“Hate you?” He shook her sodden flight suit out and draped it over the other chair, then looked back down at her, his still handsome scowl flickering in the light of the candle. “Why on earth would I hate you?”
“Because I almost crashed us. I couldn’t... I couldn’t outrun it. I thought... But then the wind...” She faltered around, and suddenly the words caught up with her emotions, and she knew she was crying by the hot rivers on her frigid cheeks.
“You did outrun it,” he said, his voice gentle. One strong arm wrapped around her, propelling her toward the bathroom. “You got us here. It was supposed to go south of us. Everyone said so.”
Everyone said so. She nodded, squeezing her eyes tightly shut to stop that horrifying leaking. But it wasn’t enough. Several big, gulpy breaths later, she gave up and turned to fling her arms around his waist.
Everywhere their skin touched, she grew warmer. The firm wall of his chest under her cheek, the strong arms that immediately came around her wrapped her in heat.
She needed comfort, to know that her partner, a doctor who treated her—the only Davenport at Manhattan Mercy without the title—like an equal, still had faith in her.
“You won’t be afraid to fly with me after this?”
Her underthings were wet, she realized as she felt his skin start to cool, or at least stop feeling quite so warm through the soaked material. She was getting him wet.
“I won’t. We’ll talk about that later, but right now you need to get in the shower,” he said, his mouth against the crown of her head. “Who knows if the water will stay hot for long, and you’ve stopped shaking.”
“It wasn’t raining that hard when I left,” she muttered. The colder she got, the less intelligent her foray into the blistering rain seemed. No matter how good her reasoning at the time.
You’ve stopped shaking. His words swam up to her as he wrapped his arms around her hips and lifted, then walked into the darkened bathroom to deposit her right in the tub.
People stopped shaking when they warmed up, or when they got too cold and their bodies gave up shaking to get warm.
He adjusted the water quickly, then stepped in with her, positioning her under the spray so that the almost too hot water hit the back of her neck, then her head, and once it had had a few seconds to cascade over her, he turned her by the shoulders so that her back came against his chest, and the water warmed up her front side.
She shivered again for a couple seconds, and then relaxed back against him, her head on his shoulder, and her hands seeking his on her hips to drag his arms back around her waist. Standing under the spray, in their underwear...
“This went a lot different in my head.”
“Did you sing and dance your way through the rain in your head?”
“No, the rain didn’t factor in. I just thought, get the wine, get some food, get candles, cards, munchies... Talk to Gabriel and give him a good night to make up for whatever you had planned at home.”
“I had nothing planned.” His mouth was at her ear, and the words should’ve taken the edge off somehow, but she found herself spinning to face him instead.
Probably her third dumb idea of the day, but, unlike the first two dumb ideas, she just didn’t care.
It was dark, the candle left in the other room, but as she pulled the tank top over her head she heard his breathing hitch. He couldn’t see anything as with the lights out the small, interior bathroom was little more than a cave, even with the door open to a slightly less dark room beyond. But he felt her skin when she pressed forward. Lifting her arms and rising on tiptoe, she didn’t stop, although she satisfied that urge to mash herself against him, and still didn’t stop when his head dipped to meet her kiss.
CHAPTER ONE
Two months later...
LOCKED IN A stall in the ladies’ room at Manhattan Mercy, Penny leaned against the polished metal separating wall and stared at her watch.
Across from her, perched atop the toilet-paper dispenser, sat a white plastic wand that could change her footloose existence forever.
It seemed emotionally safer to watch the hand on her watch ticking by than to stare at the tiny display for the entire minute it would take for the one line to appear, or two—results on the test she’d put off taking for three weeks.
At first, she’d been unable to accept it was necessary. She’d had condoms. They’d used condoms. They hadn’t even been purchased at the cheapo general store, they had just been in her bag in case some kind of life opportunity happened. It was New York City. She could conceivably run into anyone. Like that guy from that movie...the one with the smoldering eyes. And maybe he’d be drunk, bored, or somehow seduced by her ability to walk and chew gum at the same time, and then...magic would happen. If she had condoms.
A week later, she’d accepted they may have been old condoms.
Last week she’d known for sure she needed to take a test. It had really only taken a week or so to take it...
Still, hoping it was negative felt wrong. Because what if it wasn’t? She’d already be in the running for Mother of the Year from procrastinating on a pregnancy test without making disappointment the first emotion she felt for a tiny life she’d created.
Definitely the sort of thoughts you never ever tell your child. Or anyone else.
Or even better, thoughts to avoid having altogether.
Every second the tiny hand ticked, her stomach grew heavier and more rumbly. When it finally passed the sixty-second mark, she lowered her wrist but still couldn’t bring herself to look at the test.
This was not how women took pregnancy tests in commercials. They had pink bathrooms and a partner waiting outside the door, ready to celebrate, with something bubbly but nonalcoholic.
Which she didn’t want anyway.
It would be all right. Everything would be all right. Nothing bad would happen just because she looked at the little window...
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, shoring up her flagging courage that came with a twinge of self-disgust. The fact she even needed to boost her bravery should shame her into looking. Courage was a cornerstone of her entire personality. If something scared her, Penny had a personal maxim to run toward the thing, unless it was a bear.
Another deep breath slowly exhaled didn’t help either.
Nope.
A minute—or even two now—wasn’t sufficient time for this. Why didn’t they make delayed response pregnancy tests so you could work up to it? It wouldn’t have to take that long for the testing, just some kind of delay on the display.
I feel I’ll be ready to look at this Thursday. Push the Thursday button. Then take that many days to come up with a plan for how not to freak out.
She couldn’t wait for Thursday. She also couldn’t look at the thing in a bathroom stall. Leaving aside questions about her emotional maturity, if she wanted to get in the pre-flight and maintenance checks before their shift started, she needed to go now.
She snatched the little wand and stuffed it into the thigh pocket on her flight suit, zipped that pocket closed, and barreled out of the stall to clean up and get upstairs.
The whole not-looking business was even dumber than her hike through a hurricane. She didn’t need to look, the answer had burned into her frontal lobe before she’d swiped her debit card at the pharmacy. Regular Rosie didn’t miss a single period, let alone two, for no reason. The test was a formality, therefore she was extra-stupid for not just looking at it.
Gabriel would’ve told her so too, only she’d been unable to tell him about any of this before now. He would’ve picked her up, and squeezed her like an orange until she tinkled on the damned wand.
The morning after that night, which she still found herself lingering over in quiet moments, he’d suggested the things they’d done never leave the motel room. I
t became the No-Tell Motel, minus all the sleazy connotations, because he’d declared it and she’d agreed. It was the sensible thing. Gabriel never suggested things that weren’t sensible, and sometimes he was the only reason she did things that were sensible. She’d seen the sense, despite not really wanting to see it.
When he’d opened the door to leave the room, she’d grabbed his head and kissed the breath out of both of them one last time so she could hold to that agreement. The hedonistic part of her, the part that loved life and experience, hated giving up that experience so quickly.
But? Sensible. She wasn’t in the market for a relationship, at least not a relationship relationship, even if she could’ve carried on a little longer. Tried out other rooms and, through trial and arduous study, gathered the data to support the hypothesis their night had borne: sex with Gabriel Jackson was as good as it got.
But so was working with him.
She really had no idea what friendship would be like with him, or anything else outside work and the unspeakable night because, despite her efforts, they hadn’t gotten to the cards and friendship-building conversations. They’d showered...vigorously. Then they’d made a mess of the bed even more vigorously. The wine had been drunk in between all that. There had been other pit-stops where they’d consumed cheese and sausage because stamina required fuel, but none of the business their mouths had gotten up to had been in the vicinity of talking.
Unless you counted that talk. The sexy smattering of words between lovers.
Just like that.
Don’t stop.
Oh, God...
Heaven help her, she was doing it again. Thinking about all that, which had caused all this. The consequences.
She took the stairs at a run, pounding up the ten flights separating her current floor and the helipad on the roof.
At the top, with blessedly buzzing lungs and legs, she checked her watch on her way to the chopper. Just over two minutes. She’d have to do better if she was going to make it up eighty-six floors at the Empire State Run-Up in the New Year. If she even could do the stair-climbing marathon while pregnant.
She climbed into the thing she’d been calling “Baby” for two years and worked through the checklist to go over gauges and start it up. Only when she’d finished did she sit back and reach into her thigh pocket to pull out the wand. Before giving herself a chance to think anything or to get worked up, she flipped it over and read the display.
Two lines.
Yep.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. A full look tracked Gabriel’s long stride eating up the distance between them.
“Dang it.” She stuffed the wand back into the pocket and zipped it as fast as she could.
Then the door opened and he gave her a look.
“What?”
“Why aren’t you starting it up already? Is there a problem?”
“What problem? There’s no problem,” she blurted, too fast and too loud, then gestured haplessly at nothing, trying to get back on course. “I’ve already done the checks. Why are you...?”
He never came up to the roof anymore unless they had a call.
“Did we get a call?” She looked at the radio and her stomach sank. Off. She hadn’t turned it on during her pre-flight checks.
He said nothing, just turned the radio on while she started the massive rotors spinning.
“Where are we going?” she asked, buckling in, and by the time he’d answered she was ready to lift off. That was part of why she went through the pre-flight checks—it was set up to go from nothing to flight in under a minute.
“Is everything all right?” he asked through the comm once they were in the air. It wasn’t concern she heard so much as that hint of frustration that appeared in his voice every time things didn’t happen when he expected.
To lie, or not to lie...
“Can’t complain.”
She really couldn’t, at least not right now. And complaining was something she tried to only do inside her head. Complaining about anything could still trigger her loved ones trying to rescue her, which she could appreciate on an intellectual level even if she couldn’t abide it anymore. Complaining about anything related to health? That might even bring her whole family out in full flailing fit mode, maybe even with questions about whether she was healthy enough to gestate a human life.
The shape of the test in her thigh pocket stood out, and she prayed Dr. Notices Everything didn’t notice until she was ready to share.
“You’re pale. Are you sick?”
* * *
Gabriel might not understand much about what went on inside Penny’s head but he understood her body unfortunately well, beyond just what his training had taught him about her physiological signs of distress.
Pale face and darkness under blue eyes so bright the blackness beneath them seemed blacker. Some kind of unsteadiness in her hands. The silent call radio. No music either during her pre-flight routine, and she always listened to music when on standby. Tight-lipped when normally talkative...
She squinted at him, then adjusted something amid the toggles and switches without answering him. Not right.
Despite the somewhat fumbling quality her hands had taken with switches, on the controls everything went smoothly. The flight was steady, a straight line, something he could appreciate since his life depended on it, but something was wrong. And if she stayed true to form, he was going to have to shake it out of her. Later. They were already in the air, so his chance to swap out a focused pilot had gone.
The two months since their...mistake...hadn’t been entirely easy months. The first couple of weeks had been the worst. Awkward enough that she’d barely looked him in the eye any particular day, which had been rougher than he’d have thought. But with a little willpower, and a pact of mutual amnesia, they’d worked through it and things had found a new normal, somewhat off-center from the way things had been before.
Like when they bumped into one another changing in the locker room. She’d been wearing the same kind of simple and somehow ungodly sexy cotton things, and when she’d looked at him, he’d seen his thoughts reflected back at him. The pink that had infused every inch of her pale flesh had backed it up.
Not embarrassed. Aroused. And unhappily so.
Awkward.
Now he changed in the men’s room and avoided the locker room unless he had to, or unless she’d gone home for the day. His initial plan had just been to keep everything as low-key and low-stress as he could so that she could forget. He knew he couldn’t forget, but he wasn’t as prone to impetuousness as she was—he could resist. When he found himself watching the way she tapped the end of her pen on her lower lip while filling out paperwork, he could shake himself out of it. Stop thinking about her mouth. Not give in to temptation. But that seemed harder for Penny to do, so he just tried to keep temptation from coming up.
It had worked at first when they’d started working together and just had to ignore a spark, and it had even worked briefly in the middle of the time since their night, but a couple of weeks ago things had started getting tense again. Made no sense, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Time was supposed to take care of things like this, but their agreement not to discuss it meant he couldn’t even act as he would’ve in the past. Ask her what was wrong. Offer her an ear for her troubles. Just suss out symptoms and determine whether her oddness was physical or emotional... No easy course of action.
If this was attached to the desire for another night, he couldn’t blame her, even if he would turn her down.
“How long?” he asked through the comm, since he already had one patient to focus on, righting his thoughts. If she wanted his help, she’d ask for it.
Normally he wouldn’t have to ask how long. Normally his chattering partner freely gave information during flight.
Taciturn. Definitely something wrong. If he didn’t expect to need her paramedic skills, he’d put her on light duty for this run. But the patient they were flying to was a steel worker who’d fallen from the beams of a new construction site. Since they’d called for an ambulance rather than a coroner, all he knew for sure was that he’d need her at her best.
“We’re bypassing the stretcher. I don’t know what the site looks like, the board is the only safe bet. Are you well enough to carry it?”
She did look at him then, her eyes narrowing to slits. “I can do my job. I’m fine.”
Gabriel didn’t argue with her, but he’d never heard the words “I’m fine” and had it be anything near fine. Even if she put up a fight to stay on the job anytime she was ill, she’d never looked so put out with him over asking.
With an easy touch, she put the chopper down atop the neighboring building, and he unstrapped and went to grab bags.
“Get the board,” he ordered, wrenching open the sliding door and hopping out to make a run for the roof access door.
It always took her a moment longer to disembark due to having to power down the chopper. Him running ahead to the patient was part of their usual routine as every second mattered and he did whatever he could as she brought up the rear.
He hit the stairs running, and took all eighteen stories down on foot. Waiting for the elevator always slowed them down.
Across the lobby with a nod to Security, he bustled out the door and rounded the building. Just as he reached the construction site, the manager met him, slapped a hard hat onto his head and led the way across the dirt and gravel lot, around piles of construction material, to the concrete pad beneath steel beams, and his patient.
No blood haloing his head, a good sign and something he’d seen enough on the job with jumpers and falls from great height. Heads didn’t stand up well to concrete, unless they didn’t hit first. The man had landed on his feet, at least briefly, and his head had probably hit last.
The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle Page 2