“It doesn’t change my mind about you,” she finally said.
“How could it not?” He gripped her waist, pulling her closer. “I could have stopped it.”
“Maybe. But you were still a kid and you don’t know exactly what happened that night. You tried. You did a lot more than some other people might have done and you spent the past eleven years being the best man you could possibly be. You’ve got to forgive yourself.”
But he couldn’t. “I wish I could find a way to make up for it.”
“You can.” She ran her lips along his scarred cheek. “You are going to be the first man to make love to me. You are going to show me how beautiful sex can be.”
I am, he thought as he kissed her. He held her face to his and kissed her long and deep. She went slack in his arms, leaning her entire weight on him.
He didn’t deserve her, or this chance to be with such a forgiving woman, but he was going to let himself have something good and sweet and pure for just one night. Because after he left her he was going to devote the rest of his life to the marines.
“Nurse Williams! What on earth are you doing?”
They broke apart only to see Georgia’s supervisor, Nurse Chestnut, staring at them with a look of disgust on her face.
Georgia kept her expression calm, but dread filled Christian. He knew he had just cost Georgia her job.
CHAPTER 12
Fired on her birthday. Georgia knew as soon as she heard Nurse Chestnut’s voice her career at Jericho Medical was over. She didn’t say a word to defend herself, because there was nothing she could say. She had been kissing Christian. She had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a patient. But she didn’t regret a single moment of it. She was just sad that her time with him was over.
Her father would have said that getting fired was the least of what she deserved. He would have said it was wicked to offer her body to a man who wasn’t her husband. He would have told her she was going to burn in hell.
Maybe what she’d done with Christian was wicked. But she knew she wasn’t going to burn in hell for it. It wasn’t wrong of her to want to spend one night with a man who made her feel amazing and safe, and treated her kindly and remembered her birthday.
Georgia was never like her sister. Carolina was the sweet one. Her father’s favorite daughter. She never spoke out of turn or did anything to anger him. Georgia may not have been the sweet, docile girl her father wanted her to be, but she wasn’t a bad person. She always tried to follow his rules, to take the message he preached every Sunday to heart. But that didn’t get her anywhere, because in the end he’d accused of her being a wanton, a fallen woman, a whore. All because some man had taken advantage of her.
No, she refused to feel guilty about her relationship with Christian. Instead she felt desperate. She had lost her job. Her prospects for another were slim to none. Who was going to be her reference? She knew how this incident would look to a future employer. As if she was untrustworthy.
She racked her brain for options. She was going to apply for jobs anyway. Maybe she could get her old one back at the hospice center. She wasn’t sure what she would do if nobody hired her. There were only two other options. Go on public assistance or take Carolina’s offer and move in with her. Both options were unattractive.
She could work. She was a good nurse. She didn’t want to take money that she didn’t earn. But the thought of going to live with her sister was even worse. She would have to go there in shame. As a failure. Her sister and brother-in-law would have to support her and Abby and she couldn’t stomach that, either.
So the pulled out the paper the next morning and started looking for jobs.
* * *
It took Christian a day and a half to get released from the hospital, and another half day before he was able to track down where Georgia lived. He couldn’t get the image of her face out of his mind. Her boss was berating her, attacking her character, but she kept her head up, and in a move that stunned him and Nurse Chestnut, she’d kissed him softly on the mouth and walked out of his room. He couldn’t let it end like that. He’d ruined her career.
The next morning he’d gone to the hospital administrators to explain to them that what had happened between him and Georgia was his fault. And it was. She’d known how magnetic they were when they were near each other. She’d tried to keep her distance but he wouldn’t let her. He’d kissed her.
After much discussion and a little bullying, he got the administrators to overturn Nurse Chestnut’s decision. Georgia was a good nurse. Her patients loved her. They could find no other fault with her besides a lapse in judgment when dealing with Christian.
In the end they agreed to give her a three-week unpaid suspension, but he knew Georgia couldn’t afford to miss any paychecks. He had to fix that.
He had more money than he knew what to do with. He could help her out. He could make her life comfortable. But when he pulled up in front of her apartment building, the thought of giving her money didn’t sit right with him. He didn’t know what else to do. He was planning to go to Afghanistan in two weeks. After that he might never see her again.
He took a deep breath as he ascended the stairs to her second-floor apartment. The building was dark. The hallways were long and narrow. He didn’t like the idea of Georgia walking through them alone at night. But he shook off his troubling thoughts and knocked on her door.
“Coming,” she called.
His heart raced as he waited. Would she even want to see him? He wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t seemed upset with him when she’d left two days ago, but he wondered how she would feel now. Now that she had had time to process what had happened to her.
“Christian,” she gasped when she opened the door.
His heart lurched in his chest. He had never seen her out of her scrubs before, but there she was before him in a nearly threadbare white tank top and a pair of jeans that curved to her body nicely. And what a body it was. Large firm breasts, a small waist that he could wrap his hands around and round hips that appealed to a baser need in him. But her body aside, it was her face that nearly knocked the breath out of him. Worry seemed to have etched itself in her eyes. She was exhausted. He couldn’t imagine how the past two days had been for her.
“You shouldn’t answer the door without looking in your peephole. Strange men could be standing on the other side of your door.”
“I never thought I would see you again.” She shook her head. “You’re not supposed to be released for another five days.”
“Do you think after what happened I was going to leave things how they were?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I tried not to think about you very much.” She stepped aside. “Come in.”
He entered her tiny apartment. It was one room with an old daybed and a small table in the corner. But besides that there was nothing much except a crib in the corner and a TV. It was very tidy.
She would do any marine proud, but that was the only positive thing he could think about this place. The radiator appeared to be busted. There were cracks in the wall, big splotches where the paint had chipped off. It didn’t feel homey or comfortable to him. Christian wasn’t a man who was used to comfort, but when he thought of the place she called home he never thought it would look like this.
“Sit with me, Christian,” she said, distracting him from his thoughts. “I just put Abby down for a nap. We’ll have to be a little quiet.”
He nodded and sat next to her. His thigh brushed hers. The bare skin of her arm brushed his and it brought back memories of how she felt in his arms. It made him remember the aching need he had for her two days ago. It hadn’t gone away. That little bit of contact made his blood heat. It brought everything he felt for her right back to the front of his mind.
What the hell was his problem?
He had come
here to make things right. He shouldn’t be thinking the same thoughts that had gotten him in trouble in the first place.
“If you’ve come here to apologize, you don’t have to. It wasn’t your fault and I don’t want you going the rest of your life thinking you ruined mine. You didn’t ruin it. I’ll get another job. I’ll find my way.”
The hospital hadn’t called her yet. For a moment he thought about giving her the news, but he didn’t want her to get another job. He didn’t want her to come home to this dingy little place. He wanted her to be happy and raise her baby and have some of the things she wished for.
“I didn’t come here to apologize, Georgia. I came here to ask you to marry me.”
Her gaze shot to his. Her mouth hung open. He’d shocked her. Hell, he had shocked himself. He had never thought about getting married, about having a family again, or a home or roots. It would be crazy to have those things with the kind of life he led. But after hearing the words come out of his mouth, he didn’t want to take them back. This was his chance to make up for things.
Miko had crossed his mind a lot over the past eleven years. He wondered what had become of her, and if she lived in poverty or was shunned from her family or if she and her child had any part of a good life. Years later he was faced with another woman, with a child and a hard path to travel.
He could fix things for Georgia. He had the power to make her life good. He couldn’t let this chance to make things right slip through his fingers.
“Are you going to go back to war?”
“No.” The word came out of his mouth before he even thought about it. He knew he couldn’t leave her if there was a chance he was never coming back. She could be a wealthy woman if he died overseas, but he knew Georgia well enough to know that she wouldn’t want that. “I could take care of you, Georgia. You wouldn’t have to—”
“Yes,” she said, surprising him. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
* * *
She’d said yes before he could explain himself. She didn’t want to hear his reasons for marrying her. It wasn’t because of love or devotion or any other reason she’d ever dreamed she would get married for.
Christian had proposed to her out of some misplaced sense of guilt. That was the only reason he wanted to marry her. He thought he was going to take care of her, support her. Make her life a little easier. But that wasn’t why she was marrying him.
She was marrying him because it would keep him from going back to war. And because she could take care of him, show him what it was like not to be alone in the world. Yes, marrying him would make her life easier, but she didn’t want him to think he’d saved her. She could land on her feet without him.
“Did you say yes?” He leaned back in his seat, a slightly dazed expression on his face.
“I did.” She studied him silently for a moment, taken aback by how vulnerable he looked in that moment. She could almost see the little boy he once was, and it made her heart squeeze painfully in her chest. Not many could see past his six-foot-six scarred exterior, but she could, and she knew there was a good man beneath it.
She never thought she would see that good man again. Having him next to her in her tiny apartment, in the real world, was surreal to her.
When she’d kissed him goodbye two days ago, she’d thought that would be the last time. She never thought they would be here. She’d never thought she would agree to be his wife.
Their lives were about to change. He was giving up his career. His life as he knew it. He wouldn’t have to risk being flown home in a casket. He may not have realized what his staying here meant to her. He was giving up something he loved, and when they were married she would go out of her way to thank him for that, to be a good wife to him. She would make it so that he wouldn’t regret not going back to the marines.
“Are you sure you want to marry me?” he asked her, tearing her from her thoughts.
“Do you want to take your proposal back?”
“What?” His gaze shot to hers. “No. I would never do that.”
She reached for his hand, twining her fingers through his, looking for a way to relieve the bit of awkwardness that crept up between them.
The touch seemed to startle him. He looked down at their joined hands and then up to her face. “You’re going to be my wife.”
He stroked his thumb along hers, then turned her hand over so that he could trail his fingers along her palm. She was going to respond to his statement, but tingles broke out on her skin and her tongue couldn’t seem to form words.
She might be marrying him for other reasons besides safety. He was the only man she wanted to share her body with. She’d known from the moment he’d touched her breast the other day that no other man could come close to making her feel that way.
Unconsciously her body leaned against his and she tilted her face up to his, seeking to close the distance between them.
“Mama?”
Georgia jumped at the sound of her daughter’s voice. Abby was sitting up in her crib staring at her. At Christian her little face scrunched in a frown.
“Did we wake you, love? I’m sorry.”
She stood to go get her daughter. Christian followed close at her heels. If he were going to marry her, then that meant he was going to be Abby’s father. Not just her husband. It was the only way it could work. The gravity of that thought hit her as she reached her daughter’s crib. She stopped in her tracks and looked up at him.
“I love her more than life itself, Christian.”
“I know,” he said softly.
“If I marry you, I expect you to be her father. I want you to love her and protect her and support her. I know that’s a lot to ask, but she comes first in my life. She always will. And if you can’t accept that, you can retract your proposal with no guilt.”
She searched his face as the weight of it all fell on him. But instead of scaring him, as she expected, his expression grew determined. “You said yes. You’re not getting out of marrying me.” He set his hands on her shoulders and gently squeezed. “Introduce me to my new daughter.”
Her heart flipped over in her chest at his words, but being a parent was easier said than done. She was sure she had made some mistakes when it came to Abby, but she didn’t want marrying Christian to be one of them.
“Ma?”
She turned and lifted her daughter from her crib. Christian was a good man. He would treat her right. He would be kind to her baby. If this was going to work she had to trust him.
“Abby, love.” She lifted her up to Christian, trying not to think about all the things there were to worry about. “This is your daddy.”
“Hello, little one,” he said softly.
Abby stared at Christian and then did something Georgia never expected her little girl to do. She gasped, turned away from him and buried her face in Georgia’s shoulder.
Christian’s face fell. He wasn’t a very expressive man, but she could clearly see the hurt on his face.
“My burns...” His face turned to stone. “She’s afraid of me.”
He took a step away from her, and Georgia could see him mentally shutting down, but she wouldn’t allow it. When she looked at him she barely noticed his burns, and if she did it was only because they made him more beautiful to her. “It’s not your burns. You’re an enormous, perpetually scowling man, honey. And she hasn’t been around any men before. That was my fault. I let what happened to me affect how she feels about men.”
“She’s just a baby. I’m sure she’s not that deep.”
“If this marriage is going to work, you have to agree that I’m always right.”
His lips twitched and she took that as a sign that she should try again. “Abigail. This is your daddy. I want you to say hi.”
She lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder and turned to l
ook at Christian. She frowned at him. “No Da!”
“Fine.” Georgia set her on the floor and wrapped her arms around Christian’s solid body. It had only been two days, and yet it felt like a lifetime since she had touched him. But she couldn’t forget her daughter was watching them. Georgia knew Abby would only accept Christian if she did.
“Hello, Daddy.” She ran her hand up his burned arm. “I like Daddy,” she said, not looking at her daughter. “He’s big and strong, and he smells really good.” She looked up at him. “Why do you smell so good?”
“I finally got to shower using soap I like.”
“I like it, too. Bend your head so I can kiss you.”
“Okay.” He closed his eyes and let her pepper kisses all over his face. “Not that I’m complaining, but what are you doing?”
“If I like you, she’ll like you.” She looked down at a still-frowning Abby. “Eventually. Won’t you, baby?”
“No!”
Georgia sighed. This was not going to be as easy as she hoped.
CHAPTER 13
He was getting married. Christian had to keep repeating that to himself as he stared at Georgia later that day. Married. Family. Home. Words that were never in his vocabulary. He had never thought it would happen for him. But it was happening. He had proposed without thinking and changed the course of his life with just a few words.
Now he actually had to take care of her. Giving her the protection of his name wasn’t enough. He had to make her happy or it wouldn’t erase the misdeeds of his past. It wouldn’t make up for Miko. Or his parents. He kept thinking about his mother and how she would have wanted this for him. He missed her. He missed them both, and starting a family of his own made the ache of not having them around more profound. It was probably why he never thought about having a family. A part of him thought he didn’t deserve one. He was too selfish to make sure the one that he had was safe. What right did he have to any happiness now?
Georgia’s hand cupped his burned cheek. He looked over at her, her big eyes filled with an emotion he couldn’t name.
Jericho (A Redemption Novel) Page 14