Donovan's Child by Christine Rimmer Page B

be pleasant at dinner, in a thoroughly surface sort of way. And in three weeks, she would leave this house and the solitary man who livedhere. She would build a special children’s center and get a great job with a top firm.
    And if she ever thought of Donovan McCrae again, it would be with simple gratitude for the opportunity he had given her.
    Â 
    Donovan woke at ten after six Monday morning with the facade, vestibule and welcome area of the children’s center clear in his mind.
    He could see it. He understood it. He knew how to build it. He had it, damn it.
    He knew how it should be.
    He needed to draw it, fast. And then he needed for Abilene to see it. He couldn’t wait to show it to her. This was the breakthrough they’d been waiting for.
    After today, it was all going to fall into place. And fast. Even faster than it had up till now.
    He sat bolt-upright in bed, threw back the covers and swung his legs to the side, unthinking. His feet hit the floor and he leaned forward to stand.
    The arrows of shimmering pain brought him up short. He looked down at the deep grooves of scar tissue, scoring his thighs, the flesh over his knees, which were now made of metal and plastic, and lower, to his skinny, wasted calves.
    He tossed back his head and laughed out loud.
    It was the first time since the fall down the mountain that he’d actually forgotten there was a problem with his legs.
    After that, he took it a little slower. But not a lot. He was a man with a mission, and the mission was to get the concept in his head down onto paper, to take what he’d discovered and to show it to Abilene.
    What he’d discovered. Sometimes an inspired designelement felt like that: like a discovery. Not as if he’d created it at all. But as if it had been waiting, whole and ready, for him to finally see it.
    He rang Olga and asked her to bring him coffee in the studio. And then he threw on some clothes and wheeled at breakneck speed out of his rooms and down the hall.
    In the studio, he turned on some lights to boost what natural light there was from the skylights and the clerestory windows, so early on a gray winter morning. He got out large sheets of drawing paper and soft pencils and he went to work.
    It came so fast, he could barely keep up with it, his hand moving, utterly sure, across the paper, every stroke exactly right, no hesitation. Just a direct channel to the idea that was waiting, so impatiently now, to reveal itself.
    When he finished, he looked over and saw that Olga had come and gone, leaving the coffee he’d asked for, along with a couple of Anton’s killer cinnamon rolls. He took time for a cup, ate half a cinnamon roll.
    By then, it was after seven. And there was no way he could wait any longer. Even if Abilene came to the studio early, it could still be an hour before she put in an appearance. Before he could show her what he had.
    He couldn’t do it, wait that long.
    So he gathered the drawings—the one of the facade, the one of the entry interior and the one from the floor of the welcome area, looking up. He rolled them, snapped a band around them, laid them across his thighs and went to find her.
    Often she would grab breakfast in the kitchen, so he wheeled there first and stuck his head in. Anton stood at the stove stirring something that made his stomach growl.
    â€œAbilene?” Donovan asked.
    â€œHaven’t seen her yet today.”
    â€œThanks.” And he was off down the interior hallway.
    He reached the door to her sitting room and braked sideways to it, gave it a strong tap, called, “Abilene?”
    She didn’t answer.
    He knocked again. Nothing.
    Was she still in bed? If so, she needed to get up. Now. She needed to see this and she needed to get herself together and get to work.
    He tried the doorknob. It turned.
    So he pushed the door inward. “Abilene?”
    Still no answer. She must be a sound sleeper.
    Too bad. It was imperative that he