by Knupp, Amy
“Have you been drinking?” she asked without thinking.
“Nope. Just sleeping. A drink’s not a bad idea, though.”
She jumped to her feet in a burst of energy driven by antsiness. “You’d definitely be more pleasant if you were drunk. Either that or passed out.”
He looked up at her as she stood directly in front of him, and finally, he appeared to focus on her and realize there was another living, breathing being in the room with him. The corners of his lips rose ever so slightly. “Touché.”
Devin watched Carey flop ungracefully in her fancy dress next to him and his spirits rose a tad. What the hell was this woman up to? It was after midnight.
“Why are you here, Carey?” She was too close. Too tempting.
She pulled a leg up under her. “I figured you were dying to hear all the details of the wedding.” Her words dripped sarcasm.
“How was it?”
“It was…actually pretty good. Happy. Real.” She smiled, although she wasn’t looking at him, but rather off to the side at nothing. “I had a good talk with my mom. Borderline bonding. There may be hope for us.”
There was more contentment in her expression than he’d seen in a long time. She’d never said as much, but he suspected it really bothered her to have a poor relationship with her mother. The urge to pull her to his side and tell her he was happy for her nearly overwhelmed him, but he held himself back.
When she grasped his hand, he didn’t take it away. Her mood switched from amused to serious in the time it took him to blink.
Carey took a slow, lung-expanding breath. “So, um, have you ever had one of those lightbulb moments where something suddenly becomes crystal clear to you?”
“Ye-e-e-ah.” His reply was stretched out, as if he was suspicious of what she was going to reveal to him. “I guess so.”
“I had one tonight.”
“At the wedding?”
“Afterward. Outside in the rose garden.” She ran her fingers nervously over the back of his hand.
He didn’t speak, which made it harder to spit this out.
She took another deep breath, glancing at the ceiling. “I was sitting there watching all the couples leave the wedding. Thinking how nice it would be to have someone to go home with on a permanent basis. And…” She swallowed hard.
“And?”
“I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”
His face didn’t change at all. He just stared back at her.
“I know I’m hard to deal with sometimes and I drive you crazy when I fly by the seat of my pants and you wish I’d be more careful about everything and—”
“Carey. Breathe.”
She did. Her chest rose as she sucked in air until she couldn’t fit any more in.
She pulled herself toward him and pressed her lips to his, tentatively at first. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then he responded and the kiss escalated to white-hot. She slid onto his lap and wound her hands around his neck, not breaking the contact between their lips. Which seemed just fine with him.
Her heart pounded and she felt light-headed. This wasn’t going to be so difficult.
She could feel his hardness up against her thigh and she was thrilled to think they would soon be together, physically and emotionally. She wasn’t even nervous about making love with him—it felt completely right.
But first things first.
She pulled her mouth away from his reluctantly. Rested her forehead against his.
“Devin?”
His breath was ragged and his “yeah” came out as a croak.
“What I figured out is that I love you.” Her words rushed together, but she didn’t care. She’d said it.
Judging by the look of alarm on his face, she shouldn’t have.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DEVIN WORKED his way out from under her and paced across the room as Carey’s heart sank into her gut. He obviously didn’t feel the same way about her, so she’d just ruined everything between them.
She pulled her legs up as close to her chest as she could get them—which wasn’t very, thanks to her belly—and tried to form a ball with her body. She was afraid to speak. Afraid to breathe.
Refusing to look directly at him, she sensed he was leaning against the cabinet on the opposite wall, his back toward her. “Devin?”
He didn’t answer.
Didn’t need to.
She rose slowly, bone-deep weary in every cell of her body. Her throat felt scratchy and dried up. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s clear you don’t feel the same. I’ll leave.”
“Don’t.”
She froze. His back to her, he stretched his arms over his head, resting them on the top shelf of the entertainment center.
His wide, golden shoulders rose with a heavy sigh and, in spite of the difficulty of the situation, she longed to run her hands up his muscular back and feel the heat of his flesh.
“It’s not as easy as you think,” he finally said, turning. He took several steps forward and stopped about six feet in front of her. He ran his fingers through his hair and then grasped the back of his neck. She noted his motions as if she was watching a movie she wasn’t part of.
“I do feel the same way, Carey.”
His eyes pierced hers and she felt tears flooding them. Her throat ached…she sensed a “but” coming.
“I love you.” He dropped both hands to his sides. “Dammit. I do.”
She looked at him in confusion. He seemed to be arguing with himself.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask what the “but” was.
“I want you so badly, Carey. I lie awake thinking about you at night, thinking about what it’d be like to have you in my bed. To wake up by your side every day.”
He paced as she held her breath.
She couldn’t take the agony. “What is it, Devin? Just say it.” A tear fell down her cheek.
He looked down at the floor. “I just can’t…the baby…I’m…trying really hard.”
The baby. It all made sense in a split second. The baby. It wasn’t his. It was Jerod’s, and he couldn’t handle that.
How could she ever expect him to?
“God, I’ve tried to deal with it. Tried to find a way to accept your little girl as my own.”
Tears seared her eyes and poured over onto her burning cheeks. He couldn’t have said anything less fixable than that.
The regret that she’d managed to bury for weeks now, the remorse over her poor judgment toward Jerod, came flooding back. With that single mistake, she’d condemned herself to a life without Devin.
“I want to love that baby growing in your belly as much as I love you. Maybe someday I’ll be able to…”
She shook her head slowly, the anguish centering in her chest. “Not good enough.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was gravelly with emotion. “It hurts me like hell, too.”
The room seemed to close in around her. She had to leave now. “I have to go,” she said flatly.
She shuffled to the front door, walking away from the man she’d thought was the best thing ever to happen to her.
Wrong again.
HER BELOVED Bug offered nothing in the way of comfort or reassurance. Carey sat in the driver’s seat for several minutes, trying to stop crying long enough to drive.
Devin didn’t come out of the house to tell her it was a misunderstanding. To convince her that he’d find his way to loving her baby.
Sucking in a deep breath of thick, damp air, she forced herself to start the car and head home. Biting her lower lip until it was raw, she managed to pull the car into the driveway outside her apartment three minutes later. Her head hurt. But it was nothing compared to the pain in her heart.
She reached the top landing and dizziness made her grab for the railing. She held on for all she was worth. The air was suffocatingly still. She stood there, immobile, trying to regain her bearings.
Finally, she was able to let go and she jamme
d her key into the lock, then stumbled inside. She made a beeline through the kitchen toward the couch and collapsed.
God, the pain.
How stupid could she be?
What pissed her off the most was that two months ago—two hours ago—she’d learned to accept that she would raise her child alone.
Then she’d dared to imagine having a loving, supporting husband to stumble down the path with her.
In a matter of minutes, the illusion had been ripped out from under her, and while someday she would probably be glad she’d found out sooner rather than later, at this very moment, ignorance seemed like bliss.
As she rolled to her side, another wave of dizziness swept over her, and she grasped the side of the couch in a futile attempt to make the world stop spinning. The headache resurfaced with a vengeance.
Something was horribly wrong with her body.
She thrust her trembling hand out toward where she’d dropped her purse, hoping her phone was inside. Maneuvering herself to a semi-sitting position was a chore, but she pushed up on the arm of the couch anyway.
She called her doctor’s home phone, praying he was there, just steps from her back door. He would make everything okay.
He wasn’t home. His wife told her he was at the hospital and that she’d have him call her right back. The phone rang within minutes, and when she opened her eyes to pick up the phone, she had trouble seeing clearly. Spots danced in her vision. It was the doctor. In tears, she reported her symptoms to him, the very symptoms he’d warned her to watch for a few weeks ago, willing him to tell her this was normal and that it would subside soon.
No such luck.
He ordered her to get to the hospital immediately. He was gravely concerned about her blood pressure.
For once Carey longed to have her mom take care of her. She nearly dialed her new phone number. But it was her mother’s wedding night and Carey didn’t want to ruin it for them. Instead, she called Monica, who answered on the second ring, clearly still awake. Carey tried to explain the problem without blubbering.
“Don’t move,” Monica said. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
The line went dead, and Carey closed her phone. Squeezing her eyes shut in an effort to deny any vision problems, she curled up in a ball.
She would die if anything went wrong. Her love for the child was overwhelming. Her future was so tied up in bringing this little one into the world and giving her a happy childhood, she couldn’t imagine anything else now.
She’d already suffered one loss tonight. There was no way she could survive another.
IT HAD BEEN dawn for more than an hour when Devin emerged from the shower and threw on clean clothes. He hadn’t bothered to go to bed. He’d known there was zero chance of sleeping.
Every muscle in his body screamed, and he hadn’t even pulled one of his usual killer pool workouts. He’d merely sat in his family room and watched Carey walk out of his life. He’d brooded on the sofa for hours, unable to muster the energy to try to swim through the ache.
He lumbered down two flights of stairs to his office, not because he thought he’d get a damn thing done. He didn’t know what the hell else to do with himself. Without bothering to flick the lights on, he went to his desk and collapsed into his chair.
The look on Carey’s face haunted him.
It killed him that he was too weak to be what he wanted, what Carey needed.
She loved him, for God’s sake. Carey. The woman he’d wanted for nearly half his life. And he’d rejected her out of…what? Jealousy? Pride? What, exactly, kept him from trying?
Hopeless and weary, he stared at the photograph of him and Gramps. Gramps, whom he’d let down.
And now he was letting Carey down. And himself. This time it wasn’t work getting in the way, but his own damn hang-ups.
You’ll be much more content with yourself if you give everything you’ve got to your relationships.
His grandpa’s voice rang out so clearly in Devin’s mind, he actually turned to make sure he was alone.
What the hell would happen if he actually made an effort to forget about Jerod? If he focused on being the best father to Carey’s little girl? If he simply just tried?
CAREY WAS nowhere to be found.
Devin had gone to her apartment after spending a good two hours at the lake, sitting on the dock, mulling over the realization he’d had in his office.
What it came down to was that he had to do this. He believed he could. He’d disappointed the most important man in his life by not trying hard enough, and hell if he was going to disappoint Carey. Or himself.
He’d spent his time on the dock imagining the baby, thinking about being a father, picturing how it would be to wake up several times a night to help Carey feed her. He hadn’t let himself think about his cousin. Jerod had turned down the chance to be in Carey’s and the baby’s life.
His loss, Devin’s gain.
Devin had knocked on Carey’s door three or four times, willing it to open. He’d tried Trent’s house. He’d tried Carey’s cell phone but could tell from the immediate voice mail that it was turned off. He’d even broken down and tried to track Carey’s mother’s new phone number but had had no luck. Apparently Phillip’s phone was unlisted. Damn inconvenient when Devin had a future to go after.
At a loss, he tried Monica’s cell phone for the second time as he drove from Trent’s house to who-knew-where.
“Hello?”
“Thank God you answered. I was beginning to think I’d entered some kind of black hole.”
“Devin. I was just about to call you. Carey’s in the hospital.”
Suddenly afraid, his stomach tightened into a knot. He swore crudely. “What happened? Is she okay?” Panicked, he pulled onto a side street to get out of traffic. “What hospital?”
“I took her in late last night. Her blood pressure was sky-high. She’s at General. Room 408.”
“Shit.” Committing the room number to memory, he turned the car toward the hospital. “What’s…how—”
“They’ve been monitoring her all night and it’s gone down a bit. Not enough, but they want to give her a few more hours to see if it lowers some more. If not, they’ll be forced to do a caesarian.”
“Shit, Monica. Shit, shit, shit.” He banged his fist on the steering wheel. The compression in his chest intensified.
“Calm down. She’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The way it’s lowered is a good sign.”
It was because of him. He knew it deep in his gut. It’d been less than ten hours since she’d left his house. The pain had done this to her. Pain he’d caused because he’d been too dense to know what he really wanted. And needed.
“What if they have to do the caesarian?” he asked, a sharp ache spearing his temples. “Can the baby…make it?” His voice was a raspy whisper, foreign to his ears.
“She’s twenty-six weeks along. The baby needs to stay in as long as possible.”
“But…can she make it?”
“The baby? Yeah. A lot depends on her weight and lung development.”
“Like what? What depends on those things?”
He heard Monica sigh. “Devin, you need to ask the doctor these questions. I didn’t get a lot of information myself. I was with Carey and her mom and Phillip most of the night, and I didn’t want to upset her more than she already was.”
His heart hammered out of control. He broke out into a cold sweat. She couldn’t lose the baby.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“I’m heading home to change clothes. We’re meeting Kyle’s family for his birthday lunch. I was hoping you could stay with her.”
“On my way. I hope the sight of me doesn’t send her blood pressure back up.” He swore to himself again.
“She wouldn’t let me call you last night. What’s going on between you two?”
“I don’t have time to go into it. I need to get to her.”
<
br /> He got on the freeway driving toward downtown, his mind completely focused on Carey and the baby.
“You can’t leave me hanging, Devin,” Monica said.
“I have to go.” He hung up on another plea for information.
Minutes later, he shot into a parking space and jumped out. It was all he could do to keep from sprinting inside. Logically, he knew there was nothing he could do, but he was desperate to set eyes on Carey.
The door to Room 408 was closed, as were most in the labor and delivery hallway. He opened the door slowly. Carey appeared to be asleep, so he moved noiselessly across the room and sat in a chair by her side. She didn’t stir.
The sight of her hooked up to machines had a startling effect on him. He’d never been squeamish in his life, but something about Carey being in any kind of danger made him feel like he’d been suckerpunched.
Rubbing his hands over his eyes, he took a deep breath and sat forward, his elbows on his knees, just inches from her. There was no indication of the battle her body fought.
God, please. Let her be okay. Let them be okay.
Her blond hair was tangled. Shadows underlined her eyes. Her lips were parted slightly, and they appeared dry, chapped.
He’d never loved her more. He ached to hold her and soothe her blood pressure down far enough to give the baby more time.
He hated to imagine the alternative. Carey would be shattered if anything happened. He couldn’t bear to think of her pain….
Or his own.
The strongest urge came over him—the urge to fend for the child, to keep her safe, to give her the love and security Carey was so focused on providing.
DNA be damned…it didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was the child’s survival.
He had to make Carey believe his heart was open. To her and to their baby.
A FEW MINUTES later, Trent walked into the room gripping a foam cup of steaming coffee. Carey hadn’t woken up yet, so Devin merely nodded in greeting.
Trent stood at the foot of her bed for several seconds watching her. His concern was written all over his face. Then he caught Devin’s attention and silently invited him to the hallway where they could speak without wakening her.
