The Pregnancy Project. Victoria Pade

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