THE M.D. SHE HAD TO MARRY Read online

  When she entered the main room, he looked up in mid-crunch. She didn't say a word, just went out the door and into the bathroom, where she relieved her overworked bladder and splashed icy water on her face and grumbled to herself in the mirror as she raked a brush through her hair.

  Logan was over at the stove, clattering the iron covers, when she reentered the cabin. He sent a smile over his shoulder. "Now you're up, I'll make a fire."

  He rumpled a newspaper and fed it into the belly of the stove as she went to the old electric percolator on the counter by the sink, filled it with water and plugged it in.

  "You're drinking coffee?" A frown of doctorly concern creased his brow.

  She unplugged the pot, took the lid off and tipped it so that he could see inside. "Just water. I'm heating water. For tea. Herbal tea. Does that meet with your approval?"

  "Yes," he said gently. "As a matter of fact, it does." He turned back to the stove. She took a tea bag from the canister and dropped it into a mug. Then, since it never took the water that long to boil, she just stood there at the counter, waiting for it.

  "Are you hungry?" he asked, once he'd lit the fire and was carefully putting the cover back in place.

  "I'll get myself some cereal."

  "Are you sure? Maybe an egg—"

  She looked at him. The look must have said exactly what she was thinking.

  "Not an egg person, huh?"

  "Not in the last, oh, eight months or so."

  "I understand."

  She doubted it, but she decided not to comment. Soon enough, the water was hot. "There's some instant coffee, if you want it," she muttered grudgingly as she poured the boiling water over her tea bag.

  "No, thanks. The cereal's fine."

  She carried a bowl and spoon to the table with her. The cereal was already there. He went to the refrigerator and got her the milk. Soon enough, they were sitting across the table from each other, crunching away.

  Lacey tried to concentrate on her cereal. She took slow bites and she chewed thoroughly. She'd discovered, especially over the past month, when her entire digestive system seemed to have been crammed into a tiny space between her swollen uterus and her lungs, that if she didn't eat slowly, either hiccups or heartburn would be the result.

  "I tried not to wake you," he said with regret, after a few moments of mutual chewing and swallowing.

  She sent him a glance. "But you did."

  "You're angry."

  "No." She had to chew some more. He waited. Once she'd swallowed, she told him, "I was angry when you woke me up. Now I'm…" She sought the word. It came to her. "…philosophical."

  He set down his spoon. He looked much too amused. "You? Philosophical?"

  She scooped up more cereal, poked it into her mouth. "Uh-huh."

  He watched her as she chewed. When she swallowed, he said, "I assume you intend to elaborate."

  As a matter of fact, she did. She nodded. "It's just come to me. In a blinding flash of insight."

  He muttered, "I'll bet."

  "I mean it." She left her spoon in her bowl, braced her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her hand. "It has. It really has."

  "All right. I'll bite. What has come to you?"

  Her stomach felt squashed. She arched her back, rubbed at the base of her spine, then settled into her earlier pose, chin in hand. "Our basic natures are at odds."

  "Meaning?"

  "The fact that you love my sister aside, there really is no hope for us—as a couple, I mean."

  His jaw twitched. "That's your opinion."

  She sighed. "Remember that old story—the ant and the grasshopper?"

  He dared to groan. "You're kidding."

  "Nope. You're the ant. Up at first light. Diligent and hardworking, upwardly mobile, always getting ready for a rainy day."

  "I'm an ant." He did not look pleased.

  She gave him a lazy grin. "That's right. I, on the other hand, am all grasshopper." She gestured at the small, dim room around them. "I take everything—each day—as it comes. I live for the joy of the moment. You don't understand me and I don't understand you. We're just … much too different by nature to have a prayer of making a go of it together."

  He studied her for a long moment, looking irritatingly amused. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall the story, when winter came, the grasshopper died."

  She hit the table with the heel of her hand. "See? Total ant logic. Focusing on the very things you can least control."

  "I assume you mean death."

  "Yes. Exactly. Death. And bad weather, too." She picked up her spoon again and went back to work on the cereal.

  "I thought that was the moral of the story," Logan said. "The ant worked hard and scrimped and saved and lasted the winter. The grasshopper partied. And when the cold weather came…" He shook his head and pretended to look mournful. "Too bad, so sad."

  She pointed her spoon at him. "I live in L.A. Bad weather is not a problem."

  "We're discussing a fable, Lace. In a fable, bad weather stands for any of a number of possible difficult periods in life."

  She'd started out this little discussion feeling pleasantly superior—now she felt just plain disgruntled. "Oh, never mind. You're determined to miss my point and make your own."

  "I got your point."

  "Right." She bent her head over her bowl and finished her cereal, aware of his eyes on her the whole time.

  When she looked up, sure enough, he was watching her.

  He said, "Maybe having my baby is the best thing that ever happened to you. As my wife, you know you'll always have a roof over your head when winter closes in."

  She reached for the bottle of prenatal vitamins in the center of the table, screwed off the lid and shook one into her hand. "Listen to me, Logan. I'm not going to be your wife. And as far as that roof you mentioned, I don't need to know it'll be there. I don't think that far ahead. As I keep trying to explain to you, I'm a grasshopper to the core."

  "Fine. So I'll think ahead for you. You do need that. Especially now, with the baby coming."

  She picked up her bowl and stood. "I can see I'm getting nowhere."

  "I wouldn't say that. This has been an enlightening discussion."

  "Enlightening for you, maybe."

  There it was again, that musing, knowing look in his eyes. "Seriously. I think we have a lot to offer each other."

  "Dream on."

  "I'll scrimp and save for a rainy day. You'll see that we make the most of every moment. We're the perfect couple."

  Something scathing rose to her lips. She bit it back and turned for the sink, where she washed her vitamin down with water, cleaned her bowl and spoon and set them in the wooden rack to dry.

  * * *

  "He seems a fine man," Tess said. "And so handsome, too."

  They were sitting in a pair of rockers on the porch of the main house, just Tess and Lacey, enjoying the shade in the heat of the afternoon. Zach and Jobeth had taken Logan out for a look around the ranch, Starr had driven off that morning to her summer job and Edna had settled in with the baby at her own house for a short nap.

  "Lacey, did you hear what I said?"

  Lacey made a noncommittal sound. She had her sketch pad perched on what was left of her lap and she was busy stroking in shadows with the side of her pencil.

  Tess took a few more tiny, perfect stitches on the thick wool sock she was darning. "I hope he got everything worked out all right with the other doctors at his office."

  Logan had tried calling his office via cell phone earlier. When the cell phone cut out on him, he'd ended up using the phone at the main house.

  "Yes," Lacey said. "His partners have agreed to cover for him."

  "Well. That's good."

  Was it? Lacey wasn't so sure. But she felt no urge to remark on the fact. She focused on her drawing, her hand moving swiftly and surely over the paper.

  Tess cleared her throat. "Maybe I have no right to ask, but I'm going to ask anyw
ay…"

  Lacey made a series of quick, deft strokes, cross-hatching more shadows, then looked up from her sketch pad. "Yes," she said, "Logan is the baby's father."

  Those big dark eyes of Tess's didn't waver. "He says he's here to marry you."

  "When did he say that?"

  "Last night. You had left the table for a moment." Tess snipped with her scissors and tied off her thread. "Will you marry him?"

  "No." Lacey flipped the cover over her drawing and set the pad on the short bench between them.

  "Why not?"

  Lacey's back was aching, as it had been for the past few days. She pushed herself from the chair and indulged in a nice, protracted stretch. Tess watched her, saying nothing.

  Lacey wandered to the railing and managed to hoist herself up onto it. She put one hand under her belly to support it a little and leaned her cheek against the porch post.

  Then she said it. "He doesn't love me. He's always loved Jenna."

  Tess bent to her basket, dropped in the sock, and brought out a plaid shirt with a tear at the shoulder seam. "How do you know that?"

  "They were high school sweethearts. And they were even engaged, last year, before Mack McGarrity came back into the picture."

  "That was last year. What about now?"

  "I've … confronted him with it. Yesterday, when he first arrived and started insisting that we had to get married."

  "And?"

  "He didn't come right out and say, 'I love Jenna,' but he never denied it, either."

  Tess looked over the rows of thread spools in her sewing box, seeking the right color. "Your sister is no threat to your relationship with Logan. Jenna loves her husband."

  "Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped Logan from loving her."

  "Or so you assume, though he's never actually said as much."

  "He doesn't have to say it. I know. And he certainly hasn't said he loves me."

  "Have you said you love him?"

  "No, and I don't intend to."

  "Why not?"

  Lacey considered that question—and decided against answering it. Tess didn't seem to mind. She got to work threading her needle, rolling a knot into the end of the thread. She took her first stitch.

  Her head still bent over her mending, Tess spoke again. "Whatever Dr. Severance feels for your sister, it's obvious he cares for you. And he also feels … what a man feels when he looks at a certain woman."

  Lacey sat a little straighter on the railing. "Sex, you mean?"

  "Yes. I mean sex."

  "Oh, come on. He did … want me. Nine months ago. But now…"

  "He wants you," said Tess patiently. "And I am not talking about nine months ago. I am talking about what I saw on his face last night."

  "You imagined it."

  "No, I didn't." Tess glanced up in mid-stitch. "And you do love him."

  Lacey considered a lie of denial and rejected the idea. Tess would know a lie when she heard one. Lacey looked out, over the yard, past the silvery foliage of the Russian olive tree growing in the center of the driveway, to the rolling green land that would soon parch to gold beneath the summer sun. "I'm not going to marry him." She said it very softly.

  "Excuse me?"

  Lacey turned back to the shade of the porch. A fly buzzed near her ear. She waved it away. "I said, I'm not going to marry him."

  Tess kept her gaze on her mending, but a smile curved her mouth. "He's a fine man. And he cares for you. He wants you as a man wants a woman. And you love him. It's enough."

  "Enough for what?"

  "Enough for a start. Enough to build on. That's all that's really needed at the first in a marriage, if the two people are honorable. If they're willing to persist."

  Lacey peered more closely at her cousin's wife. "You sound as though you're talking from experience."

  "I am. Zach and I started out with a strictly practical arrangement. He needed a wife. And I needed … a place like this ranch. Somewhere to call home."

  Lacey let out a short laugh of pure disbelief. "You and Zach? You're kidding. I can see when he looks at you how he feels. And when you look at him…"

  A sweet pink blush crept upward over Tess's soft cheeks. "Yes. But it wasn't always that way."

  Bracing her hand more firmly beneath her heavy stomach, Lacey lowered her feet to the porch boards. "Well. Call me a fool. Call me a romantic. But I want to have my husband's love when I marry him."

  "Ah, but not just any husband. You want Logan Severance's love."

  Right then, as if the forces of nature had some vested interest in proving Tess's point, a gust of wind blew down the porch. It ruffled back the cover on Lacey's sketch pad. The drawing Lacey had just been working on—of Logan napping in the cabin—was right there for Tess to see. She glanced at it.

  "Very nice," she said.

  Lacey stepped forward, flipped the cover in place and turned the pad over so the cardboard backing would hold it shut. "All right. So it's Logan's love I want. So what? Sometimes people can't have what they want."

  "That's true. And they certainly will never get what they want if they don't even try."

  "And just how do you suggest that I 'try'?"

  Tess took a few more perfect stitches, her head tipped thoughtfully to the side. When she pulled the thread through for the third time, she spoke. "Marry him. Build a life with him. Raise that baby together. Give love a place to grow."

  Give love a place to grow. What a captivating idea.

  Too captivating. "That might work for some couples. But not for Logan and me. There are just a hundred ways we don't mesh."

  "And those ways are?"

  "Well, for starters, at least with me, he can be unbelievably overbearing."

  "And you're a born rebel. Your lives will never be dull."

  "You don't understand, Tess. You don't know. He is a fine man, just as you said. But I'm not … wife material. Not the kind of wife Logan's always wanted, anyway."

  "You will be an excellent wife. You're strong and good-hearted and full of life. Logan Severance is a lucky man to have your love."

  Lacey shook her head. "Tess, you're not listening. It simply can't work."

  "Shall I tell you what my wise old Aunt Matilda used to say?"

  "I'll pass."

  Tess chuckled. "Listen up."

  "Oh, all right. Go ahead."

  "Whether you think you can or you think you can't—you're right."

  * * *

  Logan, Zach and Jobeth returned about half an hour later. Tess went in and brought out a pitcher of lemonade and five tall iced glasses. For a while, they all sat together on the porch. Logan asked questions about what he'd seen on his afternoon tour and Zach answered him in that low, pleasant drawl of his.

  Lacey sat in the rocker, sipping lemonade and sometimes sketching, listening to the others talk. Now and then Logan would glance her way. Their eyes would meet and she'd find herself thinking about what Tess had said.

  Marry him. Raise that baby together. Give love a place to grow…

  Somehow, right then, in the shade of her cousin's porch on a hot summer afternoon, Tess's lovely, impossible words sounded like excellent advice. Lacey felt good, lazy and content and happy with the world and her own rather insecure place in it.

  Even the ache in her back wasn't that bad, though sometimes it did seem to reach around, feeling like thin yet powerful fingers, and squeeze at her distended abdomen. She wondered, as she sat there idly rocking, if she might be having contractions—and then decided that if she was, there was nothing urgent about them. They came irregularly and were never less than ten or fifteen minutes apart.

  Edna strolled across the yard with the baby at a little after five and Starr came spinning down the driveway in a dusty sports car a few minutes later.

  Tess picked up her mending and her cloth-covered sewing box and stood. "I think it's time I started thinking about getting some food on the table. Lacey? Logan? I hope you'll join us."

  "Yes," said Edna
. "Please stay. There is plenty."

  So they stayed. They walked back to the cabin together at twilight. Logan insisted on carrying her big shoulder tote, which Lacey took everywhere so she'd always have her sketchpads and pencils with her if she needed them.

  He reached for her hand halfway down the dirt road and she gave it to him. In fact, she wrapped the fingers of her other hand around his arm and leaned in close. He felt so solid and good, someone she could always lean against and know that he could take the weight.

  She chuckled to herself.

  He turned, smiled. "What?"

  "I was just thinking that you're great for leaning on."

  She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, certain that he would consider them nothing short of an invitation to start in about marriage again.

  But he surprised her. He only squeezed her hand, murmured, "Lean all you want," and kept walking.

  When they got to the cabin, he made the same suggestion he had the night before, that they sit outside for a while. And this time she accepted his invitation.

  They sat on the step and listened to the coyotes howl at the risen moon and hardly talked at all. Talking didn't seem necessary, somehow.

  When they went in, Lacey showered first, standing under the arching shower pipe that had been added on to the claw-footed tub. As the water cascaded over her swollen body, it occurred to her that never once since breakfast had he used the dreaded "M" word.

  Was that progress?

  She didn't know. And she didn't really even care. The day had been a good one, all in all. And she was a born grasshopper, someone who knew how to take each day as it came.

  She was in bed by ten, listening to Logan's movements in the main part of the cabin, practicing her pregnant-lady exercises, and wishing that the pain in her back would go away. She felt a little keyed up, and her legs were cramping just a bit. She expected another mostly sleepless night.

  But surprisingly, she dropped off around eleven.

  She woke at one in the morning. She sat straight up in bed as a powerful contraction gripped her. She groaned, a loud, animal sound, one she couldn't have held back if she'd tried.