by Tina Beckett
“Yes, she was. You pulled her through that crisis.”
“I’m glad I was here.”
She put a hand to her hair, as if checking to make sure it was still secured, then went back to worrying at that empty ring finger. He hated that it was bare, hated that she kept drawing his attention to it.
She stopped fiddling and looked at him. “I’m glad you were there too.”
“Are you?” A clod of something stuck in his throat, making his voice come out rougher-sounding than it should have.
“You did a lot to help keep her calm.”
The wind went out of his sails in a hurry. Of course she hadn’t meant she was glad in a more personal sense. He decided to change the subject.
“You didn’t have to rush right over. I’m sure she would have waited for you.”
“That bad, huh?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“The way I look. I didn’t put on any makeup.”
Ah, that’s what...
“I think I remember telling you I liked you without it. Many times.”
“Patients always looked at me like I was a kid without it.”
No one would mistake her for a kid anymore. Not because she looked older. Yes, there were tiny lines beside her eyes and a crease on the right side of her face where her smile reached slightly higher. The biggest change was in those green eyes. Eyes that had seen things no one should ever have to see. Had held her daughter in her arms as she’d taken her final breath.
She wasn’t older. There were just moments he caught a fleeting sadness in her eyes. Or was that resignation?
He had no doubt the experience had aged him too. Only he hadn’t handled it nearly as well as she had. Grace’s death had nearly crippled him emotionally. He’d never been as open as Kady and her family were about showing their feelings. Their grief had been almost palpable—expressed the way healthy people were supposed to. Tucker, on the other hand, had built a dam, shoving his emotions behind it.
After everything had gone south, he’d retreated into himself with the lame excuse that he needed to be strong for his wife. In the end, she had been the one who’d been strong for him. She’d been able to function emotionally...sexually, even in the midst of her grief. And he hadn’t been able to deal with that. So he’d shut her out. Along with her family and most of the world. When Kady’s grandfather had tried to talk to him, he’d slammed that mental door as well.
For Tucker, shame and grief had gone hand in hand and created an unholy alliance. A wall had gone up that had never come down. It still hadn’t.
“I can go home afterward and dry my hair at least.”
Damn, she’d taken his lengthy silence for disapproval.
“Leave it. I like it.”
As if that should matter one iota. He always managed to say the wrong thing around her.
“Okay, I will.”
And with that simple answer and the smallest glimmer of a smile she started walking toward the room. She glanced back and tossed her head in a come on gesture. “You were in that treatment room as well.”
“I don’t think she even remembers me. It was you she wanted to see.”
“Somehow I doubt that very many people forget you, Tucker. You kind of blow through like a hurricane.”
He blinked. “Is that a compliment?”
“It’s just the reality.”
And leaving him to wonder what the hell she meant by that, she headed toward the room, leaving him to follow behind.
Once they got there they found someone already there, holding the baby. “Dr. McPherson, thanks so much for coming. This is my roommate, Phoebe.”
“I’m glad I got to see you before you left.” Kady’s thumb went to town on her ring finger, like she should be doing something but wasn’t sure what.
Ah, she wasn’t used to being with a patient without checking vitals or doing something doctorly. He understood that all too well. It wasn’t always easy to have relationships that weren’t based on either professional courtesy or trying to help patients. It was why doctors sometimes had a hard time switching off once the last patient had been seen. There were days there just wasn’t anything left for anyone else. Not fair to families sometimes. Tucker had always thought he and Kady had had the perfect arrangement, because they’d understood that and had given each other space when it was needed.
But when the same two doctors couldn’t fix what was wrong with their daughter, that house of cards came tumbling down. Nothing known to man had been able to reconstruct it. Maybe he’d never have another real relationship ever again. And maybe it was even easier that way.
Was work enough?
It had been. At least until now. And once Kady went home? Would it be enough again?
He had no idea. But he sure as hell hoped so. When his eyes ventured to that black hair clip, though, all bets were off. Because the cycle of remembering and rejecting began all over again.
“Do you want to hold her?” Samantha’s voice brought him back from the brink, and he realized she was talking to him. At some point the baby had passed from Samantha’s roommate to Kady.
She was standing with the newborn tucked into her arms, gently rocking the infant back and forth. Nothing had ever looked more right than seeing her with a baby. His breath stalled in his throat, even as he noted her eyes on him, a worried crease between her brows. Had Samantha already asked him once?
“Oh, no. I’m good.”
“Aw, come on,” the young woman coaxed. “I know you know how to hold a baby. You operate on ones smaller than this one all the time, right? At least, that’s what Dr. McPherson told me. How about holding one that’s healthy?”
Healthy.
Had Kady told her about Grace?
No. They were talking in generalities. And if he refused to hold the newborn, someone was going to wonder why.
The breath he’d been holding in stagnated in his lungs and his throat tightened. Somehow, though, he managed to hold his arms out when Kady came over, allowing her to gently deposit the tiny bundle into his care.
No one should ever trust him with a baby.
And yet patients did it every day.
This was different, though. This baby had weight. And substance. And...health.
What he was feeling now was probably the same thing Kady had felt a few moments ago.
Grace had felt just like this once upon a time. Just a day old, but with a solidness that had felt very right in his arms. Smoky blue had eyes met his and blinked. Blond tufts of hair had stood straight up. Small fists had waved in the air as if...
He couldn’t do it. “Take her, please.” He held the baby out for Kady to take back, while chunks of his heart seemed to peel away and fall to the floor.
How could she bear the thought of having another child? Holding it close? Loving it?
He could treat preterm babies because he knew they weren’t his. And it was his way of doing what he hadn’t been able to do for Grace: give them a cure. But there was no attachment. No sentimental feelings attached to any of them. He made sure of that.
Then why did their names run through his head as he operated on them? Why did he murmur to them, even as his scalpel cut deep?
He was just trying to remember that what he did was important to someone.
Samantha took the baby from Kady with a smile. “Thanks again for everything.”
She acted like there was nothing weird about the way he’d rushed the infant back into Kady’s arms. Maybe he hadn’t been as transparent as he’d thought. Or maybe he was better at hiding his emotions than he gave himself credit for.
They walked the trio out to the curb, waiting while the baby was strapped into a car seat in the roommate’s car. Then they waved goodbye.
This was the last time they would ever see Samantha and her
new baby. He tried to drum up the last time he’d seen his own baby, but failed miserably.
“Tucker, are you okay?”
Kady’s soft voice called him back from the depths. “I’m fine. Just didn’t expect to have to hold her, that’s all.”
“I could tell.” She linked her arm through his for a moment as they stood there on the curb, the noise of traffic and voices outside very different from the canned silence inside the hospital. “You were a good father to her. Don’t ever forget that.”
A sudden wash of emotion spurted from behind the wall, stabbing at the backs of his eyes and clogging his throat. Oh, hell. Not now.
He pulled his arm from hers, afraid if they stood there any longer, she would see.
“We did everything we could for her. So did her doctors.” His cool businesslike tone had to be a slap in the face after what she’d just said. But it was all he could manage without the past pouring out in a very real way.
She gripped his arm again. “Hey, don’t do that. Don’t you dare do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like she was nothing more to you than one of your patients. She was our daughter, dammit.”
“You think I don’t know that? That I don’t have to deal with what happened every single hour of every single day?” The dam broke and he turned, yanking her against him. “I remember the second she was born, the second she smiled. The second she...”
Then his lips were on hers, hand going to the back of her head and clutching her to him. Grief and want and need all melded together into a huge tangled ball that was impossible to unravel.
Kady seemed to understand exactly what he was feeling, arms wrapping around his neck, giving back every bit as good as she got.
And it was good—too good—the heat and pressure of her mouth changing the tone in an instant. He deepened the kiss, and a familiar stirring took place, reminding him that he could indeed do things. Wanted to do them.
With Kady and no one else.
“Woohoo! Go, Dr. Stevenson!” The cheer, along with several catcalls, had him yanking away from her so fast that she tripped backward, might have fallen if he hadn’t reached out to grab her arm.
Thirteen figures stood on the sidewalk, staring at them. Some of them grinning, some of them shocked as hell. Well, no one was more shocked than Tucker himself.
What did he do about it? This was his fault. He’d initiated that kiss. It was bad enough that the medical students had seen it. Who else had spotted them?
Great. How was he supposed to explain this to anyone?
Worse, how was he supposed to explain this to himself?
This was why he didn’t let his emotional responses come out to play more often. They ran amok, doing whatever the hell they wanted to.
He took a breath.
“We just had a... This was...”
Kady took a step forward. “Remember when we talked about interpersonal relationships? This was a lesson in what not to do with a colleague. I hope you all got the point.”
Whether they believed the hogwash she was dishing up or not, they didn’t dare contradict her. While he willed his body to turn off the fireworks she’d unwittingly ignited, Kady was busy running over the latest case study with the group. A case he couldn’t even remember going over with her.
Because he hadn’t given her the chance. He’d whisked her back to that hospital room to see their patient and things had slalomed downhill from there.
Until that kiss, when things had started going up in ways they shouldn’t have. But Tucker had proved one thing to himself.
He hadn’t forgotten the smell of her hair.
Or her touch. Or anything else about her.
It was still there. In the back of his memory bank.
And there wasn’t any power on earth that was going to erase it. Not three days from now, when she went home. Not three months from now. And probably not three hundred years from now.
CHAPTER NINE
KADY SAT BY the pool and tried to make out the words on the documents. Not easy on her phone. Making the text bigger helped, but then she had to scroll repeatedly back and forth to follow the sentences from beginning to end.
She should probably just wait until she got home to go over the sperm donors’ information, but she’d wanted to give it a chance to percolate for a while.
Anything to take away the memory of that scene in front of the hospital. She’d been shocked by the outpouring of emotion from a man who hadn’t let her see the real him in a very long time. She’d glimpsed it when he’d been so desperate to hand the baby back to her. But during that kiss? Lightning had cracked through the air, singeing them both. And something had woken inside her. Some vital part that had tunneled into the earth had sprung back to life, leaves unfurling and seeking the sun.
But if she’d hoped Tucker would declare that he’d never stopped loving her, that he’d changed his mind, she’d been sorely disappointed.
But, then, she’d been disappointed before.
She focused on the information on the screen.
It was all there. Height, weight, body type, ethnic background. The first two she rejected outright, although she wasn’t quite sure why. They seemed perfect on paper. What wasn’t to like? They were both evidently tall, dark and handsome. So what was wrong?
She had no idea.
Tipping her sunglasses to the top of her head, thinking maybe the artificial darkness was injecting some kind of pessimism into the process, she tried again. The glare from the white paper hurt her eyes. There was no foggy residue on the windows today to mute the sunlight. She squinted and forced her eyes to keep moving, trying to pinpoint the problem.
She found nothing.
Why was she having such a hard time differentiating between one application and the next? Maybe it was having the sanitized, clinical reality laid out in front of her. This was not a love match. Or computer dating. Then again, it wasn’t meant to be. It was scientific data, nothing more, nothing less.
But taking the human element away made it seem like all three applicants were painted with the same brush. No mention of a dimple. No stray acne scar on any of their right temples. No crooked little toe from a break when he’d been three years old.
He?
She swallowed. God. Those things belonged to Tucker.
Was that why none of these physical bios measured up?
She should have been long over him by now. And she’d thought she was. Had thought that having a baby on her own meant she was finally moving forward with her life.
But when he’d stood there on that curb and suddenly grabbed her, she’d come face to face with the flesh and blood man she’d fallen in love with. Passionate and loving, but reserving those feelings for her alone. She hadn’t seen that side of him in so long that she’d almost forgotten it existed. And then it had been there. Right in front of her. Making her want to lose herself in his touch.
She hesitated. She’d been disappointed that he hadn’t expressed any deeper emotion afterward.
Was it because she was still in love with him?
No. She couldn’t be. Not possible when they wanted such different things out of life.
But that was back when the mechanical Tucker had systematically shut her out of his life in the most devastating way imaginable. He’d withheld his touch. His affection. His words of love. They’d inhabited the same physical space but not the same world.
These last three days had been different. It had been like Tucker had woken from a deep slumber.
Could he be changing before her eyes? Or, like her sunglasses, was it all just an illusion?
She didn’t know, but she couldn’t bank on something that might be confined to her fantasies. Or to a five-day working vacation. She needed permanence. Shared ideals.
Her eyes went back to the last d
onor’s file, turning her phone to the side to see better.
“Must be some interesting reading there.”
“Ah!” She let out a scream, the cellphone tumbling out of her hand and landing on the towel she’d tossed down a few minutes earlier. Thank God the pool room was empty this morning.
“Sorry.” He bent down to scoop up the phone.
“No, don’t—”
Too late. His gaze was on the screen, head cocked to the side. Then twin shutters slammed across his eyes. When they lifted to meet hers there was a blankness she remembered all too well.
The Tucker from the end of their marriage.
“Donor bios? Is this what you were talking about in my office?”
She reached up and grabbed her phone from him. “If you must know, yes.”
There was a silence that seemed to stretch on forever.
“Why would you go this route?”
“It’s less complicated.”
The shutters lifted a little. “Less complicated than what?”
Was he serious? “Than the whole relationship thing. That didn’t seem to work out for me all that well.”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “I’m sorry, Kady. For everything.”
No, no, no.
She did not want her future to go hacking around with her past. She needed them to stay in separate realms where she could manage them. When they mixed, things got...complicated. It made those bios look unappealing all over again.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m just doing what I think is best for me.”
He lowered himself into the chair beside hers. “And going it alone is best?”
“At the moment? Yes.”
He nodded at the phone. “Mind if I look?”
“Yes, I mind.” She was very aware that she was sitting there clad in nothing but her red bikini. Again. “Did you want something?”
She allowed the crabbiness in her voice to come through. Today had not been the stuff of which dreams were made.
Well, except for that kiss. And even that had turned into a disaster when their medical students had shown up in the middle of it. Just when Tucker had been getting to the good part. And then they’d had to pretend to simply be colleagues for the next two hours while they’d tried to overlap cases without overlapping anything else.
