Her Secret Valentine

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Not to be dissuaded, Ashley continued, “And I can’t find my favorite black bra and black satin panties either.”

  Cal had done laundry once since she’d been back. So had she. “Maybe they’re with the dress?” he said, struck by how pretty she looked this morning—her golden skin glowing with health, her cheeks flushed a becoming peach.

  Ashley added a tiny bit of butter and a generous amount of blackberry jam to her toast. “I can’t believe this!”

  Neither could Cal. Had he realized she was likely to want her dress and that particular set of undies, he would have picked those items up by now. “They’re probably somewhere. You’re just not seeing them. Or you put them somewhere and you don’t remember,” he fibbed.

  Leaning back in her chair, Ashley regarded him humorously. “Are you hinting I’m losing my mind?”

  “No.” But he was going to lose his soon, if he didn’t get to make love with her again in the very near future.

  Wordlessly, Cal offered her coffee. She declined with a shake of her head and continued to sip her milk.

  “I am, however, saying you have had an awful lot on your mind lately, what with helping out Carlotta this week, fielding visits with both our families and trying to figure out where you’re going to look for a job.”

  The laughter left Ashley’s china-blue eyes as suddenly as it had appeared. “That at least I know,” she told him quietly. “I’m looking for a position right here in central North Carolina and I don’t care if it’s a high-powered job or something distinctly low-key. I just want to take care of pregnant women and their babies. And that, Cal, is why I wanted my black dress. I wanted to go see the med-center administrator and talk to him about the possibility of me joining the staff at the hospital right here in Holly Springs.”

  Cal struggled not to let his own selfish needs take control. “That would be terrific,” he told her just as seriously. Forcing himself to be as supportive of her professional goals as she deserved, he continued, “But are you sure you don’t want to follow up on the lead your mother gave you for an academic posting?”

  Years from now, he didn’t want her looking back with regret, or blaming him for any dreams not realized. Because that would be just as detrimental to their relationship as his refusing to support her now.

  “I’m certain.” Ashley leaned across the table to take his hand and squeeze it affectionately. “I may not have had my priorities straight before this, but I do now,” she told him, looking deep into his eyes. “And you, Cal, and the—”

  “And what?” he said when she stopped in mid-sentence. He studied the stricken expression on her face.

  “And our life together,” Ashley finished, flushing self-consciously as she squeezed his hand again and smiled, “come first.”

  ASHLEY COULDN’T BELIEVE she had almost spilled the beans like that. Part of it was due to the intimacy she was feeling with Cal, since their mutual confessions last night. Knowing he had missed her as much as she had missed him had given her hope that, with a little more time and continued effort, they could make their marriage everything they had once wanted it to be.

  And to that end, black dress or no, she had things she wanted to accomplish that morning. Starting with a talk with the hospital administrator in charge of physician recruitment.

  Unfortunately, the situation wasn’t as positive as Ashley had hoped it would be.

  “We’re all set with the number of OB’s we need right now,” Frank Hodges told her. “But I’ll talk to the board anyway, see if there isn’t something we can do, because we’d love to have someone with your background and training on our staff. In the meantime, I’ll make some calls for you, find out which hospitals in the area need an obstetrician,” he said. “I’ll get back to you on that as well.”

  “Thank you. I’d appreciate it,” Ashley said.

  “Bummer,” Carlotta said, when Ashley filled her in over lunch in Carlotta’s private office. “I was hoping they’d have room for you so I could ask you to join my practice.”

  That would have been easy. Nice, too, because she and Carlotta worked together so well. “Something will come up,” Ashley said confidently. She would see to it. Even if the position she ended up with did not please her parents.

  “How are you feeling?” Carlotta asked, as the two of them worked on their turkey sandwiches.

  “Pretty good, actually.”

  “How’s the morning sickness?”

  Ashley made a seesawing motion with her hand. “Comes and goes. Cherry Life Savers seem to help.”

  Carlotta grinned, commiserating with a shake of her head. “For me it was lemon-flavored water. If I could take a sip or two of that, I was usually okay.”

  “How are things on the home front?” Ashley asked. The usually immaculately put-together Carlotta had a jelly stain on her slacks, and instead of the navy flats she should have been wearing with her outfit, she had on black. “Any word on when Nanny Beatrice is coming back?”

  “Another ten days. Minimum.” Carlotta sighed. A troubled look crossed her face. “Mateo and I are trying our best, but according to the kids, we’re just not cutting it. It’s almost like she’s the parent and we’re the stand-ins.”

  “Surely—”

  “No. It’s true.” Carlotta speared a baby spinach leaf and twirled it around and around on her fork. “And it makes sense, if you think about it.” She glanced over at Ashley, sadness reflected in her dark eyes. “Beatrice cared for Juan from the time he was born. Of course she was just a sitter then; he stayed with her while I was in undergrad classes. It wasn’t until Elizabetta was born that Beatrice actually moved in with us. And she was a member of the family by the time Lorenzo came along. The simple truth is that our medical practices are so demanding the kids have spent more time with Beatrice than they have with either of us.”

  Ashley could easily imagine the same thing happening to her and Cal. “Do you regret that?”

  “I don’t know.” Carlotta gazed at the picture of her kids on her desk. “I’m beginning to think I have missed out on more than I ever knew.”

  CARLOTTA’S WORDS stayed with Ashley the rest of the day, as she saw patients at the office, and even when she stopped at the grocery on the way home along with everyone else in town to stock up on essentials before the snowstorm hit.

  The only problem was there was no milk on the shelves. None. When she asked one of the teenage stock clerks if they could bring out more from the back, he just laughed. “We haven’t had any since noon and we’re not going to get any more until after the snowstorm.”

  Ashley supposed there were other ways to get the calcium requirement the baby needed. “When exactly is the storm supposed to get here?” Ashley asked. “Have you heard?”

  He pointed to the storefront windows. “Lady, it’s here now.”

  Ashley looked. Sure enough, there was snow coming down in big, fat wet flakes. She wished she had paid more attention to the weather report that morning, and probably would have, had she not been looking high and low for her black knit dress. “How much is predicted?”

  “Radio said a little while ago eight, maybe ten inches.”

  Yeow. Which meant they could get snowed in out at the farm.

  Ashley wheeled her basket down the aisles, putting cottage cheese, yogurt, evaporated—and powdered—milk into her cart. The bread was all gone, too, so she picked up biscuits from the freezer section, and corn-bread mix, plus several packages of meat, fresh and frozen vegetables, and cereal. The checkout lines were packed, so she ended up standing in line longer than it had taken her to gather her groceries, but finally she was headed out to the lot.

  The pavement was slick, so she navigated carefully. As soon as her groceries were in the trunk of the Mustang, Ashley started the car and cleaned the thin layer of snow off the windows. She was shivering by the time she got back into the car. Aware she couldn’t get home a moment too soon, Ashley started the drive back to the farm.

  The first four blocks
went okay. But as she neared the edge of town the roads suddenly got a lot more dicey.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve ever driven in snow,” Ashley reminded herself, hands gripping the steering wheel. She had grown up, dealing with winter weather. But she hadn’t been pregnant then, Ashley thought worriedly. And she didn’t like the way this vintage sports car was handling on the slick city streets.

  She was about to turn back, stay in town for the night, or at the very least wait for Cal to drive them home in his SUV, when a teenager came barreling around the corner, going way too fast for either his experience or the weather. Ashley had time to gasp, and steer the wheel to the right, to avoid a head-on collision. And then he was spinning past her, continuing on down the street, completely out of control, while the Mustang jumped the curb and headed straight into someone’s front yard.

  “ASHLEY? Are you okay?” Mac Hart asked.

  Ashley turned to see her brother-in-law coming toward her. He was wearing his Holly Springs sheriff’s uniform. His patrol vehicle was parked at the curb.

  “I’m fine.” Aware this wasn’t the first time Cal’s older brother had come to her rescue, Ashley climbed out of the Mustang on shaking legs, aware the snow was coming down even harder now. “I was trying to avoid a collision with another car and ended up jumping the curb.” A move that while not exactly laudable had been a lot better than the alternative.

  “Yeah. One of the neighbors saw it and called it in. I was in the vicinity, so…”

  Ashley drew in a quick, jerky breath, glad Mac had only been a minute or two away when it happened. “That teenager—”

  “Just totaled his car. He’s about two blocks up. Another officer is assisting him. I don’t know how the fool didn’t get hurt,” Mac lamented with a disgruntled frown. He bent to look into her face. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked her quietly.

  Ashley had already done a medical assessment, and except for a slightly accelerated pulse, she had come out of the incident unscathed. “Yes. I was only going about fifteen or twenty miles an hour when I hit the grass.” She knew she was pale—a look in the rearview mirror had told her that—and shaky. But those were normal reactions to any near accident. “It just scared me to have such a close call.” Ashley shuddered, recalling. “I thought he was going to hit me.” She’d thought that she would lose her and Cal’s baby. She swallowed hard around the growing knot of emotion in her throat. “But he didn’t. And except for the bump as I went over the curb I didn’t even get knocked around at all.” Her safety belt had held her in place. Although now that she thought about it, a shoulder harness would do a much better job of protecting her and the baby…but those hadn’t been invented when the ’64 Mustang had been made.

  Mac gave her a hard, assessing look. “You want me to take you to the hospital?”

  Ashley turned her collar up, and moved so her face was no longer directly in the blowing snow, which seemed to be coming down harder and thicker with every second that passed. She saw a few people beginning to gather in yards, a distance away, watching. “No. That would be a fool’s errand. I’m serious, Mac. If I thought there was any reason for me to go to the ER, I would.” In a flash. “But there isn’t. It’d be like going to the doctor for a single hiccup.” And she wasn’t about to do that.

  He was still watching her carefully. “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  He clamped an authoritative hand on her shoulder. “I’m taking you home anyway.”

  Ashley turned and looked at the Mustang. “I can’t just leave my car sitting in someone’s front yard.” She considered herself fortunate she hadn’t taken out any of their trees or landscaping. They probably did, too, although they didn’t appear to be home….

  “I’ll get it out for you,” Mac continued to propel her in the direction he wanted her to go.

  “My groceries—”

  “We’ll get those,” Mac promised her kindly, as gallant as ever. “But first, I’m putting you in the patrol car.”

  Mac was nothing if not efficient. Fifteen minutes later, Ashley’s Mustang was safely parked in a church lot down the street, and they were on the way out to the farm.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Ashley said, relieved not to be behind the wheel herself at this moment.

  “No problem.”

  “I needed to talk to you anyway.”

  Mac lifted a brow, but kept his eyes on the road.

  Anxiety welled inside Ashley. She turned her eyes to the side of the road. An inch of snow had already fallen, and it was coming down fast. “I never told Cal about what happened that day you took me to the hospital.”

  Expression grim, Mac adjusted the windshield wipers to a higher speed. He shot her a quick glance. “So he doesn’t know you were ever—”

  Pregnant, Ashley thought. “No.” Another chill went through her. She folded her arms in front of her. “And I don’t want him to know.”

  Mac adjusted the heat, so more of it was flowing directly onto Ashley. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  Good question, and one she had asked herself maybe half a million times. “I probably should have told him at the time, but you know why I didn’t.” Because she hadn’t known how to tell him he had lost what he had never even known he had. “And now it’s too late.” Ashley’s voice caught, tears pressing behind her eyes. “He’d never understand.”

  When they stopped at the next stop sign, Mac turned and regarded Ashley with concern. “He has a right to know, Ashley.”

  As Mac continued driving, guilt flooded her heart that she could ever have done something so short-sighted and foolish in the first place. “I would tell him, Mac, if I thought he could forgive me for keeping something like that from him, but—” Ashley’s voice trembled and she had to force herself to go on “—I know now that he wouldn’t be able to, and I don’t want to risk my marriage for something that can never be changed anyway.” Because as much as she wanted to undo the past, she just couldn’t.

  Mac looked as if he still disagreed with her, but he did not argue the point further.

  “What’s brought this all up?” he asked compassionately.

  Ashley took a deep breath. Although she knew she could confide in Mac and trust him to keep whatever she chose to tell him secret, there was no way she was letting him know what Cal still didn’t.

  Not this time anyway.

  “Cal and I are working on our marriage,” she said simply. “I don’t want anything to interfere with that.” Nothing from the present, and certainly nothing from the past.

  “I KNEW IT! YOU’RE NOT FINE!” Cal rushed into the family room, where Ashley was reclining on the sofa before the fire. He had thrown a coat on over his scrubs. His med-center badge was still clipped to his shirt.

  Ashley tried not to make too much of the fact he had left the hospital before changing into his street clothes, something he never did. She flushed self-consciously, aware she had been “resting” pretty much ever since she got home. Not because it was medically indicated—but because she wanted their baby to know she would do whatever it took to ensure he or she came into the world, healthy, happy and safe. This time there were going to be no regrets, no “what if’s” or “if only’s.” No looking back and wondering…

  She put the decorating magazine she’d been reading before falling asleep on the sofa aside. “I gather from that wild look in your eyes that you heard about my mishap with the Mustang?”

  Cal grinned wryly in response to her comically exaggerated description, but the serious light remained in his eyes. He took off his coat and sank down beside her on the sofa, next to her raised knees. “Mac came by the med center and told me in person.” Cal paled slightly as he continued relating, “He didn’t want me seeing the Mustang parked there when I was driving home, ’cause he’d figured I would wonder why it was there when you weren’t and get all worried. And dammit, Ashley—” Cal’s brows knit together in aggravation, as he continued scolding her “—why didn’t you ca
ll me and let me know what happened yourself?”

  Because if I had talked to you on the phone just then I probably would have burst into tears for no good reason other than I love you and don’t want to lose you. And the incident had reminded her that they could lose each other, just that quickly, should luck and wisdom not be on their sides next time.

  But she didn’t know how to say any of that without sounding…pregnant.

  Ashley sighed and ran her hands through her hair. She had left the blinds open, and outside she could see darkness had fallen. The snow was now three or four inches deep and still coming down.

  Cal continued to wait for an explanation.

  Ashley gestured helplessly. “Because I knew you were in surgery this afternoon and I was fine. So I figured I would tell you when you got home which I would have had your big brother not beaten me to it.”

  He took the blanket off her lap and visually checked her out, his hands moving over her limbs as if he were conducting a medical exam. He seemed barely able to reassure himself. “You’re absolutely sure you’re fine?” he insisted.

  “Yes,” Ashley retorted firmly. She batted his hands away. “Now stop playing doctor, Doctor,” Ashley teased, capturing his hands in hers. “And take a breath and calm down.”

  Cal’s eyes grew abruptly moist. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you,” he told her in a low, hoarse voice.

  That quickly, Ashley got choked up, too. She went into Cal’s arms and hung on tight. “I don’t want anything happening to you, either.”

  He held her to him fiercely and they clung together like that for several minutes. Eventually, she heard Cal’s voice muffled against her hair. “You can’t scare me like that again. I mean it, Ashley. Anything happens, you let me know. Right then.”

  Guilt flashed through her, more potent than a tidal wave. Ashley closed her eyes against the pain in her heart. “I promise,” she said thickly. “I won’t ever ever hold anything back from you again.”