe the warmth came from Nonny, who was a seventy-something pixie wearing red leggings and an oversize red sweater. Or from Paige, who was sound asleep in the other room wearing God only knew what.

Of course, Sara couldn’t possibly baby-sit Sami.

Nonny, bless her, said, “You can’t possibly baby-sit, Sara. You have school. That’s far more important for you. And besides, I
need
to baby-sit. The older I get, the more useless I feel. This will make me functional again.”

Sara kept on playing ball with Sami. “Dr. Pfeiffer said that she lived with you while she was growing up. Is it true?”

Noah listened closely.

“Oh, yes. It’s true,” Nonny said. “My daughter—her mother—is a very charming woman, but she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Some women aren’t. It’s usually better if they realize it before they have children, but in this case it worked out all right. Of course, Paige didn’t always agree. She missed having a mother and father. At times, she still does.”

“Where are they now?” Noah asked.

Nonny screwed up her face and looked at the ceiling. “Uh, Capri? No. Siena. That’s it. Siena.”

“What do they do there?” Sara asked.

“Not—very—much,” Nonny ennunciated with care and a certain helplessness. “My daughter married a man with too much money. They became playmates when they were eighteen, and they’re still at it. They’ve never grown up. They’ve never had to accept any sort of responsibility.”

“But they had a child,” Noah pointed out. “That’s a responsibility.”

A sheepish Nonny said, “I’m afraid I made it easy for them to shirk it. From the start, Paige was my little girl. She was a cuddler in ways her mother never was, and I loved it. I was always quite happy to send my daughter and son-in-law back off to their villa or chalet or dacha, or wherever it was they were living at the time. I enjoyed having Paige to myself.” She grinned. “And now I have Sami.” Her grin widened, seeming to overtake her small face in a way that was so cheerful, Noah nearly laughed. “And now I have you both. It’s so
lovely
to have guests.” The grin vanished, replaced by wide little eyes and an earnest entreaty. “You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?”

Put that way, Noah could no more have disappointed the woman than he could have dragged himself back to wallpapering a bathroom. “We really shouldn’t impose.”

“No imposition!” she exclaimed, just as he had suspected she would. Her eyes were bright. “I was only ordering in. So I’ll order in more.” Leaning close to Sara, she said, “Do you like Mexican?”

Sara nodded vigorously. “But my father doesn’t. It upsets his stomach. Every time he came to visit me in California we had a problem. He’d ask me where I wanted to eat, and it would always be Mexican. The places
he
wanted to eat were boring.”

“Ach, then we’ll make him a cup of chicken soup. As for me”—she rubbed her hands together—“I’m in the mood for something hot. Say, some chili. Or nachos with jalapeño pepper cheese.”

Sami grew red in the face. Nonny stroked her head. “No nachos for you, either? No chili?”

“Do they upset her stomach, too?” Sara asked.

“Actually,” Nonny said, lifting Sami, “that isn’t the problem.” To Noah, with a charming delicateness, she said, “Would you excuse us while we go to the ladies’ room to repair ourselves?”

Noah chuckled. “Of course.”

Sara got right up and went with Nonny, leaving him alone in the living room. Not one to pass up a prime opportunity, he headed for Paige’s bedroom.

He didn’t see her at first. She was lost in the patchwork designs on her bed—comforter, a slew of pillows, sheets—all in warm shades of brown, gold, green, crimson. He saw what he thought was a patch of hair, but it turned out to be kitty, curled in a ball against one of the pillows.

Then he saw Paige. Her body was a faint diagonal line under the comforter and her hair was strewn over the patchwork, camouflaged, but it was her, no doubt this time. His body was telling him so as surely as his eyes, though precious little of her was exposed. The comforter crowded under her jawline. He couldn’t begin to guess what she had on.

Drawn closer, he studied her face. It was pale, clean, vulnerable in sleep. Her hair looked as though it had been damp when she had fallen into bed. It was a riot of waves. He smoothed several back from her cheek, then, unable to resist, returned to touch the smooth skin. Then the straight line of her nose. Then her mouth. Her breathing was slow and far more even than his. Her eyelids were still.

He sat down on the bed. Still she didn’t waken.

He thought of the time she had just spent at the hospital, hours that had to have been brutal, and felt a swell of respect. He also felt respect for Nonny, who had raised an irresponsible daughter’s daughter to be eminently responsible.

He felt another swell, this time a physical one centered in his groin. The attraction was strong. It was chemical, had been so from the first, and the more he saw of her, the stronger it became. The time they had been together, way back in Mara’s yard, seemed a dream now. Or maybe it was because he had dreamed it so many other times that the first was just blending in.

He kissed her temple and waited. When she didn’t respond, he kissed her eye, then her cheek, lingering there to enjoy the fresh scent of her skin. Tendril by tendril, he trained her hair back over the pillow. He traced the sculpted line of her ear. He slid his fingers under the comforter and let them soak up the warmth of her neck.

She gave a soft hum of pleasure. He moved his fingers lightly.

Her eyes flickered open. They focused straight ahead, then shifted slowly to Noah. She seemed disoriented, asleep with her eyes open, but he didn’t give a damn. Her mouth looked too soft, too sweet, to resist. He lowered his head and kissed it. He ran his tongue around it. He nibbled on her lower lip, sucked it, caressed it.

A soft sound came from her throat. She had closed her eyes, but her mouth was his for the taking, and he was too hungry to abstain. He took it in its entirety, devouring it wetly, using his tongue to explore what was inside.

She made the same soft sound, accompanied by the beginnings of response. Her breathing was no longer as steady. Her mouth clung to his.

He framed her chin with his hand, then slid it lower, under the comforter, then the sheet. The route was paved with bare flesh, silky and warm, rising and falling with the sough of her breath. He found her breast and caressed it, drew her nipple hard between his fingers, then pulled the comforter back only enough to put his mouth where his hand had been.

This time it was a cry, a soft but needy one, then the sound of his name on her breath. Her body was swelling, arching to his. She repeated the cry when he drew her nipple deeply into his mouth.

Rising up, he braced himself over her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips moist. Her eyes were open again, disoriented now in an eddy of pleasure. He slipped a hand under the sheet, lower over her abdomen, until he found what he sought.

She gasped.

“Shhhhh.” He covered her mouth and ate at it in time with the motion of his hand. He swallowed her breath when it came faster, then her cries when they rose, when her body went tight and seconds later shook with a powerful release.

He was slow in retrieving his hand and then brought it up, fingers spread wide to feel everything he could before he withdrew. Her breasts were tight, her nipples hard. She pressed her hands over his to hold them there until, it seemed, reality hit. Then she made a sound that held more than a touch of embarrassment and rolled over, away from him and so far under the comforter that nothing showed but the top of her head.

Noah wanted to talk. He wanted to tell her not to be embarrassed, that her pleasure was his, that the release was good for her. He wanted to give her another one. Mostly he wanted to strip down, join her under the covers, and bury himself deep, deep inside her until nothing remained of the outside world but bits and fragments of memory.

But the outside world was still there. He could hear it moving over his head and guessed that he had Nonny to thank for keeping Sara occupied. Which was nice, but not overly responsible on his part.

Reluctantly he rose from the bed. He straightened and took several deep breaths, grateful just then that Paige was buried under her comforter so that she wouldn’t see the shape of his pants. In the bathroom, he tossed cold water on his face, but between the bra that lay with her discarded clothes, the damp towel on the rack, and the scented soap that was so thoroughly reminiscent of her skin, his body tightened again.

Back in the bedroom, he stood at the window and studied the backyard. With the loss of leaves from the birches and maples, the conifers captured the limelight in the late afternoon sun. Soon that sun would be lower and weaker. Soon snow would cover the firs. Soon the Board of Trustees would be picking a permanent Head of School and Noah’s time at Tucker would be done.

It occurred to him that the place wasn’t all that bad. But some things were written in the stars, and this was one. He was destined to head a
great
school. Not Mount Court.

A glance over his shoulder told him that Paige remained under the comforter, and just then the second-floor sounds picked up. Taking his cue, he left the room.

Paige dreamed of things so seductive and passionate and downright erotic that she awoke in a sweat. The room was dark. She was alone. It was a minute before her body stopped trembling, a minute before the reality of her exhaustion and its cause hit her, and then she brushed her hair back with a forearm and moaned.

The clock glowed a green ten twenty-two. She figured she had been sleeping for more than seven hours and had every intention of going for another seven, but in this short break she thought of Jill and her baby and all the others who’d been hurt. Life was fragile, taken for granted day to day, but such a tenuous thing. Paige’s own parents had had that close call in an airplane, but how many close calls had there been in automobiles? Or walking along streets? Or sitting, oblivious of danger, in theaters whose structural stability was in doubt?

She thought of coming home that afternoon to Nonny and Sami, and then there were visions of Noah—had he been there or had she simply dreamed him? Months before she had thought her life rewarding—she still thought it so—but these new elements fit into it with frightening ease.

Fragile. Tenuous. Happiness that could get a firm grip, then tear your flesh away when it left. Was it truly better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? She didn’t know. The pain of wanting things one couldn’t have was devastating. It was sometimes better to push them from mind and pretend that they just didn’t exist.

So much for dreams. Reality was harder to ignore.

Reality, just then, was tens of patients for whom Paige was no longer responsible but whom she wanted to visit. Reality was a thriving group practice meant for four, with only three left and working double time. Reality was Nonny, who was seventy-six going on fifty, and Sami, who was sixteen months going on twelve months. Reality was a cross-country team to coach every afternoon, and a baby-sitter to heal, and too few hours in the day.

The exhaustion of it put Paige back to sleep, but she awoke the next morning knowing that of the four doctors coming to Tucker to interview that week, one of them had better be good.

One was. Her name was Cynthia Wales. After completing her residency in pediatrics, she had spent four years on the staff at Children’s Hospital in Boston, but she was an outdoorswoman. She wanted to be closer to mountains and rivers, and she wanted the less pressured practice that would grant her time to explore them. Best of all, she had come to interview at the start of a two-week vacation and was willing to postpone that vacation and start working right away.