by Janice Lynn
Would be risky, the fear that lurked within her added.
“What are you thinking?”
She cut her gaze to the man occupying her thoughts and went for the truth. Mostly.
“That you and I will be saying goodbye in a few hours.”
His expression tightened, then he seemed to make a quick decision. “We don’t have to.”
Her heart skipped a beat. What was he saying?
“You could stay in Atlanta tonight,” he suggested, excitement glittering to life in his eyes. “I could take you somewhere nice for dinner and we could spend the evening together.” His gaze searched hers. “The night.”
Oh, how he tempted her.
But she’d only made arrangements with Savannah to keep Joss until this evening. Plus, she missed her little boy.
She needed to get back to Chattanooga, to her life there.
She looked into Trace’s face and saw so much of her son there. Same eyes, same straight nose, same strong chin. Same stubborn determination.
What would he think if he knew they’d had a son together?
That they had a beautiful three-year-old little boy who was the spitting image of him? Would he want to know Joss? Would he care? Or would he take off for parts unknown without batting an eyelash?
What if he took Joss from her? Her father had never wanted her and he had still tried to take her. Not that Trace was anything like her father, but once upon a time her mother had believed in her father, too.
Panic filled Chrissie and she shook her head.
“No, we can’t spend the night together?” he asked, misinterpreting her head shake.
She wasn’t staying, wasn’t going to call Savannah to beg for one more night. Her friend would say yes, but...
“I need to go home, Trace.”
His disappointment was palpable. “Are you scheduled to work tomorrow?”
“Not until Tuesday, but—”
“But you need to go home to do laundry and wash your hair?”
His tone was so sarcastic and unlike anything she’d heard come from his mouth that she was a little taken aback.
“I didn’t say that, but I do need to go home.”
His gaze was steely. “Why?”
“I have things I have to do, Trace. A life there that I’ve been away from all weekend.”
“A life that can’t wait one more day?”
She closed her eyes. She wanted to stay with him, wanted to let him bring her body over the top time and time again, but then she’d be faced with leaving tomorrow. Then, she’d be faced with explaining to Savannah why she needed another night, not that her friend wouldn’t be understanding. Savannah would probably be the opposite and encourage her to go for it.
But every second she spent with Trace made her question more and more how he’d react if she told him about Joss.
Every smile, every touch, every laugh they shared made her crave to see him with their son, to hear and see the two of them interact, laugh, play.
Every time she considered telling Trace she battled guilt and the terror she’d faced as a child at the hands of her father.
She couldn’t spend more time with Trace. She just couldn’t.
“No, it can’t.” She braced herself for whatever his reaction might be, but when he spoke he sounded like his normal self again.
“We would have had a great time, Chrissie. I won’t lie and say I’m not disappointed.”
Sighing in relief, she reached for his hand. “We have had a great time. That I need to go home now doesn’t change that.”
Glancing at her, he considered what she said, then grinned. “You’re right. We have had a great time. Thank you.”
They finished listening to the event farewell then made their way back over to the medical station. They worked side by side, chatted, made a few jokes with the other volunteers who’d stayed to help, but the last few grains of sand quickly fell and soon it was time for Chrissie to go.
She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay, to spend every single second that he’d give her for however long that might be. Silly. She’d already had more than she’d ever dreamed she would just in getting to see him again, to make love to him again.
She’d also learned so many things about him during the hours they’d lain in his sleeping bag talking.
He was an only child. He’d gone to private schools his whole life, including college, and medical school. His father had wanted him in the family business, but Trace had wanted to be a doctor, so he had become one. Bud and Agnes really were his godparents and he considered them the major influences on who he was. His mother had a good heart, but was a social butterfly who lived in the shadows of his father and was content there. Trace never had been. Both his parents were in good health and his grandparents had died of old age.
All things that were important to know about her son’s father’s family.
More guilt hit her.
Before this weekend, she’d never really considered tracking Trace down to tell him about Joss. Not more than in brief little snatches.
By the time she’d realized she was pregnant almost three months had gone by since she’d seen him. He hadn’t contacted her. Not once. She’d had no reason to think he’d have wanted to know about their son. Quite the opposite, really.
She still didn’t.
Just because they shared a dynamic chemistry didn’t mean a thing except that they were highly sexually compatible.
That they most definitely were.
Ugh. She had to stop with this internal battle. There were compelling reasons why she wasn’t going to tell Trace.
Chrissie said goodbye to the volunteers she’d met. Trace got hung up talking to one of them who was considering signing on with Doctors Around the World, and while they talked Chrissie went to track down Agnes and Bud to say her goodbyes. She found Agnes supervising the equipment-rental company breaking down the food service area.
“You headed out?” Agnes asked when she spotted Chrissie coming toward her.
“I am. I packed my things up into my car this morning and we just finished packing the supplies in the medical station.”
Agnes stopped what she’d been doing, wiped her hands down the side of her shirt. “Hope we’ll see you again next year.”
Next year.
Would Trace be there or would he still be off in another country doing good for those in need?
She and Joss needed him.
The thought was silly, but it ran through her mind, causing her to wince.
No, she and Joss did not need him. She took great care of her little family.
“I’m not sure where I’ll be next year, but maybe.” She gave an answer because Agnes waited for one.
“Trace know you’re about to leave?”
“He was helping the crew load up the heavy stuff, then got caught up talking about Doctors Around the World when I headed this way. I’ll find him and say goodbye before I leave.”
Although it would be better to just go.
“You two going to see each other again?”
She fought grimacing at Agnes’s question. “No.”
Disappointment marred Agnes’s face and she gave a little shake of her head. “I hate to hear that. You’re good for that boy.”
Trace was hardly a boy, but Chrissie wasn’t going to point that out.
“He was good for me, too.”
The weekend had been good for her. As hard as the thought of saying goodbye to Trace was, she was glad she’d come to the event, glad she’d volunteered and been a part of something so wonderful to help others, glad she’d run into Trace and put the bitterness she held toward him to rest.
Hopefully for good.
Hopefully she’d go home and love t
heir little boy and only think of Trace with fond memories of the man who’d given her life’s most precious gift. Her son.
He’d been honest with her. He wanted nothing more than what they’d already shared. Well, that and one more night of hot, steamy sex in the comfort of a bed.
Funny, but she had a difficult time imagining anything being better than what they’d already shared on a blanket dappled in sunshine and a sleeping bag in the shadows.
Yeah, it was time to go because she was becoming an emotional mess.
She looked at Agnes and the woman saw right through her.
“You need to tell him.”
Knowing what she was about to do, she shook her head. “It’s better this way.”
Agnes wasn’t buying it. “Better for who?”
“Both of us.”
“Are you married?”
“What?” she asked at Agnes’s unexpected question.
“I’m just trying to imagine what reason there could be for you to walk away from Trace.”
What about the facts that he’d be leaving to go overseas, that he didn’t want a committed relationship, that he didn’t want children? What about Chrissie’s baggage that dogged her with the fear of him grabbing Joss and running, even when she logically knew Trace would never do such a thing?
What about the fact that Trace could so easily break her heart?
“I know you don’t understand, Agnes, and for that I’m sorry, but I had no expectations and neither did Trace.”
The older woman shook her head. “Young people these days.”
Yeah, she supposed to Agnes it did seem that she probably did sleep around without another thought, but, even with as much as she liked Agnes, she didn’t know the woman well enough to explain to her that wasn’t the case.
Even if she did, that would raise too many other questions. Like why had she slept with Trace so quickly four years ago? Why had she set aside common sense and had sex with him repeatedly this weekend?
Because Trace was different.
He always had been.
What that difference was she couldn’t allow herself to label, especially not while Agnes studied her with an expression that wavered from disappointed to sympathetic.
Yeah, if she allowed herself to really care about Trace she’d need sympathy, because she’d be facing even bigger heartache than she had the last time they’d said goodbye.
Good thing she’d gone into this knowing all they had was the weekend because falling for Trace would have been easy.
Which was why she hugged Agnes and said goodbye.
Goodbye to Agnes, to Atlanta, and to Trace.
* * *
“What do you mean she left?” Trace frowned at the woman he’d loved and admired his whole life.
Agnes had marched into the empty shell of the medical tent where he’d been talking to one of the volunteers and insisted upon speaking to him. He was grateful she’d waited until they’d left the medical tent to announce her news in private.
“You heard me,” Agnes countered, her hands going onto her hips as she gave him a motherly stare-down. “Apparently, you didn’t say or do the right things, because she told me bye and apparently already had her car packed, because she left.”
Yeah, he’d helped her carry her things to her car that morning after they’d broken her tent down.
“I said and did the right things,” Trace argued. He’d been upfront with her that time spent with him was only for the weekend.
It didn’t matter that she’d just left without saying goodbye.
Not really.
She’d probably done them both a big favor, because he’d have tried to convince her to spend the night with him again.
She’d already said no so trying to persuade her further would have been pathetic on his part.
He wasn’t a pathetic or desperate kind of guy.
At least, he never had been in the past.
These last four years hadn’t presented him with much opportunity to date or have relationships with women. Sure, there had been a few female volunteers, but for the most part he’d been celibate and hadn’t had any interest in dating.
Or in sex.
He’d blamed his lack of interest on the situations he’d been in. On the stress and the extreme conditions of the areas where he’d been working.
Maybe it had been more than that.
Maybe it had been memories of a certain woman.
“Well,” Agnes interrupted his thoughts. “What are you going to do about her leaving?”
He blinked at his godmother and almost smiled at her feigned, or not so feigned, outrage. “Not one thing.”
He wasn’t. Although he wanted one more night, he could see the plus sides to her having left. Saying goodbye to Chrissie wouldn’t have been easy. Odd, as he didn’t recall having problems telling her goodbye four years ago. Then again, he’d been leaving that week for parts unknown so he’d been saying goodbye to pretty much everyone.
He’d be doing that again within a few weeks.
Agnes frowned. “You’re not going to go after her?”
“She left without saying goodbye,” he reminded her, shoving his hands into his cargo-shorts pockets and fiddling with his keys. “A woman doesn’t do that if she wants a man to come after her.”
“Sure, she does.”
Maybe in some cases, but not theirs. He shook his head. “That’s not the kind of relationship we have.”
Agnes harrumphed. “Well, sex every four years doesn’t seem to be a very normal kind of relationship, if you ask me.”
Trace winced, but stood his ground. “I didn’t.”
He was not talking sex with Agnes. Nope. He wasn’t going to do it no matter how well meant her intentions were.
“Don’t give me that look or that attitude,” she warned in her most motherly tone. More motherly than his own mother’s usual tone for sure.
“I know you like her,” Agnes continued, not backing down.
“I never said I didn’t,” he reminded her, knowing that to resist was futile. Agnes had always been able to read him and it wasn’t as if he and Chrissie had tried to hide their attraction to each other. At least, not after she’d gotten past her initial hang-up.
“Then why would you let her walk away?” Agnes’s question echoed what was running through his mind.
Crossing his arms, he considered the woman he’d adored all his life, then shrugged. “She was avoiding having to say goodbye. I understand that.”
On some levels, he really did.
“Well, I’m glad you do, because I sure don’t,” Agnes huffed. “I think you should go after her and see what happens.”
Trace laughed. What would be the point?
“I already know what would happen.”
Agnes’s salt-and-pepper brow arched. “What’s that?”
“We’d say goodbye.”
“You seem so sure.” Her disappointment was palpable.
Trace let out a long breath. “Whether today, tomorrow, or next week, we’d have to say goodbye. I’m leaving and will be gone for months on end. Perhaps years. This way is best.”
* * *
Chrissie was still telling herself that leaving was the best thing for her and Trace when she was at Savannah’s house that evening. The farther away she got from Atlanta, the more unsure she became.
Part of her knew she’d done the right thing.
A goodbye between her and Trace would have been messy. Just look at how messy their talking about it during the farewell had been.
But she did hate that she hadn’t got to touch him one last time. That she hadn’t gotten to feel his lips against hers one last time as they shared a goodbye kiss. That there’d been no additional time
for talking, for asking him about what had happened to him.
But then she’d think of Joss and the panicky, got-to-escape, how-could-I-not-have-told-him? feelings would take over again and she’d heavy-foot the gas pedal. She’d gotten home in record time.
“There you go again,” Savannah accused, eyeing her from across the living room where she held her baby, nursing her. “Something happened this weekend.”
Chrissie looked at her friend with an obviously guilty expression because her friend’s eyes widened.
“Something did happen!” Savannah exclaimed, louder than she should have as Amelia stopped nursing and whimpered. Savannah quickly settled her daughter and whispered, “Tell me.”
Chrissie looked down at the sleeping little boy curled in her arms. Joss had been so excited when she’d gotten there, had given her a welcome home card he and his “Auntie” Savannah had made. Savannah had insisted they stay for dinner, during which her husband Charlie had been called into the hospital and had to leave. When they’d finished eating, while Savannah had recounted Joss’s adventures over the weekend, Joss had climbed into Chrissie’s lap and dozed off almost immediately. She hadn’t minded. She loved these moments of holding him close, of snuggling his little body, and feeling his heart next to hers.
Something she’d denied Trace from ever knowing by not telling him about his son. Guilt stung her eyes and she sniffled.
She was not going to cry. She wasn’t. No way.
“Tell me,” Savannah insisted a little louder when Chrissie still hesitated.
“I...” What did she say to Savannah? How did she begin to explain to her best friend that she’d had a repeat of the weekend that had given her Joss?
Well, hopefully, not a full repeat as they’d used protection every time, and surely odds wouldn’t be on her getting pregnant twice while protected?
Her head spun for a brief moment. The thought of being pregnant with Trace’s baby again didn’t repel the way it should have. Maybe it was because Joss was curled in her arms and she’d missed him so much. Maybe it was because Savannah was nursing Amelia and had never looked happier than she did these days.
Maybe it was something more.