Those were bad. Worse, though, were his dreams of Mariah. In them he saw her laughing and smiling, joyful and tender. Her eyes watched him, her hands touched him. And in his dreams he responded. His body grew ready for hers. His heart grew hungry for hers. His arms lifted to reach out to her.
And then he would see Sarah again. Drifting just out of reach.
Then, always, he woke up. Alone.
Mariah was tired.
She was more than tired. She was beat. She and Sierra had painted the room that was going to be the nursery this week. She’d bought two cribs and a dresser. She’d made curtains and had hung them, which had been the biggest challenge of all. But her exhaustion had less to do with physical exertion and lack of sleep than it did with worry. It was the worry that was getting to her, that was making her crazy.
The fear that, despite the brave face she was putting on, she was not going to be able to make it alone.
How was she going to get any work done at all once they were born? In six weeks, if she went full term, she would find out. It was a terrifying thought.
At least now they didn’t require changing and feeding every couple of hours. They were there, kickboxing their little hearts out, but at least they were silent. When they were born, they would cry, they would need to eat, they would need to be changed. She would have to do a thousand loads of laundry and go grocery shopping and cook meals and clean the apartment on top of doing the work that brought in money.
And how could she travel with the babies? How could she go to Martha’s Vineyard or Newport or… wherever?
How on earth was she going to cope?
The very thought of trying to deal with it all was almost enough to do her in.
Of course, Rhys had said he would provide financial support for the children. And she was grateful.
But she couldn’t let him support her. She would have to do that.
And she didn’t know how she was going to manage.
All she could think of was working her butt off now— so that she could afford to take some time off when the babies were born.
Stella was delighted. “The more the better,” she said. “I can save the articles and put them out over several months. Go for it.”
Mariah went for it.
She worked. She wrote. She peed. The babies moved. They shifted. They kicked.
“I think I have a field goal specialist on board,” she told Kevin when he dropped by to see if she wanted to go out to dinner.
It was one of those unseasonably warm November days, the ones that encouraged you to spend them outside because, with any shift in the wind, chances were that old man winter would come breathing down your neck and you wouldn’t get another nice day until spring.
So Mariah had spent it out on the terrace, cleaning up what was left of the plants in her flower boxes, then sitting at the small table, working on her laptop, trying to finish up the rough draft of the story she’d spent the past two days in Philly getting.
She’d interviewed a pianist who lived on the top floor of an old warehouse in which the elevator had been out of commission. She’d hiked up six flights of stairs, lugging her carryall with tape recorder and notepads. Her back had ached all the way home. It persisted still.
She’d come home this morning and tried to write, but the babies had kicked a lot, so she’d worked on the flower boxes to keep moving. Then she’d gone for a walk to try to settle them down.
But nothing had settled them. She wondered sometimes if they kept each other awake as much as they kept her from sleeping.
“Or maybe they’ve taken up clogging,” she told Kevin.
He looked horrified. “Clogging? Cripes,” he muttered. “Maybe you don’t want to go out to dinner, then.”
“No. I would like to go.” Getting out would be good. Better than staying home and trying to work while her unborn children auditioned for Riverdance in her abdomen.
Besides, she didn’t want to turn Kevin away. Even though she didn’t need him to deflect Rhys anymore, he still came by to see her a couple of times a week, and she was just glad to have him around. He was a good friend.
She put away her laptop. She could finish the article after she came home or tomorrow morning. Rubbing her back, she fetched her jacket. “Let’s go,” she said.
They went to a small quiet Italian place just off Columbus. It was a nice place to just relax and enjoy a meal, nothing frenetic, nothing demanding. Perfect, Mariah thought, and she tried to focus on what Kevin was saying.
But her back really hurt and she couldn’t get comfortable. She felt a tightening across her abdomen.
“What?” Kevin said.
“Huh? Oh, nothing. They’re just squeezing.”
He looked baffled. “Squeezing?”
“That’s what it feels like.” She studied the menu. The waiter came and they gave their order. And Mariah felt the sensation again. She shifted in her chair. They were not the world’s most comfortable chairs.
“You okay?” Kevin asked.
She nodded, shifting again. The kickboxers weren’t happy. Maybe they needed to pee. She got up. “I’ll be right back.” She went to the bathroom downstairs. She felt the tightening again as she went.
She stayed down there a long time. Ten minutes. The tightening was occurring every three. With regularity.
She was shaking when she came back to the table.
Kevin saw it at once. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I’m having the babies.”
“No,” Mariah said.
She glared up at her sister and said it again. She’d been saying it since Sierra had met her and Kevin at the hospital last night. “No, Sierra! I don’t know where Rhys is. I don’t know how to get in touch with him. I don't want to get in touch with him!”
“You need to,” Sierra said. She stood over Mariah’s bed now and, hands on hips, glared right back down at her sister who plucked irritably at the sheet and tried to think calm, cheerful, relaxing thoughts like the doctor had told her to do.
It wasn’t working—because Sierra kept right on pestering.
“Telling him won’t do any good,” Mariah said firmly. “Besides,” she added, looking away out the window, “he won’t want to know. Because something happening to me or to the babies is exactly what he doesn’t want to have to face.” Mariah sighed. “It happened before,” she explained.
She’d never told Sierra about Rhys’s wife and child. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want his past discussed, and there had never been any reason to before. Now Mariah knew her sister wouldn’t leave well enough alone until she had a compelling reason.
So briefly, going into as little detail as possible, she told her sister about Rhys’s wife, about the baby they were going to have. And about how he’d lost them both—and couldn’t forgive himself or forget or move on.
“So you see why he can’t get involved,” she finished. She gave Sierra a faint smile.
“The hell I do! All I see is what a selfish ass he is!” Sierra flounced around the room, practically bouncing off the walls. “His wife died and so that gives him an excuse to be a jerk to the woman he got pregnant?”
“You don’t understand,” Mariah said wearily.
“No, I damned well don’t!” Sierra fumed. She muttered. Mariah thought smoke might easily come out her ears. “You’re having twins! You almost had twins last night. You need to be taken care of—not taking care of someone else!”
“I’m not taking care of him! I’m just saying I don’t need him,” she said in an effort to placate Sierra. “I don’t need anyone.” She tried to sound put-together, capable, calm.
Sierra wasn’t buying. “Bull,” she said. “You need bed rest and calm and someone to do everything for you.”
“Not Rhys.”
Sierra glowered. She did another lap around Mariah’s bedroom. Mariah shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch.
“Look,” Mariah said finally, with as much patience as she could
muster, “you’re not exactly promoting a stress-free existence here. You look like you’re going to blow up. Just go away and let me sleep.”
Sierra stopped pacing and looked contrite. “I’m sorry. But—” She caught herself. “I’ll shut up. You get some rest. I’ll just be out in the other room.”
“You don’t have to stick around.”
“Yes, I do. And unless you want to fight about it, go to sleep.”
And Mariah knew there was no arguing with the pugnacious Kelly chin when it lifted like that.
“I’ll be fine,” she whispered as Sierra gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. She smiled until her sister left the room. Then she closed her eyes and prayed that it was true.
She’d been praying ever since the contractions had started and Kevin had taken her to the hospital straight from the restaurant the night before.
The hospital had called her doctor and he’d come right in. He’d examined her, murmuring and muttering, while Mariah had stared at him in white-faced, dry-mouthed panic.
“Am I…? Are they…?” But she couldn’t even voice her deepest fears.
Finally he’d looked at her over the top of his glasses. “You, my dear, need to take it easy.”
“I will,” she’d promised fervently. “But… are they all right?”
“So far. We need to stop those contractions.” And then he’d insisted she stay in the hospital overnight. “Just to make sure nothing starts going wrong.”
Thank God, nothing had.
She’d lain awake all night, barely daring to move. Trying to accomplish the almost impossible, which was to relax.
Kevin had called Sierra and the two of them had sat there all night, not relaxed, right along with her.
Finally, though, the rhythmic tightening across her abdomen had slowed and eased. By morning it had become faint and irregular.
When the doctor came in, he’d been pleased. “So far so good,” he had said. Then he’d shaken his finger at her. “But from here on out you have to be careful.”
“I’ll be careful,” Mariah had promised.
“Rest. In bed. All week. After that, if everything is okay, you can be up and around. No overdoing,” he said sternly. “No taking on the world.”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t,” he said firmly. “These babies are getting big and restless and they’re creating stress of their own. And, from what your sister has said, you’re working very hard.” Sierra had been her usual vocal self about how hard Mariah was working.
“I’ll stop.”
“Yes,” the doctor and Sierra had said together, “you will.”
“You’re caught in the middle,” the doctor went on. “I know that. But you have to take care of yourself. Rest. Sleep. Eat. Get fat and lazy. You do that, you’ll be fine.”
“All of us?” Mariah asked, her heart in her throat.
“Another month and these babies will have a much better chance.”
“Wolfe? Phone.” The voice came out to Rhys in the darkness.
It was sometime in the middle of the night where he was. Singapore? Saudi Arabia? Taiwan? It would come to him when he got more of his brain cells together.
Turkey. Yeah, Turkey.
Phone? Who the hell would be calling him?
Mariah.
He was out of bed and stumbling toward the doorway. “Thanks, Blake,” he said to the guy who’d called him and who pointed him in the direction of the one lone telephone in the place.
“Mariah?” he barked when he grabbed it up.
“Right in one,” his brother Dominic drawled.
Rhys clutched the phone in a death grip. “What happened? Is she…?”
“She’s okay. Now.”
Rhys let out a harsh breath and sagged against the wall. “Then what the hell are you—? How do you know about Mariah?” he demanded.
“I got a little visit.”
“From Mariah?” Rhys couldn’t imagine.
“No. Her sister. You didn’t tell me she was pregnant,” Dominic growled. “More important, you didn’t tell me you had a vested interest, shall we say, in the, er, input… as well as in the outcome.”
“Tell me!”
“She was having contractions. It’s not—”
“What? Already? What happened? Is she all right?”
“She’s getting along fine at the moment,” Dominic said, his voice more soothing now. “She was in the hospital overnight as a precaution. She’s home now. In bed. It was a… warning, I guess you’d say. She has to take it easy.”
“Damn right she does,” Rhys muttered. Wasn’t that what he’d been saying all along?
“Rest. Sleep. Put her feet up.”
“Of course.”
“The purple-haired witch doesn’t think she’ll do it.”
“You met Sierra? You talked to her in your office?”
“Sierra,” Dominic corrected, “talked to me. Shouted at me. Stomped past my secretary, burst into my office, grabbed me by the tie and told me she’d wrap it around a certain part of my anatomy and twist if I didn’t get hold of you right now and tell you to get your butt home and take care of her sister.”
“Whoa,” Rhys said.
“Wow,” Rhys said.
“Yeah,” Rhys said with dawning admiration, “I can see Sierra doing something like that.”
It didn’t take much imagination at all to envision Mariah’s nutty sister knocking Dominic’s very proper secretary for a loop, then tackling the CEO of Wolfe Enterprises on his own turf. Another time he could have entertained himself for hours with the scenario.
Now he said, “I’m on my way.”
“Glad to hear it, Dad,” Dominic drawled.
Dad.
Rhys didn’t think about that.
He didn’t think about anything but getting back to Mariah. They owed him time. He’d come in early.
It was a family emergency, he told his boss. And he got the next plane to London. He had a short layover there, then he caught a non-stop to New York. He was home practically before he left—at least according to the clock.
In fact, he had no idea what time it was—anywhere.
He was operating entirely on automatic by the time he got out of the cab in front of his brownstone the next evening. He tossed his bag in his front door and pounded up the stairs.
His hammering on Mariah’s door got no response.
He felt a renewed sense of panic. What if she was in the hospital? What if she’d had the babies? They wouldn’t survive, would they, being so early? Would she survive?
He pounded again. “Damn it!” he said through his teeth. “Open the damn door!”
And then, at last, he heard the lock turn and the chain rattle. The door opened a crack. He expected to see Sierra.
Mariah stared back at him, astonished. “What are you—?”
He didn’t wait for the question. Didn’t answer it at all. He pushed the door open and strode past her into the room. She was wearing a pair of baggy shorts and a sweatshirt—and even though it had been less than a month since he’d seen her she’d changed again.
Or rather her belly had. It was huge.
“What are you doing out of bed?” he demanded.
Still she gaped at him, then she almost visibly pulled herself together. “I was answering the door,” she said starchily. “Some idiot was pounding on it.”
“I thought Sierra would be here.”
“Sierra has a life.”
“She won’t when I get done with her. What the hell does she mean, leaving you alone?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Go get in bed,” Rhys said, moving in on her, herding her toward the bedroom even as he spoke. “You’re supposed to be lying down.”
“Says who?”
“Sierra. The doctor. My brother.”
“Your brother? Dominic?” Mariah’s jaw dropped. “What’s Dominic got to do with this?”
“He called me.”
“Whatev
er for?”
“To preserve his virility, I believe. Sierra threatened it unless he tracked me down.”
“I’ll kill her.”
“No, you won’t. Too much stress. Damn it, Mariah. Go lie down!” And when she didn’t immediately he took her by the arm and steered her toward the bedroom.
She resisted for just a second, then sighed. “You really are a bully,” she muttered as she allowed herself to be shoved down the hallway. “I don’t know what you’re doing here. He shouldn’t have called you.”
“Yes, he should have.” He backed her toward the bed and nodded, satisfied, when she sat down abruptly. “Feet up.”
“I don’t—”
“Feet up!” He bent and took hold of her calves, lifting her feet onto the bed. Then he sank down beside her and sprawled on the bed.
“Rhys!”
“Mmm?” He flung one arm over her to make her stay put, then shut his eyes.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Taking care of you,” he murmured.
She tried shoving his arm off, but he went totally limp, half from exhaustion and half from perverseness.
“I don’t need ‘taking care of,’ ” she argued.
“Not what I heard,” he mumbled. He rolled onto his side and hauled her close. God, she felt good. A hell of a lot better than his pillow which he’d woken up hugging recently. He tucked his arm more tightly around her burgeoning middle.
It kicked him.
He jerked his head up. “What the hell—?”
“You were squishing them,” Mariah said tartly.
“Them? Huh? Oh!” He loosened his grip, flattened his palm against her belly. It shifted and rolled beneath his hand. Them. The children.
His children.
He didn’t want to think about that.
Not now.
He couldn’t think about anything now. He was here. That was enough.
“Are they like that all the time?” he mumbled.
“Not all the time. Sometimes they sleep.”
“Good.” He settled in again, fitting his body to curve against hers, anchoring her loosely with his arm. “Thank God for that.”
“Rhys!”
Rhys's Redemption Page 12