Leigh Michaels - The Husband Project

“Can we get that in writing?” Susannah said breathlessly. “I’m parked on the sidewalk, Kit, so it might be a good idea if we don’t hang around here much longer.”

Kit’s phone rang and she turned away to answer it.

“I can walk,” Alison said.

Susannah looked doubtful, but when Alison pushed herself to her feet. Susannah quickly offered her arm. Their progress was slow, hampered not only by Alison’s discomfort but by Flanagan’s other patrons, crowding around to offer advice.

They were almost to the car when Kit caught up. “Now that’s luck,” she said briskly. “Logan’s at the nearest hospital, just finishing a delivery—so he’ll meet us in the emergency room.”

Alison sank into the back seat. There was no comfortable position; what she wanted to do was draw her knees up to her chest and howl. In a feeble effort to distract herself, she said, “Was his delivery a boy or a girl?”

“I didn’t stop to chat,” Kit said dryly. “For all I know it could have been a Federal Express package.”

In the emergency room, Susannah went off to deal with the paperwork, and Kit waited outside the small treatment room while two staff members swarmed over Alison to do a preliminary examination. It was only after they had left and quiet descended on the room that she really realized where she was, and what was likely to happen.

Time to face the truth, she told herself. You were an idiot in the first place to try to pretend nothing was wrong. Now you can’t pretend anymore. And if your nightmares turn out to be fact after all—

Alison’s heart seemed to be skipping every other beat as fear pumped adrenaline through her veins. She tried to keep her eyes so tightly closed that the tears couldn’t seep out, but it was impossible.

Kit took her hand. “Another one?” she said gently. “Squeeze as hard as you need to, Ali.”

Alison shook her head. “No. I’m just...so stupid. Thinking that if I pretended it didn’t hurt, it would stop.”

Kit said slowly, “And if you didn’t see a doctor then nothing could really be wrong? That’s a first-class case of denial, Ali, and I could just—” She took a deep breath. “No, this isn’t the time for a scolding.”

Susannah appeared in the doorway. “Why not? Sounds to me like she deserves one.” She brushed a lock of Alison’s perspiration-dampened dark hair back from her temple. “It’ll be all right now.”

It might never be all right again, Alison thought.

Susannah’s grin was mischievous. “I can promise that because I just caught a glimpse of your doctor, and let me tell you, Ali, you’re one lucky girl.”

A rustle from the doorway made both Susannah and Kit move away from the side of the examining table. Restlessly, Alison turned her head.

Lying flat on her back, looking almost directly into the bright overhead lights, was hardly the best way to get a good view. Even so, Alison had no trouble figuring out what Susannah had been talking about. Her visual perception might be skewed and a good part of her attention focused on her pain; nevertheless, she realized with her first glance that her new doctor was one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen.

He was tall and broad-shouldered; the washed-out green scrub suit which would have been baggy on another man fitted him as easily if it had been tailored. His hair was an unruly dark brown thatch, just a little longer than it ought to have been. His face was angular, with a strong jaw and a mouth which hinted that he liked to smile.

She looked up into his eyes. They were green—a deep, true green that Alison had never seen before—surrounded with indecently long and curly lashes.

He was surveying her every bit as closely, but for different reasons; Alison could almost see the calculator in his brain checking off symptoms even before he offered a hand, large and capable and tanned. “Ms. Novak? I’m Logan Kavanaugh,” he said. “Tell me when you started to feel this pain.”

He listened with his head tilted just a little to one side, jotting notes from time to time on the clipboard he carried, those brilliant green eyes seeming never to leave her even when Kit interrupted now and then with more details. Then he laid the board on a nearby cabinet and said, “And it hurts... right here, is that right?”

Alison. was sure that under normal circumstances the pressure of his hand on her abdomen would have been no more than a firm touch. As it was, however, she felt as if a cannonball had hit her squarely where she hurt worst. She screamed, and her body instinctively folded up into a fetal position.

If she’d been lying on her side, there would have been no awkward consequences from simply pulling her knees up tight to her chest and bending her head protectively over her vulnerable midsection. Instead, she was on her back, with Logan Kavanaugh bending over her—and as she reared up off the table, her forehead collided with his jaw. Her vertebrae rattled with the impact.

He staggered back from the table, one hand pressed to his face. “I see I found the right spot.” His voice was level, but when he took his hand away from the comer of his mouth, his fingers were red. “Excuse me a moment.”

As he left the room, Alison lay back on the table. The pain in her abdomen was almost relentless, and now her head ached, too. Even breathing hurt.

“Now that was a full-speed retreat,” Susannah said admiringly. “You’re a wonder, Ali. I’d never have come up with such a novel way to get rid of a man.” She moved closer to the table and patted Alison’s hand.

Despite the pain, Alison couldn’t keep herself from laughing—though it sounded more like a sob.

In less than a minute Logan Kavanaugh was back, holding an ice cube wrapped in a piece of gauze against his lip. He stopped a full pace from the examining table. “What have you eaten today?”

Alison closed her eyes. “A light and early lunch. So if you think, Doctor, that this is nothing more than indigestion—”

“No, and I’m sure it’s not hunger pains, either. I think it’s the.hottest appendix I’ve seen in years. I’ve already called a surgeon, but we may as well get the basics out of the way while we wait. Are you allergic to any medications?”

Alison shook her head wearily.

Kit said, “But is it safe to wait, Logan? Couldn’t you—”

“What? You want me to voluntarily spend an hour in the same room with her and a scalpel? She’s dangerous enough with only her head as a weapon.” His voice was full of lazy humor, but Alison bristled anyway. “It won’t take long for the surgeon to get here,” he went on, more seriously. “By the time we’ve done the workup—”

“It’s not appendicitis,” Alison said.

A silence as clear and hard as crystal fell over the room.. From the hall came the sound of footsteps and lowered voices, but inside the examining room the only sound was the nagging hum of the clock above the door.

“I beg your pardon, Doctor,” Logan Kavanaugh said. His imitation of the ironic note in Alison’s voice was precise. “And just what is your diagnosis?”

Susannah said hastily, “She’s not herself. Really, Dr. Kavanaugh. She’s practically out of her mind with pain.”

“Ali.” Kit sounded tired. “You haven’t been reading medical books, have you?”

“What an incredibly idiotic question,” Susannah said. “The research queen of metropolitan Chicago? Of course she has—she probably keeps Gray’s Anatomy on her bedside table right next to her Dun and Bradstreet ”

The door opened, and a white-coated woman with short red hair and a sprinkling of freckles appeared, her hand already outstretched for the clipboard Logan Kavanaugh held. “Thanks a bunch, Kavanaugh,” she said absently as her gaze dropped to the chart. “You know I have a date tonight. At least, I used to have.”