You Belong to Me

by Jennifer Greene

  Blake warily stiffened again. “What do you mean, if something happens?”

  “Remmington, come on. Like I’ve been trying to tell you—something’s happened to Christina, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know why. I also don’t know why she was so panicked that her family would find out about the baby. But the point is, right now this baby is her business and mine and no one else’s. I’m not asking you to be quiet forever. Only long enough to give me some time. I need to find Christina and find out what’s wrong on my own.”

  “Look. You’re asking me to break the law. And surely you know that Christina’s been listed as missing and everyone’s been looking for her all week—”

  “I’m only asking you to keep quiet for a short period of time. This baby isn’t the law’s business. Or Christina’s father’s business. Or anyone’s business but hers and mine.” Nighthawk’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and then he sighed, heavier than a north wind and just as wearily. “I’ll be honest—I don’t know what the right thing to do is. I just don’t want to cause Christina any more trouble than I already have. I promise you—I swear—I’ll make sure the baby is loved and cared for. I just want the news about her and Christina kept quiet temporarily until I have a chance to straighten this out.”

  Blake hesitated. “What if you can’t straighten it out? What if you don’t find this Christina?”

  Gavin met his eyes squarely. “I don’t know. But can’t you try to imagine yourself in my shoes? I’ve only been a father for a few hours. The mother of the baby is in some kind of trouble I don’t understand, and just as bad, the baby could be in some kind of jeopardy that I don’t know about. Do you hear me? I don’t care about the law. I just care about making sure the baby’s all right. And that Christina is, if I can find her.”

  “You’re a stranger to me. I’m not risking my license, or breaking the law, without knowing you from Adam. I don’t have a single reason to believe you.”

  “I’m still asking you to. Please, don’t tell anyone that we were here.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want anyone knowing this baby exists yet.”

  “No.”

  “And I need you to be the baby’s doctor if she gets sick or something happens. Until all this is resolved—”

  “No!”

  Damn. Nighthawk and the baby left minutes later, having gotten exactly what they wanted to out of Blake. A yes.

  Doors started slamming around seven-thirty. By then the sun had long peeked over the horizon and was now beaming through the windows with beatific cheer. Blake had cleaned up, shaved, splashed ice water on his face, and was downing his second pot of coffee.

  By the time the nurse cocked her head around the doorway to give him the morning’s schedule, he bantered with her no differently than any other morning. No one guessed he was troubled. No one even guessed he was tired. Blake had never shown his problems and wasn’t about to start now.

  But on the inside, he felt as if his entire ethical system was falling apart in front of his eyes. His character, his morals, his integrity were all going to hell in a handbasket. Previously, his entire experience with lawbreaking consisted of a ten-year-old speeding ticket. He never bent the rules. He didn’t know this damn Nighthawk from Adam, didn’t have a shred of evidence the guy was telling the truth, didn’t have a reason in hell to believe the father’s plight…but he did.

  It was Serena, Blake thought morosely. Nothing had been the same since he’d met up with her again. He’d become a stranger to himself. The one thing in his life he’d never doubted was his judgment, but lately he couldn’t seem to tell right from wrong. All the blacks and whites were becoming blurry grays.

  Patients came and went. More mothers cried than babies—which actually made it a pretty average day. His brother called, then his grandfather. Two four-year-olds broke out in a fistfight in the waiting room. Blake suspected abuse with one of his little girl patients, but he couldn’t prove it, and worrying about the child gave him a hammering headache by three.

  Through the whole day, he kept trying to decide what the best thing would be for Serena. She needed something from him. Joy, she’d said.

  Blake didn’t have a clue what she meant, but it kept gnawing on his mind that she’d always seen him as a better man than he was. Two dads and one wife had found him easily expendable. It was only with Serena that he’d ever felt loved—but was she swayed by their mutual tie to Nate and five tons of chemistry?

  Possibly the visit from Nighthawk was an omen, Blake considered. It seemed an ideal thing to confess to Serena. A way to show her what kind of man he really was. Fallible. Confused. Bumbling his way through the rights and wrongs of life…and just maybe, not the father she wanted for her son. But it seemed the only choice he had left was to be completely honest with her.

  Serena rarely lost it. Heaven knew she’d long realized that she was highly emotional by nature, but losing her parents so young had indelibly changed her outlook on life. No matter how tough life was, she always remembered the agony of loss and loneliness from when she was little, and something inside her always reached for the joy instead of dwelling on the heartbreak.

  Tonight, however, was the night before Nate’s first day of school and Serena’s first teaching day of the new school year. In addition, she hadn’t heard from Blake since arguing with him. She kept thinking he’d call, but not one of the five million calls she got was from the one person she wanted to talk to. She’d managed to get Nate ready for bed after dinner and had laid out his clothes for the sacred first day. But the time had kept running away, and she hadn’t done anything to prepare herself for tomorrow. Adding to her fretful mood, rain was streaming from the sky like silver ribbons. Hot rain. No meanness to it, no lightning or wind. It bounced off the ground and snaked into rivers and just wouldn’t quit. And at precisely 8:02 p.m., when she turned around to see the back door opening, her shriek could easily have been heard on the far side of the Tetons.

  “What have you two done?”

  Nate and Whiskey both stopped dead in their tracks. Boy and dog shared the same guilty expression. “Um, Mom…”

  “Don’t you ‘um, Mom’ me! Either of you!” Her finger wagged at the two of them—one wearing star-and-moon pajamas, but both equally drenched in mud. To add insult to injury, she heard the rap on the front door, not that she had time to answer it. “When did you two sneak back outside? You were clean. It’s bedtime, for Pete’s sake!”

  “Mom, we just went out for a minute because Whiskey was hot. And the rain was so much fun and it felt so good. Only then we kind of slipped in this puddle. It was just an accident—”

  “There was no accident. You rolled in the dirt! All I asked was that you stay clean. Now look at you! You’re not just sopping wet but dripping mud all over the place. You’re both going to have to get another bath—”

  “Serena? Nate?”

  Truthfully she’d heard the door open and sensed Blake walking up behind her, the same way she could sense her own heartbeat. But she was too busy losing it to have a coherent conversation. “You’re going to have to wait a minute,” she said to Blake. “I can’t talk to you. I’m too busy murdering my son and his dog.”

  “Is there any chance I could help before it comes to that?”

  “Yeah, Dr. Blake, you could help!” Nate piped up hopefully.

  “Yeah, you can help,” Serena said darkly. “You can spank the pair of them after I finish murdering them both. And I mean to tell you, I am mad, Nate. You know you were all clean and supposed to be settling down before bed. You know I wouldn’t have wanted you to go outside in the rain. Here it is eight o’clock and I have to clean you and Whiskey and the house all over again. And as far as rolling in the mud, young man—”

  “I can give myself a bath, Mom.”

  “No, you can’t. Not when your hair needs washing and there’s all that mud all over your ears.”

  “Then Dr. Blake wants to give me a bath, don’t you, Dr. Blake?
And I’ll just tiptoe so I don’t make any more messes. See, I’m only dripping a little now, Mom.”

  “Don’t move. And, oh, my God, I forgot to hang up the phone. Are you still there, Victoria?” As soon as she hung up, the phone somehow managed to ring again. Perhaps Blake perceived that there was a slim chance she was inclined to hurl the receiver against the nearest wall, because he scooped it up before she could grab it.

  “Would you mind calling back at another time? She really has her hands full here.” That handled, Blake descended on the two culprits. “Whiskey, you’re going out to the garage to dry off. We’ll see about getting you clean a little later. And in the meantime, Nate, up.”

  Despite the mud, Nate scrambled up into Blake’s arms faster than a monkey climbing a banana tree, looking so adorable that Serena almost—almost—forgot how furious she was. Dad and son looked like such a matched pair. A matched guilty pair, as they backed carefully, quietly, out of the room.

  “I’m not through yelling at you! I’m not even close. I haven’t even heard one apology and for that matter—”

  “I’m sorry, Mom, really, really sorry!” Nate called.

  Blake backed him up. “Look, Serena, we’re both so sorry we can hardly stand it. But Nate and I are going to get out of your sight and get clean. You just sit down with a nice glass of wine, okay? Relax. Put your feet up. And I’ll take care of the dog once I’m through with Nate.”

  Initially, there was too much to do to sit. But once she’d hosed down Whiskey and banished the dog to the garage to dry off, life started to look more recoverable. A mop took care of the dirt in the kitchen. By the time she’d made a mug of chamomile tea, she could hear the sounds of Blake and Nate giggling from behind the bathroom door.

  Nothing could have relaxed her more than hearing those two having a great time together. She was stretched out on the living room couch by the time Blake finally emerged from the back rooms. By then, he’d put a spiffed-up Nate to bed and claimed the little one’s eyes were already closed. She thought that she should probably explain her loss of temper. “Normally, a little mud doesn’t bother me, but I think it was building up all evening, realizing that tomorrow is his first day of school.”

  “School?”

  “Yeah. You know. My baby. His first day of school. He’ll never be my baby the same way ever again.”

  “Um, Serena? I saw him covered with mud barely an hour ago. I don’t think you need to worry that he’s a full-fledged adult who doesn’t need you as a mom anymore. Not today and not for quite a few years yet.”

  He looked adorable, she realized. A few bubbles seemed to be clinging in a small blotch near his neck. He’d lost his shoes and was barefoot. His shirt was stained with mud, and several water spots were drying on his chinos. When he first came out and leaned over the couch, to find her prostrate and sprawled like a woman in a coma, he’d had the rare perception to not crack a smile.

  “School’s a terrible thing,” she said sadly.

  “You’re a teacher. I thought you loved school.”

  “I do, for heaven’s sake. And God knows I’m trying to raise Nate so he’ll be independent. Only I didn’t mean for him to really grow up so much he’d be going to first grade.”

  “Ah,” Blake said, as if she were actually making sense. His gaze hovered on her mouth, then swiftly dropped to her mug. “You need some more of that, whatever it is?”

  “No. If I have any more tea, I’ll probably float.” Fascinating. His gaze had sneaked back up to her mouth again. “I’m sorry. You got thrown into the middle of a war the minute you walked in.”

  “I’ve never seen you lose your temper before. Remind me never to make you angry, okay?”

  “Scared you, did I?”

  “Oh, yeah. My knees are still shaking.” But he hadn’t stopped looking at her mouth yet. Or her throat. She no longer felt like lying on a couch with so much of her body exposed to his eyes, but he didn’t move and she didn’t want to call attention to herself by moving, either.

  “Blake?”

  “Huh?” His hand had lifted. His fingers seemed to be halfway to her cheek, about to touch her.

  “You must have come over for some reason? Or was it just to stop by?”

  The guilty hand dropped instantly, and though his eyes met hers, those wild, warm fires were abruptly banked. “You’re right, I had a reason. There was something I needed to tell you.”

  “What?” She promptly sat up, for the first time noticing the odd, tenacious look in his eyes, as if he were stuck telling her bad news. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, exactly.” He hunched down on the far end of the couch. A deliberate distance from her, Serena thought. “I did something. Something I feel you should know about.”

  “Okay.” Darkness was falling fast, the room turning a dusky velvet. The only light came from the lemony glow of a lamp in the far corner, and right when she wanted to see his expression clearly. She wasn’t worried about whatever was troubling him. She was grateful. Blake had never brought her a problem before. As of that night on the lawn when they’d almost made love, she’d despaired that Blake would ever open up to her. He’d locked himself so tight behind his rules of control that she doubted he would ever trust her. She’d feared she wasn’t the woman who could free that special, wondrously loving man.

  Over the next few minutes he did open up, but not about anything she was expecting. He pushed up off the couch almost as fast as he’d sat down, shoved his hands into his pockets and paced around as he regaled her with a story about a newborn patient. It seemed that someone had come to his office—he wouldn’t tell her the name—who’d asked him to keep a confidence, even though he should have taken the information to the law. There was a baby involved and a missing person.

  Serena couldn’t comprehend what he was really trying to tell her. She heard the story about the baby, but it seemed as if Blake were trying to own up to something and she couldn’t fathom what it was. “Okay, so you met this man who was in some kind of trouble. In fact, the whole thing was so mysterious and weird that you were afraid he was in some kind of serious trouble…”

  “Yes.”

  “But you had enough time with him to evaluate what kind of character he had. And trouble or not, he seemed like a good guy and a caring father to you…”

  “Yeah. I’m sure of that. I can’t explain it,” Blake admitted. “It’s not like I could come up with proof in a court of law.”

  “Well, this isn’t a court of law. You’re talking to me. If you think this guy is a good man, then he is. But more to the point, why are you so troubled about this? You’re a doctor. This is your job every day. Not just listening to what people say, but making judgments based on how they act. Really, that’s how you save people’s lives. So you made some judgment calls about this man. I don’t have any doubt at all that you’re right about him, Blake, so what’s the problem?”

  She could have sworn she sounded patient and empathetic and caring, but he abruptly pivoted around and threw up his hands. “Serena, you’re driving me nuts!”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m trying to be honest with you.”

  “And I swear I’m listening, Blake. But all I’m hearing is you confessing to some nonexistent crime.”

  “I should have reported the information about the birth and the missing person. To do less is going outside the law.”

  “And that’s wonderful,” Serena murmured.

  “Wonderful?” His eyes shot skyward as if begging for some strength. “I’m trying to warn you about what kind of man I am. I’m not doing good with Nate, you know that. I keep screwing up. And you were talking the other night about this strange joy thing. I don’t know that I ever had that joy thing, Serena. And then there are things like this. Nothing I’m doing lately seems to be right. Things I used to think were wrong seem right. I’m afraid I could talk myself into believing that I could be with you, with Nate, unless you take the reins and call a halt.”

 
“So you think telling me that whole story about how you handled this troubled man could make some kind of difference to me?”

  “Not exactly. But maybe. It wasn’t the man and the baby. It was that I’m trying to be honest with you about the kind of mistakes I’ve made and keep on making.”

  “Whew. I’m really glad we talked about this,” she murmured, and surged up from the couch. She walked closer to him.

  And then she pounced.

  Nine

  Damn woman was doing it again.

  Kissing him. Rewarding him for doing something wrong. He’d been trying to warn her that he just wasn’t the kind of man she needed in her life, for Pete’s sake.

  “Serena—”

  “You were so darling. The way you picked up Nate and hugged him even when he was all covered with mud.”

  “Darling. Um. Thank you. I think.” She smelled like sandalwood and peaches. Peaches from her shampoo, sandalwood and some other exotic flower from the scent on her skin. The scents were addling his wits. “But—”

  “I had such a terrible day until you came over.”

  Apparently she thought he deserved another kiss for that. Only the taste of her was more madness. Sweet and exotic and alluring. “Thank you again. But—”

  “There was nothing wrong. It was just one of those mean days. I was upset over the way we’d left each other last time, and feeling weird about Nate’s first day of school, but mostly it was just me. One of those days when you trip over your own feet. And then you came in, and I saw the way you looked at Nate and it was like the sun filled my heart. Life’s a risk, Blake, did you know that?”

  Okay. Apparently she expected him to think while her bare hands were slowly chasing the shirt up his chest and over his head, her mouth coming back down on his with the smoothness of a hummingbird’s landing. He wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t listening. His veins were pumping lots of rich, oxygen-rich blood, but all of it was pooling below his waist. “Uh, I don’t know as I have my mind on philosophy right at this precise moment.”