To Save This Child

“I’ve been going over the western region’s sales figures, yours in particular.” Warren bit into the cookie. “Your numbers have certainly fallen off a bit in the past year, haven’t they?”

“Yes, but…” But what? Kendal didn’t have a good answer here. She knew she’d let her sales numbers slide. She regretted that for more than one reason and had vowed more than once to change it—along with everything else about her life. “I’m taking steps to correct that.”

“I was wondering…” Warren was talking with his mouth full, a small slight, perhaps another ominous sign. “Have you made any progress in getting Dr. Bridges on board with Paroveen?”

Dr. Bridges. The very name made Kendal’s insides seize up. Dr. Jason Bridges, the up-and-coming facial reconstruction surgeon whose thriving practice sat smack in the middle of Kendal’s territory, yet remained frustratingly out of her reach. She’d heard all about him. Supposedly, he was some kind of handsome bad boy. The Wolf. That’s what the single women at Integris had labeled him. They said any woman who attempted to slip a choke chain onto that man’s neck, much less jerk on it, would quickly find herself dumped.

But she also knew Jason Bridges leaped at the chance to use his brilliant mind and his incredible hands to help people. Aggressive was hardly the word for him. Coming straight from an extended residency at Johns Hopkins, he had burst onto the scene at Integris and nothing had been the same in the surgery department since.

People had talked about him from day one. Within months patients had started flocking to him.

Kendal represented Paroveen, the perfect drug for a busy doctor like Bridges. Paroveen was now being aggressively marketed after years of research and development, and promised to dramatically reduce post-op swelling and scarring with almost no adverse side effects. Kendal believed in its efficacy wholeheartedly, but getting Bridges to believe in it was another matter. He stubbornly persisted in using the competitor’s equivalent, Norveen.

Warren swallowed his bite of cookie. “When I saw you at the Christmas party, you told me you were going to close in on Bridges right after the first of the year. And now—” he waggled the cookie “—it’s already Valentine’s Day.” Warren smiled a coercive smile that was anything but sweet.

Since Christmas, Kendal had launched a one-woman campaign to get Bridges to switch. To no avail. She’d done everything in her power to forge a positive connection with the man, arriving earlier and earlier at the hospital to catch him on rounds. Didn’t the man ever sleep?

But so far she’d barely gotten her foot in the door of his tenth-floor offices. And that was only thanks to getting on a first-name basis with Bridges’s nurse, Kathy. And that was only because over a box of doughnuts one morning they’d discovered their mutual loves—chocolate and the Spanish language.

“Uh, actually, I haven’t made as much progress with Dr. Bridges as I’d like, but I’m working on it.” She bit her lip before she blabbed about the basket of Valentine’s cookies and promos. Recent regulatory codes prohibited such gifts, but Kendal was desperate. She couldn’t ever seem to schedule a sanctioned breakfast or dinner in Bridges’s office, which, of course, just happened to be Warren’s next suggestion.

“Why don’t you set up an in-service breakfast in his office?”

Duh.

Kendal wondered if the other reps got micromanaged like this. “I’ve offered to do that many times, but the nurses keep saying Bridges doesn’t have time. He’s got an awfully full surgical schedule. The man’s apparently some kind of freaky machine—doing surgery from dawn ’til dusk.”

“I am well aware of that. That’s why he’s the number one facial reconstruction surgeon in the region, our highest potential market.” Warren had stretched out the words well aware with exaggerated patience. Indeed, that was the point. Everybody in the business was well aware that if a prolific, fastidious surgeon like Bridges used Paroveen, the rest of the local surgeons would soon follow. “That’s why we need to get him to at least try Paroveen. We’re never going to get him to prescribe the drug until we get him to at least try it.”

Kendal let the wipers beat to the count of two, seeking the right words to defuse her boss. “I know things have slipped in my territory. But I’ve done everything I can to meet this guy. I try to leave samples. I talk to his office staff a couple of times a week, but I have yet to lay eyes on the man—”

“I don’t have to tell you how this stuff works, Collins.” Warren pronounced each word as if she’d suffered a lobotomy. “You used to be one of the best reps in the business. I’m telling you, do whatever you can to impress him.”

There was her last name again. That and Warren’s choice of words—used to be—sent a warning buzz ripping straight from Kendal’s toes to the top of her head. Kendal used to be Merrill Jackson’s hotshot sales rep, the one who won all the quota awards at the national meetings. But when Phillip had bugged out on her, it had felt like he’d pulled some kind of plug. All of her confidence had been seeping like air from a tire ever since. While she should have been aggressively garnering new business, Kendal found it was all she could do to get out of bed some mornings. The truth was she had been too busy surviving emotionally to expand her business. And in the cutthroat world of pharmacy sales, stagnation was bad. Real bad. Now she was stuck with a dwindling territory, a lifestyle built around two handsome paychecks instead of a single meager one and a growing pile of debts.

Her manager knew Bridges was a tough sell. Very set in his ways. Very particular about patient care. Very brand loyal. This was a test.

“Look, if you don’t want to go after Bridges, I can always call—”

“No!” Kendal wasn’t about to let some other rep take part of her territory. She would get Bridges or die trying. “Don’t worry. I’ll find a way to tap into his schedule, and when I do, I’ll wow Bridges and his crew.”

“’Atta girl, Kendal.” Warren had smiled, and Kendal had actually been grateful when he used her first name.

She sat up and smacked the sudsy water with her beautifully groomed hand, railing at the one who started this mess. “Phillip Dudley, I hate your freaking guts!” She raised her chin higher to the ceiling, shrieking even louder, “And I hope you die!” The word “die” echoed back off the Italian tile walls, sounding so ugly that it shocked Kendal to her senses. What kind of bitter woman was she becoming? She slid back down into the water and might have dissolved into tears again if the portable phone on the counter next to the tub hadn’t bleated in her ear.

Annoyed, she grabbed the thing. This was Sarah, no doubt, trying one last time to talk Kendal out of staying home alone on her birthday. But the caller ID displayed an unfamiliar number. With a sudsy finger, she punched Talk. “Hullo.”

“Is this Kendal Collins?” A vaguely familiar female voice.

“Yes.”

“Hi, Kendal. This is Kathy Martinez from Dr. Bridges’s office.”

Kendal tried not to make watery noises as she sat up straighter in the tub. Dr. Bridges’s nurse?

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Kendal leaned forward in the water, adjusting the phone. “No, actually, I was just…relaxing. What can I do for you, Kathy?” She was grateful that she was able to maintain a fairly coherent business voice, despite the wine.

“Stephanie Robinson—” the nurse started, “do you know Stephanie?”

“I know the name.” Stephanie Robinson. Kendal gripped the phone, thinking that if Stephanie Robinson were anywhere near this bathtub, Kendal would drown the woman. Why was Dr. Bridges’s nurse calling her about Stephanie Robinson? To rub in the fact that her boss was still prescribing Stephanie’s drug like candy?

“Well, she had to cancel a breakfast she had arranged for Dr. Bridges and the staff. I knew you were on our waiting list in case we had a cancellation. You wouldn’t be interested in doing it, would you?”

Kendal almost slid under the water in disbelief. Would she do it? Would she do it? Was the sky blue? Did the Pope wear a beanie?

“Actually, I’d love to.” Was she saying actually too much? She frowned at the empty wineglass.

“Great! Apparently Stephanie’s expecting and has such a dreadful case of morning sickness that she can’t even function until noon most days.”

Expecting? Stephanie was pregnant? Kendal raised her knees out of the sudsy water and propped her elbows on them. She pressed her forehead with the butt of one hand and squeezed her eyes shut while she fought down tears. Pregnant. With Phillip’s child.

When Kendal remained quiet too long, Kathy Martinez said, “Kendal? Are you still there?”

By an act of will so fierce it sent a tremor through her, Kendal dragged her mind back to the conversation, focusing on the good fortune that had suddenly dropped in her lap.

“When do you want me to come?”

“Tomorrow. Seven o’clock.”

Tomorrow. So much for the pity party. She’d be busy getting her act together for a presentation instead. “Great. I’ll see you then.”

They hung up, and Kendal slid back down in the water, feeling far, far worse than she had before the nurse called, if that was possible.

So Stephanie Robinson, no, Stephanie Dudley in her nonprofessional life, was pregnant.

She, Kendal, should be the one who was pregnant by now. That had been the plan. At least that had been her plan. To pay down the town house for about a year, then, as soon as they were married, get pregnant. Then combine their home offices, convert the third bedroom into a nursery and live happily ever after. Her longing for a child overcame her suddenly, an ache in her middle, a physical hunger.

Did she really miss Phillip so much, or was it this fantasy she missed? The idea of a family. They weren’t getting any younger, she’d told Phillip more than once, hoping to inch him toward the altar. They’d have to start on a family as soon as they were married. She’d never dreamed the malleable Phillip wouldn’t go along with her program.

Only in hindsight had she recognized that Phillip had been mostly silent during these one-sided conversations. Ominously silent.

She got out of the tub and pulled the plug. She stared at the draining water for a moment while she thought, Goodbye tears. Kendal Collins is all done crying. Kendal Collins was, by Jove, going to have Dr. Bridges eating out of the palm of her hand within the month. She would make so much money that she could pay for this stupid town house outright if she wanted to.

Almost angrily, she started toweling off. She stopped when she caught her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror that covered one wall. She gave herself a determined glare, straightening her shoulders. Yes, indeed, Kendal Collins was going to take her life back, make buckets of money and forget all about marriage and babies…and pain.

But when she started toweling again she thought, Who am I kidding? She couldn’t forget about marriage and babies. Because that was what she really wanted. Underneath the manicures and cars and clothes, that was all she really wanted.

But now, instead of marriage and babies, she found herself on her thirty-first birthday, all alone and struggling to survive in a very competitive business.

She closed her eyes, wondering again why Phillip had left her. Oh, sure, their love life hadn’t been the hottest in history. But she had thought that was the way Phillip preferred it. He’d always been reserved…almost to the point of being passive. She had always feared that unleashing her own fierce passions might scare the pusillanimous Phillip off.

So ironic. He had left anyway, despite her efforts to mold herself to suit him. Was there something wrong with her? She opened her eyes and gave her reflection a critical once-over. She was cute. Everybody said so. She was healthy and…shapely. Was she perhaps a little too shapely? Phillip had hinted as much so many times that Kendal had struggled to lose weight, trying to keep him happy. But Phillip had dumped her for the anorectic bimbo anyway.

She turned sideways and lifted her chin. Okay, so she was endowed with some pretty serious curves, but she also had a healthy mane of coal-black hair, riveting green eyes and skin like a China doll. She unhooked the clip that held her hair high and let the heavy waves tumble down. They felt cool against her bath-warmed back. She looked, she decided, like a Madonna, like a woman born to be a lover…a mother.

To hell with Phillip. She liked herself the way she was, and even if she never found a man, never had babies…

She clutched the towel to her front and closed her eyes. Never? She had turned thirty-one on this very night. Never was looking like a real possibility.

“Please, God,” she whispered to a deity she seldom thought about, much less prayed to. A deity so remote, so powerful and elusive, that she refused to even assign “it” a gender.

“Please,” she prayed, “send me a husband.” And as long as she was asking she decided to add, “And a child, too. That’s all I really want. A family. I don’t even care how you do it.”

CHAPTER THREE

KENDAL EXITED the elevator at the tenth floor, pulling her rolling travel cart behind her, reflecting that sometimes a pharmaceutical sales rep resembled nothing more than a glorified bag lady. Hauling your business around in the back seat of your car, up and down elevators in a silly rolling cart. So much paraphernalia—the cell phone, the pager, the laptop, the PalmPilot, the boxes of samples, the promo items, the paperwork. Kendal’s constant challenge, and one of her chief strengths, was keeping it all organized. From her home office to her company car to the wheelie nipping at her heels, Kendal’s life was a study in constant and careful order. Control, unrelenting control, was the key.

She opened the door of Dr. Jason Bridges’s office and hoped Daylight Deli hadn’t delivered the quiche, pastries and fruit trays yet. The waiting room was empty—a good sign. She wondered what kind of pull Stephanie Robinson had that she could conveniently get a breakfast scheduled on the one morning in a million when Dr. Bridges wasn’t in surgery. A youngish receptionist sat in her chair behind a glassed-in cubicle. Kendal didn’t see Kathy Martinez.

The lobby window rolled open and the young receptionist said, “May I help you?”

“I’m Kendal Collins, I’ve brought breakfast for your office, courtesy of Merrill Jackson.” Kendal gave her an engaging smile and handed the woman one of her business cards.

“Oh. Of course. Kathy!”

A familiar brown face appeared around the window of the reception area. “Kendal?”

“Hi, Kathy! Thanks for calling me last night.”

“No problem. Thanks for coming on short notice.” Kathy Martinez’s black eyes fixed on Kendal. “Now, didn’t you tell me that you’re—” she paused one millisecond before saying the next words as if they had some special significance “—fluent in Spanish?”

“Sí. Cómo le va?”

“Muy bien, gracias.” Kathy chuckled. “Ha estado alguna vez en Chiapas?”

Had she ever been to Chiapas? Kendal’s conversational Spanish was excellent, so she hadn’t misunderstood, but she didn’t get the point of the woman’s question. Still, she kept her cordial smile in place. “No, but I’ve been near there—to the Yucatan Peninsula.”

In her business, any connection she forged might help with future sales. It was all about building the relationship. If she was lucky, she and Kathy might move on to the subject of Paroveen sometime before noon.

“Listen. I need to talk to you about that.” Kathy Martinez clutched Kendal’s arm.

“Okay.” Kendal couldn’t imagine why this nurse, who barely knew her, was acting so excited. Did they need an interpreter for a patient? “But I’m expecting the food trays any moment, and I’d like to get my brochures and samples set out first.”

“Of course. Let me show you to the break room.” Kathy’s smile seemed unnaturally bright.

Kathy led Kendal through a warren of offices and exam rooms, then opened a door to a sparsely decorated room with green Formica counters on three walls and a large round faux-wood table in the center.

Kendal parked her rolling case against a wall plastered with unappetizing anatomical charts and went to work with her usual efficiency.

First, she pulled all the chairs away from the table and lined them up against the wall. She didn’t want people to sit down without looking at her materials. It was better if they moved around.

Then she unzipped the suitcase and whipped out a portable easel. Faster than a magician, she assembled it and set it next to the table. She then pulled out a giant tri-fold poster featuring Paroveen and propped it open on the easel. Lastly, she covered the ugly table with a paper tablecloth—royal purple, Merrill Jackson’s signature color. She’d found a stack of the cloths on sale at a paper goods store and bought the lot. Just the kind of subliminal touch that helped people remember the occasion and your product—and you.

She applied this kind of forethought to her personal appearance as well, lacing her business wardrobe with subtle touches of purple.

She felt a teeny bit puffy today after indulging in the wine and cookies last night, so she’d chosen a crisp black suit with a pencil-slim calf-length skirt and a crisp lavender microfiber blouse. Her only jewelry, save her perennial one-carat diamond earrings and a Merrill Jackson name tag, was a sterling silver lapel pin shaped in the Merrill Jackson logo. She’d been awarded that one for high sales.

The skirt felt a tad snug as she squatted to unzip a low pocket where her brochures and business cards were stashed.

The door to the small room opened and a really good-looking guy in a white T-shirt, leather jacket and snug jeans balanced a trio of long rectangular boxes as he entered the room, tilting his broad shoulders sideways.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” Kendal barely gave him a glance and turned back to her task. “Would you mind taking the food out of the cartons and putting the trays out on that purple tablecloth? I’m running a little late here.”

Kendal was very good at making the most of her time by delegating tasks and soliciting help from others.

“Bossy workaholic,” her sister Kara had called her one time when Kendal had pressed her into stuffing envelopes while they visited.

“Ah. So you want me to quit working so much?” Kendal, already hard at the task, had asked her sister sweetly.

“It wouldn’t hurt you to slow down, you know.”

This, Kendal thought, from the woman whose leisurely days included naps with her toddler while her hardworking husband pulled down six figures.

“Then I guess old Matt wouldn’t mind paying my bills, too.” Kendal knew that was unkind, implying that her sister was some sort of deadbeat, a burden on her poor husband.

But Kara had merely rolled her eyes indulgently at her older sister. “For your information, Matt and I are a team. Matt enjoys taking care of his family. Unlike that weakling you’re hooked up with. The way Phillip insists on divvying up every last cent the two of you spend…that’s not commitment, Kendal honey. And it’s not true love. Don’t kid yourself.”

Kara’s honesty had seemed harsh at the time. But as it turned out, Kendal’s younger sister had been absolutely right about dear old Phillip.

Sensing no movement from the direction of the door, Kendal glanced over her shoulder again. The man with the boxes was still standing there, giving her rearview a once-over.

“You are definitely not Stephanie Robinson,” he said and smiled.

Kendal frowned at him. What an odd thing to say. And because Stephanie was ultra slim, and Kendal was not, and because he was looking at her backside, his implication pricked her pride a teensy bit. All of a sudden she really didn’t care for the way he was looking her up and down. Sort of brash for a delivery boy. She stood and straightened her skirt.

“Stephanie’s not coming,” she explained in a tone that was intentionally frosty. “I’m Kendal Collins, from Merrill Jackson. The McMayer presentation has been canceled.”

“I know.”

“Oh.” She had placed a last-minute call this morning to the same caterer that Stephanie used, figuring they’d be glad to switch the order. Daylight Deli was reasonably priced and located right here in the vast Integris medical complex. They were good, even if their delivery boy was a little rough-looking.

“Then would you mind?” She flipped a hand toward the table. “I’d like to hurry and get set up.” Kendal walked over and quickly fanned her promotional materials on the countertop next to the coffeepot. “The staff will be coming in here at seven.”

“Only if I say so.”

An electric rush zapped through Kendal’s middle. Oh, no. Her eyes fixed on the counter for one split second, then squeezed shut the next as realization turned to horror. People said the elusive Dr. Bridges dressed like a motorcycle punk.

Kendal whirled around, struggling to recover her poise. “Pardon me?” She smiled as if totally confused.

“I’m Doctor Bridges.” He sauntered up to the counter where she stood, and slid the cartons onto the remaining space next to the coffeepot. Then he stuck out his hand.

She took it, hoping hers wasn’t too sweaty with shock. She’d been trying for months to meet the man, and here he was, big as life. Truly big. Even his hands were large. And very warm. She shook his hand while her mind did an instant replay. Had she said anything rude while she’d been assuming he was just an ogling delivery boy? “I-I’m Kendal Collins,” she stammered while he held onto her hand and her heart started to pound. “I don’t think we’ve ever actually met.”

“No, I don’t think we have. But I’ve heard of you.” He hadn’t released her hand. A fact that screamed through Kendal like a fire alarm. Besides being warm, his hand felt smooth. A by-product of being a surgeon, she supposed. And talk about strong. His clasp was electric with purpose, intelligence, life.

The twinkle in his eye acknowledged that the charge passing between them as he pressed her fingers in his strong, warm ones, was very real. She’d never met a man whose very touch sent an electric current all the way to her toes.

“You have?” He’s heard of me? she wondered. How? She hoped it was in connection to Paroveen.

He nodded, smiling, but didn’t elaborate, which was unnerving, considering that his eyes were raking over her frame like a tiger sizing up lunch.

He stepped closer. He was much taller than Kendal, and she had to tilt her head back as she looked up into his face. “Well…huh—”

His flashing blue eyes, so sparkling and intelligent that they actually made her breath catch in her throat, were scrutinizing her face now with the same avid attention he’d given her figure seconds before. He finally let go of her hand, grinning while he studied her from hairline to chest. He definitely reminded her of a tiger circling a shivering fawn, and he seemed all too aware of his effect on her.

Kendal waved her emancipated hand in the air nervously. “I hope you don’t mind, but when I found out that Stephanie had canceled her breakfast, I offered to bring some food in for the staff instead. So they wouldn’t be disappointed,” she trailed off, “and all.”

“How very considerate!” he spoke with the barest hint of sarcasm.

They both knew why she was here. Kendal imagined his thriving practice was overrun with eager drug reps like herself.

“So. What did you bring us?” He raised the lid off one of the boxes. Kendal could see the tray of expensive pastries, covered with cling wrap. “Not too shabby,” he said as he reached to lift the wrap. “Got enough here for a hungry doc?”

“Afraid not.” Kendal gave his hand a light slap.

He laughed. Then he quirked a smug grin at her, digging around under the cling wrap anyway, and she gave him a wry little smile in return.

“I’d be all too delighted if you’d eat with us,” she said, “since you’re the real reason I’m here.”