Right by Her Side

by Christie Ridgway

  “I think we should marry as soon as possible,” he murmured. “There’s no reason to wait and there’s every reason for us to become better acquainted.”

  The whole idea of getting better acquainted through marriage was so overwhelming that she couldn’t find the voice to protest. He kept up that soft kneading, that soft talking, spinning tales of their future that began to sound like bedtime stories.

  The deep fatigue that had been hovering now settled over her like a warm blanket. She drifted off to the sound of his voice and the fairy tales he was whispering in her ear.

  Later, she stirred, and discovered she was in her bedroom, fully dressed beneath the afghan her mother had made. When she reached to pull it higher, her hand encountered a piece of paper. A note. The fact that she could read it made her suddenly aware that it was morning.

  And she was suddenly aware that Trent had steamrollered her, after all.

  The note was a list of items she’d apparently agreed to after all.

  Wedding date: Thursday, 3:00 p.m., County Courthouse

  Blood test: Monday morning

  Lawyer’s office: Thursday, 2:00 p.m. to sign prenup agreement.

  She remembered insisting on that.

  It went on from there.

  Well, she wasn’t going to follow instructions. Of course she wasn’t! She remembered his voice rumbling in the darkness the night before, remembered him tucking her into bed. She didn’t believe it was a reasonable solution to marry Trent Crosby, even if he was as disillusioned about love as she.

  The whole idea was ridiculous and she wasn’t even the slightest bit tempted, no matter how good-looking, how persuasive, how skilled he was at the kind of foot massages that a nurse would love to grow accustomed to.

  To emphasize that fact, she tossed the note aside. Another little piece of paper fluttered into the air like a feather. Rebecca caught it. Stared at it.

  The fortune. And the truth shall set you free.

  Okay, the truth: She was a little bit tempted.

  Fine. More than a little bit.

  Was she free now?

  The phone beside her bed rang. She picked it up.

  “Hello, fiancée,” Trent said in her ear.

  Good Lord, she thought, as his voice sent a warm tickle down her malleable spine. Not free. Not free at all.

  Five

  “Admit it. You know we made a mistake. You know you made a mistake.”

  Trent looked into Rebecca’s anxious face as the elevator descended another floor. “You’re kidding, right? We’ve been married less than ten minutes. We haven’t even made it out of the courthouse yet. How could this be a mistake already?”

  “I’m dressed in my nurse’s uniform. What bride starts a marriage dressed in hospital scrubs?”

  “A bride who was called in for an extra shift and who couldn’t find it in herself to say no, it was her wedding day, that’s who. And for the record, that’s your mistake, not mine.”

  “But this was all your idea, and—” She cut off the rest of her remark as the elevator doors swished open and a trio of people stepped inside.

  And I’ll be damned if I say it was a mistake, Trent thought. It was the best solution to their problem for all the reasons he’d already given her. Plus, it didn’t feel like a mistake. The knowledge that he was married to Rebecca gave him all the pleasures of a bulging bank account and a successful business negotiation rolled into one. There was that distinct sense of security, as well as the edgy thrill of a chase brought to a satisfying conclusion. And then, just below the surface was that intriguing simmer of possibility. It was just as he’d planned, Trent thought as they exited the elevator and walked toward their parked cars.

  He slanted another look at Rebecca and put every ounce of determination and certainty into his voice. “Believe me, Rebecca, this is not a mistake.”

  “I’m not convinced you’re the type of man who would ever admit to one,” she grumbled.

  Well, that was true. And he was also the type of man, who, when he decided he wanted something, got it by going after it in a systematic, methodical fashion. Paying attention to the details was the secret to his success and the source of his confidence. If he personally made sure that all the t’s were crossed and the i’s dotted, then any kind of acquisition was accomplished smoothly.

  To his satisfaction.

  Just like today.

  He held to that happy thought until the moment the two of them stood on the slate front porch of his house. With his hands gripping her suitcases, he stalled a moment before setting them down to locate his keys and release the lock. “I, uh, hope you’ll like the place.”

  Instead of looking at her, he stared at the heavy, ugly door. What was he saying? She was going to hate it. He hated it. He’d bought it, furnished, right after his divorce from a guy who’d bought it, furnished, right after his divorce, from another guy who’d…and so on. Something like five iterations of thirty-something, just-single men had lived in the place, and it always held the cold chill of a house in which the furnace was rarely turned on. Even less pleasant, it reeked of layers of Pledge and Windex and Lysol, applied by a succession of faithful housekeepers who for years had polished surfaces that the succession of busy bachelors rarely dirtied.

  Hell. Impatient with his uncharacteristic hesitation, he dropped the suitcases and dug for his keys. He swung open the door and she immediately stepped across the threshold.

  Hell, he thought again. Should I have carried her over it? For all his planning, he hadn’t thought that one out. And now it was too late. Annoyed with himself for the oversight, he retrieved the suitcases and followed her inside.

  She paused in the foyer, looking around her.

  A white-carpeted, sunken living room on the right. Curving staircase to the upper floor directly ahead. On the left, a dining area, then the entry to a stainless-steel kitchen and un-cozy den. As always, everything in sight gleamed, from the lacquer furniture in the living room to the red waxy tulips in the austere crystal vase precisely centered on the dining-room table.

  “What do you think?” he heard himself ask.

  Did he sound anxious? He hoped to God he didn’t sound anxious. He didn’t feel anxious, damn it, not about anything, and her doubts were kept at bay by his confidence.

  “It looks…”

  He wasn’t holding his breath.

  “It looks…

  He was breathing, of course he was.

  “…clean.”

  His air exhaled on a laugh; he couldn’t help himself. “It’s awful. I know it’s awful.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, no. Don’t try to backpedal now.” The laughter eased the trace of tension that had found its way inside him. “‘Clean’ is about the nicest thing I can think to say about it, too.”

  She made a face at him. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Let’s admit it’s bad. Let’s admit it has all the charm of the inside of a coffee can.”

  “Trent.” She shook her head. “Why are you living here if you don’t like it?”

  He shrugged. “It didn’t matter before. It was just me and…it didn’t matter where I lived. I spend most of my time at the office.”

  Doubt flared in her eyes again.

  “But I’m going to change all that,” he hurried to say. “With the baby, with you, I’m going to be spending more time at home.” He gestured with one of the suitcases, worried that if he set them down she’d grab them back up and run for her life.

  Of course he wasn’t worried. Not really. The i’s, the t’s—he’d thought everything through with precision, right? If he kept steady, then she would too. Still, he headed for the staircase, determined to get her things farther into his space.

  Just follow my lead, he thought, willing her after him.

  “We can buy a new house or change this place, you know,” he said, steadily mounting the stairs. “Enlarge the rooms by taking a can opener to them or something. Donate the furniture to
a home for indigent monkeys.”

  Now she laughed. “Indigent monkeys?”

  “Because the stuff is indestructible. Believe me. I spent one Saturday night amusing myself by trying to put a dent in the coffee table with everything from a Sam Adams beer bottle to a construction-quality sledgehammer. There’s still not a mark on it.”

  “I would have supposed you spent your Saturday nights in more interesting ways than that.”

  He paused on the stair landing and stared down at…his wife. Since his divorce, he’d had his share of women. But none of them was interesting, he realized. Not in the way that Rebecca, with her wavy hair and valentine face, wearing her cartoon-printed hospital scrubs, was interesting to him.

  Alarm edged down his back. What the hell did that mean?

  It meant none of them had carried his baby, idiot.

  Despite that calm, cool voice of reason in his head, his feet were still slow taking the stairs, so slow that she caught up with him. At the top, he gestured toward the open gallery space. “My home office, but feel free to use it if you’d like.”

  She nodded, then headed toward the short hallway on the right. “And the bedrooms are here?”

  “Yes. I thought—” He froze as she glanced over at him.

  “You thought?” she prompted.

  “Th-th-the…” He was stuttering! Stuttering! “The first room, in front of you, I thought might make a nice nursery. It gets the morning sunlight and is closest to the stairs. Or maybe that’s bad, to be so close to the stairs? And the morning light might wake the baby too early or…”

  Terrific. Now he was babbling. Ultraconfident, just-follow-my-lead Trent Crosby was babbling.

  “Are you all right?” Rebecca asked, frowning.

  “Of course I’m all right.” This was his idea, wasn’t it? This whole marriage thing was his idea, his grand, well-devised, completely-thought-out, completely-the-right-idea, completely-not-a-mistake plan.

  “Then that seems like a fine room for the baby,” Rebecca said. “So where am I to sleep?”

  The million-dollar question. The one that had pulled that self-assured rug from beneath his feet just seconds before. The one that had only occurred to him when she’d said the common, ordinary word bedrooms.

  “Trent?” She was looking worried again, and she moved toward him. “What’s the matter?”

  Her nearness only made his sudden discomfiture worse. His fingers loosened on the handles of her suitcases and they plunked to the ground. She took one of his hands between both of hers. Noticing the platinum band on her fourth finger didn’t help matters. Smelling her didn’t help matters. Shouldn’t a nurse smell like Band-Aids and iodine? Something boring and practical like that?

  Rebecca smelled sweet, a light, powdery, sweet scent.

  He wondered if her skin tasted sweet.

  He knew her mouth did.

  She was staring up at him with those innocent, baby-doll eyes, and he felt like a lecher because she was the mother of his child and he was getting hard thinking about her skin, her mouth and what her hair would look like loose around those breasts of hers he’d never seen, really had never had the chance to even judge beneath the tentlike clothes she wore. He was a lecher, all right.

  And a loser. Because he’d failed in devising a way to accomplish one very important part of this whole marriage idea of his. How could he have been so stupid? When he’d proposed their practical marriage, he hadn’t meant it to be a chaste one. There had been enough of a sexual simmer between them for him to know a physical relationship with her wouldn’t be a hardship.

  But in all his hurry to get her to the altar, he’d never broached the idea with Rebecca. It seemed a bit crass to bring it up now.

  Which meant Mr. Cross-the-t’s and Dot-the-i’s had made a mistake. He’d never planned exactly how to get his wife into his bed.

  Without specifying her reasons, Rebecca had requested a few days off, but on the day following her marriage she was back at Portland General for a meeting of a group that had become close to her heart. Months ago she’d been asked to give a talk on pediatric first aid for the Parent Adoption Network of Children’s Connection. That day she’d discovered that the group was much more than an organization of parents who had adopted or were considering adoption. It was, in fact, a supportive group of individuals that included couples who had used the fertility services of Children’s Connection as well. It was at that meeting that the idea of using a sperm donor had surfaced in Rebecca’s mind.

  Now she attended the meetings regularly, ostensibly as a health-care “consultant,” but she got back in camaraderie and caring just as much as she gave in professional advice. When she was ready to announce her pregnancy, her friends in PAN would be the first she’d tell.

  And they would be the first she’d tell about her marriage to Trent Crosby, too. That was if she didn’t decide to call it quits first.

  Rebecca paced through the hospital corridors, reassured by their familiarity. The days between finding that handwritten list on her quilt to finding herself in front of a county marriage clerk had passed in a blur. Trent had listened to her doubts, her cautions, her reasoning, and he’d countered every objection she’d had with something of his own that appeared to make even more sense.

  She’d come to like him—she’d liked him nearly from the first—and the idea of entering into a marriage for all the sensible reasons he suggested had started to seem not so crazy, after all. He’d even managed to calm her mild panic immediately following the brief wedding ceremony. But then she’d entered that walk-in freezer he called a house and her worries had come rushing back. A night in a strange, bare guest room hadn’t alleviated a one.

  Could she and Trent really make this family plan of theirs work? If not, the time to back out was sooner, not later.

  “You look as if the world is weighing on your shoulders.”

  With a start, Rebecca realized she’d made her way to the room where the PAN meeting was scheduled. Morgan Davis, the director of Children’s Connection, was acting as greeter and he was gazing down at her with a wry expression on his face.

  “Rebecca, you can’t know how much I regret—”

  She stopped him by putting a hand on his arm. “Morgan, we’ve been through the apologies.” Though she wasn’t prepared to tell him how she and Trent had resolved their problem—she wasn’t confident their way was going to work—she didn’t want to rehash the circumstances, either. She tried on a bright smile. “What’s up for today? Don’t we have a school psychologist coming in?”

  “Canceled at the last minute.” The grin on Morgan’s face said he didn’t find it a tragedy, however. “We’re going to have an impromptu celebration instead.”

  “What? Why?”

  He shook his head. “Mum’s the word until everyone else arrives. Go on in and help yourself to refreshments.”

  With a backward glance at him, she followed instructions. As usual, there were cookies and drinks set on a counter, but more puzzling was the fancy sheet cake in the middle of the room. Swirled white frosting and blue-icing roses were piled high upon it in an elaborate decoration.

  Sydney Aston, mother to adopted five-year-old Nicholas, walked up to stand beside Rebecca. She glanced at the cake, then glanced at Rebecca. “That looks like a wedding cake,” she said in a teasing voice. “Do you have something to tell us?”

  Rebecca’s gaze whipped toward the other woman. “What? No! I mean, no, I didn’t bring the cake in.”

  Sydney grinned at her. “But yes, you have something to tell us?”

  Rebecca’s face burned. “I, um, I…” She tried imagining the words she would use. Trent Crosby and I…Yesterday, Trent Crosby and I… I’m married to Trent Crosby.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” Sydney’s grin died. “I was just kidding around, not trying to make you miserable.”

  But that was how Rebecca felt. Miserable. How could she and someone like Trent Crosby, CEO, make things work between them? Her hand crept over h
er stomach. Eisenhower, I have to get us out of this mess.

  “Come on,” Sydney took her arm and led her toward a nearby table. “You sit down and I’ll bring you something hot to drink. It looks as if we’re almost ready to start.”

  Rebecca noticed the room had filled. She waved to a few friends and then managed a smile for Sydney when she sat down beside her with two disposable cups of fragrant herbal tea. “I’m sorry, Sydney. My mind is scattered today. How are you and my darling friend Nicholas?”

  “Darling Nicholas is more darling by the day.” Sydney’s sigh sounded bittersweet. “I never knew how much I could love him and—” She glanced over at Rebecca and there was the glint of tears in her eyes. “You’ll think I’m silly.”

  Rebecca touched her friend’s shoulder. “I won’t.”

  “I get so afraid sometimes that someone will come along and take him away from me.”

  “I understand.” Patting the other woman’s shoulder, Rebecca felt her own eyes sting. Knowing Sydney’s story—the baby had been abandoned by a former college friend who had been staying with her and that Sydney had applied to be the baby’s foster mother and then later adopted him—only made the voiced fear more poignant. “It’s common to feel that way, you know that from what we’ve heard at our meetings here. It’s natural and not silly whatsoever.”

  Rebecca couldn’t imagine losing Eisenhower. The baby was so real to her already. And wanting the best for her child was why she’d agreed to marry Trent. But could they make it work?

  “It’s worse because of these nightmares that Nicholas keeps having,” Sydney went on to say. “He wakes up screaming and all he can tell me is that someone is taking him bye-bye. When I ask him who, he just shakes his head and starts crying.”

  “Someone taking him bye-bye?” Rebecca questioned. Five-year-old Nicholas was usually more articulate than that.

  Sydney nodded, her gaze trained on her cup of tea. “It seems strange to me, too, because he hasn’t used the phrase bye-bye since he was a toddler. It’s as if the nightmares cause him to regress…or he’s remembering something that actually happened.”