Knocking at Her Heart (Conover Circle #1) (7 page)

After he dropped Kelsie off at
home, he went back to the hospital. He knew he needed to go home, grab some
sleep, some food. But he wanted to check his patient one more time.

The boy was resting
comfortably—as comfortably as one could rest with a broken pelvis and multiple
spinal fractures. The other boy had regained consciousness and the neurologists
looked a little more hopeful than they had the night before. Sam saw the
worried faces of the two families and knew that even if both boys recovered
fully, that lives had been changed the night before. Innocence had been
lost.          

Too keyed up to sleep, he sat
down at his desk, flipped on his computer, and started to read his e-mails. He
got through three before he gave up. He couldn’t remember anything he’d read.
All he could think about was the shocked look on Maddie’s face when he’d
offered to help.

Offered.

Well, sort of. He hadn’t really
given her a choice. He’d bulldozed his way in.

It wasn’t his style.

But the woman drove him
crazy. 

When he’d walked out of her
hospital room the night before, he’d been pissed. He had definitely not helped
her just so that he could demand
payment
later on. 

Yeah, but... 

He did, after all, intend to take
full advantage of Kelsie’s presence at Kids Are It.

That was different.

There was nothing wrong with
trying to figure out why Maddie was so opposed to selling. Once he figured it
out, they could make another offer, one that would meet both their needs.

Everybody would win.

Suddenly feeling terribly weary,
Sam pushed his chair back, shut off the lights, and walked out of his
office. 

Well maybe not everybody would
win.

His family would never have to
worry about money again, Maddie would be able to build a bigger, better
daycare, and he’d…well, he’d still be alone.    

Maddie waited for Sam in the
downstairs kitchen, her cold hands wrapped around a hot coffee cup. She could
hear the faint ticking from the clock on the wall. Although it was just minutes
before six, she’d already drained her first cup of the day and now sat quietly,
sipping her second.

She sat in the chair that faced
the wide window. She could both hear and see that the birds were up, but other
than that, the street looked quiet. Ten minutes earlier, she’d heard the thud
of the morning paper thrown against the front door. But she hadn’t moved from
her spot, content just to enjoy the early morning quiet.

It wouldn’t stay that way for
long. Each day at the daycare offered a tangled mixture of laughter and tears,
new words and broken crayons. She loved it. 

She wanted a house-full of
children of her own. She dreamed of feeling her own child’s chubby arms wrapped
around her neck, to hear her own child’s first words, see his or her first
steps, to learn his or her first secret.

She and Jeff had discussed
children once. He’d said he wanted them, too, but had added that they seemed as
if they’d be a lot of work. Then he complained that the dependent deduction was
ridiculously low.

She heard a quiet knock on the
front door. She eased herself out of the chair and walked to the door. She
looked out the privacy hole and Sam stood there, his head bent, scanning the
headlines of her paper. 

She took an extra minute to
examine him, liking that he didn’t realize she watched him. He had on faded
jeans and scuffed loafers. She could see a blue chambray shirt underneath the
spring jacket that remained unzipped. He looked comfortable, confident, and
ready to work. 

She still felt a little awkward.
She’d apologized, he’d accepted, but still. She had insulted his character.
Without cause.   

She opened the door. “Good
morning,” she said.

He looked up, a smile crossing
his face. He held the paper out to her. “Special delivery.”

“Thanks,” she said, feeling just
a bit lightheaded. She saw why the nickname Dr. Gorgeous had stuck.

“How do you feel?”

She stepped back so that he could
come in. “The incision is a bit sore,” she admitted.

“You want me to check it?” he
asked.

Maddie felt the heat start at her
toes and rise rapidly through her body. She definitely did not want Sam looking
at her naked stomach again. “No. I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let me know if
you change your mind.”

Sure. “I see you haven’t changed
your mind about doing this C.R.A.Z.Y. thing.” She kept her voice light. “It’s
not too late to back out.”

“Tell me what I should expect.”

She poured him a cup of coffee
and refilled her own. “Expect the worst. You might be pleasantly surprised.”

“You don’t really think that?”

She shook her head. “They’re all
great. Every last one of them. Very active.” 

“No problem. I can handle
active.”

He looked a little smug. She
wondered how smug he’d look at six o’clock tonight with grape juice spots on
his shirt and chalk dust under his fingernails. “I’ve really got two separate
groups,” she said. “There are the preschoolers and then the kindergartners and
up. I don’t have any under two or over twelve.”

“What happens when a twelve year
old has a birthday?”

She laughed. “It’s horrible. I
fret about it for weeks on end. One of the greatest compliments I ever had came
from a boy who said that the worst thing about turning thirteen was that he
couldn’t come to Kids Are It anymore.”

“High praise from a teenager,”
Sam said.

“The highest. I’d probably let
them come forever, but if I did, there would be no room for the little kids.
And they’re the ones who really need a safe place to be.”

“No babies?”

“No. I don’t have the room. And
it would mean hiring another person. The laws are very specific about the ratio
of adults to children. For every four babies you have to have one adult.”

“But if you had the room, you’d
take care of babies?”

“Sure. I guess.”

He nodded and looked sort of
satisfied. She wondered why he cared.

“Does a bus stop here for the
school age kids?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, grateful for him
keeping her on course. “Some come early and get on the bus here. Some get on
the bus at their own house. But they all come here in the afternoons.” She got
up from the table, walked over to the bulletin board in the corner of the
kitchen and yanked down a sheet of paper. “Here’s how we keep track of it all.”

He’d seen full day surgery
schedules that looked less complicated. Arrival times, departure times, food
allergies, medicine allergies, pediatrician names, parents’ home and work phone
numbers. Everything was in a grid, easy to read, easy to understand.

“Very organized,” he said.

She pointed to a square. “Today
the school kids get out early. It’s parent-teacher conference time. They will
be here by one.”

“No problem,” Sam said.

She had to admire his confidence.

“We’ll see if you feel the same
way after the first kid throws up on you.”

Maddie and Sam both jerked their
heads up. Carol stood in the doorway.

Sam laughed. “And good morning to
you, Carol. Don’t worry. I’ve had all kinds of body fluids on me. It’s one of
the hazards of my other job.”

Carol winked at him. Maddie
couldn’t move. The reminder hit her hard, almost taking her breath away. How
could she have forgotten?

“How are you feeling?” Carol
asked as she dropped her heavy purse on the table. “Why are you up?” she asked
before Maddie could even answer the first question.

“I’m fine. I had to let Sam in.”

“Don’t you worry about Sam,”
Carol said. “I’ll take care of him. You just get your little butt back upstairs
and get into bed.”

“But—”

“She’s right,” Sam said. “You
should be resting.”

She didn’t want to go. Didn’t
want to turn over control of her business. “I’ll just sit here and I won’t say
a word.”

Both Sam and Carol shook their
heads. Maddie realized it would be futile to try to argue. 

“All right,” she said. “But I’m
not happy about this.”

“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “I’ll
come see you later and give you all the gory details. Then you can say I told
you so.”

Maddie didn’t answer. She didn’t need
to be worrying about telling Sam why it was such a bad idea for him to be
around. She needed to spend some time telling herself.

When she got upstairs, she poked
her head into her guest room, making sure that it was still in good shape. When
her parents had previously visited, they had declined her offer of the guest
room and stayed at a bed and breakfast five blocks over. They said they didn’t
want to impose.

She supposed that could be
true. 

But she kind of figured it was
because they were just as uncomfortable with her as she was with them. They
were strangers who’d shared a house for eighteen years. She suspected that
riders on the subway, sharing a bench seat, had more sincere conversations. She
knew little about their hopes and dreams and quite frankly, she’d stopped
hoping a long time ago that they might ask about hers.

But given that her mother was
traveling alone and might be uncomfortable staying somewhere strange, Maddie
would once again offer up the guest room.

Back in the living room, she sank
down on the couch and closed her eyes. She woke up sometime later when she
heard a persistent knocking on her door. She blinked, glanced at her watch, and
realized she’d been sleeping for over three hours. She opened the door,
expecting Carol, but was surprised to see Sam and Kelsie.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said,
motioning to Kelsie. “When Jean dropped her off, she was really worried about
you. I told her she can’t tell the other kids that she saw you.”

The little girl, who had her
uncle’s dark hair and dark eyes, was half-hiding behind Sam’s leg. “It’s fine,”
Maddie said.

“I’ll be back in a couple minutes
to get her. I don’t want to be gone too long. The Simmons twins look like
they’re up to something.”

Ricky and Robert Simmons were
identical twins that, for the safety of others, should probably have been
separated at birth. What one didn’t think of, the other one did. 

“You need to watch them very
carefully,” Maddie advised. “They’re small but incredibly quick and really
dangerous.”

“I gathered that after I found
them climbing up the curtains. They were pretending to be cats.”

After Sam left, Maddie patted the
couch. “Come sit here.”

Kelsie didn't move. Maddie tried
again. "Are you going to color today?"

"I thought you might
die."  Kelsie spoke the words clearly.

What? Where had that come from?
Maddie got up from the couch and went to stand next to the little girl. She
carefully eased herself down onto the floor beside her so that she could be at
eye-level.

"I'm fine. Your uncle and
all the other doctors took very good care of me. In a couple of days, I'll be
back to work."

"I wouldn't have seen you
again if you had died." 

"That's true," Maddie
acknowledged, not willing to lie to the child.

“Uncle Sam knew somebody who
died.”

So that explained the preoccupation
with death. “Was she very old? Like a grandma?”

Kelsie shook her head. “No. I saw
pictures of her. She was old like you.”

Maddie almost laughed but she
couldn’t. Not when Kelsie stood before her, so serious.

“I heard Mommy and Uncle Sam
talking. Uncle Sam was crying.”

Someone important to Sam had
died. She fought the crazy urge to pump a four-year-old for more information.

“Kelsie, I’m not going to die.
The next time you come, I’ll be downstairs and we’ll play together.”

“Will you trace me? With the
chalk?”

“Yes, of course I will,” Maddie
said, grateful to be past the death conversation.

When Sam returned a few minutes
later, she and Kelsie were looking at the photo album on her coffee table.
“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Maddie said
quickly. “Everything okay downstairs?”

“It’s fine. Carol had everybody
lined up for snack so I made a break for it.” 

           
*

Maddie slept until early
afternoon.  She got up, showered, and tried to watch a talk show, before
flipping to a game show, until she finally settled on the History Channel.
After fifteen minutes, she gave up caring about how the cotton gin had been
discovered and walked downstairs. She was prepared for Sam and Carol’s strong
objections to her presence, but the house was quiet.

Carol was in the pink room,
folding clean towels, surrounded by eight small, sleeping bodies. Each child
had his or her own cot. All of the blinds had been lowered. Across the room,
Maddie could see the dust dance in the air when streaks of sunlight filtered in
through the wooden slats.  The room was absolutely quiet with the
exception of the deep and steady breathing of children.

She waved to Carol. “Where’s
Sam?” she whispered.

Carol nodded toward the window.
Maddie slipped her fingers between two slats of the blinds and peeked outside.
A dozen big cardboard boxes littered her backyard. She looked at Carol who had
joined her at the window. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

“He’s gorgeous, polite and smart,
too. When the six older kids got here, I think they figured they could push him
around a little. Kind of like a substitute teacher. But before I knew it, he’d
marched them next door to the hospital and they’d returned with the boxes. He’s
kept them busy in the yard for almost two hours. They’ve been building forts
and making tunnels. Then they got the balls out and made up some games. I think
they’re pretending it’s a carnival.”

There was definitely more to Sam
than she’d first thought. And her conversation with Kelsie had added another
layer. “I’m going to see if he needs help,” Maddie said. She had one hand on
the door handle when Carol stopped her.

“I kept expecting the doorbell to
ring all day. When is your mom supposed to get here?”

“Should be soon. It depends on
how much fun she’s having at Pierre’s. It’s this fancy little bed and
breakfast/spa combination. She’s stopping there first.”

Carol stopped folding the towels.
“And it’s just your mom?”

She didn’t want to tell her
friend that her parents were having marital problems. That would make it real.
But she trusted Carol. “My dad evidently has been having a fling. My mother
recently found out.”

“Oh good Lord.”