Buch lesen: «A Full House»

“Dr. Crawford, we’re holding your daughter.”

Annie Crawford listened to the words, but for a long time they didn’t register. The man’s deep voice continued. “This is Lieutenant Macpherson of the twenty-third precinct. We picked up Sarah about an hour ago with a carload of teenagers and about a half ounce of marijuana.”

“I’m sorry,” Annie finally managed to say, “you must be mistaken. My daughter’s home in bed.”

There was a polite pause. “You may want to come down to the station. I could give you directions.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll just call home and confirm that Sally is there.” Without waiting for a response, Annie hung up and then dialed her home number. The phone rang five times before Ana Lise picked it up, her Copenhagen accent heavy with sleep.

“Ja, she’s in bed, Doctor. It’s after midnight.” Ana Lise sounded bewildered by the question.

“Please check.”

Moments later the housekeeper returned to the phone. Her voice was no longer puzzled or sleepy. “She’s gone. I do not understand this. She is nowhere in the apartment.”

“Damnation!” Trepidation made Annie breathless as she picked up the receiver again to dial the police station.

Dear Reader,

Maine is a place people come to for its unspoiled beauty as well as its graceful and timeless ability to heal weary souls battered by a fast-paced world.

In the innkeeping business one meets many wonderful and interesting people, and while this is a fictional story, it was born of a series of real-life encounters with people who were doing just what Lieutenant Jake Macpherson and Dr. Annie Crawford—hero and heroine of A Full House—seek to do.

Lily Houghton represents all elderly people faced with losing their independence. She wants to remain on the saltwater farm she loves, but after she breaks her hip in a fall, her son decides she’d be better off in an assisted living center, and lists her home with a local Realtor. Annie Caldwell rents it for the summer, and to find out the rest of the story, dear gentle reader, you must open the pages of this book.

If you’ve never visited the grand state of Maine, by all means put it on your list. E-mail me at www.harraseeketinn.com, and I’ll help you plan a vacation you’ll never forget. I’d love to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Nadia Nichols

A Full House
Nadia Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Zilla Soriano, my much-appreciated editor.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

THERE WAS A TIME when Annie Crawford looked forward to the unknown challenges she would face at work and the split-second, life-and-death decisions she made every day. But gradually, over the years, those feelings had changed. What she thought about now when she faced another shift was how long and stressful it would be and how desperately tired she was of holding people’s lives in her hands.

These days, in those rare moments of quiet that sporadically punctuated her chaotic world, she dreamed of being someplace else. Someplace warm, where gentle winds blew all the clouds away. Someplace serene and peaceful, where tall grasses grew and where sometimes, in the midst of this lush green field, there grazed the most beautiful herd of wild—

“Horses,” a man’s voice said, interrupting her reverie.

She blinked, lifted her chin out of her hand and gazed up at the broad, friendly face of the man who was lowering himself into a chair across the hospital cafeteria table from her. He was dressed in casual clothes and looked wide awake despite the lateness of the hour.

“For one incredibly hopeful moment I thought you might have been dreaming about me,” he continued, nudging a second cup of coffee across the table toward her. “But when I saw the sheer rhapsody of your expression, I knew it had to be that dream about the wild horses in the field of green grass.”

Annie accepted the coffee with a slow smile. “There were five of them, and one was a jet-black stallion with a white star. Matt, what are you doing here on your night off? What time is it?”

“Just after midnight. I stopped by to check on Bonnie Mills on my way home from having a few beers at Gritty’s.” Dr. Matt Brink tasted his coffee and made a face. “So, what’s shaking?”

“For a Saturday night it’s been downright boring, so I checked on her myself about an hour ago. She was sleeping like a baby.”

“Still is.” Matt grinned. “She’s going to be walking soon, I’d stake my job on it.”

“That’s the kind of miracle we need more of.” Annie lifted her cup and stared at the black brew briefly before taking a sip. She also made a face and sighed. “Listen, I’ve been thinking…”

“About the beauty of the Adirondacks in spring?” Matt asked hopefully, and Annie shook her head with a rueful laugh. Matt had been prodding her for weeks to commit to a hiking and camping trip.

“Matt, how many times do I have to tell you that I can’t go? I have a thirteen-year-old daughter and I can’t just—”

“I know,” Matt interjected, raising a placating hand. “She’s going through a very difficult period in her life called adolescence and you absolutely cannot leave her without maternal supervision until she is married with several grown children of her own.”

“Matt…”

He heaved a frustrated sigh. “I know,” he repeated. “You’re sorry.”

Annie smiled. “You’re impossible.”

“I’ve been thinking, too,” Matt said, leaning toward her. “Why not bring her along?”

“Bring Sally?”

“It’ll get her out of the city and away from those friends of hers that you don’t like. The fresh mountain air and sunshine would do her a world of good.”

Annie’s beeper chirped and she reached automatically to silence it, checking the extension. ER. She groaned wearily. “Let me guess. Knife wound to the abdomen inflicted by a drug dealer upon a possessive pimp who tried to talk down the price of a gram of crack for one of his girls.” Annie pushed to her feet and eased a cramp in the small of her back. She smiled down at Matt. “Be seeing you around, pal, and thanks for the coffee.”

“Ask Sally,” Matt pleaded as she swiftly departed. “I betcha she’d love to go on a camping trip.” She waved a hand at his words as she pushed through the cafeteria doors but didn’t look back.

THE SIGHT OF BLOOD didn’t bother her and never had, but Annie sometimes felt as though she should be wearing a full biologic suit when she dealt with some of the shady members of the knife-and-gun club that routinely passed through the ER on a Saturday night. The man she now confronted was being restrained by two uniformed policemen. Male, mid-twenties, black eyes burning with fear and hatred. Blood spurted from his upper thigh while two gloved medics tried vainly to staunch the flow. “We can’t get him to hold still,” one of them tersely stated the obvious, his face beaded with sweat and dark with frustration. Blood was everywhere. “Gunshot wound. Looks like it’s nicked the femoral.”

Annie pulled on gloves and protective glasses and leaned into the youth’s face. She spoke three terse sentences in fluent Spanish, and the struggling instantly ceased. The cops looked at her in amazement as the medics quickly secured the pressure bandage. “What did you say to him?” one of them asked.

Annie smiled grimly. “I told him that if he didn’t hold still I might accidentally cut off his cojones because I was extremely inexperienced and the bullet hole was in a very ticklish spot.” She waved her hand. “Let’s get him down to Number Two operating room. They’re still fixing the overheads in One.”

The bullet wound was just the first in a string of injuries typical on a Saturday night. Somewhere between declaring the victim of a single car accident dead on arrival and monitoring the condition of an infant admitted with severe flu symptoms, Annie fielded a call from her ex-husband. “Hello, Annie,” Dr. Ryan Crawford said from some five hundred miles north in Bangor, Maine. “Sorry to bother you at work but I haven’t had much luck reaching you at home, either, thanks to your hostile housekeeper. You busy?”

“It’s pretty quiet now but that won’t last for long, so hurry up and state your case.”

“Still the same old Annie,” Ryan said dryly. “It’s about our daughter. I’d like her to spend the summer here, or at least part of it. Did she tell you?”

“She mentioned it,” Annie said stiffly, turning her back on the nurse’s station. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. She’s going through a very difficult time…”

“I know. Adolescence. Been there.”

“Not as a young girl you haven’t.”

“Annie, why do you feel so threatened by my wanting to have Sally visit? Trudy and I would love to have her, and she told me she wants to come.”

Trudy. Annie’s grip tightened on the receiver. Three months after their divorce was finalized, Ryan had tied the knot with Trudy, a medical transcriptionist from his office. It was Annie who had asked for the divorce, citing irreconcilable differences that had nothing at all to do with another woman, or so she thought. Ryan’s obvious involvement with Trudy had surprised the hell out of her.

“Hasn’t Trudy got enough to think about with the baby? It’s due pretty soon, isn’t it?”

“Seven more weeks. And in case you’re interested, it’s a boy. Trudy wanted to know ahead of time so we could get the nursery ready. If Sally came up she’d be here for the birth. She’d get to meet her brother on day one. She’d be a part of it all, and Adam would be a part of her life.”

“Adam?”

“Trudy named him. Adam Beckwith Crawford.”

“Beautiful.”

“Oh, come off it, Annie, don’t be so bitter. Let Sally come. It’ll be good for her. She’ll love our place. It’s on the outskirts of the city, big yard with trees, big garden, an easy drive to the ocean. It’ll be a good break from New York. All kids need fresh air and sunshine, even if some doctors don’t. And face it, Annie. You’re so busy you’re hardly ever around for her.”

Annie’s beeper chirped again. She checked the extension as she silenced it. ER again. “Gotta go.” She hung up the phone abruptly and hurried down the corridor. He had a hell of a nerve saying something like that to her. Even if some doctors don’t.

“Don’t what?” one of the ER nurses asked as she burst through the doors. Annie felt the blood rush into her face. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud. She dove into her next case with grim determination. Baby girl. Four months old. Severely dehydrated from a combination of vomiting and diarrhea. Damn the man. Even if some doctors don’t…never around for Sally… What did he know about being a parent, the two-timing bastard? He’d done precious little parenting with his first child.

She read the thermometer with a fierce scowl and shook her head. Well, he was about to get a second chance at fatherhood. She hoped A.B.C. was a colicky baby and that Trudy made Ryan get out of bed at least half of the time to take care of him. And that Adam Beckwith Crawford gave his parents a tough time with adolescence. Been there. Honestly, the nerve of the man.

She admitted the baby for overnight observation, and while she wrote up the orders for fluid and electrolyte therapy, she reflected on her daughter. Not a bad kid. Mouthy at times, and increasingly distracted and pressured by a chaotic world, but in spite of what her Ryan thought, Annie considered herself a good mother. Almost every morning she and Sally had breakfast together, discussed schoolwork, current events, boys, homework and future plans and dreams. Sally could talk to her about anything, though lately the girl had been too busy hanging out with her friends to talk much at all.

So why, Annie wondered with a strong twinge of anxiety, did Sally want to spend the summer in Maine? Did she really miss her father so much that she’d forsake the cute—Tom Somebody-or-other—boy she’d recently discovered, for the entire summer? Or was she unhappy living with her mother? And the real crux of the matter—if she went to visit her father in Bangor, and if he made life indescribably wonderful for her, would she want to come back?

“Dr. Crawford? Phone call.” The head nurse interrupted Annie’s dark thoughts and she glanced up from the clipboard, startled. She handed the orders to the nurse with a nod of thanks and took the call at the station.

“Crawford, here,” she said abruptly.

“Dr. Crawford, this is Lieutenant Macpherson of the Twenty-third Precinct,” a man’s deep voice said. “We’re holding your daughter here at the station. She’s fine, but she was picked up about an hour ago with a carload of teenagers found to be in possession of about half an ounce of marijuana.”

Annie heard the words spoken, but for a few long moments they didn’t register. “I’m sorry,” she finally managed in a haughty voice, “but you must be mistaken. My daughter’s home in bed.”

There was a polite pause. “You may want to come down to the station,” the calm voice suggested. “I could give you directions…”

“I’m perfectly capable of finding the police station, Lieutenant,” Annie snapped, “but I’m certain that won’t be necessary. I’ll call my housekeeper and she’ll verify that my daughter is in bed. Asleep.” Without waiting for a response, Annie hung up, then picked up the receiver and dialed home.

The phone rang five times before Ana Lise answered, her Copenhagen accent heavy with sleep. “Ana Lise, is Sally home?”

“Ja, of course she is.” Ana Lise sounded understandably bewildered by the question. “She is in bed, Doctor. It is after midnight.”

“Could you please check?”

Moments later the housekeeper returned to the phone. Her voice was no longer puzzled or sleepy. “Doctor, Sally is gone!” she exclaimed. “She is nowhere in the apartment, but…she was here, I fixed her supper, she did her homework at the kitchen table, watched TV for an hour, went to bed at ten just as she always does. But now I do not understand this. She is gone!”

“Damnation,” Annie said, and hung up. Trepidation made her breathless. She picked up the receiver and dialed Matt’s number. His voice, too, was thick with sleep. “Matt? I’m so sorry to wake you but I have to ask you an enormous favor…”

Thirty minutes later Matt was at the hospital to cover for her, bleary-eyed and disgruntled. “You owe me a camping trip,” he said gruffly when she tried to thank him. In her gratitude she nodded in agreement. “You got it,” she promised.

She took a cab to the police station. It was close to 3:00 a.m. and the precinct was nearly as busy as the ER. After asking at the main desk, she was directed to the juvenile holding area where several young people were bastioned in a small room under the supervision of the juvenile officer. Her daughter was among them, looking pale, scared, and so very young. She was talking to a man whom Annie herself would have crossed a busy street to avoid—an unshaved vagrant dressed in throw-away clothes and sporting long, unkempt hair. He had one hand braced against the wall, the other on his hip, and his body was curved in a lazy slouch as he listened, head down, while Sally talked. What on earth could Sally be discussing with a bum like that?

Annie felt a surge of outrage as she marched up to the officer seated at the desk and pointed in disbelief. “Would you mind telling me why that degenerate is talking to my daughter?” she blurted angrily. “He shouldn’t even be in the same room with her! I see his kind in the ER all the time, shot up and cut up, costing the taxpayers big bucks for us to patch their holes so they can go back out on the streets and sell their drugs to young innocent kids like…like these.” Annie gestured to the young occupants, thinking to herself that her daughter was undoubtedly the only innocent among them.

The uniformed officer sat quietly through her angry outburst, then raised one hand in a calming gesture. “That degenerate is Lieutenant Macpherson, the arresting officer.” The cop reached for some papers and pushed them across the desk toward her. “I assume you’re here to sign for your daughter’s release?”

Annie flushed at his words. She could feel the band of pain tightening in her temples as she crossed the room and regarded both her daughter and the man she’d been talking to. “I understand you’re the…the officer who arrested my daughter,” she said to Lieutenant Macpherson who had straightened out of his slouch at her approach. Up close she could see his hair was a dark tawny color and his eyes were pale. Blue or gray, she couldn’t quite tell, but they were clear, keen, intelligent eyes.

“That’s right,” he said. “I’d like to speak with you in private, if I may, before you take your daughter home.”

“I’m sure there’s been some mistake,” Annie said. “Sally doesn’t belong in here.”

“Oh, but she does,” Macpherson contradicted in a maddeningly mild voice. “She was in a vehicle full of kids smoking pot. I just happened to be working a stakeout when they stopped to ask me where they could buy some more.” He shrugged. “Guess I look like the type that would know. I brought them in. They’re a lot safer here than they were in that part of town.”

Annie stared at him, her face burning and her heart beating loudly in her ears. She turned to Sally. “Is that true?”

Sally kept her eyes fixed on the floor. “Yes,” she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

Annie stared at the other kids. Five of them, all older than Sally. Two girls, three boys. One of the boys was perilously close to manhood, and when he glanced at Sally, Annie frowned. “Are you Tom?” she asked. At his sullen nod, her blood pressure climbed another notch. “Sally, you told me that Tom was your age and that he was on the honor role.” Aspirin. She needed a handful of aspirin…and a stiff drink.

“Dr. Crawford,” Macpherson said, shoulders rounding as he shoved his hands into his jeans’ pockets. “It’s important that I speak with you privately.”

Annie followed him reluctantly into the corridor, where he paused near the water fountain. He was tall, she noticed, having to look up to meet his eyes, and well built. “Once you sign for her release, you can take Sally home. She’ll need to be present at a court hearing, and the juvenile officer will explain that to you.” He hesitated for a moment. “We’d also like her to sign an agreement stating that she’ll have no further contact with Tom Ward. That boy’s only seventeen years old but his police record spans four years and includes shoplifting, vandalism and drug trafficking on school grounds.” Annie’s blood pressure soared to new heights at his words.

“Because this is Sally’s first offense,” Macpherson continued, “we’re recommending that she attend a ten-hour program held at her school for two hours every Tuesday evening. It’s called Jump Start and its purpose is to deter young people from getting into any more trouble.”

“I can assure you Sally will never step foot in a precinct house again,” Annie said grimly.

Macpherson nodded. “Probably not. She seems like a good kid and she’s pretty shaken up right now, but this program will make her understand the repercussions of bad behavior.”

“All right,” Annie agreed.

“I talked to Sally for a little while because she obviously didn’t belong with the rest of those kids. Her biggest fear right now is that you’ll be so mad you won’t let her visit her father this summer.”

“She told you that?”

Macpherson nodded. Annie’s stomach churned and her head pounded. She drew a deep, even breath. “Well, she’s right,” she said.

“I think that would be a mistake,” Macpherson said.

“Really.” Annie had to resist the urge to slap his arrogant, unshaved face.

“From what she told me, she misses him a great deal. Maybe I’m speaking out of place, but I have a daughter, too, Dr. Crawford. She lives with her mother in Los Angeles. I talk to her on the phone as often as I can, but it isn’t the same as being there.”

“Then might I suggest you move to California, Lieutenant,” Annie said. “That’s what any caring father would do.” She turned her back on him and returned to the room where Sally waited with the other teenagers. “You,” she said coolly to her daughter after signing all the appropriate release forms, “are under house arrest.” She paused. “For the rest of your life.”

They rode home in silence. There was nothing that Annie could say to bridge the awful void. Her thoughts were a chaos of conflicting emotions. Sally was unhurt. It could have turned out much worse. But how had she snuck out of the apartment past the night watchman? How could Ana Lise have let this happen?

Four in the morning and Ana Lise was waiting for them. She had made coffee, and the smell of it bolstered Annie’s flagging spirits. Ana Lise made rich, marvelous coffee. She took the offered cup and motioned Sally into the living room. “Sit,” she said wearily. “We need to talk.” She sank onto the couch while Sally perched uneasily on the edge of a chair. “How did you get out of the apartment?”

Sally’s eyes dropped. “I climbed into the dumbwaiter.”

“You climbed into the dumbwaiter,” Annie repeated woodenly. “You had prearranged plans to meet Tom and his friends and go out joyriding on a Saturday night to smoke some dope and get high.”

“Mom…”

“Sally, you’re just thirteen years old.”

“So what? I’m not a baby,” Sally said, becoming sullen.

“Then why are you acting like one?” Annie rose from the couch and paced across the room, clutching her half-empty coffee cup. Gray hairs, she thought. Millions of them. I’m well on my way to total gray and damn close to being forty years old… “Where did you meet those kids, and how long have you been hanging around with them?”

“Tom’s Melanie’s brother. He’s really nice…”

“Nice? Is that how you describe a guy who lures you out in the middle of the night and gets you arrested? A guy who has a four-year police record that includes selling drugs on school property? How can I ever trust you again? How can I ever leave here and not wonder where you are when 2:00 a.m. rolls around?”

“It’s not Tom’s fault. He didn’t do all those things they said.”

“No, of course not. Tell me something. Has he told you about the birds and the bees yet? Has he told you that girls can’t get pregnant the first time they have sex? That if he can’t have sex with you he’ll find someone else who really cares about him?”

Sally’s body language became increasingly defiant. “It’s not like that.”

Annie’s eyes lasered her daughter’s. “It had better not be. I don’t want you seeing him ever again.” She turned her back on her daughter and paced to the window. Looked out onto the blaze of lights that stretched out forever. Big city. Enormous city. City that never slept. She sipped coffee to steady her nerves. “Your father called tonight,” she said when she could speak calmly.

“Dad?” Sally’s voice was a poignant mixture of remorse and hope. “Does he know about this? Did you tell him?”

“He called before I knew myself.” Annie turned to face her daughter. “He told me that he wants you to spend some time with him this summer. Trudy’s going to have the baby soon, and he thought it would be good for you to be there for the birth, so you could get to know your brother right from the start.”

Sally’s eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. “He said that?” she said, her face working.

Annie’s heart turned over. She felt breathless and turned away, wandering to the cherry highboy beside the fireplace. She trailed her fingers across the satiny finish of the old heirloom and finished her coffee. “Do you want to go?” she asked.

“I miss Dad,” she said simply.

Annie nodded. The highboy was a beautiful piece, her great-grandmother’s. It had begun its life in Cotswold, had been shipped to Australia for two generation’s worth of family history and then had come to America when Annie had married. One day it would be Sally’s. Annie pictured her mother’s kind and patient face, so very far away from her now, and her eyes stung. “Someday you’ll have children of your own,” she said softly, turning to face her daughter. “And that, young lady, will be my revenge. Now go to bed.”

Annie should have returned to work but she didn’t. She phoned Matt, who told her not to bother. Everything was quiet at the hospital and only one hour remained of her shift. “Remember, you owe me that camping trip,” he reminded her before hanging up. She sat out on the balcony and sipped another cup of coffee while Ana Lise worked through her guilt in the kitchen by baking. She brought Annie a big piece of apple strudel, fresh from the oven, and hovered over her.

“I am so sorry about all of this, madam,” she said. Ana Lise had never called her “madam” before and it startled Annie, who raised her eyebrows at her housekeeper in surprise.

“Oh, Ana Lise. Go back to bed. It’s not your fault. But from now on I think we should put a lockout on the dumbwaiter after 6:00 p.m.”

“Ja, ja.” Ana Lise nodded vigorously, relieved. “I think so, too.”

Annie watched the sun rise over the city, heard the burgeoning swell of noise gather faintly and then grow until the peace was gone, obliterated by swarms of cars, buses, trucks and people. Millions of people, all going somewhere, doing something. Alive and living for the moment…

She sighed. The camping trip with Matt suddenly appealed very strongly. She was a country girl at heart, having grown up on a big sheep station that her father managed. Her father had been a great man and a great leader of men. Quite a shock it had been to a lot of people when he had died in the Outback soon after Annie’s seventeenth birthday. He hadn’t come in one day from riding the fence line, that endless wire fence erected to deter the dingoes, the wild dogs of Australia, from the sheep. They had sent search parties out that night and more the following morning. More than a hundred men had searched for three days, but he was dead when they found him, he and his horse, both.

They found the horse first, just three miles from the fence line. Broken leg. Shot. Searchers reconstructed the scenario. The horse had spooked and thrown John Gorley, then bolted three miles before the fall that fractured its cannon bone. Gorley had followed the horse, eventually finding and destroying it. He had been hurt himself in the fall, worse than he would probably have admitted, because John Gorley was not a man to admit to any sort of weakness.

Knowing where he was, he’d cut due south to intersect the fence line near the Boranga station, but had died two miles shy of his destination. The autopsy had proved his grit. Big John Gorley had walked over fifteen miles in two days of relentless heat with no food, one pint of water, a broken arm, six broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.

The Outback had killed her father, yet it had nurtured him, too. Annie had not forgotten the harsh beauty of it, the smell and the taste and the feel and the sound of it. She was born in Australia and the land of her birth was in her blood. Sally had never seen the land down under, nor had she expressed any desire to, but that might change as she matured and became more curious about her roots. About her grandmother who lived in Melbourne now and her uncles, two of whom worked at Boranga and the third who had stayed on at Dad’s station.

“Daddy,” Annie said softly, marveling at how unreal his death still seemed, how impossibly remote the idea that she would never see him again or hear his deep, humor-filled voice or feel the intense glow of pride his words of praise could evoke in her.

Sally said she missed her father, and why wouldn’t she? Though he called her once a week, she rarely saw him. Perhaps she should spend some time with him this summer. It would be good for the both of them to get to know each other better, and it would get Sally away from those awful kids. That alone was enough to make Annie reconsider Ryan’s proposal.