Marriage by Contract. Sandra Steffen
shortly after Christopher was born. With all the confusion and chaos in the aftermath of the enormous storm that ravaged Grand Springs, no one knew exactly when she’d disappeared. The girl had given her child life. She’d even given him a name and filled out his birth certificate. And then she’d left. Beth knew it was unusual for a mother who planned to abandon her child to sign the birth certificate. But Annie had…and it was definitely complicating the adoption process.
For the life of her, Beth didn’t understand why the young woman had left. Maybe she hadn’t planned to leave Christopher behind. Or maybe she’d decided she couldn’t raise him on her own. Whatever the reason, Beth prayed that nothing bad had happened to Annie Moore.
“Take care of him for me.”
At the time, Beth had assumed Annie had meant it in a temporary sense, but as the days and weeks had passed without word from the young woman, she’d begun to wonder if Annie had meant forever.
And forever was what Beth wanted with this child. As she stared into Christopher’s eyes, a yearning so deep and so strong wrapped around her heart and squeezed like a fist. “I love you,” she whispered. “If I was your mother, I’d make you feel safe and secure and well loved. Oh, Christopher, you really are a miracle baby, do you know that?”
Christopher looked up at her, his expression so earnest she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He weighed less than five pounds, but his personality was ten times that big, and so was his will to live. The first two months of his life had been difficult. His lungs had been underdeveloped, and he was so tiny at birth that many people hadn’t expected him to survive. The infection he’d gotten had weakened him further, but the little scrapper had clung to life by a thread. And through it all, Beth had stood by his incubator. On breaks, during her lunch hour and long after her shift was over, she’d laid her hand on his tiny body that was hooked up to so many wires and tubes he couldn’t be picked up. Talking to him, reassuring him that she was there.
She’d never forget the day more than a month ago when she’d looked up from the chair where she was rocking Christopher and found Travis Stockwell and Peggy Saxon watching from the other side of the window, a twin in each of their arms. She’d appreciated their smiles and nods of encouragement, but she couldn’t help noticing the differences between their babies and the child she was holding. Little Travis and Virginia had been born the day after Christopher. Even though they were twins and had come into this world in a cab during the terrible storm, they were already chubby and wiggly and strong.
Just as Christopher would be soon, Beth reminded herself.
Barring any more setbacks, he’d be ready to leave the hospital in a week or so. She couldn’t think of anything in the world she wanted more than to be able to take him home and make him her son.
“Your only hope is to get married.”
The last Beth knew, husbands didn’t grow on trees, although her closest friend claimed that now and then they’d been known to crawl out from under rocks. Thoughts of Jenna made her smile, just as they always did. But no matter what Jenna said, Beth hadn’t found Barry under a rock. He happened to be bright and articulate and was an extremely successful corporate attorney. She’d loved him, and she’d thought he loved her. But a person couldn’t love someone and then casually throw them away. She was still aching from the events of the past year, but she had to hand it to Barry; he certainly knew the ins and outs of obtaining a divorce. Beth only wished adopting Christopher could be half as easy.
She fed the baby his bottle, burped him and changed him, then stood next to his incubator and watched him sleep. She’d never experienced the joy of feeling a baby grow beneath her heart, but she knew how it felt to have a child grow within it, as Christopher had.
If only wishes made things so, she thought to herself, finally turning to leave. Too tired to stave off the sadness that had been building up inside her since Mrs. Donahue’s parting words, Beth walked through the corridors, her arms folded, her footsteps quiet and slow.
A man’s voice drew her from her thoughts. “The hospital board wants to promote you to head of obstetrics, Tony, but they think it would look a lot better if you were married.”
Everybody in the hospital knew Dr. Noah Howell’s voice. And there was only one Tony on staff at Vanderbilt Memorial.
Suddenly alert, Beth glanced at the stairway at the end of the hall, and at the light spilling from the open doorway ten feet away. If she continued on toward the stairs, she would run the risk of interrupting the conversation between the two doctors. Glancing over her shoulder, she decided to head for the elevators.
Suddenly, an idea too absurd to contemplate froze her feet to the floor.
* * *
Tony Petrocelli took a deep breath, let it all out, then paced to the other side of the room. Shaking his head, he faced his friend and fellow doctor, but for the life of him, he didn’t know what to say. He was still in a state of shock due to the latest incident during which a patient—a stark-naked, voluptuous, single patient—made a pass at him in his own examining room. He’d heard the nicknames people called him when they thought he was out of hearing distance—the Don Juan of Vanderbilt Memorial, the Italian Stallion—but the forwardness of some of his patients was getting out of hand.
Scrubbing a hand across his face, he said, “Noah, are you telling me the board won’t give me the promotion unless I get married?”
“No, that isn’t what I said or what they said, at least not exactly. And you don’t have to make marriage sound like a death warrant.”
Tony strode to the window. Staring at the parking lot below and the mountain peaks rising in the west, he knew he could have dismissed Noah’s statement easily enough. After all, Noah Howell was a newlywed himself, and Tony had always suspected that married people belonged to a secret club and earned points for signing up their unsuspecting friends. He’d been ignoring his sisters’ attempts for years. But it was getting more and more difficult to dismiss his parents’ subtle hints about their only son’s bachelor status. And these blatant come-ons from his patients were becoming more frequent. One of these days, one of them could cost him his career.
Turning around, he looked at Noah, who was lounging comfortably in a chair on the other side of the desk. Rubbing at a bothersome knot in the back of his neck, Tony said, “I suppose you’re right about one thing, Noah. My life would definitely be a lot simpler if there was a wedding band on my finger.”
The other man’s laughter drew Tony’s eyebrows down. Noah Howell had a reputation for being responsible, dedicated and serious. Until a couple of months ago, he’d been no more prone to outbursts of laughter than he was to whistling. That was before he and Dr. Amanda Jennings had been thrown together during the blackout. Tony didn’t know what had been in the air that night, but strange things had been happening ever since. Some of them were sad and shocking, such as the murder of Grand Springs’ mayor, Olivia Stuart. Others, like Noah and Amanda’s surprise engagement and subsequent wedding, had been much happier events.
“Think about it, Tony,” Noah insisted. “Amanda says there isn’t a woman in this hospital, single or otherwise, except for her, of course, whose smile doesn’t get just a little brighter when you walk by. Surely one of them has caught your fancy, if you know what I mean.”
Tony scowled. “I always know what you mean these days, Noah, and frankly, I liked you a lot better when you had a shorter fuse.”
“No, you didn’t, and I’m a little surprised you’ve noticed that I’ve changed.”
Tony clamped his mouth shut on the first thing that sprang to his mind and walked straight out the door. Giving it a hard yank behind him, he spun around. And collided with a woman’s slender body.
He heard a startled “oh!” and caught a glimpse of Beth Kent’s auburn hair and wide blue eyes before his vision blurred. “Whoa,” he said, his hands shooting out to steady her. “Sorry about that. I didn’t even see you coming.”
That happened to him a lot, but no matter