Suddenly Engaged (A Lake Haven Novel Book 3)

by Julia London

  The thing was, he thought later, when he’d untangled his arms and legs from her, that he was old enough and wise enough to know a good thing when he saw it, to know when someone’s pieces fit so well with his. Maybe the infatuation would fade away, but Dax didn’t care at the moment. He was enjoying this too much. He’d been dragged out of his cave and into sunlight, and he wasn’t going back in by overthinking it.

  At a quarter ’til midnight, he reluctantly climbed out of her bed. He could see that Kyra was tired, and she had to work in the morning. He pulled on his jeans and T-shirt while she watched him with a sated smile on her face. “Oh, by the way,” he said casually, “I’ve been meaning to ask—I assume you’ve had Ruby’s seizures checked out?”

  “Her what?”

  Dax looked up from the buttoning of his jeans. “The absence seizures she’s been having.”

  Kyra frowned and slowly pushed herself up. “What are you talking about?”

  Dax gaped at her. Was it possible she didn’t know? “She has absence seizures,” he said. “Have you ever noticed how she sort of zones out? She does that finger thing,” he said, mimicking it.

  “That’s a habit. I know she zones out, but she’s easily distracted, that’s all.”

  Dax mentally congratulated himself for stepping into this with the finesse of a cow. He sank down on the edge of her bed as Kyra hastily donned her T-shirt. “Look, don’t be alarmed. These things are common with some kids. They check out for a few seconds. Most of the time, they don’t know it. Most of the time, they grow out of it.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “I would know if Ruby was having seizures. How would you know, anyway?”

  “I’ve been a medic and a paramedic, remember?”

  Kyra stared at him. Then abruptly climbed out of her bed and stacked her hands on top of her head. “Oh shit! Are you kidding? That can’t be right—I thought it was a behavioral thing!”

  “Don’t panic,” he said and tried to take her in his arms, but Kyra shook her head and batted his hand away. “It’s a childhood thing she’ll grow out of.”

  “You said most of the time.”

  Dax wondered why he’d said anything at all. “Like, ninety-nine point nine percent of the time,” he said reassuringly.

  “And the point one percent?” she demanded.

  “That’s why I asked. I just wanted to make sure you ruled out anything else, even though it is highly, highly unlikely that it’s—”

  “My mother had a brain tumor and she died,” she said flatly. “I was twelve years old, and she died. And in the end, she had horrible seizures.”

  What a clod he was, blurting that out without thought. “No,” he said sternly and took her by the arms, forcing her into his embrace. “No, no, no. If she had a brain tumor, you would know it. Calm down, Kyra. Just see her pediatrician, and he will put your mind at rest, I promise. There is nothing wrong with Ruby. She’s perfect.”

  “She doesn’t have a pediatrician!” she said tearfully.

  He leaned back to look at her.

  Kyra shook her head. “I have this horrible insurance, and we moved here, and I haven’t done anything about it because my deductible is so high, and she’s been good, she’s been really good.” Tears were sliding down her cheeks now.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “I never meant to upset you. I assumed you knew. Look, we’ll make her an appointment. I made some furniture for a pediatrician here in Lake Haven. I’ll give her a call. It’s going to be fine, Kyra. Don’t worry, everything is fine.”

  She nodded and sniffed back another sob.

  “Promise you won’t freak out.”

  She nodded again.

  She could nod all she wanted, but when he left it was clear she wasn’t fine at all. She looked distant as she chewed on her bottom lip at her front door.

  She was better the next morning when she dropped Ruby off, but still distracted. Dax tried to talk to her, but Kyra shook her head and pointed at Ruby.

  “I understand,” he said. “I’ll make a phone call today and set you up, okay?”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Kyra—”

  “Okay, pumpkin, I’m off to work,” she said and leaned down to her daughter. “You promise to mind everything Dax says, right?”

  “Right!” Ruby said. “Bye, Mommy!” She turned from the door and dashed into the kitchen, calling for Otto.

  Dax watched Kyra get into her car and drive away. She didn’t look back at him but seemed intent on the road ahead of her.

  He watched her until he couldn’t see her any longer.

  He put Ruby to work washing dishes. But she was six, and she was more interested in playing in the suds and revealing every thought in her head. When she was done, Dax had to mop the floor. While he was mopping, Ruby followed Otto outside and into a flower bed. She came back covered in streaks of dirt. Dax had to hose her down in the yard while she squealed with laughter. He let her dry off with Otto while he worked in the shed.

  At lunchtime, he put her to work making sandwiches—an art form she really enjoyed and was horribly bad at—and then sat her down in front of an old TV with a roof top antenna. He didn’t have cable, and could only get one channel. So Ruby watched Days of Our Lives and seemed engrossed with it.

  Dax took the opportunity to make a couple of calls. The first was to Heather.

  “Hi!” she said with far too much cheer.

  “Hi,” Dax said. “So, look,” he said and managed to end any hope of dating with all the panache of a caveman.

  He next put in a call to the pediatrician he knew. She called him back within the hour and he explained his unusual request.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll have my receptionist give you a call to schedule. Summer is slow—I’m confident we can get her in this week.”

  “Thanks, Nora,” Dax said. “I really owe you.”

  “Make me another beer box and we’re even,” she said laughingly.

  He could make a rustic beer box in a single afternoon, and he would do it in exchange for this favor.

  After lunch, Dax oiled some wood for a new project while Ruby dug up weeds with his trowel. His phone rang, and he gingerly fished it out of his pocket with two fingers. He looked at the display and groaned, then punched the phone icon. “What do you want, Stephanie?” he said gruffly.

  “Hello to you, too,” Stephanie said, just as gruffly. “I thought you might like to know that Ashley is in labor.”

  Dax’s heart seized. He turned away from Ruby and shoved a greasy hand through his hair, then grimaced and rubbed his fingers on his shirt. “She’s early. How long has she been in labor?”

  “She’s only a week early. And she’s been having contractions a little over an hour. We just got to the hospital.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asked, more to himself than to Stephanie.

  “I don’t have time to help you figure it all out, Dax.”

  “I meant, should I come now?” he asked curtly. The moment of dread had come—he couldn’t imagine anything worse than standing shoulder to shoulder with Stephanie as they watched his baby being born. And he could guarantee Stephanie wasn’t going to bow out of the experience. He would just have to shoehorn his way in.

  “If you want, I’ll call you when she delivers,” Stephanie suggested, perhaps a little too hopefully.

  Dax didn’t say anything. He felt a little woozy, like he’d been in the sun too long. It suddenly hit him—this was his baby. His baby. His boy.

  “Dax?”

  “She’s at Holy Name Medical Center?” he asked gruffly.

  Stephanie sighed. “So you’re coming.”

  “Of course I’m coming. This is my kid, Stephanie.”

  “Fine,” she said irritably. “Yes, she’s at Holy Name.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said and hung up.

  He stalked off to the shed to calm down a little. He was momentarily di
stracted by the wall unit he was making for some socialite on the north end of the lake. “Rustic,” she’d said. “But not too rustic.” She’d touched her finger to his chest and smiled up at him.

  “Not too rustic,” he’d repeated and had stepped far away from her reach. But now he noticed a gash in the pallet wood he was using and stepped closer to assess if he could sand it out. He spent a few minutes working on it, his hands moving by rote, his mind on Ashley giving birth to his son right now.

  Forget Stephanie—Dax was wasting time. He could not imagine his son coming into this world and him not being there to witness it. He threw down the sandpaper and looked at his watch. Kyra should be back in an hour. He could make it to Teaneck in a little under an hour.

  He walked out of the shed. “Coconut!” he called.

  Ruby started and turned around. He eyed her up and down. “Let’s go clean up. Do you have a dress in that mess you call a room?”

  “I have a red one,” she said.

  “Go get it. And come right back here. We have some work to do before your mom gets home.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Megan yelled at Kyra twice in the course of her shift for not picking up food. Even Deenie was frustrated when Kyra dropped a ketchup bottle and it shattered all over the wait station. “What is the matter with you?” she asked as she wiped off her shoes. “I just bought these!”

  “I’m sorry,” Kyra said, fighting back invisible tears. She was sorry, so very sorry. She was sorry she’d dropped the ketchup and she was sorry she was a marginal mom at best.

  Deenie noticed Kyra’s despair as she threw the paper towel she’d used into the garbage. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just having a bad day,” Kyra said and avoided Deenie for the rest of the shift. She didn’t want to talk about it, not yet. If she did, she might collapse with grief and guilt and worry.

  Her tips were lousy, which came as no surprise, seeing as how she’d forgotten things, dropped things, left people waiting. She couldn’t focus—all she could think was that her daughter, her beautiful, spirited daughter, was probably growing a giant cancerous tumor in her head because Kyra was too dumb to realize those little lapses in attention were medical and not because Ruby was absentminded.

  She’d felt sick since Dax had told her. She’d tortured herself with recalling how many times she’d snapped at Ruby and accused her of not listening, when in reality Ruby probably had been having a seizure. She loathed herself for having let Ruby’s pediatric appointments lapse. What mother did that? But she’d been busy and tired and she’d told herself she would get Ruby to a pediatrician before school started.

  She finished her work in a miserable frame of mind and headed home. When she pulled into the drive at Number Three, Dax and Ruby came pounding down the porch steps side by side. Dax looked intent. He’d probably had his fill of Ruby after one day and had probably lost respect for Kyra when he figured out that she was completely inept when it came to her daughter. She got out of her car, prepared for whatever it was . . . but she could hardly look him in the eye.

  Ruby, on the other hand, looked radiant. It was impossible to believe anything was wrong with her beautiful, vibrant little girl. “Hey, pumpkin, how was your day?” she asked, hugging Ruby tightly to her.

  “It was awesome,” Ruby said. “He washed me with the hose.”

  Kyra reluctantly let go of Ruby. “The hose?”

  “I was really dirty,” Ruby said.

  Kyra risked a look at Dax. He seemed so anxious. On edge. “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” he said, and Kyra’s heart sank. “My baby is on the way.”

  That news stopped the slide of her heart into the dark pit of despair. “Oh, wow, that’s . . . that’s great, Dax.” She was happy for him. He would have a beautiful, healthy child. Kyra tried not to compare his new baby to her daughter, but she couldn’t help it. Life felt so unfair sometimes.

  She also couldn’t help but wonder how this might change things between them. She knew how much attention a new baby required and how there was so little left over for anything or anyone else.

  “Yep,” he said and grinned. “But I’m in a rush.” He nudged Ruby toward her. “There’s a bunch of muddy clothes in a sack by the back door. I didn’t know what to do with them.”

  “Got it, not to worry.”

  He was clearly eager to be gone, but he hesitated and glanced at Ruby. “I don’t know if I’ll be back by morning. I don’t know how long—”

  “I’m off tomorrow,” Kyra said. “Please, don’t think about it.”

  “You’re off, great. I got you an appointment with the pediatrician tomorrow afternoon. It’s at two, but that’s the only slot they had.” He held out a piece of paper with the information.

  Kyra stared down at the scribbled note with the doctor’s name and the time. “You did that?”

  “I told you I would, Kyra,” Dax said and touched her hand, tangling his fingers with hers. “I’ve got to go. Will you keep an eye on Otto? I fed him, but he’ll be rooting around for something in the morning if I’m not here.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Dax was already moving, walking backward. “His food is in the kitchen. Ruby knows how much.”

  “She does?” Kyra asked, looking at her daughter.

  “I do, Mommy. I’ve fed him twice. He eats a lot. And then he burps.”

  Dax raised his hand, then turned around and strode quickly to his truck.

  Kyra and Ruby watched him go, peeling out of the drive like a man whose ex-wife was having a baby.

  Kyra didn’t even have time to say thank you for the thousandth time.

  Ruby played with her Barbies that night and sent them on a whale-hunting mission in the bathtub. Kyra watched her closely—every time Ruby looked away, she was certain it was a seizure. She was imagining things—her daughter was not having a seizure every minute of every hour. She googled seizures in children and found absence seizure, like Dax had called it. There were various causes, according to the sites she looked at, but it seemed from what she could find that it was fairly innocuous. It was probably genetic. Ruby would probably grow out of it.

  Except if she didn’t. In rare cases, the seizure could be caused by something else. Something ominous . . . like a tumor.

  And then there were the discussion boards. My son was diagnosed with having absence seizures, but we asked for a second opinion and found a cancerous tumor. Always get a second opinion!! Those few comments of doom stuck with Kyra.

  When Ruby was brushing her teeth, Kyra saw it—Ruby’s fingers started fluttering and she stared at the sink for several seconds. Kyra dipped down—Ruby’s eyes were a little glassy and fixed on the sink. And then, as if a light switch had turned on, Ruby looked at her toothbrush and seemed to remember what she was doing. Her fingers stopped fluttering.

  “Ruby? Did something just happen to you?” Kyra asked.

  Ruby looked at her mother strangely as she put down the toothbrush. “What happened?”

  Kyra smiled and tousled Ruby’s red curls. “Nothing.”

  When Ruby was in bed, Kyra returned to her googling, this time delving deeper into the symptoms of brain tumors. She began to feel a bit better about things—Ruby had none of the symptoms associated with a growing tumor, and not all tumors resulted in seizures. Dax had to be right—if this was a brain tumor, she’d know it.

  She felt calmer the next morning when she woke up. She looked out the kitchen window and noticed Dax’s truck wasn’t in the drive. She wondered how it was going, if the baby had been born.

  When Ruby woke up, they went together to feed Otto. The dog was lying in the middle of the kitchen floor and didn’t lift his head when he saw Kyra come through the door. But his tail began to wag when he saw Ruby.

  Kyra thought about texting Dax but didn’t want to intrude on this important moment in his life. She remembered when Ruby had been born, how besotted she’d been, how nothing else mattered but that tiny little being i
n her arms. She would not have wanted her neighbor texting her to ask how everything was going.

  Kyra spent the rest of the morning trying to study, but thoughts about Ruby kept creeping into her head. The clock seemed to be moving in slow motion toward the hour of their pediatric appointment. But finally the hour came, and Kyra and Ruby headed to town.

  At the doctor’s office, Kyra filled out miles of paperwork about Ruby and handed over her insurance card. The receptionist typed some things on her computer, then looked at Kyra. “You have a very large deductible.”

  “I know.”

  “We take the co-pay up front. It’s sixty-five dollars.”

  A king’s ransom, but Kyra counted the amount out in bills.

  The receptionist looked at the money strangely. “You don’t have a card? We don’t generally take cash.”

  Who didn’t take cash? “I have a check card. Will that work?”

  “Yes,” the receptionist said. She might think the check card was better, but Kyra didn’t. She tried to live off her tips and leave the money in her bank untouched. For emergencies. Like this.

  At last they were admitted into the examining room. It was painted Pepto-Bismol pink, and there were shadow shapes of children around the walls. The pediatrician, Dr. Giannarelli, was a busty, gray-haired woman with a bun on top of her head and a pen stuck through it. She had an easy, comfortable way with Ruby as she examined her. “Well,” she said when she’d completed the examination and was washing her hands, “Ruby looks like a very healthy girl. Can you describe the seizures to me?”

  “She zones out. And she does this weird thing with her fingers,” Kyra said, trying to mimic it.

  Ruby, who was twirling around in the middle of that small examining room, watching the hem of her dress spin out, stopped and laughed at that. “I don’t do that, Mommy.”