Darlene Graham - The Pull Of The Moon

Danni blushed, shoved in a mouthful of chili.

“It’s the man thing, isn’t it?” Carol asked.

“The man thing? Now you sound like Jackie. She wants to turn me into some kind of mantrap. Besides, I told you it’s not just a man, it’s a family I want.”

Carol’s eyes grew soft with understanding. “Oh? Well, I don’t recommend it, but a family can be had without a man.” She reached across the table, squeezed Danni’s forearm and continued more quietly. “Come on. You’re an obstetrician. Several unwanted babies a year slip through your hands.”

Danni bit her lip and considered that. As if she hadn’t a thousand times before. She’d placed a few adoptable babies with single mothers. Those cases had filled her with joy. Why couldn’t she just do the same thing for herself? She took a huge gulp of her iced tea. “Okay. I do want the man. I want a husband and a family. Okay?” She looked down at the napkin in her lap. “I just... I just...” She smoothed the cloth. “The truth is, nobody ever asks me out.” She was silent for a moment, then continued.

“Unfortunately, all the men I meet are soon-to-be fathers. And all the men I already know are either attached or they consider me a good buddy.”

Carol could sympathize. She’d been in Danni’s shoes herself, and her heart ached for the younger woman. All her own male friends from high school and church had known her as the studious overweight girl who would listen to their troubles—usually about other girls.

But then had come that glorious summer when she’d met George. The summer when she’d forgotten about her weight, forgotten about her social life, gone off to be a camp counselor, decided she’d spend the summer hiking with kids, being free and healthy. By the time she’d met George, she was tanned, firm, and vigorous. And because she’d thought she’d never see George again after camp ended, she had let herself relax around him. She’d flirted, been silly, and fun, and feminine.

Even now, she remembered the first time he’d asked her to dance at the camp social. Remembered how it had felt to dance with him, to be close to him, remembered his hand lightly resting on her hip when they’d ordered ice cream in town, remembered their first kiss. And that final stroll beside the lake when he’d proposed. It had all been so thrilling!

She looked Danni over now, with real compassion in her eyes. “Danni, have you ever considered that maybe you’re sending the wrong signals?”

“Uh-oh.” Danni started filling a fajita. “Signals. That sounds like what Jackie said. She said I needed advertising. Perfume and...purple heels, for crying out loud.”

“Purple heels? Oh, for heaven’s sake. What does that child know? I’m talking about healthy feminine signals, coming from real feminine confidence.”

“I’m confident,” Danni defended as she bit off a corner of the fajita and chewed.

Carol stared at her. “I said feminine confidence.”

Danni swallowed and looked miserable. “To tell you the truth, I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean by that. I always assumed I could be myself and get a man. My mother always says there are plenty of fish in the sea.”

“There are, honey. There are. And you should always be yourself, but when you go fishing...” Carol paused. “How do I say this? When you go fishing, you have to take some good bait.”

“Okay,” Danni said despite her misgivings—she hated the sound of the word bait. “What do you have in mind?”

What Carol had in mind almost caused Danni to choke on the mouthful of food she was chewing.

“I was thinking—” Carol smiled a slow, cunning—Danni thought maybe even a little fiendish—smile “—of putting you on a diet.”

“A diet! You, of all people,” Danni sputtered, “suggesting a diet. You’re always saying weight’s not an issue to a happy woman, how your husband loves you no matter what your weight is, how long ago you set aside those false notions about ‘thin’ equals ‘attractive’—”

Carol held up a palm to halt her. “We’re not talking about my weight, here. And the diet isn’t so you can attract a man. It’s to make you feel good about yourself—healthier, happier. That’s real feminine confidence. How about it? Just a little diet?”

BUT WHAT CAROL HAD in mind wasn’t just “a little diet.”

The next day after work she dragged Danni to Super Sports where she convinced her to buy enough exercise equipment to open her own gym.

“You have to commit,” Carol said cheerfully while Danni wrote the astronomical check and arranged to have the stuff installed in the sunny southern bedroom upstairs.

The next day she persuaded Danni that they needed to take a long lunch, and told Jackie exactly what to cook for it while Carol and Danni were upstairs “doing Danni’s workout.”

“That woman’s gonna kill you,” Jackie complained a few days later while she rebelliously scooped homemade chocolate chip cookies onto a platter. “One cup of steamed broccoli—” she mimicked Carol’s throaty voice “—three ounces of broiled flounder, and ten—count ’em—ten green grapes.”

“I think it’s already working,” Danni said, but she nibbled on a cookie anyway.

Carol had a royal fit when she discovered the cookies. She hauled them upstairs to “dispose” of them herself while she bossed Danni through her aerobics.

“You’re tough!” Carol boomed around a mouthful of cookie. “You’re pumped! You’re buff! You’re a lean, mean machine!” Carol took a big bite of cookie and Danni kicked higher, sharper. “You’re sweating! Asking for more! You have the eye of the tiger! Grrrr—”

“Oh, shut the hell up!” Danni shouted, snatching a cookie and cramming it in her mouth.

After that, Carol decided she was setting a bad example as a coach, and Jackie decided if she was going have to cook diet food, she might as well eat it, too.

So, the three of them agreed to stretch and sweat and starve together.

Carol became a regular drill sergeant about the exercises, and Jackie got just plain vicious about the diet. Paper-thin tomato slices. Low-fat cream cheese spread in a transparent film. Sugar in any form banished.

Danni,hated every minute of it.

But after a mere ten days of this torture, the results were definitely starting to show: Danni’s skin was glowing, her green eyes were clear, and her slacks seemed looser. And she did feel healthier, happier.

And the fireman, of all people, was the first to notice.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HEAD NURSE IN THE emergency room called upstairs herself.

“Have you seen Dr. Goodlove this morning?” she asked the young ward clerk, who hung up the phone, whirled her chair around and repeated the whole juicy conversation for the entire staff.

“That good-lookin’ fireman—you know, the one that looks like Tom Selleck?—he’s down in the E.R. to get his sutures removed, insisting that Dr. Goodlove do it herself. Says—get this—he likes her laugh.”

“Woooo!” the staff all crooned and turned to Danni, who stood at the chest-high desk, writing a note on a chart.

“I never laugh, and you all know it,” she quipped without glancing up from her work.

But as soon as she finished examining a patient in labor, she hurried downstairs, telling herself she was agreeing to do this out of simple curiosity. Was the guy really as gorgeous as she’d remembered?

Oh my, yes. He really was.

He was waiting behind a curtain, sitting up on a gurney, shirtless, with his legs dangling in snug jeans and cowboy boots. Danni decided his chest was even more amazing than she’d remembered—well-defined pectorals tapering down into hard ridges of the intercostals, small dark nipples, that perfect pattern of hair, and so tanned—or was that his natural skin color?

Danni grabbed up the chart and spoke to him without looking up from the pages. “Mr. Creed, I trust everything healed nicely.”

“You are Dr. Goodlove, aren’t you?” he answered.

She glanced up at him and only then did she realize that he was staring at her somewhat incredulously.

“The same woman who stitched me up?” he asked.

“Yes.” Danni frowned.

“You look so...so different.”

“Well—” she smiled “—you were drugged the first time we met.”

“No, really.” He tilted his head, studying her, like a painter assessing a model. “You look really... different.”

Danni felt a small surge of satisfaction. “Just a few pounds lighter.”

She took his arm and examined the nearly-healed burns, the well-mended suture line. As she traced her fingers over his firm, smooth skin she wondered why she was feeling so self-conscious. He was only a man. But when she glanced up into those blue eyes, which were peering at her intently, she knew why. He was not just any man, he was the first man, ever, to actually cause her breathing to become unsteady.

He leaned forward and glanced down at her hips, and Danni felt her cheeks grow warm. “If you say so,” he replied. “But there’s something else. Hey!” He pointed with his free hand. “It’s your hair, isn’t it? It was a lot longer before, and—” he squinted “—it was...different”

“Yeah.” Danni reached up and flipped one of the offending strands back. “It’s different, all right. The haircut-of-the-month featured in Beauty Doo.”

He laughed as she turned to unwrap the suture removal tray. “I take it you don’t like it,” he said.

Danni shrugged, slipped on her gloves. “Thank the Lord I don’t have to look at it.”

“Well, it’s kind of pretty.”

When she cast a disbelieving look over her shoulder, he protested, “Really.” Then he gave her a teasing, dimpled grin. “But personally, I like my women more...natural.”

Danni turned her blushing face back toward the tray and gathered up tweezers, suture-removal scissors, gauze. “Well, this is anything but natural. It takes a gallon of superglue and an Act of Congress to make it behave.”

“So—” he tried to lean around to see her face “—this is not the real you. That’s good. I liked the tourniquet better,” he added, which made Danni smirk, remembering what a mess her hair had been when they’d met in the E.R.

She turned to him and reached up to snip the first suture. “Nope. This is certainly not the real me.”

“That’s good,” he repeated—so quietly, so sincerely, that her hands stilled. Their eyes met.

They seemed suddenly to have run out of banter and fell into an awkward silence. Danni worked on his arm and, with a mixture of embarrassment, building excitement and hope, mulled over the fact that he actually remembered her makeshift ponytail holder.

His eyes traveled slowly from his biceps to her face while she worked. And just as she had on the night. when they’d met, Danni tried to keep her mind firmly on what she was doing. But, with his eyes only inches from hers, watching every move she made, it was an effort. And this time instead of smoke, he smelled like English Leather. Had he slapped on the aftershave because of her?

When she’d finished removing all twenty-four sutures, she probed the area gently with her fingers to test the integrity of her work. He didn’t even grimace.

“You’ve healed quite nicely,” she said.

“Are you married?” he asked.

Danni, caught off guard, even a little shocked by his directness, managed not to show her reaction. “You know,” she joked, “my mother warned me about firemen.” She looked at him with wide-eyed mock seriousness.

“Oh yeah?” he challenged.