by Anna Adams
She scrambled to yank her shirt over her belly, and Sophie stepped between them. “You shouldn’t be back here, Grandpa.”
“I know. Janey, do you mind if I stay a minute?”
“No.” The girl stared at the monitor as her baby’s heart sounds grew fainter. “Dr. Ridley?”
“It’s just the monitor.” Sophie adjusted it while her grandfather looked away. Sophie pulled a robe out of a cabinet to cover Janey better. “Gran’s okay?” she said as if her heart wasn’t pounding faster than the baby’s.
“Yes.”
Nita. “My mother?”
“Just give me a few minutes, Sophie.”
Janey grabbed Sophie’s arm. “What are you talking about? You didn’t call him because something awful’s wrong with me? You don’t need a lawyer or something?”
Sophie pushed her own fear to the edge of her mind. “Grandpa was a judge, Janey. He doesn’t even remember being a lawyer.” It must be bad. He didn’t argue with her. But she didn’t want to scare this young woman anymore. “You’re fine. Have you thought of a name for the baby yet?”
“After today, I’d call her Sophie if it didn’t sound so old-fashioned.”
“Thanks.” Sophie’s mouth ached as she tried to smile. She didn’t dare look at her grandfather. Only two more names came to mind, and she couldn’t stand anything happening to Ian or her dad.
She heard more footsteps.
“How about you?” Janey pointed at Sophie’s stomach. “Do you have a name?”
“My husband insists it’s a boy, but I say we’re having a girl. We haven’t talked about names yet.”
“You don’t know which it is?”
“No. I looked away during the sonogram, and he asked not to be told.”
“Janey, I hear you had a little problem.”
Gran. Thank God. Sophie whirled but didn’t quite meet her grandmother’s eyes. The truth would be there.
“She’s fine. The baby’s heart is beating at her normal rate.” Sophie concentrated on the monitor readout. “Plenty of movement. I checked Janey on Thursday and she wasn’t effaced or dilated. I haven’t done an exam tonight because of the fall, but I promised we’d hang around and listen a while.”
“Good idea. Mind if I listen, Janey?”
“I’m glad to see you, Dr. Calvert.”
Sophie slipped out the door, past her gran and grandfather, her own tears already escaping. She hurried to her office and dragged her grandpa over the threshold before she shut the door. “Tell me.” She choked on the last word, crying too hard to stop because he looked so serious. His pale face terrified her.
“Ian’s going to be fine.”
“No.” Her legs buckling, she started for the floor, but Grandpa grabbed her and eased her onto the couch. “Is he—”
“I don’t know exactly what happened. But he told me to tell you he’s going to be fine. I’m supposed to repeat it until you believe me.”
Her head swam. Fear made her sick, cramping low in her belly. She dropped against her grandpa’s chest. “What happened? Is he lying? How bad is he? Did someone shoot him?”
Seth rubbed the back of her head, and the steady movement helped a little. Sort of like repeating that Ian would be fine. “His ankle is broken. He dislocated his shoulder, and he has some other cuts and bruises, but he’s fine. He made them call me when he couldn’t find Ethan.”
“Grandpa, I’m going to him. Tell Gran I won’t be in tomorrow.” She pulled out of his arms, already on her way to the door.
“He’s coming home. He discharged himself from the hospital.”
She rubbed both hands over her face. “Why would he do that?”
Her grandfather pulled her back to the couch. “He wants you to see he’s okay. I have his flight number in the car. Just sit here until I’m sure you’re all right, and then we’ll figure out what time we can expect him tomorrow.”
“I’m meeting his plane.”
As Seth held her, she noticed his hands were shaking. “He doesn’t want you to be upset. That’s why I’m here. Just wait for him at home. He’s coming as fast as he’s able.”
“Are you all right, Grandpa?” She didn’t care for his wan color. “Let me take your blood pressure.”
“Are you out of your mind?” He sprang back from her. “I was terrified you’d lose this baby or go into labor or something. I’m seventy-eight years old, and I’ve never delivered a child. I didn’t want to start with you.”
“I’m healthy as a horse. I just don’t want my husband to be dead.”
“Greta said that would be your reaction. But don’t start trying to doctor me.”
“Let me at least get you some water.”
“Water, I’ll take.”
“Maybe you could help Gran while I get it. We’re just trying to occupy Janey’s mind.”
Grumbling, he did as she asked. Janey seemed a lot happier, chatting about school like any other fifteen-year-old. Sophie positioned her grandfather in a chair across the table from Gran.
“I’m going for water. Anybody else want some?”
“I’d like a bottle,” Janey said, and Gran nodded, too. Sophie tried to draw her grandmother’s attention to her grandpa, but Gran didn’t seem to notice.
“Grandpa, the flight information?”
“On the front seat of my car. I’ll get it.”
“I could use the walk.” Again she tried to alert her grandmother, but Gran was totally focused on Janey.
Sophie tried to look normal as she passed by the patrons on her way to her grandfather’s car. They said hellos and good-evenings, but no one seemed to notice anything was wrong.
She climbed into the car’s front seat, scooping a piece of paper off the upholstery first. Ian’s plane was due to land at eight-thirty in the morning. Where was he sleeping tonight? She’d left her cell phone in the treatment room, but she found her grandfather’s in the glove box.
She dialed Ian’s number and got the “this customer isn’t answering” message. What kind of a man broke half the bones in his body and then turned off his cell phone?
Sophie folded her arms on the dashboard and leaned her forehead on them. A good cry would make everything more bearable except she’d have to explain a sobfest, and Janey couldn’t take much more tonight.
Ian was probably asleep already, doped up on painkillers and too dumb to stay in a hospital where he clearly needed to be. But she could hardly wait to touch him again—to make sure he was alive.
She sat up. One thing she could do right away. She dialed her aunt Eliza’s number. Molly answered.
“What are you doing there?” Sophie asked.
“Mom and Dad are having a ‘date.’ I’m looking after the place. What can I do for you?”
“A massive favor. Can you take in my mom for at least one night?”
“I’d be glad to, but my mother might toss her clothes into the street the second she shows up. She holds a long-term grudge when anyone wrongs the family.”
“I know she doesn’t like having my mom under her roof, but she’d really be helping me if she’d reconsider this once. Ian’s had an accident. I’m going to pick him up at the airport tomorrow, and I’d like my home and my husband to myself for twenty-four hours.”
SEEING SOPHIE made even the wheelchair bearable. Ian couldn’t reach her on his own two feet, but what mattered was holding her in his arms again. Feeling the warmth of her body and their growing child. He couldn’t wait, but every time he checked his watch, time seemed to move more slowly.
The plane took forever to taxi to the gate, but at least they helped him off before anyone else. Sophie was waiting on the other side of the security barrier, surprisingly graceful for such a pregnant woman, heart-wrenchingly beautiful, but he suspected she’d be beautiful to him no matter what she looked like.
Something within Sophie had bewitched him from the moment he’d met her. Something that had to do with passion and spirit and longing that no one else had ever answered
for him. Maybe it was as basic as their mutual need for a strong and loving family. He simply accepted that his future now lay with Sophie.
With all that in his face, he allowed a man to push his wheelchair to her feet. Rather, she stopped the wheelchair by dropping to her haunches in front of it.
“Ian.” She leaned into him, resting her hands on the arms of the chair. She kissed him as if she hadn’t seen him in years, and he couldn’t care less about the crowd parting around them. With his hand to the back of her head, he claimed her with the certain knowledge she would belong to him for the rest of their lives.
Laughing, she leaned back, and the crazy woman had tears on her eyelashes.
He rubbed them off, careful not to smear her makeup. She wouldn’t like sporting a raccoonish look.
“I’m okay,” he said. He caught her chin and kissed her again. “I’m okay now.”
“Excuse me, folks.” The guy at the wheelchair handles interrupted them. “We’re causing a traffic jam. What say we talk about this in some out-of-the-way spot?”
Sophie hoisted herself to her feet. “I’ll take over from here. Thanks for your help. Where do I turn it in?”
“Someone will help you get him into your car.”
Behind him, they switched at the controls, and he was moving again. “Should you be pushing this thing, Sophie?”
“It’s this or check beneath your cast to make sure they did a good job up there. Which hospital did you go to?”
“George Washington, but I don’t remember the doctor’s name.” He knew she’d ask. “It’s in my paperwork.”
She grunted.
“I owe your grandfather for breaking the news to you. What can we do that he’d like?”
“Force my grandmother to take a long vacation with him.”
“I still have the condo in Chicago. Do you think they’d like a big-city vacation?”
She laughed with surprise in her voice. “Seeing as we Calverts are all hicks from Bardill’s Ridge, I guess they might. We’ll ask Gran.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” He didn’t have to tell her, but he wanted no more misunderstandings. “James Kendall might set up something special for them.”
“We could ask Olivia.”
His ex-boss’s daughter and Zach’s wife. “Oh, yeah. I always forget she was part of the life you used to lead.”
“Any chance that life is over?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “What do you mean?” The shadows beneath her eyes made him feel guilty.
“Can’t you find another line of work?”
“No.” He wanted to give her anything and everything, but she couldn’t ask the impossible. “Would you give up your work if something happened to a patient?”
“I might not have a choice.” Distrust invaded her gaze. “You do, and I guess you’re making it.”
“Sophie…” How could he make her understand? Why should he have to explain that his work was important? “Make sense. Think about your grandparents, your gran’s attitude toward her job.”
“Wait.” She gave the chair an extra shove. “I don’t want to argue today. I don’t want to compromise. I just want to be glad you’re alive.”
He almost dialed the agency and quit on the spot. Fortunately he’d skidded across the road in front of Union Station on his cell phone, and it hadn’t survived.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I FELT IT.”
Ian’s excitement drew Sophie from the comfort of being cradled in his good arm. Late afternoon brought watery sunlight through the living-room windows to the sleeper sofa she’d made up before she’d left for Knoxville.
“You felt what?” She scrubbed at her face, trying to wake up. She hadn’t meant to sleep. Ian had simply asked her to lie down beside him.
“The baby. My hand was on your stomach, and I felt the baby move.” He flattened his palm over the bulge that seemed to expand hourly. “At least I think I did. You don’t have gas?”
“No.” She pulled back, appalled, but he only laughed at her.
“I felt the baby,” he said.
“Keep accusing me of embarrassing bodily functions, and you won’t be feeling anything again.”
He closed his mouth on a wide grin. “I’m starving.”
“That’s an acceptable physical need.” She shifted, careful not to hurt him as she braced herself on one elbow. “I can’t believe we fell asleep.”
“We were both exhausted.” He kissed her lightly, continuing to grope her stomach to make the baby move. “Got anything in the fridge?”
“I can’t remember.” Her life had taken on a before-Ian-was-hurt quality that seemed to put a year between last night and this morning.
“Where’s your mom? I forgot all about her.”
“I begged Molly to let her stay at the B and B, and then I told her she had to go.”
He clearly struggled with another urge to laugh. “You made her leave?” He fingered strands of her hair away from her cheekbone. “She’s the only person who gets away with pushing you around.”
“No one pushes me.” She smiled. “At least that’s what I tell myself. Let me see about food. You’re liable to starve before you heal. You’re the better cook.”
“I can tell you what to do.”
“I should be able to rustle up something.” She understood surprisingly little about kitchens. That would have to change if she was going to provide a child with a nutritious diet. She padded to the kitchen on bare feet, a pair of flannel pajama pants flapping at her ankles. “Do you want coffee?”
“I’m dying for ice water.”
“Coming up.”
She got the water and sipped some as she opened the fridge. “Oh, score.”
“What did you find?”
“Someone’s brought staples.” She peeled tin foil off the edge of a baking dish. “Mmm, ham. The real stuff, you know? Not that canned ham people up north like so much.” She broke off a chunk and nibbled. “Yum. You want a sandwich?” She checked the next bowl. “And potato salad. Ian?”
“They both sound great to me.”
She started taking the fixings out of the fridge. “I should drive you down to see Dr. Fedderson tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“He’ll be taking care of you, unless you know of some other doctor?” She peered through the kitchen doorway.
“Fedderson’s fine. Your father tells me he’ll make a good doctor for the baby, though I thought I’d schedule a physical myself before he’s born.” Ian faced her stoically, ready to be scoffed at. “Just to make sure he’s thorough. I meant, why should I see him tomorrow? I’m supposed to have the ankle checked in two weeks. I dislocated my shoulder, but it’s fine now that they popped it back. A little sore…” He smiled as she flinched. “What?”
“I had to put a shoulder back once in my ER rotation. I’d rather dig ditches.”
“Imagine how the patient felt.” He held out his hand. “How’s the water coming?”
“Sorry.” She carried the glass to him, taking another sip on the way. “Have you talked to Adam?”
“From the hospital. I broke my cell phone, and I hadn’t memorized your grandfather’s phone number, so I asked Adam to get it for me.”
She nodded. “Did you talk to him about quitting?”
He drank his water, watching her without expression. Afterward he took his time about wiping the excess moisture off his lip. “Why would I?”
Because he had a wife and child who needed him alive? Why weren’t she and the baby enough reason to leave such a dangerous job? “What happened in D.C.?”
“The guy I was supposed to walk to the meet had set up his own meeting. His buddy was supposed to grab the CD and run.” He half shook his head. “I got in their way.”
“You almost got yourself killed for a CD?”
“I reacted, Sophie. I wasn’t even sure my guy was bad when I went after the CD. No wonder they cooked up that story about unreliable fire walls.”
&n
bsp; “We don’t need to discuss fire walls.” She sat on the edge of the uncomfortable bed, ignoring a metal rail that bit into the back of her thigh.
“We can’t talk about my job, either. You want me to quit, and I’m not ready to give it up.” With six stitches in his arm and four more on his thigh, cuts and bruises all over his face and neck and his ankle in a dark-blue cast, he looked more like a victim than an action hero. He narrowed his eyes as if reading her mind. “I know I look bad, but this is the only job I’ve ever had. I don’t know any other work.”
“I understand all that.” She smoothed her hand along his beard-roughened chin. “But I thought you might be dead when Grandpa first came to see me.”
She’d begged him with reason, but her trembling voice affected him more. He pulled her close, but then hissed with pain. She tried to move away.
“No, don’t go,” he said. “You were my last thought, Sophie. I don’t intend to die. I won’t make any more stupid mistakes. Any other CDs can go wherever they want after this.”
He splayed his fingers against her cheek, holding her close to him. She caught his wrist and clung. “It’s not enough,” she said.
“It’s what I can offer right now.”
“I don’t like honesty anymore. Lie to me.”
His laugh ruffled her hair. “I’m not lying. I only have to learn a lesson the hard way once. That’s why I know I won’t be dancing with any more cars. I just learned they’re tougher than I am.”
“You can’t put yourself in my shoes?”
“Not yet.” He let her straighten. “I wouldn’t ask this kind of sacrifice from you, Sophie.”
She had a feeling they looked at their jobs differently. She considered herself lucky she could help people. He had something to prove. Maybe he was proving he still had a life apart from their marriage by clinging to the promise of another assignment that would take him away.
“I need to call Gran,” she said. “They’ll be worried about you, and I have to find out about a patient I left with her.”
TWO WEEKS LATER, Ian was sick to death of being waited on from his makeshift bed on the sofa. Each morning Sophie changed the bed back into a couch. He suspected she did it to give him a more manly stage to sprawl from, and he was grateful, but he was more than ready to take care of himself.