Sizzling Nights with Dr. Off-Limits

by Janice Lynn

  “When?” If she hadn’t known who was sitting in the back of the taxi next to her, she wouldn’t have recognized his voice. He sounded distant, removed, like a stranger.

  He was a stranger. Five years ago, he’d told her to leave, she had, and then he’d divorced her. Five years in which they’d had no contact whatsoever. Just because he’d jumped back into her life and into her bed didn’t mean a thing.

  Not a thing.

  Except that once again she was crying.

  She turned, met his gaze and spoke low but clearly. “When you told me the very last thing you wanted was for me to have your baby.”

  * * *

  Lucas stared into Emily’s tear-streaked, puffy face.

  She’d been pregnant.

  His baby had been growing inside her.

  He’d told her he didn’t want her to have his baby.

  She’d already been pregnant.

  Understanding of so much from the past hit him. Understanding of her silent sobs at the funeral.

  She’d been pregnant, but there was no baby.

  His insides crumbled. “What happened to our baby?”

  Emily’s face paled to a ghostly white. Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’t speak. Her face contorted in pain and guilt hit him that he asked, yet he had to know.

  “I’m sorry.” He felt as if that was all he said where Emily was concerned. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  He was sorry.

  So very sorry.

  “I didn’t know you were pregnant, Emily.”

  “I know.” Her voice was a broken sob and she reached for the taxi’s door handle, no doubt preparing to jump out the moment the taxi stopped outside her upcoming apartment building.

  Lucas reached in his pocket, pulled out a twenty and tossed it up to the driver through the window as he followed Emily out of the car.

  She went inside the building and he followed her, unable to leave, but not sure he had any right to be there.

  Yes, he did have a right.

  She’d been pregnant with his baby. He deserved to know more, to know the details of what had happened to their child.

  Without a word, they rode up the elevator together, then she unlocked her apartment door and he followed her inside.

  She tossed her over-the-shoulder handbag onto her sofa, then turned to face him. Tears streaked down her face still, gutting him. How many tears had he caused her to shed?

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She shook her head. “It was a long time ago. I never should have said anything. You don’t need to know.”

  For the first time a spark of anger hit him. She’d been pregnant with his baby and hadn’t told him. Now she was telling him he didn’t need to know about their child because it had been a long time ago?

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me.” His voice broke as he spoke. How did he convey that he felt grief over the loss of a child he hadn’t even known about until minutes before? That he felt grief that she’d dealt with that loss by herself when he should have been there. “You should have told me years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I deserved to know.” Had he really? He wasn’t sure. But he should have known. He should have been able to look at her, his wife, and have known his baby was growing inside of her.

  “How did it happen?”

  Her eyes narrowed defensively. “I didn’t get pregnant on purpose, if that’s what you’re asking. I know that’s what your parents would have thought if they’d known, but we always used protection. Always.”

  She’d talked about having a baby so often, hadn’t he worried that was what she’d do? Hadn’t he quit coming home for fear that she’d purposely get pregnant? Instead, she’d already been pregnant and had wanted him to show some sign that he might be happy about the news. He never had, and she hadn’t told him that it was already a done deal.

  Was that why she’d cried all the time? He’d thought her depressed. Had she really been suffering from extreme pregnancy hormone mood changes?

  His short spark of anger dissipated. “I meant, how did our baby die?”

  She paced across the room, paused, her back to him. “I started bleeding and it wouldn’t stop. The obstetrician at the emergency room said my hormones were really out of line, that it had only been a matter of time before I miscarried as my body was rejecting the pregnancy. There was nothing they could do.”

  “How far along were you?”

  “Five months.”

  Lucas’s feet went out from under him and he sank onto the sofa. Five months. His wife had been five months pregnant and he hadn’t known.

  Five months. How was that even possible?

  Sure, he’d stopped having sex with her for fear she’d get pregnant, but shouldn’t he have noticed something different? Or had he been so busy trying not to look at her that he’d failed to see the obvious?

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I never thought you did. Although I could see the difference in my belly, I hadn’t gained any weight overall. When dressed, it was easy to hide.”

  Why hadn’t she gained weight? Perhaps the stress of a strained marriage? Perhaps all the tears she’d cried?

  “I’m sorry, Emily.” There he went apologizing again. “I should have been there.”

  She didn’t correct him. Nor should she. He should have been by her side in that emergency room.

  “Were you alone when it happened?”

  “I went to my parents after I moved out of our apartment.” She shook her head. “I’d felt bad all week but thought it was from what was going on between you and me. When I started gushing blood, my mother called the ambulance. She stayed with me.”

  “She probably hates me.”

  “You’re not her favorite person.”

  “I imagine not.” He tried to let it sink in. Had Emily not miscarried, he’d be a father. He’d have a five-year-old kid. Would she have told him if she hadn’t miscarried?

  “I had to threaten my mother that I’d never speak to her again to keep her from going to give you a piece of her mind.”

  “I wish she had.” Because then he would have known.

  Then what? What would he have done differently? Would he have gone to Emily and comforted her?

  “The last thing I wanted was more drama.”

  Which explained why she’d just accepted his ridiculous divorce papers that he’d expected her to show up at their apartment and throw back in his face. Despite her depression, he’d expected her to fight for their marriage, to fight for him. When she hadn’t and he’d realized she wasn’t going to, he’d felt a devastation unlike any he’d ever known. Pride had helped him replace hurt with anger.

  As with much of their marriage, he’d reacted on hot emotion when he’d filed for divorce, but, as stupid as he’d been, he’d never expected their marriage to end. He’d thought receiving the divorce papers would send Emily home, would snap her out of whatever was bothering her, would cause her to admit she had a problem and needed help. Instead, she’d signed the papers, rid her life of him and never looked back. She’d not wanted anything else from him. She’d just wanted to forget he’d ever been a part of her life and she’d moved on as if he’d never existed in her world.

  He’d been the one with a problem, the one who’d needed help.

  She’d given birth to a five-month-old baby.

  “Did we have a son or a daughter?”

  She hesitated and for a moment he wondered if she was going to tell him anything more, but then she sighed and looked so gutted his insides twisted.

  “A daughter.”

  He’d had a daughter. A daughter whom he’d never gotten to see or hold or even fantasize about.

  “They wouldn’t
let me see her,” Emily said, her tortured words invading his thoughts, making him ache with the pain he heard in her voice.

  “I wanted to,” she continued. “I wanted to hold her, but they wouldn’t let me.”

  Lucas got off the sofa, went to Emily and wrapped his arms around her while she cried. He shed tears of his own.

  “You’re a much better person than I am,” he told her long minutes later.

  Not speaking, she shook her head. “I’ve held that in for so long. I can’t believe I told you.”

  “You should have told me long ago.”

  “Why? What good can come out of you knowing? Nothing.”

  “At least now I understand why you signed the divorce papers.”

  “You told me to leave, then sent me divorce papers. Did you think I wouldn’t sign them?”

  “In the middle of an argument, I told you that if you were that unhappy being married to me, you should leave. You left.”

  She closed her eyes. “How could I stay when you wanted me to leave?”

  “I never wanted you to leave.” He disentangled himself from where he held her. He needed to process the things that had happened, the things he’d learned and how he felt about those things, how he felt about Emily, about himself, about the fact he’d had a child he never knew about. “I just couldn’t be what you needed me to be at that point in my life. You were crying all the time, so moody, I felt I could never do anything right, could never make you happy. Between my fellowship, my mom’s grief over my grandmother’s death, the financial constraints you insisted upon, the stress of wanting to be a good husband, I just wasn’t coping well. When, between crying bouts, you started talking about wanting a baby, I choked. I already felt like a failure. How was I supposed to add in daddy duties?”

  “I guess it’s a good thing you never had to.”

  “No, Emily, that isn’t a good thing. Not at all. Had you been upfront and told me you were pregnant, I would have wanted our baby.”

  “How could I have told you I was pregnant? Your parents were already accusing me of being a gold digger, warning you that I’d get pregnant on purpose. You were drifting further and further away from me and the more I tried to pull you back, the further away you slipped.”

  “I wasn’t slipping away, Emily. I was staying away because I didn’t want to make you pregnant.”

  She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I was afraid you’d intentionally get pregnant.”

  “I’d never have done that.”

  “I know that. Now. At the time, I was stressed and was hearing from all sides how I’d rushed into marriage and how you’d be quick to want to start a family so you’d have a permanent tie to my family’s wealth.”

  “I never wanted money from you.”

  “No, you never did.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry, Emily. For making you so sad, for everything I ever did wrong.”

  “Me, too.”

  Lucas wasn’t sure how long he stood at Emily’s window, staring down at the street below. When he turned, she sat on the sofa, watching him with her red-rimmed eyes.

  He’d done that. He’d put that deep hurt inside her. He’d pushed her away and she’d lost his baby. No wonder she’d changed hospitals to get away from him. No wonder she’d not wanted anything to do with him when he’d first shown up at Children’s.

  He’d hurt her in ways that couldn’t be easily forgotten, couldn’t readily be moved beyond. The fact that she hadn’t told him she was pregnant, that she’d kept something so significant from him during their marriage, caused pain he’d not easily forget or move beyond, either.

  Tonight, he needed to hurt, though, to feel the pain and let it cut at his very soul while he came to grips with the past, with the loss of a baby daughter he’d not even known about.

  Emily had said too much had happened for them to ever have a second chance. He hadn’t understood that before.

  Now he did.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EMILY POKED HER HEAD into her patient’s room. Her heart swelled at what she saw.

  Cassie Bellows awake and, although still groggy and sleeping more often than not, holding her mother’s hand.

  “How’s she doing this morning?”

  Cassie’s mother smiled. “She woke up several times during the night but seems a little stronger each time she wakes up.”

  “That’s what the night nurse told me during report. She said Cassie was doing great.”

  The girl’s mother nodded. “Dr. Cain says everything went as perfectly as it possibly could have when he removed the tumor. Now we just have to wait and see how successful the surgery really was or wasn’t.”

  Dr. Cain. A man Emily hadn’t seen for three days.

  Three days in which he’d just disappeared from her life.

  But not life in general because he’d been at the hospital each day, had done his rounds, had transferred Jenny, who was steadily improving, to the orthopedic surgical floor for further correction of her limb injuries. He’d scheduled Cassie for surgery and performed the surgical excision of her tumor early the day before.

  Cassie had done great. Emily had checked on the child before she’d gone home from her shift but had made sure to carefully avoid Lucas.

  If he didn’t want to see her, she wouldn’t put herself in his path. Not intentionally.

  She didn’t fool herself that she’d be able to avoid him altogether, not with them working at the same hospital. She’d toyed with updating her résumé but had nixed the idea. She loved her job at Children’s and wasn’t leaving. If her being there made him uncomfortable, he could leave. He’d said he would if that was what she wanted. Was it? No, she wanted him to have the opportunity to pursue his dreams, to do his research. Children’s provided him with that opportunity.

  They were both better off without each other.

  If only she could convince herself of that.

  She had five years ago. She’d convinced herself that he was a horrible person who hadn’t wanted her or their baby.

  That belief had been a balm for her pain and helped her move forward.

  This time she knew better. She knew that her pregnancy hormones had prevented rational thought, that she’d blamed him for things that had perhaps been as much her fault as his.

  Lucas was a good man, a good doctor. They’d both been immature and had made mistakes then and now.

  Not that telling him about their baby was a mistake. The mistake had been not telling him immediately when she started suspecting she might be pregnant all those years ago, letting her hormones, and fear of what others thought, of what he might think, drive her thoughts to irrational limits.

  But he’d already started acting so distant and somehow she’d known he wouldn’t be happy with her news even before she’d started hinting about a baby. Still, she should have told him.

  “Her vitals are looking really good,” she told Mrs. Bellows, knowing the woman was waiting for a response of some type.

  The woman nodded. Emily checked Cassie’s reflexes, pleased when each one responded appropriately.

  “Her neuro check is right on target.”

  Cassie’s eyes tracked everything Emily did as she quickly assessed her patient. That the girl’s eyes didn’t leave hers was a great sign.

  By the time Emily finished her examination, Cassie had dozed back off.

  Mrs. Bellows bent over the bed to kiss Cassie’s cheek. “Dr. Cain said he’d wean her off the ventilator today if she continued to hold her own.”

  Dr. Cain. Dr. Cain. Dr. Cain. Maybe Emily would have to rethink the whole staying at Children’s thing. Listening to his patients and their families extol his virtues didn’t rank high on her list of things to do if she wanted to keep her sanity.
>
  Not that she didn’t understand Mrs. Bellows’s admiration of Lucas. Emily did. He’d saved Cassie’s life when he’d stopped the bleed and he’d given them hope that Cassie was going to be okay when he’d removed the brain tumor.

  “She is. I bet he’ll be by this morning and give the order for the ventilator to be discontinued. My guess is that he only left it in overnight as an extra precaution.”

  The woman nodded, then glanced down at where her hand was laced with Cassie’s.

  “She squeezes my hand in response to my questions,” the woman assured her, sounding ecstatic by the simple communication.

  Emily smiled. A mother’s love was a beautiful thing. Something she’d never allowed herself to really embrace. Not before telling Lucas about their baby. She had been a mother. She had loved her baby.

  Telling Lucas about their daughter had healed areas of her heart she’d thought incurable.

  “I asked if she knew who I was and she gave me the funniest look and tried to nod her head, then squeezed my hand. I asked her to squeeze it twice if she knew.” Mrs. Bellows’s voice choked up. “She squeezed it twice.”

  Feeling a little choked up herself, Emily patted where mother’s and daughter’s hands were linked. “She knows you.”

  Emily was sure the child did. She’d seen the recognition and love in Cassie’s eyes when she’d looked at her mother.

  “She really didn’t wake up much yesterday but has been awake several times during the night and this morning. She never lasts long, but each time I see her eyes, it’s enough to reassure me that my baby girl is still in there. But we won’t really know much until the ventilator is out and we see how she responds to simple tasks.”

  Emily knew that it was possible Cassie would have reverted to the skill levels of a much younger child from the trauma of having part of her brain excised. Or that she might have suffered permanent damage and lost ability to stand, or walk, or talk, or so many things.

  But so far every indication was that the girl’s surgery had been a huge success. Emily prayed that trend continued.

  “I’ll be in and out checking on her, but if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me to her room.”