He looked at the chart, and his expression, when he looked back at her, was more compassionate. “I do sympathize with your concern. But surely you understand that I can’t rush things simply because a patient may have trouble conceiving.”
“If it’s possible at all,” she said, her voice wavering slightly with emotion. Stay calm, she told herself. Breathe.
“If it’s possible at all,” he agreed.
She took a moment to collect herself, then asked, “All right, what do I have to do to convince you?”
“Slow down a little. Truthfully, Miss Tourbier, I’m less concerned with your complete lack of experience with children than I am with your all-fired determination to do this so quickly despite the inexperience.”
He didn’t think she could do it. He wasn’t even going to give her a chance. He was going to take his little notes and then recommend to the clinic that she was a bad candidate for the treatment. Her dreams for a child, or children, would be blown out like a match, on this one man’s whim.
“Please, Dr. Cross,” she said, her heart beginning to ache. “What can I do to prove to you that I’m ready for this?”
He tapped his pen on the paper a couple of times, then let go of it.
Melanie watched it clatter on his desk.
“I have a suggestion,” he said.
Hope surged in her. He hadn’t written her off yet.
Not that he had the right to simply write her off.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Actually, it’s more of a challenge. Or—” he lowered his chin and looked at her seriously “—you might even call it a dare.”
Two
“A dare?” Melanie repeated, frowning. “Okay, I’m listening. What is it?” She looked like a gambler, waiting to see where the ball would settle on the roulette wheel.
Jared Cross sensed that this was a woman who was used to taking chances, who perhaps even relished them.
His mind strayed to the tabloid newspaper article he had in his file. His secretary had showed it to him, thinking it was cool that such a major celebrity was coming to the clinic. Jared hadn’t shared her enthusiasm, particularly once he’d read the article. Granted, it was a tabloid and he took everything he read with a grain of salt, but several facts were unrefuted: one, that Miss Tourbier’s lover was married, and two, that they’d behaved indiscreetly in front of the man’s children.
Of course, it had been a couple of years ago, according to the article, which described a book that was coming out detailing the affair. Perhaps she’d learned something from it. Perhaps she was more responsible now, at least about what she did or did not do in front of children.
That was the kind of thing he needed to determine.
He would be fair, despite her obvious and unfounded fear that he was against her.
He leaned toward her, elbows on his desk. This plan, he knew, would benefit everyone involved. “I challenge you to volunteer for, say, two weeks in the hospital day-care center.”
“Two weeks!”
He nodded.
“With 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