Christine Rimmer - The M.D. She Had To Marry

But right now, Lacey felt she was managing well enough. And the cabin did please her. She had music—a boom box and a pile of CDs in the sleeping nook. She read a lot and she sketched all the time. Lately, since just before she’d come to Wyoming, she’d discovered that she no longer had the kind of total concentration it took to work seriously on a painting. But that was all right. She sensed that it would come back to her, after the baby arrived—no matter what Xavier Hockland, her former teacher and mentor, chose to believe.

And certainly she could manage to make it to the main house when her labor began. Tess could take her to the hospital from there.

Logan began prowling around the room. He stopped by the big stove. “What do you use to heat this place?”

“Wood. Lately, the weather’s so mild, I hardly need heat, though. And if I do, I only have to build one fire, in the morning. By the time it burns down, it’s warm outside.”

“How do you cook?”

“Same thing. I build a fire.”

“You’re chopping wood in your condition?”

She made a face at him. “No. Zach takes care of it. He keeps the wood bin out in back nice and full.”

“But you have to haul it in here and build the fire yourself?”

“It’s not that difficult, Logan.”

“Heavy lifting is a bad idea at this point. Your doctor should have told you that.”

“Logan. Come on. Stop picking on sweet old Doc Pruitt. I only carry in a few pieces of wood at a time. There honestly is no heavy lifting involved.”

He marched over to her again. “You need help around here. And even if you won’t marry me, I think I have a right to be here when my baby is born.”

She opened her mouth to rebut that—and then shut it without making a sound. He was right. If he wanted to be here for the birth of their child, who was she to deny him?

“Who knows?” he added. “You might even need a doctor in a hurry. Then you’d be doubly glad that I stuck around.”

Score one more for his side. She could go into labor any time now. If, God forbid, anything should go wrong before she reached the hospital in Buffalo, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor at her side.

And who was she kidding, anyway?

Beyond the issues of her isolation in the cabin, of a father’s rights and Logan’s skills as a physician, there was her foolish heart, beating too hard under her breastbone, just waiting for any excuse to keep him near for a while.

It astonished her now, to look back on all those years growing up, when the name Logan Severance had inspired in her a feeling of profound irritation at best. Logan Severance, her sister’s perfect, straight-A boyfriend, who played halfback on the high school football team, took honors in debate and went to University of California in Davis on full scholarship. Logan Severance, who seemed to think it was his duty to whip his sweetheart’s messed-up little sister into shape. He was always after her to stand up straight, carping at her about her grades, lecturing her when she ran away or got caught stealing bubble gum from Mr. Kretchmeir’s corner store.

Sometimes, she had actually thought that she hated him.

But not anymore.

Now she knew that she loved him. She had figured that out last September, on the fifth glorious day of their crazy, impossible affair. It turned out to be the last day. As soon as she admitted the grim truth to herself, she had seen the self-defeating hopelessness of what she was doing. She had told him she couldn’t see him anymore.

He had called her three times after she returned to L.A. She’d found his messages on her answering machine and played each of them back over and over, until they had burned themselves a permanent place in her brain. She had memorized each word, each breath, each nuance of sound…

“Hello, Lacey. It’s Logan. I was just—listen. Why don’t you give me a call?”

“Lacey. Logan. I left a message a month ago. Did you get it? Are you all right? Sometimes I… Never mind. I suppose I should just leave you alone.”

“Lace. It’s Logan. If you don’t call me back this time, I won’t try again.”

She had started to call him a hundred times. And she had always put the phone down before she went through with it, though she had known by his second call that she was carrying his baby, known that eventually she would make herself tell him.

Known he would come to her as soon as she did.

And that once he came, it would be harder than ever to send him away.

He smoothed a coil of hair back from her cheek. She savored the lovely, light caress.

He murmured so tenderly, “Say I can stay.”

She put off giving in. “I don’t want to hear any more talk about marriage. It’s out of the question, Logan. Do you understand?”

His eyes gleamed in satisfaction. “That’s a yes, right?”

“Not to marriage.”

“But you’ll let me stay here with you.”

“Just until the baby’s born. After that, you have to go. We can make arrangements for you to see the baby on a regular basis, and we can—”

He put a finger against her lips. “Shh. There’s no need to worry about all that now.”

She pulled her head back, away from the touch of that finger of his. It was too tempting by half, that finger. She might just get foolish and suck it right inside her mouth.

His grin seemed terribly smug.

She told him so. “I do not like the look on your face.”

“What look?” He reached for one of the grocery bags. “Come on. I’ll help you put this stuff away.”

As soon as the shopping bags were emptied, Logan went out and got his things from the car. There was only one bureau in the dark little cabin. A scarred mahogany monstrosity with a streaked mirror on top. It loomed against the wall by the rear door, sandwiched between a pair of crammed-full pine bookcases. Lacey gave him three of the eight drawers. He’d traveled light, so everything fit in the space she assigned him.

As he unpacked, Lacey sat in the old rocker in the corner, watching him, rocking slowly, her abdomen a hard mound taking up most of her lap, her head resting back, those blue eyes drooping a little.

When he finished, he shoved his empty bag and extra shoes under the daybed. Then he dropped onto the mattress, which was covered with a patchwork quilt. “That’s that.”

“Umm,” she said softly. The rocker creaked as she idly moved it back and forth.

He leaned an elbow on the ironwork bedstead and allowed himself the luxury of just looking at her.

She looked good. Her skin glowed with health and her golden hair still possessed the glossy sheen he remembered. Pregnancy seemed to agree with her. That pleased him. He wanted more children, after this one. A whole house full. It wouldn’t be the way it had been when he was a boy, just him and his father and the endless string of housekeepers who had never managed to take the place that should have been filled by a wife and mother.

His kids would have more than that. His kids would have brothers and sisters—and both of their parents. There would be noise and laughter and a feeling of belonging.

Lacey went on rocking—and she smiled.

He wanted to touch her, to put his hand on the fine, smooth skin of her cheek, to run it down over her throat and then over her breasts, which looked sweet and firm and full, even beneath the shapeless denim dress she wore. He wanted to spread both hands on her belly, test the hardness of it now, when she was so close to term, maybe even get lucky and feel his baby kick.

But he knew she wouldn’t allow such intimate explorations of her body. Not now. Not so soon after he’d forced himself back into her life.

He was going to have to wait to have his hands on her. Probably until after he had managed to convince her to marry him.