The M.D. Next Door. GINA WILKINSЧитать онлайн книгу.
another night of reading and TV?
She really needed to get back to work soon.
Thinking she might sit with the housekeeper during the concert, Meagan had looked for Nina when she’d arrived, but couldn’t find her in the crowd. She assumed Nina had taken a seat close to the front.
Because she hadn’t wanted to wander up and down the aisles searching for Nina, she chose a seat closer to the door instead. She thought she’d be able to see well from there, though a child a few rows ahead of her kept standing up in his seat. Other than the empty seat next to her, the section was full. People around her laughed and talked and waved at acquaintances across the auditorium. Feeling a bit like an imposter among all the friends and family members waiting for the concert to begin, Meagan smiled and nodded to the older woman sitting beside her, who murmured a greeting in return then turned away to chat with her companions.
“Excuse me, ma’am, is this seat taken?”
In response to the polite question only minutes before the concert was to begin, she glanced up automatically from the program she’d been studying to assure the speaker that the seat was free. The words died when she saw who stood in the aisle, smiling down at her.
Seth’s hair was a little tousled, she noticed, and he looked just a bit disheveled, as if he’d rushed to get there. He wore a beautifully tailored gray suit, more formal than most of the more casually garbed audience, but he’d loosened the blue-and-silver tie at the collar.
Definitely cute, she thought, remembering the teasing conversation with her sister. And when he took her up on her gestured invitation and dropped into the seat beside her, he was close enough that their arms brushed when he shifted his weight.
The concert had just gotten even more interesting.
Chapter Three
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Meagan and Seth said at almost exactly the same time.
They laughed, then she said, “Alice said you had to work late tonight.”
“I was able to get away a little earlier than I expected. I might have driven a little too fast to make it here on time. I saw you when I walked in just now and I had to look twice to make sure it really was you.”
“Alice told me about the concert during our outing Saturday. She invited me to come and it sounded like fun.”
“You must be getting cabin fever if this sounded like fun.”
The unwitting repetition of her own earlier thoughts made her laugh again. “You could be right.”
He wasn’t smiling now. “Or maybe you were being nice. You didn’t think I’d be here, so you wanted to make sure Alice had more than our housekeeper supporting her in the audience.”
She didn’t want him to think Alice had said anything at all critical of him, or had deliberately played on Meagan’s sympathies. “Alice made it very clear you wanted to be here, Seth. She said you almost never miss any of her programs or performances. I didn’t come because I felt sorry for her or anything like that.”
His lips quirked a little, as though he were almost amused by her reassurances. “I appreciate that. I can’t help feeling guilty when work threatens to interfere with Alice’s plans.”
“I’m sure every working parent, married or single, struggles with that guilt.” Which was why she wasn’t entirely sure she should ever take on that responsibility, she mused as the overhead lights blinked to notify the noisy audience that the program was about to begin. Had she been back at work, it would have been very difficult for her to attend a six o’clock school program—not without reshuffling her usual work schedule, anyway.
The velvet curtains parted on stage and an expectant hush fell over the audience—except for one toddler who wanted to “go pee pee right now!” A few giggles broke out in response to the vocal demand, but most eyes were focused on the stage when the performers filed out from the wings to encouraging applause. The boys wore white shirts, black pants and black vests, and the girls were in long black dresses with three-quarter sleeves and white satin waist sashes. They all looked very much alike, Meagan thought with a frown, but then she smiled when she saw Alice on the second row.
Squirming a little in the not-particularly-comfortable auditorium seat, Seth propped his elbow on the wooden armrest between them just as Meagan leaned a bit that way. Their shoulders bumped, hands brushing on the armrest. Both straightened quickly, murmuring apologies and looking intently toward the stage. Meagan moistened her lips, a little shaken by that momentary contact. It had been a long time since a man’s fleeting touch had made her pulse rate trip. She had to admit it was a nice feeling—even though she wasn’t at all sure she should be reacting that way to this particular man. Didn’t she have enough complications in her busy life?
She focused intently on the reason she was there, rather than the imagined warmth emanating from the man sitting so close to her. It was an interesting concert. The choir performed a mix of classical pieces, oldies and more recent pop numbers—whatever the director had been able to afford to license for performance, Meagan figured in amusement. The kids were pretty good overall, though occasionally a note escaped that should not have been made by human vocal cords. The doting parents and grandparents in attendance didn’t seem to mind; they clapped as enthusiastically for the bad notes as the good.
“Alice has a very pretty voice,” she commented to Seth after one of the numbers. Alice had sung a couple of solo lines, and though nerves shook her voice a little, she still had a very nice tone.
“She got that from her mother,” Seth admitted ruefully. “I can’t sing a lick.”
Meagan spent the time during the next number wondering how Seth felt about his ex-wife. She’d heard little animosity in his voice on the few occasions he’d spoken of her. Had the split been amicable or was he hiding bitterness for his daughter’s sake? Had his heart been broken or hardened or relatively unscathed? Did he still love his wife? Had he ever, really?
Realizing she was indulging in idle speculation—a game of solitaire gossip—she told herself those questions were absolutely none of her business. She concentrated intently on the remainder of the concert, making a rather futile effort to keep her attention from wandering …elsewhere.
“To Alice. The star of the Pulaski Preparatory Academy junior high choir.” Seth lifted his plastic tumbler of fountain soda as he made the teasing toast a half hour after the concert’s end.
Brushed by the curls of her saucy new haircut, Alice’s cheeks reddened with embarrassed pleasure. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and muttered, “I’m not the star, Daddy. I only had two solo lines. Andrea Merchant is like the star of the choir. She always gets the long solos.”
“I like your voice better than hers,” Meagan asserted loyally as she dipped a french fry in ketchup. “She leans too heavily on melisma for my taste. I know it’s the style these days, but I think it’s overused.”
“Melisma?” Seth wasn’t sure he’d heard that term before.
“Stretching a single syllable with several notes,” Alice supplied quickly, her reciting tone suggesting it was a definition she’d learned in class. “You know, like ba-a-a-a-a-by.”
She warbled the word in illustration, hitting several notes in the process.
Seth nodded to indicate he understood. “That technique is overused these days. I didn’t know what it was called, but I often wish the singer would just pick a note and stick with it.”
Meagan and Alice launched into a discussion of current music stars and their singing styles, and Meagan proved to be quite up-to-date on contemporary music, though she admitted she didn’t follow the younger musical acts as much. Alice, whose taste in music had always been eclectic, made a snide comment about the teen-idol performers most popular with her classmates. Watching her, Seth tried to hide his amusement at her obvious