“Why? Did someone already call you?”
“Call me? No. About what?”
“About Gwen.”
Alex’s heart sank like a stone in his chest. Why would someone call him about Gwen? “What about her? Is she okay? Has something happened? Is the baby okay?”
Adrienne was silent on the phone for half a heartbeat, making Alex almost ready to leap through the receiver and shake her until she told him what was going on. “They’re both fine…now.”
He breathed a ragged sigh of relief, but he could tell there was more to the story. “What’s happened?”
“She went into premature labor while she was at work last night. Luckily, her supervisor realized what was happening and took her downstairs. They immediately admitted her.”
“Labor? What? She’s only, like, six months along. Why would she have gone into labor?”
“I know. They’re not sure why it happened, because she has so many weeks left and no real risk factors. That’s why it’s so serious. They’ve got her on some very strong intravenous medication to stop the contractions. They seem to have done the trick for now. But the next few months will be rough. She’s going to be on mandatory bed rest. She has to take leave from work, and she won’t be able to afford to keep her apartment on her reduced pay. Anything could start up the contractions again, and if her water breaks, they’ll have to risk delivery no matter how far along she is.”
Alex gripped his skull with his free hand. Picturing Gwen alone in a hospital bed, fearful for the baby’s life, was eating him up inside. He felt helpless. “What can I do?”
“Come back. She’ll kill me for doing this, but if you care at all for her, come back to New York. Be here for her. She’d never admit it, but she needs you to get through this. I lied the day she left the Hamptons, because I was trying to protect her. Gwen loves you, Alex. She’s just scared of being hurt.”
“I know,” he said solemnly. “I love her, too.”
Adrienne muttered a soft curse. “You love her? Really? The mighty Alexander Stanton has fallen?”
Alex supposed he deserved all this, but he would be the willing butt of all the jokes after he was back and he knew Gwen and the baby were safe. “Yes. I’m in love with her. That’s why I was coming back to New York. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t going to let her run away from us. My flight gets in this afternoon. I’ll go straight to the hospital from there.”
“Call me when you get here, and I’ll get you her new room number. They’re moving her to a regular room this afternoon.”
Alex said goodbye and hung up the phone. He couldn’t get to New York fast enough. Gwen was in the hospital. Both her life and the baby’s were potentially in danger. She was stable now, but what if something horrible happened and he never got to tell her how he felt? What if she lost the baby and he was a thousand miles away hiding in his work?
He couldn’t bear the thought. She’d already shared with him her fears about the future and facing it alone. She certainly didn’t need to go through this by herself. From now on, he wasn’t going to hide from his feelings. He was going to tell her the truth as soon as he could.
No more regrets. Starting right now.
* * *
Gwen hated hospitals. It was a strange realization, given she worked in one. As a nurse, it was fine, but being a patient was the ultimate torture for any medical professional. Take your medicine. Eat your lime gelatin. Stay in bed. Listen to the medical advice of some twelve-year-old nurse who graduated from junior high while Gwen was graduating from nursing school.
Torture.
She would do whatever she had to do for Peanut’s sake, but she wasn’t going to be happy about it. Bed rest. Twelve to fourteen weeks of it. Absolute misery. She wanted to go home, and they promised she would be released soon, but that was little consolation. She would have enough short-term disability through work, but the reduced pay would barely cover her rent. And the doctor would not be pleased to know she lived alone in a fifth-floor walk-up she could barely afford.
That would mean either being lifted via crane into her apartment for the duration of her pregnancy or breaking down and staying with Adrienne and Will. Robert and Susan would help however they could, but they weren’t in the financial position to pay her lost wages or put her up in a hotel. Their place was a slightly larger version of her own postage-stamp apartment. Letting go of her place and staying with Adrienne was the logical choice, as much as it pained her.
She hated this feeling of helplessness almost as much as she hated hospitals.
Gwen fought the urge to roll into a more comfortable position. The drugs had put a halt to the contractions, but they were taking every precaution. The doctor said it was best to lie on her left side, which was her least comfortable side, of course. It also put her back to the door of her room, so people were constantly sneaking up on her. At the very least, she wished her door would creak so she would know when someone was coming in.
“Gwen?”
At the sound of her name, Gwen jumped. Once again, someone had come in and startled her. After the sudden panic faded, a new fear crept into her mind. That voice. A man’s voice.
Alex’s voice.
Gwen leaned back to look over her shoulder. Alex was standing a few feet away from the bed, a small bundle of daisies in his hand. Knowing Alex, she’d figured he would show up with the largest, most expensive arrangement the hospital gift shop had to offer. The daisies were a charming, and unexpected, touch.
The doctor told her to try to avoid stressful situations, but what could she do when one walked into her hospital room? She wanted to roll back over and pretend he wasn’t there, but that wasn’t going to make it less stressful. Instead, she sat up and hit the button to bring the back of her bed up to a seated position. She fidgeted with smoothing out her hair and straightening her gown, but it was a lost cause.
She didn’t say anything to him at first. She couldn’t quite find the right words. First, there was a part of her that was embarrassed for running out without telling him goodbye. It was the coward’s way out, but she never claimed to be brave when it came to relationships. Then there was the part of her pride that was wounded when he hadn’t chased after her. She hadn’t run with the intent of being chased, but it certainly would’ve been nice to know he cared enough to follow her.
There’d been no word from him since the holiday, but now he was showing up out of the blue with flowers. It made her wonder if she ever would’ve seen him again if she wasn’t in the hospital. If not, she shouldn’t read too much into his being here.
Gwen glanced down, uncomfortably, and noticed his brown leather loafers were caked in dried mud and dirt. “Where on earth have you been?”
“New Orleans. I went to check on my high-rise, but I was coming back to see you when Adrienne called me.”
A likely story. She wanted to believe that his being here had nothing to do with her condition, but it was doubtful. Adrienne had likely asked him to come, hoping it would make her feel better to see him. “There’s no need to rush back here. I’m fine. Peanut is fine. We’ve just got to take it easy for a few months.”
Alex nodded, his face unusually somber. “These are for you.” He took a few steps forward to place the daisies on the table by her bed.
Gwen admired them for a moment. There were no roses or expensive lilies this time. Just a fresh bundle of white daisies with bright yellow centers. Despite her reluctance to accept his gift, they made her smile. They were her favorite flower, although there was no way he could know that. They grew wild on her grandparents’ farm when she was a child. She would pick handfuls of them and her grandma would put them in a vase on the kitchen table.
“Thank you for the flowers.”
Alex stood a few feet away, his posture unusually awkward. He appeared to be at quite a loss as to what to do with himself, which was odd for a man who was always in control of everything. “When Adrienne called, she mentioned you would have to take some time
off work. I, uh, was thinking you might need someplace to stay for a few months. You know that my place has more than enough room. I’d have someone come in to cook for you. You wouldn’t have to worry about bills or stairs or anything until the baby arrived safely.”
Gwen’s gaze narrowed at him. Part of her had hoped he was here to make some romantic gesture, but she never once believed he was actually here to offer that same old song and dance again. “Did Adrienne ask you to do this?”
His gold eyes widened at the sudden venom in her voice. “What? No. She just told me you were on bed rest. I thought that—”
“You thought what, Alex? That you could just waltz in here like my knight in shining armor and I would be grateful for any scraps you threw my way? Don’t you think next week’s fling will wonder why there’s a grumpy pregnant woman hiding away in your apartment like Mr. Rochester’s crazy wife in Jane Eyre?”
He swallowed hard before he spoke. “That’s not at all what I was thinking. I was just offering what I could to make your situation less stressful. I’m certain I’ve already caused you enough stress as it is. I’m sorry that you felt you had no other choice but to leave. I tried to call you over a dozen times after you left.”
Gwen couldn’t take her cell phone with her to work, but she was good about checking for voice mail or missed calls. “I didn’t get any messages from you.”
“That’s because I never hit Send. I worried that you were right. That leaving was the best thing for you. I didn’t want to drag you back into it if you wanted so desperately to be rid of me. So I decided to go to New Orleans and focus on work and let you get over me, if that’s what you wanted.”
Gwen only wished he was that easy to get over. The reality had been much tougher, even though she had been the one to leave. “But you said you were coming to see me, even before Adrienne called.”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I was coming to tell you that I…”
Alex hesitated and she watched a touch of color drain from his face. His pupils were fully dilated, a touch of moisture breaking out across his brow.
“Are you about to pass out?” she asked. “Do I need to hit the call button for the nurse? I can’t get up to catch you if you—”
“I love you, Gwen.” Alex spit the words out as quickly as he could. It almost made her wonder if she’d heard him wrong. He could just as easily have said, “I loathe blue gin,” although that would have been random and out of context.
“What did you say?” she asked. If he’d said what she thought he’d said, she wanted to hear it again. Louder and slower. Even if it made him squirm. Especially if it did.
Alex walked over to the bed and eased down beside her. He gently scooped up her hand, careful not to disturb her IV, and held it. “I…love you. You took my heart with you when you left, and I’ve had nothing but an aching hole in my chest these last few weeks. I’m stupid and stubborn, and it took me way too long to figure all this out. But I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to get married and have children of our own. I want to wake up every morning with you in my arms.”
She’d always worried that Alex was too smooth for his own good and she would never be able to tell when he really meant what he said. But there was no doubt in her mind that he spoke the absolute truth to her now. There was a painful sincerity in the tone of his voice with no hint of his usual charming mischievousness. Alex was serious. And Gwen was dumbstruck. She couldn’t even form the words that she loved him, too. All she could do was reach out to brush his honey-colored hair from his eyes. She let her hand linger on his cheek, his eyes closing as he leaned into her touch.
“When Adrienne called and said you were in the hospital with complications, there was this horrible moment where I thought I might’ve lost you forever. Or that something had happened to Peanut. I know she’s not our child, but she’s as close as I’ve ever come, and it would hurt just as badly to lose her. And to watch you go through that, knowing there was nothing I could do to help, would’ve broken my heart.”
“I was so scared, Alex.”
He leaned in to hug her, and the tears she’d been holding back since she was admitted to the hospital came rushing all at once. At first, she’d been too concerned to waste time crying, and then she hadn’t had more than a few moments alone, with Adrienne, Robert and Susan hovering over her. Now, in Alex’s arms, the dam broke.
“All I could keep thinking was that I’d messed up. And how crushed Robert and Susan would be if something happened to their little girl. I’d tried to do everything right. I just had one job—to keep their baby safe—and somehow, I’d failed.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Gwen,” he whispered into her hair before sitting back to look her in the eye. “Sometimes these things happen. You’re lucky you work at a hospital and had people around you who could help. It could’ve been so much worse. But everything is fine now. You and Peanut are safe. The doctors are going to keep a close eye on you. And like it or not, you’re coming to live with me at least until she’s born, if not for the rest of your life.”
Gwen pulled back, the irritation on her face poorly disguised. “Now, what makes you think that telling me you love me gives you any more right to boss me around than before?”
“You’re right,” he conceded. “You’re a grown woman who makes her own decisions. But I would very much like you to come stay with me. My apartment has felt cold and lonely since I got home. The memories of the weeks we’d spent there together were like ghosts, haunting me. I’d like us to make some new memories there. Unless you’d rather stay with Will and Adrienne… .” He smiled.
At that, Gwen knew her argument was lost. It was one thing to be forced into staying with someone because they felt you couldn’t take care of yourself. It was another entirely when they loved you and wanted to keep you safe and healthy. And she wanted to be with Alex. Just not as a burden. Her soft groan of defeat was enough encouragement for him.
“You’re going to have the most comfortable and luxurious bed rest any pregnant woman has ever had. I’m not taking any chances with your health and welfare. The whole flight back here, I worried that I’d almost lost my chance. That because I was afraid to chase after you, you might never know how much I loved you.”
“I knew,” she whispered, a small smile curling her lips. “I was just waiting for you to get with the program.”
Alex returned her smile. “I wish you would’ve told me that and saved me the last few weeks of angst.”
“You wouldn’t have listened. You needed to figure it out for yourself.”
He nodded. “You’re probably right. Does this mean that you’ll agree to come stay at my place until the baby is born and possibly never move out?”
“Yes. I don’t care if I ever see my miserable little apartment again.”
“And you forgive me for letting a woman as great as you almost slip through my fingers?”
“Yes.”
“And does it mean that you still love me, too? A little birdie told me that you did, but I want to hear it from the source.”
“Yes. I do love you.”
His hazel gaze searched her face for a moment, absorbing her answer before he spoke again. “Then I have one last question. And I hope that the answer to it will be yes, as well.”
Gwen’s breath caught in her throat. Just a minute earlier he’d mentioned marriage and children, but those were abstract plans for the future from a man who had just started wading into the commitment pool. If he was about to say what it sounded like he was going to say, some very concrete plans were about to be put in place.
Alex reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small red box. “Will you, Miss Gwen Wright, do me the honor of being my wife?”
The top opened to a most unexpected find. The ring had a large yellow stone, surrounded by tiny diamonds and set into an intricate two-tone band with more tiny diamonds inset. It was beautiful. And unique. It had an antique feel about it, which made her think
it was probably very old. Maybe a family heirloom. She would’ve been happy with any ring he gave her, but she appreciated him making the effort to give her something different.
Gwen knew in that moment that he really did love her and had for even longer than he knew. He’d paid attention to her, noticed the details, knew what she liked, put her needs first, bought her things to make her happy… It had just taken him this long to realize all those things were the actions of a man in love.
Tears filled her eyes again, but at last, they were happy tears. He wanted to marry her. Alex Stanton—the man who made her laugh, made her smile, made her feel like the sexiest woman on earth—was going to settle down with her. A nobody from Tennessee who had wondered, not two days earlier, if she might be lonely her whole life. “Yes.”
Alex grinned wide and leaned in to gently embrace her again. Gwen closed her eyes and relished the feel of being in his arms—the warm scent of his skin and cologne mingling, the heat of his body scalding her through the thin cotton of her hospital gown. When he pulled away, it was only to slip the ring on her finger and kiss her properly.
On her long, lonely bus ride back to the city, Gwen had searched her mind for their last kiss. It had been nothing but a quick peck before they’d fallen asleep in his room. It pained her to know that might be the last kiss she ever shared with Alex. Now, with his lips against hers and their futures intertwined, she no longer needed to worry. They would have many kisses to fill her memory for years to come.
She never wanted to let him out of her arms’ reach again. And soon, she wouldn’t have to.
“Now, I hate to go, but there’s so much for me to do before you’re discharged. I’m going to go back to my place and get it ready for you. If you give me your keys, I’ll have movers boxing up everything you own before the end of the day. I’ll handle everything, including talking to your landlord. I also have to make a very important trip to my insurance agent to get that ring properly protected.”
Gwen looked down at her engagement ring in a moment of confusion. It was beautiful, but was an insurance policy really necessary? Then it hit her. She examined it more closely and shook her head. “I suppose this isn’t a really nice golden topaz, is it?”
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