Cherished Beginnings (5 page)

"Be glad to." He stood and set the cup of tea on a window ledge. Tension hung in the air between them. It had started when she mentioned California and then had immediately become so skittish.

"Here, you'll need my keys," she said, fishing them out of her skirt pocket. She handed him her key ring.

"I'll check it out and see what I can do for you," he said before wheeling and stepping off the porch without using the stairs.

In a moment, his motorcycle sputtered to life. Xan switched on the headlight, throwing a strong bright beam against the trees at the edge of the clearing. Then with a jaunty wave he was gone, a rooster tail of dust spurting out behind him.

Good,
Maura thought to herself. She'd wondered how she was going to get her car repaired.

Maura sat back down and wearily rested her head against the high back. Why had she said anything about California? That part of her life was over. She'd hopped in the minivan and set out blindly for the farthest sanctuary she knew, and she'd ended up here in South Carolina with Kathleen and Scott.

Speaking of the minivan, she'd be lost without it. She hoped Xan could muster enough mechanical expertise to find and repair whatever was wrong with the motor.

* * *

Accelerating the Harley down the overgrown path toward the highway, Xan also wondered what was wrong with Maura's minivan. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. It didn't matter what was wrong. He was going to make absolutely sure that she didn't leave this place in it.

In fact Maura would have been amazed to know that Xan had already decided that the only satisfactory mode of transportation for her tonight was his motorcycle, where she would ride behind him, her ample breasts pressed to his back, her long, tanned arms wrapped securely around his waist.

Chapter 3

While Xan was gone, Maura washed herself, dipping her hands over and over into the sink. She splashed the water slowly over her face, her arms, her breasts, considering how it felt. She was used to washing her patients, but for herself this task had always been accomplished in the shortest possible time with absolutely no consideration of it as an exercise in creature comfort.

The water trickled in cool rivulets down the sides of her face, gathered in the hollows above her shoulder blades, ran slickly between her breasts, hung in heavy droplets from the pink tips of her nipples. The crude towel with which she patted herself dry was stiff until the water softened it. But noticing the textures that touched her body was new to her, and it felt good to cool off.

She did her best to keep Annie and the baby comfortable, and she taught Cindy a new variation of cat's cradle in order to pass the time. It seemed like forever before Xan returned. As soon as she heard the motorcycle thundering down the dirt road toward Annie's shack, Maura stopped folding clean cloths for the baby and hurried to the front door.

"I've called a friend to tow your car to his garage," Xan told Maura when she stepped anxiously out on the porch, closing the screen door quietly behind her. "I don't have any idea what's wrong with it." This statement was accompanied by a shrug of his broad shoulders. His face, upturned toward her, picked up a glow from the dim light of the lamp inside.

"Well, then," she said, her expression decidedly woebegone, "I suppose the next problem is getting home." Her sister and brother-in-law were out for the evening, or she would have called them.

"Where do you live?"

"I'm staying on Teoway Island."

For a moment satisfaction flickered in his eyes. This was better than he'd hoped. "I live on the island," he told her. "I'll be glad to give you a lift. That is, if you don't mind riding on the back of my motorcycle."

At this point, it felt good to let someone else take over. "I don't mind," she said. She'd be grateful for the lift.

"How's Annie?" he asked quickly, as though it really mattered. By this time he had stepped up and joined her on the creaky front porch, placing himself only an arm's length away. Other than their voices, the only sound was that of crickets chirping in the bushes.

"Annie's doing beautifully, and so is the baby. I could leave now, I suppose."

"Why don't you get your things and say goodbye to everyone, and we'll get on the road? You look like you've had one very hard day."

She nodded, too tired to do anything else. As she stepped inside the cabin, she caught a glimpse of herself in a cracked mirror hanging beside the door. She looked worn to a frazzle. Her back ached, her shoulders felt bunched into knots, and at the moment she longed for nothing so much as a decent meal followed by a leisurely bath in the sunken tub at Kathleen's beautiful, well-appointed and expensive house overlooking the Teoway marshes.

Annie and Cindy and the baby were quickly settled for the night, and after a whispered goodbye to Annie and a promise to check on her again soon, Maura rejoined Xan on the front porch.

The air was cool, thank goodness, now that darkness had dropped over the countryside. It was a clear night, the air moist but not muggy, and the stars overhead shone with a clarity unmasked by clouds. There was a moon, too, a great golden globe hanging so close that Maura felt all she had to do was reach up to touch it.

Xan slid a proprietary arm around her shoulders and divested her of her medical bag containing her midwife's kit. He handed her carefully down the steps as though she or the stairs might break. At this point, Maura felt flimsier than the stairs.

"Have you ever ridden on a motorcycle before?" he asked her with a grin. As he packed her bag into one of his commodious saddlebags, he looked sideways up at her. The moonlight gilded his face and reflected twin moons from the dark pupils of his eyes.

She was momentarily caught up in the magic of the moons. Then she smiled, thinking that if Xan Copeland knew anything about her previous life, he'd find this a ridiculous question. "No, never," she said, wishing she could tell him how funny this situation was to her.

"Here. Put on this helmet." He held it toward her. It was gold, with sparkly flecks in it. They shimmered in the moonlight.

Hesitantly she pulled the helmet over her head and tried to fasten the chin strap.

"That's not the way to do it," he chided, bending forward to snap it properly as he would a child's. She was tall, over five foot seven, and he still had to bend over. She wondered how tall he was. Six one? Six two?

He knit his brows, fascinated by the effect of Maura's wearing a motorcycle helmet. She looked fantastic, even with smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes. A shock of auburn hair fell over her forehead and the rest hung from beneath the helmet in a soft and beguiling fringe.

"Now hop on," he told her as he held the bike.

"You mean just—"

"Sure." He smiled encouragingly. It occurred to her that when they were riding, she'd have nothing to hold on to except him. This whole scene seemed as though it belonged to someone else's life, not hers. But she gamely hitched her skirt above her knees and swung a leg over the bike.

He got on, too, and before she could change her mind, they were wheeling around the clearing, the roar of the engine rending the night. Her hair whipped out behind her, free as air. The wind danced on her face, and she felt as though she were flying. She surprised herself by laughing out loud, when just a few minutes ago she had felt so drained of energy that she never would have thought she'd be laughing.

"Do you like this?" Xan shouted over his shoulder. She could barely hear him with the noise of the wind rushing past.

"Yes!" she shouted back.

"That's why I keep a motorcycle as well as a car. Riding is one way for me to get rid of tension." His hair ruffled backward, caressing the side of her face as she inclined her head forward to hear his words.

She clutched Xan's midriff more tightly. Underneath his knit shirt he was spare and lean, just as he looked, with no roll of flab at his waist, only firm muscle.

Maura relaxed a bit when they pulled out on the deserted highway, and he relaxed, too. As his muscles untensed, he leaned backward slightly into her. The sensation of his vibrating back pressed to her soft breasts and flat belly was titillating, to say the least. It was a wholly sensual feeling, suffusing her entire body to send warm ripples to the center of her, but surprisingly, these sensations weren't unwelcome. She swallowed at this new knowledge of herself and looked over his shoulder, watching the white divider lines on the road slide past.

The distance to Teoway Island, one of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina, wasn't as far in miles as it was in cultural lag. Annie's cabin and others like it were located along a lonely highway on the mainland in the Shuffletown community about twenty miles from the elegant and historic city of Charleston. Unincorporated, forgotten, and ignored by its well-to-do neighbors, Shuffletown housed the mostly black population that had once worked the rich South Carolina plantation land as slaves.

Staying on after the Civil War, they became tenant farmers, working the land for others. Some made a living fishing the abundant waters off the coast. Lately, many had found employment in the resort and residential developments on Teoway Island. Others left for college and better-paying jobs in the cities, never to return.

For those who remained in Shuffletown, life could be good if they didn't expect too much in the way of worldly goods. Steeped in the Gullah and Geechee traditions that their forebears brought with them from Africa, folks were not wealthy by most people's standards, but there was one commodity they produced with abundance. Children.

Maura loved the children. Kids with wide gleaming smiles. Little girls with hair braided in corn-rows, coffee-colored scalp shining between the rows. Small boys with tight black curls, chasing one another in play, their brown legs pumping as they ran. These children were not well-dressed, as their counterparts on Teoway Island were. They wore cotton shorts and simple shirts, some of them homemade. Or they wore T-shirts and jeans bought at rummage sales. Now, in the summer, they went barefoot.

Maura had first asked Kathleen about the Shuffletown community one day as they sat sunning themselves on Teoway Island's wide beach.

"No one on Teoway Island seems to know anything about Shuffletown," Kathleen said, dismissing her question with a shrug.

"Everyone who lives here has to cross the Teoway Island bridge to pass through Shuffletown on the way to Charleston," reasoned Maura.

"I don't think anyone from Teoway
wants
to know anything about Shuffletown," Kathleen said pointedly.

And then Maura dropped a bombshell. "I'm going to set up my practice in midwifery there," she declared. "I'm going to provide home births for the people who want them."

Her sister stared in openmouthed shock. "Shuffletown is not the kind of place you'd want to practice as a midwife," Kathleen demurred.

"They're the kind of people I want to serve," Maura replied quietly. "They need me, Kath. So do their more well-to-do neighbors. My practice will serve them all." Maura didn't know if Kathleen was being purposely obtuse or if she really, after all their sisterly talks, didn't understand why Maura had forsaken her old life for a new one that she hoped would be more purposeful.

"People living here in the Lowcountry are much more traditionally oriented than where you used to live," Kathleen said. "Hospital births are the norm."

Maura scoffed at this. "Home births have been going on since we all lived in caves. Nowadays, women everywhere are opting for giving birth in their homes because they're dissatisfied with the hospital model. Women should have a choice."

"I don't know, Maura." Kathleen rolled her eyes. "You might want to consider other options."

"Kathleen, I'll help the locals understand what a home birth is about, like I did with people in the housing projects and ghetto. Believe me, I know from experience that there will be lots of pregnant women around here who prefer to deliver their babies at home. Besides, I already know that there's no practicing midwife in this area."

"Whatever you say," Kathleen had sighed, knowing better than to brook Maura's stubborn determination, and so Maura had continued her discreet inquiries at places where people gathered—small stores and gas stations and hole-in-the-wall cafes. She'd developed an ear for Geechee and an appreciation of the Gullah people as she assessed their needs.