Maternal instincts are as natural to you as doctoring."

"But" "It's not just that you've gotten used to having Sami. She isn't just a habit. You love her. Face it, Paige. You do."

"Of course I love her," Paige admitted. "How could I help but love her? She's a darling child" "No, no," he interrupted with a wave, "we're not talking love in the general sense here.

You love her like a mother loves her child.

You take pride in her accomplishments. You worry when she's sick. You look forward to coming home from work and seeing her. You give her time that you'd otherwise give to yourself, and you don't think twice about it, because that's what mothers do."

"She's been a novelty for me," Paige reasoned. "I've never had a child around the house before."

"And you like it. Admit it." "She's such a good child."

"And you like having her around," he challenged.

"Okay." She couldn't see bickering the point.

ill like having her around."

"Only you run into trouble when you think of formalizing the relationship. Just like you run into trouble when you think of formalizing our relationship. You shy away from making formal commitments. So where does that leave you?" he asked. "Ultimately it leaves you alone. Sami will go either to this family or another one.

Nonny will go back to her own apartment. I'll go to Santa Fe, and that'll be that."

Paige could picture it. Those very images had been hovering at the periphery of her awareness since Joan had called. No. Longer.

They had been hovering since she realized she loved Noah.

His arms were at his sides now, his voice sheathed in steel and reminiscent of the man she had first locked horns with three months before. "Your life will be just as it was before Mara died," he said, "only it won't be as nice as you remembered it being, because you'll be coming home every day to an empty house. You'll be eating dinner alone. You'll be sitting on that love seat of yours, reading Mara's letters for the umpteenth time, and you'll be wondering what Sami is doing, or Nonny, or me. Only we'll all be gone, and there will be no way you'll be able to get us back. So, on top of everything else, you'll be feeling regret. Your nights will be lonely as hell."

"Why are you saying all this?" she cried. She had come for comfort, not torment.

He didn't answer, simply stood with his arms limp, but something about the way he was looking at her caused a tugging inside. His glasses reflected the lights in the room.

Behind them, she could swear she saw tears.

More gently he said, "I sometimes see my life that way, busy all day and barren at night. So now I'm looking forty-four in the eye, and I'm wondering where I go from here. I'm thinking that I came to this town expecting nothing.

And now suddenly there's something. It's out there waiting to be grabbed, and even if I go for it, it might slip right through my hands.

So I'm in the same quandary as you."

She went to him and slid a hand in his. "You aren't just talking about us, are you?"

He shook his head.

"This job?"

He thought for a minute, pursed his lips, shrugged. ill can't separate the two. Does Mount Court excite me because when I go out of an afternoon I know there's a chance I'll bump into you down by the gym, or at the hospital?

Is the challenge more meaningful because I can look forward to telling you about it at night?" He looked perplexed. "I didn't ask for this, either, Paige. I didn't want entanglements. I came here expecting to stay for a year and then be gone. Sara and I had a lot to work out, still do. The last thing I neededwanted was to fall in love with a married woman."

She was bemused. "I'm not married."

"You are. To the town. To your practice. To the conviction that things were better before." He gave her a sad smile and rapped her hand against his thigh. "You came to me for comfort because you're confused. Well, hell, I'm confused, too. I can't tell you what to do about Sami. It's something only you can decide." His phone rang.

"All I know is that you'd better decide quick. I'm no expert in the workings of adoption agencies, but my guess is that once things get moving they may be hard to stop. By the time you make your call, it could be too late. You could lose Sami by default."

And him, Paige thought. She could lose him, too, if she didn't take a stand soon. But there were so many issues involved. Her simple life was totally muddled.

The phone rang again.

"One way or the other," he said in his softest voice yet, "make a decision. Soon.

Before the window 41 .S closes." He released her hand and went to the phone. Mara had written about that window, about opportunities here and gone, and Noah was right. The call was hers. Either she went for a new life or she returned to the old. One held everything she knew and trusted, the other was filled with unknowns. The old and trusted was safe and secure and the newwho knew if it would work?

Needing to think through it all, she turned to leave.

"Wait," Noah called, frowning into the phone.

"Dr. Pfeiffer is here," he told whoever was on the other end. "We'll be right over." He hung up and reached for his jacket. "Julie Engel is at the infirmary. She passed out in the library. The nurse doesn't like some of the answers she's getting."

Paige grabbed on Julie's problems as an escape from her own. "Like what?" she asked as they hurried out of his office. She was thinking of drugs. The rigid set of Noah's jaw was consistent with that.

"Like this isn't the first time she's passed out," he said. "Like she's been feeling sick for the past week. .Mainly in the mornings."

Paige didn't like the sound of that, either.

Not drugs. Sex.

Noah held the door and followed her out.

Under his breath, as they strode along, he murmured, "This is not what I need. Not now.

Not when things are finally starting to look good here. In the whole month of November, the discipinary problems were petty thingsclosely missed curfews, a few skipped classes, one boy smoking in the bathroom, and it wasn't even pot. We're making progress, at least I thought we were." He made a sound. "I might have known it would be Julie."

Deirdre and Alicia were in the small outer room of the infirmary. They moved in on Paige the instant she and Noah entered.

"She just fainted dead away."

41 R "Flat out on the floor."

"We got her here as fast as we could." ill told her to see the nurse last week."

"She's been eating next to nothing."

"Maybe it's the flu."

Paige stopped only long enough to put a comforting hand on each girl's shoulder. ill'll take a look. You both sit and relax."