Читать книгу The Husband Project - Leigh Michaels, Leigh Michaels - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

ALISON was absolutely certain of one thing; no amount of sarcasm could have made him let go of her any more quickly than that simple statement did.

Logan’s arm dropped as if he’d suddenly realized her shoulders were coated with acid, and he backed away till he was leaning against the terrace rail, a safe distance from her. A casual observer would no doubt think his .professional control was undisturbed, for his face was calm. Alison knew better; she could see the incredulity in those brilliant green eyes.

“For heaven’s sake,” she said testily. “You’re a doctor who specializes in women. You must know how—” For the first time, she realized that there. was an entirely different interpretation to her question than the one she had meant.

He obviously saw the double meaning hit her, for a sparkle of humor appeared in his eyes. “If you’re asking whether I know where babies come from, I am familiar with the basics.”

“I’m sure that’s quite a comfort to your patients.” Alison’s voice was chilly. “Let’s get this straight, however. Don’t flatter yourself that I had you in mind as a potential father.”

“And that,” he murmured, “is quite a comfort to me. Do I understand that you want to use a medical procedure usually reserved for infertile couples in order to have a child?”

Alison relaxed just a little. “That’s it, yes.”

“Well, excuse me if this is a stupid question—but why not just go about it in the old-fashioned way?”

“I don’t see any need to explain. Will you help me or not?”

He looked thoughtful. “Without an idea of what’s going on inside your head? I’d sooner bodysurf across Lake Michigan on a stormy day.”

“And if I explain?”

“Depends on the explanation. To be perfectly honest, I’d still put the odds at about seven to three against, but I’m willing to listen.” He folded his arms across his chest and settled his hip against the terrace rail as if he was prepared to stay there all day.

Alison drew a long breath, hesitated, wet her lips. It shouldn’t be so difficult to say the words, she told herself. Her reasons made perfect sense; any intelligent person could surely understand why she’d come to this conclusion. But her tongue felt numb and three times its normal size.

Partly, she realized, her paralysis was because of the way he was studying her. The last time he’d looked her over, in the emergency room, he’d been watching for symptoms. Now he wasn’t—unless of course he suspected she was a mental case—and though his gaze was no more personal, it was an entirely different kind of survey.

And she was entirely different, too. She wasn’t twisted with pain, flat on her back, her hair mussed and sweaty and her face stark white. She wondered what he thought of the difference.

He shifted slightly against the wrought iron. “If you’re going to tell me that there isn’t even one man in your life, forget it. I don’t buy it.” Another man might have give the line a suggestive twist, or turned it into a compliment. Logan made it sound like the stock report.

Annoyed, Alison said, “Of course there are men in my life. In fact, that’s part of the problem—there are too many men.”

His eyebrows soared. “Oh, this ought to be good,” he muttered. “No, let me guess. They’d all be hurt if you chose one of the others, so to keep things in balance you’re looking for an anonymous donor. Of course, this makes perfect sense.”

Alison glared at him. “I have an incredible number of male friends,” she began. “The key word being friends. I’d like them all to still be friends when this is over. If I had even a short-term affair with one of them, the whole situation would change.”

“Well, now that you mention it—”

“Once there’s a more intimate relationship, it’s impossible to return to real, ordinary friendship.”

“And there’s not a single one of your friends you’d sacrifice for the cause?” Logan murmured.

“There’s also the problem that whichever man I chose would know he was the father of my child, and that could create all sorts of difficulties.”

Logan snapped his fingers. “I have it. If you expand this short-term affair to include all of them, everybody would still be on equal terms with you, and none of them would know who—”

Alison raised her voice. “This is hardly the sort of professional discussion I was looking for, Dr. Kavanaugh.”

“Not even you would know. It’s the perfect—” Logan broke off. “Of course, I suppose they could all line up for DNA tests... Sorry. You’re right, of course. I’ll try to stay focused. Do go on.”

“The father of a child has certain rights.”

“To say nothing of responsibilities,” Logan murmured.

“That doesn’t concern me. Financially, I can support a child easily. I could even take a baby to work with me. And I have no doubt that I’ll be a good parent.”

“Singular. Have you considered that maybe the kid would like to have a father, too?”

“Wouldn’t they all? The fact is, some kids are better off with only one parent. In a good many cases it isn’t having a single parent that’s the problem, it’s being torn apart by the conflict between mother and father.”

Logan didn’t seem to disagree; at least, he stayed silent.

“And I’d be better at the job than most. If you’re worried about who will teach my little boy to pitch a baseball—I will. And I can do anything else that comes along, too.”

He began to applaud. “Brava, brava!”

“I just want a child,” Alison said mulishly. “I don’t want to give some man the right to interfere in my life—and my child’s—for the next eighteen years. I don’t want to mess around with every-other-weekend visitations and arguments about when the kid needs a haircut. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Obviously you’re going to tell me why it isn’t.” he murmured.

“I’d gladly agree never to ask for financial support in return for a promise not to seek parental rights.”

“Now you’re talking. I suspect a lot of men would think that kind of a deal was pretty inviting—they could have all the fun and none of the responsibility.”

“But that’s just it. I know my promise is good, but how could I know he meant what he said? And even if he felt that way now, how could I be certain it would continue?”

“Make him sign something,” Logan suggested.

“Do you honestly think that would do any good? If he came back in a year or two or five and wanted to mess up my child, what’s going to stop him from suing me? All you have to do is read the front pages to know it’s a lot harder for the courts to terminate a father’s rights than it used to be. Even adoption isn’t always final these days.”

“Alison, this is a charming argument, but—”

She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me, but I haven’t suggested you use my first name. Or do your patients call you Logan?”

“Quite a number of them do. In any -case, it’s a moot point, since you’re not my patient and you’re not going to be.”

Disappointment trickled through her. “You won’t help me?”

“Even after hearing all your so-called reasons, I still don’t see why you need medical intervention to carry out the most natural process on the face of the globe. Besides, I’ve decided just now that as a patient you’re more than I want to handle. I’ll give you my card, and you can talk to my nurse for the names of some other doctors who might be more inclined to cooperate.”

He moved away from the terrace rail, reached for his wallet, and extracted a business card. But he-didn’t hand it to her; to Alison’s utter astonishment he picked up her hand and raised it to his lips. “I must thank you, however, for taking me into your confidence. It’s been—”

If he said entertaining, Alison thought, she’d kick him in the kneecap.

“Truly memorable,” Logan murmured. He put the business card in her palm, folded her fingers, over it, smiled down at her, and was gone.

The walk from her row house to work had taken longer than she’d expected, so Alison was later than usual when she climbed the front steps of the brownstone which housed the offices of Tryad Public Relations. And though she wouldn’t have admitted it even under torture, she was far shakier than she’d expected to be. It was taking longer to snap back after her surgery than she’d thought it would.

From the porch next door, the twin to Tryad’s, Alison heard a soft scuttling sound as Mrs. Holcomb retreated into her house. Though Tryad’s offices had been next door, sharing a common wall, for three years now, Mrs. Holcomb still obviously considered Alison a stranger. And though the woman was no longer the textbook example of a recluse—in fact, she’d loosened up quite remarkably since the days when no one ever saw her outside at all—she still scampered for cover if surprised. But at least she’d speak to Kit and Susannah from time to time.

The idea that the old lady might actually be a bit afraid of her piqued Alison. “I’m just as nice as Kitty and Sue,” she muttered. “You’d think she’d give me a chance, at least.” She smiled at her own self-pity—why should she expect Mrs. Holcomb to be the one who made the first move?—and pulled open Tryad’s front door.

It felt like a year since she’d been there, though it was scarcely more than a week. Alison stopped just inside the door to get her breath and bask in the quiet atmosphere she loved so well. Sunlight spilled through the stained-glass panel above the front door and lavishly spread a rainbow of colors across the beige carpet on the stairs and the golden oak floor of the hall. Upstairs, from the front office, she heard Kit’s laugh. The aroma of fresh coffee wafted up from the ground-floor kitchen and mixed with the scent of photocopies still warm from the machine near the receptionist’s desk.

As Alison came into the front office which had once been the brownstone’s living room, the secretary jumped up, almost knocking over a vase of flowers. “You’re back!”

Alison fielded the vase and sniffed a half-open red rose. “Very nice, Rita,” she said. “I hope the flowers are a romantic gesture, though, because if someone’s sending bribes and trying to hire you away from us we’ll have to do something drastic.”

Rita colored gently; her pink cheeks made her hair look even more silvery than usual. “My son sent them for my birthday,” she said. “I thought you were going to be gone another week.”

Alison shrugged. “I was very bored, and every time I tried to follow doctor’s orders and rest, one or the other of the cats decided to jump up on my lap. Given the choice of sitting at a desk or having a Persian napping atop my incision, I decided I might as well come back to work.”

“Well, you look as if you’re about to drop,” Rita said critically.

“Will it make you happier if I sit down to read my messages?” Alison took a thin sheaf of pink notes from the basket marked with her name. “There aren’t many, for a whole week. And here I thought I was indispensable to the firm. ,.

“Those are just the personal ones, people who called here when they couldn’t get you at home.”

Alison wasn’t really listening. Most of the messages were short, just friends and clients offering a few words of encouragement and the wish that she’d be back in top form soon. But her friend Jake had called with a doctor-patient joke which Rita had patiently transcribed, right down to a punch line which made Alison groan.

And Rob Morrow had phoned to ask her to the opera. When he’d heard why she was out of the office, he’d left a tongue-in-cheek message that he’d heard some fancy excuses in his day but having surgery to avoid sitting through Rigoletto was the best one yet.

She smiled and put the sheaf of messages down. Just reading them had left her feeling warm and comforted. Her friends were special, indeed.

And there’s not a single one of them you’d sacrifice for the cause? Logan had asked.

He’d sounded just short of sarcastic, but Alison was even more convinced that she’d been right not to turn to her male friends. She was genuinely fond of each of them, or they would no longer be in her life—and she wasn’t willing to take any risks with those relationships.

Few mates, she had found, were able to comprehend the simple concept that men and women could be friends without sexual feelings getting in the way. She didn’t for a minute suppose that Logan Kavanaugh understood that, or he wouldn’t have asked such an idiotic question.

But even among men who accepted the general principle, it was difficult to find one who could wholeheartedly translate that philosophy into his personal life. That was why she hadn’t seriously considered talking to any of her men friends about her desire for a child. She suspected that, despite their good intentions, most of them would conclude that her request implied a whole lot more than a simple favor. And a good many of the rest would feel just a bit threatened since they hadn’t been asked...

Alison realized belatedly that Rita was talking, her soft voice rhythmic and soothing. “Kit and Susannah have been splitting your business calls. Kit’s taken everything to do with the video, Susannah’s handling the singles group and...”

A low, warm voice from the hallway said, “Did I hear my name?” A moment later Kit was standing over Alison’s chair, arms folded and one foot tapping ominously on the hardwood floor.

“What are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be driving yet.”

“Who said I drove?”

“Then please tell me you took a cab. Because if you walked all the way over here—”

“Dr. Williams told me to get gentle exercise.”

“I think she meant to start with a little less than half-mile hikes. Why didn’t you call and ask for a ride?”

“Because you’d have told me to stay home.” Alison smiled at the look of defeat in Kit’s eyes. “Anyway, I’m here now, so I might as well do some work.”

She was extra careful on the stairs which led down to her office on the ground floor, since going down steps was still one of the more difficult things physically, and the last thing she wanted to do was take a pratfall with Kit standing by to say I told you so.

Susannah and Kit had offices on the upper floor, in what had once been bedrooms. But when they’d first toured the building, in the days when it was still a home, Alison had taken one look at the ground-floor study, with its thick walls and high windows and built-in bookshelves, and fallen in love.

She had never regretted her choice. Since it was half underground, the room was always warm and quiet, and being as far as possible from the confusion of the top floor production room was worth the effort of climbing all the way up now and then.

The surface of her black lacquer desk was exactly as she’d left it, bare except for her red leather blotter and a whimsical Chinese vase that doubled as a pen holder. Her projects were laid away neatly in the file drawer below, and she pulled out the most pressing of them. The promotional video she’d been working on for months, intended to draw industry to Chicago, was in the hands of the tape editors, but there was plenty to be done in the next couple of weeks while they finished the final cut.

And then there was the singles club. The outgrowth of a casual brainstorm of Susannah’s months ago, the project had landed on Alison’s desk only because Susannah hadn’t found a sponsor until the week before her wedding. And how would it look to her new husband, she’d asked Alison earnestly, if she started spending a couple of evenings a month in a singles group?

So Alison had inherited the club—a project she still thought was Susannah’s craziest idea yet. But one of Chicago’s finest restaurants had agreed to host and sponsor the club, and now there was no backing out; Tryad’s reputation was on the line, and Chicago Singles would succeed, or else.

She opened the folder, and within minutes she was buried in her work. Even if her heart wasn’t entirely in the project, Alison had to admit that the more deeply she became involved in the singles club, the more possibilities there were.

She didn’t realize how long she’d been working till she stood up to get a notepad from the storage closet out in the hallway and had to grab the corner of her desk to keep from falling. She was light-headed, and there was a nagging ache in her lower back and a sharper one near the half healed incision.

“So much for the idea that you don’t need rest breaks any more,” she told herself dryly as she evicted Tryad’s calico cat from her comfortable nest at one end of the white wicker love seat. The cat glared and stalked off, tail high, and Alison lay down, wriggling around until she found a comfortable position.

The love seat was hardly conducive to naps—but then she didn’t intend to sleep, only to rest for a few minutes. Kit had installed a chaise longue in her office, and Susannah had selected an overstuffed couch, but Alison had deliberately chosen the wicker love seat and matching chair because—white they were cozy and inviting with their feminine, frilly cushions—they were not so comfortable that visitors sat around just to chat.

Her brain kept on ticking, rattling off promotional possibilities for the Chicago Singles. She loved her work, so much that it didn’t feel like a job at all most of the time. And she was comfortable with her life. Of course she wanted a child, and she’d continue to explore her options—but she must have been nuts to have gone off the deep end, that day on Kit’s terrace. She must have still been in shock from her surgery—and from her fear of never having a baby—to have reacted so idiotically.

She hoped Susannah never heard about the incident. She was the one who specialized in crackpot ideas and who seldom thought them through to the obvious consequences. She’d have a good laugh about Alison—practical logical Alison—asking a doctor to help her have a child... and asking on the spur of the moment, without even a thought for the outcome.

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 sent out to a mailing list of hundreds. She’d leave it on Rita’s desk to be taken care of in the morning, and then she was going home.

Used to the bright lights in her office, Alison was startled by the dimness on the main floor. She’d known it was late, of course—she’d drawn the curtains over her office windows hours ago, and the stillness of the entire brownstone had told her everyone but she and the calico cat. had departed. Still, she’d expected the last bit of twilight to still be trickling through the windows at the head of the stairs. Instead, there was only the yellow light which spilled from the entrance porch through the beveled glass panels around. the front door.

She flipped the hall lights on and crossed toward Rita’s office. A shadow moved on the steps outside, and Alison’s heart jolted. Tryad’s hours were clearly posted on the door; why would anybody be lurking outside now? A public relations office wasn’t even the sort of business she’d expect to draw the attention of any self-respecting burglar...

But if she was wrong about that...there she stood, spotlighted in the hallway.

She dived for the switch to kill the lights. Her eyes were slow to readjust to the dimness, and she’d managed to convince herself that she’d been startled by the movement of a tree branch in the breeze when a face pressed against the glass. The bevels distorted the image, so it wasn’t her eyes so much as the way her stomach tightened which told Alison who was outside. She unlocked the door, pulled it open, and looked up at Logan Kavanaugh.

“So you are here,” he said. “I saw lights on in the basement and then that sudden flash up here, and I suspected it would be you.”

“Congratulations. Does finding me make you eligible for a prize?” She didn’t move aside.

“Are you going to invite me in?”

“Any reason I should? Business hours are—”

“Looks to me like your business hours are about like mine—whatever it takes to get the job done.”

He did look tired, she thought. There was a network of fine lines around his eyes. She stepped back from the door. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“If it’s already made.”

“It won’t take a minute. Believe me, you don’t want to drink the tar that’s left in the pot.”

Logan shrugged. “I’ve no doubt had worse.” He followed her down the stairs and into the big kitchen next to her office.

Alison dumped the glass carafe, rinsed it, and started a fresh pot brewing. “So what brings you here?” She didn’t look at him. “No, don’t tell me. I bet you’re so shaken at being done with work at this hour—my goodness, it’s only eight o’clock!—that you’ve decided to take me on as a patient after all.”

“This was supposed to be my afternoon off,” he said gloomily. “If I was out beating the bushes for anything, it’d be a doctor—we’re short one just now.” He shook his head at the sugar bowl she held up. “I thought perhaps you’d decided on another approach to your problem, since you haven’t called for a referral.”

Alison set a steaming cup in front of him. “I’m amazed, with all those rafts of patients to see, that you’d bother to keep track of me.”

He grinned, and the tired lines around his eyes crinkled with humor. “Purely in self-defense, I assure you. Though as a matter of fact, I didn’t know till today that you hadn’t called.”

Alison poured her own coffee and sat down across from him. “So what was special about today?”

“This came in the mail.” He reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “I don’t suppose you know anything about it.”

His tone, Alison thought, said that he’d already convinced himself differently.

She looked warily at the envelope. The return address was Tryad’s, the envelope identical to the ones they had printed by the thousands. Logan’s name and office address had been neatly typed. She turned it over, looked up at him, and shook her head. “I can’t imagine why you think I’d be sending—”

“Go ahead, open it.”

“The cloak-and-dagger way you’re acting, I’m not sure I want to leave my fingerprints,” she muttered, but she slid the contents out. She recognized the long, narrow card immediately; it was one of the elegant gift certificates she’d produced, good for one year’s membership in the Chicago Singles.

She tried without much success to choke back a laugh. Susannah, she thought, the little matchmaker! The whole notion of gift certificates had been Susannah’s; Alison should have seen this coming. “And you thought I’d enrolled you? No, I can’t take credit for that. Lucky you. It’s a pretty pricey gift, you know.”

“Can’t take credit? Or won’t?”

“I had nothing to do with it. I have to admit I have my suspicions about who’s responsible, but—”

“It’s your signature, Alison.”

“Of course it is. I signed a whole stack of blanks, but they’re not valid till Rita numbers and registers them. She no doubt has a record of who paid the bill. If you like, I’ll ask her tomorrow. I can also—”

“It’s a shame, you know. I was so certain it was you I brought you a gift in return.” From the other inside breast pocket, he took a small, flat white box and set it down on the table beside his cup.

“Very thoughtful,” Alison said dryly. “But I still don’t quite understand why you’d think that I—”

“Because the whole idea sounds like one of your fruitcake plans—and when I found out you hadn’t pursued the medical alternative, it all fit with your twisted logic. What better way to meet a transient population of males than to set up your very own singles club?”

Alison shook her head in confusion. “So I can look over the selection and choose one to father my baby? Oh, please. Even if I was crazy enough to do that, why would I let you in on it?”

“In the hope that I’d feel so bad about the risks you’d be taking that I’d volunteer to help after all.”

“You’d be more likely to issue a general warning in the name of protecting your fellow men.” She tapped the heavy vellum gift certificate on her palm. “I’ll give this back to Rita tomorrow and have her issue you a refund check.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it isn’t polite to return a gift for the money?”

“As a matter of fact,” Alison said dryly, “no, she didn’t.”

Logan extracted the gift certificate from her hand and put it gently back into his breast pocket. “Besides, someone obviously thought I’d find this fun—and who knows? They might just be right. And the least I can do is stand by to give—what did you call it? A general warning to protect my fellow men, wasn’t that it? Thanks for the coffee.” With a theatrical sweep, he bowed and was gone, leaving Alison sitting with cup in hand staring at nothingness.

Finally she shook her head a little and smiled. Let the man have his joke. He wouldn’t show up within miles of the Chicago Singles; he just wanted her to think he might.

She stood up and started to clear the table. Only when she picked up his cup did she realize that he’d gone off without the small, flat box.

I was so certain it was you I brought you a gift in return, he’d said.

If the box had been seated or wrapped, she wouldn’t have opened it. But it was neither, and it would have taken a lot more willpower than Alison possessed to keep from lifting the lid and peeking inside. She wasn’t hurting anything, after all. He’d never even know she’d looked.

On a bed of white cotton lay a silver pin just a couple of inches tall, in the shape of a musician with a flute raised to his lips. The workmanship was delicate, the most beautiful Alison had ever seen. And what instinct had told him that the flute was the instrument she’d always wanted to play?

Her fingertip went out hesitantly. The silver warmed instantly to her touch, and—almost frightened by the pleasure which swelled her heart—she snapped the lid back on the box and put it in the drawer of her desk, where it would be safe till she could send it back to him.