“Years ago,” Margred said at the same time.
Which? Liz wondered. Not well or years ago?
Margred shrugged and smiled. “I remember so little.”
“I am pained to be so forgettable,” Morgan murmured.
“No doubt you have improved with time.”
He threw back his head and laughed. Liz felt an absurd flutter that might almost have been jealousy. Totally
unprofessional, she thought. Inappropriate.
Terrifying.
“Mom.” Emily tugged on her white doctor‟s coat. “Are you done yet?”
Liz knelt, grateful for the distraction. She hated making Emily sit through her clinic hours, but there hadn‟t been time this
morning to make other arrangements. “Not yet, honey. I still have a couple of patients to see.”
“Then can we go to the beach?”
“We‟re going to the community center, remember? To enroll you in summer camp.”
Emily‟s bottom lip poked out. “I don‟t want to go to summer camp. I want to go to the beach.”
“I can take her.”
She looked up. Margred was gone. There was only Morgan, staring down at her with those knowing yellow eyes. Her heart
jumped. Her brain blanked. “What?”
“I will take your daughter to the beach,” he repeated, his tone patient and amused.
Emily jigged from foot to foot.
“No,” Liz said. “Thank you, but we can‟t impose.”
“It is not an imposition. I came to see you in any case, you and your daughter.”
“Why?”
He hesitated. “Companionship,” he said finally.
“ I need trust and tenderness and companionship and commitment ,” she had said to him last night. “Can you offer me all
those things? Or any of those things?”
Her breath escaped. “Emily isn‟t your child.”
“No, but I will keep her safe.” He met her gaze. For once his eyes weren‟t distant and amused but warm and direct. “Let me
do this, Elizabeth. For you and the child.”
“Please, Mom,” Emily begged.
“I get off in two hours,” Liz said.
“I will have her back to you before then,” he promised.
She looked from her daughter‟s eager face to Morgan‟s inscrutable one, feeling herself teeter on the edge of a decision, on
the brink of a precipice. “What‟s your cell phone number?”
“I do not have a cell phone. Not . . . with me.”
There was simply no way she could let her daughter go off without any way to reach them. “Then . . .”
“You could give him yours,” Emily said. “Pleeease.”
“Trust must go both ways,” Morgan said quietly.
He was right, damn it. Of course he was right. But she hadn‟t counted on anyone but herself in a long, long time.
Slowly, she unhooked her cell phone from her belt. “The clinic‟s number is already programmed in. Just hit the contacts
key.”
He glanced curiously at the phone before slipping it into his pocket.
“Yay!” Emily dragged her backpack from under the chairs. “Thanks, Mommy.”
Liz swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “You should thank Mr. Bressay.”
His gaze locked with hers. “You can thank me.” Her chest tightened as a corner of his mouth curled in a smile. “Later.”
“Where‟s your car?” Emily asked.
“I do not have one.”
“Why not?”