Her eyelids drooped, and her mind began to spin.
She didn’t know what sort of a party it was at first. She couldn’t hear anything, and everything seemed to be in black and white. Like an old home movie, that was it.
Slowly the picture cleared, like a projector coming into focus. Now she could see people, party hats perched on their heads, their mouths moving but making no sound. They seemed to be watching her, she glanced down and realized she was carrying a cake, balancing it carefully in both hands. A birthday cake from the looks of things, since there was a fat candle glowing in the center...
A single candle. She looked up eagerly, her eyes searching for the child the birthday cake must belong to. But the crowd of party-goers was dense. Suddenly, however, the group shifted, and people stepped aside to make room for her. At the end of the aisle they’d formed was a high chair, and in it sat a small child, romper-clad and wide-eyed, with a tuft of dark hair sticking straight up. Alison smiled and stepped forward, tripped over her own feet and went sprawling. The candle snuffed out an instant before Alison’s face smashed the thick white icing...
She jerked awake and lay back against the cushions, breathing hard. “Talk about Freudian,” she muttered finally, and pushed herself into a sitting position.
Yes, she’d been acting bizarre that day on Kit’s terrace. It had been little short of insane to blurt out her wishes that way, and particularly to Logan Kavanaugh. When the only experience the man had of her was a sick, argumentative woman who’d left him with a sore and bleeding lip—well, it was no wonder he hadn’t been eager to cooperate. She must have been deranged not to see that before she’d so thoroughly embarrassed herself.
But the fact she’d been crazy to bring it up to him didn’t mean it was a crazy idea. Granted, she’d have been better off to think it all the way through first and do a little more research before choosing a doctor. But the longing was real; she still wanted a child. And the facts hadn’t changed; all her arguments made just as much sense now as they had in the first burst of enthusiasm.
She’d been tempted to rip up his card, but common sense had made her hesitate. Why start from scratch if she could get a referral? And she wouldn’t have to talk to Logan himself; he’d said himself that his office nurse could help...
She’d just dialed the last digit when Susannah’s blond head appeared around the edge of Alison’s half-closed of fice door. “Rita said you were asking about—Oh, sorry. Want me to come back later?”
Susannah’s timing, Alison thought testily, couldn’t possibly have been worse. She started to put the phone down.
Before she could break the connection, however, the line clicked and a low-pitched Southern drawl said, “Obstetrics and Gynecology Associates.”
What a tongue twister. Somebody ought to have-had better sense. Hastily Alison put the phone back to her ear. “I’m sorry. Wrong number.” She hung up without waiting for a response. “I’m finished, Sue. Have a seat.”
Susannah flopped down in the big wicker chair. “I kept a list of the calls I took for you and what I did about them—or mostly, what I didn’t do.” She handed a sheet of yellow paper to Alison. “The majority said their business could wait till you were back in shape.”
Alison ran her eyes down the list. No big problems jumped out at her. “Thanks, Sue.”
Susannah swung around and draped her legs over the chair’s arm. “My pleasure. I also wondered.... You know the painting that was vandalized at the Dearborn Museum?”
Alison frowned. She remembered only vaguely—but her foggy recall made sense; Susannah had mentioned it at Flanagan’s when Alison’s pain was at its worst. “What about it?”
“The artist is coming to town to inspect the damage, and of course as the museum’s official public relations person I’ll have to be there. I wondered, if you don’t have another obligation, if you’d go with me.”
“Why? I’ve never been part of the Dearborn campaigns.”
“Moral support,” Susannah said firmly.
“Nobody can possibly think it’s your fault, can they?”
“Of course they can. I’m the one who suggested that instead of a guest book they hang a plain white canvas and let visitors write their comments with markers. So when the board starts looking for a scapegoat, and remembers that I encouraged the patrons to write on things—”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Since when did that prevent clients from yelling? A week from Saturday, five in the afternoon. Can you go?”
“I think so.” Alison reached for her calendar. “That night’s the first Chicago Singles meeting, so I’d have to go directly from the museum to Coq Au Vin. But maybe I can talk to the museum director about hosting an event for the stupid singles club.”
“Better quit calling it that,” Susannah advised, “or you’ll slip one of these days. I can see it now, on some morning interview show on television... Are you going to have gift certificates for membership?”
“Hadn’t thought of it.”
“If you do, I might get one for our painter friend.”
“He’d think it was a personal apology for the additions to his canvas.”
“You’re probably right.” Susannah yawned. “Kit tells me you and Logan Kavanaugh not only connected—pardon the pun—at the hospital but you spent a whole hour tête-à-tête on her terrace.”
“Did she?” Alison buried her face in a folderful of blank paper and did her best to sound entirely uninterested.
“So what’s going on there?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Come on, Ali. Don’t tell me you’re just going to add him to your string of male pals.”
“Not on your life.”
Susannah sat up with the grace of a ballerina, grinning broadly. “Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. If you don’t want to be friends with the man, it must mean you’re seriously attracted to him.”
Alison put the folder down with a snap and looked levelly at Susannah. “You know, Sue, my life was a whole lot less complicated before both you and Kit went nuts and fell in love.”
“Mine, too, but it was much less fun. So when are you going to see him again?”
“I’m not.”
“Really?” Susannah rose slowly. “Then why were you calling him at the office just now? I heard the receptionist answer. That’s a terrible name for a medical practice, don’t you think?”
Alison choked.
“And why, instead of admitting it, did you hang up on the poor woman when I came in? What, I wonder, didn’t you want me to overhear?” Then Susannah smiled like an angel and walked out without waiting for an answer.
The thinness of the stack of messages waiting for her on Rita’s desk had been a mirage; the fact was that every client Alison possessed—including some she hadn’t heard from in a year—called in the next week. Caught between too much work and the lingering effects of her surgery, Alison even considered installing an air mattress in her office. The main reason she didn’t was that she couldn’t find time to call the store and arrange a delivery.
She yawned as she climbed the steps to the main floor, carrying the final draft of yet another letter to be personalized and