“In the flesh.” Sam draped his arm across Marjorie’s shoulders as he smiled down on her, his gaze filled with warmth. He hadn’t told many of his friends about Marjorie, but hiding the news of how he felt from his best buddy had been impossible. Bernie had known he’d met someone important the minute Sam casually mentioned her a few days earlier. Bernie had wanted to know all about her, but Sam had hesitated. He hadn’t been sure of his own feelings then. Marjorie appealed to him more than anyone had in a long time, but she wasn’t exactly the happy homemaker, and that realization had pulled him up short. Until he’d met Marjorie, the woman he’d pictured in his life had been able to both seduce him in the bedroom and whip up a five-course dinner.

“I understand that you’re joining us for our picnic on Wednesday.”

“Yes,” Marjorie said, and nodded for emphasis. “Thank you for including me.”

Sam poured two more cups of coffee while she sat down and talked to Bernie, then joined them at the table. Marjorie mused to herself that things were going well. If only they could stop here. She had no trouble relating to adults: It was infants and children who caused her to break out in hives.

“I’m going to take Marjorie to the nursery,” Sam was saying.

Doing her utmost not to choke on her coffee, she pushed her cup aside and stood. If she thought her heart had been pounding in the elevator, now it was crashing like a Chinese gong as she followed Sam out of the doctors’ lounge. No doubt the three nurses she’d met earlier never had this problem. Most likely any one of them would gladly surrender her eyeteeth to have Dr. Sam Bretton.

He led her down the wide corridor and into the nursery. Rows of bassinets were lined up in uniform fashion. Some of the infants were blanketed in pink, others in blue. Their surnames were written in bold letters in front of their mock cribs. Two of the nurses that Marjorie had just met now sat in rocking chairs, soothing crying infants.

Sam donned a surgical robe and handed Marjorie one.

“Sam,” she whispered, barely able to speak. “There’s something you should know.”

“Just a minute,” he murmured, grinning boyishly. With a gentleness she’d witnessed several times in the last month, Sam lifted a small pink bundle from a crib and looked up at Marjorie, beaming proudly.

“What do you think?” he asked, scooting sideways so she could more easily view the squirming infant in his wide embrace.

Her eyes dropped to the scrunched-up face and minute fists as the baby struggled to get free of her bindings. She forced a smile, unable to think of anything to say.

“Would you care to hold her?”