Loe raamatut: «Marriage by Contract»

Chapter One

Bethany walked through the automatic door, her senses assaulted with the sudden burst of air-conditioning and the smell and clatter of patients’ supper trays. After saying hello to the lab technicians heading for the cafeteria, she rounded a corner, her footsteps slowing to accommodate all the people milling around in front of the elevators. Too restless to wait, she spun around and took the stairs.

The exercise felt good. Maybe climbing eighteen or nineteen flights of stairs would ease the dread and disappointment dogging her steps. Unfortunately, Vanderbilt Memorial had only four floors. Beth stopped at the third.

She’d just come from the social worker’s office downtown. All the deep breaths she’d taken since her meeting with Mrs. Donahue had failed to dull the sharp edges from the words still echoing through Beth’s head.

“I know you love Christopher, Bethany,” Mrs. Donahue had said. “And I think you’d be a wonderful mother. But even in this day and age, our court system prefers two-parent homes, especially in infant adoptions. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid your only hope is to get married.”

Beth was no stranger to marriage. She’d been married for seven years. The attorney who’d handled the divorce had casually dubbed Barry’s quest to end the marriage “the seven year itch.” Of course, the legal terminology he’d used in court was irreconcilable differences. Nobody had addressed the real reason Barry had wanted a divorce. But Bethany knew.

Her stomach roiled, a combination of the smell of hospital food, her dark thoughts and the memory of Mrs. Donahue’s parting words. Forcing her worries to the back of her mind, she strode down the hall to the nursery.

Kitty Garcia looked up from the diaper she was changing and slanted Beth a genuine smile. “Hi, Beth. You’re a little later than usual today.”

“I had an appointment,” Beth answered, her gaze automatically trailing to the other side of the glass. Already smiling at the tiny hands flailing over the top of the incubator, she strode to the sink, scrubbed her hands and donned a sterile gown. The sadness and despair she’d felt since her meeting with Mrs. Donahue faded the instant she took Christopher in her arms.

Lord, he smelled sweet, all talcum powder and baby innocence. She kissed his cheek, his chin and the tiny fold of skin at his neck. “Hello, sweet pea,” she whispered. “How’s my big boy today?”

She was almost sure she heard him sigh. Holding him several inches from her face, she smiled at him, marveling at his serious expression. He was two months and three weeks old, and he was slowly but surely gaining weight. It was a little too soon to tell what color his eyes would be, but his little head was covered with a layer of fine, dark hair a shade or two lighter than his mother’s.

Nobody had seen Annie Moore since she’d left the hospital shortly after Christopher was born. With all the confusion and chaos in the aftermath of the enormous storm that ravaged Grand Springs, no one knew exactly when she’d disappeared. The girl had given her child life. She’d even given him a name and filled out his birth certificate. And then she’d left. Beth knew it was unusual for a mother who planned to abandon her child to sign the birth certificate. But Annie had…and it was definitely complicating the adoption process.

For the life of her, Beth didn’t understand why the young woman had left. Maybe she hadn’t planned to leave Christopher behind. Or maybe she’d decided she couldn’t raise him on her own. Whatever the reason, Beth prayed that nothing bad had happened to Annie Moore.

“Take care of him for me.”

At the time, Beth had assumed Annie had meant it in a temporary sense, but as the days and weeks had passed without word from the young woman, she’d begun to wonder if Annie had meant forever.

And forever was what Beth wanted with this child. As she stared into Christopher’s eyes, a yearning so deep and so strong wrapped around her heart and squeezed like a fist. “I love you,” she whispered. “If I was your mother, I’d make you feel safe and secure and well loved. Oh, Christopher, you really are a miracle baby, do you know that?”

Christopher looked up at her, his expression so earnest she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He weighed less than five pounds, but his personality was ten times that big, and so was his will to live. The first two months of his life had been difficult. His lungs had been underdeveloped, and he was so tiny at birth that many people hadn’t expected him to survive. The infection he’d gotten had weakened him further, but the little scrapper had clung to life by a thread. And through it all, Beth had stood by his incubator. On breaks, during her lunch hour and long after her shift was over, she’d laid her hand on his tiny body that was hooked up to so many wires and tubes he couldn’t be picked up. Talking to him, reassuring him that she was there.

She’d never forget the day more than a month ago when she’d looked up from the chair where she was rocking Christopher and found Travis Stockwell and Peggy Saxon watching from the other side of the window, a twin in each of their arms. She’d appreciated their smiles and nods of encouragement, but she couldn’t help noticing the differences between their babies and the child she was holding. Little Travis and Virginia had been born the day after Christopher. Even though they were twins and had come into this world in a cab during the terrible storm, they were already chubby and wiggly and strong.

Just as Christopher would be soon, Beth reminded herself.

Barring any more setbacks, he’d be ready to leave the hospital in a week or so. She couldn’t think of anything in the world she wanted more than to be able to take him home and make him her son.

“Your only hope is to get married.”

The last Beth knew, husbands didn’t grow on trees, although her closest friend claimed that now and then they’d been known to crawl out from under rocks. Thoughts of Jenna made her smile, just as they always did. But no matter what Jenna said, Beth hadn’t found Barry under a rock. He happened to be bright and articulate and was an extremely successful corporate attorney. She’d loved him, and she’d thought he loved her. But a person couldn’t love someone and then casually throw them away. She was still aching from the events of the past year, but she had to hand it to Barry; he certainly knew the ins and outs of obtaining a divorce. Beth only wished adopting Christopher could be half as easy.

She fed the baby his bottle, burped him and changed him, then stood next to his incubator and watched him sleep. She’d never experienced the joy of feeling a baby grow beneath her heart, but she knew how it felt to have a child grow within it, as Christopher had.

If only wishes made things so, she thought to herself, finally turning to leave. Too tired to stave off the sadness that had been building up inside her since Mrs. Donahue’s parting words, Beth walked through the corridors, her arms folded, her footsteps quiet and slow.

A man’s voice drew her from her thoughts. “The hospital board wants to promote you to head of obstetrics, Tony, but they think it would look a lot better if you were married.”

Everybody in the hospital knew Dr. Noah Howell’s voice. And there was only one Tony on staff at Vanderbilt Memorial.

Suddenly alert, Beth glanced at the stairway at the end of the hall, and at the light spilling from the open doorway ten feet away. If she continued on toward the stairs, she would run the risk of interrupting the conversation between the two doctors. Glancing over her shoulder, she decided to head for the elevators.

Suddenly, an idea too absurd to contemplate froze her feet to the floor.

* * *

Tony Petrocelli took a deep breath, let it all out, then paced to the other side of the room. Shaking his head, he faced his friend and fellow doctor, but for the life of him, he didn’t know what to say. He was still in a state of shock due to the latest incident during which a patient—a stark-naked, voluptuous, single patient—made a pass at him in his own examining room. He’d heard the nicknames people called him when they thought he was out of hearing distance—the Don Juan of Vanderbilt Memorial, the Italian Stallion—but the forwardness of some of his patients was getting out of hand.

Scrubbing a hand across his face, he said, “Noah, are you telling me the board won’t give me the promotion unless I get married?”

“No, that isn’t what I said or what they said, at least not exactly. And you don’t have to make marriage sound like a death warrant.”

Tony strode to the window. Staring at the parking lot below and the mountain peaks rising in the west, he knew he could have dismissed Noah’s statement easily enough. After all, Noah Howell was a newlywed himself, and Tony had always suspected that married people belonged to a secret club and earned points for signing up their unsuspecting friends. He’d been ignoring his sisters’ attempts for years. But it was getting more and more difficult to dismiss his parents’ subtle hints about their only son’s bachelor status. And these blatant come-ons from his patients were becoming more frequent. One of these days, one of them could cost him his career.

Turning around, he looked at Noah, who was lounging comfortably in a chair on the other side of the desk. Rubbing at a bothersome knot in the back of his neck, Tony said, “I suppose you’re right about one thing, Noah. My life would definitely be a lot simpler if there was a wedding band on my finger.”

The other man’s laughter drew Tony’s eyebrows down. Noah Howell had a reputation for being responsible, dedicated and serious. Until a couple of months ago, he’d been no more prone to outbursts of laughter than he was to whistling. That was before he and Dr. Amanda Jennings had been thrown together during the blackout. Tony didn’t know what had been in the air that night, but strange things had been happening ever since. Some of them were sad and shocking, such as the murder of Grand Springs’ mayor, Olivia Stuart. Others, like Noah and Amanda’s surprise engagement and subsequent wedding, had been much happier events.

“Think about it, Tony,” Noah insisted. “Amanda says there isn’t a woman in this hospital, single or otherwise, except for her, of course, whose smile doesn’t get just a little brighter when you walk by. Surely one of them has caught your fancy, if you know what I mean.”

Tony scowled. “I always know what you mean these days, Noah, and frankly, I liked you a lot better when you had a shorter fuse.”

“No, you didn’t, and I’m a little surprised you’ve noticed that I’ve changed.”

Tony clamped his mouth shut on the first thing that sprang to his mind and walked straight out the door. Giving it a hard yank behind him, he spun around. And collided with a woman’s slender body.

He heard a startled “oh!” and caught a glimpse of Beth Kent’s auburn hair and wide blue eyes before his vision blurred. “Whoa,” he said, his hands shooting out to steady her. “Sorry about that. I didn’t even see you coming.”

That happened to him a lot, but no matter what anybody said, he wasn’t really absentminded. He simply didn’t pay attention to the world around him unless it concerned him. And this sudden pulsing sensation pounding through the very center of him definitely had him concerned.

“That’s all right,” she said. “It was my fault.”

Her voice sounded kind of breathless, and made him wonder if her heart had jolted and her pulse was accelerating, too. He knew of one way to find out, but this wasn’t a private corridor, and Beth was inching away from him.

No matter what Amanda and Noah said, not every woman’s smile brightened when he passed. His eyes had sought Beth’s often since the night of the blackout. Although his body always did its part, his heart speeding up and his breathing slowing down, the most he’d ever gotten from her was a quick nod and a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. In fact, this was the closest he’d been to her in two-and-a-half months.

Fortified by the memory of the brief brush of her body against his moments ago, and intrigued by the expression on her face right now, he said, “Unless you threw yourself at me on purpose, I don’t see how this could have been your fault.”

Beth was accustomed to taking blame, and would have liked to convince herself that the reason her nerves were standing on end was because there was no reproach whatsoever in Tony Petrocelli’s eyes. Unfortunately, she’d never mastered the fine art of lying, not to others, and certainly not to herself. That meant her heart was fluttering in her chest for another reason entirely.

“Did you throw yourself at me on purpose, Beth?”

At a loss for something clever to say, Beth could only shake her head and stare. Tony Petrocelli was standing a few feet away, one hand on his hip, the other in his pocket. A white shirt that had probably been wrinkle-free when he put it on was tucked into the waistband of low-slung dress pants. His lips were full for a man’s and were parted slightly, drawing attention to his mouth.

Beth’s heart thudded once, then settled back into its normal rhythm. There was no doubt about it. He had the looks, the style and, oh yes, the moves to unsettle a feminine heart. The question was, did she have the nerve to unsettle his?

Good Lord, what was she thinking?

He took one long, smooth step toward her. Lifting her chin, she held his gaze and drew on every last ounce of courage she possessed. Keeping her voice quiet so that no one else would hear, she said, “Although I didn’t actually throw myself at you, I was waiting for you.”

“I like the sound of that.”

Beth was at a loss for words all over again. As one moment stretched to two, his gaze left hers and trailed over her body in that anything-but-subtle way men had. Before she lost all her nerve, she took a deep breath and wavered him a smile. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with Dr. Howell. Perhaps I can help.”

Tony felt a fast little jolt, followed by a rousing dose of pure attraction. He had no idea what Noah had to do with any of this, but he could think of one way that Beth could help. Moving even closer, he lowered his voice and said, “I’m listening.”

She wet her lips, then glanced in every direction. Following the course of her gaze, he felt a tightening in his throat and a chugging in his chest. Doing everything in his power to let her set the pace, he whispered, “I think the coast is clear.”

He could see her breath catch in her throat, could practically hear her thoughts screeching to a stop. For a moment, he thought she might kiss him, here and now. Instead, she lowered her voice to but a whisper and said, “I heard Dr. Howell mention that you could use a wife.”

Tony went perfectly still, his eyes trained on Beth. Her auburn hair was pulled back, curly wisps framing a face that had gone noticeably pale. As if she read the question in his eyes, she finally said, “I, er, um, that is, I’d like to apply for the position.”

Blood pounded through Tony’s brain. Through the roaring din, he managed to say only one word. “Position?”

She nodded, her eyes growing more wary by the second.

“Are you telling me you’d like to be my wife?”

She nodded again and slowly lowered her gaze.

He snapped his mouth shut, but still he couldn’t move. She’d knocked the wind out of him, and she hadn’t even laid a hand on him.

His cell phone beeped. Incoming text: Dr. Petrocelli, please report to OB.

The sound of his phone jerked them apart like a bolt of lightning, then froze them in a stunned tableau all over again. “Look, Beth, I don’t know what to say.”

Beth had never heard of anyone dying of embarrassment, but she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t be the first. She moved backward, holding up both hands in a halting gesture. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Just forget I ever mentioned this. And I’ll do the same.”

When he continued staring at her, unmoving, she seized her opportunity and fled. She listened for the sound of footsteps behind her. Thankful that none came, she hurried down the stairs the way she should have done in the first place. At the landing between floors, she dropped her face into her hands. Her cheeks were on fire, and so was her pride. Mingling with her embarrassment and sheer humiliation was the deep-seated sadness that Christopher would never be hers.

* * *

“The doctors think Christopher will be ready to leave the hospital soon. Isn’t that wonderful?” Beth asked as she dusted a shelf of mining supplies and trinkets in her best-friend’s store.

The soft clink and jingle of bangle bracelets was the only indication Beth had that she wasn’t alone in the room. “Jenna?”

At the sound of more jingling, and nothing else, she turned around. “Don’t you think that’s wonderful news?”

Jenna Brigante tossed her waist-length black hair over her shoulder and flipped the Closed sign in the window of The Silver Gypsy. Instead of turning the lock, she swung around, her gauzy skirt swishing around her knees. “Not only do I think that’s wonderful, but I told you it was wonderful the first three times you mentioned it.”

“Oh. I must be repeating myself.”

“I live in an old prospector’s cabin in the mountains with only crows for company much of the time. So if you think I mind hearing about Christopher, think again. In fact, if you want to tell me one more time, be my guest. And then, when you’ve run out of diversions, you can tell me what’s really on your mind tonight.”

Beth folded her arms and studied her friend. Jenna looked every bit like the gypsies she claimed were her ancestors, from her big brown eyes to her low-necked blouse, all the way to the strappy sandals on her feet. What she lacked in height, she more than made up for with personality. She said she was thirty-two “springs” old, and had an incredibly straightforward way of saying exactly what she was thinking, not to mention an uncanny ability to read every nuance of a person’s expression and behavior. She was the only person Beth knew who could swear in four languages, and the only person who accepted Beth exactly as she was.

Straightening a display of silver baubles and charms and necklaces, Beth said, “I saw Barry today.”

Jenna made a derisive sound. “I suppose it’s inevitable. In a city of over sixty thousand people, you never run into an old friend or former classmate, but ex-husbands appear on every corner. How is old Barry, anyway?”