“Yes. I apologize for not keeping you informed. There simply was no time.”
“But she’s okay?”
“Yes.”
“The baby?”
“Six pounds, five ounces and breathing on his own. Apgar scores were seven and eight, well within the normal range.”
“What the...? Apgar?”
“Appearance, pulse, grimace, activity and respiration,” Dr. Sharma rattled off.
“Right,” Ernesto muttered. “I knew that—and I need to see them. Take me to them now.”
“I think we can arrange that,” said Dr. Sharma with a gentle smile.
“Right now,” Aly’s dad insisted. And then his eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the carpet, out cold.
“Dad!” Aly shouted. Her voice echoed so loudly, she clapped her hand over her mouth to silence it.
All three of them—the doctor, Marco and Aly—dropped to their knees around the unconscious Ernesto.
A second later, his eyes popped open. He blinked up at them, frowning. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m all right.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Sharma somewhat wearily. “Fainting spells happen quite often with new dads.” He felt Ernesto’s forehead and took his pulse. “It’s the stress, frequently exacerbated by low blood sugar.” Dr. Sharma clucked his tongue. “Have you eaten today?”
“I had a full breakfast,” Ernesto grumbled. “And I’ve been right there in the delivery room for five births before this one, so don’t call me a first-timer.” Marco and the doctor helped him back into his chair. “But that damn abruption thing and the emergency C-section? That’s some scary stuff.” He shook his head and muttered, “Just let them be all right. This is the last one, as God is my witness. I’m gettin’ clipped.”
A nurse appeared with a small carton of orange juice.
Dr. Sharma took it from her and gave it to Ernesto. “Drink up. You’ll feel better.”
Aly’s dad drank the orange juice straight down and crumpled the empty carton. “Take me to my wife, please. Now.” He stood without wobbling. “See? Steady as a rock.”
Dr. Sharma led him off through the double doors.
Dante showed up five minutes later. Pascal and Tony came soon after. They were allowed, one by one, to take a quick peek at Cat and the baby in recovery.
After that, they settled in to wait for Cat to get into her own room. Aly texted Connor to let him know what was going on.
I’ll come on over, he texted back.
Longing filled her, sweet and hungry. For the strength of his arms around her, the solidity of his body to lean against.
But it really wasn’t necessary. No. There’s nothing you can do here, really. We’re just sitting around waiting for Mom to get her room.
Call me if you need anything?
Promise.
Next, she called her aunt Siobhan. That call took forty-five minutes, during which her aunt alternately insisted she was catching a flight to Oregon right away, and delivered a long list of instructions for how Aly ought to be taking care of Siobhan’s baby sister.
There were two other families in the obstetrics lounge. After a while, Aly worried that the long phone conversation was irritating them. She took it out to the foyer area beyond the reception counter until Aunt Siobhan finally wound down and said goodbye.
Once Cat had been moved to her own room, Aly’s brothers each took a longer turn visiting her.
Aly went last and found her mom conscious but groggy, holding Aly’s new baby brother. Her dad had taken off his shoes, climbed up on the bed and kind of wrapped himself around his wife and baby son, managing somehow not to interfere with the various tubes and monitoring devices attached to Cat.
Aly bent and kissed the three of them, one by one.
“We made it,” Cat said in a half whisper, her voice rough, probably from the breathing tube she would have needed while under the anesthetic.
“Meet MacCormack Salvatore,” her father announced proudly. The baby promptly opened his tiny mouth in a huge yawn.
“It’s a big name for a little boy,” joked Aly. She had her phone ready. “Smile, you guys.”
Her dad beamed, her mom turned the corners of her lips up, barely—and little MacCormack yawned again. Aly snapped three pictures in quick succession.
Then she took a turn holding her new brother. The little heartbreaker even opened his eyes once and stared kind of dazedly up at her. She chuckled in delight at everything about him—his button nose and tiny mouth, his little, wrinkled, starfish hands.
Reluctantly, she handed her brother back to her mom, who reminded her to call various members of the extended family and let them know that MacCormack Salvatore had arrived.
Her dad instructed, “You tell your aunt Siobhan that your mother and the baby are fine.”
“I already talked to her, Dad.”
“You need to call her again. Trust me, Bella. She’ll expect another call and another report on her baby nephew, on how Cat is doing now she’s out of recovery. You answer all her questions and before you hang up, you make it crystal clear that your mother will call her when she’s ready to talk.”
“Now, ’Nesto,” her mother chided. “Sibbie calls because she cares.”
“She calls a lot because she cares.”
Cat gave Aly another tired smile. “Say it to her nicely, sweetheart.”
“I will, Mom. Don’t worry.”
Her dad suggested, “Get Siobhan to call the rest of the family. You’ll be doing her a favor, giving her something to do.” He smirked. “And you’ll get rid of her faster because she’ll be in a hurry to tell everyone else what she knows.”
“’Nesto!” Her mom nudged him with an elbow.
Aly’s dad grunted. “You know I’m right.”
Plus, it was a great idea. “Thanks, Daddy. I’ll do that.”
When she got back out to the waiting area, Marco, Pascal and Tony had already gone.
Dante said, “Anybody mention how long they’re keeping them here?”
“No, but from what I’ve read about having a C-section, it’ll be a few days, at least.”
“Well, then.” Dante got up and stretched. “I’m heading out for now.”
She rose and gave him a hug. “I’ll stick around for a while. I’m sure we’re out of the woods, but just in case.”
He chucked her under the chin. “You’re the best.”
She looked up into his dark eyes and thought about Grace Bravo, for no logical reason. Could there really be something going on between Dante and Connor’s youngest sister? It seemed so unlikely. But that was only because they’d all grown up together and she remembered when Dante was eighteen and Grace was nine. The older they got, the less the age difference was going to matter.
Dante must have seen some hint of her thoughts in her expression. He frowned. “What?”
Did she even need to know?
Probably not. And if she did know, she could end up stewing over how much to share with Conn. “Nothing. It’s been a heck of a day, that’s all.”
“You should eat something. Get Connor to bring you takeout.”
She bopped him one on the shoulder. “He’s at work.”
“Oh, come on. It’s after four. And the guy’s totally whipped, anyway. You know all you gotta do is call.”
She would’ve smacked him again, but it pleased her too much to think of Connor rushing to bring her whatever she needed. “You and Conn seem to be getting along pretty well lately.”
“I might be starting to think he’s okay.”
“Don’t fall all over yourself saying good things about him.”
Dante smirked. “No danger there.”
She fake-punched him again, after all. “Get outta here.”
“Call if you need me.”
“Yo
u know I will.”
After he left, she texted Connor, including one of the pictures she’d taken of her parents and baby MacCormack.
He wrote back seconds later. Cute. They’re both okay, then?
So far, they’re doing great.
You still at Memorial?
Yeah.
Should I bring takeout?
She smiled to herself, thinking of Dante’s observation a few minutes before. Definitely. Bring takeout—but bring it home. I’ll meet you there. I have to make a few family calls, share the big news, and then I’m on my way. Call Janine. Tell her to come over.
Good idea. Will do.
* * *
They shared their takeout with Janine, who’d passed out a lot of flyers that day, but had no news about Maurice.
After Janine went home, Aly grabbed Connor’s hand and led him upstairs, where they spent a beautiful hour crawling all over each other.
Eventually, they settled down beneath the covers. She gave him a blow-by-blow of the day’s events.
“Must’ve been awful,” he said, when she’d finished.
Stacking her hands on his gorgeous bare chest, she rested her chin on them. “Yeah. It was rough. But at least it had a happy ending.”
Idly, he fiddled with her hair, taking a fat lock of it and rubbing it between his fingers, drawing the strands out and then smoothing them down her back. “You ever think about it anymore—having kids, I mean?”
Aly’s heart kicked into a faster rhythm, the rhythm of guilt for what she hadn’t said. Her face must have given her away.
His golden-brown eyebrows drew together and his fingers stilled in her hair. “It bothers you, thinking about having kids now?”
“No, not at all.” And it didn’t. What bothered her was what she hadn’t told him—and she really had no reason to be bothered about that. She would tell him as soon as she knew herself.
Which would be as soon as she took the test.
And so what if she was procrastinating on taking a home test? It wasn’t good to take a test too early, anyway. Early tests had a higher chance of a false negative—yeah, the tests she’d bought were pretty much guaranteed to give her a correct result at this point.
But a false negative wasn’t the only drawback to testing early. Sometimes a pregnancy wasn’t viable. A woman could get a positive result, become all excited about having a baby and then not have it work out.
Those were her excuses and she was sticking with them.
“Aly?” He rubbed the back of his finger along the curve of her cheek. She loved that, the way he touched her. The way the slightest contact, skin to skin, made her feel so much—aroused, cherished, wanted. Loved. “What’s wrong?”
She should just tell him.
But damn it, she wasn’t ready to talk about it—or even to find out for sure yet.
“Nothing,” she answered. “Honestly.” Liar, liar. Pants on fire. She turned her head and made herself look directly into his eyes. “And yeah. I do think about kids. You know I always wanted kids.”
“Me, too.”
“I remember,” she whispered. They’d agreed they both wanted kids way back that first year they got together at OU, though they’d never discussed when, exactly, that was going to happen.
He traced the shape of her ear and lower, his finger skimming the side of her neck, drifting around to dip into the notch between her collarbones, wandering slowly down the center of her chest, distracting her, causing desire to flare across her skin, to hollow her out below.
And wait a minute...
Why did he look so sad? “You feel like you’re running out of time to have kids?”
“A little. Maybe.”
“Well, stop. You’re a man. You’ve got lots of time left to become a dad.” And you just might get lucky. It could happen sooner than you think. “Consider my Dad. Fifty with a newborn.”
“Will wonders never cease?” Connor smiled and a million winged creatures took flight in her belly. He made her giddy.
And breathless. The man could steal her breath away with just a smile. “My dad swears that MacCormack’s the last one.”
“I’ll bet your mom’s in agreement about that.”
Aly lifted herself up, planted a quick kiss on his sexy lips and then pulled her pillow closer. Rolling to her back, she stuck the pillow under her head. “Think about it. When MacCormack’s twenty, my mom will be sixty-eight—and my dad will be seventy.”
“Yikes.” He got up on an elbow and leaned close. His lips touched hers. They shared one of those kisses that went on forever, the kind that made her see stars even though it never went deep. “What were we talking about?” he teased when he lifted his head.
She wrapped her arm around his neck. “This.” And she pulled him down for another kiss, a deliciously deep one this time.
They let their bodies do the talking from there.
* * *
Cat and baby Mac, as they’d all started to call him, went home from Memorial that Thursday. Dr. Sharma released them at a little after ten in the morning.
Mac was a surprisingly easy baby, at least so far. He had no trouble nursing. Already, he seemed a laid-back kind of guy. When he cried, he could usually be soothed by the basics—a diaper change, a meal or somebody rocking him.
A nurse rolled mother and child out of Memorial in a hospital-mandated wheelchair. Aly’s dad was waiting. He had the car seat all hooked up in Cat’s Chevy Tahoe. Cat sat in back with the baby and Aly followed them in the Mazda.
At the house, Tucker ran in circles, whining and quivering in ecstasy to have Cat back home again. Ernesto insisted on being the one to get mother and child settled in the master bedroom. Aly fixed lunch. Her dad went to work after the meal and Cat and Mac curled up in bed for a nice little nap.
When Aly peeked in on them around two, Mac was in the bassinet by the bed and Cat was sitting up with the romance novel she’d been reading on Monday when her water broke. Tuck had curled himself close to her side. Aly would have quietly shut the door and headed back to the kitchen to start putting her parents’ dinner together if Cat hadn’t glanced up and spotted her.
Aly’s mom smiled, marked her page with a bit of ribbon and patted the empty side of the bed.
“You sure?” Aly mouthed.
At Cat’s nod, she slipped off her sandals and tiptoed over. She set the sandals on the floor, climbed onto the bed and lay on her side, facing her mom. Cat turned, too, so their foreheads were inches apart. Now they could whisper together without disturbing the baby. On Cat’s other side, Tucker let out a huff of a sigh, but otherwise didn’t stir.
Aly asked, “How’re you feeling?”
“Like my stomach will never be flat again.” Cat put her hand on her soft belly and let out a low chuckle. “Not that it was all that flat nine months ago, come to think of it.”
Aly felt kind of misty-eyed. “You’re beautiful, Mom.”
Cat put her hand over Aly’s and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you. It is clear to me that I brought you up right.”
It was a sunny day, and warm for October. Earlier, Aly had opened the windows. A gentle breeze stirred the sheer curtains.
Cat said, “Whatever it is, I’m right here if you want to talk about it.”
For once, Aly didn’t let herself get all wrapped up in second-guessing. She just said it. “I think I’m pregnant.”
“Ah.” It was an invitation. Cat wouldn’t pry, but she was always ready to listen.
Aly felt so fortunate to have a mom who understood her and rarely got on her last nerve. “I bought two tests, but I haven’t taken either one of them.”
“How far along?”
“Eight or nine weeks—I mean, if I really am pregnant.”
“And Connor?” Cat asked. It was a truly vague question, yet Aly understood it perfectly.
“I haven’t said anything to him yet. I want to take a test first, find out for sure.”
“How do you feel?”
“Physically? Fine. No morning sickness, nothing like that.”
“How do you feel in your heart?”
“Um, happy. Hopeful. Nervous. Wondering what will happen, how it might all work out.”
“Sounds good to Grandma.” Cat pressed her lips together.
Aly sighed. “Go ahead. Speak.”
“You think you might move home?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Cat nodded her agreement to whatever decision Aly might end up making. Her parents had always accepted her choices and adapted to them. They were much tougher on the boys.
And Cat was still watching her too closely.
“What else?” Aly asked.
“Hmm. Well. I was just thinking. Eight or nine weeks along, that’s a good time to find out.”
Aly took her mom’s hand and wove their fingers together. “I’m getting there, Mom. I really am...”
* * *
But the next day went by. And the weekend. And Monday and Tuesday—and somehow, Aly still wasn’t “there” yet.
Wednesday, she had a session with Dr. Warbury at ten. She stopped in at Janine’s first.
Janine already had company, a neighbor from across the street. They sat in the front room together, sipping coffee, chatting away. Lately, Janine always seemed to have something going on. In the search for the still-missing Maurice, she’d struck up real friendships with neighbors up and down the block. She missed her cat, but her life was much less solitary than it had been before Maurice vanished.
Aly stayed for ten minutes and left the two women making plans to meet at a local fitness center and try out a yoga class.
* * *
“So,” said Dr. Warbury, as the session was winding down. “Things are looking good for you. No headaches in the past three weeks or so. And you have a solid understanding of the life you’ve led in the past seven years.”
Aly didn’t remember everything—but did anyone, really? She knew enough. She no longer felt that her own mind was keeping secrets from her.
A Husband She Couldn't Forget Page 15