“Let’s say you let yourself get run down,” she said. “You weaken your immune system, and there you are, a sitting duck for every bug that cruises by. So you have one illness after another, getting even more run down, and then, when this little girl is born, you’re too full of germs to be in the delivery room, let alone ready to function as her father.” She pointed her fork at him. “What do you say to that, Mr. Pediatrician? Is that fair to anybody?”
“No. No, it’s not.” He picked up his fork. Eating food when you’d rather not had never seemed like an act of courage to him before. But he realized that in Mary Jane’s case, that’s exactly what it was. He could do no less.
“Attaboy.”
He couldn’t help it. He grinned. Yesterday he’d been absolutely sure that smiles and laughter were a thing of the past. But here was irrepressible Mary Jane Potter, valiantly shoving down food she didn’t want and cheering him on to do the same. A person would have to be made of stone not to respond to that.
She grinned back. “But I gotta warn you, it tastes like crap.”
His grin turned to a chuckle.
“You look great when you do that.”
“I never thought I would again.”
Her blue eyes grew warm with compassion. “She wouldn’t want you to stop smiling, Morgan.”
His fork clattered to the plate and his throat closed. He fumbled for his napkin as his grief came flooding back.
“Damn,” she said softly, bolting out of her seat.
He tried to choke out an apology and couldn’t. Through his tears he saw her throw a bill on the table.
“Come on.” She grabbed his hand and led him, stumbling, out of the restaurant.
Bright sunlight gave way to cool shade as she pushed him into an alley. Then she wrapped her arms around him and he clung to her and cried. He felt her shaking in his arms and was ashamed that he’d caused her to lose control, too. But he couldn’t do anything except curl his body over hers, bury his face in her glorious hair and hold on for dear life.
Eventually he managed to stop crying, but he couldn’t let go of her. He lifted his damp face, straightened a little and laid his cheek on the top of her head. “I was going to leave today,” he said. “Go back to New York.”
Her arms tightened around him.
“I won’t,” he said. “Not yet.”
Her grip slackened. Then she sighed, and when she spoke, her voice was hoarse from weeping. “Good.”
CHAPTER THREE
MARY JANE got behind the wheel of her neon-green Super Beetle while Morgan leaned down and moved the passenger seat back to accommodate his long legs. She’d sold her old junker and found a smokin’ deal on this slightly used buggy. It had been love at first sight the minute she’d seen the bud vase set into the dash. Sure, she had monthly payments, but she also had a silk daisy smiling at her every time she climbed into the car.
Before starting the engine, she turned to Morgan. “How long do you think you can stay?”
“A few days, maybe. But I’ll need to call the office and tell them where I am. My partner can probably take care of—”
“You didn’t tell your office you were coming here?”
He looked surprised by the question. “I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Morgan!”
“I haven’t been in the most organized state of mind recently.”
“Well, I know, but people must be frantic! Your office is one thing, but what about your friends, your parents? All sorts of people.”
He regarded her steadily. “I called my parents right after the accident. As I talked to them and felt no empathy at all, I was brutally reminded that they try to avoid anything messy and cruel. When I told them there would be no funeral, so they weren’t required to do anything, they sounded relieved. They told me to call if there was anything they could do. But I knew they didn’t really want me to call.”
Her heart ached for him, but she knew exactly what he was talking about. Her father had been like that after her mother died. He’d promptly hired Arielle as Mary Jane’s nanny and then had proceeded to distance himself from his daughter, who was a constant reminder of harsh realities like death. Arielle had been her family from that moment on, Arielle and the good friends she’d made here in Austin.
“As for friends,” Morgan went on, “I have to confess we weren’t all that close to anyone. We were both busy with our careers, and we didn’t take much time to socialize other than business dinners, meet-and-greet kinds of things. I can’t think of anyone who would be all that concerned as to my whereabouts.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong about that, but you should at least call your office.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I will.”
“Do you have a calling card?”
“Of course.”
She pointed to a pay phone a few feet from the restaurant. “I’ll wait.”
His eyebrows rose. “Are you giving me an order?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. I don’t know how they do things in New York, but out here in Texas we give people a shout when it’s necessary. I would say running off to Austin and leaving your medical practice high and dry qualifies.”
“My God, you’re lecturing me!” He seemed ready to give her an argument.
She met his gaze. “I may be a mere child in your eyes, and an uneducated waitress on top of that, but it’s possible I know more about some things than you do, in spite of the fact you’ve gone to college for about a million years and probably graduated magna cum incredible.”
He blinked. “I don’t think of you as an uneducated waitress.”
“That’s what I am,” she said quietly. She noticed he hadn’t contradicted her statement that she was a mere child. He still thought she was too young—too young for him. “I finished high school,” she said, “but I was sick to death of sitting in stuffy classrooms by that time. Waitressing is the only thing I know how to do.” She paused. “Well, that’s not quite true. I know how to—”
“Never mind!” he shouted.
Her eyes widened. “I was going to say crochet. What did you think I was going to say?”
“I’ll make that call.” He was out of the car in an amazingly short time, considering that he had to unwind his body to get through the low-slung door.
But he didn’t get out quickly enough to keep Mary Jane from seeing that he’d blushed red as a stop sign.
While he made his call, she studied him without fear she’d be caught gawking. She needed to look at him more closely and decide what she thought about all this. For one thing, she wanted to make sure that she wasn’t rising to the bait. If she wasn’t careful, she’d take his assumption that she was only a kid as a challenge to prove she was every inch a woman. That would be bad.
Once he’d made his connection to New York, he leaned a shoulder against the curved cubicle surrounding the telephone. Now that she’d begun to see him as a man instead of a pediatrician and her best friend’s husband, she allowed herself to notice the wide set of his shoulders, his narrow waist circled with a black leather dress belt, the pleated trousers that didn’t totally hide his nice butt. He shifted his weight.