Looking skeptical, she stepped closer to peer into the living room windows. Gabe followed her glance to the gorgeous golden retriever puppy still snoozing inside a metal crate. Satisfied all was okay with her pet, she countered, “I don’t doubt that your medical skills will always be needed elsewhere, Gabe, but there are infectious diseases in Texas and plenty of people who need care here, too.” She paused to give him a pointed look beneath her fringe of thick golden lashes. “For those who want to be close to their friends and family and share in life’s challenges, anyway.”
He wasn’t running away from their mutual loss or his complicated family, no matter what she thought. “And your point is, darlin’?”
“Brett found a way to serve his community and provide much-needed medical care at the hospital here in Laramie.”
No doubt his late best friend had been a saint. The kind Susannah had been looking to lasso for herself—at least according to her twin. “Yeah, well, I’m not Brett,” Gabe returned gruffly. Which was why he had just quit his regular hospital job in nearby San Angelo, and signed up for his first five-year stint with PWB. So he would be free to concentrate on international medicine full-time. Instead of just a few months every year.
“Oh, how well we all know that,” Susannah retorted.
Gabe understood why Susannah was lashing out. She had so much pain locked inside her, she had to put it somewhere. He also knew he was tough enough to take it. He watched her navigate her way down the steps with the hand truck and back up into the bed of the U-Haul, long, sexy legs moving purposefully, her silky skin gleaming in the sunshine. Reminding him he’d always wanted to make a move on her, but had known better, then and now. “You want to clarify that?”
“Brett knew how to really be there for the people in his life. Especially Belinda.”
He caught the wistfulness in her low tone. Knew her sister’s intensely happy marriage had been a source of relief, amazement and heartache for her. Guessing how lonely and inadvertently left out she’d often felt in the wake of such contentment, he narrowed his glance at her and goaded her into revealing more of her feelings, “And you think I don’t have Brett’s gift for getting close to others?”
“Not really, and especially not in a romantic way. I mean—” she surveyed the moving boxes still left to be unloaded, waving an airy hand “—it’s not that I think you’re a monk, mind you.” Her eyes sparkled with sudden mischief. “I’m sure you have had your share of the ladies.”
Choosing not to delve too deeply into her remark, he provoked, just as languidly, “And I’m sure you date, too.”
Regret battled with the sorrow in her expression. “Not...successfully.” She sighed. “Which is why I’m back here,” she continued, her usual stubborn optimism returning. “Because I’m going to forget all about trying to find the one and pursue having a family on my own.”
“With...?” he asked, fearing he already knew the answer to that, given the terms of her sister and brother-in-law’s will and the controversial property contained therein.
Her lips quavered slightly, leaving her looking achingly vulnerable once again. “The embryos Belinda and Brett left behind.”
He knew she was heartbroken and bereft, and he privately worried she’d never find the bliss her late family had left behind, but this was crazy talk, pure and simple. No way a woman still in the throes of mourning should undertake such a risky, life-upending proposition. Especially when a happy result was far from guaranteed. “Whoa, whoa!” He lifted his hands in emphasis. “Just because they left you their embryos does not mean you have to personally use them, Susannah.”
“And what would you have me do, Doc?” she shot back angrily, leaning in close and going toe-to-toe with him. “Destroy them? Because Brett and Belinda were quite clear that they did not want that to happen, even in the event of their death.”
Reminding himself she was still grieving and that he needed to tread carefully here, he suggested quietly, “You could donate them to another infertile couple.”
He watched her lips open in a round “oh” of distress.
“As was also offered as an option for you, if this situation ever came to pass,” he continued. And sadly, it had.
She shook her head, stepped back, distraught. “The thought of strangers taking on their embryos...” Moisture sparkled in her eyes. “No.”
“You don’t have to be related by blood to be a good parent,” he reminded her gruffly, knowing it to be true. Carol and Robert Lockhart had been wonderful to him and his seven siblings, loving them every bit as fiercely as his biological parents had. First through the foster-care system, then adoption.
Yes, there were still underlying issues for all of the siblings, he admitted to himself reluctantly. How could there not be, after experiencing a lightning strike on their Houston home during a terrible thunderstorm, the frantic escape that followed, followed by the eventual roof collapse that had killed both his folks in an instant?
Yet, at the end of the day, he and his sibs were still family. Emotional scars and all. Fiercely loved and protected by their adoptive parents.
Susannah pulled herself together and studied him, the tenuous politeness they had managed for the sake of their late loved ones showing signs of fracture yet again. “I wasn’t trying to insult you or your folks, Gabe.”
“And yet,” he couldn’t help but point out, feeling a little resentful himself now at her attitude, “you said it. And meant it.” Thereby implying that nonbiological ties are inferior to biological ones.
Susannah raked her teeth across her lower lip and tried again, choosing her words carefully. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I know you and your siblings were lucky enough to find a really wonderful second set of parents. But after Belinda and I were orphaned, we landed in a situation with an actual blood relative where that wasn’t the case. Which makes me a lot less trusting that everything will turn out all right, just because a situation looks good on paper.”
“Meaning?” he asked, aware this situation was becoming far too personal, far too fast.
Briefly, a flash of emotion that seemed to go far deeper than the situation they were in flickered in her gaze. “I have no intention of signing Brett and Belinda’s embryos over to someone else to raise. Not,” she said emphatically, coming close enough to inundate him with the wildflower scent of her perfume, “when I am still here to do it for them.”
Copyright © 2020 by Cathy Gillen Thacker
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ISBN-13: 9781488069864
A Family for a Week
Copyright © 2020 by Melissa Senate
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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