Beyond Just Us (Remington Medical Book 4): A Single Parent Marriage of Convenience Romance

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Hmm.” Disdain oozed through the sound. “Well, I suppose Tess has always been reckless. I’d like to speak with her, if you’d be so kind.”

  Kindness was the absolute last thing on Dec’s agenda. “I’m sorry. She’s not available right now.”

  “How unexpected,” she said, her sarcasm on full display. “Well, please inform your wife that her presence is expected at her cousin’s wedding in two weeks. Arrangements have been made for her accommodations and her RSVP has been noted by the parents of the bride. We weren’t expecting a plus-one, but I suppose we can accommodate if she insists upon you accompanying her.”

  Sweet Jaysus, this lady had balls like the Rock of Gibraltar. “I’ll let her know you called and relay the message. Everythin’ else will be up to her.” Declan made sure his tone added just as much as it should be to shame the woman without pissing her off outright.

  “I suppose we’ll see,” she said.

  But before Declan could say another word to the contrary, the line went dead.

  Tess was in hell. It was certainly freaking hot enough to be a distinct possibility, anyway. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead and her T-shirt to her shoulder blades. She vaguely remembered that Charlie had been here at some point and told her she had the flu—she was ninety percent sure that hadn’t been a dream. The mountain of crumpled tissues in the wastebasket beside her bed and the twin kegs of ibuprofen and Gatorade on her nightstand certainly spoke in favor of the flu being a reality.

  The fact that every one of her muscles felt as if it had been bow-tied with barbed wire and encased in concrete, and her cranium was currently hosting a college marching band, just hammered it home.

  Groaning, Tess blew all of her energy on rolling over, her thoughts hazy and disjointed. The door opened, and she managed to lift one eyelid just enough to see Declan cross the threshold.

  “Hey, you’re awake,” he murmured, his hand cool on her forehead. “I was just slippin’ in ta check on you.”

  “Mmmmfff.”

  Well, guess that answered the question about whether or not her pudding-brain was going to cooperate with her mouth. God, she was just so tired.

  Declan’s brows came together. “Let’s have a look at that temperature, yeah?”

  He grabbed the temporal thermometer, swiping it over her forehead. Tess wanted to get up. She wanted to take the thermometer and check her own temperature and come up with a plan of action. At the very least, she wanted to get up, to see her son and make sure her work shifts were covered. She wanted to take care of things like she always did.

  But her head filled with fog and she couldn’t make herself move.

  Declan made a noise of displeasure. “102.6. How about some more ibuprofen? And a bit of this Gatorade, too.”

  Oh, that would be good. Her throat was pretty parched. But the mere act of propping herself all the way up was going to require far more energy than she had—a fun fact she learned about halfway through trying. She must look pathetic, and she really didn’t want to know how she looked, or, oh God, how she smelled. Tess had dealt with enough really sick people to know it wasn’t good.

  But then Declan looked at her, the tenderness in his expression completely at odds with his rough, gruff demeanor, and she knew it didn’t matter what she looked like or how she smelled.

  She was cared for.

  “That’s the way, a ghrá geal,” he said, holding the Gatorade up so she could wash down the pills, then take a few more tiny sips before she’d spent the last of her energy reserves.

  “Jackson?” she asked, her head lolling back on the pillow. She didn’t want to see him; he wouldn’t understand that she was sick and couldn’t hold him or care for him for fear of getting him sick, too. Declan being this close to her was bad enough. But she needed to know her son was being taken care of.

  Declan didn’t let her down. “Charlie took him for the day, and tonight, he’s with Connor and Harlow.”

  Holy shit, it was night time? “Ss’he okay?”

  “He’s doing great. His fever’s gone, and he isn’t sick. Harlow’s going ta drop him off at childcare tomorrow, and Connor will pick him up.” Declan held up his cell phone. “I even FaceTimed with him before dinner.”

  Tess’s chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with her flu symptoms. “Your meds,” she murmured, but he had here there, too.

  “Connor’s got me, although, I’ll be honest, I prefer your bedside manner. So, do me a favor and make a fast recovery, would you?”

  The smile that hung in his voice set her fully at ease. “Mkay,” she managed, letting her eyes drift closed. Jackson was well cared for and Declan was here with her. Suddenly, everything else felt secondary.

  “Get some rest,” he said, easing her back under the covers and tucking her in fully.

  And then, she slept.

  Tess surfaced slowly, as if she were rising from the bottom of some deep, dark ocean. Her limbs still felt heavy and covered in rust, she realized, as she tested out first her arms, then her legs beneath the blankets. Still, now she could move them without too much effort. Vaguely, she recalled more Gatorade, then some clear chicken broth that Declan had helped her drink out of a mug, at some point. Maybe some crackers? Although, that part was fuzzy. Tess had zero sense of time, or even of what day it was. Daylight was now doing its level best to stab past the curtains that Declan must’ve pulled shut, and ugh, her mouth felt like sun-baked sandpaper. She pushed herself up to seated, finding her legs beneath her slowly as she made her way to the bathroom.

  “Oh…gross.” The wan face staring back at her, complete with bruise-like smudges beneath the eyes and dry, cracked lips, was sadly hers. After brushing her teeth for what felt like a full five minutes, then spending a few more on the basics to get herself semi-human again, Tess finally made her way down the hall, padding softly into the family room, where Declan sat, gloriously shirtless and twisted into a mildly obscene yet ridiculously hot yoga pose in the middle of his mat.

  “Yeah, that does it. I’ve definitely died and this is heaven,” she said, and he turned toward her swiftly.

  “Ah, you’re up.” He was on his feet in an instant, pausing the video on his phone. “Come and sit down. I can make you some tea, if you like.”

  Tess wanted to tell him not to fuss over her, but the truth was, she wanted the tea more. “That sounds good. Then, maybe I can try some breakfast.”

  “I think y’mean dinner, love,” Declan said, detouring to place a hand on her forehead before heading to the kitchen to fill the tea kettle.

  Whoa. “Holy shit, I was out of it for that long?”

  “You were,” Declan confirmed. “Your fever finally broke at about mid-morning. You’ve been sleepin’ ever since.”

  He returned with the temporal thermometer, handing it over to her so she could see the 99.5 flashing over the screen once he’d moved the scanner over her forehead. “That’s not so bad,” she said. “I still feel like I was on the business end of a stampede, though.”

  “I suspect that’ll take another day or two to go away. Some real food will help, though.”

  Tess’s stomach gurgled happily at the idea, but she’d seen far too many people make that mistake to fall for it. “Maybe I’ll start out with that tea and work my way up to some soup and toast.”

  “You’re the doctor,” Declan said. A few minutes later, he was sitting next to her on the couch, his water bottle in hand as he passed over a steaming mug of tea. “I take it you’re feeling at least a bit better.”

  “A little,” she agreed, letting a sip of tea soothe her throat before asking, “How’s Jackson?”

  “He’s great. Connor even promised not ta give him too much sugar,” Declan said, and Tess laughed.

  “That’s because he had to keep him. Ugh, I miss that kid.”

  Her heart lurched, but Declan covered her free hand with his, giving up a reassuring squeeze.

  “It’s not your fault you were sick. Plus, a few days w
ith friends won’t hurt him. That said”—he flipped her hand over, lacing his fingers between hers—“I miss him, too. Charlie and Parker will have him tonight, but if your fever stays down, maybe he can come home tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. I’d really like that.”

  The pause that ensued lasted for a beat, then another, and screw it. Tess had never had much of a filter. Starting now seemed stupid.

  “Listen, I want to thank you for taking care of Jackson while I was sick, and for cleaning the condo.” It hadn’t escaped her notice that the place practically fucking sparkled.

  Declan shook his head. “You don’t have to thank me, Tess,” he said, but this feeling in her chest, the one that had snuck up on her but that she really, really liked, even though it kind of scared the crap out of her, needed a voice.

  “Actually, I do. Because you also took care of me. And while I’ll let my friends help me out with Jackson, I haven’t let anyone take care of me but me in a really long time.” If she were being honest—and hey, why not, since she was blabbing about alllllll of her feelings right now—she’d never really trusted Alec to see her as vulnerable as Declan had. All the times she’d gotten sick when they’d been married? She’d holed up in the guest room and gutted it out on her own. “I needed you, and you were right there,” Tess said, her heart fluttering. “I thought it would feel scary to let someone see me all vulnerable and human, but with you, it didn’t. It felt good. So, yeah…thank you.”

  For a minute, Declan said nothing, and oh, shit, maybe barfing up all of her emotions had been an epically bad idea. He wasn’t really a Kumbaya kind of guy. Had she just screwed everything up?

  But then he looked at her, and nothing about his expression was screwed up. “You look vulnerable and human sometimes because y’are, love. But it’s how I like you. And I do like you, very much.”

  Something tickled at the back of her subconscious, and she heard herself say, “When I was sick, you called me something in Gaelic. I know you’ve used it, um, before.” They’d been right smack in the middle of really fabulous sex those other times, so she’d just dismissed it, but… “Will you tell me what it means?”

  “A ghrá geal,” Declan replied, a smile ghosting over his mouth. “The direct translation is ‘my bright love’, but it’s a term of endearment.”

  Tess’s breath hitched. “Oh. Like ‘sweetheart’?”

  “Not quite,” he said slowly. But he didn’t look away. “It’s not as generic as that. It’s more the sort of thing lovers use. Intimate. What a husband would call his wife.”

  A feeling she had no name for welled up inside of her. “I suppose we are married,” she whispered, and Declan hooked his index finger beneath her chin, tilting her face upward so he could kiss her forehead.

  “We are.” A flicker of unease moved through his eyes, the edges of his mouth tugging into a slight frown. “Speakin’ of which, I may have made a bit of a hash of somethin’.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tess asked, confused.

  Declan rubbed a palm over the back of his neck, a rare sheepish look covering his face. “The land line rang yesterday, while you were sleeping. Normally, I’d have just ignored it, but I didn’t want it to wake you, so I answered, and…”

  Please don’t say it. Please, God, if you’re out there and listening even a teeny-tiny bit, please don’t let him say—

  “…it was your mother.”

  Tess groaned. For Chrissake, she saved people’s lives for a living. How could her karma be this bad? “What did she say?”

  Declan ran down what sounded like a short, yet very Bronwyn-like, conversation that made Tess’s blood run oh-hell-no hot. “God! She’s always been presumptuous, but this really takes the fucking crown. She RSVP’d for me?” Not that Tess would actually go, but still. “I’ll have to call my cousin and explain that there’s been a misunderstanding.” The last time she’d seen Elizabeth, the younger woman had been at Tess’s own wedding, and her cousin had barely been seventeen, but she’d just have to make the explanation kind enough to work.

  “You could do that,” Declan said, and wait, what was that look on his face?

  Oh, no. No way. “You’re not suggesting I actually go?”

  “Not if you really feel that strongly about it,” he said. “But would it really be so bad to go and show your mother once and for all that you’ve got a happy life, just as you are?”

  Tess snorted even though it made her already raw throat ache. “It would take an army for my mother and sisters to accept me just as I am.”

  Declan’s smile was brilliant and beautiful. “You don’t need an army, Tess. You’ve got me.”

  “You’d…go?” She blinked. “Willingly. With me. To this wedding. When you know it’s basically like walking into a pit of starving vipers, only less fun.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged and took a sip from his water bottle like nothing doing. “It might be a little fun to give your mam a bit of what-for. How does the saying go? Happiness is the best revenge, right?”

  Well, shit. “I guess I never thought of it like that,” Tess admitted. Of course, she hadn’t been this happy in, well, ever maybe. Certainly not enough to consider it revenge. “I wouldn’t want to go without Jackson. I’ve already missed him enough this week.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” Declan said.

  But that wasn’t a deal-breaker. The invitation she’d pitched into the recycling bin last month after sending her regrets had said that the bride and groom were providing babysitters at the event who could look after little ones on-site during the ceremony and reception. She and Declan could spend the rest of the time together, with Jackson.

  “It would only be for a weekend,” Tess said, and God, was she seriously considering this? “And the wedding is going to be held at this gorgeous spa resort in the mountains. It’s a four-hour drive, tops, and a pretty one, at that.”

  Declan said nothing, simply sitting beside her in that quiet, anchor-like way of his that made her feel so secure and strong, letting her roll through all of the turbulence in her chest as she sorted through how she felt.

  “If we go to this wedding, we’ll have to be really married,” she said.

  One black brow rose. “We are really married.”

  “Technically,” Tess argued. “But all of our friends here know it was to get you the care you needed.”

  “That may be true, but they’re the only ones. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a technicality. I’m your husband, and you’re my wife.” Declan held up his hand, his wedding ring firmly in place. “Until we decide to change that, it’s real to me.”

  In that moment, Tess knew two things. The first was that, against every odd she could think of, she was totally going to this wedding.

  The second was that she was probably in very deep shit, because being married to Declan felt real to her, too.

  24

  Forget naps and chicken soup and ibuprofen. Toe-curling, sheet-ripping, mind-scrambling orgasms were the best medicine.

  Tess knew, because after she’d showered, eaten a light but decent meal, and slept for another nine hours overnight, Declan had given her not one, but two such orgasms, and now, finally, she was feeling essentially normal.

  “I still think I could go back to work today,” she said to Declan, who was—in a move that was a crying shame, really—pulling a pair of low-slung workout pants over his hips.

  “You could,” he agreed. “But you’re not going to, because Charlie’s dropping Jackson off in about twenty minutes, and spending the day with him is way more fun.”

  Okay, she couldn’t argue. “Fair enough.”

  After a lingering kiss that very nearly led to the quest for orgasm number three, Tess hopped into the shower. Fifteen minutes later, she’d pulled on her favorite jeans and twisted her damp hair into a knot on top of her head, her sights set on her kitchen and the coffee she knew was waiting there.

  But the front door buzzer caught her midway t
hrough the trip. “Hello?” she asked, her heart bouncing at the sound of Charlie’s voice in reply.

  “Hey, it’s us!”

  Tess didn’t hesitate to buzz Charlie in, but she did pace a tiny path over the foyer floor until a knock sounded off on the door. Tess whipped the thing open, her heart folding in half at the sight of Jackson’s huge, happy smile.

  “Little man! Oh, I’ve missed you,” she said, taking him out of the stroller and wrapping her arms around him tight.

  “He missed you, too, although, we had the best fun together,” Charlie said, wheeling the stroller all the way inside and shutting the door behind her. “Hi, Declan,” she added, waving toward the breakfast nook.

  “Mornin’, Charlie. Hey, there’s my favorite lad.” Declan walked over to place a hand on Jackson’s back.

  Jackson babbled a string of joyous, incoherent sounds in response as he grinned up at Declan, tempting Tess’s chest to burst. “Are you headed to work, or can you stay for a bit?” she asked Charlie. “I’m about to have my first cup of coffee in nearly four days, so it ought to be fun to watch.”

  “I do have the morning off,” Charlie said, her pretty blue gaze moving from Jackson to Declan. “Are you sure I’m not intruding?”

  Tess threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, my God, did you really just ask me that?”

  “Actually, I’m headed to the gym for a bit,” Declan said with a smile. “A very smart doctor told me I needed ta keep healthy while I looked after her best friend, and I’m takin’ that quite seriously.”

  “That doctor approves.” Charlie laughed.

  Speaking of which. Tess’s brain kicked into caregiver mode, and she looked at Declan. “What did you have for breakfast?”

  “Oatmeal with peanut butter, milk, and a banana. Yes, I tested my levels. Yes, I took my meds. Yes, I’ll hydrate. I promise.”

  His tone held no irritation and his smile was a thing of cocky perfection. “Thank you,” Tess said.

  Declan dropped a kiss on the top of her head, then one on Jackson’s before grabbing his gym bag and heading toward the door. “You’re welcome. If you get too tired, text me, and I’ll come home early.”