by Laurie Paige
“Stupid,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t have come.”
She stopped herself from leaning into him as the words penetrated the haze forming around her. “Why?”
A frown settled on his brow as he took a quick, harsh breath. “Because I can’t be around you and not want you. It was foolish to think we could be friends. Or go back to a casual basis after…after…”
“After we made love,” she supplied.
“I didn’t want involvement,” he told her, so sweetly earnest she wanted to kiss him. “I didn’t want the responsibility for another person’s happiness. Then there was the accident. I was worried about you. What I didn’t expect, didn’t figure into the equation, was the passion.”
“I know. It shocked me, too. A little,” she added truthfully. “So where do we go from here? Do you want me to transfer to another hospital?”
“No,” he said sternly.
“Then what?”
“I’m not sure. I think we both need time to think this through and make sure this is where we want to go.”
She wanted to argue that she was sure, but looking into his eyes, she kept silent. The twin pits of hell were again reflected in those dark depths. “You’re right. Let’s give each other some space, then—” She shrugged.
“Then we’ll see what comes next,” he murmured, brushing her lips once with his thumb, then releasing her.
He stared intently into her eyes for another second, then he stepped away from her. With a troubled frown, he walked out.
In the silence that followed his departure, she considered the implications of their conversation. One thing she knew—being with her didn’t open the possibilities to a glorious future for him as it did for her. It only reminded him of all he’d lost.
* * *
The atmosphere was strained in the E.R. when she went in at one that afternoon. The usual Saturday mishaps arrived via ambulance or private vehicle, usually driven by wild-eyed relatives or friends.
Jenna found that she and Eric worked together as competently as ever, no matter what their emotional stress might be. The other nurses were nervy around him, she noticed. The very grimness of his expression was enough to silence any unnecessary chatter.
“This is the third time you’ve been in this year,” Eric said to a seven-year-old. “Isn’t it time you learned not to pick up stuff off the floor in a store and eat it?”
The boy gazed at him with big brown eyes that would soften a polar bear’s heart. “It looked like candy.”
“You had no idea what it was,” the doctor said. “You’re a smart kid. Don’t be stupid in the future. You’ll make plenty of other mistakes without repeating this one. I don’t want to see you in here again, understand?”
The mother looked rather offended, but the child nodded. Jenna kept her expression neutral as she labeled a specimen for the lab, then cleaned the stomach pump and related equipment.
The mother and son left. Eric took the paperwork to his office to finish, and she went to the cafeteria for her dinner break.
“You look tired,” a feminine voice said.
Jenna glanced at her friend. “Rachel,” she said warmly. “You’re working rather late yourself.”
The other nurse nodded and settled into a chair with a carton of juice. She covered a yawn. “This has been a hard day.” She sighed.
Jenna didn’t ask if there had been a death. Oncology was a difficult field, worse than trauma cases in some ways.
“We’re making enormous strides in fighting cancer,” Rachel murmured, “and we win some cases, but we also lose.”
“Some losses hurt more than others. Who was it?”
Rachel massaged her temples. “A sixteen-year-old boy. Cancer of the bone. It had spread to his spine. He loved baseball. He wanted to make it to the majors.”
Jenna listened as her friend spoke quietly about the youth. He’d shared his dreams with Rachel. He’d introduced her to his girlfriend.
“He was bright, talented and friendly, a good person,” Rachel finished, grief clouding her eyes.
“That’s his legacy then,” Jenna said. “Years from now, perhaps at a class reunion, his girlfriend will think of him and her memories will be sweet.”
Rachel squeezed her arm. “Time for me to get home. Thanks for letting me talk it out. That helped. Come over tomorrow for lunch. Are you free, or is a certain doctor demanding all your time?”
Jenna managed a careless smile. “No such luck. I’d love to have lunch with you. Will Bryce be there?”
“No, he and a friend are taking part in a golf tournament for a local charity. The nursery is finished, and I’m dying to show it off to someone.”
After Rachel left, Jenna ate her balanced, healthy meal and pondered Life with a capital L. Fate could be unkind, but people survived…most of them…
Tears gathered behind her eyes as a sense of sadness came over her. Her child would never know a father. Would he feel this as a loss in his life? Would he see her as selfish to want a baby without providing a complete family to help raise him?
Still in this sentimental mood, she returned to the E.R. Things were quiet. Eric’s office was closed and dark. He’d gone home for the day. She worked steadily until ten, then drove home and let herself into the silent condo.
“We’ll get a dog,” she promised the baby as she went up the stairs and prepared for bed. “Will that work as a father substitute?”
She realized it was a bit late to be thinking of that. Lying in the bed where she’d experienced such bliss, she knew why her thoughts were haunting her. She wanted Eric as the father for her son. She wanted him as her lover. She wanted him as her love.
* * *
Sunday dawned clear and bright. The air was fragrant with the scent of spring flowers. Jenna watered the pots on the patio, picked a few dead flowers off the shrubs around her place, then freshened up for lunch with her friend.
Driving to Rachel’s new home, the impressive Armstrong mansion, she felt a few pangs of envy. Not for the house or the Armstrong money, but for the love Rachel and Bryce had found. He behaved as if the child Rachel carried was his.
Suppressing the feeling, she put on a smile for her long-time friend and actually had a thoroughly enjoyable visit. The baby’s room, done in pink and gold with genuine antique furniture that had been in the Armstrong family for generations, was perfect for the girl Rachel was expecting.
Driving home later that afternoon, Jenna was truly happy for her friend. She sighed contentedly. Maybe one couldn’t have everything, but she had plenty of good things—friends, a father who would be a wonderful grandparent to her son, a job she loved. Who was complaining?
At the next street, she noticed the sign and the elegant rock garden planted at the entrance to an expensive subdivision. Eric lived in here, she recalled. On an impulse, she slowed and turned in. She just wanted to see the area.
At the last house on a winding street, she spied his SUV. Her heart lurched when she saw his familiar figure in the yard, which looked freshly mown. A riding lawn mower was visible through the open door of a three-car garage.
His eyes met hers. She slowed at the curb and stopped.
“Hello,” he said, coming to the street and speaking when she rolled down the passenger-side window.
“Hi.” After a brief silence, she added, “I happened to be in the neighborhood. I had lunch with Rachel.” The excuse sounded terribly lame.
“Come in,” he invited. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”
She turned off the key and got out when he came around and opened her door. They walked up the long drive made of pavers and lined with lush landscaping.
“Did you have a professional do this?” She gestured toward the flower beds and the paths between them, all laid out for minimum water usage and maintenance.
He opened the door so she could enter the house. “I used a computer program to lay it out, then had a friend who owns a nursery put in the plants.”
The h
ouse was cool and completely silent once they were inside with the door closed. They were in a den with a large-screen TV and leather furniture at one end and a reading chair with a table and lamp beside it at the other. The wall was lined with bookshelves.
“Do you read a lot?” she asked, peering at the many volumes on the shelves.
“The decorator selected most of the books. I’ve read all of them,” he said, leading the way into a dream kitchen of light cherry cabinets and stainless steel appliances and tile floors in warm tones of slate.
“This is lovely. Even I could probably cook a gourmet meal in here,” she joked.
He took two tall glasses from a cabinet and filled them with ice from the refrigerator dispenser. After pouring tea in, he handed one to her. He watched her while he took a long, cool drink. “Come on,” he said.
She followed him from room to room, each one perfectly furnished and immaculate. It reminded her of the model homes used by builders to showcase their work, beautiful but devoid of the little things that meant someone lived there.
“This is my office,” he said, escorting her into a room in the back of the house. Unlike the rest of the home, the room was messy. The desk was littered with papers and files. A pair of jogging shoes had been pulled off and left in front of the French doors to the patio. “I’m cleaning out a bunch of old stuff, tax records and such.”
“I see.” She walked to the double doors. There was a grassy backyard, just right for croquet or a game of badminton, or just tossing a ball back and forth. Beyond the lawn was a fenced area filled with grasses and wildflowers.
“My wife planned on having a pony for the kids.”
She nodded. Kids. Plural. They’d wanted more than one. For a second, her throat closed up. She nodded again while she fought for control. Using skills learned in her work, she forced air into her lungs, one breath, another, then another, until she was calm.
“There’s a guest bedroom down here,” he continued, “and four upstairs, each with its own bath.” He laughed. “I grew up in a house with one bathroom for six people. My grandmother lived with us, and she metered the time each of us three kids spent in the shower. I learned to bathe in five minutes flat.”
“Sounds like plenty of time to me,” she quipped, giving him a smile. She lifted the glass, saw it was empty and wondered when she’d drunk the tea. She had no memory of it.
“Here, I’ll get you a refill.”
Before she could protest, he took her glass and left the room. In the silence, she could hear a clock ticking.
Glancing around, she spotted a grandfather clock against the wall behind the desk. Going to it, she examined the precision pendulum and weights that kept it going for a couple of weeks. Her father had a similar one. She’d always found its steady ticking a comfort in the days after her mother had passed away when she was alone in the house, doing homework and waiting for her father to come home.
Turning from the clock, she smiled at the papers on the desk. Clearing out old stuff was a good sign, a step in the right direction, in her opinion.
A letter caught her eye. A pen lay on the page as if the writer had stopped while in the middle of it.
A shock rippled over her when she recognized the name at the top. Unable to refrain, she leaned over the desk chair and read the swiftly written lines in which he’d poured out his grief and sorrow to his deceased wife for hurting her with his neglect, his wish that they could have had another chance. It ended in despair…
I know life goes on and that a person must move on, too. I’ve met someone, slept with her, but I’m not sure I can ever love again or share what we had. I’m not sure I want to.
The letter stopped there. It was one of remorse, but more than that, it was one of love, a deep, abiding love that had never died. It was a letter to the woman who filled his heart.
That woman wasn’t her.
Jenna heard his steps in the kitchen. Panicked by emotions she couldn’t contain, she rushed out the elegant doors, around the house and down the drive. She was in her car when Eric came out the front door. He called her name, but she didn’t answer.
“Jenna, it isn’t what you think,” he called, running toward the street.
She’d left the keys in the ignition, so it took only a turn to start the engine and speed away, leaving him looking concerned as he watched her leave. It wasn’t until she was back on the main county road to town that she could think again. Tears kept clouding her vision so that she had to continually blink in order to see.
He couldn’t possibly know what she thought. She didn’t know herself. Except that she’d been a fool to think she could make a difference in his life. And stupid to fall in love with him.
As she rounded a sharp curve, she blinked again, but the scene didn’t change. Two cars were barreling side by side down the two-lane road, racing each other.
There was a shallow ditch and stone wall on either side. Having no choice, she swung the wheel hard to the right and planted both feet on the brake pedal. She managed to cut the wheel back to the left just before impact with the wall and hoped it would be a glancing blow.
A tree loomed in front of her. She wrapped a protective arm across her abdomen. “Please,” she whispered. “Eric, we need you.”
It was the last thing she remembered.
CHAPTER 10
Eric got a call from the emergency-room receptionist just as he sat down on the back patio with a cool beer. After Jenna had taken off, he’d showered and changed in order to give both of them time to think things through before they faced each other again. He knew he had to be certain about what he wanted to say. It would affect their future. And that of the child.
“Thompson,” he said into the receiver.
The news stopped his heart for a second, then sent it into overdrive. He listened, asked a few questions then hung up. Jenna had been run off the road by two guys who were drag-racing. She’d bounced off a stone wall and crashed into a tree. She was in surgery to rejoin a cut artery and close a wound in her leg. She’d lost a lot of blood.
Dear God.
Grabbing the keys off the kitchen counter, he hurried to his car. In less than a minute, he was on his way to the hospital as history repeated itself, only this time it was Jenna who’d been in the accident.
At least she was still alive. Not like the other time. He forced the thought at bay.
After parking in his usual spot, he ran inside. “Which O.R.?” he asked the older woman at the desk. She was the one who’d thought to call him.
“It’s finished,” she said.
His heart stopped, literally stopped.
“She’s in recovery now,” the receptionist added.
He glared at the woman who’d handled the emergency-room admittance forms almost as long as he’d been born. She smiled serenely at him and gestured toward the swinging doors. He turned toward them.
Composing himself, he went down the corridor to the surgery recovery area. Three beds were occupied in the rooms surrounding the nursing station. Jenna was in the first.
He went inside, his gaze automatically taking in the readings on the monitoring equipment. Then he bent over the protective railing and looked into her face.
She had the pale, waxy appearance of someone who’d just gone through a major trauma, someone near death.
He took her wrist, needing to feel the beat of her pulse for himself. For a second he couldn’t find it. A ripple of anguish ran through him.
His eyes went to the monitor. Her heart was steady. He found the pulse and counted. The oxygen monitor showed full saturation. So, all the signs were good. The relief was almost as painful as the fear had been.
A second monitor showed the baby’s heart rate. It was fast, but not alarming. The child may have been bumped around, but he was still nestled securely in the cradle of his mother’s body.
“Good,” Eric said aloud, feeling the tension seep from his neck. The phone rang beside the bed. He picked it up. “Yes?” he said, n
ot ready to talk to anyone.
“This is Rachel. Is Jenna all right?”
His impatience evaporated. Jenna had loyal friends who loved her. Something, his heart or soul or whatever, swelled until it filled his chest to the bursting point. “She’s fine. So is Stevie.”
“Stevie? Oh, the baby,” Rachel said. “Yes, she’s fine,” she said to someone in the room with her. “What happened?”
He explained all that he knew. He’d no sooner hung up than the phone rang again. This time it was Lily. He went through the facts again. After four more calls from friends and co-workers, he recorded a message and routed calls to the voice mail.
Then he waited.
The night passed, hour by slow hour. Jenna didn’t wake or move. When he held her hand or touched her forehead, she was cool, as if she were made of wax.
But her signs were steady, and at last he fell asleep in the chair, his dreams strange as he ran through a maze, but couldn’t find his way either to the center or to the outside.
* * *
“Eric?”
Jenna narrowed her eyes and studied the man whose hand rested on top of hers. He had a growth of beard on his face. She’d seen that twice…the morning after he’d spent the night on her sofa and the one after he’d spent the night in her bed.
He opened his eyes and stared into hers. Then he smiled, a slow, sexy smile that stirred up things in her heart. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” She looked around. “I’m in the hospital. The wreck—”
Panic hit her. She slipped her hand away from his and laid it on her tummy.
“He’s okay,” Eric said. “He probably didn’t like the jouncing around, but he’s not hurt.”
“My leg hurts.”
“A piece of metal sliced through an artery. It’s been repaired, but you’ll have to stay off your feet for a few weeks until it heals.”
She checked the monitors. “It’s kind of odd to observe your own heartbeat and everything. I suppose that’s better than the alternative, like not having one to check.”
“Stupid young punks,” he said fiercely. “You could have been killed, you and Stevie.”
