Maybe My Baby
Auteur·e
Victoria Pade
Lectures
15,0K
Chapitres
9
Chapter One
The plane had landed in Fairbanks, Alaska, but there was a delay in clearance to unload passengers. So while Emmy Harris waited with everyone else, she took the makeup bag from her carry-on to do a little repair work.
As the new director of the Bernsdorf Foundation, she didn’t want to look travel worn when she met Dr. Aiden Tarlington for the first time. He was a good friend of the head of the foundation’s board of trustees—the Old Boys, as Emmy and her assistant referred to them.
The trustees were the seven men—all of them old enough to be Emmy’s grandfather—who were her bosses. And if she’d learned nothing else in the two months since she’d been promoted to director, she knew that one hair out of place could shoot a hole in her credibility with them.
So, since she assumed Dr. Tarlington was Howard Wilson’s contemporary, she knew better than to present anything less than a perfectly professional appearance and attitude. It was the only way to counteract the demerit of her relatively young age when dealing with that particular generation—even when she was the person in the position of power, the way she was on a fact-finding trip like this one. Which also happened to be her first ever.
There wasn’t the need for too much makeup repair, though, because Emmy didn’t wear much in the first place. At twenty-nine her skin was clear and she hadn’t yet discovered any wrinkles, which meant she didn’t have anything to camouflage. She did like to dust her high cheekbones with a pale-pink blush, however, and after a full day on the go she wanted to blot the shine from her narrow, not-too-long nose.
Before she’d left home that morning she’d also applied just enough mascara to darken her lashes and accentuate her hazel eyes. That didn’t need refreshing, despite the fact that it was now late in the afternoon. But the pale-mauve lipstick she’d used twice already during the day was once again in need of replenishment, so she carefully filled in her full lips with that.
She’d pulled her very straight, thick, auburn hair into a tight bun at the nape of her neck—again in an effort to add years and professionalism to her appearance. But a few wisps had strayed and she combed them smoothly back into place.
As the plane finally began to roll forward again, she tucked the makeup bag into the carry-on and unfastened her seat belt. She brushed at her navy-blue skirt to rid it of the pencil erasings that had accumulated while she’d worked through the flight. Then she stretched one leg out as far as she could to see if the new, expensive nylons were going to hold up to their claim that they wouldn’t bag at the knees even after long periods of sitting.
The minute the plane came to its second stop at the terminal and the pilot thanked the passengers for flying with his particular airline, Emmy stood up and put her suit jacket on over her high-necked white blouse.
She was eager to get off the plane and down to the business of checking out the small community of Boonsebury. Part of her new job as director was to gather information and recommend that the foundation bestow one of their grants to bring more modern medical care to the rural area or recommend that the foundation deny the application.
Either way she didn’t want to be in Boonesbury, in Alaska, any longer than necessary. She was a city girl through and through, and she already knew that these trips to the backwaters of America were not going to be her favorite part of being the foundation’s director. They definitely hadn’t been her predecessor, Evelyn Wright’s, favorite part. In fact, a trip like this one, to a very underdeveloped area in Arkansas, had ultimately caused Evelyn to resign.
At the first opportunity, Emmy slipped out of her row into the main aisle and began the slow trek to the exit door. Aiden Tarlington was to meet her at the Fairbanks airport and take her the rest of the way to Boonesbury where he was the sole doctor.
She imagined that he’d be a paunchy old country doctor and hoped that, if the remainder of her journey required him to drive, his eyesight and reflexes weren’t waning the way Howard Wilson’s were. The last time she’d ridden with Howard he’d scared her nearly to death.
There were a number of people waiting just inside the gate as she stepped through it into the airport and Emmy initially scanned the crowd for a head of white hair—like Howard’s. She had no basis for that. For all she knew Dr. Tarlington might be as bald as Rooney Whitlove—another of the Old Boys.
Then she realized that a couple of people were holding signs with names on them and she amended her view to read those signs since that was a more likely way to connect with the man she was meeting.
No, she was not Sharon.
She wasn’t Winston Murphy, either.
But she was Emmy Harris….
Only, the man holding the cardboard rectangle with her name written on it was hardly white-haired. Or bald. Or old, for that matter.
Instead, he had a full head of longish, dark-brown hair the color of bittersweet chocolate. And it was combed haphazardly back from the face of someone more her own age. The jaw-droppingly handsome face of someone more her own age.
Emmy rechecked the sign to be sure she wasn’t mistaken.
She wasn’t. It was her name written in big, bold letters. And the sign was definitely being held by a man who was not at all grandfatherly.
Maybe he isn’t Dr. Tarlington, she thought as she took in the full view on the way over to him. After all, he wasn’t dressed to impress, the way the representative of potential grant recipients might be. This man had on a pair of well-worn blue jeans, a V-neck sweater that showed a hint of white T-shirt underneath, and a denim jacket one shade lighter than the jeans.
Not that the attire didn’t suit him, because it did. Although Emmy doubted the guy would have looked bad in anything.
He was very tall—probably an inch or more over six feet—and he had about the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen. He also had a very angular jaw: a full lower lip below a thinner, but very sensual, upper lip; a slightly long, slightly hawkish nose; and deep-set, light-blue eyes that would have made him remarkable even if the rest of his face had been plain.
She stepped up then and said, “I’m Emmy Harris,” not wanting to address him as Dr. Tarlington since she doubted that’s who he was.
Down went the sign and out came a large hand with thick, blunt fingers.
“Hi. Aiden Tarlington.”
Emmy barely took his hand, scanning his face all over again.
“Dr. Tarlington?” she said for clarification, still thinking this could be the doctor’s grandson and namesake.
“Aiden will be fine,” he assured her in a deep, rich voice that was all-male.
“You’re Howard Wilson’s fishing buddy?” she asked somewhat tactlessly.
“We’ve been known to do some hunting, too.”
“So, you’re friends?”
“We are. Why does that seem to surprise you?”
“I just thought… Well, I guess I just assumed that you would be closer to Howard’s age.”
“Ah. No, I’m a long way from seventy-two. But we are still friends. And fishing and hunting buddies. If that’s okay with you,” he added with an amused smile that put tiny creases like rays of sunshine shooting out from the corners of each of his piercing blue eyes.
“It’s not that it’s okay or not okay. It’s just—”
“A surprise,” he supplied for her.
“A surprise,” she confirmed. “I really did think you’d be one of Howard’s cronies.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Disappointed was not what Emmy was feeling.
What she was feeling was an inordinate—and inappropriate and entirely unprofessional—urge to get her hair out of that bun.
“No, no, it’s nothing,” she assured him. “You just aren’t what I was expecting.”
Of course that had been one of Evelyn’s many laments—that nothing on these trips ever turned out to be what she expected. But this was hardly something to complain about the way Evelyn had complained about so many things.
“In fact,” Emmy added. “It’s better that you aren’t Howard’s age. Now I don’t have to worry about being driven to Boonesbury by someone with cataract-dimmed eyesight and not-great reflexes.”
“My eyesight and reflexes are fine,” the doctor said, and she wondered if she’d heard just the faintest hint of something in his tone that might have been flirting.
Surely she must have been mistaken, she told herself.
Although, those blue eyes of his hadn’t left her for a single moment since she’d approached him and introduced herself.
Then he said, “But we aren’t driving to Boonesbury, anyway. It would take us a full day to do that and another full day to drive back at the end of your stay. We’re flying.”
“Oh?” That news confused her, since she hadn’t been instructed to book a connecting flight. “And you’ve taken care of the arrangements?”
“I have. I flew the plane in and I’ll be flying the plane out again.”
“Oh.” There was a tinge of alarm in that one.
Emmy had been Evelyn’s assistant for a number of years, privy to the same complaints Evelyn had voiced to Howard about the inconveniences and lack of amenities on these trips. But the final straw for Evelyn had been a flight in a small aircraft that had been forced to make an emergency landing. Emmy had hoped never to be in that same position.
But here she was, on her first time out, faced with flying in a small plane. Piloted by a doctor.
“So you’re a doctor and a pilot?” she said, trying not to sound as if that failed to inspire her with confidence.
“Licensed in both, yes.” He seemed amused again, and there was actually a sparkle in his eyes that made them all the more striking.
Then he leaned forward a little and pretended to confide, “I’m a better pilot than Howard is a driver, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She was beginning to worry about a lot of things….
“Have you flown much?” she asked.
“Much. It’s how I make house calls to see about one-third of my patients.”
“Do you own your own plane?”
“Well, let’s just say Boonesbury and I are partners in it.”
“What kind of plane is it? A tiny prop?” Which was what the other director had had her harrowing landing in.
“Do you know planes?”
“No.”
“Then it probably won’t do much good for me to give you the particulars, but my plane is a twin prop. That means it’s slightly bigger than a single engine— I have two engines—and she’s a six-seater. A single engine prop would have two or four seats, if that matters to you at all.”
“What matters to me is if she’s safe. I’ve never been thrilled with small planes.”
“She’s perfectly safe. I’m a stickler for maintenance, and I’ve never yet had a single incident that’s put me on the ground before I wanted to be.”
There’s always a first time, Emmy thought. But she didn’t say it. Instead she reminded herself that this was all part of the job she was going to do without the nervousness and fussiness Evelyn had exhibited.
Besides, not flying would add two days and who-knew-what other complications to the trip, and she didn’t like that idea any better than the idea of flying in a small plane.
So she decided she was just going to have to trust this man.
“I guess it’ll be all right,” she finally conceded.
“I guarantee it will be.”
Emmy took a deep breath and sighed a resigned sigh. “Where to, then?”
“The noncommercial terminal is on the other side of baggage claim. As soon as we pick up your luggage we can head out.”
The doctor took her carry-on without comment and pointed with his well-defined chin in the direction they needed to go. “This way,” he said.
But even as they began to walk he looked at her, up and down.
“I hope you packed some warmer clothes and a heavy coat,” he commented after a moment of scrutiny.
“I have jeans and slacks. And a light sweater.” What she’d thought would cover most needs, even should she have to trek through some countryside.
“No coat?” he asked again.
“It’s only September first.”
“But this is Alaska.”
“Which is why I brought long pants and the sweater.”
“The trouble is, Boonesbury isn’t far from the Arctic Circle. Our highs aren’t getting much above freezing and our lows are already getting down into the single digits.”
“Oh,” Emmy said yet again. She hadn’t looked into the possibility of chilly weather because she’d honestly thought it was too early in the season for cold to be a factor even in Alaska. It was still the height of summer in Los Angeles.
But the doctor was unfazed. “Looks like first thing tomorrow we get you a coat and some warmer clothes. Even though it’ll be Sunday I think I can get Joan to open up the store for us.”
“There’s a woman’s clothing store in Boonesbury?”
“No, it’s more of a general store—Joan sells about everything imaginable. But we all just call it the store.”
“I see. Well, I probably won’t need much. I’m not all that susceptible to the cold.”
Aiden Tarlington couldn’t seem to suppress a grin at that. A grin that put two intriguing lines on either side of his mouth. “Uh-huh,” was all he said as they reached baggage claim.
It didn’t take long to grab her suitcase and get to the terminal used for private flights. Unlike the commercial accommodations, there was no covered boarding ramp, though. They had to go out onto the tarmac. Into air that was surprisingly chilly and hit Emmy like opening the door on a meat locker.
But she hid the shiver that ran through her so her companion didn’t see it and have his suspicions confirmed that she was some kind of wimp.
The small plane was dwarfed by its jet-liner cousins waiting at the surrounding gates, and Emmy had a resurgence of tension at the idea of getting into what seemed to her like a miniplane. A miniplane that would be piloted by a country doctor rather than by someone who had made a career of it.
As the country doctor did his preflight check he seemed to know what he was doing, but still Emmy buckled up tight and found both armrests to clutch just for good measure.
Then, after some back-and-forth conferencing with the control tower, they taxied out to the runway and took off.
“We’ll be flying relatively low,” Aiden explained over the din of the engines. “So you’ll get a good look at things until we lose daylight. And in case you were wondering, I am instrument trained to fly in the dark.”
Emmy hadn’t known special training was required to fly at night, and it didn’t help calm her nerves to learn that it did. Even if he was qualified.
“Come on, relax and enjoy the sights,” he urged as if he knew what she was thinking.
They weren’t in the air for more than a half hour when all signs of civilization disappeared and a spectacular panorama took over.
Aiden began to point out lakes and glacier-made valleys, specific mountain peaks and natural wonders Emmy might have missed otherwise.
But despite the incredible beauty of it all as a setting sun dusted everything in rosy hues, Emmy was left with little doubt that she had entered a true wilderness. And that didn’t thrill her. In fact, it left her with a sense of isolation she hadn’t thought she’d ever feel again, even on these trips.
To keep the feelings at bay she told herself, I won’t be here forever. I’m not changing my whole life the way I was before. I’m only here for work. For a short while…
But still the feeling persisted, tormenting her.
The flight took about an hour and a half—the last half hour of it in darkness. But finally Aiden announced that they were about to land.
“Where?” Emmy wondered aloud since she couldn’t see an airport or so much as a light in the distance as they descended. And, unlike on takeoff, there was no radio contact going on, either.
“We’ll put down in the field. It’s what passes for Boonesbury’s airport,” Aiden informed her.
“A field?”
“It’ll be fine,” he said with yet another touch of amusement in his voice.
But the reassurance didn’t keep Emmy from hanging on to those armrests with a white-knuckled grip. Or from thinking about Evelyn again and beginning to understand why the other woman had had so many complaints about the conditions she ran into on these trips.
Aiden was very intent on what he was doing, and his concentration allowed him to land the plane smoothly, gliding to the ground with little more than a bump before the plane slowed and came to a stop near a small shack illuminated by a single pole light. There was an SUV waiting beside it but no one was in the SUV. And no one came out of the shack to greet them, either. In fact, there was no indication of another human being anywhere around. There was just the field, the shack and a whole lot of fir trees in the distance.
But at least they were on terra firma again and the relief of having accomplished that without incident was enough for Emmy to once more vow that she would rise above whatever rough patches she encountered.
As Aiden shut down the engines and began flipping levers and noting gauge readings on a paper on a clipboard, he said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. The bed and breakfast where you were supposed to stay had to close. Their pipes burst. So you’ll be bunking with me. And since my cabin is between here and Boonesbury proper—what there is of it—we won’t get into town tonight.”
“Bunking with you?” There was enough of a surplus of shock in that to completely hide the fact that something like titillation had taken a little dance across the surface of her skin at the idea of “bunking” with him.
“Let me rephrase that,” he said, obviously fighting a smile as his end-of-flight tasks came to a conclusion and he turned toward her. “The B and B is the only thing we have in the way of a hotel or motel so there isn’t really a choice but to stay with me. But you won’t actually be staying with me. My cabin has an attic room complete with its own bathroom, and it can only be reached by an outside staircase. So in actuality it’s a separate residence. Well, except that you’ll need to use my kitchen. But it’s a pretty cozy room that I’m sure you’ll be comfortable in. And I promise you’ll have complete privacy.”
Again Emmy was reminded of her predecessor and of Evelyn’s gripes about some of the accommodations she’d had to suffer through. And even if the attic room of Aiden Tarlington’s cabin was nice enough, there was the added complication of being in close proximity to the man and how awkward that might be. Emmy didn’t appreciate this situation any more than Evelyn would have. Plus she knew it would only be made worse if she didn’t find a way to curb her heightened awareness of how attractive he was.
“There’s nowhere else I could stay?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
Emmy chewed that over in her mind to get used to it.
Certainly it would have been preferable to stay somewhere else. Away from him and the odd effect he seemed to have on her. But if that wasn’t an option it wasn’t an option, and she’d have to make the best of the situation.
Besides, she assured herself, before too long she would get used to being around him and stop even noticing how attractive he was. This whole situation—and his knock-’em-dead good looks—were all just a novelty. A novelty that would wear off.
And as soon as it did, there wouldn’t be a problem.
She hoped.
Aiden’s cabin was made of rough-hewn logs and was situated near an evergreen-bordered lake with nothing else as far as the eye could see around it.
Moonlight reflected on the undisturbed, glassy surface of the water to cast the only light as Aiden took her bags onto the front porch. He bypassed the door to the lower level and instead went around to the right side of the building.
Emmy followed, finding a wooden staircase there.
“Let’s get your things upstairs and turn on the space heater to warm the place while we have a little something to eat.”
Emmy was all for warmth, because he hadn’t been exaggerating about the cold that was even more noticeable here than it had been in Fairbanks.
The second floor was one large room except for the bathroom. One large room with a brass bed, an overstuffed chair, a reading lamp and a very old armoire. And nothing else.
Emmy thought that cozy was stretching the truth a bit, but she didn’t say that.
“The bed has a feather mattress,” Aiden informed her as he set her suitcases on the wooden floor that hadn’t seen stain or varnish in several decades. “I hope you aren’t allergic.”
“I’m not,” she said as she poked her head into the bathroom, where she found toilet, sink and a claw-footed bathtub with a very dated showerhead dropping down from directly over the middle of the tub.
Aiden had turned on the space heater by the time she returned from inspecting the bathroom.
“I wouldn’t recommend using the heater all night long. It can get pretty hot if it’s on for hours at a time. And there’s an electric blanket on the bed, under the quilt, so you’ll be warm enough while you sleep. Getting out of bed in the morning is just sort of a shock to the system.”
“I can imagine.”
“Wakes you up, though.”
“Mmm.”
“Come on, let’s go downstairs. I have some sandwiches made up since we didn’t have any in-flight food service.”
He held the door open for her, and Emmy went out into the cold again.
At the bottom of the steps Aiden went ahead of her to the main door. As he did, her gaze dropped inadvertently to the jeans-clad derriere that was visible below his jacket.
Like the rest of him it was something to behold, and Emmy silently chastised herself for looking, snapping her eyes up to a safer view.
But the view wasn’t actually much safer when she took in the expanse of his back and broad, broad shoulders, or the sexy way his hair waved against his thick, strong neck.
“Ladies first,” he said then, and she noticed belatedly that he was waiting for her to go in ahead of him.
Emmy stepped into the cabin, glad for the warmth coming from the old radiator against one wall.
The place seemed about double the size of the attic room but it still wasn’t large. Or luxurious. Living room, dining room and kitchen were all one open space, with a mud room off the kitchen in the rear and a single bedroom and another bath on the other side of a log-framed archway to the left of the living room.
The furnishings were as inelegant as the cabin itself. There was a brown plaid sofa and matching easy chair at a ninety-degree angle to each other, with a wagon wheel coffee table in front of them and a moderately sized television and VCR across from them.
Aiden’s stereo equipment was on an arrangement of stacked cinder blocks against one wall, there was a fairly nice desk taking up another, and a scarred oak kitchen table and four ladder-backed chairs stood in what passed as a dining room only because the table and chairs were near the bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the cabin.
“I know it’s nothing fancy,” Aiden said in response to Emmy’s glance around. “But Boonesbury provides the cabin and most of the furniture for the local doctor, and I’m usually not here enough for it to matter that it isn’t too aesthetically pleasing.”
“But it is cozy,” she said, mimicking him to tease him a little.
He laughed and she liked the sound of it. Along with the fact that he’d caught the joke.
He hadn’t been kidding about already having sandwiches made. There was a covered plate of them in the refrigerator. He brought that and a bowl of potato salad along with two glasses of water to the kitchen table where they shared the light repast while Aiden filled her in on the quirks of the plumbing system and the party-line inconveniences she would encounter if she used any telephone in Boonesbury.
They’d finished eating and Aiden was on his way back to the fridge with the remaining sandwiches when there was a firm knock on the front door.
By then it was after ten o’clock and a drop-in visitor struck Emmy as strange.
But Aiden took it in stride and said over his shoulder, “Get that, will you?”
She’d already figured out that he was a very laid-back guy and that there weren’t going to be any formalities even for the director of the Bernsdorf Foundation. So, in an attempt to adjust to the casual attitudes, she went to the door and opened it.
There was no one at eye level, but down below, on the porch floor, there was a baby carrier and a duffle bag.
Thinking that this couldn’t possibly be what it looked like, Emmy stepped out into the cold to investigate.
But it was exactly what it looked like.
Amidst a nest of blankets and a hooded snowsuit there was a baby bundled into the car seat. A baby with two great big brown eyes staring up at her from over the pacifier that was keeping it quiet.
“I think you better come see this,” she called to Aiden as she glanced all around and found no signs of anyone else.
But about the time Aiden came out onto the porch there was the sound of a vehicle racing away in the distance.
“What’s going on?” Aiden asked.
“Good question. All I know is when I opened the door this was what I found—a duffle bag and a baby in a car seat. And I just heard a car or truck drive off.”
“Oh-oh,” Aiden said. But he didn’t sound as unnerved as Emmy felt.
He went down off the porch, searching both sides of the cabin. But after only a minute or so he rejoined her, shrugging those mountain-man shoulders of his as he did.
“There’s nobody out there anymore. But we’d better get this little guy—or girl—in out of the cold.”
He picked up the carrier and the duffle bag and took them inside.
Emmy followed him all the way to the kitchen table, where he deposited everything, unbundled the baby and lifted it out.
“Hello, there.” He greeted the child in a soothing voice he probably used with his youngest patients.
Then, to Emmy, he said, “Check the bag, see if there’s a note or something that tells us who this is.”
Emmy did as she was told, wondering if her predecessor had ever had a trip quite like this one was already turning out to be.
Along with baby clothes, diapers and food, she did find a note, albeit not much of one. Written on it was only one word: Mickey.
“Mickey, huh? Well, let’s check you out a little, shall we, Mickey?” Aiden said when Emmy let him know what she’d found.
She watched as he took the baby to the sofa and laid it down there to unfasten the snowsuit. Then he removed the pajamas that were underneath it, and then the diaper.
“Looks like Mickey is a boy,” Aiden announced unnecessarily, replacing the diaper in a hurry and with more expertise than Emmy would have had. “Don’t let him roll off the sofa,” he instructed, going for his medical bag where he’d left it on a table near the front door.
Bringing it back with him, he went on to examine the child who was still watching everything with wide eyes and sucking on the pacifier, only protesting when Aiden used the stethoscope to listen to his heart and lungs.
“I’d say Mickey, here, is about seven months old, well fed and taken care of and as healthy as they come,” was the final diagnosis.
“And why was he left on the porch? Or do you often have people drop off their children late at night for a checkup?”
“No, this is a first.”
“You don’t know the child or who he belongs to or where he came from?” Emmy asked with undisguised disbelief.
“I know as much as you do,” Aiden said patiently.
Emmy stared at him, wondering how he could possibly be so calm about this.
Then something clicked in her brain and she began to replay all that had happened since she’d landed in Alaska. The need to take the small plane into the middle of nowhere. To stay in a strange, distractingly attractive man’s cabin away from everything and everyone, in a room without central heat. And now a baby left on the doorstep?
This had to be some kind of practical joke Howard was playing on her.
Or maybe it was a test to see how she handled whatever curves came her way and to find out if she really was better suited to the job than Evelyn had been.
“This is all a setup, right?” she heard herself say. “Howard just wants to see how I deal with the unexpected, if I can keep my eye on the ball and not get overly involved in matters that don’t concern me. I know he thought Evelyn didn’t make it as director because she was so freaked out by the things that happened on these trips. He thought that she took everything too seriously and too personally, that she got too involved in things that didn’t have anything to do with the grants, that she lost sight of what she was in these communities to do, of what was and what wasn’t her business and let the wrong things influence her recommendations. So he decided to put me through trial by fire, didn’t he?”
Aiden settled Mickey on his knee and looked at Emmy as if she’d lost her mind. “The only thing Howard set up was the opportunity for Boonesbury to be considered for the grant.”
“Come on. Making me fly in the same kind of plane Evelyn nearly crashed in? Making me stay here? A baby left on the porch the minute I arrive? Howard arranged it all.”
“I’m sorry, Emmy, but he didn’t. This is just the way things are.”
It was not a good sign that even in the middle of this the sound of him saying her name made her melt a little inside, and she wondered if she was just on some kind of overload. She had been up since four o’clock that morning, after all, and it had hardly been a relaxing day.
But still she didn’t give up the notion that Howard had planned what had happened since she’d landed in Alaska to test her. And she knew that even if he had, his cohort here wasn’t likely to confess from the get-go.
“Okay, fine. This is just the way things are,” Emmy repeated with a note of facetiousness. “So what does that mean? That while I’m here and you’re giving me the tour of Boonesbury’s medical needs we’re going to deal with an abandoned baby, too?”
“Well, it looks like I am. I don’t have a choice. Somebody left this baby here, and they must have had a reason. For now I need to find out who that person is and what the reason was and decide what to do about it. But I won’t let it—or Mickey—stand in the way of what you’re here to do. Boonesbury really could benefit from that grant money.”
“And you’re just going to take it in stride,” Emmy said, still finding it difficult to believe anyone could be so cool about it all.
Aiden Tarlington shrugged his shoulders again. “This is Alaska. Things in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau—the cities—are pretty much what you’d find in the lower forty-eight. But out here there’s a mix of stubborn independence and neighbor helping neighbor. I know these people and I know this baby being here could mean just about anything. But, like I said, I’ll make sure it doesn’t interfere with what you’re here to do, or impact on you in any way.”
And if this was all some kind of test Howard had set up, she decided on the spot that she was going to pass it. That she wasn’t going to get upset by this turn of events and call the head of the board of trustees to whine about it the way Evelyn would have. That she wasn’t going to take it upon herself to care for that baby even if she was itching to hold him and comfort him and let him know he was with people who would be kind to him. That she wasn’t going to let herself be distracted the way Evelyn would have been. Or let herself be swayed in Boonesbury’s favor because she was already having her heartstrings tugged.
She was there to assess medical needs of the entire area and community and that was all. Period. Finito. That was the total sum and substance of what she was concerning herself with. She knew that Howard had very nearly not given her the job because Evelyn had left him with so many doubts that a woman could do it. Doubts that a woman could weather the hardships of these trips and remain objective in the face of the things she might see. And Emmy was going to prove him wrong.
So, with all of that in mind, Emmy tried to ignore Mickey by raising her chin and her gaze high enough not to see him and said, “I’m sure everything will work out. But if you don’t mind, I’ve had a really long day and I think I’ll leave you to do whatever you need to with Mickey to get him settled in for the night.”
“Sure. You must be beat. There won’t be any rush to get out of here tomorrow, so you can sleep in as long as you want and we’ll just go into town whenever you’re ready.”
“Great.”
Aiden stood to walk her to the door, taking Mickey along with him. “If you need anything just stomp on the floor a couple of times and I’ll come running.”
“Okay. Good luck with this,” Emmy added, nodding at Mickey.
“Thanks,” Aiden said with a small chuckle, as if he could use some luck.
Or a benefactor who hadn’t enlisted him to test the new director, Emmy thought. Although she was impressed by how good he was at the charade. Obviously, Howard had chosen well in his coconspirator.
Emmy opened the front door and flinched at the blast of cold air that came in. “Better keep Mickey out of the draft,” she advised. “I’ll close this behind me.”
Aiden nodded, staying a few feet back.
“Good night,” Emmy said.
“Sleep well.”
She pushed open the screen door, then stepped out onto the porch and turned to pull the wooden door shut.
But as she did she couldn’t help taking one last look at Aiden Tarlington, standing there holding that baby, and she was struck by what an appealing sight it was to see the big, muscular man cradling the infant in his arms.
But she wasn’t going to let any of it get to her, she reminded herself firmly.
Not the adorable, abandoned baby.
Not the wilderness.
Not the rustic room without heat.
Not the idea of needing to fly back to civilization in the tiny plane when this was over.
And not the drop-dead-gorgeous, sexy doctor she was sort of living with.
Evelyn, Emmy knew, would never have been able to keep her mind on the job with all these distractions.
But Emmy was determined that she would.
