“Very. This new chapter of my life is shaping up pretty well.”
He cocked his head. “The Journey’s End chapter?”
Nope, said a distant corner of her mind that spoke only rarely and had a much softer and less emphatic voice than The Black. The one with you in it, Edward.
“Yep,” she said brightly, squashing that thought as far down as it would go lest she be tempted to say it aloud. “The Journey’s End chapter. So, dinner? Friday? I make awesome paella.”
“I’d love to.”
“You would?” she asked, overflowing with a ridiculous amount of delight given that his acceptance meant she’d have to unpack her entire apartment and, worse, her kitchen, by Friday.
“Why the hell does that surprise you?”
“It’s a relief. That’s all. I was a little worried. I’m glad you didn’t change your mind about me in the cold light of day.”
“What’re you, a vampire? I’ve never met anyone who was so worried about the cold light of day.”
“I’m an anxious person. Be warned. I worry way too much.”
He shook his head. “If what you’re worried about is me being into you, then yeah, any worry at all is way too much, Reeve. You’re all I thought about today. I finally had to go kayaking because I had so much pent-up energy I didn’t know what to do with myself. I pretty much rowed to Albany and back. Your showing up here now is like a mercy mission for me.”
“Did you say you were into me?”
“You know I’m into you, Reeve,” he said quietly, unsmiling. “It scares me a little how into you I am.”
“I’m into you, too,” she admitted. “And that definitely scares me.”
“From what I can tell? You’re pretty much Ms. Worst-Case Scenario, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much.”
He regarded her steadily for a couple seconds, then took her hand and led her to the swing, where they sat. “So what’re you—hang on. I just need to do this.”
And with no further warning, he reached around, anchored one of his big hands on her nape and pulled her in for a kiss that was sweetly lingering. Exquisitely perfect. When he turned her loose, she was melted all the way through and liquid gold inside.
“Sorry,” he whispered, pulling back. “I needed to do that.”
“Don’t apologize,” she said, opening her heavy-lidded eyes. “I needed you to.”
This confession prompted another quick kiss, then he got down to business. “What’re you scared of now, Reeve? With me, I mean.”
That was easy. “People always start out with the highest hopes when they first hook up, and things always go wrong. Look at me and Adam. You and your ex. And Sofia and her boyfriend had a huge fight today. Which is why I’m moving out so quickly. I don’t know if they’ll survive or not and I thought they’d be getting married soon. So people are basically behind the eight ball before they even meet up for drinks and a movie.”
“Thanks for that upbeat assessment, Little Mary Sunshine. Anything else?”
“I’m scared you won’t like me so much once you know more about me,” she told him.
His derisive snort went a long way toward calming her fears. “You’re a doctor, which means you’ve got smart nailed. You’ve got funny and gorgeous nailed, and you’re smoking hot in bed, which means you’ve got me nailed. You’re like a billion points ahead in the plus column. You’d have to start kicking puppies right in front of me for me to even subtract a point or two.”
“I’m trying to be serious, here,” she said, laughing and smacking his arm.
“Are you a convicted felon? Substance abuser? Child molester?”
“No!”
“Well, how bad could it be?”
Staring into his amused brown eyes, she decided, screw it, he deserves to know. More than that, she deserved to come out from under the yoke of her shame and guilt. She was pretty sick of being there, to tell the truth.
She hesitated, smoothing her skirt again. “I’ve dealt with a, ah, a lot of guilt. A lot of depression. Surrounding, you know, Adam’s death. I still struggle with them, actually.”
“Okay...?”
Blinking, she frowned at him. “That’s it.”
He frowned back, looking perplexed. “What’s the terrible part?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your husband died,” he said flatly. “What woman wouldn’t be depressed?”
His casual acceptance of this chapter of her life, which she still struggled to view without shame, even several years in, almost made her teary.
“Too bad you weren’t there to smooth the way with my parents. My mother gave me a year and announced I needed to snap out of it and start dating again. My father nearly had a heart attack when I worked up the courage to get counseling and start medication. He made me promise never to tell anyone in the family because he didn’t want them to think I was crazy.” She laughed shakily. “Half the time, I thought I was.”
“You’re not,” Edward said flatly.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said decisively. “Anything else? Other fears? Phobias? Concerns? Complaints?”
“None that I can think of at the moment,” she said, still grinning.
“Good,” he said again, sobering. “Now it’s my turn.”
“Oh, no. Are you neurotic, too?”
“You’re not neurotic, but, no, I haven’t battled depression.” He hesitated. “I have something important to tell you about me. I was going to tell you when we got up this morning, but…”
He trailed off, shrugging, and rested his elbows on his knees.
The pause gave her anxieties time to flare. The Black, who’d been quietly lurking in the background for several minutes now, edged forward, into the light, and began to gloat.
I knew things wouldn’t be that easy for you, Reeve. He’s probably a former felon. Or moving to Beijing at the end of the week.
“What is it?” she asked lightly, trying to keep her features from crumbling and to be as gracious to him as he’d just been to her. “Are you a convicted felon? Substance abuser? Child molester?”
He sat up and leaned back, holding her gaze. “I have a kid.”
Reeve’s heart slammed to a full stop. “You—what?”
“I have a kid. A baby, actually.”
“Oh,” she said faintly. “Oh.”
A baby.
This time, the voices barging into her thoughts were her own—and Adam’s.
Both came in angry, staccato bursts.
“I don’t get you!” he roared. “We talked about this! We talked about trying to have a baby when I came home on leave, and here you are, still on the pill! Were you ever even going to tell me?”
“I have told you! You just never listen! I keep saying there’s no way I can manage med school as a single mother with you thousands of miles away! I mean, think about it! Why would I even want to try?”
“So we could have a baby, Reeve! That’s kind of the point!”
“I’m not ready now, okay? Why can’t we wait? In four years, I’ll be done with med school, you’ll be discharged from the Corps, and then we can talk about it again.”
“That’s assuming I’m even still alive in another four years, Reeve!”
“Oh, my God, Adam! Don’t say that!”
“It’s true! I’m a Marine and there’s a war on, in case you haven’t been keeping up with the news! My life expectancy’s a big question mark at the moment!”
“So, you have no problems leaving me a widowed single mother? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“I’m saying that neither of us know how much time we’ve got, so I plan to live my life to the fullest while I’m here. And my life could never be full without kids, and you know it! Why don’t we talk about the real issue here?”
“And what’s that, pray tell?”
“It’s that even if I am here in four years, you’ll have another excuse, becaus
e that’s what you do, Reeve. You come up with excuses. You’ll say you want to finish your residency, and then you’ll say you want to finish your internship or some other shit—why not be a big girl for once and admit it?”
“Admit what?”
Though they’d been toe-to-toe, red-faced with rage and mutual hard feelings, they paused here, probably because they both realized, on some level, that they were heading in a direction from which they, as a couple, might not find their way back.
For one breathless second, she hoped Adam might back down so she wouldn’t have to look that deep and hard inside herself, but he didn’t. Maybe because his intuition was telling him this upcoming six-month tour would be his last.
Taking a deep breath, he plowed ahead. “Admit that you don’t know if you want to have a baby! Not with me, anyway!”
Scalding tears burned her eyes as she stared into the face of her husband, a courageous Marine who was putting his life on the line for her and their country, took a deep breath and told him the unvarnished truth: “I don’t know if I want to have a baby with you, Adam.”
“Reeve? You still with me here?”
Reeve started and focused on where she was now, not where she’d been.
It was Edward talking to her now, not Adam.
And Edward was an entirely different beast.
“Sorry,” she said, trying to give him a reassuring smile. “I’m still here.”
“Your color doesn’t look too good.”
“I’m okay. Tell me about your child.”
Edward grinned with a besotted father’s pride, a smile so bright and joyous it almost brought tears to her eyes. “Her name’s Ella. After my grandmother.”
Reeve’s heart contracted.
Ella.
“She’s got these big old dimples in her cheeks, and she knows two words already, no and baby, and she was a surprise, but she’s the light of my life.”
“I can see that,” she said, because she could.
“She’s with me a lot of the time. She was with her mother over the holiday, but she’ll be bringing her back later tonight.”
“Her mother,” Reeve said quietly. “The one you thought you’d marry.”
Edward’s expression clouded. “The one I decided not to marry,” he clarified. “Before I ever laid eyes on you, I decided not to marry her because I don’t love her the way a man should love his wife.”
“But the three of you are a family,” Reeve persisted. “The ink’s not really dry on that decision, is it?”
His jaw hardened. “It is as far as I’m concerned.”
“Maybe you should let things settle a little bit. Without my interference.”
He frowned, his mouth twisting with frustration. “Sounds to me like your fear’s doing the thinking for you right now. And I’m not sure how you could be interfering when I want you in my life. When I’m inviting you into my life. I want you to meet Ella. You’ll love her.”
The sudden flare of panic must have shown on her face. She’d planned to say something vague—oh, I’d love to when the time is right—but Edward didn’t give her the chance.
“Yeah, okay.” He got to his feet and towered over her, his lips thin and uncompromising. “I get the lay of the land.” Snorting, he shook his head with clear disbelief while Reeve frantically fumbled for something to say and came up with both hands empty. “I’ll say it again: call me. When you decide you’re all-in like I am, and you’re willing to give me a chance however I come, just like I’m willing to give you a chance however you come, you can give me a call. Until then? See you around.”
And he stalked off the porch and over to his car, where he went to work getting the kayak off the rack.
He did not look at her when she left.
* * *
Chapter 14
“Hang in there, Girlie.” The next morning, Edward hitched Ella and all her accessories—blankie, bear and binky—higher onto his hip, hooked the diaper bag more securely over his shoulder and strode off the elevator and into the pediatric offices of the medical arts building as soon as the doors slid open. As a seasoned veteran, having been here approximately eight hundred times since Ella started attending day care at three months and thereby became exposed to every nasty germ, virus and bug that babies liked to pass around to each other, he knew exactly where to go. “Almost there.”
Ella, who had her head down on his shoulder, which was a sure sign of how badly she felt at the moment, snuffled unhappily into her yellow blankie.
Edward headed straight to the front desk and his favorite receptionist, the one with common sense, a kindly face, and a heartening amount of empathy for working single dads who got the shit scared out of them every time they received a phone call from the day care telling them to come pick up their suddenly feverish kid.
“Hey, Susie,” he said, trying to work up a smile. “Thanks for squeezing us in before lunch.”
“Absolutely,” Susie said, tapping on her keyboard. “I’ll get you checked in. What’s wrong with the princess here? She doesn’t look too good, does she?”
“She feels worse.” Edward pressed his lips to his daughter’s forehead. It felt the way he imagined it’d feel if he pressed his lips to his car’s windshield while it sat in the noonday sun: burning up. “Hundred and two when they called me to pick her up. I’m betting it’s her ears again.”
“Poor baby,” Susie said, standing. She leaned across the counter and rubbed Ella’s little back. “Poor little baby.”
Ella raised her head and made an admirable effort at recapturing some of her usual charm for strangers. “Baby,” she said in her tiny voice. For effect, she gave Susie one of her backward waves, which was really a wave at her own face, and then pulled her right earlobe as she put her head back down on Edward’s shoulder.
“Aww,” Susie said, which was what people always said when Ella dazzled them. “You’ve got a real heartbreaker here, Dad.”
“Don’t I know it,” Edward muttered, holding tight to everything as he turned for the cheerily child-friendly waiting area with its collection of smart wooden toys in all the primary colors of the rainbow. “Thanks.”
Nodding to the assemblage of harried parents and their offspring there ahead of him, he sat down to wait, situating the diaper bag on the chair next to him and Ella in his lap. Ella, predictably, perked up and looked around with bright interest, noting the blaring big-screen TV on the wall—Sesame Street was today’s selection—the toys and the other kids.
“Baby,” she said, pointing her tiny index finger to a toddler sitting on the floor and stacking blocks.
“Yes, that’s a baby,” Edward told her.
“Baby,” she said, pointing to a sleeping newborn in a stroller.
“Yes, that’s a baby,” Edward said.
“Baby,” she said, pointing to the newborn’s bemused mother, who was watching the proceedings.
“That’s a mommy,” Edward said. “Mommy.”
Ella pulled back and looked up in his face, frowning. “Baby,” she insisted.
“Mommy.”
“No,” Ella said flatly, then squirmed to get down so she could head for the toys.
“Sorry, dude,” Edward said, standing up and tightening his grip on her because he knew World War III was about to break out. “No can do. You might be contagious. Can’t let you touch the toys.”
“Eh-eh-eh?” Ella asked, pointing to the ground and kicking her feet to make sure he understood the urgency of her need to get down and explore the toys.
“Sorry,” he repeated.
That did it.
Apparently Ella would have to be a great deal sicker than this to skip the temper tantrum. Tensing her entire body, she arched backward, over his arm, and let out a furious shriek powerful enough to crack all the windows in the building. Other parents looked around in alarm, and maybe it was his imagination, but he was fairly certain that even a couple of the other toddlers exchanged thank-God-we’re-not-that-bad glances with each
other.
“Sorry,” Edward tiredly told the group at large as he switched Ella to a football hold under his arm—she was now kicking and flailing, because she really enjoyed the opportunity to stretch out and put her heart into it when she threw a fit—and headed for the area near the elevator, where her screeches would be slightly less ear-shattering.
“How old is she?” asked the new mother, who looked vaguely alarmed that embarrassing scenes like these were in her near future.
“Ten months,” Edward told her over his shoulder.
“God bless you!” she called after him.
Chuckling, he turned the corner, and that was when a side door opened and two white-lab-coated people came out.
The first was an elderly gentleman, who held the door open.
The second was Reeve.
Drop-jawed and struggling to manage his daughter, who threw her blankie to the ground and proceeded to try to kick her little leather shoes off, he tried not to stare at Reeve as she pulled up short and gaped at him, but of course that was always a complete impossibility.
Today was the first day of her residency, she’d said.
So this older man must be her boss.
Wearing a pretty blue dress and sensible pumps, with her stethoscope slung around her neck and her ID badge clipped to the breast pocket of her lab coat, she looked every inch the part. Her hair was smoothed back in a ponytail, and her eyes widened at the sight of him.
“Edward.”
“Reeve,” he said. The surprise sight of her led to all kinds of renewed ambivalence about the way he’d handled things and their bad ending last night. For example? He should’ve given her another minute or two to get used to the idea that he had a kid. He should have stuck around so they could talk it through a little bit more. Or, if he had to stomp off in a huff, he should’ve called her later because, as Grandma always used to say, it didn’t do to go to bed all mad at someone. It only made it harder when it came time to make up. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Recovering quickly, her gaze shooting to Ella, who luckily seemed to have worn herself out in her weakened condition and was now straightening to watch the newcomers with keen interest, she made the introductions. “Edward, this is the head of pediatrics, Dr. Dale Jameson. Dr. Jameson, this is Edward Harper and his daughter. Ella.”
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