In moments it was just as she imagined. Trent must have taken off her shoes—she knew she didn’t have the energy for it—because her toes wiggled freely as he stood beside the bed, looking down at her.
“Good night, Rebecca Holley, R.N.”
“Good night, Trent Crosby.” Big bad businessman—not. “Sorry we didn’t get to talk more.”
But they would, because he was a nice man. A trustworthy man who would stay out of her and her baby’s life when she asked him to. Which she would. A yawn nearly cracked her jaw in two.
He lingered.
“Is there something you wanted to say?” she asked, the words slurring as her eyes drifted closed. “Sorry, but I worked a long shift and I’m so, so tired.”
“I can see that. And I have a solution to our problem that I’d like you to think about.”
“Mmmmm.” She wasn’t even sure he was still nearby, or that she was still awake. Tomorrow she’d think about how she could relax with a stranger in her room. Oh, but that answer was easy, because he was trustworthy, after all. She knew that now.
So she let herself slide into slumber. His last words drifted into her ears and then drifted out before they could trigger a nightmare.
“Once you have the baby,” Trent’s voice said, “if you give custody to me, I’ll give you half a million dollars.”
Sitting at his desk, Trent doodled on a pad, then caught himself and threw down his pen in disgust. He didn’t doodle!
He refocused his attention on the report opened in front of him. It wasn’t any more interesting than it had been five minutes before, but he made himself read every damn word. Then he checked the time again.
Two-thirty. Forty-two hours. He hadn’t seen or heard from Rebecca Holley in forty-two hours. Well-practiced in negotiation, he knew the next move was hers, but the waiting was driving him nuts. Admitting his concentration was shot, he pushed up from his chair and headed out of his office.
Claudine looked up from her desk, situated a few steps from his door. “Have we finished going over the departmental reports?”
He gave her his best malevolent glare, all the while blessing her for offering the distraction. “Again? How many times do I have to tell you not to refer to me as ‘we’?”
“It’s the royal ‘we,’” she replied. “Because you’re a royal pain in the patoot.”
He would have laughed, but he didn’t like giving her the satisfaction. Instead, he stalked past her.
“Where are you going, your majesty?” she called out.
“Human Resources. To get the necessary forms to have you fired.”
“Without me, you couldn’t find Human Resources, let alone fill out one of their forms.”
“Shrew.” He strode into the hall.
“Despot.”
Still moving, he raised his voice, determined to get in the last word. “Nag.”
Her response reached his ears, anyway. “Oligarch.”
That one stopped him. He retraced his steps and poked his head into her sanctum. “Oligarch? That’s good. That’s very good.”
Claudine’s smile was smug. “Of course I am.”
He snorted, then started to move off again.
“Trent?” Claudine again.
But this time her tone lacked its usual caustic edge, causing him to backtrack once more to meet her gaze. “Is something the matter?”
“That was my question.” Her eyes were serious, her expression kind. “Is there a problem I can help you with? All of us in Admin talked over lunch and we realize something’s bothering you. We’d…well, we’d like to help if we can.”
Oh, hell. If Admin was talking about him… Next thing he knew, his competitors would get wind of his lack of focus and use it against the company. When he found himself distracted, then doodling, then drawing the concern of his domineering assistant and her henchmen, it was time to take a new tack in the negotiations.
He sighed. “Cover for me, will you, Claudine? I might be out a couple of hours.”
It was time to confront Rebecca Holley and demand—in concise, clear terms—what he wanted from her.
Problem was, Trent thought a short car ride later, it was going to be hard to make any kind of demand to a woman sitting on the floor with a baby in her lap and a bigger kid hanging around her neck. Peering around a large poster announcing a children’s health fair in the hospital parking lot the following weekend, he watched her through the glass door leading into the crowded playroom on the Pediatrics floor. After another minute, though, he pushed open the door and walked in, because she was laughing and…and the happy expression on her face made him feel as if he hadn’t laughed since he was nine years old and Robbie Logan had gone missing while Trent was playing basketball in the rear yard.
She glanced up as he strode into the room, the smile on her face dying. “Oh!”
The last time he’d seen her, her face had been pale with fatigue and her eyes heavy with sleep, but now she looked flushed and alert. “Rebecca.” He nodded a greeting.
She rose to her feet, cradling the baby in her arms. Trent noticed the little guy had two full leg casts and three teeth.
“Gawaa!” Three-Teeth said, waving a fat arm.
Rebecca’s cheek touched the top of the baby’s head, a caress so natural he wondered if she was even aware of it. “This is Vince, one of my pediatric OR patients,” she said, then looked down at the other child she’d been playing with. “And Merry.”
“Nice to meet you,” Trent said, nodding again.
Merry wiggled the fingers of her thin hand.
Baby Vince made another wild gesture, a right hook that almost connected with Rebecca’s nose. “Gawaa! Gawaa!”
“Right back at ya,” Trent murmured, coming close enough to capture the contender’s little fist. The baby grinned at him, then took Trent’s hand to his mouth to gnaw on it like a bone.
“Oh, sorry.” Rebecca tried to step back, but Trent halted her movement by capturing one of her shoulders in his other hand. Beneath his palm, the small curve felt feminine, delicate, reminding him of how fragile she’d seemed when he’d helped her to her bedroom.
“Have you been eating?” His voice sounded abrupt, he knew it, but thinking about her body beneath those dumpy scrubs was doing something to him…. Arousing him. Making him worried, because getting hot over a woman covered in pale pink with raspberry flamingos had to be the first symptom of some weird sexual perversion.
“I’ve been eating fine,” Rebecca assured him. “And getting more rest, too.” Her face flushed as bright as those long-legged birds she was wearing and she glanced around at the kids and their parents who were involved with toys or puzzles or who were watching some kids’ show on the TV in the corner of the room. “I want you to know I’m sorry about dozing off on you the other night. I’ve never done that before.”
“It’s all right.”
“Well, thank you.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Is there…something you wanted?”
He frowned. He wanted her response to his proposition, of course. Then he jumped, startled by the sharp nip Vince gave his knuckle. “Yowch!”
The little guy grinned without an ounce of repentance. “Ga—”
“—waa. I know, kid. And a gawaa to you, too.”
Rebecca tried shifting the baby away, but Vince wasn’t having it. With another “gawaa,” he held his arms out to Trent, smiling so widely that a big dollop of drool oozed over his bottom lip.
In one smooth move, Trent pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, dabbed off the kid’s chin, and then took him in his own arms.
Rebecca blinked, then looked down at Merry, who looked back with the same surprise mirrored on her face. “So much for the big, bad businessman, eh, Merry?”
The little girl hid her answering smile behind her hand.
“Huh?” Trent lifted a brow. “Big bad businessman?”
“Inside joke,” Rebecca said, not meeting his eyes. Then she glanced down at Merry again. “This is the
man I told you about. The one who brought me those boxes for your playhouse.”
“Oh.” The little girl darted a less-shy look in his direction. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Then Trent frowned, irritated that they’d strayed so far from his purpose.
Determined to get to it, he pinned Rebecca with an implacable stare. “Can we talk?”
She blinked a couple of times. “Oh, um, sure. But I have to stay in the playroom. I told my friend Janet I’d cover for her—we have a nurse in here at all times.” She looked down and suggested to Merry that she serve herself a glass of juice and then watch TV. The little girl moved off and Rebecca reached for Vince.
He huddled back against Trent’s chest. “Gawaa gawaa gawaa.”
“Don’t worry about it. He just needs a little guy time.” Trent reassured the baby by hitching him closer.
“Are you sure?” Rebecca frowned.
“I’m used to babies.”
“I can see that.” She shook her head as if it surprised her.
But if she’d known his mother the way Trent did, it wouldn’t. Not that he’d been the perfect parental figure, either, but he’d done his best with the younger ones when he was growing up, when his father had spent all his time at work and his mother had spent all of hers doing as little as possible for her children. Trent would do his best with the child Rebecca was carrying, too.
He followed her to a deserted corner of the playroom and waited until they’d both settled into facing, cushioned chairs. Then he broached the subject that had been weighing on him for the last forty-two, almost forty-three, hours. “What are your thoughts on my offer?”
She froze. “Your offer?”
“From the other night?”
“From the other night?”
There was either an echo in the room or she was stalling. “Rebecca—”
“Why was your sperm at Children’s Connection?”
The question caught him by surprise. “Morgan Davis didn’t tell you?” He’d figured the clinic’s director had spilled the whole story.
She shook her head. “Only that it wasn’t donated for artificial insemination purposes.”
Which led him to another question of his own. “Why did you go that route, by the way? You’re what—twenty-five?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Why didn’t you wait until you found the right guy? Do it the old-fashioned way?”
“The old-fashioned way was out of the question. The ‘right guy’ divorced me two years ago.”
From the cool expression on her face, Mr. Right Guy had put her right off romance. Well, it wasn’t as if Trent held any faith about matches being made in heaven, either. His parents’ marriage and his own had both ended with unhappiness. He ran a hand through his hair, then stared down at the blue casts binding Vince’s short legs. “You sound as if you’re as soured on the whole love and marriage thing as I am.”
“Are you soured?”
He shrugged, then released a dry laugh. “Yeah. You asked why my sperm was at the clinic. My ex—my wife at the time, of course—was going to be inseminated. We thought it would increase the chances of her becoming pregnant. But when the big day came, she did the big back-out. Of my entire life.”
Rebecca released a little sigh. “I’ve come to the conclusion that while there are some good marriages built on real love, those are the exception. I’m not holding out hope that a fluke will happen to me.”
“Okay, so you’re not looking for a man. But why a baby? Haven’t you got plenty of them to occupy your time at the hospital?”
As if to emphasize his remark, Vince chose that moment to launch himself toward Rebecca. Trent passed the child over, again struck by the sweet, automatic caress she gave the baby as he settled against her. He could watch her stroke her cheek against a baby’s downy head a dozen times, he thought, and never grow tired of it.
“I’m very good at my job, you know,” Rebecca said.
A non sequitur? Something about the way she said the words made it clear it was not. He tilted his head. “Okay. So you’re good at your job…?”
Her gaze on the baby’s face, she rocked him side-to-side as he snuggled against her shoulder. “There’s a need for people who can do what I do.”
“I’m certain you’re right, but—”
“It takes a lot out of me.” Her gaze came up to meet his, and it was both direct and vulnerable. “Sick children, all day, every day.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Sick children, hurt children, suffering children. Dying children, Trent.”
His eyes jumped to Vince, now sound asleep against Rebecca’s flamingo smock. He couldn’t ask what was wrong with the baby. He didn’t want to know.
He couldn’t imagine how Rebecca could come to work every day.
“Why?” he asked.
She seemed to understand his question. “Because I can help many, many of them get well. Because I can comfort all of them. Because…because I can.”
For a second he felt ashamed that all he did was run a multimillion-dollar company. Then he cleared his throat. “But another child, Rebecca?”
Her gaze dropped from his. She lifted Vince’s tiny hand and set it on top of hers, then stroked the baby’s soft skin with her forefinger. “I need my own child, my own family to fill my well, Trent. To be my light, to be the strength I need to do a job that can tear me up inside. I need my own child to come home to, someone to repair the heart that gets broken a little bit every day. I need someone of my own to love.”
He tried to tell himself she’d made the speech with calculation, for maximum effect. With the sound of violins playing in her imagination.
“That brings us to my offer, I suppose,” he finally said.
“Your offer.” She blinked at him a couple of times, her face paling. “I thought…I was so tired, I thought I dreamed it. I couldn’t believe—”
“That I’d make such a proposition?” Trent heard the flat tone in his voice. “But I did. Half a million for the baby you’re carrying. And after what you just said, I’m ready to up the ante to a full seven figures.”
Three
Rebecca stared at the man across from her. He didn’t look like a nightmare—no, he looked like a dream—but she should be screaming all the same. “You’d give me a million dollars for my baby?”
“Our baby. And yes, I would give you a million, but you wouldn’t accept it, would you?”
In relief, her heart tripped up, tangling her tongue, too. “I— You…” She sagged against the back of the chair, swallowed.
One of the kids at the other end of the room let out a screech, drawing Trent’s attention. When he turned back to her, he said, “We need to schedule another talk. More private.”
“All right.” She croaked out the words, her voice still rough from surprise.
“I have something this evening I can’t get out of.” He rose, towering over her. “But how about tomorrow night?”
She rose, too, with Vince cradled against her in one arm. “Okay.” Her mind was catching up to events. Trent had come here perfectly serious about wanting to buy her baby! But he was leaving now, and seemingly convinced that he couldn’t, that she wouldn’t agree. But did that mean he was going to relinquish his rights? That was what she wanted. That’s what she needed him to agree upon.
Her free hand crept over her belly. What should I do, Eisenhower?
As she walked Trent toward the playroom’s exit, her gaze landed on the poster taped to both sides of the glass door. “The fair,” she said aloud.
“What?” He paused and looked at her.
If he saw her with kids again, if he got to know her a little better, he would see she’d make a good mother and that she didn’t need or want anything from him. He continued to look down at her, waiting.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” she said. “If you don’t have something else going on, would you…like to come help me out at the children’s fair? I’m sort of half in charge and we could
use an extra set of hands.”
“A children’s fair?” He said the words as if he’d never heard of such a thing.
Probably because the big, bad businessman usually concerned himself with big, bad business and not something as mundane as hot dogs and pony rides. She smiled at him, anyway. “You said you were good with babies.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Then he turned and strode for the door.
“Ten o’clock!” she called out after him. “I hope to see you there!”
By the time 9:45 a.m. rolled around, Rebecca realized she’d organized herself right out of anything major to do. Weeks ago she’d canvassed the hospital staff for volunteers and they’d stepped up without arm-twisting. The proceeds were going to benefit Camp I Can, a summer camp dear to the heart of Meredith Malone Weber, a pediatrics physical therapist. Thanks to that good cause, artistic nursing assistants were in place to paint little faces. Interns were using their rotating breaks to grill hot dogs or hand out sunscreen samples. Other volunteers were lined up to do everything from selling tickets to supervising the line for the ponies.
The flagged-off area for the fair was already starting to fill even before the official opening. Rebecca waved at a few faces she recognized, then went back to the last-minute run-through of her list. With the excited chatter and squeals of children rising around her, the hand that touched her shoulder came out of the blue at the same time that a male voice spoke in her ear. “Reporting for duty, Nurse Holley.”
Trent. It was Trent. Her face heated despite herself as she glanced up and took in his damp, dark golden hair, white T-shirt and worn jeans. He wore running shoes, the expensive kind that she always thought should do the running on their own at that price tag.
“Is there something wrong with what I’m wearing?” His hand slid from her shoulder and he held both arms out.
She shook her head, thinking, I was right about those good-looking genes, Eisenhower. “No, you’re perfect.” Her face burned. “I mean, what you’re wearing is perfect.”
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