by Anna Adams
Surprise jolted Sophie. “You don’t like Ian?”
“He’s not right for you. Not some man who wanders the world without a mat to call his own. I saw you liked him. I should have butted in. I was afraid he’d hurt you, but I trusted your good sense.”
Sophie remembered what had kept her out of Tennessee all these years. “Why do you all do that? Ever since the day Mom left Bardill’s Ridge, every female in our family, including the ‘marry-ins’ has tried to save me from myself. None of you believed in my ambition. You were all waiting for me to come to no good because Mom didn’t know how to be a mother.”
“Nita may have left, but you had Beth and Eliza and me.” Beth and Eliza were Gran’s other two daughters-in-law. “We should have pretended you had a normal family and you didn’t need us?”
Sophie gripped the trim on the sofa cushion so tightly the beads bit into her palms. She’d proved their worst fears about her. Before Ian had come along, she’d been heart-whole and content with her job and her Washington friends. She’d thought she was too smart, too careful to get hurt. But the truth was, she’d never cared enough about any other man.
Even now, three weeks after their sham wedding, she missed Ian, and missing him felt irrational. She’d compromised her pride for him. She’d punched holes in all her best walls of defense, and he’d betrayed her trust.
“Sophie, I can’t offer you the job unless you tell me why you want it. I need another doctor—and I want a good one like you—but I’m after someone who’ll take over, someone I can depend on.”
“Why take over?” The family all assumed Gran would work here until they carried her out feet first. She’d promised she was quitting a million times before. Sophie felt a chill.
“Nothing’s wrong. Don’t jump to conclusions,” Gran said, and kneaded Sophie’s hand. The same touch had comforted Sophie all her childhood. “You remember I promised your grandfather I’d retire on our anniversary?”
“Yeah, but no one believed you.”
“Grandpa did.” Gran laughed, a touch embarrassed. But Sophie knew she had the courage to take the necessary steps. “If I’m not working here, someone as good as I am has to take my place.”
“You’re sure that’s all?”
“Positive.” Gran kissed her forehead. “I’ve done good work and I want it to continue. If you take over, I could help you until you know the place the way I do.”
Gran wasn’t arrogant. She’d trained at Vanderbilt when most Tennessean young ladies were learning how to sew a fine seam. Despite getting married and soon giving birth to her first son, she’d finished at the top of her undergraduate class and stayed there all the way through med school. Not one of the powerful men in charge of those male-dominated institutions had ever given her a break.
She deserved an honest, long-term commitment from her granddaughter. It wouldn’t be fair to take temporary shelter in the mountains. “What if I think it over to make sure?” Sophie asked. “I don’t want to waste your time with training and then let you down.”
Gran pulled back, satisfied. “Take a few days. Are you staying in town?” She stood, ushering Sophie to the door. She was a busy woman. She made time for family, but she didn’t dawdle. Sophie took no offense. She’d learned her work ethic from her grandma.
“I’m on my way to Dad’s.” She’d decided to tell him about the baby now. Lucky thing Ian was too far away for her father to set an armed posse on him. She’d be lucky if her dad didn’t turn the posse on her.
Gran reached for a file from the top of her in-box. “Listen to him for a change. Ethan’s a smart man.”
“You say that about all your sons.”
Gran slid on her glasses and smiled over the half lenses. “Bring him up to dinner tonight. Grandpa will want to see you, too.”
Sophie doubted food would be one of her dad’s priorities after she dropped her bomb. He’d be too busy trying not to let her see she’d disappointed him. “I’ll call if we’re coming.”
“Fine.” Gran nodded at the door. “I’ll walk out with you. My next appointment should be waiting.”
Gran darted around her as they exited her office. Sophie took her time, studying the spacious waiting room as if she’d never seen it before, the easy chairs squatting, fat and comfortable, in front of the far windows, the hefty ottomans just waiting to prop up a pregnant woman’s swollen feet.
She could work here. She already felt her share of family pride in the place.
Several patients glanced up from their magazines. Gran’s patrons were usually the only strangers in town and even they couldn’t maintain their anonymity forever. They obviously wanted to know who she was.
The pressure mounted. This was for real. These women would be her patients, and she’d be leaving an office full of women in Washington—her first patients in her first practice.
Sophie headed for the door. She’d often thought of how it would feel to work here, but she’d never imagined scurrying home to Bardill’s Ridge, pregnant and conveniently married. She flattened both hands on her stomach.
She’d manage fine with the patients, but how would she survive her grandmother’s on-the-job mothering? It might be a good idea to end her marriage before Gran discovered it. Greta Calvert believed in family enough to think Sophie should give Ian a second chance.
And the other citizens of Bardill’s Ridge? Sophie’s mother had left town with a man who wasn’t her husband. Sophie could see the heads nodding. Wild like her mother.
Nita had never possessed the instincts that guided some moms. Marriage was a piece of paper she could simply burn, and when she had a date, her daughter was usually an inconvenience.
Sophie understood that her mom just didn’t “get” motherhood. And while Sophie loved her, she didn’t want to be like her.
In D.C., her soon-to-be unmarried state wouldn’t provoke a ripple of interest, even among her own patients. Bardill’s Ridge would consider such an attitude too progressive to abide within the city limits. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to protect her reputation with a marriage that existed only on paper.
With one hand covering her belly, Sophie pushed open the glass door. She’d be a good mom. Her dad, her cousin Zach, her grandfather and Molly’s dad, Uncle Patrick, would be strong father figures in her child’s life.
“Sophie?”
Her grandmother’s startled voice spun Sophie around on the threshold. Gran’s eyes were fastened on the hand covering Sophie’s stomach.
Stricken with guilt and regret, Sophie dropped her hand to her side, allowing Gran to study the bulge of her stomach unimpeded.
When Gran looked up, her gaze was a mixture of happiness and confusion and regret. After a moment she turned away.
“Wait.” Sophie could barely speak over her own despair. She’d hurt one of the two people whose love and respect meant more to her than anyone else’s.
“Tell your father,” Gran said curtly. “And then we’ll talk. I just don’t want you or a child to be hurt, Sophie.”
Sophie stanched the urge to defend herself. She nodded and turned to descend the granite steps.
The weather had changed. The Mom’s Place looked less rosy under a now cloudy sky, and a chill breeze mussed her hair. Even the girls had taken their books inside.
Sophie glanced toward her car and froze. Ian had materialized, seemingly out of nowhere. Long and lean, feet crossed at the ankles, he was braced against her car. Her first thought was that he had to be cold in his light camel-colored windbreaker. Then she saw anger in his blue eyes. His mouth was a thin slash of pain.
She walked toward him. “Why are you following me?” she asked. She couldn’t control the desire she felt at seeing him, but then stiffened against it. Her body was no longer running her relationship with Ian.
“You’re my wife. You’re carrying my child. I want to be with you. Take your pick.”
“You’ve prepared a series of stories?” She had to get Ian out of here before Gran saw him and called for family rein
forcements. “Let’s start with the one where you want to be with me. You’re saying that because you think that’s what I want to hear. We can drop that whole ‘wife’ concept, because we’re getting divorced. That leaves you thinking you owe something to my baby.” She halted, prepared to shove him aside to reach her car door. “You owe the baby nothing. I’m the one who depended on a condom.” She was allergic to the Pill, but she’d never explained that to Ian. Who’d have thought she’d need to? “This is my child.”
“Mine, too.” His dogged gaze devoured her. He might be looking for changes in her body, but his regard turned her heart into a battle drum.
She longed to throw him off her mountain. Her sense of his betrayal was still so strong she wanted to call her cousin Zach, the local sheriff, to chat with Ian about stalking.
“Even if you plan to be the baby’s father, you have no business near me until I deliver.” She fished her keys from her purse and held them up. “Will you move?”
He straightened, his skin taut across his cheekbones. “I made a mistake.” Tired and anxious, his voice softened with a plea that unsettled her. Ian never begged.
“It’s too late.” She lifted her keys again.
He ignored them. “I’m sorry.” She could hear the ache in his tone. “I don’t know how to be a husband, but I’ll do my best if you give me a chance. How can I convince you?”
“Make me forget you lied about wanting to be one.” A horrible truth dawned on her. She actually wished she could forget what he’d said at the church. “I trusted you.”
“I didn’t lie.” He held himself still, his only movement the rubbing of his right thumb against his index finger. One night as they’d lain in a moonlight-painted bed, he’d told her that finger, unnaturally straight from middle knuckle to nail, tingled in cold weather.
She’d never asked how he’d damaged it. Why hadn’t she? Why hadn’t he told her, anyway? None of that mattered now.
“If I thought I couldn’t be with my child any other way,” she said, “I’d pretend I wanted you, too.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking. She suddenly found herself focusing on it. She remembered how it felt beneath hers, moist with passion, seductively destroying that common sense her grandmother had mentioned. She’d glimpsed a future in his kisses. She’d believed in him because she’d thought no one could make love as they had without sharing more than just physical need.
“Sophie.” He curved his hand around her forearm. “When you look at me like that…”
He dragged her closer, but it wasn’t hard. She forgot to resist. His breath whispered against her lips.
He paused, his seemingly defenseless gaze almost asking permission. She could break away if only she could remember how to make her feet move. She might have been dangling in midair. She’d made another mistake, putting herself within his reach.
She was about to make a worse one. She closed her eyes and sighed in absolute, physical relief when Ian brushed his lips over hers.
A sane inner voice commanded her to run. She made herself deaf. She hadn’t touched him in nearly three weeks, and she’d pined for his hands on her, his kiss, his beating heart pressed against her seeking palm.
This was their strongest bond, and she needed him in ways she didn’t begin to understand. He closed the chilly space between them. Sophie slid her hands into the hair at his nape and pulled his head down to hers with strength born of inexplicable longing. Holding Ian was more like coming home than driving up the mountain road had been.
He tightened his arms as if surprised to find her in them. His warm hands bunched her sweater. She breathed in as his fingertips traced her spine, her rib cage, the curve of her breasts.
A moment’s shame flitted through her as she welcomed his touch. She’d run from that church because she hadn’t wanted to need him. Letting him hold her like this, giving vent to her desire, put the lie to that, but she’d stopped feeling whole without him.
A groan slipped from his mouth to hers, melting her against the car. She arched, claiming him, offering herself. But somehow sanity reminded her where they were.
“My gran,” she said against his throat, unable to make herself look over at the resort’s open windows.
At once he released her. They were both breathing hard. He caught her left hand. “Where’s your ring?” She’d never heard his passion-thickened tone in public.
Bemused, she shook her head.
“Your ring, Sophie.” Repeated more harshly, the question finally penetrated her thoughts.
“Nothing’s changed.” In case he didn’t understand, she widened a bland gaze, trying to force him to believe her. “You touch me—I want you. Apparently, I’d make love to you anywhere, anytime, but nothing else has changed, either. I don’t trust you, and I can’t live with you.”
“You can.” He rubbed his finger again, his thumb trembling in time with her heartbeat. “We’ll learn to trust each other.”
“Not in front of our child. I want to do motherhood right.”
He reached for her again. Thank goodness he expected her to give in as if she possessed no will of her own, because she caught him off guard, taking his wrists to drag him away from her car door. He didn’t seem to be a guy who struggled with women. He was easy to move.
She opened the door and jumped inside, completely unashamed of her healthy fear. Not of him—of herself and her apparent addiction to him. She wasn’t on her own anymore. Time to break bad habits.
She started the engine. Ian planted his hands on his hips, the picture of a gunslinger.
She reversed the car, staring straight into his unforgiving gaze. He’d find her before long. He had a gift for hunting down his quarry. She’d never hidden from anyone before, and how far could she run in Bardill’s Ridge?
DUST SETTLED ON THE GRAVEL that had skidded from beneath Sophie’s tires. Ian took stock of the faces at the windows of the resort. Somewhere among those reproachful women, Greta Calvert no doubt wished him dead.
He couldn’t blame her. He’d screwed up Sophie’s life, and he’d certainly want to destroy anyone who ever hurt his child.
He turned away, unable to go inside to reassure Greta, since he had to follow Sophie. Or anticipate where she’d head next. To her father. If she planned to move back to Bardill’s Ridge—and that had to be her plan—she’d tell Ethan Calvert about the baby.
Ian already knew the way. If only he’d kept his big mouth shut after the ceremony, they’d be telling her father together. She shouldn’t have to face him alone. A sense of guilt made him hurry to his own rental car. Sophie loved her dad, respected him, worried more about his disappointment in her than even Greta’s. Her parents’ divorce had driven her to want to please Ethan.
Ian quick-stopped through a couple of four-way intersections on the country roads before he reached town. Three red lights later, he had to slow for traffic at the square. Some of the local farmers had brought early wares from their greenhouses and set up stalls beyond the wrought-iron fence that protected the grass. Their customers upped the small-town traffic.
By the time he reached Ethan Calvert’s house, Sophie and her father, a tall man in jeans and logger’s plaid, were standing in front of the barn-workshop that rose higher than Ethan’s clapboard house. The pair were clearly at odds. Ethan leaned down to say something that made Sophie grimace. Ian didn’t think. He just launched himself from the car to protect his wife.
Ethan and Sophie turned at the sound of his slammed car door. Sophie tried to stop him with a hand up, looking like an impatient crossing guard.
“Ian, no. This is about our family.”
“I’m part of your family now, Sophie.”
She widened her eyes in an urgent, silent appeal that he keep quiet about the wedding. He shook his head. He’d rather saw off his own arm than hurt her again, but she’d made their child the spoils of this fight.
Ethan interrupted their unspoken battle, moving in front of his dau
ghter.
“Dad.” She grabbed his flannel-covered arm. “It’s as much my fault as Ian’s.”
“Maybe you don’t know how we handle your kind of man down here.” A threat of bodily harm quivered in Ethan Calvert’s voice.
Ian restrained a ripple of anticipation. Physical danger he could handle all day long, but Sophie had him in an emotional trap, and he had to be smart. He strode to her side. “Tell him everything.”
“I have,” she lied. A blush drew her father’s closer attention. “You’ve already forced me to break the news about the baby to my dad on the doorstep because I knew you’d hare over here. Now leave us alone.”
Ian glanced from father to daughter. Ethan must know how much his divorce had hurt his daughter. He’d surely want Sophie to give wedded parenthood a chance to provide her child with two parents together in the same house. Especially when the baby’s father wanted to do the right thing—as detestable as the concept of responsibility might be to Sophie.
Behind them, another car climbed the hill. Ian turned, as did Sophie. It was her cousin Zach Calvert in a Bardill’s Ridge patrol car. Her grandmother must have rushed to the telephone.
The sheriff parked beside Ian’s car and climbed out. The slow-moving Southern lawman had a talent for kicking the shit out of bad guys. In his frustration, Ian thought a fight sounded good, but it wouldn’t guarantee his welcome into the family.
Another cousin, Molly, climbed out of the passenger side. She’d been one of the Calverts Ian had investigated before he’d allowed James Kendall to set foot in Bardill’s Ridge. The more the better he thought now.
“Sophie—” Zach settled his cap on his head “—do we have a problem?”
Without waiting for her answer, Molly pushed between her cousin and Ian, her glance setting him on par with a mugger. Molly’s parents had abandoned her, and she’d lived on the street until Sophie’s Aunt Eliza and Uncle Patrick had adopted her. She knew more about bad people than Sophie.
Molly’s abandonment put his own in perspective, and sympathy would have led Ian to be kinder about shutting her down, but Sophie showed no favorites in her habitual resistance to being helped.