the key to her future had been left unprotected on the steps of Maitland Maternity Clinic.
Her smile deepened, but never reached her eyes. Maitland Maternity. How fitting. How damn, ironically fitting.
She almost laughed out loud.
Suddenly, the sound of voices began to mix with the faint buzzing in her head. Raised voices, laced with excitement, all talking at once. Janelle glanced over her shoulder down the alley.
Had someone seen her drag that insufferable bitch’s body back there, after all? Had they seen what she’d done?
But the voices weren’t coming from the alley. They were coming from the direction of the clinic.
Janelle froze in her tracks, horror spilling over her like black tar, smothering her smugness.
Reporters and camera crews had materialized from nowhere, swarming around the back entrance to the clinic. Blocking her view. Blocking off more than her path.
Biting off a vicious curse, she faded into a doorway at the edge of the alley as frustration threatened to overpower her. Caught halfway between heaven and hell, she was completely cut off from her triumph.
Cut off from the money.
So far, so far…
CHAPTER ONE
DR. ABBY MAITLAND was doing her best not to look as impatient as she felt.
Just down the hall in Maitland Maternity Clinic, patients sat in her waiting room on tasteful, blue-cushioned chairs, chosen to afford optimum comfort to women who were for the most part in an uncomfortable condition. She was booked solid without so much as a ten-minute window of breathing space. She’d come into the clinic running slightly behind and praying that no one would see fit to go into labor this morning.
That was when her mother had waylaid her.
Abby had always had difficulty saying no to her mother, not out of a sense of obligation but one of pure affection. It was hard to say no to a woman who had gone out of her way all her life to make sure that her children were happy and well cared for. Today was no different.
Abby supposed that the request to stand by her mother’s side as Megan Kelly Maitland met the press this morning shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Abby had been born into this a goldfish-bowl existence, where almost every detail of her life, and of her family’s, was periodically dissected for newsworthiness. Especially if the media was having a slow week.
These days, with tabloid journalism running rampant on almost every cable channel and lurid headlines leaping out from every supermarket checkout counter, “newsworthy” was usually synonymous with scandalous.
But not in their case, thank God. The Maitlands, with their penchant for charitable donations and the clinic her mother and late father had cofounded all those years ago, were the press’s vanilla ice cream. Comforting, ever-present—but uneventful. The closest they had to a ribbon of contrasting chocolate was her younger brother, Jake, with his mysterious comings and goings and secret life-style.
Lucky Jake, Abby thought as she followed her mother and two of her siblings to the rear entrance. He wasn’t here to go through this with them.
But wealth, Abby knew, brought certain obligations, and she was far too much her mother’s daughter to turn her back on that. Although there were days when she would have loved to be given the opportunity, just to see what it felt like.
Today, for one.
Abby glanced at her watch for the third time in as many minutes. With a bit of luck, this wouldn’t take too long. She absolutely hated being late.
“I don’t see why you need all of us, Mother,” she heard herself murmuring, despite her good intentions.
Megan Maitland smiled as she gently pushed back a strand of Abby’s dark hair that had fallen wantonly into her eyes. The same lock she had been pushing back ever since Abby had had enough hair on her head to run a brush through. A wave of nostalgia whispered through Megan. Her children had gotten so big, so independent.
Her sharp, dark blue eyes swept over her son R.J. and daughter Ellie standing beside her. R.J. was the oldest of the seven, and Ellie and her twin, Beth, were the youngest, with Abby in the middle. Megan wished all her children could be here today when she made the announcement. It was just a silly little press conference, she knew, and they had all promised to come to the party that was being given in honor of the clinic once the plans were finalized. But she missed her children when they weren’t around. Missed the sound of their laughter, their voices.
She was as proud of them as she could be, but there were times when she longed for the old days, when they were young and she could keep them all within the reach of an embrace.
Megan blinked, silently forbidding a tear to emerge. She was becoming a foolish old woman before her time. What would William say if he could have seen her? He would have teased her out of it, she knew, while secretly agreeing with her.
She missed him most of all.
Her smile, soft and gentle, widened as she answered Abby’s question. “For moral support, darling. I need you for moral support.”
R.J. shrugged. Megan knew this was eating into his precious time as president of Maitland Maternity Clinic, but he would never say no to her. Her love for him had been reciprocated from the day she and William had adopted him and his younger sister Anna after their father had deserted them. Although rightfully they could have called her Aunt Megan, she had never felt anything but maternal love for William’s niece and nephew.
“Don’t see why moral support should have to enter into it, Mother,” R.J. muttered, looking more somber than usual. “We’re just announcing that there’s going to be a party celebrating the clinic’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Not much moral support required for that.”
A tinge of pity stirred within Megan. R.J. didn’t smile nearly enough. In this last year he seemed to have become even more work-oriented than ever.
Ellie, her youngest, whom Megan had appointed hospital administrator despite her tender age of twenty-five, grinned at her serious oldest brother.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she cheerfully disagreed. “I think facing the press requires a great deal of moral support.” She exchanged glances with Abby, a bit of her childhood adoration for her older sister still evident. “I always get the feeling they’re waiting for something juicy to bite into.”
“That’s because they are.” Abby could see the trucks from the various cable channels in and around Austin, Texas, through the window that faced the rear of the clinic. “Though I am surprised that so many of them have turned out. After all, this is just a human-interest story to be buried on page twelve.”
R.J. tucked his tie neatly beneath his vest. A glint of humor crossed his lips. “Page twelve? If I have to stand on the back steps of the clinic and grin at those hyenas, it better get us lines on at least page four.”
Abby patted his arm affectionately. “Don’t grin too hard, R.J. Your face might crack.”
Though Abby had always known that R.J. and Anna were really her cousins, there had never been a dividing line between any of the Maitland children.
