For a moment, he stood over her, liking that she was soft and sweet, as she had been the one night when she hadn’t been angry with him.
That night had changed his life, and he was determined to have her like that again.
With a smile, and a feeling that he couldn’t help himself, he pulled the sheet back and slipped into bed with her, shoes and all. There wasn’t time for prolonged lovemaking and now, before she woke, while he could still think, he knew that the third floor of Duncan Gates’s house was not the place.
He kissed her temple as he pulled her into his arms and, sleepily, she snuggled closer to him as he kissed her eyes and cheeks. When he touched her lips with his, she slowly came awake, moving her body nearer his, her thigh sliding between his as his hand moved down to draw her gown up and caress her bare flesh.
His kiss deepened, his tongue touching hers, and she responded eagerly, pushing at him as she tried to get closer.
It was Lee’s watch fob piercing her stomach through her thin nightgown that made her waken—but not fully.
“I thought you were a dream,” she murmured, as her hand caressed his cheek.
“I am,” Leander said hoarsely. Never in his life had he been required to use such control. He wanted to take her gown off, to caress all her warm, lovely flesh, to feel her skin against his. He wanted to run his unshaven cheeks against the soft flesh of her stomach and hear her squeal in feigned protest.
Blair suddenly sat straight up. “What are you doing here?” she gasped.
He put his hand over her mouth and pulled her down beside him, where she began kicking her heels and pushing at him. “If you want to go with me, you have to go now, and since it’s not daylight yet, I didn’t want to bang on your front door and wake the whole house. Will you stop making so much noise? Gates will be in here, and if he sees you like this, he’ll probably parade you downtown in sackcloth and ashes.” He moved his hand away as she calmed.
“That’s preferable to what you have planned,” she said in a loud whisper. “Get off me.”
Leander didn’t move an inch. “If I’d had time, I would have climbed in here without my…ah, shoes,” he said, rubbing his leg up and down between hers, still holding her quite close.
“You are a vain, lecherous—.”
She broke off because he pinned her arms above her head and kissed her, gently at first, deepening until she couldn’t breathe, then gentle again. When he pulled away, there were tears in her eyes as she turned her head aside. “Please don’t,” she whispered. “Please.”
“I don’t know why I should have any mercy,” he said, releasing her hands but keeping her trapped under most of his body. “You’ve shown me no mercy in the last few days.” At the look in her eyes, he moved off her. “If I leave the way I came, down the tree, will you get dressed and meet me out front?”
Her eyes lost the look of a trapped animal. “And we’ll go on call?”
“I never saw a woman look forward to blood and gore before.”
&
nbsp; “It’s not that, it’s the helping of people that I like. If I can save one life, then my life—.”
He kissed her quickly before climbing out of the bed. “You can give me the new doctor speech on the way. Ten minutes, all right?”
Blair could only nod and was out of the bed almost before Lee was out the window. She didn’t give a thought to how unusual their behavior was, because nothing in her life had been ordinary since she’d returned to Chandler.
Out of the small closet in her room, beside some of Houston’s stored winter clothes, Blair took a garment that she was very proud of. She’d had it made in Philadelphia by the old, established tailoring firm of J. Cantrell and Sons. She’d worked with them for weeks on designing and fitting a suit that would fill all the needs she could imagine in future emergencies as a doctor and yet remain modest. In the tailor’s shop, she’d tried wearing it astride a wooden horse, making sure that it was short enough to be safe and long enough to be respectable.
The jacket was cut with perfect military simplicity; the skirt looked full and feminine, but it was actually divided into two so it had the safety and comfort of bloomers. The suit was made of the finest, most closely woven, navy blue serge that money could buy, with several deep pockets that disappeared into the folds of the fabric, a buttoned flap over each pocket so that no precious instruments could be lost. There was a simple red cross on the sleeve to designate the suit’s purpose.
Blair tied on a pair of high laced black calfskin shoes—boys’ style rather than the fashionably narrow shoes that tortured women’s feet into submission—grabbed her new physician’s bag, and hurried downstairs to meet Leander.
He was leaning against the carriage smoking one of his thin little cigars, and for a moment, Blair dreaded going anywhere with him. No doubt she’d spend all day fighting his hands moving all over her, and she’d never get to do anything to help with a patient.
He took one quick look at her outfit and seemed to nod in approval before jumping into the carriage and leaving Blair to help herself get in.
As soon as she climbed into Lee’s carriage, he started off in the way that Blair was beginning to prepare herself for. She held on for dear life.
“Where is this first case?” she shouted over the sounds of the carriage tearing along the road south out of Chandler.
“I don’t usually do these calls anymore, since I work in the hospital most of the time,” he shouted back at her. “So some of the cases I haven’t seen, but this one I happen to know. It’s Joe Gleason, and his wife’s sick. I’m sure it’s another baby. Somehow, Effie manages to produce one every eight months.” He gave her a sideways look. “Ever caught a newborn?”
Blair nodded and smiled. Since she’d lived with her uncle, she’d an advantage that the other students in her college did not have: she’d been able to work with patients rather than just learn theory from books.