ill children?” Her bravado was gone. She looked doubtful, and suddenly more vulnerable than he would have imagined possible. “Do you think I’m qualified to help out with them? I’d hate to say the wrong thing and make things worse.” She gave a half smile. “I have a tendency to talk before I think. Sometimes it gets me into trouble.”
He couldn’t help but smile back. He felt as if this was the first thing she’d said to him since coming in that wasn’t a previously devised closing argument. “No kidding.”
She gave him a withering look.
“Okay, okay. Here’s the deal. The day care is for the use of staff members, and sometimes the children or siblings of patients. There’s nothing particularly challenging about it. Like all kids, they just need care and kindness and attention.”
She still looked reluctant. “I’m sure I could handle it, but how would the parents feel about having me there? I’m sure they didn’t leave their kids with the idea that just anyone could come in and work with them.”
“I’m not asking just anyone,” Jared said, glad that she’d raised the issue. It showed she was thinking the right way. “I’m asking you. But if you don’t think you’re up to it—”
“Of course I’m up to it.” She bristled at the challenge, as he knew she would. “In fact, I think it sounds like fun.”
“Good.”
“But I know what you’re up to,” she added, jabbing a finger toward him in the air. “This isn’t a little dare, it’s a test. So I want to know your criteria for passing.”
“Look, Miss Tourbier, I’m not playing games. You can’t simply connect the dots and win a child.”
“Win a child?” she repeated incredulously. “Dr. Cross, even if you believe that’s what I’m here to do, I would imagine you could find a less crass way to express your feelings. You’re not only disparaging me, you’re demeaning the child I hope to have, and I will not stand for that. Besides—” she threw her arms up “—you’re the one devising this silly scheme to prove myself.”
“Miss Tourbier, I’m trying to help you, to give you a little taste of motherhood while there’s still time for you to decide it’s not what you want at this time.” He saw her objection coming and raised a hand. “If there’s even the possibility that you might decide that. I know you say there isn’t. If that’s so, then this is just a little practice for the real thing. No harm, no foul.”
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Tell me, do you make every prospective mother jump through these kinds of hoops? Is this how the hospital gets volunteers?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Every case is different. I don’t make this particular suggestion to everyone, although everyone does undergo a waiting period with counseling to make sure they’re making the right decision. Not every clinic does that. But not every clinic cares the way Mission Creek does. I suspect it’s our reputation for being cautious that brought you here.”
“Among other things,” she agreed. “But I still feel you have a prejudice against me particularly.”
“I’m not punishing you by asking you to work with the kids. I’m trying to help you, to allow you a taste of the real, everyday process of caring for a child. If it arms you with a little experience for your future child, I’ve done you a favor. If it gives you pause and causes you to wait on your plan, then I’ve done you and the child a favor.”
Melanie took a long breath, then expelled it. “That makes sense,” she admitted. “I just wish I believed you were even a tiny bit open-minded about my plan.”
He smiled. “I wish you were a little more open-minded about it, too.”
She looked at him for a moment, her blue eyes as light as the summer sky, but the expression in them dark. Dangerous. “This is not going to change my mind, you know.”
“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.” He had to admire her determination. Truth was, he had nothing against her personally. He merely knew what it was like to be an unwanted child. Fifteen years in the Drumoldry Orphanage had given him all the evidence he’d ever needed.
His birth mother had kept him for the first three years of his life. All he remembered of her was the smell of alcohol, a lot of yelling, and cockroaches crawling around the floors of the succession of cheap motels they slept in.
Oh, and the boyfriends. His mother had had a lot of them. He’d seen more than any kid should have to see.
It wasn’t just his own experience that made him so protective of childrens’ rights, it was the experiences of the children he’d known in Drumoldry: Mary Cassidy, whose father was unknown and whose mother lost a battle with cancer when Mary was the undesirable-to-adoptive-parents age of eleven; Bobby Miller Nordell who had come in at four years of age, then was returned at six by a couple who had managed to have their own children and didn’t want him any longer; Alex Jergen, who’d been left in the orphanage parking lot at age three and who stayed with them until he gave in to his depression at fifteen.
Jared knew too many stories just like theirs.
“It’s not personal,” Jared repeated. “It’s about the child. Please work with me on this so we can make sure we do what’s best for him or her. And what’s best for you. A couple of weeks isn’t a long time to wait when you’re talking about creating a new life.”
She studied him for a moment. He didn’t know what she saw there, but her expression softened suddenly. “Okay. We’ll do it your way. When can I start at the day-care center?”
“How about tomorrow morning? I’ll call and arrange it with them, let them know you’re coming. Say, nine o’clock?”
She nodded. “I’ll be there at nine sharp.”
She was late.
She hadn’t even opened her eyes until ten that morning. It was jet lag, of course. Melanie had never been a late sleeper and she certainly wasn’t lazy, but she knew it would be hard to convince Dr. Jared Cross of that.
How many points was this going to count against her?
She scurried around the bedroom of her rented apartment in The Aldon Towers, throwing on the most conservative, June Cleaverish clothes she could find. She gave her long dark hair the quickest once-over with a brush and pulled it back into a long pony-tail. Forget makeup; the kids wouldn’t care. Besides, the less conspicuous she was, the better. Remarkably, no one in this little town had taken much notice of her so far. She only hoped that would continue to be the case.
She pounded out to the street where her car was parked, wondering if there was even a chance that Dr. Cross wouldn’t discover she was late on her first day there.
Nah. He was probably there right now, she thought as she forced herself to keep to the twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit on Mission Creek Drive while the clock on the dashboard seemed to move at double speed. Ten-ten, ten-fourteen, ten-nineteen.
With luck she found a parking space in the street and hurried up the sidewalk, passing a magazine kiosk. The tabloid headline seemed to jump out and grab her by the throat: A Wild Heiress! And there was that stupid photo again—the one that managed to make it look as if she and Robert were in
