Jacob Weber was one student that I’ve never forgotten. After a rocky start at Saunders, he became an academic whiz—a Harvard med school graduate turned star fertility specialist. It’s too bad that the aptitude he’s shown in scientific matters never extended to matters of the heart.

His schoolmate Ella Gardner is full of heart, from her work as a federal prosecutor to her loyalty to her family. But she’s never been lucky in love, nor in fulfilling her greatest dream, becoming a mother. Now that she’s turned to Dr. Weber’s expert counsel as a last resort, I wonder if they both might receive an unexpected prescription…for one another.

Dear Reader,

Most of us look forward to October for the end-of-the-month treats, but we here at Silhouette Special Edition want you to experience those treats all month long—beginning, this time around, with the next book in our MOST LIKELY TO… series. In The Pregnancy Project by Victoria Pade, a woman who’s used to getting what she wants, wants a baby. And the man she’s earmarked to help her is her arrogant ex-classmate, now a brilliant, if brash, fertility expert.

Popular author Gina Wilkins brings back her acclaimed FAMILY FOUND series with Adding to the Family, in which a party girl turned single mother of twins needs help—and her handsome accountant (accountant?), a single father himself, is just the one to give it. In She’s Having a Baby, bestselling author Marie Ferrarella continues her miniseries, THE CAMEO, with this story of a vivacious, single, pregnant woman and her devastatingly handsome—if reserved—next-door neighbor. Special Edition welcomes author Brenda Harlen and her poignant novel Once and Again, a heartwarming story of homecoming and second chances. About the Boy by Sharon DeVita is the story of a beautiful single mother, a widowed chief of police…and a matchmaking little boy. And Silhouette is thrilled to have Blindsided by talented author Leslie LaFoy in our lineup. When a woman who’s inherited a hockey team decides that they need the best coach in the business, she applies to a man who thought he’d put his hockey days behind him. But he’s been…blindsided!

So enjoy, be safe and come back in November for more. This is my favorite time of year (well, the beginning of it, anyway).

Regards,

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

The Pregnancy Project
Victoria Pade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VICTORIA PADE

is a native of Colorado, where she continues to live and work. Her passion—besides writing—is chocolate, which she indulges in frequently and in every form. She loves romance novels and romantic movies—the more lighthearted the better—but she likes a good, juicy mystery now and then, too.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter 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 Nineteen

Dear Jacob,

I wish you continued success in your academic career. Don’t still on her pale-hold you back ever again.

All best wishes,

Your professor,

Gilbert Harrison

Ella,

It was a pleasure to hear of your graduation from law school. You were—and still are—one of my best and brightest. Keep reaching for the stars, and I hope you get everything you want in life.

Warmest regards,

Professor Gilbert Harrison

Saunders University

Chapter One

T he waiting room of Dr. Jacob Weber’s office was like most doctors’ offices. Uncomfortable chairs, upholstered in a mauve tweed fabric lined teal-green walls. The chairs, which formed a U around a coffee table covered with outdated magazines, faced the half wall that separated them from the receptionist’s desk. Inexpensive prints in silver frames hung on the walls—all of them some form of mauve-and-teal-green flowers—and a potted fern stood in one corner.

As Ella Gardner sat there she wondered if there was a handbook for decorators of medical offices that said mauve and teal green were calming colors, and that a token potted plant gave a homey touch. But even if that was the common perception, it didn’t work for her. She didn’t feel at home. She didn’t feel calm. And no amount of office decoration could change the fact that she wasn’t looking forward to the consultation she was waiting for with the man who had been touted in a recent article entitled The Best Healthcare Providers of Boston as the most innovative, cutting-edge fertility specialist the city had to offer.

But Jacob Weber was her last hope.

So she’d made the appointment. She’d nearly begged for it. She’d had herself put on a waiting list for cancellations when the receptionist had said there were no appointments available for two months. When that same receptionist had called yesterday to say there had, indeed, been a cancellation, Ella had juggled three other pressing duties at the office to be able to get there.

Jacob Weber was as widely known for his arrogance and bad bedside manner as he was for his expertise and use of the newest experimental techniques.

Not that his superior, pompous, self-important attitudes were news to Ella. They’d both attended Saunders University, and although Ella had been three years ahead of Jacob and had never actually been introduced to him, his reputation as the rich boy who considered himself better than everyone else had been widespread. As well, Ella’s younger sister, Sara, had been in Jacob Weber’s class, so Ella had heard enough about him not to doubt his current claim to fame as the best doctor with the worst disposition.

But she wasn’t there to be friends with Jacob Weber. She was there in hopes that he could do what no one else had been able to do for her in the past three years—conquer her infertility so she could have her heart’s desire: a child of her own.

There was another woman in the waiting room, and after a glance at Ella, the other woman took a compact from her purse and checked to see if there was lipstick on her teeth. Ella only had on lip gloss but suddenly wondered if something about her appearance had prompted the woman to be concerned about her own.

She didn’t want her insecurity to be broadcast, though, and since she’d come straight from court after filing papers in a case she was working on, she used her briefcase as a decoy, pulling it up onto her lap. Hoping it seemed as if she’d just remembered something in it, she opened the briefcase.

There was a mirror on the inside of the lid and she used that to take stock.

No, no lip gloss on her straight white teeth—it was all still on her pale-rose-colored, not-thick, not-too-too-thick, not-too-thin lips.

Her hair was in place, too. At least as in place as it ever got. It was curly. Very curly. Shirley Temple curly. So she kept it chin length—just short enough to wear parted down the middle and in a supercurly bob when she wanted it down, just long enough to pull up into a scrunchee at her crown when it was too unruly to deal with and needed to simply be contained. Like today. But none of it had escaped, so it wasn’t a stray corkscrew that had caused the other woman to worry.

Ella didn’t wear much makeup—only blush, mascara and a little eyeliner to enhance her light-gray eyes—and none of that had melted away. And there were no smudges on her slightly turned-up nose. No ugly blemishes had cropped up on her pronounced cheekbones or on her small chin or forehead to mar her normally clear, peaches-and-cream skin, so she decided it hadn’t been anything in that area that had alarmed her companion-in-waiting.

Maybe she’d spilled something from lunch down the front of her…

She tipped the briefcase lid forward just enough to reflect her clothes rather than her face, but there were no signs of salad dressing down the front of the white blouse that peeked from beneath her open suit front, and nothing dribbled down the lapels of the plum silk. A glance downward let her know that nothing had spilled into the lap of her slacks either, so she finally concluded that what had prompted the other woman to check for flaws hadn’t originated in Ella’s own appearance.

“Ella Gardner,” the nurse called out from the doorway to the right of the reception counter.

Ella straightened almost guiltily from behind her briefcase. “That’s me,” she said as she closed her briefcase, grabbed her black leather purse and stood.

“I’m Marta, Dr. Weber’s nurse,” the portly, older woman introduced herself as Ella reached the doorway. “How are you today?”

Ella didn’t want to admit she was tense, but her voice gave her away by cracking a bit when she said, “Fine, thanks.”

If the nurse picked up on her anxiety she didn’t show it. She merely said, “Since this is only your initial consultation I’ll have you go into Dr. Weber’s office. He’ll be with you as soon as possible.”

“Okay,” Ella agreed.

She followed the older woman past an area stacked floor-to-ceiling with files, then through another section where a countertop held medical equipment and supplies. Beyond that was a hallway, lined with exam rooms on both sides, all with file cubbies attached to the walls beside them. Marta took her to the very end of the corridor, where she motioned to the office visible through the already-open door there and stepped aside for Ella to enter without her.

“Go ahead and have a seat,” Marta advised, closing the door and leaving Ella alone in the room.

The inner sanctum of the beast himself.

Two women Ella worked with had had experiences with Dr. Jacob Weber—one of the paralegals and one of the research assistants.

The paralegal had actually recommended Jacob Weber to Ella even before the “Best of” article. The paralegal had heard through the grapevine that Ella was having trouble conceiving and had suggested she consider seeing the renowned infertility specialist, warning her, though, not to expect Mr. Personality. She’d said it had been worth it to her and her husband to overlook his crankiness because his treatments had resulted in a pregnancy after six years under the care of other doctors. She’d told her that Jacob Weber could definitely be a bear, though.

The research assistant, on the other hand, had said that after two visits with Weber, she and her husband had agreed they’d rather be childless than put up with him.

Now, standing in his office, waiting to see him, Ella could feel her heart beating rapidly, and she tried to slow it down by breathing deeply, steadily. She reminded herself that the paralegal was now pregnant and had returned to her regular doctor and that regardless of the poor social and personal skills of Jacob Weber, she would now have a baby. That seemed worth everything to Ella.

She set her purse on the floor beside one of two nondescript visitor’s chairs facing the big oak desk and opened her briefcase a second time. Not to use the mirror again, but to take out the file folder that contained copies of all her records from her last two gynecologists. Then she closed the briefcase, put it on the floor with her purse and placed the file on the edge of the desk just in front of the visitor’s chair.

But she was still too uneasy to sit, so she took a tour of the office instead, beginning with the bookshelves to the right of the desk.

Medical texts were all she found before she moved on, venturing behind the brown leather desk chair to the large window on that wall.

The window overlooked a lush green park shaded by tall elm trees. If this were her office, Ella thought, she would have placed the desk to take advantage of the view, and she wondered if Jacob Weber ever swiveled his chair around to do that. Somehow she doubted it.

Next she went to the left of the desk, stopping before the wall there that displayed framed diplomas outlining the educational history of the man she hoped could help her.

There was the diploma from Saunders University, identical to Ella’s own and a second one from Harvard Medical School, as well as a certificate that proclaimed he had satisfactorily performed a residency in gynecology and obstetrics, and another certificate of completion for his fellowship in reproductive endocrinology. Surrounding the diplomas and certificates were several awards given by the American Medical Association and various other professional organizations to Dr. Jacob C. Weber.

Apparently, he lived up to his reputation as an expert in his field.

Ella just hoped he didn’t live up to his other reputation.

Turning away from the display of the doctor’s accomplishments, she took stock of the sofa that lined the wall behind the visitors’ chairs, curious about why it and the coffee table in front of it were there at all. She could understand other medical specialties bringing entire families into the doctor’s office and requiring more seating, but infertility hardly seemed to call for that.

Although, by all accounts Jacob Weber was dedicated to his work, so maybe he sometimes slept in his office, Ella thought. She knew from the “Best of” article that he wasn’t married, but what about a girlfriend? she wondered, spinning on her heels again to survey the room in general in search of something that might give an indication of his personal life.

She didn’t spot anything, though. No family photographs or sports trophies or even a pencil holder shaped like a golf tee to prove he had a hobby. In fact, there wasn’t a single thing in the room that said anything about the man except that he was well educated, well trained and recognized for his work.

“But all work and no play—”

The door opened unceremoniously just then, and she cut her comment short, startled by the abruptness with which the man burst into the room.

It was as if a bulldozer had just barged through the wall, and she couldn’t help feeling as though she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t do.

That sense was reinforced when the man raised a dark eyebrow at her and said facetiously, “Everything to your liking?”

Maybe everything except him, Ella thought. Rather than respond to his less-than-friendly greeting, she held out her hand to him. “I’m Ella Gardner,” she said, hoping against hope that her name didn’t ring a bell with him, that he didn’t recognize it or remember it or her or the awful mess she’d been involved in at Saunders when they were both there.

Nothing seemed to strike him, though. And he either didn’t see her extended hand because he was too busy glancing at the open file he’d brought in with him or he used that as an excuse not to take it. One way or another, Ella was left standing there twisting in the wind as he moved around behind his desk. And feeling all the more uncomfortable.

“Where’s your husband? The consultation should include him and his work-ups, too. I won’t do this twice.”

“I don’t have a husband. I’m divorced.”

“Have a seat,” he commanded without showing any reaction to the news that she was single.

He himself didn’t sit, however. He remained standing as he continued to look at the papers in the file as if they were more interesting than she was.

Ella was beginning to see why people wouldn’t stick with him if he wasn’t someone’s last resort. But he was her last resort, so she did as she was told, finally settling into one of the visitor’s chairs.

Even once she was sitting, Jacob Weber went on with whatever it was that had his attention, as if she weren’t there at all.

It gave her the opportunity to get a good look at him. He was a big man—at least an inch or two over six feet—with long legs and broad shoulders that ably carried off wearing the long white lab coat he wore over khaki slacks, a blue plaid sport shirt and a darker blue tie. Beneath the lab coat was a body that showed no signs of fat or flab, and instead appeared taut and surprisingly muscular for someone who gave every impression of being a workaholic in the extreme.

Venturing her first real glance at his face, Ella was taken aback to find him so handsome. The only picture of him that had accompanied the “Best of” article had been a profile shot taken from a distance while he’d stood at the nurse’s station of a hospital. The caption had said something about it being the only photograph the fractious Dr. Jacob Weber would cooperate for, and in it he’d been nearly unrecognizable. And nowhere in any of the complaints Ella had heard about him had anyone—including her sister—mentioned that the man was drop-dead gorgeous. She could only conclude that his personality was so rotten it diminished the impact of looks that could stop traffic.

He had the facial structure of a male model—a strong chin and rugged, angular jaw with pronounced cheekbones and slightly hollowed cheeks. His bottom lip was fuller than his top but still neither could have been more perfectly shaped below a nose that was just long enough and just straight enough.

He also had great hair—a light chestnut-brown color—that he wore short all over but not too short, giving it an artfully disarrayed look. And when he finally closed the file he’d been engaged in and raised his eyes to Ella, they were so dark a blue they were almost purple and they seemed to pin her to her chair.

“Files.”

It took Ella a moment to realize he was asking for—well, demanding, actually—to see her files now that he’d set aside the one he’d come in with. That moment of delay was enough to aggravate him because before she’d grasped what he wanted and was able to comply, he said, “You did bring your files, didn’t you? I’m sure Bev told you to.”

Bev was the receptionist, and she’d made it very clear that Dr. Weber would not consider taking her case without a full and complete history before him.

“Yes, she told me. It’s here,” Ella said belatedly, reaching for her own file on the edge of the desk and passing it to him as he finally sat down across from her.

Those remarkable blue eyes went back to reading then, as if her medical information was more relevant than she was, and Ella worked to rein in her shock over his good looks and regain some control of her wits. Clearly this was a man she had to be on her toes with.

After a few minutes scanning the file—and still with his gaze trained on the pages and not on her—Jacob Weber said, “You’re thirty-five.”

“I am.”

“In good general health.”

“Yes.”

“On any medication?”

“No.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a federal prosecutor.”

Ordinarily that prompted a response of some kind, but not from Jacob Weber. He merely took the information without comment and continued.

“After a year of not achieving pregnancy through regular, unprotected intercourse the full gamut of tests were performed and no obstacle to conception was discovered. You had eleven courses of varying drug therapies to stimulate ovulation and—again—no pregnancy,” he said, interpreting what was documented in her file, all without looking at her.

“Right,” she confirmed.

“I see that you did have a husband in the picture for that—your physician’s notes indicate that there was normal sperm count and motility in the male. And now you’ve had five months of in vitro—even without a husband?”

“Yes.”

“All unsuccessful?”

“Right.”

He finally looked up from her file, once again leveling those amazing blue eyes on her as he set the folder on his desk and sat back in his chair. “And you expect me to do what? Perform a miracle?”

“If you have one of those hidden in your pocket, sure, I’ll take it,” Ella said, trying a little levity.

He didn’t so much as crack a smile to be polite. He merely stared at her.

Ella wasn’t sure if he actually expected another answer to his sarcastic question but since she didn’t know what else to do in response to his continuing silence, she said, “I don’t expect anything. I’ve heard that your success rate is better than average, even for people who have failed with every other doctor. I’ve also heard that you sometimes use unconventional methods that can do the trick when nothing else has. That’s why I’m here. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have a child.”

“It looks to me like you already have done everything it takes. And it hasn’t mattered.”

“Which is why I was hoping you had something new or innovative or experimental you might try. That’s also why my regular gynecologist suggested I consult you. Between the cost and the fact that I’ve already failed to conceive after five in vitro attempts, we agreed that it was time to go in a different direction.”

“How about the direction in which you open your eyes to the fact that not everyone is meant to have kids. That some people should—and have to—just accept that they can’t and get a life.”

Ella wasn’t unaccustomed to having to take what an abrasive judge dished out, and she called upon the controls she used in court to hold her temper now, too. “I have a life,” she informed him in an even tone. “I have a home of my own, a career, a sister and brother-in-law and niece I’m very close to, friends… That isn’t the point. The point is, I want a child of my own.”

“To fill the gap because your marriage didn’t work out?”

It took a little more will to contain herself. “I wanted a child of my own when I was married—as you’ve seen in my records I was married when I first started to try to get pregnant and I didn’t need any gaps filled. Not then and not now. I want kids. I want a family. Most people do. It isn’t a phenomenon.”

“And you want it so much you’ll even do it without a man?”

“I’m a very capable, independent person. Sure, it would have been nice to have the whole package, but that isn’t how it worked out. The fact that it didn’t doesn’t change what I want, but the clock is obviously ticking for me. I don’t have time to wait for Mr. Right, the sequel, to come on the scene, court me, marry me and then start all over again. And since I don’t doubt that I can raise and support a child on my own, I really don’t need a man.”

“Apparently you need me,” he said snidely.

“Oh, you better be a miracle worker,” Ella muttered, deciding on the spot that either he was going to accept her as a patient or he wasn’t, but that if he thought she was going to beg, he was mistaken.

After dishing out a little of his own medicine, neither of them said anything for what seemed like an eternity. His almost-purple gaze didn’t waver from his scrutiny of her. She refused to squirm beneath it—if that was what he thought he could make her do.

And then, finally, he said, “I’m about to begin a new, short-term research project. A few select patients will undergo acupuncture performed by a Chinese practitioner of an ancient discipline called Qigong. She’ll also be giving herbs that she mixes herself, and teaching meditation and relaxation techniques. There will be sessions of therapeutic massage, as well. It’s a test to see if this particular form of medicine can reset the body’s natural balance in order to increase the success rate for in vitro fertilization.”

A tiny speck of hope sprang up in Ella. “I don’t object to having in vitro again afterward,” she assured in case he was thinking she wasn’t a candidate because she’d already done it so often and spent so much money on it that she was now looking to do something completely different.

“There are two problems,” he continued, ignoring what she’d said and making her hope waver. “I already have as many patients, married patients, as I need in the study, and—”

“Couldn’t you make room for just one more?”

“—the other patients have already been through my orientation to explain the process and procedures.” He finished his second point as if she hadn’t interrupted him.

“I’d be willing to go through it all without the orientation,” Ella said, hating how she’d been reduced to grasping at straws but still hoping that he wouldn’t be telling her any of this unless he was actually going to include her.

“I don’t practice in half measures,” he informed her.

He got points for being conscientious if not for being tactful. But still Ella didn’t know if he was rejecting or reluctantly accepting her.

Another silence dragged on, again with his intense eyes on her the whole while, making her worry more as each minute passed that he was going to turn her down.

“I want you to understand,” he said when he deemed to speak once more. “If I allow you into the group and this doesn’t work for you, I won’t treat you further. In other words, I will accept you as a patient only for this study and the in vitro procedures that will follow it. If you don’t conceive after a reasonable number of attempts, you have to agree that we will go our separate ways. Because, after looking at your history, I don’t see where there’s anything I can do for you that hasn’t already been done—repeatedly. For me to go beyond this particular study would be a waste of my time and your money.”

“Okay,” Ella said much too quickly, jumping at the chance he seemed to be giving her.

“Before you get on the bandwagon you should also know that because I have a full caseload and so does Dr. Schwartz—”

“Dr. Schwartz is the Chinese doctor?” Ella asked, feeling a bit giddy with the thought that Jacob Weber wasn’t turning her away cold.

“She’s married to a colleague of mine, Mark Schwartz, and she took his name.”

Ella couldn’t suppress a smile.

“As I was saying,” he continued, still without the slightest alteration in his somber demeanor. “Because of my caseload and Dr. Schwartz’s schedule, all procedures will be done in the evenings, here, after office hours.”

“That’s fine,” she assured hurriedly.

“Even with your full life?”

Oh, he was nasty! But Ella wasn’t going to let him get the best of her. “I told you I’m willing to do whatever is necessary,” she informed him.

“Well, it will be necessary for you to meet with me so I can outline what the study entails. And that will have to be after hours, too, because I don’t have any other time for it.”

He leaned forward and scanned a desk calendar. “Today is Thursday and I’m busy tonight, so that’s out. I have to be at a conference all day and evening Saturday and Sunday, and Monday evening is when the study is slated to begin,” he said, more as if he was thinking out loud than explaining his time constraints to her. “I can skip the conference’s opening ceremony and dinner tomorrow night, but I have a meeting after that that I’ll have to get to. So that has to be it. And since the hour I’m with you will be my single chance to eat, we’ll have to do it over a meal.”

Hardly a gracious invitation but she would take what she could get. “Just tell me where and when,” she said.

He did, without missing a beat or even inquiring if she minded going to the heart of Boston to the hotel where his conference was being held to make it convenient for him.

“I’ll be there,” she said after writing the time and location in her day planner and returning it to her purse.

“I’ll keep your file,” he informed her then, standing and taking it with him as he did. “Have Bev give you the paperwork you’ll need to fill out—everyone else has already done that.”

“Okay. And I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

His only answer was to raise an eyebrow at her just before he rounded the desk and walked out of the office as abruptly as he’d entered it, not so much as saying goodbye to her.

But despite his bad manners Ella felt relief on two fronts.

The renowned Dr. Jacob Weber was going to give her one last chance to have a baby.

And he didn’t seem to remember either her name or the scandal she’d been involved in in college.

Chapter Two

J acob Weber was awakened the next morning by warm, sloppy kisses.

“Ah, can’t you wait for the alarm just one morning?” he groused, keeping his eyes closed.

His only answer was more kisses. More kisses with even more enthusiasm. On his cheek, his nose, his ear, his brow…

“Okay, okay, I get the message,” he said, opening his eyes to the tiny black schnauzer puppy he’d been sharing his bed with for the past four weeks.

He couldn’t be angry, though. Not when he was looking into the furry face of the three-pound dog standing on his pillow with her head down, her shiny black nose an inch away from his, her butt up and her stubby tail wagging gaily in the air.

If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she was smiling at him.

He pretended to be more peeved than he actually was now that he was awake and said, “Have you forgotten that I’m the guy who found you abandoned on the street and kept you alive by feeding you with an eyedropper and then a baby bottle until you figured out how to lap up that special formula the vet charges me an arm and leg for? The least you could do is let me sleep until six-thirty.”

The schnauzer clearly had no sense of guilt. She merely barked a tiny, high-pitched yip to emphasize her point.

And her point, Jacob knew, was that she wanted to go outside. Not something he could deny her when, even though she still needed concentrated care, he was making headway in housebreaking her. But only tentative headway. Delays were not tolerated for long. Which the second yip warned him of.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m getting up,” he said, rolling out of bed and reaching for the sweatpants he’d learned in the past four weeks to keep at the ready.

As he pulled them on he couldn’t help chuckling at the sight of the puppy playing tug-of-war with the edge of his sheet, growling and shaking her head furiously in the battle.

“That’s it, Champ, give it hell. Live up to your name. You’re nothing if not feisty,” he said.

The mention of feistiness brought with it another thought, this one of the woman he’d met in his office the day before. The woman who had been coming much—much—too easily to mind since he’d met her. Ella Gardner.

Ella Gardner.

Feisty and determined. Like Champ.

Jacob couldn’t help smiling to himself when he recalled her I-don’t-need-a-man speech. What had she said about herself? That she was a capable, independent person who didn’t have time to wait for Mr. Right, the sequel….

“Mr. Right, the sequel,” he repeated out loud, chuckling again. “I liked that one,” he informed Champ as he scooped her up in one hand and took her downstairs and out the back door of his two story townhouse.

The tiny dog couldn’t make it up or down the three steps that dropped to the patch of lawn he was allotted, so he deposited Champ at the bottom of them and then sat on the top one, his mind continuing to wander back a day.

To Ella Gardner.

He wasn’t sure why she was sticking with him. She was pretty enough—beautiful actually. Glisteningly-bright, riotously curly blond hair. Big, sparkling silver-gray eyes with long, thick lashes. Skin like alabaster. A small, thin, pert nose. Lips that—even when she’d been telling him off—had only left him wondering if they felt as soft as they looked.

Of course that in itself—noting details of her face, wondering things like how soft her lips were—was an oddity. He’d treated beautiful women in the past. But after initially registering the woman’s appearance on some level, it became something he didn’t pay any more attention to than he paid to the appearance of his less-than-beautiful patients. They were all patients—ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent married patients. They were his cases. His work. Certainly they weren’t anything personal to him. He couldn’t do his job if they were. Not legally, ethically, morally or emotionally.

Yet this one was lingering in his head the way no one before her ever had.

Was it the feistiness? he asked himself as he watched Champ wrestle fearlessly with a rubber duck that was as big as she was, and again connected the pup’s dauntless spirit to Ella Gardner.

Maybe.

He liked a little spunk, he had to admit it. And Ella Gardner seemed to have that—even if she had obviously been keeping her temper in check.

But again, he had patients whose spirit he admired and not one of them had come home from the office in his head the way Ella Gardner had. Not one had been waiting for him behind his lids when he’d closed his eyes the night before. And here he was now, barely awake and thinking about her again. Her, not any of his other tenacious, strong-willed patients.

He just couldn’t figure it out. He knew people who attributed attraction to some kind of questionable science and called it chemistry. That theory just hadn’t ever held water for him. If it was science, it was the flimsiest kind. That’s what he’d argued even with an old medical school classmate who was doing top-dollar research on pheromones for a perfume company.

But for the first time he had to concede that maybe—even if it was flimsy—chemistry between two people did exist. Because he was just stumped when it came to finding any other explanation for why the image of Ella Gardner kept following him around.

For why he kept mentally replaying their brief, all-business meeting. Every minute of it, every nuance, every expression on her face and intonation of her voice.

He just couldn’t find any other explanation for why he continued to recall her sweet, clean scent greeting him when he’d walked into his office. And how much he’d liked it.

He certainly couldn’t find any explanation other than chemistry for the regret he’d been suffering over not having taken the hand she’d extended to him to shake, over missing an opportunity to touch her.

And what was it—if not chemistry—that had made him ignore that simple gesture from her in the first place? he asked himself. He would have shaken any other patient’s hand. But when it came to Ella Gardner there had been something about her from the instant he’d set eyes on her that had knocked him off-kilter and his instinctive response to that had been to keep his distance, to be even more formal, more remote and removed than usual.

He didn’t understand it. He hadn’t understood it when it had happened. And true to form, he’d retreated into that attitude that had gotten him through the earlier part of his life. That bad attitude from which he’d recently faced some old repercussions.

But a doctor just couldn’t have…

What exactly was it that he had for Ella Gardner? he asked himself. Stirrings? Attraction? Some kind of unaccountable infatuation?

He didn’t know what it was or what to call it.

But whatever it was that he’d had, a doctor just couldn’t have it for a patient.

And she was a patient.

Okay, yes, it could be argued that for now she wasn’t his patient. That during the course of treatment she would be Kim Schwartz’s patient, that he wouldn’t so much as examine her until after the alternative course was finished and he began the in vitro procedures. It could be argued that only then would Ella Gardner be his patient.

But he was splitting hairs and he knew it. Basically she was still a patient—or at least a patient-in-waiting. And he didn’t get personally involved with patients or with patients-in-waiting.

Hell, he didn’t get personally involved with anyone.

And that was how he liked it. How he liked his life. No personal involvements meant no complications. It meant no encumbrances. No expectations. No disappointments. Uninvolved and unattached—that was how he made sure to keep himself, focusing on his work and solely on his work. That was the way it had always been, and that was the way he wanted it to stay. The way he intended to make sure it stayed. Which was why he never let any woman get too close or stick around too long.

“So vacate the premises of my brain, Ella Gardner,” he muttered under his breath, through clenched teeth.

The sound of his voice was enough to distract Champ from the rubber duck, and she did her springy little run over to him and promptly began a tug-of-war with his big toe. Which she could barely open her mouth wide enough to accommodate.

Her pin-sharp teeth hurt some, but still her struggle made Jacob laugh. He leaned forward and picked up the pup again to take her inside.

“Patients and puppies—sometimes you’re both pains in my neck,” he told Champ.

But he still held the tiny dog to his face, rubbing his nose in the downy fur behind one of her ears.

And in spite of all his determination to put Ella Gardner firmly out of his mind, he also still found himself—entirely against his will—looking forward to having dinner with her tonight more than he should have.

And way, way more than he wanted to.

Chapter Three

“T his is Jacob Weber. I’ve had a patient emergency this afternoon and am running behind schedule. You’ll have to meet me at my office rather than at the hotel and wait for me to finish with my other appointments today. We may or may not be eating, depending on the time left before my meeting, but I’ll make sure to run you through the orientation, even if it’s on the fly. Unless, of course, you aren’t here when I finish for the day, and then I’ll assume you’ve had second thoughts about this course.”

Ella played the message a second time, shaking her head as she listened again. She was amazed by the doctor’s curt, verging-on-rude demeanor even on the telephone. Although she supposed she should give him points for making the phone call himself, for not merely having his receptionist do it.

On the other hand, as Ella played the message a third time, she thought that he might be better off having his receptionist relay his messages. At least Bev was nice.

But Ella reminded herself that Jacob Weber was the best there was when it came to infertility, so she would just have to overlook his rotten social skills to be treated by him.

It was a shame, though, she couldn’t help thinking. Because as the deep, rich tones of his voice wafted over the line for the fourth run-through of the message, the image of him spontaneously presented itself to her mind’s eye—the way it had about a million times since she’d met him. It was a shame that someone with the face of a Greek god, someone with broad shoulders and smoldering nearly purple eyes, someone who exuded a raw, steamy sexuality that he didn’t even seem aware of, had a gargoyle’s personality. Without that he would have been a powerhouse of a man, whom no woman could resist.

Then again, maybe for her own sake it was good that he was so unlikable. Because if she was playing his phone message four times just to hear his voice and thinking yet again how great looking and sexy he was, she’d better have something that tempered what otherwise might seem like an attraction to him.

But of course she wasn’t attracted to him. Continuing to think about how jaw-droppingly handsome he was was just like recalling an awesome winter sunset—it might be something to behold but only from the warm safety of a house where fierce winds blowing outside couldn’t get in.

No, there was no way she was attracted to Jacob Weber. She needed his professional services, his talents, skills and experience as a doctor and that was all. Being attracted to him amidst that—coupled with his contrary, irritable, arrogant temperament—would be very, very bad. It was the absolute last thing she needed. Or wanted.

Still, she played the message a fifth time, telling herself it was for its supercilious, overbearing tone, and the turnoff that provided. That it was not for the sound of the polished-mahogany voice that delivered it.

Then she made herself hang up the phone.

A woman would have to be crazy or masochistic to put up with a man like that in any kind of personal relationship, she asserted to herself. And she wasn’t crazy. Or masochistic. Or looking for a new relationship with any man, let alone one like Jacob Weber.

A single marriage that had demanded too long a period of suppressing her own needs and desires, a marriage in which she’d allowed herself to be controlled, was enough for her. She certainly didn’t need to top it off with someone like the unpleasant doctor.

“No, thanks,” she said out loud as she went into her bedroom to change out of her business suit.

“Just do your job and do it well, and I’ll be only too happy never to have to see you again.” She went on talking to the unseen Jacob Weber as she put on a pair of gray slacks and a white camp shirt for her second encounter with the prickly physician.

And hopefully it wouldn’t take too long to accomplish the feat of getting her pregnant, she added silently, fighting against the ever-present fear that it wouldn’t happen at all. Because the less time she had to spend with the man and tolerate his pomposity, the better.

“I’ll be glad when you’re nothing but a bad memory,” she proclaimed as she scrunched the curly explosion of her hair above the rubber band that held it at her crown and retraced her steps out of her bedroom and then out of her apartment.

And that’s all he’d be, too, she assured herself as she left the building and got into her car to drive to Jacob Weber’s office. “Nothing but a bad, bad memory,” she repeated forcefully.

Yet somewhere buried deep beneath that bravado lurked a tiny shadow of doubt.

A tiny shadow of doubt born of the fact that every time she thought about seeing the gargoyle in a Greek god’s body again she felt a twinge of excitement….

“He’s right behind me, I promise,” Marta said to Ella as the nurse came through the door from the inner office into the waiting room where Ella had been sitting for over an hour.

“Okay,” Ella answered, hoping the woman was right but unsure whether to believe it or not since Bev, the receptionist, had told her the doctor would be out after the last patient had left forty minutes ago and then repeated it when she’d left herself twenty minutes earlier.

Marta gave her a reassuring smile, said good-night, and went out.

The longer Ella sat there, the more difficult it was to avoid what she considered her pregnancy demons. The thoughts—the doubts—that crept into her mind when she wasn’t guarding against them or when she had too much time on her hands.

What if nothing worked and she never got pregnant? What if all the money, all the effort, all the pain came to naught? What if she spent her entire life childless?

The questions tortured her and, as if she’d outrun them, she stood and forced herself to focus only on the present. On the fact that Jacob Weber was keeping her waiting.

Clearly the office ran on his timetable, and he wouldn’t be rushed. For anyone. Certainly not for her.

Ella decided to take a stroll around the waiting room, pausing to look more closely at the framed prints on the walls, to straighten the magazines on the coffee table, to pluck a dead leaf from the fern and bury it in the soil around its roots. And all the while she wondered if Jacob Weber was making her cool her heels on purpose. Just to be contrary. Or as some kind of test.

Then, through the cut-out that connected the receptionist’s area with the waiting room she saw the light in the hallway that ran between the examining rooms turn off, and she felt encouraged.

At least she did until she caught sight of the man himself opening the door to what looked like a supply closet.

Without any acknowledgment of her, or any apparent awareness that she was even out there, he slipped inside the closet and closed the door behind him.

He probably put counting cotton balls ahead of meeting with her, she thought, feeling a little surly after all the time she’d been waiting.

He was only in the supply closet for a moment, though, before he emerged again. Yet he still offered her not even a glance or a word to let her know he really was on his way before he stopped at the area where the scale and other machinery were located—the area that was apparently the nurse’s work station.

Did he even know she was watching him? Ella wondered.

He didn’t seem to. Or care, if he did, because for what felt like an eternity his attention was on something.

The man really was a jerk, Ella thought, staring openly at him in hopes of at least drawing a glance.

It didn’t work. He went right on looking over some sort of paperwork, oblivious to her.

Jerk, jerk, jerk…

Good-looking jerk, though, she had to concede as she took in the sight of him in tan slacks and a tan sports coat over a darker brown dress shirt and tan tie that all seemed to set off his chestnut hair to perfect effect.

But again she reminded herself that he was a gargoyle in a Greek god’s body so as not to let that handsome appearance cloud the reality.

After another few minutes he seemed to finish what he was doing, because he tucked the paperwork into a file and brought it to the receptionist’s desk, finally gazing in Ella’s direction.

But that was as much as she got.

They were only a few feet apart, and he still didn’t bother to speak. He merely raised a cursory glance at her before lowering his eyes to the desk again to write something on a note he attached to the file.

Maybe he was just singularly dedicated, Ella told herself. But that didn’t keep his actions from seeming just plain rude.

He finally flipped off the rest of the lights in that portion of the office and—at last—headed for the door that would bring him into the waiting room.

You’d better be damn good at what you do, Ella thought as he joined her.

She had to look twice to believe what else she was seeing, however. Riding along in the side pocket of his sports coat was what appeared to be a tiny black puppy with two front paws and a soft furry head—no bigger than a plum—sticking out of the top.

The almost-too-small-to-be-real dog barked a squeaky-but-fearless bark at her that Jacob Weber ignored as, without greeting her, he said, “I’m going to have to make a stop at my place—luckily it’s just across the street. Then it looks like all we’ll have time for is a fast-food dinner before I need to make my meeting. There’s a hole-in-the-wall a few doors down that has Chicago-style hot dogs. We’ll probably have to stand and eat them at one of the counters along the wall, but that’s as good as it’s going to get.”

And all that without any reference whatsoever to the puppy in his pocket.

“Uh…okay,” Ella said. But she refused to be left in the dark about the dog and pointed to the side of the doctor’s coat. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Jacob Weber looked down at the coal-black face peering with pint-size grandeur from his pocket and said, “This is Champ. Who is the cause of my need to stop at home, since I can’t take her to my meeting.”

“Champ is a girl?” Ella said, unable to suppress a smile at the tiny, wavy-haired terrier, or to hold out a finger to pet her.

“She is a female, yes,” Jacob Weber confirmed.

“Champ makes her sound like a boy.”

“She’s named Champ because that’s what she is—a little champ.” That was all the explanation he was offering because then he said, “Shall we go? We don’t have much time.”

Champ was more easily won over than her owner, because she was licking Ella’s hand and wiggling around in the coat pocket enough to let Ella know she was wagging her tail.

But Ella had no choice except to comply with the doctor’s insistent suggestion, retrieve her hand and follow him to the door.

He opened it, waited for her to step out into the hallway and then closed and locked the door behind them.

The elevator was directly across from his office, and the moment he pushed the down button the doors opened.

“Champ looks too young to be away from her mom,” Ella observed during the elevator ride that Jacob Weber would likely have left silent.

“She is. I found her in the gutter at the curb in front of my place about four weeks ago. Since she seems to be a purebred, the best guess is that her original owner was moving the litter for some reason and she somehow fell or got out of the box unnoticed. I knocked on a few doors but no one knew anything about her so I took her to a vet around the corner. He thought she was five or six days old at the time and said she wouldn’t live without special care.”

“And you decided to keep her and give that special care?” Ella asked, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice.

They’d reached the ground floor, and the doctor held open the door long enough for her to precede him out of the elevator.

“The vet was too busy to do it so I did,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What kind of special care did she need?” Ella persisted as they left the office building.

He continued in that same no-big-deal tone to outline a regimen of feeding and watering the pup every hour round the clock until recently, of caring for her day and night to pull her through, of her still needing to be looked after closely and not left unattended for long periods.

By the time they’d walked across the street to a row of brown brick town houses, Ella was amazed that the gruff Jacob Weber had gone to such lengths to save the animal.

“You’re a dog lover,” she guessed.

He shrugged as he unlocked and opened his town house door, reaching in to flip on a light, then motioning her inside. “I’ve never had a pet of any kind before this,” he said as he came in after her and closed the door behind them.

“And you still kept Champ and did all that for her?” Ella marveled.

“What was I going to do? Put her back in the gutter to die?”

That snide statement was more like what Ella expected from Jacob Weber. As was the curt “I’ll only be a minute” that came next.

But for the first time she didn’t take him or his surliness as seriously as she had before. How could she when, as he turned to go into what appeared to be the living room, he reached into his pocket and extracted the tiny dog to hold up to his face and say in a tender voice, “Okay little girl, outside to do your business and then I’ll have to put you in the crate for a while. Don’t worry, I promise it won’t be long.”

Then he lowered the puppy to hold to his chest just as they both disappeared from her view.

Maybe you’re not such a hard-nose after all, Ella thought.

Of course despite his treatment of Champ, Jacob Weber had still left her standing in the entryway rather than offering her a seat in the living room. Which would have been the polite thing to do.

But at that point Ella merely shook her head and remained where she was.

Well, almost.

It was just that the longer she stood there in the narrow entrance with nothing but a steep set of stairs rising up in front of her to study, she became curious about what his place actually looked like. And what it might say about him.

She wasn’t brave enough to do any actual snooping, but she did slide a few feet to where the entry merged with the living room, leaning enough to her left to peek into that other section of his house.

She was glad that there weren’t any signs of the doctor by then and she assumed he’d gone through the living room into the kitchen that was visible at the other end, at the rear of the town house. But given that brief opportunity, she did take stock of the living room from where she was.

Not that there was much to take stock of.

What little furniture decorated the space appeared expensive and tasteful but there was definitely not much of it. An elaborate oak entertainment center on one wall sported a big-screen plasma television and an impressive stereo system. Directly across from that sat an exquisite overstuffed black leather sofa with a floor lamp to one side and an oak coffee table in front. And that was it. There were no pictures on the walls, no plants to warm up the place, and no other seating. And while the sofa was large enough for more than one person, the room still seemed to be a one-man setup that didn’t welcome company.

It made Ella wonder if that was Jacob Weber’s own goal—to keep himself removed—or if his off-putting disposition had simply forced him into the role of loner.

The doctor had apparently gone out the back door with the dog because just then Ella heard it open, and the sound of him saying something she couldn’t make out gave her fair warning of his return.

She hurriedly straightened up again and sidled to her original position.

He came as far as the living room where she could again hear what he said as he informed Champ that she had her pillow, blanket, bear and monkey to keep her company, instructing her to nap while he was gone and promising treats when he got back.

It was sweet. Maybe more sweet because it was coming from a man who otherwise appeared to be tough as nails, but sweet enough nonetheless to raise Ella’s curiosity once again, this time over what exactly lurked behind the man’s brusque exterior.

More sounds let her know that he was putting Champ in her crate and within moments of that Jacob Weber was back in the entry with her.

“Is Champ all tucked in for the night?” she asked, pretending she hadn’t been privy to any of the doctor’s exchange with his pet.

“Not for the night, no. But for the time being, anyway.” He raised a big, thick wrist to check the paper-thin watch there and added, “We need to get going.”

Ella nodded her agreement, realizing that while Champ may have somehow wormed her way into the doctor’s affections and weakened his defenses, talking about Champ didn’t soften his demeanor at all.

Maybe nothing did, Ella thought as they left the town house.

Well, fine. If he wanted to keep things purely professional, she’d stop trying to make it anything else and wait for him to begin her orientation.

Which was actually what he did as they set off in the balmy early-September evening to walk down the street toward the shops that lined the next block.

“The study begins Monday evening,” he said without preamble. “Although I won’t be there—”

“You won’t?” Ella heard herself ask before she’d considered the wisdom—or lack of wisdom—in it. And before she’d had any idea that it would come out in a tone of voice that had a slightly disappointed ring to it. To go along with the disappointed feeling she also discovered in herself…much to her own amazement.

“I’ll be there the rest of the time,” he was quick to assure her, obviously having caught the tone.

Desperate for damage control, Ella said, “It’s just that… I don’t know… I guess I thought that since it’s your study and your office—”

“It is my study and my office but in essence it will be Dr. Schwartz treating you during this initial phase. My being there at all is really just a courtesy. But I will be there. Every night after Monday night.”

Ella thought she’d successfully made him believe she’d merely had a moment of patient insecurity, because he continued with what he’d been explaining, only now his voice had a more comforting note to it. “Even though I won’t be there Monday night, Marta will be. She’ll introduce you to everyone. And Kim Schwartz is not intimidating at all—she’s not even five feet tall, weighs about eighty pounds and is very soft-spoken. Very cordial and friendly.”

“Good,” Ella said, trying to encourage his impression while tamping down on what was really going on with her. Whatever that was…

They left the row of town houses and stopped at the corner. As he watched for a break in the cars coming through the intersection, Ella looked ahead at what awaited them on the other side.

They were in an older area of Boston that had been remodeled and updated to attract new residents and businesses. It had been a success because the town houses on either side of the doctor’s were occupied and so were all of the storefronts on the next block.

Ella could see a bakery, a bicycle repair shop, a coffee shop, a bookstore, a pizza parlor, a costume shop, and several other small establishments, including their destination at the opposite corner where a neon sign jutting out from the building announced Chicago-Style Hot Dogs.

When they could finally cross, Jacob Weber picked up where he’d left off.

“Marta will be taking some routine, baseline readings on my behalf—blood pressure, pulse, temperature. She’ll also take blood and urine so we have labs on you all. Kim—Dr. Schwartz, but she doesn’t mind if you call her by her first name—”

“What about you?” For the second time Ella’s mouth ran away with her—not something that usually happened.

“What do you want to call me?” he asked, as if challenging her.

Accepting the challenge—and because first names might act as the equalizer she needed with this man, she said, “Jacob. I’ll call you Jacob.”

Ella had the impression that he considered taking issue with that. But in the end he surprised her by simply conceding, though not without sarcasm.

“Okay. Well, Ella, Kim will also be there Monday night,” he continued. “She’ll have a lot of questions for you—she needs histories as extensive as any other doctor. She’ll take your pulse, too, but not for the same purpose that Western medicine does. In Chinese medicine the pulse is taken for the strength and quality of the blood flow. The belief is that it tells something about your chi—your energy. Many practitioners of Chinese medicine base their treatments on that. Kim says she can tell when there are disturbances in the body just from the pulse. She’ll also ask to look at your tongue.”

Ella glanced over at him, finding his profile as strikingly handsome as the frontal view of his face but trying not to register that fact. “She’ll ask to look at my tongue?”

He actually did crack a smile at her reaction. Only a half smile, but a smile nonetheless that softened his features and gave him a whole new appeal as he looked at her, too. “It’s a diagnostic tool in Chinese medicine. She’s shown me what she looks for and given me the textbook she learned from. I’ve been using it myself—asking to look at my patients’ tongues to see if what I’m finding or suspecting in their physical condition really might be reflected in the way their tongues look. I’ve found some merit to it. I’ve also found that after Kim has treated a couple of my patients who went to her on their own—and helped them—that there are changes in the appearance of their tongues. It’s actually what prompted this study.”

They’d reached the hot-dog stand and although dusk was just beginning to fall, light spilled from the windows in front of it to provide plenty of illumination. Enough so that he said, “I’d rather have better light but let me see yours, anyway.”

“You want to examine my tongue out here on the street?”

She couldn’t be sure if he was kidding or not. Especially since there was an amused expression on his face.

He glanced around and then said, “Nobody’s looking.”

The man was too mercurial for her not to worry about refusing him. But they were in the open, with several other people milling around them, and Ella knew she would feel like an idiot standing there sticking her tongue out at him. Plus, mercurial or not, there was only so far she was willing to go.

“I will not stick out my tongue,” she said firmly.

“You’ll have to do it for Kim,” he warned gruffly.

“I will do it for her. But I won’t do it for you. Especially not out here.”

A passerby looked askance at her just then and Ella realized there might have been some sexual undertones to what she said. Apparently Jacob noticed the same thing, and it obviously amused him because a glint came into his eyes. A very attractive glint that almost seemed to add a certain charm to the man.

But a moment later he glanced away and it was gone.

He opened the door to the hot-dog stand then, once more waiting for her to go in ahead of him.

Ella was only too glad to do it, using the opportunity to tell herself she was out of her mind if she thought this man was capable of being engaging in any way.

He did, however, insist on paying for her hot dog and just as they turned from the register a very small café table in the corner opened up.

“Looks like we get to sit after all,” he said, leading her there.

Slathered in mustard, the hot dog tasted great, and as they ate Jacob laid out the course of treatment that would begin on Tuesday evening—when he would be in the office, he made sure to remind her.

He reached the end of his orientation at the same time they finished their hot dogs, but he no longer seemed in such a hurry to get this over with. In fact, after pushing away the remnants of his meal, he sat back as if he were surveying her and said, “So how did you become a federal prosecutor? A driving need to put away the bad guys?”

After a moment to register the switched gears and the fact that he was actually making conversation with her, Ella answered him. “Yes, as a matter of fact. That, plus I discovered in law school that I was a good trial attorney. I spent a year in a private firm but after one too many cases defending someone I really believed was guilty—in particular a woman I was reasonably sure had extorted money from an elderly man who had been left penniless as a result—I changed to the other side of the courtroom.”

“And your conviction rate?”

“It’s high. But it isn’t about the numbers for me. If that becomes the priority, then bad things can happen. Innocent people can go to jail. I don’t want that on my conscience. It isn’t just a game to me—a competition that my ego has to win—”

“It’s about right and wrong. And punishing the evildoers.”

“That probably sounds corny to you but yes, that’s what it’s about to me. If someone does something awful to you or to someone close to you, you want to know they aren’t going to get away with it, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“But at the same time, what if something happens to point a finger at you for something? For something you didn’t do? Do you want to spend years locked up because, as a prosecutor, I refused to look at everything from all sides just to keep my conviction rate up?”

“So, you care.”

“Yes, I care.”

He nodded, his deep, dark-purple eyes staying on her as if he were seeing past the surface. And maybe even as if he liked what he saw. And heard. Although Ella was wary of going that far.

“What about you?” She wanted to interrupt his study of her. “You must have become a doctor to help people.”

“To tell you the truth, no.”

“No?” she said with a small laugh, surprised by his answer.

“It was the science I loved. I went into medicine planning to do research, not work with patients.”

“How did you end up with patients, then?”

“I didn’t at first. I finished medical school and spent a year in research—like your year defending evildoers rather than putting them away,” he said with another of those half smiles she was a little afraid she could get hooked on.

“And you didn’t like it as much as you thought you would?” she asked, to urge him on.

“I liked it all right. It was just that during that year I discovered that impregnating mice and rats, and making charts and lists of statistics to write papers from got tedious day after day. I wanted to continue some of the research—like this study in alternative medicine—but I wanted to do it in the real world, with people.”

“Where you could see genuine results and not just compile data and end up with paperwork as your final product,” Ella guessed.

“Exactly.”

“And has it been better for you? Have you enjoyed working with people more than working with rats and mice?”

This time she got a full smile and it doubled the effect. “Don’t sound as if you can hardly believe it,” he said.

“Did I?” Ella asked, because she honestly hadn’t thought it had come out that way.

He only answered her previous question. “Yes, it’s been better for me to work with people. I think I’ve done some good for a lot of them, and if I had spent the last few years in research I’d probably still be doing the same project I started when I graduated from med school.”

“I know that from what I’ve heard and read about you, you’ve definitely done some good for a lot of people,” Ella confirmed. “That’s why I came to see you.”

That seemed to remind him of something—maybe that this wasn’t a social occasion or that their being together was a professional association—because his smile dissolved, he sat up straighter, and took another look at his watch.

“I’d better get going or I’ll be late for this meeting,” he said.

Despite the fact that a certain amount of formality had reappeared in him, Ella thought his tone was tinged with what almost sounded like regret to put an end to this.

Still, they both stood and gathered the papers and remnants of their dinners, depositing it all in the trash before leaving the hole-in-the-wall restaurant.

“I appreciate you taking the time to do this for me tonight,” Ella said as they headed back up the street. “And dinner was good, too.”

That addition made him smile another more-reserved smile, which she caught out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t think a hot dog and a bottle of water count as dinner. Don’t tell Kim Schwartz that’s what I fed you or she’ll think I’m sabotaging the study. She’s all about balanced everything—a balanced life, a balanced diet, a balanced body.”

“She’ll probably see it in my tongue on Monday night whether I tell her or not,” Ella joked, eliciting a slight chuckle from the imposing doctor and feeling far too pleased with herself that she’d accomplished it.

As they neared his town house and the building directly across from it where his office was, he pointed his chin in the direction of the office building and said, “I can never find a spot to park in front of my place so I use the office lot. Is that where your car is?”

“It is,” Ella confirmed.

They crossed the street together and went into the lot where few other cars kept company with the silver Porsche he said was his and the more economical, compact sedan she pointed out as hers.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said, following her to it and waiting for her to unlock the driver’s side door.

“Thanks again for the orientation dinner,” Ella said, looking up at him from over her open door.

“I’ll see you Tuesday night.”

“I’ll be there,” she assured him.

For a moment he just went on standing there, those intense eyes of his staying on her the way they might have had this been the conclusion of a date he didn’t particularly want to end.

But then he took a step backward and said, “Drive safely.”

“You, too.”

He raised his chin to acknowledge that and pivoted on his heels to head for the Porsche.

And as Ella got behind the wheel of her own car and closed the door, she suddenly began to wonder what it might have been like if this had been the end of a date. Would he have tried to kiss her?

Kiss her?

Jacob Weber?

That was just too weird to even think about, she told herself as she started the engine.

Too, too weird…

But weird or not, she still couldn’t get the idea out of her mind the whole way home.

She also couldn’t get out of her mind the lingering and purely baseless thought that it just might have been nice if he had kissed her.

Chapter Four

“N ow you’re going to let them turn you into a pincushion?”

Ella laughed at her sister, Sara’s, comment in regards to her announcement that she was about to begin acupuncture treatment for infertility. “Yes, I guess I am,” she confirmed.

It was Tuesday and Ella had taken the afternoon off to shop with Sara and Sara’s about-to-be-three-year-old daughter, Janey, for Janey’s birthday party on Friday night. After buying balloons and streamers and other decorations in the princess theme Janey had chosen, they were at Janey’s favorite playground. While Janey climbed on a giant plastic replica of a hamburger, Ella and Sara sat on a bench close by, having mocha lattes.

“It won’t only be acupuncture, though.” Ella continued to explain her next plan of attack in her attempt to conquer her childlessness. “I met with Dr. Schwartz last night and I’m also taking herbs—a powder form specially blended for me that I mix in water to drink. Plus she’ll be teaching us meditation and relaxation techniques and some acupressure, and there’s even some therapeutic massage that sounds kind of nice.”

“But needles, El, needles,” Sara persisted.

“Don’t sound so horrified. It isn’t as if she’s going to poke my eyes out with them or anything. Kim—she’s the doctor—showed them to us and they’re very, very thin needles, about the width of a hair. They don’t go in all that far, either.”

“But they do go in. Into your skin.”

“I’m sure it’ll be okay. Acupuncture has been around for centuries—longer than Western medicine. A gazillion people have survived it and I think I will, too.”

“I just don’t see how that’s going to help you get pregnant.” Sara added skepticism to her distaste of the idea of the needles.

“It may not. It’s an experimental study. That means we’re trying something new to see what happens. But one way or another it’s harmless. The goal is sort of to reset my body so everything is working the way it should be, to put me at optimal speed so that maybe, when JacobWeber does in vitro on me again afterward, it will actually take.”

“But is it worth it?”

Ella looked over at Janey just as her niece stood tall atop one end of a make-believe stack of toast and leaped off as if it were the accomplishment of a lifetime, laughing gleefully when she landed in the sand.

“Anything—everything—is worth it. And believe me, I’ve been through much worse than being poked with needles,” Ella assured her sister.

“Maybe. But have you been through worse than Jacob Weber?” Sara asked.

“I know you never liked him—”

“That’s an understatement. No one liked him and most of us actively disliked him.”

Ella knew Sara was referring to her college days at Saunders University.

“Maybe you’d feel different if you crossed paths with him now,” Ella suggested.

“How could I feel any different when he was such a creep? All those airs he put on. Acting as if it was beneath him to even talk to the rest of us. You know I was in that poli-sci class with him and when the professor broke us up into groups for a project the high-and-mighty Jacob Weber refused to work with us—or with any of the other groups—and instead did an entirely separate project on his own. He made it clear that he’d rather work alone than have to hang out with any of us. It was as if he thought we were lower life forms or something.”

Ella had heard that story at the time and on several occasions since—whenever Jacob Weber’s name had come up. That was usually because something had been written about him and his accomplishments in a Boston newspaper or in the Saunders University alumni newsletter. But for the first time, Ella felt inclined to refute her sister’s opinion of the man. Slightly, anyway.

“To tell you the truth, he kind of surprised me when I was with him on Friday night,” Ella ventured tentatively, knowing Sara wouldn’t be receptive to hearing anything positive on this subject.

“How did he surprise you? You couldn’t believe anyone could be such a big jerk?”

“That was what I thought when I first met him at my consultation and while he kept me waiting in his office on Friday,” Ella acknowledged. “But now I don’t know, something changed.”

“Like what?” Sara asked in disbelief.

“Well, for starters, he has this tiny schnauzer puppy he found on the street when it was only days old and he’s been taking twenty-four-hour care of it to keep it alive.”

“He probably eats schnauzers with fava beans and a nice Chianti and he’s just fattening up the poor thing to make a good meal out of it,” Sara said sarcastically.

Ella laughed again but didn’t comment on her sister’s cutting remark. “Her name is Champ, and he carries her around in his pocket and talks to her like she’s a small child. And she seems to love him.”

“Give her time.”

“No, really, Sara. I’m beginning to think that maybe—just maybe—he isn’t all bad. Yes, his social skills leave something to be desired. A lot to be desired. But after a while Friday night he sort of relaxed a little and… I don’t know, he was nicer. He can even be funny when he wants to be.”

“He’s drugged you, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, I’m sure there’s some kind of make-Jacob Weber-easier-to-tolerate medicine in my particular mixture of Chinese herbs,” Ella answered facetiously.

“I’m telling you, El, he’s the most obnoxious, standoffish snob I’ve ever met. Don’t be fooled by him because he has a dog.”

“It isn’t only the dog. He…” Ella struggled to find the words to describe the subtle change she’d seen in the man. “He just got better over time, even after we’d let off the dog. He showed some interest in me as a person, not just as a patient. He asked why I do what I do for a living. He actually listened to what I had to say, and commented and participated in the conversation as if it interested him. He answered my questions about his occupation and why he got into it. We had a nice talk.”

“Nice and Jacob Weber? Uh-uh. The two just don’t go together. Maybe he’s mastered some kind of cloaking device to pull off a better bedside manner,” Sara suggested.

“No, his bedside manner is rotten—I saw that when I had my appointment. This wasn’t the doctor thing at all. This was actually like seeing the man himself. I’m not sure why it happened—maybe the chemicals in hot dogs have some kind of neutralizing effect on him or something. But I’m telling you that by the end of the time we were together, he wasn’t nearly as… As Jacob Weberish.”

“Maybe he has plans to eat you with fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

Ella rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying he didn’t start out abrasive and nasty and off-putting, because he did. I’m just saying that he didn’t stay that way. So maybe under the surface—”

“My advice?” Sara said, cutting her off before she could go any further in that vein. “Don’t get under any surfaces with that guy.”

Ella laughed a third time. “You’re hopeless.”

“What I hope is that you’re right and he can help you get pregnant,” Sara said more seriously as Janey ran to her to show her a pink rock she’d found. “But don’t let him fool you into thinking he’s a nice guy, because he isn’t.”

Ella’s niece wanted her opinion on the rock, too, and after assuring her it really was beautiful, Ella said to Sara, “The bottom line is that Jacob Weber is the best in his field and that’s all that matters.”

But that wasn’t entirely true.

Because she’d liked it when Jacob had mellowed on Friday night and she hoped that side of him was still in evidence when she saw him again tonight.

And she was afraid that if it wasn’t, she was going to be very sorry that it had disappeared.

More sorry than she wanted her sister to know.

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