“What an incredible load he’s carrying.” Sam pulled Annie into her lap when the little girl stood beside her to check out the toys on the sofa.
“That’s for sure,” Cal agreed. “And it’s why the kids need encouragement and assistance. When Henry had an accident, everyone pulled together for him.”
“Including Cal,” Em told them. “He was there to make sure there were no complications.”
“Sounds like an extended family.” Sam smiled as Annie squirmed to get down.
“Something I never had,” Em said quietly. Everyone looked at her expectantly and she found herself saying more. “It was only my mother and me. My father disappeared before I was born so when things happened there wasn’t any support system.”
Sam nodded. “I guess we’re all broken in some way or other. I lost my mom when I was little and was raised by a stepfather. It wasn’t easy, and I hate to spout clichés, but what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. If we’re lucky, someone special comes along and we don’t have to be quite as strong as we were without them. I waited a very long time for Mitch.”
“And wasn’t I worth the wait?” he said grinning.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Definitely.”
Em realized Cal was the only one who hadn’t shared part of his past. She knew he’d had a pretty carefree childhood, but he’d also been married and never talked about it. That was part of who he was and she had a bad feeling that it had a lot to do with his never-get-serious-or-take-responsibility attitude.
When she studied him she saw something restless in his eyes, an expression that looked a lot like envy. It occurred to her that she recognized it because of a similar feeling.
Mitch and Sam had revealed that they’d been through a lot before finding each other. Their perseverance had produced a happy marriage and beautiful child. Like Cal, Emily envied them. The family they had was all she’d ever wanted.
If she’d persevered in telling Cal that she was pregnant with his child, maybe they would have had a chance. But whatever broken part of her had kept the secret had cost her that chance. This glimpse of how wonderful their life could have been was her punishment for screwing up.
* * *
Several days after her visit to see Mitch and Sam’s beautiful baby boy Em was still feeling down, depressed and restless at the same time. It was after 10:00 p.m. and Annie was sound asleep. Em had decided to channel the edgy energy into the distasteful chores that needed doing.
In her cutoff sweatpants and thin-strapped T-shirt she’d already scrubbed the bathrooms and now she had the refrigerator in her crosshairs. With the trash can in front of the open door she was tossing everything that had been there for a week or more.
Peeking underneath the folding top of a square carton that had been chow mein when Cal brought it over she wrinkled her nose at what now looked like a science experiment gone horribly wrong. Next she pulled out a rectangular plastic container with burgers and hot dogs left over after Cal had grilled them. She smiled, remembering how she’d teased him about cooking enough to feed a Third World country.
Something squeezed tight in her chest when she looked at the longneck bottle of beer that he’d stuck in the fridge when Annie had snagged his attention. Apparently she’d needed him more than he’d needed the beer because he never got back to it.
Em picked up the bottle and circled the mouth with the tip of her finger at the same time an image of Cal formed with his big body filling up her tiny kitchen. He was wearing his cocky grin, the one that made her hormones go into free fall and opened a big, lonely, black hole inside her that caused ripples of pain that went clear to her soul. The refrigerator light backlit the bottle as her fingers squeezed until her knuckles turned white. She was the world’s biggest idiot.
In every women’s magazine on the newsstand there was an article about how to find a good man. She’d actually had the blind luck to stumble across one, then proceeded to throw him back into the pond because she’d been afraid of rejection.
“You’re a pathetic loser, Emily Summers.” Unable to part with the bottle, she put it back on the shelf and closed the door. “A pathetic, immature loser.”
She walked down the hall to Annie’s room and looked in on her daughter who didn’t seem to mind that her mother was an immature loser. At least not yet. Hopefully she’d respect and admire her mother more than Em had her own. Maybe the fact that Cal was involved in his child’s life would make Annie’s world happier than her own had been even though the perfect family wasn’t going to happen.
Em glanced at the watch on her wrist and hoped that ten-thirty was late enough and she was finally tired enough to sleep. In the living room to shut off the lights, she heard a soft knock on the door. The sound made her jump because it was so unexpected this time of night. Probably Lucy or Patty needed to tell her something and didn’t want the phone to wake Annie.
She twisted the deadbolt then opened the door, but instead of her neighbors, the owner of that old, flat beer in her refrigerator stood there. Cal. Heart pounding, she said something completely witty and brilliant. “Hi—”
“It’s late, I know. But I saw your lights on and—”
Usually he called to tell her he was coming by to see Annie. She studied his face, the deep lines on either side of his nose and mouth that indicated he was tired. Or stressed. Or both. “Is something wrong?”
“I just wanted to look in on Annie. Sorry to bother you, but—”
“It’s not a problem.” He was in blue scrubs and she guessed that he’d probably come straight here from Mercy Medical Center. That meant he’d worked later than usual. Opening the door wider, she stepped back. “Come in.”
“Thanks.”
She put her hand on his arm when he started past her. “Annie’s asleep, so—”
“I won’t wake her. I just want to look at her, to—”
He stopped because his voice cracked. And that wasn’t all. Studying him more closely she swore that he looked like a man who was cracking from the inside out. “What’s wrong, Cal?” she asked again.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he said, not answering the question.
She followed him into Annie’s room and the night-light revealed the suffering in his eyes as he gently ran his hand over his little girl’s curls. Sighing in her sleep, Annie rolled to her tummy with her tush in the air. He ran his finger over her chubby arm and settled his palm on her back, watching it rise and fall. Finally he sighed heavily and moved away from the crib, pausing briefly in the doorway for a last look before walking into the living room.
He stopped by the coffee table and shoved his fingers through his hair. “Thanks, Em. I appreciate you not giving me a hard time.”
“Don’t thank me just yet.” In her opinion she’d never given him a hard time about seeing Annie. A guilty conscience tends to make you gracious and agreeable even if you were opposed to a father/daughter relationship, which she was not. But he’d never stopped by this late or looked this troubled. “I want to know what happened to you.”
He turned to look at her. “What makes you think anything happened?”
“And here I thought that being a doctor made you brighter than the average guy—”
His laugh was bitter. “Not so much.”
When he moved toward the door to leave, she rushed around him and stood in front of it. “Not so fast.”
For the first time the smallest hint of a smile showed at the corners of his mouth. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not letting you leave until you talk to me.”
“What if I don’t want to talk?”
“I have my ways.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and saw the movement draw his gaze there followed by a deep swallow. “Now, tell me why it was so important that you see Annie.”
He took her measure and finally nodded. “I needed to make sure she was all right. That she’s healthy, breathing, happy and normal.”
Oh, no. “You lost a patient,
didn’t you?”
He nodded miserably. “A little girl. Three years old. Car accident. Depressed skull fracture and abdominal injuries.”
“Oh, Cal—I’m so sorry.”
“We stabilized her in the E.R. and she made it into surgery but Jake lost her on the table.” Misery clouded his eyes. “The thing is the parents did everything right. She was in the car seat, properly secured in the back passenger seat. Their SUV was broadsided by a pickup that didn’t stop for a red light.”
“It’s not your fault,” Em said firmly.
“No?” He shook his head. “I didn’t do enough. I must have missed something or I wouldn’t have lost her.”
“You’re not God.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” He curved his fingers around her upper arms. “If I were all powerful, I’d be able to protect kids. I could stop the things people do to each other. The lies, manipulation. They break the rules of human decency. If I were God, I’d be able to save innocent lives from the bad stuff.”
He was talking in generalities, but there was something in his eyes, in his voice, in his expression that told her whatever he was feeling was profoundly personal. And not necessarily about the little girl he’d lost, but something innocent in himself that had died.
“You’re a good man and a good doctor.” The words didn’t take away the pain and grief in his expression.
“I hate to lose,” he ground out.
“But you can’t always win.”
Em was desperate to reassure him and didn’t know what to do except press her body to his and put her arms around him offering him comfort through her touch. She felt the tension in his body and tightened her grip, resting her head on his chest, feeling the powerful pounding of his heart beneath her cheek.
She felt the conflict rage in him and his resistance to her reassurance but held on until he pressed his hand to the back of her head and his fingers tangled in her hair. Gently he tugged, tilting her face up.
“Em—”
The agonized whisper of her name on his lips was the last thing he said before lowering his mouth to hers. The touch unleashed all the storm of need inside her and drowned rational thought, silencing all the reasons why this was not a good idea. Greedily his mouth took hers, sending jolts of excitement arcing through her that fried her nerve endings.
He traced her bottom lip with his tongue and she opened. Without hesitation he dipped inside and eagerly took what she offered. He kissed her cheek, her jaw, the sensitive place just beneath her ear and down her neck.
Breathing hard, he swung her into his arms and said in a voice that scraped over her skin and made her tingle, “I want you, Em. If you have a problem with that, speak now—”
She touched her fingertip to his mouth and shook her head. “You’ll get no argument from me.”
Looking fierce and so very wonderful, he said, “That would be a first.”
“Not true.” She locked her arms around his neck as he carried her into her room. “I’m not a confrontational sort of woman.”
“Yes, you are.” He stopped by her bed and removed his arm from behind her legs, letting them slide down his front until her bare toes brushed the carpet. “But I don’t need sparks of conflict to build a fire.” His heated gaze seared to her soul as he stared down. “All I need is to look at you.”
He took the bottom of her T-shirt and slowly slid it up and over her raised arms and satisfaction glittered in his eyes. “Pay dirt. You’re not wearing a bra.”
“I didn’t think I had to,” she said.
“Not on my account.”
His gaze darkened when he touched the red discoloration on her breast, all that remained of the lump. Bending slightly, he tenderly kissed it and she nearly dissolved from the liquid heat that surged through her. While his lips had their way with her breasts, his thumbs hooked in the elastic waistband of her shorts and pushed down. When they pooled at her feet, she stepped out of them and stood before him completely naked except for the watch on her wrist.
He slid his palm over her abdomen, then dipped a finger into the curls between her legs, his breath catching as he felt her waiting warmth. Her thighs quivered and practically begged for more. With one sweeping movement, he pushed her comforter down until the sheets beneath beckoned them. Then he yanked off his scrubs, retrieving his wallet from the back pocket and setting it on her nightstand.
Em crawled onto the bed and waited for him to join her, watching him lift a condom from his wallet. He opened the foil packet and covered himself. Need and intensity glittered in his eyes as he put one knee on the mattress and braced his hands on either side of her, trapping her in the most sensuous and sexy possible way.
Breathing hard, he settled on top of her and she gloried in being beneath him. He pushed inside and filled her. It was like she was finally where she belonged with who she was meant to be with.
He buried his face in her neck and slowly moved in and out, each thrust sending her higher, stoking the tension building within her. Every stroke intensified the pressure until finally she shattered and pleasure punched through her very center, rippling outward to every part of her.
Moments later he went stone still and groaned out his own release, holding her to him as if he’d never let her go. She slid her arms around him and held on tight because she was exactly where she wanted to be.
Where she wanted to stay.
Chapter Twelve
Cal felt Emily shiver from being naked under the air-conditioning vent and pulled the sheet up over them as he snuggled her more securely to his side.
“You know what they say about combining body heat,” he said, then brushed his mouth over her forehead.
She rested her arm over his belly, her breasts pressed against him and her only reply was, “Mmm—”
The single sound, not even a word really, was just about the sexiest thing he’d ever heard and parts of him responded. He wanted her again, as much or more than he had when he’d walked in here tonight. He’d needed to see Annie, but deep down inside it was Em he wanted. Some instinct told him that only she could take away, for just a little while, the guilt and pain of losing a kid.
He knew it was way past time to go and there were nine different ways that what he’d just done with Em was wrong. Right now, with her in his arms and her soft, sweet, satisfied curves pressed sleepily to his side, he couldn’t think about that. There would be plenty of opportunity to kick himself six ways to Sunday, but for now that could wait.
Em put a soft kiss on his shoulder. “How do you feel?”
He turned his head to look at her. The nightstand light was behind him but illuminated her face and the sympathetic concern in her dark eyes. She wasn’t asking if the sex was good, and he didn’t really want to talk about anything else.
He forced a smile. “It’s pretty hard to feel bad after that.”
“I meant are you still thinking about what happened in the E.R.?”
He shrugged. “You never get used to it when a young life is cut short.”
She was quiet for a few moments, but he could almost feel the energy of her whirling thoughts pumping through her. A frown hinted that the thoughts were troubling.
“Cal, I—”
“Are you going to get serious on me?”
“It’s okay for you, but I’m supposed to be the good-time girl?” she said.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Sure you did.” She brushed a finger over his abdomen and his muscles tensed involuntarily. “But I demand equal time.”
“Okay. Go.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said before we—you know.”
It surprised him that she was still shy. She had always been that way afterward, but when their bodies were giving and taking her passion and responsiveness always blew him away. “We had sex.”
“Yeah. That.” She wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“I said a lot of things. What specifically?”
“About hat
ing to lose.”
He nodded. “It’s true. Obviously losing a patient is unacceptable to any doctor and that’s especially the case with children. But I’m competitive in most ways. When I played sports it was running up the score. In school it was about having the highest grade point average. Being a doctor means saving my patients.”
“What about being married?” she asked out of the blue.
“What do you mean?”
“How do you judge success in marriage?” She met his gaze. “Your father told me you were married once. When I had questions, he said I’d have to ask you. So, I’m asking.”
When he sat up the sheet pulled away, revealing her breasts, the softly feminine flesh he’d just touched and kissed, the healing scar from her recent procedure. Looking around he noticed the softly feminine pink-and-lavender floral print comforter and lace crisscross curtains over the blinds on the windows. Even the dangly crystals sparkling on the lampshades marked this room as a girly space.
A space that he should never have set foot in, but regret and remorse didn’t stop him from wanting her again. It stirred within him, even now when she was asking about failures he spent every day trying to forget.
He threw the sheet back and stood then found his scrubs and dressed. When she joined him in the living room she’d put on a short yellow terry-cloth robe that hid her nakedness but didn’t erase the memories of her body that were branded into his mind.
She walked past him and stood in front of the door as she’d done just a little while ago. “Obviously I touched a nerve.”
“It’s not a time I enjoy talking about.”
“Maybe if you did it wouldn’t have as much power over you.”
Staring at her, he put his hands on his hips. “So your diagnosis and treatment are to use my words?”
“I’m not minimizing your experience, but you might feel better.”
Maybe she was right. Not about feeling better, but about talking. It was time to tell her, let her know that he wasn’t just a judgmental jerk and had good reason for his feelings.
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