But he didn't love her. He wasn't even sure he knew how.
#
"You'll come back and talk to me," Lorraine said to Jessy. "You promised, right?"
"Right," said Jessy. "I'll stop in before I leave for the night."
"And you'll call my mom and tell her'?"
"I promised, didn't I?"
"Yeah," said Lorraine, "but lots of people promise things. That doesn't mean much."
The girl was right. Promises were cheaper than canned peas on sale at Shoprite. "I'll speak to your mama," Jessy said. "You don't have to worry about that anymore."
She stepped outside into the hallway and leaned against the wall. "Damn," she whispered as the tears spilled down her cheeks. "Damn, damn, damn." This was all she needed, to be pulled into the problems of some pregnant teenager. She'd made a vow her first day in med school that she'd never get personally involved with any of her patients and, for the most part, she'd found it easy to keep that vow. But this was cutting too close to the bone.
A trio of orderlies walked by. They cast curious looks in her direction. The tallest of the three whispered something to his two coworkers, and she knew they were talking about her by the way they suddenly tried hard not to look at her again.
Doctors weren't supposed to cry. She knew the rules. Death, dismemberment—it didn't matter. You sublimated your emotions and got on with your work. She'd never found that particularly hard to do until now. That skinny little thing huddling under the blue hospital blanket was the girl she'd been not all that long ago. She felt as if she'd stepped back through a time portal and was confronting herself, all of her fears and longings and insecurities. Let me keep my baby, Mama .. I can still go to medical school with a baby . . .
But Jo Ellen had had other ideas and the will to go with them. You're just a girl, she told Jessy, you don't know how a baby changes everything. All those dreams of glory disappearing under a mountain of diapers and disappointment. I want better for you, Jessy, her mama said. I want you to be what I never could.
Of course Jo Ellen hadn't said that last bit, but Jessy could hear her mama's voice saying it just the same as if she had.
The same thing was happening to Lorraine. She was being bombarded with expectations, buried under the weight of guilt. She needed someone to talk to, preferably someone who had wanted to keep her baby but hadn't and would regret it every single day of her life.
A pair of doctors strolled by, and she ducked her head over her notebook and pretended she was scribbling something so they wouldn't notice her tear-streaked face. She had to get out of there. The head nurse was right. She had forgotte.to eat today. Maybe she'd go down to the cafeteria and grab a tuna on rye and some milk. She started down the hallway, rounded the corner, and walked straight into a faceful of roses.
"Oh!" She stepped back, laughing apologetically. "I'm sorry. I wasn't looking where I was going."
The roses lowered, and she found herself face-to-face with Spencer. "I was looking for you, Jess."
Oh, God, exactly the one person on earth she didn't want to see. "You have thirty seconds," she said, ignoring the sweet perfume filling the air between them.
He pushed the flowers toward her. "These are for you."
She glared at the roses and then at him. "I don't like roses."
He looked vaguely deflated, and she was glad. "Tell me what you do like, and trade them in."
"I'm not the flowers type."
"I think you are."
"Don't," she whispered, feeling her control slip another notch. "I'm not in the mood."
"I'm not going to ask you to marry me again," he said.
"Good," she snapped, "because I've already told you my answer." .
"We got it all wrong," he said, ignoring her words. "We have to go back to square one and start over."
"We're not starting anything," she said as her heartbeat accelerated. "We were a mistake. We shouldn't have happened in the first place."
"Can't undo it," he said. "We happened."
"I'm busy," she said, pushing past him. "Why don't you go home and count your trust funds?"
"What time do you get off tonight?" he asked, falling into step with her as she headed for the cafeteria.
"Midnight."
"I'll be waiting for you in the lobby."
"No!" She, stopped in her tracks and spun around to face hint. "Get out of my life, Spencer. I don't need or want you in it." Seeing him hurt too much. She'd rather cut him from her life entirely. Her game playing had come with a terrible price tag attached to it.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Her eyes filled again with tears. "Don't do this to me. Not today."
"Why not today?" He didn't sound like himself. That edge of sophistication that always unnerved her was gone. "I didn't want to make you cry, Jess. That's not why I'm here."
"Don't flatter yourself. I'm not crying over you." Ah'm not cryin' . . The more upset she got, the more Southern she sounded. Any second now he'd be calling for an interpreter. "Why are you here?" She batted the flowers away with her hand. "Why are you doing this?" Nobody ever brought her flowers. Didn't he know that?
"Why do you think?" he countered. He sounded even less like himself--ruffled and exasperated. "We started all wrong, Jess. I'm trying to. get us back on track."
"Back on track? We were never on track, Spencer. We weren't anything at all." She'd thrown herself at him because she'd actually believed she could be happy with nothing more than the memory of one night in his arms.
"You're right," he said. "We were a one-night stand and we got caught, but that doesn't mean that's all we can be."
Her resistance was beginning to ebb. You could live just so long without hope. Sometimes she felt as if she'd lived her whole life without it. "Why are you doing this?" she said softly. "Is it for the baby or for me?"
He didn't answer right away. He was looking at her as if he'd never seen her before, and the intensity of his gaze made her wish she'd never asked the question in the first place.
"I don't know," he said after a moment. "Maybe I'm doing it for us."
"Good answer," she whispered. "Very good answer."
She buried her face in the cream and crimson blooms and began to cry.
#
Molly got home from Spencer's office around three-thirty and changed into a pair of loose black pants and a white T-shirt. She took an emerald green sweater from her closet and pulled it on over her head. Two weeks ago it still had that oversized look she was striving for. Not anymore. Her breasts and belly stretched the nubby fabric almost to the limit of decency. She didn't care. This wasn't a fashion statement. She needed bright colors to lift her dark mood.
Jessy was still at the hospital. Molly couldn't remember what time Rafe had said he'd pick her up. Four o'clock? Eight-thirty? She also couldn't remember why she'd ever agreed to such a ridiculous idea. She wasn't an invalid. She was pregnant. She didn't need someone to drive her around. She had all of her faculties. She could drive herself anywhere she wanted to go.
The thing was, she didn't want to go anywhere.
Not even the Caribbean for a quickie divorce?
Now there was a swell idea. Where did Robert get the nerve to suggest such a thing?
Same place he got the nerve to walk out on you and take every stick of furniture in the house.
Good point. It made her wonder how well she'd known her husband in the first place. They'd shared a home and a bed and a life, and the truth was she didn't know the first. thing about him. She knew he liked his eggs sunny side up, his shirts starched, his bath towels warm from the dryer, but she didn't know what made him happy or why he'd never loved her the way she'd wanted to be loved.
Did you love him, Molly? Be honest now. Did you love him the way he wanted to he loved?
She hated questions like that. She hated being honest with herself.
She'd loved him the only way she knew how—as a partner, as the man who would father her children. Robert ha
d represented the security she'd never known as a child, and when he proposed to her, she said yes immediately. "We're good team," he'd said. She'd support him during law school, then the moment he was settled in with a good law firm, she'd quit and start a family. That was their dream, wasn't it? That was what the hard work was all about.
He'd said he was happy. He said his parents would be crazy about her. He said all the right things but he never once said I love you.
The saddest part of all was that it took ten years for her to realize it.
She wondered how different her life would have been if she'd demanded more of Robert and the relationship, if she'd understood that being a good team meant more than a career and a house in Princeton Manor. Of course, if she'd understood that she would have seen that their marriage was doomed from the start.
She hated Robert for taking the coward's way out, but she couldn't hate him for wanting more from a marriage than they'd found together. She hated him for walking out on his unborn child, but she couldn't hate him for falling in love. Not now that she knew what they had both been missing.
The baby shifted position, a flurry of soft kicks and punches that usually preceded a nap. It's your loss, Robert she thought as she gently massaged her belly. You turned your back on a miracle.
He made his decision the day he walked out the door on them. Now he'd have to find a way to live with it.
Chapter Twenty
Something was wrong.
Molly hadn't said a word since she got in the car. Every time Rafe tried to engage her in conversation, he found himself slamming face first into a wall of monosyllables.
Feel like stopping for supper?
No.
If you're cold, I'll turn up the heater.
Okay.
Get a lot of work done today?
Enough.
Feel like telling me about it?
That last one didn't even rate a monosyllable.
Her lovely face was set in unapproachable lines. He tried to think of what he might have done or said to cause this breach, but his mind was blank. That morning everything had been fine between them. Whatever caused this shill of mood had happened in the hours between then and now, and she was keeping it to herself.
It was dark when he let them into the carriage house. She moved quietly about, switching on lamps, adjusting the front blinds, then drifted back to the kitchen. He
heard the refrigerator open then click shut. He heard the sound of water running. She was at the sink with her back to him when he approached her.
"Need some help?" he asked.
She shook her head. Her fiery ponytail danced between her shoulder blades. "I can handle it."
A two-syllable word. He took that as a sign of encouragement. "Why should you do all the work?" he asked, moving closer to her.
"I don't mind."
He placed his hands on her shoulders, but she neatly stepped away from him. Not a good sign.
"Talk to me, Molly," he said "If I don't know what's wrong, I can't make it right."
"There's nothing wrong." Her voice was so tight you could have bounced a quarter off her vocal cords, "Everything's just fine."
"Bullshit." He saw her cheeks redden. "Don't close up on me. We've come too far for that."
"Have we?" She spun around to face him. He noticed her anger before he noticed her beauty. That was a first. "How far have we come, Rafe? Maybe it looks different from your angle than it does from mine."
Her words stung. He had no doubt that she meant them to sting. "You want to know how it looks from my angle," he asked. "It looks like you're angry and hurt, and I'm in the line of fire."
"You're right," she said. He could see a slight softening of the worry lines between her brows. "I'm angry and I'm hurt, and you're lucky enough to be the closest one to me."
"I can take it, Molly. I'm not going to leave because you have problems."
She smiled her first smile of the night. "Maybe you should wait until you hear the problems."
He leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm listening."
"Robert wants me to fly down to the Caribbean and get one of those quickie divorces."
He struggled to keep his expression impassive while inside he was turning cartwheels. "Will you do it?"
Her smile shifted again, this time into a line of pure steel. "He also wants joint custody of the baby."
Dangerous territory. "You wanted him to take an interest."
"Six months ago," she shot back, "not now. Now it's too late.''
"The baby isn't even born yet. He--
"Are you taking his side?"
"I'm not taking anybody's side. I'm pointing out a few things you might have missed."
"He's not coming anywhere near this baby. Not while I'm still breathing."
"He's the father."
"One night doesn't make a man a father, Rafe," she said quietly. "It takes a lot more than that."
"So you're going to shut him. out."
"He walked out on me," she said. Her hands settled over her belly. "On the baby. He hasn't even asked if things are going well or not."
"Maybe he's having a change of heart."
"I wouldn't think that would be on your wish list," she said. Her mood went from fire to ice in the blink of an eye.
"Is it on yours?'
"That's not funny."
"You're right," he said, "it's not funny at all."
"I told Spencer to tell Robert he can go to hell. What do I need him for? This is my baby. I'm the one who's carrying her; I'm the one who makes the decisions."
He knew better than to argue with her. If he started down that road, he would end up telling her all about Sarah, and this improbable world they'd created would crash down, around him. He was selfish enough to want to keep that from happening, but that didn't take away the guilt.
He had to remind himself that he had no rights in this situation. She hadn't asked for his opinion and she probably wouldn't take it if it were offered. He wasn't her husband. The baby she carried wasn't his. They were uneasy lovers with the odds stacked against them. She could tell him to go to hell, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it except tell her that without her he was already halfway there.
#
Molly couldn't shake her bad mood. She knew none of this was Rafe's fault, that he had absolutely nothing to do with her problems with Robert, but that didn't stop the sense that her whole world was somehow off-kilter.
They worked together in the kitchen in silence. She made the toast and hashed browns. He made the scrambled eggs, coffee for him, and decaf tea for her. They sat down at the picnic table near the back door and ate their evening breakfast in continued silence. She hadn't a clue what he was thinking. The truth was, she hadn't a clue to anything about him. This man who had become the central figure in her life was as big a mystery to her now as he'd been the day she met him. She didn't know him any better than shed known Robert.
Which meant she barely knew him at all.
She wondered if this was her pattern, to skim the surface of life, to accept the obvious and not look for trouble; so when trouble showed up, it hit her right between the eyes.
She put down her fork and leaned back in her chair. Suddenly the day weighed so heavily on her shoulders that she found it impossible to eat or think or stay awake. She struggled to keep her eyes open, but it was a losing battle.
Rafe was at her side instantly. She felt herself being lifted up into his arms, heard his heart beating beneath her ear, the creak of the stairs as he carried her to the bedroom they'd shared.
"Don't be kind to me," she whispered as he settled her down on the bed. "I don't want to need you." Men didn't stay with her. Her father hadn't. Neither had her husband. He brushed her hair back from her forehead then kissed her on both eyelids. She could feel herself sinking deeper into an almost dreamlike state that was part exhaustion, part surrender. He lay down next to her on the bed and gathered her
close to him in a full body hug that was as close to heaven as she had ever experienced.
"I don't know anything about you," she murmured, "not the first thing." All she knew was his smell and his touch and the way he made her feel. You couldn't trust those things any more than you could trust a whisper in the night.
"You know I'll never leave you," he said.
You will, she thought as she drifted off to sleep. One day you'll leave.
She slept deeply, with her face pressed hard against his left bicep. The room filled with the sound of her breathing, the sweet smell of her skin. In a perfect world, this would be enough. This second. This moment. There had been a time when he wouldn't have asked for more, when he Could have been content with a glimpse of happiness and never known the difference. .
Now he wanted it all. He wanted more than a glimpse of happiness, he wanted It around the clock, every day, all week, all year; He wanted a lifetime of happiness and he wanted it with Molly and her baby. The carriage house came to life when she was there. Shadows were banished by sunshine. Birds sang from the rafters. The smell of perfume wafted through the rooms like a blessing from God.
She took it all with her each morning when she left.
One day you'll leave..
He heard her say it before she fell asleep, in that one unguarded moment not even Molly could prevent. He knew she couldn't turn to her family for help. She'd told him about the multiple marriages and half-siblings scattered about the country. Her husband had been her real family, their house her only home. She carried herself with strength and dignity, but he knew what that cost her. He could still see her the way he'd first found her, bent over at the waist with her arms wrapped across her belly, moaning low like the wolf he'd found in a trap all those years ago. She never talked about, her pain, but he knew that it was there. There was so much he didn't know about her, so much yet to be discovered.
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