You Belong to Me

by Jennifer Greene

  Stories of family and romance beneath the Big Sky!

  “You’re angry, aren’t you, Blake?”

  “I’m not sure angry begins to cut it.” He paused to take a calming breath. He needed to concentrate to keep his cool. “Serena, I happen to be allergic to bee stings. The same kind of allergy that Nate has. The kind that I told you is commonly inherited.”

  “I didn’t know about your allergy.”

  “You had no reason to. The subject never came up in the time we knew each other. But that’s not the point,” he said impatiently. “Even if the bee-sting allergy had never come up, I could see right off that Nate may have inherited his good looks from you, but he didn’t get that square chin or the shape of his head from you.”

  “No, he definitely didn’t,” she agreed softly.

  “He’s my son, isn’t he?”

  One word. “Yes.”

  JENNIFER GREENE

  You Belong to Me

  JENNIFER GREENE

  lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and an assorted menagerie of pets. Michigan State University has honored her as an “outstanding woman graduate” for her work with women on campus.

  Jennifer has written more than seventy love stories, for which she has won numerous awards, including four RITA® Awards from the Romance Writers of America, and both their Hall of Fame and Lifetime Achievement Awards.

  You’re welcome to contact Jennifer through her Web site at www.jennifergreene.com.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  One

  “You’re going to be okay, Nate. I know you’re feeling bad, but Dr. Carey will know just what to do.” Serena Dovesong slammed on the brakes, yanked open the driver’s door of her rusty red pickup and hurled around the front of the truck to the passenger’s side. At rocket speed, she had her hands on her son.

  “No, no, don’t try to move on your own, sweetie. Just let Mommy carry you. A couple more minutes and we’ll be inside the doctor’s office. Everything’s going to be just fine.” Her heart was thumping to a frantic drumbeat, but she kept her voice as soothing as a love song. “Nothing to be scared of, lovebug. Nothing at all. Just hold on to Mom.”

  She was aware of leaving the keys and her purse in the truck, but carrying Nate was all she could handle. Besides, it wasn’t as if she cared whether anyone stole the stuff. They could have it. They could have her truck, her money, and anything she owned—as long as her son was all right. And man, it had been a long time since she’d had to physically carry her six-year-old. He was heavier than a mountain. Please, God. Please…

  The instant she charged onto Willow Brook Road, a car horn furiously blared, nearly scaring the wits out of her. She hadn’t looked. Not just because she was so worried about Nate that she couldn’t think, but because there was no reason to expect traffic—not on a blistering hot August afternoon in the quiet Montana town of Whitehorn.

  The car swerved and Serena kept running, her arms cradling her son, sweat beading on her forehead and every place her baby’s body touched hers. She always stayed cool in a crisis. Always. But damn. Nate’s skin was clammy and he was limp in her arms. The darn kid should have been giving her a hard time about being carried like a baby. He should have been galloping around the street, giggling at the top of his lungs. He should have been noisy and mischievous and by this time in the day, she should have been cleaning up at least one scrape or cut, because Nate was an exuberant life lover and never had been afraid of a damn thing.

  Nor was his mom.

  Usually.

  Serena gave herself credit for having an unusual amount of courage. But not where her son was concerned. The thought of anything happening to Nate drowned her heartbeat in a river of fear.

  The sun fried through her dark hair, burned through her sandals. It had to be a hundred and ten, and the big sky looked bleached out and cloudless, not even a mist cloaking the Crazy Mountains to the west. And then, blessedly, there was sudden cool shade as she used her hip to push open the door to Dr. Carey Kincaid’s office. Instantly she smelled antiseptic and alcohol, saw the usual lineup of miniature bodies in the pediatrician’s waiting room, but the sights and sounds passed by in a blur.

  “Serena? And Nate? What’s wrong?” The buxom receptionist jumped up from her chair when she saw Serena hurtling past with Nate in her arms.

  This was no hoity-toity big-city medical facility where anyone had to worry about formal rules. There were no strangers in Whitehorn. No one was going to misunderstand if she charged into the inside examining rooms without an appointment. “I need Dr. Carey! Right now! I almost headed for the emergency room, but her office was closer. This won’t wait. Nate got stung by a bee. I know that sounds like nothing, but something’s wrong. The stinger’s out, and I put an ice pack on it, did all the obvious first-aid things—”

  “Dr. Carey’s not here today,” the receptionist said, unrattled. “But you should have gotten the letter about her expanding the practice to include Dr. Remmington. In fact, he just started with us last week—”

  “—but Nate broke out in this clammy sweat. And he started acting really dizzy, breathing in this strange way. It was just a bee sting! Only, in a matter of minutes, he suddenly seemed so sick, so I just grabbed him and drove here. I—” Serena suddenly stopped. “Did you say ‘Remmington?’”

  “That’s right. Blake Remmington. The kids have been calling him Dr. Blake. Head into the third room on the right, it’s free, and I’ll go run and get the doctor.”

  “Hurry.”

  Serena heard the frantic note creep into her voice and purposefully lowered her tone—just as she purposefully banished any emotional response to hearing Blake’s name. She could easily have ignored an earthquake right then. Nothing mattered but her son. Nothing. She forced a reassuring smile for Nate as she laid him on the white-papered examining table. “Hey, shortstop. You’re looking better already.” He was looking worse, his beautiful golden skin now a strange, alien gray.

  “I want to go home, Mom.”

  “And we will. In just a little bit.”

  “My arm hurts.”

  “I’ll bet it does.” When she lifted the ice pack, her eyes stung with fear. The welt was still swelling. Bracing Nate with one hand—she was afraid he was dizzy enough to fall—she flicked on the cold faucet at the sink with the other and grabbed paper towels.

  “I don’t want to see the doctor. I don’t want any shots. I just want to go home, Mom.”

  “Hey, me, too.” She combed her fingers through her son’s thick, straight black hair and pressed her lips against his flushed forehead, even as she was pressing the wet towels on the bee sting welt. “You know what? I’m rethinking that computer game you wanted.”

  “Wild Warriors?”

  “Yeah, that one.” The game that bugged her because it played up all the Native American stereotypes. The one she swore she’d never get him no matter how much he argued. But that was yesterday. “I’m thinking that you’ve been such a good squirt lately that you deserve a present.”

  “You said it was a dumb game. You said I was spending too much time on the computer.” But hope was starting to shine in his eyes—enough hope to make him forget his hurt arm, at least for a second.

  “I do think the game is dumb,” Serena replied. “And I also think you’re spending way too much time on the computer. But if you really want this Wild Warriors, what the hey.” She wanted to buy him the
game. And everything else he’d ever wanted. Anything to make him feel better. Anything. If Nate asked her at that second for the moon and the stars, she’d have sold her soul to try to obtain those for him, too.

  “Mom. I’m not crying, because I’m too brave to cry. But I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking about it hard. My arm hurts. It really, really hurts. I am not having fun and I want to go home—”

  From just behind her Serena heard the familiar masculine bass voice, rolling out like a sax playing slow, lazy blues.

  “I’m Dr. Blake, Nate. And I can see right away what a brave, strong boy you are. But let’s see if we can make you feel better so you won’t have to try so hard.” Blake Remmington stepped calmly into the room, his eyes fixed on Nate. “Did your mom have the chance to tell you that we’re old friends? I always did think she was one of the most special people on the planet. I’ll bet you think that, too, huh? Wow, that’s quite a bump. I’m thinking you must have tangled with a bee the size of the Crazy Mountains. And I want you to tell me about it, but not yet. Right now I want you to be real quiet, and just breathe in and out for me, okay? Slow. Real easy. I can’t hear anything else when I have the stethoscope in my ears, but after I listen to your heart, then you can talk all you want.”

  Serena remembered the last time she’d seen a magician work his magic. Blake wasn’t that different. He’d started talking from the minute he’d walked in, but it wasn’t idle or gregarious chitchat. Instead he was using that easy, mesmerizing voice of his to soothe his young patient—and it worked. Nate fell silent as the doctor pressed the stethoscope disc on his chest and back. Blake’s attention was focused completely on her son. And so was Serena’s.

  Still she felt Blake’s swift glance at her, the way he inhaled her in a single gulp…and heaven knew, she was just as aware of him. Her nerves vibrated like a tuning fork identifying an old, familiar chord.

  The years had changed him, but not much.

  Not enough.

  He wore no lab coat, just a blue T-shirt over chinos—casual, comfortable clothes that couldn’t possibly intimidate a child. But the shirt was tucked in, the chinos belted, the city haircut conservative. Even in college, Blake had always colored between the lines—not because he was a follower in any way, but because he seemed to have been born with an old-fashioned sense of honor. Blake Remmington had always been the kind of man who said the right thing and did the right thing, no matter what the cost to himself.

  Even barefoot, she knew he was an easy six-two, with the lean, lithe build of an athlete. He had no waist, no butt, but both his arms and shoulders were corded with muscles that stretched the seams of his shirt. He wasn’t a muscle man, just physical by nature. Though his body hadn’t softened in the last seven years, Serena sensed a hidden softness in him, just as she had back then.

  His hair was a rich, dark brown; his skin ruddy. His eyes, a nonstop source of fascination for her—or they used to be. His eyes weren’t just blue. They were compelling, sexy, changeable, sometimes the cold blue of an icy glacier, sometimes the hot blue of a raging fire. Whether they were cold or warm depended on whether you’d done something to tick him off or were a lover in his bed.

  Nothing could be hotter than Blake’s blue eyes—Serena knew that personally—but he never willingly let down his hair, even when the lights went off. He valued control, particularly in himself. The only time he openly revealed the soft side of himself was when he was around children. She hadn’t known he’d become a pediatrician, but she remembered how he was around kids even as a med student. A child looked at him and instantly trusted. Somehow kids sensed his gentleness, his integrity. Maybe they even intuited that this was a man who could loudly lose his temper, yet never would with a child. That was an absolute. There were a lot of things that used to be absolutes with Blake Remmington.

  Her palms suddenly sticky, her throat wanted to swallow on a gulp of nerves. And not—for that instant—because she was scared for her son.

  “Serena?” His voice was like music, low and mystical. But where that magical tone had worked to calm her son, it had the opposite effect on her. “Did you see exactly what stung him? Whether it was a bee, hornet, wasp, what?”

  “Yes, I saw it. As far as I could tell, it was just a plain old ground bee.”

  “Unusually strong reaction for just a plain old ground bee. Nate, do you remember if you were ever stung by a bee before today?”

  “I guess. I don’t remember ‘xactly…”

  Serena stepped in. “He’s been stung twice. Once, when he was two years old. And another time last fall. He was miserable both times—who isn’t miserable with a bee sting? But this time it was so much worse. He’s all right, though, isn’t he…” She refused to phrase that like a question.

  “He will be.”

  She watched Blake impatiently push the stethoscope behind his neck, out of the way, and give a smile to her son that took her breath away. His strong, tanned hands circled Nate’s wrists, taking his pulse without the little one knowing. “Do you happen to know if you’re allergic to bee stings, sport?”

  “I’m tough,” Nate informed him.

  “Hey, I can see that you’re very tough and really strong. But you can be tough and strong and still be allergic to something.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I’m not ‘llergic, because my mom woulda told me. “

  Blake hadn’t looked at her again and didn’t now. “Serena, is his father allergic?”

  She gulped. Fast. “I don’t know. I never happened to ask and the question just never came up.”

  “Okay. Let’s go at the problem another way. Were each of the previous stings noticeably worse than the one before?”

  “Yes. Yes, for absolute sure. The first one just welted up like a mosquito bite, really. But then the one he got last fall— I wasn’t there. He was fishing with my two brothers. But by the time he got home, his leg was really swollen, and I thought maybe he’d been stung by a wasp instead of a bee, and no one knew. But this time—today—I was there. Right there. I had the stinger out in two shakes. I elevated his arm, had it cleaned and on ice so fast—”

  “And yet he still had this reaction,” Blake finished for her. Again Serena watched him examine Nate, his fingers testing for swelling under his arms, on his throat, yet never losing his reassuring smile for her son. “Do you know how much you weigh, big guy?”

  “A’ course.”

  Blake grinned at the number. “Okay, and now can you tell me how old you are?”

  “Sure. Six.”

  “Well, I could see what a strong, brave boy you were, but I still never guessed—” Something abruptly changed in his tone. Something sharp, something fast. “Six years old, huh?”

  For maybe five seconds nothing seemed to move or breathe in the examining room. Blake could have been a marble statue, permanently carved in a bent posture over Nate. He never looked at her, never looked away from her son. He just didn’t seem to be breathing for those few seconds.

  “What’s wrong?” Serena surged forward.

  He acted as if he hadn’t heard her. He just talked to Nate as if only the two of them were in the room. “Okay, Nate. You’re pretty miserable, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. It hurts. And I feel really awful.”

  “I know you do. But we’re going to give you some medicine right now to help you feel better.” Blake strode to the door, opened it, and said something quietly to the nurse. He was back at Nate’s side in seconds. “This medicine is called an antihistamine. It’s going to make you feel a little light-headed, but that’s the worst of it, and that part will last only for a little while. After that, you might feel sleepy. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”

  “No. Can I go home then?”

  “Well, let me tell you the plan. We’re going to try that medicine as soon as the nurse brings it in, and then I want you to stay here for a little while because I want to make sure it works. If you start feeling better, it’s an A-OK and you’re outta here
. But just in case that medicine isn’t the best one for you, I want you to stick around for a few more minutes so I’ll know it, because then I could try a different type of special medicine. You get me? One way or another, we’re going to make sure you feel better. You okay with that plan?”

  “Yeah. That sounds good.” Or it did for a second. Serena knew her son, and sensed the instant Nate smelled a skunk in the woods. “Hey, you’re not talking about giving me a shot, are you?”

  “Yup.” Blake’s tone was smoother than butter. “And I have to tell you a secret, Nate. Don’t tell your mom. Don’t tell anyone, okay? But I really hate shots.”

  Nate’s eyes had instantly welled, but now those tears hovered without falling. “You hate shots, too?”

  “Oh, man. I sure do,” Blake promised him.

  “Well, me, too. And I really don’t want one right now.”

  “I wouldn’t, either,” Blake said sympathetically. “You already had a terrible day. It’s just not fair to have to get a shot, too, is it?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “If it were me, now, I’d be conning my mom out of something I really wanted after a day like this.” The nurse quietly walked in, and Blake smoothly blocked Nate’s view of the needle as he kept talking. “Like a new book. Or a root beer float. Or getting to rent a movie you wanted to see. Something tells me that your mom is going to be real sympathetic this afternoon if you happen to want something. You being so brave and all, how can she resist? I haven’t kept track, but were there some good movies that came out this summer?”

  “Yeah, you bet. In fact…” Tears suddenly gushed from Nate’s eyes. “Hey.”

  “Count to five, Nate. Then it’ll be over. It’s a fast one,” Blake promised him. “And then I have to tell you and your mom something… There, see, it’s all done. That’s it. And now, just in case you feel a little woozy, lay there for me, okay? And listen.” To the nurse, he murmured, “Thanks, Patrice.”

  When the nurse left the room, he met Serena’s eyes. But his expression had completely changed. The first way he’d looked at her—that pulse-rocking, hormone-stirring, oh-man-how-great-to-see-you look—had disappeared. This was the cold-blue formal look he reserved for strangers.