The Nurse's Baby Secret

by Janice Lynn

  Was he suggesting...? Surely not. She’d stayed at his place for a month and he hadn’t made sexual advances toward her other than when he’d kissed her. To think that within five minutes of him being back in Chattanooga he’d be propositioning her was crazy.

  “Let’s play cards.”

  “Cards?” Were her fingers digging into his shoulders? Probably, but she had to hang on because she felt off kilter.

  “Yep. I have the deck you gave me in my pocket.”

  “Is that what that is?”

  He grinned up at her. “What did you think it was?”

  Still not understanding why he was there, why he was kissing her, her belly, and not understanding him wanting to play cards with her, she took a step back.

  “Fine. Let’s play cards, but no whining when I beat you.”

  He followed her to the sofa, pulled the coffee table closer. “I’m changing up the rules a little for this game.”

  “Sure you are. How else do you have a chance of winning?”

  “Something I’ve realized, Savannah, is that when I’m with you, I’m always the winner.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Have you been drinking?”

  He frowned. “You know I don’t drink.”

  “Why are you here, Charlie, because I know it’s not to play cards with me?”

  “You called,” he reminded her.

  True, she had.

  “You were already on your way here.”

  He nodded. “I was.”

  “Why?”

  “To ask you to play cards with me.”

  “You were sitting around in Nashville, bored, and decided you’d drive two hours and ask me to play a game of cards?”

  He snorted. “Would you believe that’s exactly how it happened?”

  Rolling her eyes, she shook her head and sat down on the sofa. “Fine. We will play cards. What are we playing and what are these new rules that are supposed to help you win?”

  He pulled the deck of cards from his pocket, then dragged a chair to sit opposite the coffee table from her. “You choose which game you want to play.”

  “Solitaire,” she flung out at him.

  For the first time since he’d entered her apartment, the sparkle in his eyes dimmed. “No Solitaire. You have to choose a game we can play together.”

  “How can you change the rules to a game if I’m the one who chooses the game?”

  “You’ll see. Just choose a game.”

  “Fine.” She named a game.

  “Good choice.”

  “So what are these new rules that are supposed to help you beat me?”

  “I don’t want to beat you.”

  “You drove two hours to lose?”

  * * *

  No, Charlie hadn’t driven two hours to lose. Just being near her already made him feel like a winner.

  “I’ve already told you, I’m always a winner when you and I play together.”

  “Right.” Her tone was sarcastic and she rolled her eyes as she reached for the cards he held. “I’ll deal first.”

  He handed her the cards, watched in silence as she dealt. When she set the cards onto the table, she glanced up at him, eyes full of expectation.

  “Time for you to tell me these rules, unless you’re planning to make them up as we go to increase your odds.”

  He took a deep breath and hoped this went the way he’d been rehearsing it in his head for the past two hours.

  “The rules really haven’t changed so much as the stakes.”

  “The stakes?”

  “Winner takes all.”

  “All of what?” she asked as she arranged her cards in her hand.

  “Whatever he or she wants from the other.”

  “But I don’t want anything from you,” she reminded him, frowning.

  “Maybe you’ll think of something while we’re playing.” Maybe he’d think of something to help him win because she sure hadn’t dealt him the best hand he’d ever been given.

  “Then you agree that you think I’m going to win?”

  With the way his cards currently looked, probably.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time, but, truth is, I plan to win this game.” He did. Somehow. Some way. He would win.

  “Because you want something from me?”

  He nodded, studying his cards so intently he hoped connections that weren’t there would suddenly appear.

  “What?” she asked, as if unable to help herself. Good, he needed her to be interested. He needed her a lot more than that.

  “You’ll find out after I win.”

  “Ah, that’s your strategy,” she accused him, drawing a card from off the top of the deck. “Try to convince me to let you win. Better luck next time. I’m not that kind of girl.”

  The corners of his mouth tugged upwards. “I know. I like that about you.”

  She tossed a card from her hand down onto the table.

  “Actually, there are a lot of things I like about you,” he said, going for casual despite the fact his insides quaked.

  She glanced at him from above the cards she held.

  “Like how smart you are,” he continued.

  “Yes,” she intoned. “All men like smart women. It’s always their favorite quality in the opposite sex.”

  “I’m not all men, and I do admire that quality in you. Along with quite a few others.” He drew a card off the top of the deck, then discarded one he didn’t need.

  When he didn’t elaborate, she asked, “Such as?”

  “Such as how intensely blue your eyes are when curiosity is burning inside you,” he teased, buying himself a little time to try to figure out how to play his cards right. Figuratively and literally.

  “That’s corny and superficial.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Savannah. You’ve always turned me on.”

  She glanced down at her rounded belly. “Oh, yeah, I’m the stuff dreams are made of.”

  He nodded his agreement. “You are. My dreams.”

  Her mouth pinched into a tight line. “Don’t say things like that.”

  She picked up the card he’d discarded, placed it into her hand, then tossed one she didn’t want.

  “Why not? It’s true.”

  She set her cards down on the table. “If this is your strategy to win, I don’t like it. Nor is it going to work.”

  He arched a brow. “What would work?”

  “To beat me in cards?”

  He nodded.

  Her gaze narrowed. “Cheating?”

  He shook his head. “I won’t cheat you, Savannah. Not ever again.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You cheated me?”

  “Not like what you’re thinking. This was more a case of cheating myself.”

  “Now I’m really confused,” she admitted, picking her cards back up and gesturing for him to take his turn.

  He did, liking the card he drew, and tossing one of the useless ones from his hand onto the table. “I was cheating myself of what you and I could have had, because I was scared of how I feel about you. Scared of us.”

  There. He’d admitted the truth to her. A big truth that left him vulnerable. But it wasn’t enough and he knew it.

  “When I got the job offer from Vanderbilt, I felt I couldn’t say no. To do so would mean admitting that you were more important to me than my career or anything else.”

  She took her turn, quickly drawing and discarding. “I never wanted to stand in the way of your career.”

  “You didn’t. But the truth is my career was only an excuse to leave.”

  “Why did you need an excuse to leave?”

  He picked up a card, tucked it in beside
another card, then discarded. “Because I didn’t deserve you or the happiness I’d found with you.”

  “Because?” she asked as she snatched up the card he’d discarded.

  Part of him questioned their sanity. Here they were, having the most important conversation of their relationship, and they were playing cards while doing so. Yet wasn’t that what he’d intended to some degree?

  Maybe because he’d needed something to focus on besides what he was admitting to her.

  “Because I destroyed my parents’ lives.” The admission spilled free from his lips much easier than he’d expected. Because he was telling Savannah. Because he knew he had to tell her everything before the past could be healed. God, he hoped the past could be healed. “How could I be so happy when, because of me, they’d been so miserable? I was afraid I’d do the same thing to you as I’d done to them.”

  It wasn’t exactly fear he saw in her eyes, but the emotions glimmering there were definitely not happy stars and rainbows.

  “No, afraid is too mild a word,” he corrected. “I was terrified I’d do the same thing to you.”

  “What did you do to your parents?” Her question came out as barely more than a whisper.

  He took a deep breath and spoke the truth. A truth it had taken him too many years to accept. “Exist.”

  Savannah’s brows rose and she lowered her cards. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But I sure didn’t understand you. How did existing make your parents miserable and how does that affect me?”

  Here went everything on the line. He’d lay it all out there and what she did with it was up to her.

  “There’s a lot I haven’t told you, that I haven’t told anyone. My parents married because my mother was pregnant with me. They hated each other,” he continued. “I’m not sure it was that way to begin with, but definitely from the time I can remember, they detested each other.”

  “That’s sad,” she said and her sincerity echoed around them.

  “Very. I always wondered why they didn’t divorce.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I wanted them to divorce. My dad had planned to go to medical school. He had a scholarship for his undergraduate and excelled at school. When my mom got pregnant, he married her, took a job at a local coal mine, dropped down to going to school at night. He lost his scholarship when he went from full-time to part-time. Eventually, he quit going altogether. He never forgave my mother for ruining his dream, and neither of them ever forgave me for destroying everything.”

  “I’m sorry,” she offered simply.

  “Me, too. They both lived in misery. My father was determined everyone else should be at least as miserable as he was or as close as possible. He pretty much succeeded.”

  “That’s terrible,” she empathized. “I can’t imagine placing that type of emotional burden on a child.”

  Charlie could all too well.

  “My father was determined that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes he’d made. I hear his voice in my head, telling me to always put my career first, to never let anyone stand in the way, and I didn’t.”

  Savannah winced. “This is where I come in. It’s okay, Charlie,” she assured him. “I don’t want to stand in your way. I’ve never wanted that. I’m fine, I promise.”

  Charlie took a deep breath, set his cards down and reached for Savannah’s hand, and wondered if she’d ever be able to forgive someone with as messed-up a head as his. He wouldn’t blame her if she couldn’t.

  Still, he had to tell her everything.

  “It’s not fine, Savannah. I’m not fine.”

  She frowned at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve made so many mistakes over the past few months. I let you and I go on too long. When the job offer came, I didn’t want to go. I took it because I felt I had to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  “Me.”

  She blinked at him. “From you?”

  “My father was not a good person, Savannah.”

  “You aren’t your father,” she reminded him.

  “No, I’m not, but I am what drove him to that point. What drove my mother to that point. I wasn’t able to protect her from him. I tried and it only made things worse. A lot worse.”

  “You were a child, Charlie. A blessing. It wasn’t your job to protect your mother. That was your father’s job.”

  “He’s who she needed protecting from.”

  Understanding of just how bad things had been dawned and empathy showed in her eyes. “Did he abuse you?”

  Charlie’s jaw worked back and forth, memories of a fist crunching into the bones hard racking through him. “Only once.”

  Her brow lifted.

  “I stopped him from hitting my mother. For years, I’d blocked out what I didn’t want to deal with, pretending I didn’t know. One night, when I was fifteen, I couldn’t pretend anymore, and I stepped in, refused to let him hit her again.”

  “Oh, Charlie,” Savannah empathized. “Surely that had your mother waking up that she needed to get you both out of that bad situation.”

  “She got out,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “She killed herself that night, but not before telling me that it was my fault he hit her and my fault she was leaving. She died because of me.”

  It was the first time he’d given voice to what he knew in his heart. He’d not been able to protect his mother and she’d taken her life to escape the reality of her world. A world Charlie had helped shape into the unbearable mess it had been.

  Savannah gasped, then frowned. “I thought your mother died in a car wreck.”

  “She did.”

  “Oh.”

  Oh. Charlie’s head dropped and he wondered why he was telling Savannah all this. He’d never told anyone. Maybe some things were better left unsaid.

  “I’m not sure what to say.”

  See, Savannah agreed.

  “I don’t expect you to say anything.”

  She pulled her hand from his and rested it protectively over her belly. The motion was very telling and he struggled to continue onward with his admission.

  “Caring about another person terrifies me,” he admitted. “Being responsible for another person terrifies me.”

  “You aren’t responsible for me.”

  “But I am responsible for our baby.”

  “I’ve not asked you for anything,” she reminded him. “You don’t have to be any more responsible than you want to be.”

  “That’s just it,” he admitted. “I want to be responsible in every way. For our baby and for you, Savannah. That’s what the stakes are. I want you and our baby. I want you to give me a chance to make things right.”

  Her blue gaze lifted to his, seeking answers to the questions he saw in her eyes.

  “That isn’t a game, Charlie. You can’t just win those things.”

  He closed his eyes, then opened them, stared into hers. “No, I know I can’t win those things. Not really. But playing a card game with you seemed like as good a place as any to start trying to win you back into my life.”

  “I wasn’t the one who left,” she reminded him, her chin lifting a little higher.

  “Words aren’t my strong suit and I’m obviously failing miserably at telling you what I’m trying to say. Let me try again.” He took her hand back into his, kissed her fingertips. “Savannah, you are my dream. The only one that really matters. You and our baby. I don’t want to ever hurt you or make you miserable or have you look at me with anything other than happiness in your eyes. Until tonight, I never let myself consider that it wasn’t me who’d made my parents miserable, but that they’d done that to themselves.”

  “You were an innocent child, Charlie. Of course it wasn’t your fault.�
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  “But I didn’t see that, Savannah. Not until you showed me the truth. Forgive me, Savannah,” he continued. “Forgive me for not seeing what was right in front of my eyes.”

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, she refused to look directly at him. “It’s not my forgiveness you need, Charlie.”

  Was she unable to give him a second chance? He’d known it was possible, but he’d hoped otherwise.

  “You need to forgive yourself,” she continued, her words cutting deep into his chest.

  Forgive himself?

  “You feel guilty that you were born, that your parents had to raise you, that you tried to protect your mother from your horrible father. Charlie, how would you feel if that was our child?”

  “That’s what I don’t want to happen.”

  “It never would,” she said so confidently that he stared at her in wonder. “You would never hit me, Charlie.”

  He grimaced at the thought of physically hurting her. He couldn’t imagine any circumstance where he ever would.

  “Nor would you ever mentally and emotionally abuse our child into believing he or she was to blame for your own miserable life. Your father was an ill man, Charlie. I didn’t know him, but he obviously needed help.”

  “Probably.”

  “Definitely,” she corrected. “As for your mother—” she let out a long breath “—I don’t know why she stayed, but she was no better than he was. It was her job to protect you, Charlie—” she stressed her words “—not the other way around. She should have removed you from that situation before your dad ever had the chance to get inside your head, before you were ever put in the position of having to step in to stop her from being physically abused, and she sure shouldn’t have said the things she said to you on the night she died.”

  He closed his eyes. “Logically, I know you’re right, but how do I know I won’t turn out just like them?”

  “That one’s easy.” She took his hand and pressed a kiss to it, looked up at him with her tear-filled blue eyes. “Because you didn’t.”

  He started to deny her claim, but stopped. She was right. He wasn’t like his father. He wasn’t like his mother either.