Mother by Design

by Susan Mallery

  She covered a yawn at one point. He realized they had been sitting chatting for almost two hours.

  “You need to rest,” he said, rising and clearing the table before she could do it.

  “You’re very helpful around the house,” she told him, putting the remaining veggies in a plastic bag and storing them in the refrigerator. “Your wife must have trained you well.”

  The mellow feelings disappeared. “She was a gourmet cook. She didn’t like anyone messing in the kitchen while she was in it. It distracted her, she said.”

  “I can understand that. If I were an expert, I probably wouldn’t want someone in my way, either. Since I’m not, I’ll take all the help I can get.”

  The tension slipped from him. “You’re easy to be around,” he told her. “I missed you yesterday at the hospital. The other nurses—”

  He stopped, realizing it wasn’t good form for the head of the department to talk about the staff to one of them.

  “None of them has worked with you as long as I have,” she continued his thought, “so it isn’t as easy for the others to anticipate what you need.”

  “Sometimes you seem to read my mind.”

  Her smile bloomed. “I know the routine.”

  For a second, the ambiance between them was the same as yesterday when they’d kissed. He felt a compelling urge to do it again. He wasn’t sure he would stop this time. They were alone in her home and he knew exactly where the bedroom was located.

  “I have to go,” he said and headed for the door.

  “Thank you for the lunch. And for helping me after the accident. And for driving me to the clinic yesterday.”

  He paused and glanced back at her. The window over the sink backlighted her golden hair, turning it into a shimmering halo around her perfect face. She looked like an angel come to life.

  He strode out and down the sidewalk, putting distance between them. One thing he knew—angels weren’t for mortals like him.

  Chapter 6

  On Wednesday evening, after a slow four hours in E.R., Jenna retrieved her dinner from the fridge and headed for one of the little-used waiting rooms. She and another nurse had decided to eat in there where it was quieter and more comfortable. And Jenna could prop her feet up.

  She heard a “Shhh” as she approached the door and was disappointed. Someone was using the room. Well, maybe they wouldn’t stay long—

  “Surprise!” a chorus of voices rang out when she entered the room.

  Every nerve in Jenna’s body jerked as adrenaline flooded her system, ready to send her into “fight or flight” mode. She grinned and pressed a hand to her breast in exaggerated relief. “Definitely a surprise,” she told her friends as they crowded around her.

  The room was decorated in blue crepe-paper streamers and balloons proclaiming It’s a Boy! A cake held pride of place on the nearest table along with gaily colored plates and napkins. Presents were stacked on another table.

  “A baby shower? For me?”

  “Yes, for you,” her longtime friend, Lily, assured her, stepping forward and tugging her to a seat at the cake table. “We also brought healthy food so you could have a piece of cake without suffering a guilty conscience.”

  Jenna laughed. She was rather strict on herself about eating well-balanced meals. For the baby’s sake. “Rachel, hi,” she greeted her other best friend. “Did you two plan this?” she demanded, gesturing toward the decorations.

  “Yep,” Lily said.

  “With the help of the E.R. staff,” Rachel added.

  Jenna glanced at the crowd. There were at least twenty people in the room, many of them co-workers on other shifts in E.R. and several from the pediatrics wing where she had often volunteered to feed babies or just hold the fretful ones if their parents weren’t available.

  Looking past the smiling faces, she spotted Eric at the back of the room. He was putting on a pot of coffee. He looked around at that moment and winked at her.

  It was so surprising, she was almost shocked again.

  “Your boss said it was okay,” Rachel told her. “He even said you could take longer for your break.”

  “Eric was in on this?” Jenna did have trouble believing that. He was so…so solemn, as a rule.

  “He was. He thought it was just the thing to cheer you up after your mishap last Friday.”

  “He did?”

  While the people around her chuckled at her amazement, Jenna realized she’d probably made her boss sound like a curmudgeon or something. “He’s been really wonderful this past week, helping me and all.”

  “Right, he must have been taking ‘nice’ pills,” the other E.R. nurse who’d tricked her into coming here said and laughed delightedly when several glances went from her to Eric and back, speculation definitely in their depths.

  “Dr. Thompson is always nice,” Jenna said, feeling compelled to defend him.

  “Huh,” the nurse said, but under her breath as the doctor came forward at that moment.

  “Dinner is served, madam,” he intoned.

  Everyone seemed to know what he or she was supposed to do. Soon Jenna was seated in front of a feast of dishes prepared by her friends. Eric had supplied a honey-cured ham from a local deli that was already cut and ready to eat, along with their delicious homemade crunchy rolls.

  After eating, she had to open the gifts before they let her cut the cake. She was touched by the assortment of tiny clothes and blankets and layette outfits.

  “Thank you all so much,” she said when she was at last finished. “This was such a surprise, a wonderful one, and I love everything. I can’t wait to use it all—”

  “Except the diapers,” Lily said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Where is your baby?” Jenna asked Lily.

  “Asleep, I hope, at home with her daddy.” She glanced at the clock. “It’s time I got back. It’s almost time for a feeding.” She gave her friend a hug. “Eric would make a great father, don’t you think?” she whispered in Jenna’s ear. With a grin, she sailed out of the room.

  Jenna looked anywhere but at the part of the room where Eric chatted with another doctor. She was afraid her thoughts would leap into her eyes for all to read.

  Lily’s teasing words sizzled in her head like the stamp of a branding iron. Eric as father to her son?

  Don’t even think about it, she warned herself. She had gone into this alone and with her eyes wide open to the difficulties of single parenthood. She could handle it.

  “Time to get back to work,” the E.R. nurse said with a groan and then a laugh.

  Jenna looked at all the stuff to clean up.

  “Go on,” Eric told her. “I can handle this. I’ll load the gifts in my SUV. It’s bigger than your car. I can bring them by tonight when you get off.”

  “Th-thanks,” she said with an involuntary stammer.

  The other E.R. nurse looked at her and waggled her eyebrows. “Something between you and Dr. Thompson?” she asked in a friendly, teasing manner on the way back to their duty station.

  Jenna shook her head. “Not really. He was…helpful after I had the accident.”

  “Honey, if I weren’t married, I think I’d see just how helpful he could be.”

  Their laughter was cut short when they entered the Emergency Room area. Two people were being brought in on stretchers. “Fire,” the medic with the emergency medical team told Jenna. “Their house caught on fire. They tried to save their pets and were overcome with smoke. The firemen pulled them out of the burning house.”

  Jenna went to work, directing the EMT medics to put the victims in two cubicles and instructing a nurse to call in a specialist on burn treatment. She checked the IVs started by the medics and prepared a special wash to start cleaning the inflamed skin as they removed charred clothing from the man and woman.

  Eric and the burn specialist arrived at the same time. The specialist instructed Eric on what to do for the first patient while he started on the second one. Jenna listened and made sure the
supplies were at hand, anticipating each request from the doctors as they all worked for the remainder of the shift and into the next.

  “You need to get off your feet,” Eric told her when they at last walked outside into the cool night breeze. He was frowning in his serious way as he looked her over.

  Jenna checked the time. “It’s only a little after eleven. I thought it was later.”

  “You’ve had a long day.”

  It was obvious he thought she’d overdone it, but no one could predict emergencies and no one walked out while dealing with one. “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  “Huh,” he said. “I’ll follow you home.”

  She started to protest, then remembered he had all her baby stuff in his vehicle. He probably wanted to get rid of it so he wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow. “Okay.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her acquiescence, evidently expecting an argument. She gave him an impish smile, then unlocked her car and drove home with him a safe distance behind her car.

  At the condo, he carried in most of the stuff and, under her direction, stored it in the guest room where the baby crib, sanded and painted, waited to be reassembled.

  “I need to tell my father he has to come up and put the crib together,” she told Eric. “I took it apart, but I can’t remember how it goes back together.”

  “I’ll put it together for you over the weekend, if you like.”

  “That would be very nice.” Her heart bumped around her chest like a demolition derby car. She took a fortifying breath. “Did you do that when you and your wife were expecting?”

  He put the last pile of boxes on the floor next to the wall, then turned and looked at her. His face was grim. “We hadn’t bought furniture yet. We thought we had plenty of time for the house to be finished, then we would get it.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said, recalling the information. “You had a new house built a little farther out from the hospital. The land was advertised as five-acre estates. Are you pleased with it and the house?”

  She kept her manner friendly but bland as she led the way downstairs. She pretended not to notice his frown or the dark memories that filled his eyes. He had to talk about it sometime in order to get over the pain. Now was as good as any, she decided.

  “The place is okay,” he finally answered in forbidding tones. “I don’t stay at the house much.”

  She laughed. “You’re always at the hospital,” she scolded. “You’re worse than Scrooge as a workaholic. I need something to eat. How about a ham and cheese omelet?” she asked, seeing the left-over ham on the counter.

  When he didn’t answer, she glanced over her shoulder. His gaze was on her in a way that started the blood to pounding, driven by the tom-tom beat of her heart.

  “Eric?” she said, her voice going breathless.

  “Fine,” he said. “That’ll be fine.”

  She prepared the food, aware that she was hungry after the long evening of work, but knowing the hunger extended past the need for food. She sensed the same need in him as he stood at the half wall that divided the living from the cooking area and watched her work.

  When they sat down at the table, silence prevailed during the quick meal. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked upon finishing. She named the various kinds she had when he indicated he would.

  Carrying the cup, she led the way to the porch chairs. Although the night air was chilly, the porch sat in a protective alcove and was pleasant. The soft darkness seemed soothing to her taut nerves.

  “It sometimes takes me a while to wind down, especially after an emergency such as we had tonight,” she said. “I like to sit out here and listen to the quiet. The constant roar from the highway becomes white noise. I no longer even notice it.”

  “I do the same at my place,” he admitted. “Where I live, there’s no traffic sound at night. You can’t hear the freeway because there’s a hill between it and the house.”

  “Mmm, that must be nice.”

  “Yeah.” After a minute, he added, “But it can be lonely, too. Some of the at-home wives complain about that.”

  “Is that why you stay at work? Because you find the house too lonely now that your wife is gone?”

  He didn’t answer for a long time. She was slumped down in the chair so her head rested on the back. She now rolled it to the side so she could study him in the faint light coming through the pleated shades at her windows.

  When he looked her way, she couldn’t read his expression. He was probably trying to think of words to put her in her place.

  “Maybe it’s the guilt that haunts me,” he at last said.

  “Guilt because she chose to drive off in a huff when you quarreled?”

  “Guilt because she was right,” he said, his voice low so she had to really listen to hear. “She was angry because I’d worked late. Again. She’d wanted to go check on a new shipment of furniture. It was time to furnish the baby’s room, she said.”

  “Didn’t she understand that as a trauma specialist, you had to stay for emergencies? Like tonight, that wasn’t something one could predict or schedule. People have to be fair in picking their arguments. You have to be fair with yourself, too, in taking or ascribing blame. My dad says it takes to two to make a marriage…or to break one.”

  She heard Eric let out a long, slow breath. She shouldn’t be saying these things to him. His life was none of her business.

  Liar, a part of her whispered. She wanted very much to be part of his business. She wanted him…in very basic and elemental ways. It was startling, but there it was.

  “It does,” Eric agreed. “Both partners have to consider the other in marriage. That’s what I didn’t do. I didn’t call when I was going to be late. I thought she should understand that I was working and that it involved lives.”

  “She didn’t see it like that,” Jenna concluded.

  “No. She said I could spare a moment to let her know what was going on. She wanted me to tell her about the cases when I got home.”

  “But you were tired and didn’t want to talk about anything,” Jenna guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m that way, too, sometimes. At times, when I get home, I can’t make another decision, not even about what to eat. It just seems too much. If I had to be nice to another person, I’d probably explode.”

  “That’s why it’s easier not to date or see anyone.” He met her gaze in the dim light. “Is that why you chose an anonymous donor for your baby?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. I haven’t met anyone who fit my ideals, I suppose.”

  “Maybe your standards are too high. No mere mortal can live up to them.”

  She had to laugh at that. “I don’t think that’s the problem,” she said, using his dry twist of humor. “Perhaps we see too much of the human condition at the hospital to be willing to put up with it at home.”

  He hesitated, then chuckled. “You may be right.”

  Their eyes met again. The laughter faded and the silence grew…and grew…

  Arcs of electricity flew between them, dazzling in their brilliance. Liquid gold poured through her veins instead of blood, heating her from the inside out.

  “I want you,” he said, so low she almost didn’t catch the words. “I want to kiss you.”

  “Then do it.”

  She dared him with her gaze. Inside, she thought she would melt at his feet if he didn’t move, didn’t catch her before she slipped from the chair like a rag doll.

  When he stood, she did, too. He laid his hands—his long-fingered, magical hands—on her shoulders. A shiver of anticipation ran over her. She lifted her face and leaned into his lean, powerful frame. He wrapped her in his arms, holding her securely, but delicately, as if she were as fragile as a flower.

  “Jenna,” he said, a groan that spoke of needs he couldn’t voice.

  She heard them all and understood them, because the same ones were in her. Lifting her arms, she let herself cling to him. The warmt
h between them increased. She felt his breath touch her forehead, her cheek, her mouth.

  Then it was his lips touching hers.

  The kiss spun out of control at once. She luxuriated in the feel of his masculine body against hers and the way his hands slid down her back and cupped her hips so that they fit together perfectly. She arched into his embrace, the hunger erupting like a storm that had no build-up, gave no warning to the unwary.

  She moaned low in her throat, demanding more from him, wanting everything he could give…

  “Jenna, I…this is crazy,” he murmured, strewing a thousand kisses along her neck.

  “I know. It’s the hunger. I didn’t know it could be this way, this strong.” She gasped when he left a trail of fire along her neck to the dip between her breasts.

  His mouth moved to the side and he bit gently on her nipple. It contracted with painful suddenness.

  “Come inside. I want to see you…have to…”

  At his murmured phrases, she nodded and followed him into the house. He closed the door behind them. She heard the lock click into place. Hand in hand, they went up the steps and into the bedroom.

  His hands went to her top, then paused. “If you don’t want this—”

  “Shh,” she said, laying her fingertips over his mouth. “I do. I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.” She gave him a rueful smile when he peered deeply into her eyes. “Sometimes things are that way, I think.”

  “Sometimes,” he agreed.

  When he observed her with a troubled frown, as if unsure that she knew what she was doing, she smoothed the lines away from his brow, then let her hands drift to the buttons on his shirt. She unfastened one, then another, and then another…

  His chest lifted. He caught her against him in a fierce, but careful embrace. “I can’t go this slowly,” he warned, a second before deftly pulling her top over her head and disposing of her slacks in the next instant.

  He cupped her breasts and studied the darkened nipples through the thin material of her bra. Slipping his hands behind her, he unfastened the hooks, then slid the bra down her arms and tossed it aside.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured, his eyes sexily dark and appreciative of her charms. He bent and laved each breast with liquid fire.