She looked at Katie, her heart aching. The little girl had become so very dear to her in such an incredibly short amount of time.
To think, she’d sat there at the fund-raiser, blissfully ignorant, thinking how she would feel if it was Katie whose life was threatened by a dangerous medical condition. Well, now she knew. And it hurt like hell.
They were making good time. Too good. They were almost there. There was very little traffic on Newport Boulevard at this hour in the morning. Courtney stared out the window. The fog, rolling in from the harbor, hadn’t had time to lift yet. It was crouching all around them, encircling them. The way it encircled her heart, threatening to break it in two.
John had wanted to drive this morning, but she had insisted on the limousine. He was in no condition to concentrate on the road. She could see it in his eyes. He was afraid.
So was she.
It was all she could do to keep the fear from immobilizing her. To keep it a secret from Katie. She didn’t want the little girl being afraid, too. Four was too young to have fear as a playmate.
It was only later, as you grew older, that it rode beside you, placing an icy hand on your heart, Courtney thought. Nothing was ever guaranteed in life, certainly not the outcome of a delicate surgery, even when the doctor performing it was as renowned for his skill as Dr. Benjamin was.
And Katie was so small….
She couldn’t let herself think about the consequences. Instead, she looked at Katie. To Katie’s delight, John had purposely left behind her loathed car seat when she had gotten into the limousine. She looked at him in wonder as he strapped her in with only a seat belt.
“Did you forget?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t forget. You’re a big girl now, Katie. You can ride without one.”
He knew how much this meant to her. It was the last favor he could grant her before she went for her surgery. He got in beside her and nodded at the chauffeur. Sam started the vehicle.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you as long as you’re between us.”
He’d exchanged looks with Courtney and she had given him the most positive smile she could manage. They both prayed that what he’d said would prove to be true.
So now Katie sat between them, her beloved Mr. Softy on her lap and her hand in Courtney’s as she talked about all that she was going to do once she returned home from the hospital.
Courtney thought her heart was going to break, but somehow she found a way to nod and say the right things. And silently offer up every prayer and fragment of a prayer that she knew.
Arriving all too soon, John got out and led the way to the hospital entrance. He began to walk to the left as soon as they passed through the electronic doors.
Courtney laid a hand on his arm. “Where are you going?”
He was having difficulty functioning. “To the preadmit desk. I’ve got papers—”
Courtney shook her head. “I already took care of that.” She’d called the day before, making new arrangements. “She’s going to have the best of everything. I reserved a private tower suite for her and there’ll be a private duty nurse by her bed around the clock until she’s ready to come home.”
He knew she meant well, knew he was being unreasonable to resent the intrusion. But the fear he was grappling with overrode common sense and restraint.
“You had no right to do that without asking me first.” For Katie’s sake, he tried to keep his voice low. “She’s my daughter, Courtney.”
“No,” Courtney corrected, looking at the small face. She couldn’t bear to look at John’s. Even after what he’d said, the way he’d apologized on Sunday, he was shutting her out again. “She’s ours.”
If she lived forever, she would always remember the love she saw in Katie’s eyes as the girl looked up at her that morning.
They remained with Katie in her pre-op room for as long as they could, trying not to get in each other’s space. But then, it came time to allow Katie to be taken away. A nurse began to give them directions to the surgical waiting area.
Courtney stopped her. “I know the way. I’ve been here before.”
They walked down the long, carpeted hallway in pain ful, self-imposed silence, hardly seeing the other people they passed. The waiting area, when they arrived, was mercifully empty.
Although not as empty as they felt.
Hugging Katie’s rabbit to her, Courtney looked around the room. There was a huge window on one side, overlooking the boats in the harbor. Great pains had been taken to make the room as comfortable and soothing as possible.
Unable to sit, she ran her hand along the back of one of the sofas.
“You know, my father donated the money to refurbish this room. The first time I sat in it, it was to wait for news about his condition.” Even now, the memory brought fresh tears to her eyes. Courtney wiped them away with the tips of her fingers. “Hospitals always make me maudlin.”
This wasn’t the time to dwell on her own feelings. She looked at John’s stony expression. “She’s going to be all right,” she whispered.
He didn’t believe it. He was bracing himself for the worst. “Yeah.”
Needing to move, to do something, Courtney thought of the cafeteria in the basement “I’m going down to get us something to eat.” She knew it was useless to ask him to come along. “Do you want anything special?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets as he looked out the window. “No.”
He couldn’t just go on torturing himself like this. It wasn’t helping Katie. And it was destroying her to watch. “John, the operation’s going to take at least eight hours. You didn’t eat anything at breakfast—”
He didn’t even look in her direction. He couldn’t. If he didn’t keep a tight rein on what was going on inside, he was going to lose it.
“I said no,” he snapped.
Courtney turned away. “No it is.”
Courtney tried to take her time getting back to the waiting room, but she couldn’t. Even as she left John, she’d wanted to rush back, to make him talk to her. To tear down this artificial barrier between them with her bare hands. They were both involved here, both worried about Katie. This wasn’t the time to retreat to separate, inaccessible corners, no matter what their other grievances were. They needed each other to get through this.
But how could she convince him of that? How could she make him reach out to take the hand she offered?
He was still standing by the window, staring out at the harbor, when she returned. She wondered if he actually saw anything.
Courtney removed the two paper cups filled with coffee from the cardboard tray she’d carried up and placed them on the coffee table. A cellophane-wrapped sandwich joined them.
“I brought you back some coffee and a sandwich. Ham and cheese,” she added impotently. He still wasn’t looking at her. “On rye.”
He didn’t want her doing things for him. He didn’t want anything, except for Katie to open her eyes again and call him Daddy. “I said I wasn’t hungry.”
“Maybe later,” she murmured. Courtney folded the tray in half and threw it in the trash.
He couldn’t stand this, he thought Ever since last night, a kaleidoscope of memories had been whirling around in his brain. He was afraid that they were all setting siege to him because, soon, memories would be all he had left of his daughter.
He needed to know she was going to be all right. Needed someone to assure him that his daughter was going to survive.
He needed someone.
God, he wanted to reach out to Courtney, but he just didn’t know how. Didn’t know what to say, how to start. So he didn’t.
Courtney watched him. He hadn’t moved a muscle since she’d returned. Probably since she’d left. His shoulders were rigid. Something so rigid was destined to break sooner or later.
She didn’t know how to prevent that, she only knew she wanted to. More than anything else, she wanted to.
But he wouldn’t ta
lk to her, wouldn’t, let her in and she didn’t know how to try anymore.
At a loss, Courtney sat down on the sofa and took the coffee cup in her hand. Prying off the opaque lid, she slowly sipped coffee she didn’t taste, and waited.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know.”
She looked up, startled. For a second, she thought she’d imagined John’s voice. He hadn’t said anything in more than half an hour.
“What? Bring you up a sandwich?” It was the first thing she could think of, and the last thing she’d talked about. The sandwich was still sitting there, untouched, as was his coffee. “It gave me something to do.”
He turned from the window, his face an unreadable mask etched in anguish. “No, I mean take care of the hospital bill.”
Were they back to that again? That was the least of what she could do. Tired of hurting, of waiting, her temper flared.
“Hell, what else is money good for?” She replaced the empty cup on the table and turned to face him. “That’s why you agreed to this marriage, wasn’t it? So I’m giving you a bonus. Because I love her. And she’s not going to lack for anything.”
It was his pride talking, not him. It was all he had left to hang on to. “Our bargain was for a set amount of money, Courtney. It wouldn’t be right to ask for more.”
Her nerves, frayed, snapped now. “Right?” she echoed in disbelief. “We’re way past right and wrong here.” It was an effort not to shout at him. “She’s not some exercise in a math book, damn it. Get so much, pay so much,” she said in a singsong voice. “She’s a little girl. A little girl I love a great deal.”
She was off the sofa now, and ready to go a couple of rounds with him. Maybe it would make them both feel better. Anything was better than just sitting here and waiting in silence.
“Do you really think I could just put a check on the table and walk away from her? From both of you?”
Was she telling him what he wanted—no, needed— to hear, after everything that had been said? “I—”
Courtney burrowed a finger into his chest. “Yeah, you. Mr. Personality. I can’t just walk, away from you, though I should. God help me, I thought I was a lot smarter than this, but I guess it takes me a while to learn things. No matter what you think of me, what you feel— or rather, don’t feel—for me, I will always be there for Katie. And if you need anything, well, maybe I’ll be there for you, too.”
The angry tears in her eyes told him everything he wanted to know. “Courtney—”
When he reached for her, she backed away. She didn’t want gestures he didn’t mean. “If you want to apologize, you don’t have to.”
But he took her into his arms, not to comfort her, but to comfort himself. It was a homecoming for him. For both of them.
He held her close, burying his face in her hair. “Don’t leave, Courtney.”
It wasn’t until she played back his words in her head that she actually heard him. Courtney pulled back to look up into his face. “Weren’t you just listening? I have no intentions of leaving.”
It was only when he repeated it that she understood. “Don’t leave me.”
She could have cried.
And did.
For a long time, they just stood there, holding on to each other, supporting each other as best they could. Finally, John drew away, holding her at arm’s length. It was time, he thought, to let go of the silence. It was time to tell her. Everything.
“When I first married Diane, it was like walking into a fairy tale. She was crazy about me, or so she said,” he tacked on. He’d been too in love with the idea of having someone to love to see past the lies. “And I believed her. Wanted desperately to believe her. You see, I’d never had anyone love me before. Ever.”
That sounded impossible. “But your parents—”
He cut her off. “I never knew my father. My mother, too young, she claimed, to be tied down with a brat, abandoned me with her brother and sister-in-law when I was three.” His mouth twisted at the memory of his aunt and uncle. He bore them no ill will, nor any love, either. Not anymore. “Two very God-fearing people who wouldn’t have dreamed of turning me out because that just wasn’t allowed. But there was nothing in the rule book they were following about loving a kid, either, so they didn’t.”
It had taken him a while to come to terms with that. He’d always thought that, somehow, it had been his fault. His fault his mother left. His fault his uncle and aunt couldn’t love him. When he was younger, he hadn’t realized that some people were just what they were.
“I left home the day I graduated high school. I could hear their sighs of relief as I walked out the door.”
The look in his eyes told her that the pain wasn’t completely erased, no matter what he said. “Oh, John, I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t hear her, refused to hear the pity in her voice. He’d come this far without it and he would continue. There were worse lives.
John shrugged. “I put myself through college, doing whatever it took to earn enough money to pay for books and tuition. I moved around a lot, from place to place, just ahead of the landlord. Food was optional.”
He saw the horror in her eyes. It hadn’t been so bad at the time. In a way, it had been an adventure. “Hey, it builds character. Although if I had actually had it, maybe I could have seen through Diane. I would have been able to realize that all she wanted was a diversion, something to amuse herself with for a while. Someone to aggravate her parents with.” He could almost laugh about it now. Almost. “And I did. Oh, boy, did I. They hated me. They threw her a party the day she announced she wanted a divorce. Except that by then, she was pregnant.”
Diane had called him, upset, confused, angry, not knowing what to do. He’d talked her into having the baby. Technically, Katie was his from the very first moment.
“So we stuck it out for a while and I guess I hoped that things would work out in the long run. But they didn’t.”
He paused, taking a breath, steeling himself from the memory. “When they found out Katie had a hole in her heart, Diane really fell apart. She blamed me for. ‘saddling’ her with this baby and said she didn’t want to see her. She calmed down eventually and actually tried being a mother for a while. That lasted all of three months. She said the baby’s crying made her nervous. That she wasn’t cut out to take care of a child, especially not a sick one.”
Looking back, he wondered how he could have ever thought himself in love with such a vain, self-centered woman.
“This time, the divorce went through. I got custody, completely uncontested. Her parents were even willing to negotiate a settlement—provided I never approached them or Diane again. I told them what they could do with their money and left with my daughter.”
This time, when she put her arms around him, he didn’t draw away.
“We got by for a while. I had a job with a good firm by then. But in order to keep a job, you have to show up regularly, and Katie needed a series of operations.” He sighed. “There were complications. I had to stay home to take care of her. I won’t bore you with the details, but the upshot of it was that I wound up with two mortgages on the house and no source of income. The firm said they hated to let me go, but they had no choice.
“That’s when I fell back on carpentry. It’s what I did in college and it gave me the opportunity to keep Katie with me. I wanted her around as much as I could. About a year ago, I read that Diane had been killed in an autoaccident. She’d been drinking.” He recited it as if it was news about a stranger.
Still, the woman had once been his wife. “I’m sorry” Courtney said.
He shook his head. “Any feelings I might have had for her died a long time ago. I don’t think the woman I was in love with really existed, except in my imagination.” He took Courtney’s hands in his, searching her face for some indication of what she felt. He’d never put himself on the line this way before. “So there you have it The uncondensed, unabridged version of my life.”
She
knew what it must have taken for him to tell her. “Thank you.”
He didn’t understand. “For what?”
“For letting me in.”
He smiled into her face. It was he who should be thanking her. “I had no choice. I love you.”
As soon as he said it, she knew it was true. “I know. You just proved it.” Her heart swelled as she lost herself in his arms.
Chapter Sixteen
The surgeon had barely entered the waiting room before Courtney was at his side.
“How is she, Doctor?”
Darel Benjamin smiled before answering, savoring the moment. He’d just spent the past eight hours and twentyone minutes trying to make certain that Katie Gabriel had a future. And he had succeeded. Others might argue the point, but for him, there was no greater sense of accomplishment than being able to hand tomorrow to a patient.
“She came through it like a trouper.” He looked at John and recognized a haunted look he was all too familiar with. “She’s going to be just fine,” he assured John. “No incidents, no problems. Textbook surgery with a model patient.”
Thank you, God, Courtney thought, squeezing John’s hand. “When can we see her?” she asked eagerly.
The doctor pulled off his blue surgical cap, freeing the shock of chestnut hair. Exhaustion lined his face. “They’re going to be transporting her in a few minutes. It’ll take a while to get everything into place. She’ll be in CCU for a few days. The cardiac care unit,” he clarified for Courtney’s benefit. “It’s down the hall. The signs’ll get you there.”
He laid a hand on John’s shoulder. The rigidity was beginning to fade. “You and I already know what a resilient constitution Katie has. She’s going to be up and running around before you know it.” The surgeon looked down at his gown. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get cleaned up and get some coffee in my system before I go into withdrawal. I’ll be around to see her late this evening,” he promised as he left.
Wanted: Husband, Will Train Page 20
