Winter Soldier (Mills & Boon Vintage Superromance)

by Marisa Carroll

  “Much better,” he said.

  “But you’re putting me on more medication, anyway.”

  He nodded. “We tried it your way. You didn’t play by the rules. Eat your oatmeal.” Sometimes Caleb seemed to forget that Leah wasn’t his daughter.

  “Caleb, I don’t have time to spend half the day in bed. I—”

  “Do you want to lose this baby? Maybe have a stroke?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then you’ll do things my way from now on.”

  “What’s your way?” she asked suspiciously, although she knew very well what he would prescribe.

  “Medication to keep your blood pressure down. There are a couple of new ones that are safe for pregnant women. We’ll see which one you tolerate better. If you have to drink coffee, make sure it’s decaf, take . regular rest periods and cut down on work hours.”

  “Caleb, we can’t keep up with all our patients now.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  “I’m a single mother, remember? I can’t afford to start babying myself.”

  “I’d say you can’t afford not to. Your reserve unit’s up for rotation to Bosnia, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, knowing what was coming.

  “I’ll get in touch with your CO. Have you put in for medical leave?”

  Leah was one step ahead of him on that front. “I’ve already informed them of my pregnancy. My medical leave starts at the end of the month. I’m thinking of resigning my commission. If I was married, it would be different.”

  Caleb looked down at his bowl of oatmeal and not at her. “You’ve stood your watch, Leah. You have a child to think of now.”

  “A child for whom I have sole responsibility.” Her voice cracked a little. She took a spoonful of her oatmeal to cover the lapse. It was rich and hot and sweet with brown sugar, but it stuck in her throat like glue. Why had she said that aloud? It sounded as if she was uncertain of the choice she’d made to raise her baby alone.

  “We’ll always be here for you,” Margaret said. “You’re like the daughter we never had. You know we only want what’s best for you and the baby, and since you haven’t told your parents, Caleb and I have felt like, well, we should stand in their place.” Something in Margaret’s voice alerted Leah. She put down her spoon.

  “Thank you, Margaret. I’ve taken comfort knowing you’ve both been here for me these past few months. I love you both, too.” Their steadfast support had made the early frightening days facing the reality of her situation easier to bear.

  Margaret sat down and patted Leah’s hand with her plump, liver-spotted one. “I’m glad you know we have your best interests at heart. We were worried about you last night—your blood pressure was dangerously high. Caleb wanted to put you in the hospital, but you were so adamant.” Leah’s recollection of the hours after she’d left Aurelia’s place were hazy, but she hadn’t believed herself or her baby to be in danger. Now, seeing Margaret’s worried face and Caleb’s set jaw, she began to suspect otherwise. “High enough that you could have had a stroke. Thank God, you’re better now,” Margaret said, patting her hand once more.

  “Now is the operative word. Stress has a lot to do with your condition, Leah. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. Mental and emotional well-being are important in a healthy pregnancy.” Caleb spoke in the tone of voice she’d heard him use countless times before—to a patient who was resisting his medical advice.

  Leah’s heart beat a little faster. Margaret, usually so straightforward, wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. “What are you getting at, Caleb?”

  “Just remember we were worried sick about you and the baby,” Margaret interrupted.

  “Caleb!” Leah prodded impatiently.

  “You need help, Leah. Support. Emotional, if not financial, and I know what you make, so that’s a factor, too. You’re spreading yourself too thin. I know you’re worried about your parents’ adjusting to retirement. I know how much time you spend with Juliet and Aurelia.”

  “They need me. Juliet’s carrying a burden no teenager should have to bear.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t do what you can for the girl and the old woman, but you don’t know when to stop. That’s always been your problem.”

  “Picking up strays,” Leah said, half to herself.

  “We’ll help Juliet all we can,” Margaret interjected. “You know that.”

  “As your doctor my first responsibility is to you and your baby. Oh, hell. I’ve never done anything so damned unprofessional in my life, but I don’t regret it.” Caleb stood up and ran his hand over the top of his head. “I wasn’t thinking like your doctor. I was thinking like a friend—more than a friend. I did what any parent would do, Leah. What your father would have done if he were here.”

  “I take it you’re trying to tell me you went behind my back to tell my parents?”

  “Not your parents, dear, although we tried to reach them, but they’re out of town. The manager of their apartment said he didn’t think they were due back for another two or three days. We thought it was for the best, Leah. Please understand.”

  Leah listened to Margaret’s words with a sinking heart. She knew what she was going to say next. “How did you find out who the father is?”

  “You’re due the third week of August. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out you got pregnant while you were in Vietnam. I called B.J. He told me in his opinion it could only be one man.”

  Margaret looked at her husband, then back at Leah. “Caleb called Adam Sauder last night. He’s already on his way.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ADAM SHOVED HIS SUITCASE into the closet and shut the door. He looked around the motel room trying to decide what to do next. Making decisions, even the smallest and most everyday kind, was becoming more and more of a chore. He should have stopped somewhere along the interstate and gotten a room; but he wouldn’t have been able to sleep, so he kept driving. He’d left cold, blustery Chicago late the evening before, bisecting the moon-washed farmlands of Indiana, meeting the sunrise as he skirted Cincinnati and headed south into the hills of Kentucky. He’d thought of Leah often over the long, cold winter and regretted letting her walk out of his office and his life that December day, but never once had he imagined she was pregnant and keeping it a secret from him.

  Brian knocked lightly on the connecting door and then opened it. With raised eyebrows he surveyed the spartan furnishings and the TV on a shelf on the wall. “Exact clone of my room,” he said, shaking his head. “The Hideaway Inn. Your Home Away from Home. I don’t think so. But the view is awesome. Have you checked it out?”

  Adam hadn’t. The curtains were still drawn over the window behind the cheap, plastic-topped table and chairs. Brian opened them and Adam was treated to a view of hills and valleys marching off into the distance. Mist rose like smoke in the early-afternoon sunshine. The trees covering the hillsides were cloaked in spring greens, darker and fuller on the valley floor, pale and new on the higher slopes. A small river ran behind the motel, its clear waters tumbling over rocks, its banks lined on the far side with willow trees.

  “Kind of makes up for the Bates Motel decor, doesn’t it?” Brian said.

  “We could ask for rooms in the new addition.” The Hideaway Inn was undergoing extensive renovation and remodeling. A whole new wing had been added on the highway side of the building and had just opened for business, the manager had told them.

  “Nah, I’d rather stay here and keep the view.”

  “Then we stay.”

  “I bet there are some decent rapids on that river. Wonder if anyone does any kayaking around here.”

  “We’ll ask around.”

  “It can wait. We’re not here for Rand R.” Brian was silent for a moment looking out the window, then he turned back to Adam. “If you have calls to make, I’ll disappear for a while.”

  His son had been with him when Caleb Owens’s call had come the night before. Brian had left him alone to talk to the older
man in private, but he’d known something was up. Later Adam told him Leah Gentry was carrying his baby and there were complications with the pregnancy, and that was all he knew. He hadn’t expected Brian to insist on coming to Ken-. tucky with him, but he had. “You’d do the same for me,” he’d said, grim-faced.

  “Owens isn’t coming after me with a shotgun,” Adam reminded his son now.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.” Brian didn’t smile back. He hadn’t smiled once since Adam had told him about the baby. These past months he’d been making headway in his relationship with his son but not much else in his life.

  “I should check on Leah’s condition before I go see her.”

  “Why don’t you just ask her yourself how she’s feeling? How hard could she be to find in a burg this size?”

  Brian had a point. Adam didn’t want information about Leah filtered through a protective friend. He wanted to confront her face-to-face. Hear from her own lips why she’d hidden the knowledge of her pregnancy from him all these months. “Okay, I will.”

  “Dad...you won’t just swallow her story whole, will you? I mean...well, maybe it isn’t your kid. Maybe she just wants to find a rich dad for her brat.”

  “Brian, get this straight—I slept with Leah Gentry. We didn’t use any form of birth control. It was not quite five months ago, and according to what Caleb Owens told me last night, Leah is eighteen weeks pregnant. It’s my baby.”

  Brian looked defiant. “She wouldn’t be the first woman to try a scam like that.”

  “Not Leah.”

  Something in his voice must have warned his son to drop the subject. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it, but I still want to see for myself. That’s why I came along. If this is your baby, then it’s my half brother or sister, just like Megan. I don’t want to be a stranger to him. I want us to be family.”

  Adam didn’t know how to respond. He had no idea yet what part he himself was going to play in the baby’s life. Obviously Leah had intended that he’d never know about the child. She may be just as adamant that he and Brian have no connection.

  “I’ll talk to her about your concerns.”

  “Yeah. It would probably be awkward if I’m there the first time you two see each other.”

  “I think it would be best.”

  “How’s this—you take the Cherokee and I’ll do the grand tour on foot. I figure I’ll be back here sacked out on the bed in half an hour, tops. If I don’t get lost or caught in rush-hour traffic, that is.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely to happen.”

  “Joke,” Brian said. “It was a joke. Slate Hollow’s not quite the center of the universe.”

  Adam had thought Slate Hollow would be a dying mining town, but he was wrong. There was an air of energy and bustle to the small community that he hadn’t expected. Leah’s hometown might be off the beaten track, but it wasn’t behind the times.

  “Let’s leave the Cherokee. I’ll walk with you. I need the exercise after the long drive.”

  “Have you got her address?”

  “It’s 114 Huckleberry Street.”

  Brian rolled his eyes. “Huckleberry Street. Figures. Remember, Dad, I’m here if you need me.”

  LEAH WATCHED ADAM and his son approach her house from behind the veil of her lace curtains. She’d been home for less than an hour. She’d barely had time to change out of her fatigues into something more comfortable, let alone have time to order her thoughts and armor her emotions. Briefly she considered not answering the door, but that was the coward’s way out and would only delay the inevitable confrontation. She watched the two men without their knowledge as they stood talking in the benign April sunlight. Aurelia had predicted the weather would change, but so far the rain had held off.

  Leah had been expecting Adam, but not his son. She had only seen Brian once, that day in Adam’s office, and the entire unsettling episode was a blur in her memory. She remembered him having dark eyes, and Adam’s square-jawed profile, but little more. She studied him now from the safety of her living room. He had his father’s physique and mannerisms. Would her baby look like him when he grew up, if the baby was a boy? She smiled, thinking of Aurelia insisting the baby was a girl. Time would tell. She hadn’t had an ultrasound yet, and when she did she wasn’t going to ask the sex of the baby. She preferred to wait and be surprised.

  Leah caught herself up short. She’d made that decision when she’d had no one else to please but herself. Would Adam expect to be consulted now? Would he want to know the sex of the child before it was born? Did he even care?

  He must care, she thought, or he wouldn’t be standing outside her door less than a day after he’d been told he was going to be a father.

  Brian nodded at something his father said, then turned and walked on down Huckleberry Street toward the river, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jacket. What did Brian think of her pregnancy? Judging by his body language just now, she would say he was not pleased about the news of a new half brother or sister. He was another unknown quantity to factor into the equation of her future. Her heart began to race and she took a deep breath. Giving in to incipient panic wouldn’t help her or the baby. Adam came up the brick walk and knocked on the door.

  She tugged on the hem of her oversize T-shirt and stopped herself from pulling it away from her stomach. The gesture had become a habit over the past several weeks, one that was soon going to be a futile exercise. She felt the baby move inside her. Her nervousness must have communicated itself to the little one.

  She opened the door at his knock. “Hello, Adam.” She was pleased to discover her voice was steady.

  “Hello, Leah.”

  “Come in. I’ve been expecting you.” She realized with a shock that he’d lost weight over the winter, and the stress lines between his nose and mouth seemed to have become permanently etched into his skin.

  “Thank you.”

  “I saw Brian through the window. I didn’t expect him to come, too. Does that mean he’s still living with you?” She held out a hand to take his coat.

  Adam shrugged off the invitation, as though he needed the layers of leather and padding to insulate himself from his surroundings. “Yes. He’s laid off his construction job right now, and he decided I needed some backup.”

  “He isn’t happy about the baby, is he?”

  “Actually he seems pleased to know he’ll have another brother or sister. Leah, why didn’t you tell me about the baby?”

  “I’m not certain I can answer that right this moment.”

  “Is the child mine?”

  She lifted her chin and her eyes met his. “Yes,” she said simply.

  He ran his hand through his hair. There were threads of gray in it now that she hadn’t noticed in Vietnam. “Of course it is. I’m sorry I asked.”

  “You had every right to. We can do blood tests if you...” She forced herself to keep her hands at her sides. With every fiber of her being she wanted to cross them over her stomach, protect her baby and her heart from the coolness in his voice, the emptiness in his gaze.

  “No, that’s not necessary. It’s just that it’s been so long since there’s been a woman in my life.” He stopped speaking for a moment, then began again. “My ex-wife and I tried to have another child for several years after Brian was born, but she never conceived. I thought it was me.”

  “And I should have known better. I think the charge of carelessness can be laid at both our doors.” She motioned him to a chair in front of the fireplace.

  “I’ve been sitting behind the wheel all night. Do you mind if I stand?”

  “No, of course not.” She didn’t like him towering over her, but she saw he was far too restless to sit still. She sat down and by habit tugged at her shirt. She caught herself doing it, looked up and found he was watching her.

  “What does your family think of your being pregnant?” he asked, moving around the room, stopping by a picture of her parents and brothers taken the last time they�
��d been together, two years before.

  “They don’t know,” Leah admitted.

  He turned around. “I was under the impression you were very close.”

  “We are. But my parents are having some problems of their own right now, and my brothers are based on two different continents.” She caught herself sighing and straightened her shoulders. “The timing just hasn’t been right, but time is running out.” She tried to smile and almost got it right. “I have got a lot of explaining to do, and soon.”

  He stopped pacing and turned to face her. “Only if you’re ready to, I’d think.”

  This time her smile was genuine, if rueful. “You’ve never lived in a small town, have you?”

  He shook his head.

  “It will be everyone’s business, at least until the next little bit of scandal comes along.”

  “Scandal?”

  “I’m exaggerating. Let’s say until the next bit of news comes along. Don’t worry. No one’s going to have me shunned or ridden out of town on a rail. I won’t be the only unmarried woman with a child in Slate Hollow.”

  Adam frowned down at her. “I know enough about Caleb Owens from B.J. to know he’ll stand by you, but—”

  “These people are my friends,” she said with conviction.

  “And you intend to stay here and raise the child alone.”

  “Yes.” This conversation was terribly awkward. Did they have to plan the baby’s entire future now, in the space of half an hour? She couldn’t deal with so much so quickly. Not today when her head felt like a block of wood on her shoulders, and she was so shaky she went weak in the knees whenever she stood up. She felt the familiar tightness in the back of her neck, but resisted the effort to try to massage it away.