by Janice Lynn
“A girl?”
Glancing up from the baby he stared at in awe, he grinned. “All along.”
“But…”
James placed the baby in her arms. “You made assumptions without having all the facts.”
Melissa stared at the perfect little girl in her arms. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Perfect round face and head with a shock of jet-black hair. Big dark blue eyes like most babies were born with, but Melissa suspected they’d stay blue. Like James’s.
A girl.
“I bought boy clothes.”
Moving back between her legs to clean her and deliver the afterbirth, he grinned, a mischievous twinkle sparkling in his eyes. “I’ve got pink covered.”
A few minutes later, after James had clamped and cut the cord, Melissa touched a tiny hand, and five fingers automatically grasped hers. “You bought pink?”
James motioned to where the baby attempted to cram her free fist into her mouth. “My trunk is a baby girl’s treasure trove. I knew you’d want to have pink to bring her home from the hospital.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you said you didn’t want to know the gender.” He wiped his hands on a towel, then clasped her hand, the one the baby held onto, and the image of their three hands bound together brought tears to her eyes.
“I really do attempt to give you what you want, Melissa.”
“Then give me you.” She averted her gaze to stare at the pink baby, her sweet little lips puckered.
“I told you, you’ve had me all along.”
“Not these past few months. You haven’t held me, touched me, not even when I begged you to.”
“I wanted you to know sex wasn’t what bound us together. That although I want you fiercely, what I feel for you is much more. I wanted you to miss me.”
“I did miss you. Horribly.” She closed her eyes, then met his gaze. “If you only knew how many nights I lay in bed, wishing you were there to hold me, knowing you were just a few doors down and yet so far away.”
“I was never far away, babe.” He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed her palm. “I’ve always been right here, with you.”
Hot tears ran down her cheeks. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Those same nights, I was lying in the guest room, wishing you’d come to me, that I had the right to go to you. I couldn’t. I wasn’t willing to risk you making me leave if I overstepped the mark. Not when I wanted to be here so badly I could have kicked myself for ever leaving. I love you, Melissa. I have from the moment you first took my breath away at that asthma meeting.”
She couldn’t doubt him. Not with the way he looked at her, with the way his eyes lit with truth.
“You did some breath-stealing of your own at that meeting.”
He laced his fingers with hers.
“I love you, too, James. With all my heart and all my soul and all that I am.” Her mind raced, wanting to tell him everything in her heart. “I’ll move to Nashville, sell my practice, stay home with the baby, work by your side. Whatever it is that’ll make you happy, I’ll do it. I just want you in my life. That’s most important.”
He shook his head and gave a small chuckle. “You’d never be happy in Nashville.”
“I’ll never be happy without you.”
“You don’t have to be without me.”
“You’re OK with commuting, with staying here? My working at the clinic and you driving back and forth?”
“It worked for months.”
Unable to resist, she ran her fingertip over the baby’s cheek. “But not with you being happy.”
“I wasn’t happy because I didn’t know how you felt, because we were growing apart. Because we hadn’t been honest with each other. You on how much you wanted a family, me on the reasons why I didn’t.”
“Cailee’s death wasn’t your fault,” she quickly assured him.
Glancing at the sleeping baby in her arms, he nodded. “If I could do it over, I’d hold Cailee every moment of that night, but I can’t relive the past. I can only make sure I don’t repeat the same mistakes in the future. Luckily, we know much more about the causes and prevention of SIDS than we did seventeen years ago. I know that.” He touched her cheek. “But I have decided to give up my job at the ER.”
She gasped. “You can’t do that.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you for a while but…” he shrugged “…I already have.”
“I thought you were just on leave.”
“Last week they needed to know if I planned to come back and I told them that I was going to do whatever it took to be with you, the mother of my child and the owner of my heart.”
“James, you’re not planning to stand twenty-four-hour-a-day vigil over me and the baby, are you?”
He smiled softly and shook his head. “I just want to be closer, to be able to be here when you and the baby need me. You’re both too precious for me to be away, working all the time.”
She digested what he was saying. “But your teaching? Your research?”
“I enjoy what I do, but if it’s necessary to make things work, I’ll give them up, too.”
Melissa repositioned the warm bundle in her arms. “You’d do that for me?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“James, I was wrong. So wrong about so many things. I should have talked to you about how I felt rather than throwing myself into my work. It’s just what I’ve always done, how I’ve dealt with things beyond my control. But I don’t need my work. I need you and our baby. You don’t have to give up anything in Nashville. I could be happy anywhere in the world so long as you’re by my side.”
“That would be Sawtooth, Tennessee, because I’ve become quite attached to Caren Little and her sleeping disorder,” he teased.
Melissa frowned, wondering what he was talking about and why he’d bring a patient up at a time like this. She also wondered how she could have ever not known where her heart belonged when it thudded so hard just for him.
“James, what am I going to do with all those little-boy clothes?”
“Save them for next time.”
“Next time?”
“You do want more than one, right?” His eyes searched hers. “Because I predict you’re going to contract Mrs Little’s sleeping disorder in about a month.”
“A month?”
Smiling wickedly, he nodded. A month. Melissa blushed. About the time her body would allow her to become sexually active again.
“Marry me, Melissa. Make me whole, have my babies, and spend your life letting me love you and our children.”
Her vision blurring with tears, happy tears, she nodded.
Far away in the distance, they heard the wail of the ambulance. Soon they would be on their way to Dekalb.
“We’re going to make this work, aren’t we?” she asked, a smile playing on her lips because in her heart there was no need to ask. She knew the answer. It shone brightly in James’s eyes when he looked at her and their daughter.
“Oh, yeah, Dr Conner.” He leaned forward, kissed her squarely on the mouth. “We’re going to work out beautifully. This time we have love on our side, and that’s a surefire prescription for a happy ending.”
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2007
Large Print edition 2008
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,
Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Janice Lynn 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5607-4