So, he had to keep things from getting complicated. He would have to prove he wasn’t going away and at the same time keep Cindy from knowing how much he wanted her.
No pressure there.
Chapter Eleven
It was her first day back to work after Dr. Hamilton had green lighted her to return. Cindy was ecstatic about that and about returning to her home. Normal was good. Having her own Nathan-free zone was awesome. Earning a paycheck again gave her peace of mind.
At least that’s what she told herself.
The morning at the hospital had been uneventful, if you didn’t count her tense, awkward bathroom run-in with the two NICU nurses who’d made it their mission in life to keep her from getting uppity. Cindy had been the model of serenity. She’d smiled politely, taken a deep breath, then imagined herself enveloped in a force field that repelled everything, including the hostile glares.
Now it was lunch time and the first half of her first day was over. Without incident. Of course, she hadn’t been to the NICU yet or seen Nathan. She could only hope that the seed of her warning to not acknowledge her in any way, and not give her a hint of preferential treatment, had fallen on fertile ground. He hadn’t been happy, and she was sorry about that, but it couldn’t be helped.
“May I join you?”
Cindy had been so wrapped up in her own thoughts, she hadn’t noticed the woman stop beside her table in the back corner of the cafeteria. Dr. Annie Daniels patiently waited for her response with a tray of food in her hands. If she was here at the hospital, that would explain why Nathan wasn’t. They were medical partners.
“Cindy?”
Hearing her name was like a shot of adrenaline to snap her out of it. “I’m sorry. Of course you can sit. If you want to.”
“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have asked.”
Shocked into a response didn’t mean Cindy wasn’t still shocked. This doctor was a brainy, beautiful brunette with a stylish pixie haircut that made her blue eyes look enormous in her small face. The hospital had a special dining room for doctors so they weren’t forced to mingle with the employees. Yet this doctor was voluntarily mingling. What was up with that?
Dr. Daniels had always been friendly, but she was that way to everyone. Never condescending or abrasive. But it didn’t answer the question of the day: Why in the world would this elite female physician want to join her?
The doctor set her tray on the table and sat. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Feeling? That seemed kind of specific. Most people just said a generic how are you. And that’s what she did now. “How are you?”
“Really good.” She mixed dressing into her cobb salad. “But I’m not pregnant.”
And that answered the question of whether she knew about the baby. She was also Nathan’s medical partner. Did she know he was the father?
There was nothing but kindness in her blue eyes. “And I didn’t just return from a leave of absence taken because my pregnancy turned risky.”
“Look, Dr. Daniels—”
“Call me Annie. If I’m going to butt into your business, the least you can do is call me by my first name.” She smiled, then took a bite of salad.
Cindy chose to believe she meant that and said, “Annie, I don’t mean to sound suspicious and ungrateful, but why are you butting into my business?”
“I feel responsible for some of the crap you’re dealing with.”
Color her shocked. Again. “Why?”
“The thing is, Mercy Medical Center is like a family.” The doctor smiled at her skeptical look. “Don’t get me wrong. I know it’s a big, messy, dysfunctional one, but still a family. There are very few secrets.”
“Meaning?” Cindy kept her hands busy peeling a tangerine and pulling off all the little strings.
“Nathan told me he’s the father of your baby.”
“I see.” That was a big, fat lie. She didn’t see anything. There was nothing hostile or toxic in the other woman’s expression, but that didn’t mean a zinger wasn’t coming. “Why would he tell you that?”
“I don’t think he planned to. But apparently he’d just found out.” Annie speared a piece of egg with her fork. “It was my shift in the NICU, but he came back to check on a baby.”
“Is that unusual?”
Annie shook her head. “But something was different and I sensed that. After a little nagging on my part, he admitted that he was going to be a father. And that he’d never looked at what we do from the dad side of the fence before.”
“Okay.”
“He told me about you. How you’d met. That he didn’t recognize you all dressed up. And that didn’t land him on your good side.”
Cindy smiled at the memory. “I gave him a pretty hard time about it.”
“Good for you. He needs someone to take him down a peg or two and keep him grounded in the real world.”
“My world is all too real,” Cindy said grimly.
“I feel responsible for what you’re going through here at the hospital,” she said again.
“What do you mean?” She stared across the small table.
“The tension and resentment other employees are exhibiting toward you.”
Interesting that someone else had noticed, Cindy thought. That made it easier somehow. “But why do you feel responsible?”
“I overheard a couple nurses in the NICU talking and I decided to chat with you.”
“I don’t understand.”
Annie poured sugar into her iced tea and stirred with her straw. “It all goes back to that night Nathan came back to hover over the baby. It’s what he does. His job. Our job. We take care of babies who aren’t big enough, strong enough or mature enough to survive without medical intervention.”
Cindy pressed a hand to her abdomen. “It’s a scary thing.”
“Not just for you.” Annie met her gaze. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing because Nathan and I know all the things that can happen. The problem is he’s a guy.”
Not a newsflash, Cindy thought. He had the broad shoulders and muscles in all the right places to prove that. If he weren’t quite so mouthwateringly masculine, she wouldn’t be in this fix in the first place. And worse, spending time with him at his house had not taken away any of his appeal. But she was pretty sure that’s not what Annie meant.
“Why is that a problem?” she asked.
“Guys want to fix things. He’s also a doctor. So when he was feeling the need to do something for his child, I had to talk him down.”
“How?”
“I advised him to support you emotionally.”
“He’s not into that.” Cindy popped a tangerine segment into her mouth and chewed for a moment. “When we met, he said that if he can’t see and touch something, he doesn’t believe it exists.”
“So, you’ve heard his company line. He’s a man of science. Facts and results. That’s such a lame excuse and on some level he knows it.” Annie sighed. “At any rate, I advised him to be there for you. Make sure you have everything you need to minimize any anxiety.”
“It’s good advice. I don’t understand why you feel responsible for anyone else’s behavior.”
“I also told him not to let you exert yourself.” Annie watched carefully and nodded when the truth sank in.
“He was taking your advice to heart. Trying to keep me from overdoing it here at work,” Cindy said.
A man who actually listened. It also proved the saying “no good deed goes unpunished.” Unfortunately, she was paying the price for his chivalry.
“That’s right,” Annie agreed. “The down side is that people noticed.” By people she meant a certain nurse who just happened to be an ex-girlfriend. Scenarios didn’t come more volatile than that.
“Noticing isn’t the problem. But I could do without the ugly comments.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” Annie sympathized.
“Unless you wrote the script, you have nothing to apologize for,” Cindy
assured her. “There will be more talk when the pregnancy starts to show.”
“Thanks to me and the ideas I gave Nathan, it won’t be hard to put two and two together and figure out he’s the father.”
“Yeah.” This wasn’t the first time Cindy had thought about that. “It’ll be fun to hear the creative ways they’ll say how I’d do anything to trade up from housekeeping.”
Annie pointed with the business end of her fork and forcefully said, “Ignore the small-minded…witches and their rumors. Whatever is between you and Nathan is no one’s business but yours. And his.”
“And yours?”
“I’ve known him since medical school.” The lady doctor shrugged. “It’s hard to ignore how well I know him.”
“He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
“I’m the lucky one.” Her expression turned introspective and a little sad. “He was there for me when I lost my baby. It was a double whammy because to save my life, they had to do a hysterectomy.”
“Oh, no—” Cindy reached out and squeezed the other woman’s hand. The gesture was automatic, generated by a profound sympathy. One woman to another. She’d thought her problems were big and had to admit that all things considered the ability to have a baby was a blessing. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Thanks for not saying you’re sorry. For some reason that response makes me want to scream. And I have no idea why I told you that.” Annie shook her head. “Don’t fret on my account. Thanks to science and other options my husband and I are exploring ways to be parents that do work for us.”
“Your husband sounds like quite a guy,” Cindy said.
“I won’t argue that. Ryan is the best.” Annie’s eyes glowed. “And so is Nathan. Quite a guy, I mean. For what it’s worth, the weird and wonderful chemistry that men and women feel for each other knows no boundaries—not caste, class or career. Take it from someone who knows—your energy is better spent taking care of you and your baby. To hell with the rest of the crap.”
“No wonder Nathan talks to you.” Cindy smiled. “Not only do you have a way with words, you give very good advice.”
Annie laughed. “Nathan has been through a lot. Just remember that underneath all the geek and science stuff he preaches, he’s a good man.”
Annie suddenly pulled a pager from the waistband of her scrubs and glanced at the display. “Gotta go.”
“Thanks for sitting with me.”
“Let’s do it again sometime soon.” And then she hurried away.
Cindy had always liked Annie Daniels and the feeling was even stronger now. She was a good doctor and a warm human being who had little tolerance for small-minded people. From the moment Cindy had peed on the stick and discovered she was pregnant, her life had been in free fall. She’d never considered how it would feel to lose a baby and never be able to have another one.
Nathan had supported his friend through the nightmare. Actions like that and the friends in his corner spoke to the kind of man he was. The information troubled her because it would be so much easier if he had the decency to live up to his reputation of good doctor, bad boyfriend. Then her feelings could be black and white. She could dislike him. Dr. Daniels had just confirmed what Cindy had been suspecting for a while.
It was impossible to dislike Nathan Steele.
And what if she couldn’t stop with just liking him?
Cindy walked barefoot to the kitchen after changing into shorts and a skinny-strapped tank top. She and the baby had survived the first day back at work. If you didn’t count her conversation with Annie, it had been ordinary and nothing to write home about.
She wasn’t sure what to do with the doctor’s independent confirmation that Nathan was a nice guy. Theoretically the information shouldn’t change anything. This baby was his and he was merely taking responsibility. The form that responsibility would take was yet to be determined. That being the case, she needed to move forward expecting nothing from anyone and relying only on herself. If she stuck to that—her standard operating procedure—she would be fine and dandy.
“Okay.” She nodded with satisfaction and opened the refrigerator door, disappointment growing as the situation became clear. “Crash and burn.”
There wasn’t much in the way of edible, nutritious food. Ketchup. Mustard. Mayo. Diet soda. Grapes that were well on their way to spontaneous fermentation. She’d been at Nathan’s house, where provisions that she didn’t have to hunt and gather were plentiful. Note to self: Go to the grocery store. And while you’re at it, she thought, look for an antidote to pining for peanut butter and banana sandwiches and his seventy-five-inch flat-screen TV.
She managed to find a frozen dinner and was just about to put it in the microwave when the doorbell rang. Her heart did a little skip, then sped up in a way that always signalled her expectation to see Nathan. It was proof that she’d resumed her normally scheduled life just in the nick of time. Expectations were a precursor to disappointment and heartache. She couldn’t afford either.
After a stern talking-to, she walked into the living room and peeked out the window to see who was there. Her heart went back to accelerated rhythm, which was standard Nathan mode. That was acceptable because he was actually standing on the porch.
She turned the deadbolt and opened the door, ridiculously glad to see him. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He held up a bag. “I brought rotisserie chicken. Potatoes to bake. And salad. Are you interested? Or have you already—”
“I could kiss you—” She grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. “Not really. It’s just an expression.”
And that was just an excuse for the slip of the tongue. She would have wanted to kiss him even if he had nothing in his hand.
“The cupboard is bare?” he guessed.
“Pretty much.”
Cindy closed the door behind him and ignored the happy little bubble expanding inside her as she led the way to the kitchen.
“What can I do?” he asked.
Just his presence was enough, but she couldn’t say that. “How about setting the table?”
While he did that, she microwaved potatoes instead of the frozen dinner that probably tasted worse than the military’s ready-to-eat meals.
Within ten minutes they were sitting across from each other at her small table. She looked at the whole chicken he’d neatly carved into recognizable parts.
“You should have been a surgeon,” she said.
“Not my field of interest.” He sliced off a piece of meat and chewed. “How was your first day back?”
“Good. Normal. Nothing much to report.”
“That’s a relief.”
She glanced up at him. “Were you worried? Is that why you stopped by?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to check up on you. And the baby. Just make sure everything was okay.”
“It was nice of you to bring food.” It was nice, period, but she kept that to herself. She took a bite and sighed with pleasure. “I can’t believe how good this tastes.”
“You must be hungry.” He frowned. “Did you eat lunch today?”
“As a matter of fact I did. With Annie Daniels.”
He looked surprised. “Really?”
“I know. Shocked the heck out of me, too, when she came in the cafeteria and sat down at my table.”
“She’s good people,” he said.
“Agreed. She advised me to put my energy into taking care of me and the baby. And I quote, ‘to hell with the rest of the crap.’” There was no point in mentioning what his partner had said about the weird and wonderful chemistry between men and women.
He grinned. “Gotta love Annie.”
Speaking of chemistry, Cindy felt a ridiculous tug of jealousy. She wasn’t proud of it, but that didn’t change the feeling. And there was no reason for it. Nathan’s medical partner was married. The couple was looking into having children. Unlike them, she and Nathan weren’t a couple, but they were definitely having a child. And they hadn’t discuss
ed any legalities or logistics. Maybe it was time to dip a toe into that water.
“So, did your mother tell you she wants to turn your home office into a nursery?”
He looked up quickly. “What?”
“Yeah. She showed me sketches for a wall mural— generic baby, boy and girl themes. She’s going to let you make the final decision.”
“Big of her,” he mumbled, “what with me paying the mortgage and all.”
“They’re really good, the sketches, I mean.” She met his gaze. “She claimed it’s not talent, but practice because she had lots of time on her hands after your dad left.”
“She was only deserted once. I got it twice.” He put down his fork. “Three times if you count getting uprooted from home against my will and dumped in boarding school.”
“Oh, my—” Cindy didn’t think. She just needed to touch him. Reaching across the table, she put her hand on his arm. The warm strength there was vivid contrast to the stark vulnerability in his expression. “How old were you?”
“Eight or nine.”
“Oh, Nathan—how awful. That’s why you didn’t have a childhood.”
He shrugged but didn’t slide his arm away from her touch. “I got used to it.”
“Still—”
“It was hard. Eventually I realized they did me a favor. I made friends. Learned to be self-reliant. Independent. I got good grades and became a doctor.”
He learned about everything but love. The one time he gave it a try, fate kicked him in the teeth when his wife died. No wonder he couldn’t reach out now. She could hardly blame him. But it made her so sad.
“Cindy?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you all right?”
“Sure.” She met his worried gaze. “Why?”
He turned his hand over and closed his fingers around hers. “You look like someone edited out the happy ending of one of your chick flicks.”
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