by Patty Blount
Tears spilled from her eyes when Kara took Steve’s hand and squeezed it. “You should have told me, Steve.”
“I should have. But I couldn’t. It was easier to keep you separate. It...well, it was like a vacation. I could put up with Mom’s hysteria for you.”
“What about after college? What about coming here?”
“When I got the job up here, I thought I had it made. New York was far enough away that I could live on my own without her constant presence. She was happy with the phone calls and reports from my doctors. For a while.”
Kara’s eyes snapped to his. “Doctors? You had more than one?”
The server came, put baskets of food in front of both men. Steve picked up a fry, ate it with his eyes shut. “If she could see me eating artery clogging food, she’d—”
When he broke off, shook his head, she knew. “Oh, God.” Kara pressed both hands to her mouth. “When did she die?” Beside her, Reid shifted, but still didn’t touch his meal.
Steve shook his head. “She’s not gone. Dad and I committed her. A few weeks ago.”
Kara lowered her head, tried to process all of this. It made sense now. Their weird on-again/off-again romance, the way he’d always done holidays and visits by himself. Even the fights they’d had about all the activities she’d wanted to do but he always said no—it all made sense now.
And then her blood chilled. Her hand groped for Reid’s, found it. Clung.
“Steve. You said you and your brother...could Nadia?”
He looked away. “It’s possible, Kara. I don’t know.”
Her baby. Her precious, beautiful baby.
Reid pulled out his phone. “What’s wrong? With your heart.”
“I have something called COA. Coarctation—”
“Of the aorta.” Reid nodded, typing it into his phone. “You showing any symptoms?”
“Not until I was about ten or twelve. Breathing issues, cold extremities, pain during activity.” Steve pulled out an envelope from his pocket, put it on the bar. “Test results, doctor reports, all of it.”
“I could...” Kara pressed her lips together. “Oh, God, Steve! I could lose her. And you kept this from me!”
“Stop.” Steve shoved his food aside and took Kara’s hands. “Listen to me. You cannot run around like the sky is falling, do you hear me? That’s why I left and that’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want my mother anywhere near you and if she knew about Nadia—” He broke off, flattened his lips. “No kid should go through what I did. I was a prisoner, Kara.”
Reid took the envelope, stood up, tossed some cash to the bar. “I’m due back on shift. Orland, why are you here? Why now?”
Steve and Reid stared down, unblinking. Kara looked from one to the other and figured it out.
Steve was here because he thought that with his mother safely in a hospital, he had another shot with her.
Chapter Ten
Reid strode back to the fire house, a to-go bag holding the lunch he couldn’t eat.
“Hey, man.” Gene jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Mmm, what did you bring me?”
Reid tossed the bag at his partner. Gene opened the bag, found a whole burger, bit through half of it in a single bite. Reid threw himself into a chair while Gene stuffed his face, and opened the envelope Steve Orland had given Kara.
COA. Coarctation of the aorta. Son of a bitch.
He skimmed the contents of various reports. Orland was mostly symptom-free but did have low blood pressure in his legs. Reid went over it in his head, every minute of Nadia’s ambulance ride to the hospital. Had he missed this? Was it really spasmodic croup or were her symptoms just the first emergence of a congenital defect that her moron of a father passed on to her?
He drummed his fingers on the table and dug deep into his memory. She’d had a cough—the classic barking seal cough. Her throat was swollen. And she’d responded to steroids. He’d never checked the blood pressure in her legs. And Kara had reported that her extremities were blue that night.
Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ. He raked his hands through his hair, tried to remember the symptoms, the prognosis for COA but he couldn’t think, couldn’t see past the agonizing crush of memories of his own dead daughter, pounding on their cell door.
Nadia. God, no.
On a shaky breath that sounded dangerously close to a sob, Reid was about to feign illness and skip the rest of his shift but the tones sounded and Dispatch directed them to a stuck elevator over on Wall. While Gene drove around traffic, lights and siren hot, Reid prayed.
The call was textbook. They were in and out without complications and a few unbearably long hours later, his shift was over. He unlocked the two deadbolts on his door, walked into his crappy apartment, tossed his keys on the counter, grabbed a beer and settled deep onto the saggy sofa with his duct-taped laptop and spent the rest of the night finding out everything he could on coarctation of the aorta.
And when the sun came up, he showered, changed clothes, grabbed the stack of print-outs he’d made during the night and headed for Kara’s. He was in this now. He wasn’t letting go of either of his girls without a fight.
“Reid.” Kara smoothed her hair back. “Hi.”
She was dressed in baggy pajama pants and a T-shirt. She had those purple circles under her eyes and what looked like a Cheerio stuck to her shoulder and he still felt that kick in the gut. He stared for a moment and then kicked the door closed, dropped the folder of papers he’d spent all night collecting and lunged for her.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
“Wha—”
He spun her around, pressed her to the door and covered her mouth with his, swallowing her words. There was a moment of shock and then she melted into him. He devoured her—she tasted like coffee and yeah, maybe Cheerios, and he couldn’t get enough. He wrapped his hands around her butt and hiked her up, pinned her hips with his own and dove back to her mouth for more, more, and still more.
“Eeeeeeeeed!”
Nadia’s screech of pure joy jolted him back down to earth and he dropped Kara like they’d just gotten caught making out on the dance floor at the eighth grade formal. The toddler wrapped herself around one of his legs and because he wasn’t quite steady on them after that kiss, he hauled her up into his arms. She pressed both hands to his cheeks and kissed him right on the lips with one of her loud “Mwahs!” and he felt that same wave of helplessness that once came damn close to drowning him come back for an encore.
“You look about as good as I feel,” Kara remarked, studying him from the apartment door. “Rough shift?”
He shook his head. “No, it was fine. I was up all night researching this COA defect.
Kara’s lip trembled. “You were?”
“Yeah, and I left some messages. I have friends. Doctor friends. If you’re willing to blow off today, I might be able to get Nadia in to see one of them. Just to be sure.”
Kara opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Reid, you don’t have to do this. I remember what you said about long-term. And even though you’ve never told me about your daughter, I know being around Nadia has to be hard for you. So if you want to get out, or if you need time, I get it.”
He stared at her, not sure his ears were working. “You want me gone?”
“What? No!” Kara’s hands snapped up, palms out. “I’m asking you if you want to be gone.”
He was tired and cranky and yeah, really damned worried so excuse him if he couldn’t read subtext. He put Nadia down, dragged a hand through his hair and collapsed onto Kara’s sofa. She was still pressed against the damn door where he’d left her. “I don’t get exactly how you hear up all night and left some messages with doctors and conclude I want to be gone.”
“I’m just asking.”
“And I’m just saying it’s stupid. Now are you going to let go of that door and talk to me or not?”
She glared at him. “I...I can’t.”
“What the hell do you mean, you can’t
?”
Her face went red. “I mean the damn door is the only thing holding me up because my knees are shaking.”
With a curse he only just managed to bite back because Nadia was there, he scooped Kara up at the knees and sat back on the sofa with her on his lap. He peeled the dried-up Cheerio from her shoulder and held it out to her. “Breakfast?”
She snorted. “No. Last night’s dinner.”
Nadia ran over and climbed up beside them and wrapped her sturdy arms around Reid’s neck.
“Okay,” he said, pulling in a long, slow breath to steady his own nerves and then did it again so he could steady Kara’s. “Okay. You spent the night doing the same thing I did. She doesn’t have symptoms, right?”
Kara shook her head. “I thought maybe that croup attack could be, you know?”
Yeah. He did know.
“But the steroids helped her. I haven’t seen her cry in pain and she loves to run around and be active.”
“Okay,” Reid repeated. “We can use a wait-and-see approach. Or we can be proactive and get her tested.”
Kara considered that for a moment. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Steve.”
Reid’s stomach dropped.
“The way he lived. All the secrets he never shared. For so long, I hated him, Reid. I hated myself for getting fooled, you know? I can’t do that to Nadia. I need to know, Reid. I can’t live with all of that what-if stuff churning in my head. Parenting is hard enough and I—”
His arm tightened around her because he knew her. And knowing her as he did, he knew she’d spent the better part of the night beating herself up over all of this. “We’ll have her tested. I brought my bag so I can do her blood pressure myself.”
Kara nodded. “I read that it’s often different in the lower extremities.”
“Yeah. It’s just one more thing we can rule out.”
“Eed.” Nadia patted his cheek.
He turned to her with a grin. “Hi, little miss.”
The baby giggled and stepped on Kara’s stomach, plopping herself between them and said, “Mine.”
Reid and Kara exchanged glances and burst into laughter. “Does she mean you or me?” he asked.
To his amazement, Kara went bright red. “Um. You. Definitely you.”
“Yeah, so why are you so embarrassed?”
Kara pressed her lips together. She’d take the Fifth on this or perish. And when her belly let out a long loud rumble, Reid pulled an exaggerated face of shock and Nadia giggled. “Mommy’s hungry. Wanna make Mommy breakfast?”
Nadia gave him a single nod and Reid dumped Kara off his lap.
“Hey!” She protested but he’d already scooped up her daughter and headed to the tiny galley kitchen. “What are you making?”
“Toast.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Trust me on this, toast is the limit of my breakfast skills.”
“You can’t cook at all?”
“Didn’t say that. If you had a grill handy, I’d woo you with my steak skills.”
She grinned at him, felt some of the oily nausea curled in her belly ease. “Talk is cheap. I will, of course, require proof of your mad steak grilling skills to verify the veracity of this claim.”
“Verify this.”
“Hey, hey, not in front of the baby!”
He laughed and Kara’s breath caught. Reid Bennett didn’t laugh out loud often but when he did—whoa. He smiled, smirked, leered, occasionally grinned revealing very nice teeth, but a laugh with actual sound?
If she wasn’t already sleeping with him, that sound alone was panty-dropping.
And you know what? She was going to roll with it. She stretched out on the sofa, cupped her hands behind her head and crossed her ankles, watching Reid hand her baby girl a few slices of bread that she carefully fit into the slots on the toaster. He opened the fridge, found butter and some jam, put those on the counter, and then joined Nadia while they waited for the pop.
“Any minute now, Nadia... it’s going to pop. Are you ready? Here it comes...”
The toaster popped and Nadia clapped her hands. “Yay!”
Big, surly, pissed off Reid Bennett clapped his hands, too.
He smeared butter on the toast slices, cut them into triangles, and handed the plate to Nadia. “Okay, little miss. Can you very carefully bring this to Mommy without dropping it?” He held the plate in two hands and showed Nadia how to walk slowly.
Nadia repeated her single nod, and he handed her the plate. Kara was amazed watching her wild child walk instead of run carrying a plate she never dropped.
“Here, Ma.”
Tears sprang out of nowhere and Kara grabbed Nadia and crushed her to her heart. “Good girl, Nadia! You are so smart.”
The moment was shattered by the ring of a cell phone. Over her daughter’s head, her eyes met Reid’s and she was certain she saw tears in his.
“Hello?”
It was a wild chaotic race, trying to get two girls dressed in twenty minutes.
Reid wasn’t sure he’d ever recover.
He finally plucked Nadia from Kara’s arms and took care of the squirming toddler himself. “You. Shower.”
Kara’s lips twitched. “Wait, I think this is where I’m supposed to say, Me Jane.”
He swatted her butt. “Get in the shower.”
She tried to look pissed, but yeah. The look she gave him said she was anything but pissed off. He took Nadia to her room, opened drawers and found socks, pants with flowers that matched a shirt with flowers and wondered if she needed a T-shirt or onesie under it. It was eighty degrees outside, so he skipped the onesie.
“Okay, little miss, Reid’s gonna do just one thing. Will you help?”
He took out the pediatric blood pressure cuff he’d brought with him, fastened it around her leg, just below the knees. He grabbed the valve and his stethoscope, found the posterior tibial artery and quickly inflated the cuff.
“Ninety over sixty.” He unfastened the cuff and moved it to her arm, repeated the procedure. Nadia watched him with huge blue eyes full of trust.
Steve’s eyes, he knew now.
“Ninety-five over sixty. Okay, okay.” He refused to worry, refused to freak out. It’s a manual cuff; he could have messed it up, plus it wasn’t a drastic difference.
“Okay, good girl, hands up!” He raised his own and she copied, allowing him to pull the flowered top over her head. “Time for pants. Left leg. Right leg. All done.”
“Yay!” She applauded.
“Yay is right.” Reid felt like he’d just pinned a heavyweight to the mat. He put away his gear and when he looked up, Nadia was gone.
Houdini’d on his watch. Aw, hell.
“Nadia?”
A giggle from Kara’s bedroom had him running. Damn, she was stealthy. He never heard her move. He found her in the middle of Kara’s bed, hiding under the sheet.
“Gotcha!” He pounced and she squealed, kicking her feet.
“Pway!” The baby covered her head with the sheet again.
“You want to play, little miss?”
When she nodded once, Reid grinned and whipped the sheet off the bed.
By the time Kara emerged from the bathroom, dressed and Cheerio-free, she discovered Reid had Nadia’s bag packed with juice, crackers, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
No crust.
They were awfully quiet. She went back down the hall, peered into Nadia’s room, saw that the gate was fastened securely over the door... and pressed both hands to her gaping mouth.
The sheet from her bed was draped over Nadia’s crib, two huge boots sticking out from one end, two pudgy bare feet right next to them. Quietly, she stepped over the gate, heard her baby girl giggling in response to Reid’s deep rumbling voice. She crept closer, fell to her knees and peeked inside.
“Hi, you two.”
“Ma, see?” Nadia raised her arms.
“I see. Did Reid make you a tent?”<
br />
He scoffed. “This is a blanket fort.”
“My apologies. Why is there a blanket fort in my daughter’s room?”
“Hey, when a little girl invites me to pway, I pway.” Reid grinned at Nadia. Nadia grinned right back.
That’s when Kara felt it. Deep inside that spot in her heart, the one that held her memories of Mom and Steve, the one that demanded protection from further damage, she felt warmth grow and spread and realized she was in love with Reid Bennett. “Damn,” she whispered.
Reid’s smile faded. “Yeah. It’s time to go.”
She didn’t correct his mistaken perception for her whispered oath.
Minutes later, they’d wrestled baby, bag, stroller, and print-outs into a cab and were heading to New York Presbyterian. “Doctor Tully is a friend. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s sharp, kind of abrupt so don’t let him rattle you,” he coached.
Kara nodded, nibbling her nails.
“Do you want Elena?”
She took Reid’s hand because it touched her that he would think of that. But she shook her head. “I haven’t told her about this. Any of it.”
“Why the hell not?” He frowned.
“Because.” She sighed. That wasn’t an answer and just as he was about to call her on it, she continued. “Because she’s a newlywed and deserves to enjoy that. Because she’s already done so much for me.”
“And because you still think you have to do every damn thing by yourself.”
Her mouth set in that mutinous twist he now knew too well.
“Reid, please.” She hadn’t let go of his hand. That was something. He looked down, studied the way his rough hand swallowed her softer one. The nails were short and unpolished. He’d ribbed her about that once. Made some snarky comment about manicures. Kara never did things for herself like manicures or Starbucks. As far as he could tell, she hardly wore makeup except for some mascara and whatever the stuff was that she dotted on the purple circles under her eyes.
Suddenly, it hit him that he’d never done anything for her either. Brought her flowers. Taken her to a movie. Something. Her phone let out a single ping and she let go of his hand to check it.
