Everything I Hoped For

by Ann Christopher

  “Neither can we!” Samira said.

  “I can,” Baptiste said. “Remember, Melody? At the Halloween bonfire?”

  “Are you releasing me from my vow of silence?” Melody asked.

  “Proceed,” Baptiste said with smug smile and a benevolent bow of his head.

  “Baptiste had a panic attack that night,” Melody told Samira, who was all ears. “He saw that house on the hill, Howard’s Folly, and he was sort of overwhelmed because he said he could picture the two of you there with kids and stuff. A family. It was pretty intense.”

  Samira looked a little startled as she turned to Baptiste, who cocked an I told you so brow at her. Then she laughed, blinking back a tear or two. “Stop trying to make the pregnant woman cry, you two. I’m already on the edge as it is.”

  More laughter on all sides. Melody took the opportunity to grab Samira’s hand before turning to the menfolk.

  “Excuse us for a minute, fellas. I need to grill Samira about all the gory details. I’m sure you understand.”

  With that, she towed Samira to a love seat out of earshot several feet away, where they plunked themselves down and leaned in for some girl talk.

  “Oh, my God,” Melody cried. “What the hell?”

  Samira swiped her eyes. “I know, I know. My head is still spinning.”

  “How does a responsible thirty-something woman wind up pregnant? Do I need to have the safe sex talk with you?”

  “Evidently. I wasn’t on the pill at the time. We used condoms, but we were a little exuberant that first night and didn’t, ah…Well, you get the picture.”

  “I’m not sure I do, but who cares? You’ve both carried on about what an extraordinary night that was, so I can’t wait to see this gorgeous baby! So at the gala when you weren’t feeling well? That was, what, nausea?”

  “I had some cramping. No bleeding. And my OB was very encouraging just now.”

  “How do you feel about this turn of events? And to think you were so worried at the gala because Baptiste hadn’t talked about the future of your relationship. What did I tell you, you silly rabbit?”

  “He seems very excited,” Samira said, blushing.

  They both looked around at Baptiste, quickly discovering what an understatement that was. Deep in an animated conversation with Anthony, his mile-wide grin telegraphed his incandescent happiness.

  “He loves you like crazy, Sami,” Melody said.

  “I’m not sure how I got this lucky.” Samira wiped her eyes again, possibly remembering how she’d just come off a broken engagement when she met Baptiste. “Okay, and that’s enough about me. What the hell’s going on with you and Anthony? I knew you had chemistry!”

  It was Melody’s turn to blush. “I’m not really sure. We got stuck on the elevator together and…I don’t know. He’s a very interesting person.”

  “He’s a very sexy person.” Samira shot him a surreptitious glance over Melody’s shoulder. “He hasn’t stopped looking at you this whole time. So what now?”

  “I wish I knew. We’ve texted a couple of times, then he brought breakfast so we could spend a little time together. But he’s going back to London tonight.”

  “Yeah, he’s riding with Baptiste again. So when will Anthony be back this way?”

  “I keep telling you, I don’t know. I don’t see what could happen anyway. He lives in London.”

  Samira, who was now deep into her unlikely fairy-tale romance with a French citizen who lived in Paris, gave her an exasperated look.

  “Really? Have I taught you nothing?”

  “Oh, please. Don’t pretend you have all the answers all of the sudden. Like you and Baptiste are some old married couple. Two days ago, you were high up on that ledge, ready to throw yourself off because you weren’t sure where your relationship was going. I’m the one who had to talk you down.”

  “Ancient history,” Samira said breezily, flapping a hand.

  They both laughed.

  “But you like him?” Samira asked, all dewy-eyed hope and as sentimental as a Hallmark store. “You see potential?”

  Melody ducked her head and fidgeted with her ponytail, not quite ready to admit, even to herself, that Anthony had occupied most of her non-work-related waking thoughts since she met him. And there was no way to describe the unreasonable vibrancy in her skin and blood when she was with him.

  When he looked at her.

  When he touched her.

  Which was why she was determined to keep her expectations low.

  “He’s got some potential,” she said lightly.

  “Have you looked him up online yet?”

  “No. We’re getting to know each other as people without all that.”

  Blank look from Samira. “Is that wise?”

  “We shall see.”

  Samira pulled out her phone. “Well, I can look him up—”

  Melody snatched the phone and tossed it aside. “No, you can’t.”

  “Turnabout’s fair play.” With a serene smile, Samira retrieved her phone and started tapping on it. “I seem to recall that you were the person who tipped me off about Baptiste being a billionaire playboy.”

  “You know what? Look him up all you want. Just don’t tell me about it unless it turns out he’s on the FBI’s Most Wanted list or something.”

  “But…”

  “Thank you for your compliance,” Melody said, not quite sure why it felt so important to keep her word with Anthony. But she was determined to live up to her end of the agreement.

  Samira blinked.

  Melody whipped out her own phone and pulled something up. “You know who else has some potential? This guy from Doctor Love dot com who wants to match with me. Look. Jerome Ayers, forty-five. Internist. And he’s right here in town. I can’t believe I’ve never met him before.”

  Samira frowned down at the man’s handsome face, then up at Melody. “You’re still doing that?”

  “Why would you even ask me that? You were the one who ignored my vow of spinsterhood and insisted on setting up my profile. We’re trying to get together for drinks as soon as our schedules line up.”

  Samira gave her a thin-lipped look.

  “What?”

  “I just think you should give Anthony a real chance,” Samira said. “Assuming, you know, that he’s not secretly a pedophile or something.”

  “Well, we’ll see. But I’m not losing my head about dating anyone. I doubt there’s a prince out there for me. That’s why I’m focusing on my career.”

  “Anthony could be your prince, is all I’m saying. You never know.”

  Melody shrugged and fidgeted with her earring, this whole topic making her agitated for reasons she didn’t care to explore right now. Or, possibly, ever.

  Samira gave her a shrewd once-over. “So are you going to give him some before he goes back?”

  “What?” Melody tried to look shocked by the very idea, which maxed out her limited acting skills. As though this burning question wasn’t melting her from the inside out. As though she hadn’t been fantasizing about the weight and strain of Anthony’s tall body as he thrust inside her, his sweat-slicked chest hard against her pebbled nipples. “No. I’m done with casual sex and friends with benefits scenarios. They never get you anywhere and just leave you feeling like roadkill in the end.”

  “Okay, but I’d like to point out that my relationship started out with casual sex, and look at me now,” Samira said, using both hands to point at her belly.

  “Yeah.” Melody sadly shook her head. “An unmarried black woman with a baby on the way. Just another statistic.”

  They burst into laughter as Samira smacked her arm.

  “Oh, and listen. We’re keeping this quiet until I pass the three-month mark. So if you run into my parents—”

  “Of course,” Melody said quickly.

  “Let’s go see what the menfolk are talking about.”

  They walked back to the table, where Baptiste had made himself at home with the food and
was finishing off the other egg sandwich and reaching for a scone. Anthony, who’d been sipping his coffee, lowered his cup and sat up straighter, his attention zeroing in on Melody’s face and hanging on tight.

  If any other man had hit her with this level of intensity, it would have made her fidgety and desperate to hide the ruined side of her face. With Anthony? It made her lips want to smile and electric butterflies swoop low in her belly. It made her stand up straighter and hold her head up high. It made her think that maybe her scar was the very last thing he noticed about her.

  “So have you finished talking about us?” Baptiste asked happily as he stood, slung an arm around Samira’s waist and reeled her in. “Is everyone straight on all the gory details?”

  “We’re straight,” Samira told him, reaching for one of the bagels. “And we should get out of their hair. We’re interrupting their getting to know you time.”

  “Not at all.” Anthony blinked, breaking the spell with Melody, and gestured at all the extra food like a gracious host. “Help yourself. We’ll never eat it all.”

  “Thanks.” Standing, Baptiste carefully selected a raisin bagel and slid it into one pocket of his leather jacket, then wrapped his scone in a napkin and slipped it in the other. “I’d like to borrow Melody for a second before we go.”

  “Oh.” A little startled, Melody let him take her hand and steer her back to that same love seat, sparing Anthony a quick and bemused look over her shoulder as she went. “Okay. What’s up?”

  Some of Baptiste’s radiant joy receded in favor of worry lines grooving down his forehead as they sat. “I have to go back to Paris tonight for some meetings I’ve been putting off. It’s killing me to leave Samira just now, when she’s still so worried about the baby, but I don’t have a choice.”

  Melody began to see where this was going. She nodded.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her while you’re gone. Don’t worry.”

  Baptiste sagged with relief. “I knew I could count on you. You may have your hands full, though. She insists she’s not slowing down. And she doesn’t want me hovering over her. To no one’s surprise.”

  “That’s our Samira,” she said, and they both laughed.

  Baptiste glanced over her shoulder, beaming absolute adoration in Samira’s direction as she said something to Anthony. “I didn’t know I had all these dreams inside me. And if I had, I never would have thought they’d come true.”

  “You’re such a good guy,” Melody said, playfully patting his cheek while he ducked his head and fought back a tear or two. “You see? This is why I always tried to help you out.”

  Baptiste hastily wiped his eyes, cleared his throat and reverted to mischief maker in chief. “You know who is an even better guy than me? Anthony.”

  Melody rolled her eyes. She tried to look, at best, only mildly interested in this information, but her jackhammering heartbeat was probably audible all the way up to the top levels of the atrium.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. Among the three of us? Me, Nick and Anthony? Anthony was always the most serious student. He was the honorable military man. The most reliable friend. The best person. No question whatsoever. No one ever despaired of his future the way they did for me and Nick. We were better for knowing him. Not the other way around.”

  “Really?” Melody soaked this information up like a dried sponge tossed into the after-dinner dishwater. So much for appearing nonchalant. “I mean…come on. You have to say that. You’re each other’s wingmen.”

  “Wingmen?” Baptiste laughed. “Maybe in the old days. But now my first loyalty is to Samira. You are her best friend, so my loyalty goes to you by extension. It’s my duty to inform you that if Nick ever approaches you, you should run away unless all you want is an hour of his time and a basket of flowers the next morning, never to see him again. But Anthony? Another story altogether.”

  “Hmmm.” Melody smoothed her lab coat and hoped that the rising heat in her face wasn’t as incandescently bright as it felt. “So why is this paragon of virtue still single, pray tell?”

  “Well, he dates. He’s had some girlfriends. But no one special. And of course he has to choose carefully. Because of his, ah, family.” There was a pause while Baptiste eyed her closely. “Has he told you much about it?”

  “Well, I met his father last night at the gala. He’ll make someone a colorful father-in-law one day, won’t he?”

  “Indeed,” Baptiste said, something speculative glimmering in his green eyes. Along with the ongoing amusement. “Anthony seems very—what’s the word?—smitten with you.”

  “It was that fancy red dress,” she said, trying to get a deflection out there as soon as possible. “That’s why it was so expensive—”

  “All right, enough’s enough.” Anthony appeared, looming over them with a glower directed at Baptiste. “I had to wait thirty-six hours for a bit of Melody’s time, and now here you are eating into most of it with your personal melodramas. Time for you to be on your way.”

  “Nobody ever liked him very much,” Baptiste told Melody, jerking a thumb at Anthony. “Fair warning.”

  They all laughed as Samira joined them. “Might be fun to get together for dinner one of these days, don’t you think?”

  Melody shot her a what the hell? look. The last thing she needed was for Anthony to think she’d put that bug in Samira’s ear and decide that Melody was too clingy for him. But he nodded eagerly, much to her surprise.

  “We’d love to,” he said. Samira beamed with satisfaction and a flash of triumph in Melody’s direction. “I’ll be back from London a week from Friday. Maybe then?”

  Melody’s ears perked. He would? He was?

  Then she gave herself a swift mental kick in the ass.

  “Hang on,” she told Anthony, her spinning (swooning?) head making her all the more determined to keep her feet on the ground. “Don’t you think you and I need to have a few more conversations before you start speaking for me and making plans weeks in the future?”

  “No,” he said, his smooth voice thick with repressed laughter. “Is it the date you object to, or the part about seeing me again so soon?”

  She opened her mouth, praying a snappy retort was on the way while the three of them waited with raised brows and open interest.

  “Don’t you wish you had a bowl of popcorn right now?” Baptiste said to Samira in a stage whisper.

  “I do,” Samira said gleefully.

  Frowning, Melody redoubled her efforts to—

  Her pager went off.

  Oh, thank God.

  Melody all but sagged with relief at the timely interruption. But then she checked the display and her heart crashed through the floor.

  “Oh, no.”

  Anthony tensed and put a hand on her arm. “Not your little car accident girl?”

  She nodded helplessly. “Gotta go.”

  And she took off at a dead run.

  11

  It was just after five that evening when Melody walked back through the atrium in her street clothes, purse and jacket in hand. A blazing ruby sunset created patches of shadows throughout the space, but her brain was full of the fine technical points of the surgical procedure that had abruptly ended when the cutest little five-year-old girl known to humankind bled out on her table. Also taking up brain space? The long walk from the OR to the waiting area, during which she tried to think of something to say to mitigate the parents’ pending pain. And the biggie? The parents’ inconceivable devastation. So she wasn’t paying much attention to her surroundings and had no idea Anthony was still there until she heard him.

  “Melody.”

  Startled, she looked around in time to see him emerge from behind the same pillar they’d sat near that morning. A closer examination revealed that he’d set the space up as office central, with a briefcase, laptop and paperwork spread all over the table they’d used for breakfast.

  He was all somber eyes and open concern. He was, in that dark moment, the best thing
she’d seen all day.

  “How is she?” he asked quietly.

  Melody shook her head.

  His face fell. “I’m so sorry.”

  She nodded.

  He studied her long and hard.

  She let him because this was her life and the career she’d chosen. He needed to know before their budding relationship went one step further. If he didn’t understand this about her, then he could never know her at all.

  She was a doctor who put her heart into every patient she treated.

  Sometimes her heart got ripped out.

  “You’re dead on your feet,” he finally said.

  She shrugged with complete indifference about her exhaustion level. Even if a bed appeared right in front of her and she dove into it, she probably wouldn’t be able to close her eyes.

  “Another day at the office.”

  His jaw tightened. “Doubtful.”

  There was a pause.

  “Anthony. What are you doing here?” she asked quietly.

  His direct gaze never wavered.

  “You can probably hazard a good guess.”

  The knowledge that this man had scuttled his entire day just so he would be here if and when she eventually reappeared threw her for a serious loop. Funny how he insisted on stealing her breath every time she saw him.

  She thought it over, trying to make sense of him.

  “But…I thought you were going kayaking again?”

  He shrugged and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “I decided against it. It’s quite cold today. And I wouldn’t want to push my luck. The odds of my tipping over and drowning myself in the Hudson were unreasonably high.”

  That unlikely image broke through some of the gloom over her head and made her grin.

  He watched her, arrested.

  The moment stretched. The sudden rush of her blood sounded like the ocean roaring in her ears.

  He opened his mouth. Seemed to encounter a fair amount of unexpected difficulty getting his voice to work.

  “I got a lot of paperwork done instead,” he finally said, glancing around at the atrium. “It’s a lovely space.”

  “It is,” she said, noticing it again for the first time in a long time. “It’s easy to stop paying attention when you’re here every day.”