“Lynn?” Maddie was looking at her.
“Yeah?”
Kara banged her empty cup on the table. “I just asked you if I could get Kara another cup of milk.”
“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry,” she said, thankful for once that she spent so much of her time with folks who couldn’t overanalyze her actions. She was gearing up to make some small talk, to make sure her loved ones didn’t feel slighted by her lack of attention, when there was a knock on the door.
“Lynn?” Elaine, one of the daytime security guards, poked her head in the door. “Come quickly,” she said. “We’ve been trying to call you, but you didn’t pick up.”
Jumping up from the table, Lynn reached into the pocket of her scrubs for her phone. It wasn’t there. A first. She’d left it someplace.
Because her mind wasn’t on her responsibilities.
“It’s Missy,” Elaine was saying as she grabbed Lynn’s emergency bag from beside the door and headed out. “She’s gone into labor.”
Missy, the young woman who’d been spotting a few weeks before. At thirty weeks they could safely deliver. But because of the earlier spotting, the risk of complications was a little higher.
“Maddie…”
“I know, Lynn. I’ll watch Kara and take her to class and feed her dinner and give her her bath and I’ll call Lila to find someone to spend the night with Kara if you’re not back by bedtime.”
“Thank you,” she said, and with a quick kiss on her daughter’s messy cheek, she hurried after Elaine, taking Kara’s “See you soon I love you” out the door with her.
* * *
GRANT WAS STANDING in the middle of an acre of dirt behind a half-million-dollar home, helping the new owner envision the naturally landscaped swimming pool and outdoor living area that were represented by the detailed drawings in the portfolio he’d just presented to them.
The expensively coiffed, redheaded wife wanted to know about adding the built-in kiva fireplace cook station he’d recommended the first time he’d met with them.
“Absolutely,” he told her cheerfully, mentally calculating how long it would take to revise the quote, and where, in the next forty-eight hours, he could find that time.
His phone vibrated….
“Excuse me,” he said, only long enough to glance at the LED screen. Darin came first. Always.
It wasn’t Darin. And Grant itched to take the call. Lynn. Probably confirming their date that afternoon. He could hear her voice. And imagine the innuendo with which she’d coat her words…
But he had work to do.
So he spent the next half hour fighting off images of Lynn’s long hair splayed across her naked breasts as he closed one of the more lucrative single-home deals of his career.
* * *
SHE’D CALLED TO CANCEL.
To say Grant was disappointed would be an understatement. But he understood, too. A baby’s imminent birth was a far more pressing concern than Grant’s overstimulated sex drive.
As was the new resident who’d needed a physical upon arrival the following Wednesday afternoon. And Lynn’s meeting with an attorney to give her deposition regarding the state of a woman’s physical condition the Wednesday after that.
Pretty much the only good thing, where Grant’s sex drive was concerned, was that he and Lynn were talking on the phone late into the night a lot. Commiserating about their painful states and feeding each other promises of what would be when they finally did get into the same bed at the same time.
It helped, too, that anytime he had something on his mind, she was there to bounce ideas back and forth with. Whether it was something Darin had said, a design he was working on or something going on with his employees, Lynn wanted to know about it.
Darin’s diving lessons went well enough that he and Grant had put on tanks and gone down alone a couple of times. And their Friday-night dinners were equally satisfying, if one didn’t count the fact that Lynn had missed two out of three of them.
What was it with springtime and men getting violent? Or dinnertime and women reaching out for help?
Lynn had time off. Just not enough of it when Grant happened to be around to spend it with her.
The third Saturday in March, after Lynn had missed Friday night’s dinner, he’d suggested another double date, just so he could get her alone long enough to feel her up. The few moments they’d been managing to steal in the landscaping garage just weren’t cutting it.