by Cara Colter
The woman asked a few more questions which Dirk patiently answered. Watching him, watching his seemingly infinite patience when the woman became repetitious in her efforts to understand, gave Abby insight to Dirk. She’d witnessed his patience, his kindness, his caring time and again in the emergency room while he dealt with patients from all walks of life. Not once had he lost his temper or behaved unprofessionally.
She didn’t have to wonder if he’d been a good father. He had. Although, no doubt, with completing his residency, he’d probably been so busy that he’d missed out on more of his daughter’s short life than he’d have liked. Sandra Kelley had been a lucky woman to have Dirk’s love, to have had his baby, and experience the joys of pregnancy and motherhood with Dirk by her side, loving her.
Despite his aversion to Christmas, Dirk was a good man. The best Abby had ever met, really.
Honest, honorable, giving, strong in character.
Why didn’t he like Christmas? Did the holidays remind him of all he’d lost? Of Christmases he’d shared with his wife and young daughter?
Would she and their child forever live in the shadow of his former life? God, she prayed not, but deep down she wondered if that wouldn’t be the case.
If that happened, how would she prevent that overshadowing their child’s well-being? Just the thought of their child being made to feel inferior made her neck muscles ache and her stomach clench.
She finished her notes, left the bay and entered the next, determined to stay on task. A patient she’d tri-aged had discovered a large amount of blood in their urine and had been having tremendous back pain. She’d put him into the bay, and initiated protocol hematuria labs.
When Dirk stepped out of the fractured arm patient’s bay, Abby caught him and without meeting his eyes gave him the stats on the patient. “Do you want to get a renal protocol CT scan?”
“Yes. Thanks.” When she started to walk away, he grabbed her wrist, causing her to turn to look at him. “You holding up okay? You’re not overdoing it, are you?”
That did it. She’d had enough of him interfering with her work.
“No.” She pulled her arm free, hoping no one noticed. “My back hurts. My feet hurt. I’m tired. My stomach hasn’t felt right in days. But the main reason I’m not holding up is you.”
His forehead wrinkled. “Me?”
“You’re driving me crazy. You’ve got to stop treating me differently than you were before, well, you know.”
His jaw worked back and forth slowly, as if he was trying to categorize her words and having difficulty knowing where to stick them. “I’m concerned.”
“I appreciate your concern, but work isn’t the place. I’ve got a job to do and if you keep making a difference, people are going to complain.”
“People?”
“Our coworkers.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks, except you, Abby.”
He was saying all the right things, but Abby didn’t want to hear them, could only hear his “let’s just be friends” speech echoing through her head. She didn’t want or need his overbearing behavior.
In his “concern,” he was exposing her to her colleagues’ curiosity. Her volunteer friends suspecting she was pregnant was one thing. Her coworkers another matter entirely. Not that they wouldn’t know soon enough.
Everyone would know soon enough.
But she wanted a few weeks of having the knowledge to herself, to completely come to terms with her future plans prior to having to answer other people’s questions.
“Well, I do care.” It wasn’t asking too much for him to give her time to work through this in privacy. “A lot of my closest friends work here. I won’t have you undermining me.”
His gaze narrowed. “No one would say anything if you needed an extra break.”
Abby’s jaw dropped. “Why wouldn’t they?”
He looked away, guiltily, not answering her.
“Dirk?”
When his eyes met hers, a bit of arrogance she hadn‘t previously witnessed shone there. “I’m a doctor, Abby. If I give a nurse permission to take an extra break because I think she needs one, no one is going to deny that right.”
Oh, no. That so wasn’t going to happen. He’d do irreparable damage to her working environment. With a baby on the way, she needed her job.
“I can’t take extra breaks just because you think I should.” She paused, acutely aware they stood in the busy emergency room. No one was near them, but when Abby glanced around, the medical assistant was watching them curiously, a “yeah right, just friends” expression on her young face. “We can’t discuss this here. Just let me do my job, okay? That’s all I ask.”
“Abby—”
“Dr. Kelley,” an assistant interrupted, looking back and forth between them. “There’s a myocardial infarction patient on his way in. The ambulance is en route and should arrive in two minutes.”
Grateful for the interruption, Abby jumped into action. “I’ll get the renal protocol CT scan entered into the computer and have everything ready for the MI arrival.”
“Abby—”
“Take care of your patients, Dr. Kelley, and leave me alone. I can take care of myself and don’t need or want your friendship after all.” With that she spun on her heel and walked away from a man capable of breaking her heart.
When the paramedics rushed the man in, a team was ready in the emergency room to take over trying to save the man’s life.
Abby stayed busy for the rest of her shift, working straight through her break, grateful for the mental reprieve from her personal life due to the intensity of their patients’ needs.
Definitely meeting Danielle’s definition of brooding, Dirk never said another word outside anything to do with their patients. However, when he realized she’d not taken a break, not eaten, he’d disappeared and come back with a cup of yogurt, bottled water and an apple, thrust them toward her and walked away without uttering a single word.
His expression hadn’t been a pleased one. Actually, he’d looked irritated.
Part of her had wanted to toss the items at the back of his retreating, arrogant head. He deserved a good wake-up thwack. How dared he be so high-handed? Just because she was pregnant it did not give him the right to dictate what she should and shouldn’t do. He’d said he just wanted to be friends, giving up any potential right to have a say in her life.
She was her own woman, could do this on her own, would forge a good life for her and her baby.
Abby desperately clung to that thought as a shield against the hurt Dirk’s rejection had caused.
Clung to her mounting anger at his hot-cold attitude to prevent more pain from seeping through and jabbing at her vulnerable heart.
Chapter Nine
IF ABBY didn’t open her door soon, Dirk was going to jemmy the lock. Or break down the door.
Was this his fourth round of knocks or his fifth?
Where was she?
Finally, he heard a scratching at the other side of the door. At least Mistletoe was up and about. Abby should be, too. If she’d gone home and gone to bed, she’d have had a good eight hours.
Was she okay? She’d looked so tired and pale when she’d left the hospital and hadn’t acted like her normal self. He’d been tied up with a patient when she’d clocked out, hadn’t been able to believe she’d left without telling him she was going.
As if she was truly angry with him. He’d have understood anger on the day they’d found out she was pregnant, would have understood if she’d beat his chest with her fists, but last night? Hell, he’d made a conscious effort to take care of her, to let her know he planned to be there for her and their baby even if the mere thought gave him hives. Didn’t she understand how difficult this was for him? How hard he was trying?
The lock clicked, and the door swung open. Abby squinted, putting her hand up to block the fading sunlight filtering onto the porch. “Dirk? What are you doing here?”
“You look awful.”
Standing in her doorway wearing baggy sweats, her hair wild, dark shadows bruising her eyes, Abby did look awful. Like she hadn’t gone to bed after leaving work.
“Nice to see you, too,” she mumbled. Her cat rubbing against her leg, meowing, she moved aside for Dirk to enter.
Carrying a bag of groceries he’d brought because he seriously doubted she was taking care of herself, he stepped into her foyer. He eyed her more closely, taking in the pallor of her skin, the redness in her eyes. “Did you volunteer somewhere after work this morning?”
She shut her front door, turned to face him. “You’re not my boss. Not outside the emergency room. If I want to volunteer somewhere, I can.”
“Which means you did.” He let out an exasperated sigh, assessing her like a bug under a magnifying glass. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have gone with you.”
“Have you considered that maybe I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to go?” She yawned, stretched her arms over her head, raising the shapeless sweat shirt up to expose a tiny sliver of ivory skin.
“No, I haven’t considered that. Why wouldn’t you want my help?” Forcing his gaze away from that glimpse of flesh, Dirk swallowed, shifted the groceries in his arms. How could he be looking at her one minute, thinking how tired she looked and wanting to throttle her for not taking better care of herself and the next be fighting the desire to pull that sweatshirt over her head to expose a whole lot more of her delectable body?
“Go away, Dirk,” she continued, gratefully oblivious to the effect her stretch had had on his body and mind.
“No.” After a few minutes of lying in his bed, thinking about Abby and her uncharacteristic snippiness, he had crashed into a dreamless sleep and awakened with only one thought. Seeing Abby, making sure she was okay. “You need someone to look after you.”
“I can look after myself just fine.” Her lower lip puckered in an almost pout.
His gaze zeroed in on that full bottom lip. He wanted to kiss her. To take her in his arms and kiss her until she sighed in contentment.
“Since when?” Dirk fought wincing at how brusque his tone was. Just because he was fighting sexual awareness he shouldn’t be feeling when she looked exhausted, it didn’t mean she’d understand that’s what was causing his irritation. What was it about the woman that drove him so physically crazy? Taking a deep breath, he tried again in a calmer tone. “You pulled an exhausting twelve-hour shift, Abby. What was so important that you couldn’t have rested first? Something to do with Christmas again?”
Mixed emotions flashed across her face, mostly irritation. “Just because you don’t understand my love of Christmas, it doesn’t mean you get to prioritize my activities. Volunteering is important to me.”
Shifting the grocery bag, he gave her an exasperated look. “What about our baby’s well-being? Doesn’t that count for something?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.” Turning away, she walked over to the sofa, sat and wrapped a blanket around herself. The same blanket she’d wrapped around her almost naked body just a few nights ago.
Dirk swallowed. Hard.
“Christmas makes me happy.” She looked like a vulnerable child, one he wanted to take into his arms and hold. But she wasn’t a child. And if she were in his arms, he’d want much more than to hold her. She was a grown woman, a woman who he’d thought about almost nonstop since the night they’d met, a woman he desperately wanted. Why did he get the feeling Christmas meant more to Abby than the obvious?
“Look, you don’t have to check on me just because I’m pregnant.” She pulled the blanket more tightly around herself, causing the cat, which had jumped up next to her, to look annoyed. She picked up the fat cat, placing the animal in her lap and stroking her fingers over his fur. “Actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”
“Why not?” He moved into her line of sight, but didn’t sit down, just stood, watching her, wondering why she was shutting him out. His reaction on the day they’d found out she was pregnant hadn’t been the greatest, but the news had caught him off guard. Way off guard. He’d have sworn she understood, that she didn’t want a baby any more than he did. Finding out she was having a baby, that the rest of her life was going to be vastly different than she’d thought couldn’t have been any easier for her than it had been for him. Probably, the news had been more stressful to her. But he was trying. He was concerned, wanted what was best for her and their baby. Why was she being so difficult?
“We’re not a couple, Dirk. We weren’t before this and we aren’t now,” she pointed out, scratching behind her cat’s ears. “People are getting the wrong idea.”
“What?” Was she serious? “How could they get the wrong idea? You’re pregnant with my baby.”
“Neither of us wanted this baby.”
He winced. What she said was true, and yet to hear the words come out of her sweet lips so bluntly felt wrong. He’d never considered having more children, never considered starting over. He didn’t want to start over, but neither did he want to father an unwanted child.
“Whether or not we want to be parents, Abby, we’re going to be. We have to do what’s best for the baby.” God, he sounded so logical, so clinical. Did she have any idea how awkward this was for him? Standing above her, holding the groceries he’d brought to make her something to eat, her refusing to even look at him.
Her gaze remained fixed on where she petted her purring cat, her long fingers stroking back and forth. Lucky cat.
“I’m not stupid, Dirk. I will do what’s best for the baby. But for now I want time.”
“We don’t have to tell anyone for a while, but you won’t be able to hide your pregnancy for long, Abby. Decisions will have to be made. Soon.”
Looking unsure for the first time since he’d arrived, she pulled her knees up, dropped her head onto them, burying her face in the folds of the blanket. “I hate this.”
Helplessness washed over him. She looked so alone, so stressed. He wanted to take her into his arms, to hold her and never let go. But he just stood there. Taking her into his arms would accomplish what? Other than send his libido through the roof? Besides, he wasn’t so sure she’d welcome his embrace.
As if sensing his thoughts, sensing his need for her to look at him, she glanced up with red-rimmed, watery eyes. “You seem to be handling this fairly well this morning.”
Dirk felt as if a string of Christmas lights had been twisted around his throat and cut off his air supply.
Looks could be deceiving. He wasn’t handling anything. But not wanting to deal with something didn’t mean one could just ignore life’s realities. He’d learned that lesson well.
“There’s really no choice. Which means we have to make plans.”
She inhaled deeply and let her breath out slowly. “Plans?”
“To protect you and the baby.”
“No.” Her jaw dropped and she shook her head in short little jerks. “I’m not going to marry you, Dirk. Don’t even ask. That would just be compounding our mistakes and, honestly, if you did I think…well, just don’t.”
Ouch. She had a way of striking beneath his armor. “I didn’t plan to ask you to marry me, Abby. Although if that’s what you wanted, I wouldn’t deny your request under the circumstances.”
“My request? Under the circumstances?” She snorted. “I’m pregnant, Dirk. Not dying. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself and this baby, too. I don’t need you.”
Did she think he’d just walk away and forget she was having his baby? Then the truth hit him. For all her bravado, Abby was scared. She did want his concern, but didn’t know the first thing about accepting that concern. He’d gotten the impression her family had been close before her parents’ deaths. What had happened to her after that? Had she been taken care of? Loved?
“Yes,” he said softly, “you do.”
She glanced up again. Surprise flickered in her eyes. “How dare you presume you know what I need? You know not
hing about me.”
He knew she was a prickly little thing when she was on the defensive. But why was she on the defensive with him? It just didn’t feel right. Didn’t she know she could trust him? That he’d never hurt her?
What was that she’d said at the Christmas party?
Maybe not intentionally.
She’d been right. He had hurt her. They just hadn’t known it at the time. But he refused to accept her assessment that he knew nothing about her.
“I know more than you think. You’re a great nurse. A caring woman. A fantastic lover.” Her lower lip disappeared into her mouth, vulnerability shining so brightly in her eyes it almost blinded him. “And I believe you’re going to be a great mother to our baby.”
The tears Abby had been fighting pricked her eyes. How dared he come into her house and spout off sweet words like that after the awful morning she’d spent tossing and turning on the sofa? The sofa because she hadn’t been able to get comfortable in her bed, had given up and curled up in the living room, staring at her mother’s Christmas village pieces, wishing she could lose herself in that happy little world. Finally, she’d dozed a little.
She loved nursing and liked to believe he was right, that she was a great nurse. She could also go with the caring woman. She did care about others. But a fantastic lover? What a joke.
“We both know I wasn’t a fantastic lover.” She snorted softly at the mere idea of him thinking her fantastic. Not that he’d complained but, still, she doubted she’d been fantastic or anywhere close.
“Yes, you were, Abby.” He set the bag on her coffee table, squatted next to her and reached for her hand.
“So fantastic you couldn’t run away fast enough.” She stuck her hands under the blanket, anywhere to keep him from touching her. She couldn’t think when he did that. Not that she was thinking clearly anyway. Not after discovering she was going to be a mother, not sleeping much, and crying a whole lot.
He touched her anyway, running his fingers along the side of her face, into the edges of her wild-about-her-head hair. “So fantastic just remembering takes my breath away.”