by York, Zoe
“Look, it’s urgent, so I don’t have time to play this fucking game. I’m pretty sure you guys are sleeping together, and we need her to come in to work tonight.”
“Yeah, she’s here.” Jake’s pulse thumped painfully in his throat. “She’s in the shower. I’ll get her.”
“Thanks. Tell her to call me. She’s got a few hours, but the storm is going to get worse, so they want more buses out there overnight.”
“Sure.” Jake swallowed hard around that growing lump. “Matt…about Dani…”
Silence filled the phone line. His brother cleared his throat. “I don’t think anyone else knows.”
“How…”
“I came by your place last week. Her car was out front. And I overheard her telling our dispatcher about a new guy. I put two and two together and came up with ‘I’d rather not know’.”
“Appreciate the discretion, man.”
“When this shit is over, you guys might want to think about just telling people. Unless it’s just a casual thing.”
“It’s not a fucking casual thing.”
“Good, because Rafe would kill you. And I’d help.”
“Fuck off.”
The shower turned off as he hung up the phone, and Jake yanked on a pair of sweatpants. Then a t-shirt. He had a hoodie in his hands when Dani sashayed into view wrapped in a towel.
“Did you find me some sexy wool socks to wear?”
He laughed. “I did, but I’ve got some…news.”
“Should I read the word bad into the pause?”
He jerked his hand toward the bed, gesturing for her to sit. “Maybe. I don’t know. Matt just called.”
“Is everything okay?”
“He just called you.”
“Did you answer my phone?” Her voice pitched up at the end of the question, as if to ask are you a complete idiot?
Since he wasn’t, and he didn’t, he just shook his head and waited.
“Oh, shit. He called you. Looking for me.” She pressed her lips together and drew the towel tighter around her body.
Jake nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to do it grimly, because Matt was a good test balloon. But control was important to Dani, and she’d just realized she didn’t have any on this front.
“Work?”
Another nod, and this one he accompanied with the clothes he’d pulled out for her. She tugged on the socks first, then the t-shirt. She ignored the boxers, and stood, holding out her hand. “Coming?”
“You don’t want to know what he said?”
“Come tell me in front of the fireplace. If it was more urgent than that, you’d have already told me.”
He reached out and took her hand. “I love you. Never forget that, okay?”
She gave him a small smile. “Same.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, so that’s one down, five to go. I’ll tell Sean, you tell the rest of them?”
He smacked her ass playfully. “Sean’s the only one who won’t care.”
“How about that.” She batted her eyes at him.
“You’re okay?”
“With people knowing that I love you? Yeah. I can deal with that.”
— —
Despite what she’d told Jake, Dani had still been nervous when she drove to the EMS station in Wiarton. But Matt wasn’t there when she arrived—he’d been on the day shift, and was still out on a call. She was partnered with Will Mickelson, and now they were halfway between Wiarton and Pine Harbour, heading for yet another motor vehicle accident—what sounded like a simple slide off the road due to the now freezing and slippery road conditions.
Made getting there a bitch, too. But the call in had been from the responding police officer, not the driver, and they had good information. No need to rush.
The Jeep was off the road, nose down in the ditch at a precarious sixty degree angle. The first responder, an OPP officer, stood beside the driver’s open door. He waved them down. Dani grabbed the back board and scrambled down the embankment after Will.
She hung back as the senior paramedic greeted the constable, a guy Dani recognized but whose name escaped her. “What do we got?”
“Conscious female, strong vitals. Some confusion and nausea following a single vehicle MVA. No visible head trauma.” They knew that from the call, but it was good to re-confirm the situation on arrival.
Will glanced back at Dani before asking his next question. “Any alcohol or recreational drug use?”
“None observed or suspected.”
The woman in the car moaned and Will moved closer. “Hey there. I’m Will. What’s your name?”
He pulled out his pen light and examined her pupils.
“Nat…” She trailed off and tipped her head back, pressing her lips together.
“Can you wiggle your toes for me?” Will nodded as he observed her. “And push down?” It was fucking cold and pitch black, and Dani knew he was doing his due diligence because the backboard would be unnecessary if there was no cause—and on a night like tonight, it would be a shitty way to spend a few hours before hand-off to the ER staff.
But it was still cold and dark, and the sooner they got back in the rig the better.
“Good job, Nat.” He ran through a few more questions, got her to squeeze his hands, then reached in and unbuckled her seat belt. “Okay, we’re going to get you out and look you over more thoroughly in the ambulance.”
The tow-truck arrived as they crested the ditch, and then the rain started again—it had been a minor miracle that they’d had a break while down at the car. Dani moved the ambulance ahead twenty feet, then they climbed in and got Nat out of her wet coat and covered in blankets.
Even with the extra warmth, she started to shake as shock set in.
“Where are you from?” Dani asked to distract her.
“Tobermory.” The northern tip of the peninsula. “I was heading home. It was stupid, I should have stayed in Port Elgin last night.”
“Do you have any existing medical conditions?” This question was from Will, who’d finished taking her vitals and running through the neuro tests again.
“Uhm…” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I’m pregnant. It’s early still.”
That might explain the nausea. Adrenaline messed with most people. It did an extra trick or two to pregnant bodies. “Do you have someone you want to call?”
She shook her head. “Only my parents, and they’d want to come get me. I’m fine, right?”
Will nodded at Dani, giving her the practice at this spiel. “Given that you’re alone, and with your pregnancy, we’d recommend transport to hospital. If someone can’t come get you, the hospital can arrange a taxi to take you to your car in the morning. I’ll find out where it’s going to be towed.”
Right on cue, the officer knocked on the back doors. Dani took Nat’s purse, and the officer’s card and a copy of the accident report. She told him they were heading to Wiarton General just for precautionary measures, then once Will gave her the good-to-go sign, she flipped on the lights and pulled onto the highway.
At the hospital, Will gave a brief report to the triage nurse, but Nat was well enough they didn’t need to hang around until a doc saw her. Dani handed over her card as well as the paperwork from the responding officer, and wished her well.
And if Will hadn’t gone to grab them coffee, and she hadn’t stopped to talk to Nina Henderson, the admitting clerk and a friend from high school, she wouldn’t have heard any of the triage assessment conversation. It was supposed to be private. She shouldn’t be listening at all.
But then the nurse said, “Right now we’re looking at an eight-hour wait, are you sure you don’t want to go to Owen Sound instead? Or at least call someone to wait with you and take you home?”
Dani’s ears perked up. Partly professional concern—dispatch had nixed the transfer plan, because the labour and delivery triage in the larger centre only took women past the halfway point in their pregnancy—and part human decency, because she already kn
ew that Nat didn’t have anyone to go to the larger city with her. Or to sit and wait with her.
“Uhm, I guess I thought I would take a cab,” the woman said, her voice shaking.
“You don’t have anyone you could call? How about the father?”
“He’s not…okay, I’ll call someone.” Dani felt awful, but it wasn’t her place to interject, and Will was waiting for her. But she stepped back anyway and pulled out her notebook, pretending to be busy.
“Who will it be? I’ll give their name to reception in case you get called back before they arrive.”
Nat took a deep breath and Dani felt the prickle of understanding before she heard the next two words. “Jake Foster.”
— THIRTEEN —
JUST like that, Dani’s memory clicked the pieces together. Long dark hair peeking out of an oversized toque. That Jeep. Nat, short for Natasha. Probably also goes by Tasha.
He didn’t sleep with her the night of the funeral, she thought desperately. He’d told Dani that, and she’d believed him.
So when did he sleep with her? Nat had said she was still early. It couldn’t be Jake’s baby.
Curiosity killed the cat, the blood thumping through her veins said. And none of it was her business.
Plus she still had another three hours left in her shift.
“Hey, I thought you’d meet me outside?”
She jerked her head up to find Will standing in front of her with their coffee. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Come on, we’re going to get slammed if we’re not available again soon.”
She nodded numbly and followed along. She checked in with dispatch on auto-pilot, resisting the urge to call Jake and violate patient confidentiality—and girlfriend trust—and ask him what was going on.
But luck was not on her side, because an hour later they were back at Emerg, this time with a toddler who’d had a febrile seizure. A routine call, and he was breathing well, but still in that deep sleep post-seizure that meant they needed to wait and hand-off to the doc directly.
So Dani was standing at the end of the long hallway when the doors slid open and Jake walked in the entrance. And she had a tiny patient, and a patient’s panicky, worried mother, to worry about. So she couldn’t—wouldn’t—read anything like guilt into the stricken look on his face.
He held her gaze for a long, painful moment before introducing himself at the desk. And just then, Will nudged Dani and they were moving into a curtained area and this time it was Dani who gave the report, remembering to look back and forth between the doc and the nurse, double-checking that everything was transcribed to the chart.
And then they were done again, and this time, Dani was done. Beyond tired, probably not safe on the job, and emotionally blind-sided. She looked for Jake as they headed through the waiting room, but neither he nor Nat were anywhere in sight. Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and once they were outside, she looked at it.
Come find me when you’re done work. Please.
She couldn’t respond, not until she knew more. Tucking her phone away, she sighed and hunkered down into her jacket as they left the overhang at the entrance and headed for their rig again. “Let’s see if we can hand this thing off to another team, yeah?”
— —
“Jake, it’s Tasha. I had a car accident and I’m in the hospital in Wiarton. I’m sorry to call…”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. But… the thing is…crap. I’m pregnant. And they suggested I call someone…”
Pregnant. The word had thudded into his brain like an anvil.
She’d said some other things, but he’d already been pulling on his clothes and heading for the door.
“I’m on my way.” How pregnant?
But he couldn’t ask her that on the phone, and now that they were sitting in a curtained off corner of the emergency room, he found he still couldn’t form the question.
Tasha looked incredibly awkward, like she regretted calling him. They hadn’t exchanged more than a few words in the ten minutes since he’d arrived. His phone vibrated and he looked at it desperately, ignoring the sign above the bed that told him they weren’t allowed.
But it wasn’t Dani. It was one of her million brothers. He stared at Rafe’s name on his screen and he just couldn’t swipe into the message. There was too much shit going on for six in the morning that wasn’t Dani in his arms.
Jesus. The look on her face—cold, shut-down, all-knowing. If she did know something, she had a one-up on him. And she’d been on the job. Fuck. He should have gone over to her. Maybe just said something. Anything.
Instead he sent a lame-ass text, something he promised himself he’d never do again, and now he sat next to another woman. The wrong woman, but he hated how that framed Tasha. She hadn’t done anything.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Are you sure I can’t get you a drink?”
She shook her head. “Listen, Jake…I shouldn’t have called you. I know you made it clear before Christmas that we were just a one-time thing. So for me to call you after a couple of months like this…I just panicked.”
A couple of months. And she didn’t look pregnant. But there was only one way to know for sure. “If you’re…I mean…if I’m the…” Wow, brave he was not. “Do you know how far along you are?”
She shook her head. “I have a doctor’s appointment next week, but I’ve been driving back and forth to the city, and my life has been a little crazy.”
A nurse bustled in and introduced herself, then asked a few questions. When she asked about Tasha’s last menstrual period, Jake looked at the floor. She muttered something about maybe December, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, so maybe you’re about ten weeks along?” The nurse smoothed her hand down Tasha’s arm. “I’m going to do a quick doppler check of your belly then, see if we can hear anything.”
She took a small white machine and a squeeze bottle off a portable cart she’d pulled in behind her. Handing Tasha a large paper towel, she said, “Tuck this in your waistband and scootch your shirt up.”
Jake kept staring at the same scuffed corner of the linoleum, worrying about what Dani was thinking. He wanted the nurse to leave so he could check his phone again, which made him an awful friend. And possibly an awful father. They only slept together once at the beginning of November. Never before had he ever wished so fervently for a partner to have slept with someone else.
A crackle filled the room, then whooshing, and a steady—and fast—little heartbeat. Jake lifted his head, unable to ignore the truth that Tasha was definitely pregnant. Far enough along that there was a strong, healthy baby with a heartbeat in her womb. “Well, that’s reassuring, isn’t it?” The nurse let Tasha listen for a minute, then cleaned up her belly. “I’m still going to have the doctor come in, but it looks like baby’s no worse for wear from the accident.”
Jake waited until the nurse left before looking at his friend—and the look on her face slayed him in a completely different way. All soft and happy, her relief was obvious. He felt like a jackass for not feeling the same way. Of course he was happy an innocent life could continue to innocently grow, but babies were supposed to be made out of love. What had he done?
“It’s probably not yours,” she said quietly.
“Probably?” God, his voice sounded like pure pain.
“We used a condom.”
“And you didn’t with someone else?” Jesus, what the hell had he been thinking?
He hadn’t been. He’d been grieving and pissed that Dani had him strictly boxed into the friend zone. Two days of sharing a hotel room—even if not at the same time, since they were taking turns at the hospital—and he’d been out of his mind. He’d headed up north to get away from the scent of her on his skin and had tumbled into Tasha’s bed for a single night.
“There’s a guy in Toronto. We have a long history.”
Jake snorted. He knew something about histories. “I need to tell you that I’ve got a girlfriend now.�
�
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“No…God, you don’t need to be sorry. What we did, we did together.” The words sounded strained even to his own ears.
“David—my…whatever he is…—I was with him before you. And again at Christmas. It was…unexpected.” He knew something about that, too. “But neither of those timings work out if I…” She shrugged. “I’ve been trying to make sense of this since I took a test a couple of days ago.”
Jake only had the vaguest of understanding of pregnancy dating, but he knew that they weren’t going to figure it out between them. “Well, the doctor should be in soon…”
His phone vibrated in his pocket and he snatched it out fast enough his pocket might have started smoking—he didn’t look. All he had eyes for was Dani’s message. I’m done work.
Don’t go home. Wait for me.
I’m tired.
He wasn’t above begging. Please, wait. I’ll follow you home.
We can talk later.
Where are you? I’ll come to you now.
She needs you.
She needed a friend. That’s all.
Ask her about her paramedics.
Damnit. Dani couldn’t come out and say she’d been one of the responders to Tasha’s accident, but he could read between the lines. “The ambulance that picked you up. Any chance one of the two paramedics was a pretty brunette named Dani?”
Tasha winced. “Seriously?”
“My girlfriend.”
“Small world.”
“She saw me come in this morning and she knows we slept together.”
“I’ve screwed things up for you.”
No, I did that all on my own. “It’s okay.”
“You weren’t with her when…”
“No.” Not that it mattered. His heart had been, and that he’d risked their future together was inexcusable.
Another text message. My brother is looking for you.
Jake flipped over to Rafe’s text message. Widespread power outage in Grey County. All available reservists are on standby in case house-to-house search support is needed if power can’t be restored by tomorrow.
