You Belong to Me

by Jennifer Greene

  The instant she pushed open the stairwell door, she saw the nurses’ station and immediately started tracking the room numbers…and then there it was—204.

  Inside, there were two beds. No shades had been drawn on the cloudless black night, and city lights winked outside. Blake was lying, too still, on one bed, his eyes closed, his leg elevated under the stark white sheet. She surged toward him, a knife of fear instinctively stabbing her heart. But he wasn’t alone in the room.

  Although her eyes had a hard time cutting away from Blake, her son was in the first bed. He lay back, watching a cop show with a dish of ice cream in one hand and some kind of fizzy pop in the other. Before either could even say hi, she had her arms wrapped around Nate tighter than a stranglehold.

  “Hey, Mom!” Nate survived the hug and the kiss. He even lit up when he first saw her, but then his face fell. “You aren’t gonna make me go home, are you? I’m having a great time.”

  “So the sheriff was telling me.” She tried to breathe normally again. Once absolutely positive her son was okay, she leaned back against Blake’s bed, touched his wrist, his hand. They had an IV going into his arm, and his skin looked pale, but he seemed to be breathing and sleeping normally. Enough for her to smile for her son. “From what I heard, you’re a hero. I can’t wait for you to tell me all about it.”

  “Well, it was so cool, Mom. I got to give him a shot and everything, just like I was the doctor. And he just went plonk, crashed on the ground. It was because of a bee.”

  “So the sheriff said. And from what I understood, you saved his life.”

  “Well, yeah. He’s my dad, after all.”

  Serena’s lips had been parted to ask for more story details, but now her mouth clamped shut. She tried to swallow. “What’d you just say?”

  “I said, yeah, he’s my dad. You know. That’s what made it important to be brave. I got to ride next to the sheriff. With the siren on. Just me and him, ‘cause they put Dr. Blake in the ambulance. That wasn’t scary, it was fun. I started to cry when they told me I couldn’t go with him, but once we got to the hospital, after a while they let me be in here with him. He just has to sleep, so I got a job. It’s my job to make sure nothing bothers him. They put tons and tons of med’cine into him and he just keeps snoozing.”

  Serena was still struggling to swallow. “Sweetheart, a second ago you called Dr. Blake your dad.”

  “Yeah, well.” He peered into his ice cream dish as if annoyed it was empty, then set it on the bed tray and flopped back. For a young man up way past his bedtime, he looked as happy as a self-indulgent sultan. An extremely dirty sultan. “I figured you guys were gonna tell me about it sooner or later. I just thought maybe I wasn’t supposed to talk about it until you said.”

  It was a good thing Serena was leaning on the bed. “But, honey, how did you know that Dr. Blake—”

  “Was my dad? Because of everything. We get sick the same way when we’re stung by bees. And especially in the beginning, he was so goofy around me. Just sitting and looking at me sometimes for no reason. And listening to every single thing I said. I mean, there had to be a reason he was that weird. I’m a kid. Nobody listens to kids. Not normal people, anyway. And then you guys were so yucky together.”

  “Yucky?”

  “Come on, Mom. Gimme a break. He always looked at you all mushy. It just kept getting worse. It was enough to make a guy gag. Anyway, even a dumb kid could have figured it all out ages ago.”

  “And you’re smart.”

  “Yeah, I’m smart.” Nate never doubted that his mom appreciated this. “And I haven’t had a chance to tell you the scary part yet. Not that I was scared. But when he went plonk? I didn’t know what to do, because I couldn’t wake him up and he couldn’t talk to me and it was starting to get dark—”

  “Sweetheart, what did you do?”

  Nate grinned with macho satisfaction. “I remembered that he was a doctor. And he had to have a phone, right? Because docs have phones. And I knew where his car was. Although that was the scary part, because it was a ways to the car and it was getting dark and there were bears and all…but then all I had to do was dial 9-1-1 and ‘splain to the lady.”

  “I’m so proud of you for being so brave. And for doing the right thing when you were scared.” Poor baby. He had to suffer through another strangling love hug from his mom. “You know what, Nate? That’s just what your dad would have done.”

  “Yeah. He’s probably gonna be so proud of me that he can’t stand it,” Nate announced with a world-weary sigh. “I’ll probably have to tell him the story over and over about how brave I was and everything.”

  “I think you’re right. In fact, I know you are. But in the meantime, how do you feel about him being your dad?”

  “Sheesh, Mom. You know. I’ve been waiting for my dad to come find me my whole life. I was just scared he wouldn’t like me, you know? And then I couldn’t figure out why you guys didn’t tell me so I could call him Dad. And I started to worry maybe he didn’t want me to call him Dad.”

  “Oh, Nate!”

  “It’s okay. I quit thinking about it. I mean, he thinks I’m great, you know? He tells me and tells me. And he’s way happy to be with me, you can see. So I just figured you grown-ups would have to figure out the rest, the way grown-ups do. One thing, though, Mom.”

  “What, hon?”

  “I think he wants to live with us. But I think he’s too shy to ask you. And I was thinking…”

  “You’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Serena murmured.

  “Uh-huh. I was thinking that I could put the computer in my bedroom. Then Dr. Blake could have the den for his own bedroom. So we already have enough space for him, you know?”

  Her son seemed to have a dozen plans for his dad. And it suddenly occurred to Serena that she had just as many plans for Blake, but so far, she hadn’t found the courage to say them out loud. Not to the one who mattered. In fact, not to either of the males she loved more than life.

  But that was about to change.

  Fast.

  For a woman who’d always embraced risk with both hands open, Serena suddenly understood why Blake had been hung up for so long on doing the right thing. It wasn’t so easy to move when your heart was perched precariously over a cliff with no safety net below.

  But she loved that man. And no matter how Serena considered the immediate decisions confronting her, that love provided the only answer she had—and the only choice.

  Blake could have sworn it was still midnight, but he opened his eyes to a stunning wall of sunshine. It took several moments to catalog his surroundings and get his bearings. The last thing he remembered was being on Kincaid land with Nate, the dark falling fast, the bee sting, praying he’d stay conscious for his son’s sake.

  His mind was still fuzzy with drugs, but it didn’t take a doctor to recognize a hospital room. His leg was still swollen some, but the bee sting site no longer felt like a concentrated forest fire. He was just raising a hand to push off the sheet when he saw her. Serena. Curled up in a chair, a pillow wedged against the wall, her bare toes in sight under an ivory sweater that she was using for a blanket.

  She made his heart stop, she was so beautiful. The sunlight pouring in made her hair shine like black gold, brushed her cheek, dipped some of that light into the open collar of her shirt. The pale blue shirt was wrinkled, her eyes had soft smudges from tiredness, and her mouth was so soft, so perfect, that he just wanted to stare at her and never stop.

  Then thoughts started bulleting through his mind. Serena had clearly been here for hours. She was here for him, when the only thing he ever wanted to do for Serena was be there, the same way. Instead he’d failed her yet again and jeopardized her son. Their son. Their six-year-old was the hero, not the man who’d wanted to be her hero so badly.

  Until that moment his mind had never put the hero thing into words, but for him it was like a birth-mark. His whole life, it had been part of him. He’d never had family to cling to,
never had role models in the men in his life, yet he had always understood that if you did the right thing, you could stand tall. Of all the people on the planet he’d wanted to stand tall for, though, there was only one who really mattered to him. Her. The one who made him feel wicked. The one who opened up his life to all the wicked, wonderful possibilities. The one person who had always made him feel good about himself, no matter who he really was or wasn’t.

  It wouldn’t bother him to fail someone else. Some failures happened in life; Blake was too old to fret being human. But not her. The only one he never wanted to fail was her, and he had from the beginning, getting her pregnant and then failing to be part of the picture. And now, last night, he’d risked their son.

  Her eyes suddenly fluttered open, squinted against the vibrantly stunning sunlight and then found him across the room. Immediately she pushed out of the chair, her sweater dropping to the floor as she hustled toward him. “Well, Doc. I’ll be darned. You almost look human this morning.”

  “I almost feel human this morning.” Human enough to ache just from the touch of her hand. “Where’s our boy?”

  She leaned a hip on the bed, her fingers still threaded with his. “Nate’s with his uncle Wolf, but I’ll tell you, he left here under major protest. He didn’t want to leave you at all. He also didn’t want to leave the nurses, who were giving him ice cream and cookies and pop on demand.” Her fingers squeezed his. “You’d better be prepared before seeing him this afternoon.”

  His heart braced. “Prepared for what?”

  “He’s going to want to tell you the story about saving your life at least five thousand times. And then another five thousand. We’re going to be creaking in our rocking chairs before he gets tired of telling it. And then there’s another little thing you’d be better be prepared for.”

  “What?”

  “He knows,” she said softly. “He figured it out weeks ago—that you were his dad. And he likes it.”

  “He couldn’t like it.”

  “Oh, yeah, he does, Blake. In fact, the way he put it to me…he’s been waiting for you to find him his whole life.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed, well aware that his mind was still foggy around the edges. “Serena, don’t mess with me right now. I can’t think that clearly.”

  But he could feel. The weight of her thigh on the bed. The texture of her slim, warm fingers tenting with his. The scent of her drifting on the morning sunlight, a little sandalwood, a little jasmine, a little pure Serena. Desire stirred in him, when it couldn’t. The antihistamine was still spinning his mind and his leg hurt like a cussword and he felt as though his worst fear had come true as far as being a failure…a failure in her eyes.

  No part of him could possibly have been aroused.

  Yet he was.

  And when she tightened her hand, he was more aroused yet.

  “You think I’m lying to you?” she murmured.

  “I think I haven’t done one right thing by Nate. Or you. No matter how hard I tried. But I’m sorry, Serena. So sorry that—”

  “Sorry that you forced that bee to sting you?”

  He frowned in confusion. “No, of course not. But that Nate was left alone and in such a dangerous position—”

  “Ah. Then it was your fault the bee stung you.”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “Don’t make fun.”

  For a few seconds she regarded him in silence, studying his face, his eyes. And then she said calmly, deliberately, “The nurse popped in about an hour ago. She checked your blood pressure and so on. I imagine you must feel like you were hit with a steamroller, from how they described your allergic reaction to me. But she said you’re doing great.”

  “Then I’m getting out of here.” He tried pushing at the sheet again, at least until she shook a finger at him.

  “Nope. Not until you’re released by the doctor, and he won’t be in to check you out until sometime after ten this morning.”

  “I am a doctor. And I’m fine. I just need a minute to get my head together.”

  “The nurse said you’d try to cause trouble.” Blake felt bereft when she moved her hand away and stood up. “She said you were a horrible patient last night. That everyone knows doctors make the worse patients, but you were really bad.” He watched her walk over to the door and deliberately push it closed. “You’re staying until you’re released by the doc, and that’s that.”

  He tried another fake scowl on her. “Did I know you had this bossy streak before?”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet, love.”

  Love. The word suddenly shimmered in the air between them like a perfumed gauntlet. Particularly when she came back, still barefoot, and perched on the hospital bed again, even closer than before.

  “Something’s happening here,” he mentioned.

  “Yeah, there is. I realize that you’re not feeling at all well yet…but sometimes a problem just won’t wait for a convenient time. It needs to be handled immediately. Do you know what your son told me?”

  “No, what?”

  “That he wants to move the computer into his bedroom, so that we can free up the den for you. So you can come live with us and have your own room.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “That was exactly my reaction. Uh-oh. Nate also said that he thought you were too shy to ask about coming to live with us, so I needed to do it. He didn’t coach me, but I think he had something like this in mind.” He felt the graze of her fingertips on his whiskery cheek, the stroke of a kiss in the way she looked at him. “Would you come be with us…be the husband of my heart and the father of my son and the hero that I happen to desperately love?”

  He suddenly forgot how to breathe. “Serena, I think I’m light-headed.”

  “Now don’t start getting worried. I wouldn’t really ask you that. I’ve told you before I could never be with a man if he felt beholden. Like he had to be with me. Like he owed me. So that’s out of the question, but the problem, Blake, is that your son thinks you need to be living with us.”

  “Damn. I must be having some kind of medication reaction, because now I seem to be imagining things. Hallucinating. Hearing voices.”

  “Yeah, and you’re gonna hear a lot more voices before this is over, Doc.” She leaned over him. So close that he could see the emotion blazing in her eyes. See her disheveled hair sweeping like a black satin cape over her shoulder. See her lips coming toward him. The kiss was softer than silver. “You don’t have to do anything to be loved, Blake.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I always understood why you felt you had to prove yourself. You had two fathers who didn’t know how to love. But that was their flaw, not yours. Their loss, not yours. You never had to prove anything. You were always worth loving.”

  He wiped a hand over his face. “Is this lecture in lieu of anything?”

  “Yes. It’s a warning and a threat. Which isn’t a fair thing to do to a man who was as sick as you were last night, but that’s how the cookie crumbles.”

  If she was going to look at him that way, she could threaten him from now until eternity and he’d ask for more. “Okay. So what is this particular threat?”

  Her smile disappeared. “You either say the right words to me, Blake, or I’m out that door. For good. And that really isn’t a threat. It’s a promise.”

  She could, he thought, have some mercy on a man as sick as he’d been. Yet he saw no mercy in her eyes. Her expression was dominated by an emotion. A singular, consuming emotion. He couldn’t doubt how seriously she meant this test. “Serena?”

  “What?”

  His tongue felt thick, his throat rusty. “I love you. I love you more than my life. When you’re in the same room, my soul feels bigger, my life, all the possibilities. When you leave the room, all the shadows come back. I’m not the man I want to be. The joy in life is never the same, because you are the joy of my life and you have been from the day I met you.”

  Tears misted her eyes. “Damn it, Blake, if
you felt like that, why couldn’t you have said one word about it long before this?”

  “Because you had that issue thing. About feeling beholden. And because…because you’re everything. I couldn’t imagine how you could need me. You’re sunshine on the inside. You love everything about life. You’re not afraid of anything. What could I ever have to offer you?”

  “The only thing I ever wanted,” she whispered.

  “A hundred million men could love you, and all of them’d be better than me.”

  “See? That’s where you’re all screwed up. And I warned you. I’m leaving—out that door for good—unless you say the right words instead of the wrong ones.”

  “All right, all right.” Sweat—possibly from the allergic reaction—dotted his forehead. He hooked a gentle fist around the rope of her hair, not pulling, not even grasping hard. Just willing her not to leave. It was a second before he could breathe past the panic that she could walk away from him. “Would you marry me?”

  “Humph. I can’t imagine why. Everybody gets married these days, then divorced a few years later. It’s too much trouble, and for what? I make a living. I can support our son. And I can certainly love someone without a piece of paper in my hand.”

  There was a sudden knock on the door. “Dr. Remmington? This is Nurse Hathway.”

  “Go away.”

  “We’re supposed to bring your breakfast in.”

  “I don’t want breakfast and I don’t want anyone in here.” He never stopped looking at Serena. “I need an hour alone.”

  The nurse obviously wasn’t budging that easily. “Serena? Are you in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. Okay, then.”

  Again there was silence, then the thud of quiet footprints. And then nothing, but his eyes facing her eyes. “I don’t give a damn about a piece of paper, either. It’s not a nice, safe, legal marriage I want with you. I’m asking you a different kind of question entirely.”