by Brenda Novak
“Bastard,” Hudson grumbled.
“Julia might be involved. Have you considered that?”
“I have. But if she is, don’t you think they would’ve had her call me? A teary phone call from a suffering woman would’ve turned the screws on me. It might even have made me give in.”
“True. And she sent her father to prison, so chances are they no longer have any contact. That makes me think she’s not involved.”
“If she’s not, but she is my mother, I’ll send her some money, anyway. After what she’s been through, I’m sure she could use a break.”
Ellie smiled up at him.
“What?” he said.
“You have such a soft heart.”
He gave her a mock glare. “What do you mean? I’m tough as nails.”
She laughed as she stood, and he realized how much bigger their baby was getting as she walked over to him.
“Garrison is going to be enormous,” he said.
“Don’t scare me like that,” she responded as he kissed her.
She turned off the TV and talked him into going to bed, but he was too preoccupied to do anything except hold her until she fell asleep. After that, he quietly left the room and went downstairs. So much had changed in the past six months. And so much more was going to change. He’d be married, become a father. He’d also become a son if Matisson was his father—not that he viewed that as a positive thing.
He paced and played some pool, watched TV, even swam, trying to galvanize himself for the results. He was up all night, so when he heard Ellie calling out to him the following morning, he was exhausted but prepared for the worst. Maybe that was why he could hardly believe it when she found him as he was coming down the hall, threw her arms around his neck and said, “The DNA test came back negative, Hudson! Whoever smoked that cigarette—and I’m 90 percent sure it was Matisson—is not your father. They’re lying about everything! The fact that Julia Matisson happened to have her baby the same year you were born—and that it was a boy—was just a coincidence they capitalized on.”
Hudson’s knees nearly gave out on him. He’d been so sure he’d have to face the opposite. There’d have to be a third test, of course, one to confirm the results they’d received a few minutes ago. But now he had hope. Even with the uncertainty regarding whether that cigarette butt really belonged to Matisson, he believed the LA test to be more reliable than anything that came from Jones. “So what happened to her baby?”
“Who can say? Maybe he was stillborn as Matisson claims.”
“Or Matisson killed him as the cops suspect. Smothered the baby before it could even cry.”
“That’s a sad thought, but a possibility.”
He closed his eyes in relief.
“Hudson?” she said.
“What?”
“Do you still want to marry me? Maybe you should reconsider, now that—”
He caught her face between his hands. “Are you kidding? I want you to be my wife more than ever now that I don’t have to worry I’ll be an embarrassment to you.”
“I’ll always be proud of you, no matter what,” she told him.
Epilogue
Hudson was sweating despite the fact that it was cold in the hospital. Ellie was sweating, too. He could see beads of moisture on her upper lip as he fed her ice chips—which was all the doctor would allow her to have. She’d been in labor for twenty-four hours, and the pains were getting more intense. Watching her suffer killed him, made him wish he could do more than stand idly by, worrying that something terrible might happen to her or their child before this night was through. Ellie had become such an integral part of his life. He’d never dreamed he’d like being married as much as he did, couldn’t imagine having to go on without her.
He told himself he was overreacting. People had babies every day. And yet...Ellie’s delivery was turning into a long, agonizing process.
“I think you should give her a Cesarean,” he told their obstetrician, Dr. Billinger, when she came in to check on Ellie. Ellie’s parents had been there with them until midnight. They’d returned to Miami a month earlier and had come to California for the baby’s birth almost ten days ago—since Ellie had shot past her due date by a week. But when the nurse told them Ellie hadn’t even dilated to three yet, that the baby probably wouldn’t come until morning, they’d gone home to his place to get some rest.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Billinger said. “She’s progressing a little slower than I’d like, but there’s no need to panic. This is a first baby. First babies can take a while.”
“I don’t want to let this go on any longer,” Hudson insisted. “Don’t want to risk her.”
“It’ll be better for both mother and baby if she can give birth vaginally. Everything’s fine, Hudson.” The doctor patted his back as she’d been doing all day. Then she took hold of Ellie’s arm to get her attention. “You’re okay, aren’t you, Ellie?”
Ellie didn’t respond. She seemed to be somewhere deep inside herself, searching for the strength to endure. Hudson watched her muscles tighten as another contraction hit.
“This is too much for her,” he murmured to the doctor.
“She’d say something if it was. I have monitors on the baby that’ll let me know if he’s in distress.”
Hudson lowered his voice. “But if she’s only at three, the end isn’t in sight. And I’m afraid she wouldn’t tell us if it was too hard on her. She’ll keep hanging on. I don’t want her to suffer anymore.”
The doctor tried to speak to Ellie again, but Ellie ignored her. She hadn’t been talking much during the past hour. She looked totally spent. Hudson wished he could lend her his strength. They’d decided to go with a natural birth, but he felt Ellie had already given it her best shot.
“Ellie?” The doctor spoke more loudly.
Finally Ellie opened her eyes.
“How are you doing?”
Ellie looked as though she might attempt an answer, but another contraction hit right after the last one, and she cried out.
Hudson felt so helpless. Angry that the doctor wasn’t doing more, he pulled Billinger into a corner. “Will you do something?” he demanded.
The doctor glanced over at Ellie, who was trying to catch her breath, and nodded. But as soon as she checked Ellie again in preparation for whatever she had planned, she said, “Whoa! That happened fast. She’s in transition. She’s going to have the baby any minute.”
“What does that mean?” Hudson asked.
Billinger shot him a look. “It means you need to relax and let me do my job.”
“Hudson,” Ellie moaned.
He hurried back to her side. “I’m right here.”
“I need an epidural. Get me an epidural, okay?”
“It’s too late for that.” Billinger answered for him as two nurses came in and raised the stirrups on either side of the bed.
“Should I get a mirror so you can watch?” a nurse asked Ellie.
Ellie was obviously steeling herself for the next pain, but she managed a weak nod, and the nurse rolled a mirror to the bottom of the bed.
From that moment on, everything went into fast-forward. Hudson didn’t even have time to call his in-laws to tell them the baby was on his way before the doctor started encouraging Ellie to push, and the top of a dark head appeared.
“There’s the baby. Did you see that?” Billinger asked.
Hudson did see it, but he could hardly celebrate. Not yet. So many things could still go wrong... “Is everything okay?”
No one answered. They were too busy. Ellie was bearing down, and the doctor was trying to ease the delivery using oil.
When Garrison’s head finally emerged completely, tears filled Hudson’s eyes. He dashed a hand across his cheek to get rid of t
hem, but he couldn’t stop more tears from replacing those. Although the doctor held the baby’s head, Garrison looked purple—dead—and Ellie couldn’t seem to deliver the rest of him.
Hudson stumbled back as several nurses crowded the room. No one said anything, but he could feel their concern, knew something was wrong. One jumped onto the bed with Ellie and began to push right above Ellie’s pelvic bone to help her get Garrison’s shoulders out.
Panic made Hudson’s blood run cold. He feared his worst nightmare was coming true, and there was nothing he could do about it. But the whole room relaxed the second Garrison’s body slipped out.
The doctor suctioned the fluid from his lungs. “You have a son,” she said above the sound of his baby’s cry.
One of the nurses opened the front of Ellie’s hospital gown and laid the baby on her chest, skin to skin.
Hudson released his breath. Now that Garrison was out and Ellie seemed to be okay, he felt light-headed but steadied himself by putting one hand to the wall.
After clasping the baby to her, Ellie looked around at the nurses who were blocking her view. “Hudson,” she called. “Come meet your son.”
He managed not to stumble as he moved to the bed and bent to kiss her forehead. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he murmured. “So glad you both are.”
She laughed. “I’m better than okay. You can stop worrying.”
“Are you ready to cut the umbilical cord?” the doctor asked.
At that point he felt a little embarrassed, since his emotions had been so extreme. He should’ve had more faith. But everything that mattered to him in the whole world had been at stake. “Yeah,” he said and wiped his cheeks again as the doctor handed him the scissors.
Later, when both Ellie and the baby were cleaned up, the nurses and doctor were gone from the room and he was holding his sleeping son, Ellie gave him a tired smile. “You have such a serious expression on your face,” she said. “What are you thinking about?”
He wasn’t sure he should tell her. He didn’t want to bring her down when they were both feeling so euphoric. “Nothing.”
“Tell me,” she insisted.
He sighed. “My mother.” They’d known for the past two months that the pizza deliveryman—Stan Hinkle—who “found” him had also left him in the first place. After Matisson’s attempted blackmail hit the news, the police confronted Hinkle once again, at which point he admitted that he’d left Hudson under that hedge because his wife had gotten pregnant by another man, and he couldn’t face the prospect of looking at someone else’s child every day. He was leaving to deliver a pizza when she called to tell him she’d given birth in the bathroom. She’d wanted him to take her to the hospital, but he’d refused. He took the baby and left him at a neighboring house before driving down the street to drop off the pizza.
Hudson might’ve died under that hedge, except Hinkle forgot to deliver the bread sticks that were supposed to go with the pizza. When his manager sent him back, his conscience finally got the better of him. He’d picked up Hudson and turned him in to the authorities, claiming someone had abandoned him. Why Hinkle’s wife—Hudson’s mother—never stepped forward, Hudson didn’t know. Once she and Hinkle had broken up three years later, she got involved with someone else, started doing drugs and was killed in a motorcycle accident. “I wish she wasn’t gone—that you could meet her,” Ellie said.
“So do I,” Hudson said, but Stan Hinkle had denied him that possibility. Hudson thought he might be able to find his father if he hired another private investigator, but Stan knew only his first name, and after what Hudson had been through, he’d decided not to even look. He was happy with his life, happy with Ellie and Garrison. He didn’t want to bring in an unknown element, especially when there was no guarantee about the kind of man his father would be.
“What Hinkle did was so grossly unfair,” Ellie complained. “I hope he gets several years in prison.”
“I doubt he’ll wind up serving any time.”
“What? Last I heard, the police were going to try to get him on something.”
“I talked to the detective on the case a few days ago. It’s been thirty-two years—a bit long to prosecute him for child endangerment. And because he rescued me in the end, they won’t be able to make an attempted murder charge stick.”
“There’s always kidnapping!”
“But that would be tough to prove. With my mother gone, no one can say if she allowed him to do what he did or not. It doesn’t appear she did much to stop him. She didn’t even look for me after they broke up.” Which made him pretty certain she wouldn’t have been much of a mother in the first place...
“Still, it’s hard to believe he can do that to a baby and suffer no repercussions.”
Hudson ran a finger over the soft, downy cheek of his brand-new son. “What it comes down to is that my mother chose him over me. That’s how most people will see it. So I went into the system. At least Matisson and Jones will be serving time.”
She scowled. “Two years isn’t nearly long enough in my book.”
“You don’t get a lot for a failed attempt at blackmail, especially when there were no threats of physical violence. Either way, they can’t hurt us anymore.”
She tucked her hands under her pillow. “So, are you really going to be able to leave your past behind you?”
“I don’t want to hang on to that. I have too much to look forward to.” Hudson smiled as Garrison opened his eyes and stared up at him with a somber expression—one that gave Hudson the feeling he was trying to make sense of his new surroundings. “Hi, son. It’s your daddy,” he said.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed Ellie and Hudson’s story, don’t miss the next book in Brenda Novak’s SILVER SPRINGS series, RIGHT WHERE WE BELONG, coming soon from MIRA Books.
Keep reading for an excerpt from RIGHT WHERE WE BELONG by Brenda Novak.
“Brenda Novak doesn’t just write fabulous stories, she writes keepers.”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery
If you loved Until You Loved Me by New York Times bestselling author Brenda Novak,
don’t miss a single moment in the Silver Spring series, set in a picturesque
small town in Southern California where even the hardest hearts can learn to love again...
Finding Our Forever
No One but You
And don’t miss the next installment in this brand-new series:
Right Where We Belong
“Brenda Novak is always a joy to read.”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber
Join Brenda Novak for the Fairham Island series, where one woman discovers a box of photographs that evoke distant memories of a little girl who must’ve been her sister.
The Secret Sister
The Secrets She Kept
“The Secret Sister by Brenda Novak is the best romantic thriller I’ve read.”
—San Francisco Book Review
Or return to the small town of Whiskey Creek for page-turning romances set in the heart of the Gold Country! Collect the complete Whiskey Creek series today:
When We Touch (novella)
When Lightning Strikes
When Snow Falls
When Summer Comes
Home to Whiskey Creek
Take Me Home for Christmas
Come Home to Me
The Heart of Christmas
This Heart of Mine
A Winter Wedding
Discovering You
“A rare treat. Brenda Novak draws you in from the first page.”
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Right Where We Belong
by Brenda Novak
1
“You knew! You had to have known!”
The vitriol in those words caused the hair on the back of Savanna Gray’s neck to stand on end. She was just trying to pick up a gallon of milk at the supermarket with her kids, had never dreamed she might be accosted—although, since her husband’s arrest, it felt like everyone in town was staring daggers at her. The crimes Abe committed had shaken the small, insular town of Nephi, Utah, to the core.
“Don’t you dare run off! I know you heard me.”
Savanna froze. She had been about to flee. Her emotions were so raw she could barely make herself leave the house these days. She wished she could hole up with the curtains drawn and never face her neighbors again. But she had two children who were depending on her, and she was all they had left. Those children now looked up at her expectantly, and her son, Branson, who was eight, said, “Mommy, I think that lady’s talking to you.”
Gripping her shopping cart that much tighter, Savanna swung it around. She was determined to do a better job of defending herself against this type of thing than she had in the past. But then she recognized Meredith Caine. A video of Meredith—clothes torn, mascara smeared and lip bleeding as the same sister who was with her now tried to comfort her—had played on the news several times while police searched for the man who’d attacked her as she carried a load of laundry down to the basement of her apartment building.
