by Amy Andrews
Looking at Beth lying so still and silent he knew he loved her more than anything. Loved her enough to wonder if she and the baby would be better off without him. She’d already told him she was perfectly happy to do it herself. Maybe he needed to heed that. What made him think she’d even want him anyway? She had what she wanted—a baby. And her son back. Did she even have room in her life for him?
His pager beeped and he quickly pushed the silence button. He needn’t have bothered. Beth didn’t stir. He checked the message. It was the PICU. He’d been expecting their page. They were removing Brooke’s dressing and he’d asked to be notified.
He left Beth’s side reluctantly, the dictates of his job warring with his desire to be with her. This was what it would be like all the time if he got involved. Constantly feeling guilty for neglecting one or the other.
He strode down the corridors, eating up the distance between Beth and Brooke with long powerful strides, his head seething. His duty to be with the injured woman he loved at odds with his duty to his patient.
‘Hi, June,’ he said, plastering a smile on his face as he approached Brooke’s bedside.
‘Hi, Gabe.’
‘So, how’s that head looking, sweetie pie?’ Gabe crooned, turning his attention to Brooke who gave him a big smile.
Erica Hamel from the plastics team was there also and they were both pleased with how the wound was looking. They spent twenty minutes discussing the next steps in the process for Brooke. Gabe checked his watch several times. He wanted to be there when Beth woke up.
‘So, that was quite a press conference,’ June said after Erica had left.
‘Yes.’ Gabe smiled.
‘You need to employ Beth as your publicist,’ June teased. ‘I think she’s a bigger fan than even me or Scott.’
Gabe looked at June. There was a shrewd gleam in her eyes. He chuckled. ‘Some would say that reporter had it coming.’
‘Oh. Absolutely.’ June laughed. ‘If Beth hadn’t said something, I was about to.’
Gabe laughed. ‘Well, thanks, I think I can stick up for myself.’
‘You shouldn’t inspire such loyalty if you don’t want your honour defended.’
Is that why Beth had done it? Out of loyalty?
‘Of course, I think there was a bit more than loyalty involved,’ June said.
Gabe shot June a polite smile. Could she be right? Was there something more that had motivated Beth’s outburst? He excused himself, telling June he’d pop into see Brooke in the morning.
He was back at Beth’s room eight minutes later, stopping abruptly in the doorway when he realised Beth wasn’t alone. David sat in a chair beside the bed, his back to the door.
Gabe approached quietly, crossing to the opposite side of the bed.
‘Oh.’ David rose. ‘Hi. I was just…I’ll go,’ he said.
Gabe reached across the bed and laid a stilling hand on the younger man’s arm. ‘Please, don’t. Beth would want you to stay.’
David looked at him and Gabe could almost touch his aura of indecision and conflict. It seemed they would make similar company tonight. Gabe pulled up a chair and was relieved when David resumed his seat.
They sat watching Beth breathe for a long time. Neither of them spoke. It was as if they were both just content to see signs of life.
‘So…it’s been a big couple of days,’ Gabe said eventually.
‘You can say that again.’ David grimaced.
‘You do know how much it means to Beth to have you back in her life?’
David nodded. ‘I don’t know if I can be what she wants.’
‘She just wants a chance to get to know you. That’s all. She’s your mother—’
‘I have a mother,’ David rejected quickly. ‘I wasn’t just on loan to the woman who raised me for the last twenty-three years, you know. Beth can’t surely expect us to have the same sort of mother-son relationship.’
Gabe nodded. The younger man’s confusion was palpable. He was pretty sure Beth would take whatever David had to offer, but he could sense the younger man had been pushed too much for one day. ‘So why are you here?’
David sighed. ‘I…don’t know. There were so many times as a kid that I wondered about her. Wondered why. How she could have given up her child. And when things were messed up I used to think…to know she’d be able to make it right. But then I grew up and I realised she must have had her reasons and I’d had a good life and what would we really have to say to each other?’
David stopped and Gabe waited for him to continue. He could tell there was so much more David wanted to say.
‘But when she was lying there today and she was so still, all I could think was I never got to know her. I was scared stiff she was dead and I didn’t get a chance to tell her…I loved her.’
Gabe nodded. Hadn’t he had just the same wake-up call? It was important suddenly to try and make David understand about Beth. David was, after all, going to be his daughter’s big brother. Hopefully, for Beth’s sake, a big part of the baby’s life. He knew Beth well enough to know that she just wasn’t whole without David.
‘Giving you up broke her heart, David. Give her a chance.’
David shook his head. ‘She’s not going to have time for me now. She has the baby.’
Gabe clenched his hands. David had been put into a situation he hadn’t expected and his confusion was more than understandable. But he was wrong if he thought Beth’s love was so fickle.
‘Love doesn’t divide, David. It multiplies. You and Beth are halves of each other’s whole. Neither of you are complete without the other. There’s a hole in her life that only you fill. No one, not even another child, can fill that space.’
Gabe watched as David seemed to take his words on board.
‘Get to know her. You won’t regret it. If today demonstrates anything, it’s that life’s short. My father died without me ever really making an effort to get to know him, and that’s just not right. And now I’m about to be a father myself and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last little while it’s that the bond between a parent and a child is too basic to us as humans to deny.’
Gabe felt the hypocrisy of the words even as he said them. Do as I say, not as I do? Here he was urging David to get to know Beth and yet he was contemplating some part-time father status while he still kept an eye on his career.
David nodded and they sat in silence for a while longer. Gabe’s brain was working overtime. How stupid had he been? He knew how awful it had been, growing up without a father or one who’d had no emotional investment in him whatsoever. Was that what he was condemning his child to?
Would she lie in bed when she was old enough and wonder about him as David had about Beth? And what would be his excuse when she wanted to know why he hadn’t given more? He wasn’t a fifteen-year-old from a broken home. Somehow he didn’t think I was too busy with my career to give a damn would cut it. He’d seen her on the screen today, had felt his heart swell with love for the tiny fragile life. He was fooling himself to think he could just go through the motions.
Everyone had always said he was just like his father. Driven. Focused. Determined. But they were wrong. He wouldn’t sacrifice the woman he loved or his child on the altar of his career. He didn’t know how but he’d make damn sure there was room in his life for them all.
Just because he’d had a lousy role model it didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. His father may have been a world-famous doctor but he had been a lousy human being and Gabe didn’t intend to follow in those footsteps. John Winters had succeeded. More than succeeded.
David stood. ‘Tell her I was here,’ he said. ‘I’ll call again tomorrow.’
Gabe nodded. ‘Please, do.’ He reached across the bed and offered David his hand. ‘She’ll like that.’
The two men shook hands and David departed. Gabe sincerely hoped David would be true to his word. He couldn’t bear to think of the woman he loved hurting. Looking at her bruised face was making h
im sick to his stomach. Her broken heart was too much to bear.
It was almost dawn before Beth stirred. She came awake slowly, conscious of every ache and pain. She felt as if her body had been on the rack. Her temple throbbed and her eye felt like it was bulging out of her head. Her stomach grumbled and the baby was kicking like crazy, no doubt demanding that her mother eat.
She brought her hand to her face and tentatively felt the swelling there. Ouch. She had a very bad feeling it was already three different shades of purple. She was going to look very scary for a few days. She opened her sore eye, pleased to find it was still possible and her vision didn’t seem to be affected.
Her hand felt heavy and numb and she felt a tremor of alarm as Gabe’s warning about a spinal injury reared its ugly head. Beth looked down, no easy task with the collar limiting her range of movement, to check out why. For a brief second her heart stopped. Gabe’s head rested against her hand.
He’d stayed?
Beth drank in his features. His eyes were shut, his stubble making him look rakish in the subdued hospital lighting. She wanted to freeze this moment. In this instant she could almost believe they were a couple. A family. The fact that she looked like the bride of Frankenstein and his career was his first priority seemed completely inconsequential.
Her other hand hovered above his head, the urge to rumple his caramel waves almost overwhelming. But the pins and needles in her trapped hand were becoming quite painful, almost a match for the throb in her temple, and she reluctantly removed her hand as gently as she could.
‘What?’ Gabe roused instantly, his head snapping up.
‘It’s OK,’ she croaked. Her throat felt dry and she swallowed. ‘My hand was sore.’ She flexed her fingers to encourage the circulation to return.
‘Oh, sorry.’ He smiled. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’
Beth felt herself responding to his sleepy grin and his drowsy voice. She was sore, hungry and no doubt exceedingly frightening to look at, yet her hormones roared to life.
‘You should go home, Gabe,’ she whispered. ‘Have you been here all night?’
He nodded rubbing at a crick in his neck. Her eye looked even worse than it had earlier, and he felt ill all over again, thinking how close he’d come to losing her the previous day. He wasn’t leaving until he’d got some stuff off his chest.
‘David was here earlier.’
Beth sat forward and then winced, before dropping back against the pillows. ‘Really?’
‘Easy,’ Gabe said.
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
‘Beth, you scared us both silly yesterday. You were exhausted. Neither of us wanted to disturb you.’
She heard the fear in his voice again and tried not to read too much into it. ‘What did he say? How did he seem?’
‘He said when he saw you lying on the ground unconscious he thought you were dead and he realised he’d never had the chance to get to know you.’
Beth felt hope flower inside her as tears sprang to her eyes. ‘He did?’
Gabe nodded. ‘He did. He said to tell you he’d be back to see you later today.’
A tear spilled from an eye and trekked down her cheek. Could it be true? Could her son be taking his first steps towards a permanent relationship? ‘Oh, Gabe, I want that so much.’
He smiled at her as he brushed the moisture from her cheek. ‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘I know.’
Beth’s mind rushed ahead and she felt a ball of nervousness tighten in the pit of her stomach. Please, don’t let me mess it up. ‘Oh, god, I must look a fright,’ she fretted, touching her swollen eye.
‘You’re alive.’ He picked up her hand and kissed her palm. ‘Trust me, for an awful moment yesterday none of us thought that was possible.’
Beth’s palm tingled and she looked down into his earnest gaze. He was staring at her so intently her belly flopped. ‘I’m sorry I scared everyone,’ she said huskily.
‘Just don’t ever do it again, OK?’
‘OK,’ she whispered. He was still looking at her with those green eyes and she wished she knew what he was thinking. Was this just a concerned friend? A father worried about his baby? Or was this a lover talking?
She couldn’t bear to have him look at her like this, so…possessively, if it meant nothing. ‘You should go. Get a few hours’ sleep in a proper bed. You’ve got an afternoon list today.’
And just like that she was back-in-control Beth. The Beth that ran the General’s operating theatres with efficiency and expertise. The Beth that would manage motherhood with one hand tied behind her back. The one that would be perfectly fine without him. Only he wasn’t so sure how fine he’d be.
‘I need to talk to you first.’
Gabe had come over all serious and Beth felt a wave of panic rise from the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to hear him talking about future arrangements. Not now. She was tired and aching. She wasn’t strong enough. ‘Gabe, I’m really not up to much at the moment.’
‘Please.’
Beth shivered at the rawness in his tone. ‘Gabe,’ she pleaded.
Gabe hardened his heart to her plea. He had to say this. ‘I was sitting in that press conference yesterday—’
‘Oh, God. Look, I’m sorry about that,’ Beth interrupted. She cringed, thinking how deranged she must have sounded. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I was rude and hasty.’
She was trying to take it back? What did that mean? He shook his head—it didn’t matter. They weren’t in high school, his feelings hadn’t changed.
‘I…loved it when you said those things.’
Beth’s heart stood still in her chest for a few beats. He’d said the L-word.
‘In fact, listening to you defend my honour, I realised that I’d fallen in love with you. I don’t know when it happened—I think it just kind of sneaked up on me. And I thought, Hell, that’s a complication I don’t need.’
Beth’s heart raced in her chest now. Had he just used the L-word again? In relation to her?
Her hand lay by her side and he picked it up and cradled it against his face.
‘And then you got hit by that car and it was the worst moment of my life. And then I saw the baby…my baby.’ He placed his hand low on her abdomen. ‘And I didn’t think it was possible to feel such instantaneous emotion. And I knew I was getting in deeper.’
Beth was holding her breath now. His palm felt amazingly possessive against hers. Was there a ‘but’ coming?
‘And then I was talking to David and telling him how important it was to know the people who had given you life, and I realised I was being a hypocrite. That if I gave any less than my all I was condemning my child to the same fate.’
Beth swallowed. What was he saying? ‘Gabe.’
‘No, hang on.’ He shook his head. ‘I want our daughter…’ he gave her hand a squeeze ‘…to know her father. I want to be part of her life. And I realise that you don’t need me and I’m not in your parenting plan, but I can’t walk away. That’s something my father would have done. And I’m not my father. Neither do I want to be. I want to be a father to my daughter. In every sense of the word.’
Beth’s brain fizzed with information. Maybe it was the knock to her head but she was finding it all a little hard to process. She was still stuck back at the L-word.
‘Beth?’ he prompted a minute later. She hadn’t said anything. She was just looking at him, clearly confused.
‘I’m sorry, did you just say…that you loved me?’
Gabe nodded.
Beth blinked. Truly deep down she’d always felt unworthy of anyone’s love. How could someone love her when she’d given her child away? But right now she dared to feel a flare of hope.
‘And that you want to be a father?’
He nodded again.
Beth’s pulse trebled before she could put the brakes on. ‘But what about your career? Your practice in the UK? These things are important to you, Gabe.’
‘Yes, they are. And
I can have them here.’
Beth still refused to give in to total elation. ‘Aren’t you worried how you’ll manage a career and family? You’re the one who told me it didn’t work.’
Gabe nodded. ‘I’m terrified that I’ll get it wrong and I’ll make mistakes, but I’m more terrified of how empty my life will be without you in it. I can’t promise it’ll all be plain sailing, but I can promise I’ll always put you and the baby first. Always. Just like John. And Scott and June. Just because my father messed it up, it doesn’t mean I will. He was never committed enough. But I am.’
He laid both hands against her stomach. ‘I promise on the life of our daughter that I will be committed to make this work every day of our lives.’
Beth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He loved her and wanted to be with her. If it was true, if this gorgeous, successful man truly loved her, despite her baggage, then maybe, just maybe she could start loving herself. Forgive herself.
‘I know this is a shock.’
‘You can say that again.’ Beth gave a half-laugh.
‘I realise it’ll probably take me a while to win your favour but I’m hoping you’ll eventually grow to love me too and we can get married.’
‘Oh, Gabe.’ It was all too much. Beth felt a wave of emotion well in her throat. ‘I can’t believe you’re proposing to me when I look like I’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards.’
Gabe smiled and kissed her hand. ‘You’re alive. I’ve never seen you more beautiful.’ He removed his hands and laid his head against her stomach.
Beth knew tears were coursing down her cheeks but didn’t care. She ran a hand through his hair, luxuriating in the feel of it beneath her hands and the weight of his head against her womb.
‘Are you sure, Gabe? Really sure? Can you love someone who gave away her child?’
Gabe looked up into her tear-stained face. ‘What you did was brave and completely selfless. You were a mixed-up fifteen-year-old and you put his needs first. I love you especially for that.’