Page 64 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

Then I do. All at once.

I had to read that note twice before I let myself believe it was the whole thing. One word on hotel stationery. No explanation. No goodbye. No chance to ask whether she was all right or whether the night had meant anything beyond what she needed it to mean.

Now she’s here, in this room, and Alester has just told her she is pregnant.

Something in me goes very still.

I search her face, and the worst part is, I’m still attracted to her.

She’s not in the green top. She’s not flushed from my mouth or breathless in an elevator with her legs around my waist. She’s in a black dress, composed on the surface, her hair falling neatly around a face that looks like it has forgotten how to hide.

But I remember too much. The way she gripped my shoulders. The way she said she wanted me like the words had been dragged out of her. The way she shook under my hands and still reached for me again.

My body remembers before I can stop it.

Then anger follows.

She left before morning, before light, before any real conversation could happen. She took the choice out of my hands and left me with one word that explained nothing.

And now Alester Chandler is looking at her as if she is an outcome.

Alester turns toward me with the mild formality he uses when he wants a room to proceed in the correct order. “Dr. Price,” he says, “I should introduce you properly. This is Margaret Hanes.”

Margaret. The name is wrong on her.

She flinches almost imperceptibly, and I know she hates it.

“Maggie,” she says, too quickly.

Alester inclines his head. “Maggie, then.”

Her eyes don’t leave mine. She looks as if she has seen something impossible step through the door. There’s fear in her face, but it’s not only fear. There’s recognition too. Heat, buried under shock. A plea beginning before she knows how to make it.

Alester continues, unaware or pretending not to notice. With him, it is often difficult to tell the difference.

“Dr. Price has recently agreed to formally come on as my family physician,” he says. “Though Dalton and I have known each other for years, this is the first time I’ve asked him to take a defined role in my personal medical affairs.”

My attention stays on Maggie.

She hears it. I watch her hear it.

I watch her understand that D was never just D. That the man she blocked, the man she left in the hotel room, the man she thought existed outside the rest of her life, has walked straight into the center of it.

Her mouth parts slightly, then closes. For a second, I think she might say something. I think I hear her say Dalton under her breath.

Alester’s gaze moves between us. Slowly.

Not suspicious yet, but curious still.

That’s dangerous enough.

“Have you two met?” he asks.

Maggie answers before I can. “No.”

Too fast. Much too fast.

The word hits the floor between us.