The Army Doc's Baby Secret

by Charlotte Hawkes

  ‘I don’t know, Zeke—do you think that could be because you counter all of my questions with one of your own?’

  ‘You don’t find that a touch hypocritical?’ he pointed out before finally relenting. ‘Fine. Yes, I considered the danger, but those men would have been dead without us. Anyone else would have done the same.’

  Flames of fury licked at her expression.

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  Lovely as ever, she arched her eyebrows at him.

  ‘Meaning you’ve always been a risk-taker, Zeke. I think you live for that danger. I think you can’t live without it.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he ground out, but something shifted uncomfortably within him. A tiny part of him that suspected she was right.

  The silence shrouded them and then, abruptly, the fight went out of her.

  ‘This was a mistake.’

  It was the quiet sadness in her tone that really scraped at him.

  ‘What was a mistake?’

  ‘Coming back here. Trying to tell you about Seth.’

  It was like a punch to the gut and ray of hope all at once.

  ‘I’m his father. Now I know that he exists I won’t let you shut me out of his life ever again. I’ll be there for him.’

  ‘You’re a liability,’ she snapped.

  ‘Say again?’ He had never been a violent man—he’d had enough of that growing up with a father like his—but right now he could have punched a hole through his very walls.

  ‘Tonight was a miracle, Zeke. You got those men to safety and kept your own crew safe. But what would have happened if you’d been just a metre out? Just once? Would everyone have made it back alive then? Would you have made it back alive?’

  ‘But we did.’

  ‘Lord knows how.’ Her breath hitched in her throat but she forced it out. ‘And what of Seth, your son, then?’

  ‘That didn’t happen, Tia.’ His voice was low, lethal. It was all he could do to keep his cool.

  ‘This time,’ she emphasised. ‘But what is your plan, Zeke? To build a relationship with Seth? To get close to him? To get me to agree to tell him who you really are so that he can love you as the father he’s always dreamed of?’

  ‘You have a real problem with that, don’t you? Why?’ he roared.

  ‘Why do you think, Zeke? Because what happens to him, then, next time you go off to pull a stunt like tonight? When, that time, it doesn’t work out quite so spectacularly?’

  ‘That’s the reality of life, Tia,’ he managed, but the words jarred unexpectedly, even to his own ears. ‘We can’t protect people against horrible things, no matter how much we want to.’

  Tia seemed to slump, as though relieved and devastated all at once.

  ‘But I can try to protect my son from as much pain as possible. Especially when it’s so inevitable. You have a self-destructive streak, Zeke, you always have had. We both know it. If there’s a burning building you would have to be the first one to rush in and risk your life even if the fire service were minutes out.’

  ‘Minutes could make a difference,’ he countered, not wanting to concede her point.

  ‘I’m not putting our son through that.’ She stood fast.

  ‘You think you can not tell him about me?’

  ‘I think it’s my duty as his mother to protect him. Whatever noble cause you dress it up as, how can I bring you into his life when I know that one day I will have to get him through the inevitable pain of losing you because the only way you can feel alive is by risking your life?’

  ‘You seemed to have no trouble getting through that so-called pain,’ he levelled at her, unable to help himself.

  ‘No trouble?’ she cried. ‘You told me never to come near you again. That I’d ruined your life and you could never forgive me.’

  This was ridiculous; they were going around in circles. But then, maybe that was the point—they had never really learned to talk to one another. They’d never tackled issues or ironed out differences. Maybe Tia was right, they had viewed the whole ten years of their marriage as an extended honeymoon period, never needing to get into the nitty-gritty of relationship bumps in the road because before anything became an issue one or both of them would have been leaving, off on some tour of duty or something.

  Except that last time. And then he’d metaphorically drop-kicked her out of his life.

  For her own good, Zeke reminded himself fiercely. Yet it didn’t drown out the whispering voice that cast doubt. Or to prevent her from seeing you in any kind of weakened state?

  ‘I already told you that I said that to protect you. You never once told me that you were carrying our son.’

  ‘You level that at me as an accusation,’ Tia cried. ‘As though knowing I was pregnant would have changed things. But would it have changed anything, Zeke?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really? Only, I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Of course it would have,’ he bellowed, staring at her incredulously, white-hot anger searing through him. ‘It would have changed everything.’

  Tia didn’t reply, she only watched him. Blinking once. Gently.

  A wretched truth began to creep in. Or at least, a suspicion of a truth.

  Would it have changed everything? Would it have changed anything?

  ‘Of course it would have,’ he repeated.

  But this time he was less forceful.

  She took a half a step closer to him, though he wasn’t even sure she herself was aware of doing so.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she pressed softly. ‘You told me that you were protecting me. Trying to absolve me of all culpability for amputating in the first place. Trying to free me of the burden that you saw yourself to be. Would you really have changed your mind because of a baby?’

  He wanted to repeat that it would. To convince her. But suddenly, he wasn’t even sure he was convinced himself.

  He’d been a mess in those early months after he’d got back to the UK hospital. He’d only lost his leg but back then it had felt as though his whole life were over. He’d gone from an exceptionally fit Special Forces soldier, risking his life to protect his country, and those he loved, every day, to not even being able to walk, let alone look after himself; the idea of Tia having to run around nursemaiding him had felt too much to bear. Too shameful. Too humiliating.

  How would he have felt knowing they had a baby on the way?

  Knowing that when their son cried, he wouldn’t be able to get up and go to him; couldn’t simply stand and reach over the cot to pick him up; couldn’t carry him back to Tia for feeding.

  All things normal people took for granted.

  Hell, he could barely look after himself those first few months, he couldn’t have contemplated being able to take care of a baby. Tia would have been running around after their child, and then running around after him.

  He couldn’t have borne it.

  Darkness rippled within him as a pain stabbed through his arm. It took Zeke a moment to realise he’d been clenching his fist tightly, and his wrist—also damaged in the blast five years ago—was screaming in protest.

  Releasing Tia from what he’d feared would be a lifetime of feeling trapped had been one thing, but the realisation that he had effectively turned his back on his pregnant wife, his future child? That felt like something different entirely.

  ‘Perhaps that’s the truth,’ he ground out. ‘But I can’t know for certain, can I? Because you never afforded me that courtesy. You concealed it from me for months whilst I was in that rehab centre. Visiting me every day despite me telling you—shouting at you—to stay away.’

  ‘Not for months.’ Tia sucked in a shaky breath. ‘Actually, not at all during that time. I didn’t know I was pregnant.’

  It was pathetic how hope sprang up so instantly wit
hin him. He stomped it down savagely. His tone harsher than ever.

  ‘You were on a tour of duty for three months before I got caught in that IED blast. You would have known.’

  ‘But I didn’t.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’

  ‘You’ll believe whatever you want,’ she cried in frustration. ‘You always do, Zeke, that’s the point. But if you’re asking me for the truth, it’s that I had no idea. Our jobs pushed us, always training, often in danger, and I was never...regular. You know that. I could go six months without having to worry about anything like that. So I just put it down to the stress of your accident, and the amputation.’

  ‘You visited me in that centre day after day. However many times I told you to stay away, to give me space. You kept coming back.’

  Right up until he’d finally found a way to keep her away. The day he’d lied to her and told her that he could never forgive her for what she’d done.

  For a long moment they simply stared at each other. Neither of them apparently wanting to talk about that final argument.

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Her desperation was almost enough to convince him. ‘I stayed away because...you were so adamant. Because the nursing staff believed that I was doing more harm than good by visiting. Because I thought if I gave you space, maybe you’d find a way to forgive me for making the only choice I could possibly have made.

  ‘But I swear to you, Zeke, it was only after that I began to suspect I was pregnant.’

  ‘And yet you never came back to me,’ he growled.

  ‘How could I? I was afraid that putting additional pressure on you would be damaging. I was warned to let you come to terms with the amputation in your own time.’ She flung her arms out helplessly.

  ‘Warned?’

  ‘By the staff at the centre. You were so closed off, it worried everyone. And I was in an impossible situation, Zeke. I wanted to tell you because I hoped it might give you something positive to hold onto, and to work towards. Yet at the same time, I was terrified that you would try to rush your recovery. I was terrified you would push yourself too hard because you felt as though you had to be the one providing for us. For me, and for Seth.’

  ‘That was my job to look after you both. I was his father. I am his father.’

  The frustration was so thick, so deep, so bitter, he could almost drown in it. And he felt hot, too hot. If he hadn’t known better then he might have thought the carefully regulated temperature of his hi-tech home was failing.

  ‘You’d already told me to stay away,’ she countered, and he couldn’t tell whether she was more furious or sad. ‘How could I have loaded that onto you? I figured that I’d give you a bit of space, maybe a couple of weeks, even a month. I thought I had time. But I used to call them. Every day, Zeke. You have to believe that.’

  Without warning she moved towards him and placed her hand on his arm.

  The effect was electric. Shooting up his arm and through his body in an instant. He could feel her everywhere, and the ache slammed into him with all the force of those metres-high waves on his lifeboat barely a few hours earlier.

  ‘They gave me updates and warned me that you were in a bad place. Survivor’s guilt was bandied about for a long while. Hardly a surprise, but it was stopping you from recovering as you should. There was no way you were ready to be told you had a baby on the way. So I knew that staying away from you was the only way you were going to heal. Mentally and physically. Or do you really deny that?’

  He hated that she was right.

  And he hated the fact that his inability to come to terms with what had happened to him that night had caused Tia to stay away from him. And to keep his son away from him.

  Zeke seethed inwardly.

  Ultimately, it meant that however much he had congratulated himself on pulling out of that bleak place and setting up a company that he could never have anticipated would take off as it had, he was a failure after all.

  Because he’d failed his family.

  Stalking the room, he bit back one cruel, damning comeback after another. What was the point in them? The only person who really deserved his condemnation was himself. Tia couldn’t hate him any more than he loathed himself right now.

  ‘So I kept calling them each day, until one day I called and they told me you had discharged yourself. They’d thought you would be with me, but you weren’t. Of course you weren’t,’ she choked out, anger and sadness inextricably interlinked.

  No, he’d wanted to get as far away from her as possible. Because the temptation to go to her, to be with her, had been too great. He’d feared he might succumb and he’d been determined that the only time he would seek his wife out again would have been when he was strong enough to provide for her again.

  He hadn’t banked on her leaving her medical career in the army. Effectively disappearing herself. He hadn’t for a moment imagined that she’d done so because she had a baby. A son.

  His son.

  It slammed into him, thrilling and proud, even if somewhat unsettling. And rumbling behind it, unsteadily and weaving a little, a ball of something that felt strangely like joy. He scarcely knew where to start.

  ‘Maybe I did need you to stay away from me in order for me to get myself together,’ he conceded at last. Ungraciously. ‘But you’re lying if you say you did it for me. You did it because it suited you, too. Because you didn’t want to be around me. Because you didn’t want me as father to our baby.’

  Everything inside him was coiled up. Waiting. Desperate. Wanting her response.

  It was like a fresh kind of hell when she dropped her eyes from his, unable to deny it.

  ‘I didn’t want the gung-ho Zeke. The man who basically jumped at any chance to risk his life. I didn’t want my child relegated to having to remember his father as some dead hero. I didn’t want him to have to wonder—every single day—if you were going to walk through that front door, the way I had to with my mother.’

  Tia’s voice cracked, and for a moment Zeke almost floundered. He remembered how lost and alone he’d thought she was the first time he met her. It had never occurred to him that she had carried that weight around her neck all those years—right up to becoming a mother herself; perhaps it should have.

  ‘I’m so sorry...’ he began, but she turned on him, practically stumbling over angry words in an effort to cut him off.

  ‘I never wanted him to go through the pain I went through the night when she hurried out that door to the shout, kissing me and telling me that she’d be there when I woke in the morning. But she...she never was.’

  Something kicked at him. Something he didn’t care to name.

  ‘I never realised... I’m so sorry, Tia.’

  She dashed a furious hand over her eyes.

  ‘I don’t need your sympathy, Zeke. I just wanted you to understand.’

  ‘I do understand now,’ he started.

  ‘Not understand why I was frightened back then.’ She shook her head wildly. ‘I mean to understand why—after your heroics last night—I still don’t want you in Seth’s life.’

  He stood, dumbfounded, feeling as if he’d been sucker-punched. It was impossible even to draw a breath.

  ‘I don’t want you to walk into my son’s life, and fulfil every childish fantasy he ever had, only to leave it again when something happens to you. Because it will happen, Zeke. I came back here because I heard you were here, and I thought you’d changed. But you haven’t learned to value your life at all, I see that now.’

  How was it possible to feel the loss of something he hadn’t even known? And yet he felt it. Acutely. Unbearably. As if his son were being ripped from him, despite the fact that they’d never really had a chance to know each other.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he ground out, his mouth feeling wholly alien. ‘I am Seth’s father and I am going to be
in his life.’

  ‘No.’ She snapped her head up. ‘I can’t allow it. I won’t.’

  ‘And I won’t allow you to shut me out of his life any longer. Not only do I intend to spend time getting to know my son, I intend to take him with me when I leave for France in a few days.’

  Her laugh was a sharp, hollow sound.

  ‘This time you really must be joking. You think I’m going to let you take him out of the country?’

  ‘I know you are.’

  She drew her lips into a thin line. Her eyes narrowing. Ready to fight.

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  When had that part of her developed? It wasn’t a characteristic of Tia’s he’d easily recognised. Yet even through his fury he knew it was appealing to a side of him that had never stopped hankering after what might have been between them.

  She made to move away. To walk out of his house. Out of his life.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  Dimly, Zeke was aware that he hadn’t fully engaged his brain before his mouth was firing away.

  ‘I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.’ He forced his voice to sound even. ‘You’re welcome to come with us.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ She snorted. ‘And there’s no way you’re taking my son.’

  ‘Our son.’

  ‘Fine. But Seth still isn’t going with you.’

  ‘Ever heard of Z-Black, Tia?’

  She stopped, her brow furrowing, and he had to fight the urge to reach out and smooth it flat. Ridiculous. But she was like a narcotic. An addiction he couldn’t seem to kick no matter how hard he tried.

  ‘Who hasn’t? At least, in the military world.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘What does that have to do with anything, though?’

  ‘What do you know about them?’ he pressed.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Answer me, Tia.’

  She glared, then sighed.

  ‘Fine. I know they’re renowned for prepping civilians for going into war zones, from foreign correspondents to aid agencies, even corporate individuals for restructure. Z-Black is known as one of the best for training them, showing them how to spot for mines, how to look after themselves, how to work with their close protection teams so they don’t actually become a liability themselves.’