The sun was a thin gold thread on the horizon when she spotted Cole. She wasn’t surprised to see him. He’d been meeting her for a couple of weeks now, since she’d started seeing Orrin. Yet she ran tensely those few minutes before she caught sight of him, dreading the possibility that he’d slept in.
He walked toward her with his hands in the pockets of his green warm-up jacket. “Good morning,” he called.
“I’m winded.” She slowed to a walk. “I feel as though I ate lead before I ran today.”
He put his arm around her, his fingers warm against the bare skin of her arm. “I wish you’d pay better attention to what your body’s trying to tell you and slow down a bit.”
She hated him to talk that way. It made her feel guilty.
They were nearing the house and they walked silently for a few minutes. The sand looked like it contained a billion tiny lights, and somehow the scent of flowers had found its way to the beach and mingled with the salt from the ocean. She wished that every morning could begin like this one.
“Cole?” She hooked her thumb through the belt loop of his jeans.
“Hmm?”
“Will you be my baby’s godfather?”
His arm tightened around her shoulders. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I don’t think I do, but I’d like you to have a special connection to my baby and that’s the only way I know to institutionalize it.”
“I would be honored. And I really see no conflict between atheism and god parenting.”
“You don’t?”
“The godparent’s supposed to make certain that the child is raised in the faith of the deceased biological parent, right? Since you have no faith that would be quite simple.”
She laughed. “Actually, I’d just like you to lavish presents on her and give her piggyback rides and let her call you Uncle Coley.”
“Pretty sure it’s a girl, huh?”
“I hope so.” She felt her eyes begin to burn. “Will you help me with her, Cole? She’s not going to have much of a father.”
He pulled open the sliding glass door to the kitchen. “It’s a promise,” he said, his face as serious as she’d ever seen it.
“I’m out of my element,” she said to Orrin as they smiled their way through the throng at the Devlin Foundation dinner. She had the feeling everyone else in the hall had spent the day on their yacht.
“You look like you fit right in.” Orrin led her by the elbow to the head table, where Cole was already seated. He looked relieved to see them. He was probably as nervous as she was. They would both be expected to perform tonight. He stood up and pulled out a chair for her, a few seats from his own.
“It’s better politics if we spread out a bit,” he whispered.
She knew he was right, but she would have preferred sitting next to him, nestled safely between him and Orrin.
The hall was peculiar. Dozens of round tables were set with white tablecloths and glittering silver and crystal. Yet the room itself with its woody scent and exposed rafters reminded her of a boathouse.
George Calloway, the red-nosed and jowly president of the Devlin Foundation, pumped her hand and took his seat next to her. His wife was already sitting next to Cole, talking in his ear and gripping the sleeve of his oatmeal-colored suit in her hand as she spoke. He looked mouth-watering in that suit. It made his eyes more startling.
Winn Meyer, her white hair knotted at the back of her head, sat next to Orrin, scooping him into conversation with the skill of the PR professional that she was. How did she do that so effortlessly? The Devlin Foundation had a real find in her. Some people were born knowing how to handle other people, Kit thought. And here she sat, smiling at George Calloway’s veiny nose and feeling obscenely pregnant.
Cole had told her she looked good pregnant. “You have this tight, muscled body, and your belly just looks like one more muscle,” he said.
She loved the description, but right now she wondered if he saw her as a liability. How did he explain her pregnancy to people like these? Maybe they would think that Orrin was her baby’s father. That would probably be worth hoping for. Let them think she was married to Orrin but had kept her own name. She looked down at her ringless fingers and dropped her hands into her lap.
Ridiculous to worry about it, she thought. Who cares what they think? She looked around the table. There was one empty chair left, between Cole and Winn Meyer’s husband. She was certain Cole had told them he’d be coming alone. The empty chair gaped at them.
“Will this be your first?” George Calloway leaned toward her.
“Yes.” She smiled.
“When . . . ?”
“September twentieth.”
“My oldest son was born in September. He’s a professional golfer now. Travels all over the country.”
“How many children do you have?” she asked politely.
“Four.” He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and she expected him to pull out photographs, but instead he produced a crumpled handkerchief and blew his nose. “Julie’s at Princeton, Roger’s the golfer, Patty’s teaching in Collingswood . . .” He looked up suddenly, his attention caught by a woman standing behind the vacant chair. “Ah! Here she is.” He stood up. “This is Cynthia Britten, without whom the foundation would fold up like an umbrella. She’s our accountant.”
The men stood and Kit stared. She was exquisite. Her hair was as dark and shiny as Orrin’s, her skin a rich bronze. Her dress was made of some feather-light fabric that fell in layers low on her breasts. It was exactly the color of Cole’s eyes. The way she moved and her throaty voice when she apologized for being late reminded her of Estelle. But her beauty was different—innocent and unpolished, as if she hadn’t yet learned its power.
Cole spoke to her as she settled into her seat, and they laughed like old friends. Kit smoothed her green silk dress over her stomach and shifted in her seat. She’d scoured every maternity shop between the shore and Princeton for this dress. She’d have done just as well at the local Kmart.
Cynthia caught her eye and smiled at her, and Kit smiled back, captured. She longed to reach across the table and stroke her fingers over the exposed part of Cynthia’s breasts. If she felt that kind of pull, what on earth must Cole be feeling?
They made their way through salads and stuffed flounder. Kit listened politely to the Calloways’ detailed descriptions of their children’s exploits, wishing Orrin could rescue her somehow. But he was chatting on and on with Winn Meyer and her husband as if he was having the time of his life.
With half her attention she watched Cole and Cynthia. At times they didn’t seem to notice the others around them. Every once in a while Cole smiled at Kit across the table with a look that said: How could I be this lucky?
Applause broke out table by table as George Calloway made his way to the podium. He held up his hands to quiet them. Kit’s heartbeat quickened and she barely heard a word he said. Something about all of them knowing why they were there and the foundation’s great pride in being a part of a program that was so exciting. Then he introduced her.
She walked up to the front of the hall and had her cheek bussed by his damp, rubbery lips. She settled in behind the podium and looked out at the expectant faces in the audience. She wasn’t up to this tonight. It would have been better to let Cole do all the speaking, but she hadn’t been given that choice. She only hoped that her carefully memorized speech sounded more spontaneous than it felt.
“Blair Medical Center has always been an exciting place to work,” she said, her voice echoing. This had to be a boathouse. “When you talk to the employees, you get a sense that they like their jobs, regardless of the level at which they’re working. They have a commitment to their work and to the patients, and they know they’re part of something very, very important. But in recent months, since the Devlin Foundation provided financial backing for the Fetal Surgery Program, I’ve noticed a change in the level of excitement. It’s higher than ever before. You can feel it in the air—the sense of pride of everyone there in knowing that lives are being saved and changed in a way they had never imagined possible in their lifetimes.”
She paused for breath and glanced at Cole. The rest of what she had to say would put them all to sleep. They’d told her she had to talk about Blair itself. Its history. Its other programs. Leave the fetal surgery stuff to Cole even though she was the one who’d been making the speaking engagements all along.
She wrapped it up quickly, trying to ignore the polite staring into space of the audience, and turned the podium over to Cole.
The applause shook the crystal on the tables and for a moment she feared they would all stand. He’d hate that. He would say something humble about how he didn’t deserve that kind of deification. Yet as she watched him take the podium, smiling patiently while they applauded, she had to admit he had charisma. Was it that suit or had he had it all the time? He jumped right in, speaking to them as though he were sitting over a cup of coffee in their living room.
“Last week, a couple came to me after a doctor diagnosed their unborn child with a deadly kidney disease. I was able to tell them there was a very good chance the life of their baby could be saved, and that it could be a very full and normal life as well. A year ago I would have had to tell them it was hopeless and watch them walk from my office knowing that they would have to see through to the finish a pregnancy that would result in certain death for their baby. I can’t begin to tell you the gratitude I feel—and the parents I’m treating feel—toward the Devlin Foundation, which has made this possible.”
He was twisting the truth, exaggerating the Foundation’s impact as though the Foundation itself were responsible for the surgical techniques. And really, he should have reversed the order of the example he’d used. He should have said that a year ago he would have had to tell the parents that there was no hope, but now he was able to offer their baby a chance.
But it didn’t matter. The audience listened intently, all eyes and ears. Cynthia smiled, stroking her water glass with long, polished fingernails.
Cole spoke for about twenty minutes and left the podium to more applause. He sat down again, and it was Cynthia, not Kit, who got his first smile of relief.
People were beginning to rise. Many of them were approaching Cole, patting his shoulder and shaking his hand. A few were headed in her direction.
“Time to mingle,” she said to Orrin.
It had to be an hour later that Cole finally worked his way toward her. “You were great,” he grinned.
“You, too. You had them spellbound.”
“I think Cynthia and I are getting out of here.”
She waited, hoping he would suggest that she and Orrin join them but he obviously wasn’t thinking in that direction at all.
“She seems really nice,” she said. There were strange, tingling pains in her chest.
George Calloway broke between them. “A complete success,” he said, his breath fuming in her direction. It was hard to get any air in her lungs at all. She couldn’t take much more of this.
She excused herself from the two of them and found Orrin waiting for her by the front door.
“Ready?” He reached for the door, as if he knew she wanted to make the quickest exit possible.
She nodded and pushed past him, filling her lungs with the fresh night air.
“Your blood pressure’s one-twenty over eighty.” Cole frowned into her chart the next morning.
“That doesn’t sound all that high,” Kit said from her perch on the examining table.
“It’s not, except that it’s unusual for you and it merits watching. You’ve put on a little more weight than I’d like to see, too, which might mean that you’re eating too much or it might be an early sign of PIH—pregnancy-induced hypertension.”
“Toxemia.”
“Right. It’s not that uncommon in older . . .”—he smiled, touched her arm—“in women over thirty expecting their first baby.”
“So what do I have to do?”
“Rest. Lots of protein. Lie down most of the time when you’re at home. Forget running.”
“I have to run.”
“No running. You can walk on the beach, but not far and not fast.”
She knew toxemia could be dangerous, but she felt fine. She wanted to tell him that if she stopped running, that’s when she’d get sick, but the look on his face told her not to. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be good.”