by Tina Leonard
Her smile was tremulous and apprehensive. “I hope so.”
“Good.” Taking her hand, he helped her down the porch. “Now remember, you and I have known each other for some time. That’s not exactly a fib, because we knew of each other because of Bri.”
“I feel like I’ve known you forever.”
“Right. So we decided to get married. I don’t think they’ll be interested in the whys or wherefores of our relationship past that.”
April was breathless as he helped her to his car. Nerves, he thought. “Don’t be nervous,” he said automatically. “We’ve got a great chance.”
“Do you really think so?”
They got in the car, and he started it without looking at her. The less he maintained eye contact with those dazzling eyes of hers, the less likely he was to drown in her feelings. “You see anybody else lining up to take in four newborns?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t. We don’t know who might want them.”
“I’m prepared to make the case that the mother’s wishes should be considered, whether the document was legal or not. I’m willing to say that I’m working on the case, I believe I can find the mother, and it would greatly help if this grieving person who was little more than a child herself found that her family was taken care of in the manner she’d hoped. Even Social Services won’t want to scare Jenny half to death by discovering that her babies were separated. Clearly, what she had in mind was giving them a family she felt she couldn’t give them herself.”
“I hope you’re right. And thank you for saying that you’re willing to go to bat for me.”
“I believe in my heart it’s best for all concerned, or I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t have offered to…to—” He couldn’t finish, uncertain as to how to put his opinion without insulting her. She was his wife, after all.
“You wouldn’t have offered your protection to us if you didn’t believe it was the right thing to do. It makes me feel good that you trust me that much, Caleb.”
“Trust you?” He turned to stare at her, forgetting all about his vow to keep himself from drowning in her gaze. “Anybody can see that you love those children, April. They need that right now.”
Her smile lit on him like a bright star. He felt a groan go through him. So he turned back to face the road, and reminded himself that April was a place he had vowed never to go again in his life. Partner ship and caring. Being there for someone.
He told himself he was way too scarred to get lost in his heart again.
“Have you been able to find any leads on Jenny? Or have the police?”
That question centered him again, in a place where he was comfortable. The cop in him came strong to the fore. “I talked to some of her friends. Acquaintances, actually, but in the teen years, friendships are fairly liquid. They haven’t seen her since she gave birth. That’s a bad sign.”
“Why? You don’t think something’s happened to her?”
“No,” he reassured her. “I think she’s not in the city any longer. Possibly not in the state. There had to have been someplace she had family.”
“She never mentioned it to me.”
“Someone somewhere knows what I need to know. It’s simply a matter of patience until I knock on the right door and talk to the person with the golden key.”
April rubbed her hands over her arms. “It’s so hard to have that patience.”
“I know. But I believe this case is by no means hopeless. I almost feel like we’re holding all the cards. I can totally sympathize with what Jenny did.”
“You can?” April’s tone was astonished.
“Sure. She had a lot on her plate all at once. It was too much. Given time, she might even work through what happened, and want her children back without us having to encourage her to feel that way.”
“You really believe you’re going to find her, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He sent her a fast glance. “I’ll keep playing the angles over in my mind until something sticks out funny, and then it’ll come to me.”
She was silent for a moment. “One day, when you feel like it, I’d like you to tell me about your time on the force.”
That surprised him. It didn’t surprise him that she’d want to know; women usually didn’t have the caution not to try to push into his feelings. Like they could bind him up and cauterize the wound if they could only get him to talk about it. Well, his was a wound which couldn’t be cauterized, so he never talked to anyone about it.
But the tone of April’s voice wasn’t intrusive. She seemed to really want to hear about his life. He caught no false sympathy, no egged-on encouragement in her voice.
Yet, he really didn’t need to talk about it. His story was safely bottled up and stored where it couldn’t come out and ooze into his life.
“I enjoyed being a police officer,” he said, surprising himself. “Being able to help people is something I find rewarding.”
“Me, too,” April said, seemingly pleased that they shared this in common. “I feel worthy, like I’ve found my reason to take up space on earth, when I’m helping other people. Especially people who really need to be helped.”
That was what it was all about for him. “Exactly.”
He intended to be no more forthcoming than that. Waiting for her to draw more out of him now that she’d hooked into an empathy scenario between them, he was surprised by her silence. He sensed her waiting, and also her patience. If he wanted to talk now, he could. If he didn’t, he perceived she’d just return to looking out the window, understanding that he could only give to her when he had something to give.
Somehow, that noncondemning, nonwaiting silence encouraged him. “You know, I don’t think I realized that we had something in common. I mean, something other than wanting the babies to have one home, one safe situation.”
“What do you mean?” She turned inquisitive eyes upon him.
“I just think it must take a special woman to take care of babies who are so helpless that all they can do is trust. And the parents, who have to trust that you can make their children healthy. Not everyone can do it.”
“Serving the public has its wrenching moments, as you know,” she said carefully. “It also has its extremely rewarding moments.”
Man, did this woman ever know how to say exactly what he’d always felt.
“And when something goes wrong, it’s like…a sweeping loss you can’t help feeling is your fault. I mean, you’re the one everybody trusted, right? It was your job to be the best, to be the trustworthy savior.”
Too close to home, he thought raggedly. This woman was reading his emotions. And yet, somehow, he wasn’t as resentful as he’d expected he might be. “My partner was killed in a drug bust that went wrong.”
She didn’t reach to touch his hand. She merely said, “I’m so sorry, Caleb.” Softly, with the right touch of shared commiseration. “And you believe you should have been the trustworthy savior.”
“Right.”
“Tell me something I couldn’t guess on my own,” she said, softly mimicking words he’d once spoken to her. “If not the details, then pretty much the story. But you know what fascinates me, Caleb? In spite of all that, here you are, willing to be the trustworthy savior once again. Just in a different capacity. And I really, truly admire that.”
Nothing to admire about letting somebody down. But he had to smile at her refusal to coddle him. It annoyed him when people tried to understand his pain in their well-meaning manner. He hated it worse when they tried to give him advice.
April, perhaps true to form, did neither. She just offered him some sass and a little salute, and it added up to just what he needed.
“One day, maybe I’ll be able to sleep at night. In the meantime, I’m not making any plans to move into your house until we have the babies. There’s really no reason to do so.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Well, it couldn’t be said that she was after his body. He wond
ered if he should be irritated that she wasn’t more enthusiastic about an encore performance of last night. “You’re not the kind of girl to go all gooey on a guy about anything, are you?”
“I hope not. That sounds very unattractive.”
Her teasing response took the last edge off his reserve with her. “I took it pretty hard when my partner died. I keep replaying that night, thinking of everything I did wrong. I just think I could have saved him if I’d been a better cop.”
“Jenny might not have left if I’d been a better nurse. If I’d been paying closer attention to the signs. To her emotional condition.”
He gaped at that logic, as much as he could clearly see the parallel she was drawing. “Do you really think that?”
“Yes.” She shot him an impatient glance. “Is it not my job to be the one to pick up on the signals and make certain nothing goes wrong?”
“Yeah, but—”
“There’s no buts for me, just like there aren’t for you. And the worst part is, I don’t know if Jenny’s dead or alive.”
“She’s alive.”
“She was not a healthy patient when she left the hospital. Anything could have happened to her.”
An infection just by itself could zap a woman off the earth quicker than anyone could figure out the cure… A shudder shook him. They’d reached the offices of Social Services, so he parked and switched off the engine. “I think you’re good to talk to. For the first time, I feel like someone knows what it’s really like to be on the front line.”
Her gaze was even. “It doesn’t solve anything for either of us. We still have all the baggage.”
“Yeah, but the compartments just shifted. Maybe, eventually, we’ll just lose the baggage, kind of like the airports lose it.”
Rolling her eyes at him, she said, “Come on. We’ve got babies to safeguard.”
So they got out of the car, and he grabbed her hand, her soft, delicate hand that hid a gentle touch and a strong heart. The weird thing was, he didn’t mind rushing to April’s side to try to shore her up. He believed in her, the way she believed in him.
And that felt strangely nice.
In a nonpermanent sort of way, he reminded himself as they walked through the doors into the Social Services offices.
TWO HOURS LATER, April and Caleb were finished with the initial paperwork, and the questions she was so afraid she’d answer wrong. It had been draining. Wrenching. And somehow, painful.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked when they left the building to get into his car.
“I’ll feel better when we know if they’re taking us seriously as candidates.”
“It’s going to be okay. I just know it. Do you want to get a bite to eat at Austin Eats? You could go right in to the hospital after that.”
“You know, I don’t think I feel like seeing a whole bunch of people right now, and there’ll probably be a lot of staff hanging around, catching up after the holiday. I think I’d like to go get my car, Caleb, so you won’t have to pick me up when I’m ready to leave the hospital.”
“All right. I need to go by and see Dad anyway. He’s going to want to hear about how our meeting with Social Services went.”
“Tell him I said thank you for the honeymoon suite.”
Caleb gave her leg a quick pat as he drove. “I have to say I enjoyed it a lot myself.”
She stared out the window, wondering if there was a double meaning in his words.
“By the way, I went by and saw Mrs. Fox yesterday.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. She was actually pretty happy to have company on New Year’s Day.”
“Oh,” April murmured. “I guess she might have enjoyed not being alone. It’s got to be quiet without Jenny around.”
“She’s a pretty nice lady. I can see why Jenny leaned on her after David died. But she didn’t have a whole lot of details on Jenny’s history, besides the fact that she was really grieving for her husband. Mrs. Fox said she didn’t think Jenny might ever get over losing him, and that she was frightened to death of having four children on her own.”
“Oh, dear.” April could imagine the level of deep grief herself. It had to have been so overwhelming for a teenager without family.
Just walking into Social Services and doing paperwork to temporarily foster the quads had nearly panicked her. Knowing that someone had filled out paperwork on her when she was a child—actually, many people—had given her a nearly physical pain in her stomach. The process seemed so cold, and yet it had to be straightforward and nonemotional. Yet there were people’s lives involved, and children.
As an orphan herself, Jenny would have understood what she was doing if she abandoned the children to the system. And yet, her own situation was intolerable. April might have been the only person she felt might understand.
“I think I mentioned to Jenny once that I had been in foster care,” she said suddenly. “And that I’d been adopted.”
He nodded. “It’s really not too hard to figure out. I believe that she realized you were the only person who might understand her panic over her children not going into the foster care system. You and Jenny shared a similar belief system, a common background. Just like you and I have discovered something common between us.”
She stared at him, stunned by his admission. It was almost as if he was saying that they had achieved some level of closeness. Why did that shock her? “I don’t think I ever expected you to…I mean, that sounded so—”
He grinned at her loss of words. “So hurray-for-the-home-team? Maybe I have to think of our relationship in terms of sports.”
“Oh.”
“That’s the spirit. Now I’m going to do a few things today, but you call me if you hear anything, or need anything.”
“Okay.”
He parked the car at her house and April started to get out, halting when he caught her hand.
“I mean it, April. Call me if you need anything.”
The look in his eyes was deep and purposeful. He really meant that he would take care of her, in any way she needed, while they were married.
It was so wonderful to know that he wanted to be there for her—and it was so scary to find herself wanting to rely on him. Every other time a boyfriend in her life had wanted to let her rely on him, she’d taken off like a shot. Bonds had not been easy for her to form.
She felt one forming with Caleb, whether she wanted it to or not, and yet, she found herself drawn to it like a sunflower to the sun. I could fall in love with him, she realized faster than a blinking eye. I like being married to him.
That shocked her more than anything. Managing a quick smile for goodbye, she got out of the car and hurried up the sidewalk, letting herself into the house without another look back at him. Her heart thundered.
“What was I thinking?” she asked herself. “This will be over one day. And it’s going to hurt so much more than being passed over at the orphanage when I have to face that Caleb doesn’t want to stay married to me.”
The dawning of her feelings for him were outside their agreement. She couldn’t have foreseen that she’d begin to feel this way. There was so much good wrapped up in Caleb. Him. His family. His beliefs. Their mutual understanding. His lovemaking, and the way he treated her so gently.
It was balm to her spirit; it was a magnet pulling her heart inexorably toward his.
Nothing about this was going to feel good when it was gone from her.
Chapter Eleven
“So how’s the newlywed?” Bri asked when April came in to check on the babies.
“I’m fine. Better than fine.”
They hugged each other, reveling in the knowledge that they were sisters now.
“I’m only here for a quick visit, but my brother treats you good?” Bri asked.
A blush stole over April’s cheeks. “Your brother treats me better than good.”
“Oh my gosh,” Bri said in wonder, her eyes not missing a detail of the glow in April’s eyes. “
You didn’t say anything about how you and Caleb had decided to make the big leap. But you really like my crazy brother, don’t you?”
April laughed. “He’s not crazy.”
“No, but he can be tough as old rawhide. Yet, the way you’re smiling tells me you really like him. It all happened so fast I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought. But there’s something special between you two, I can see it in your eyes.” She hugged April again, close.
“He hasn’t been tough as rawhide with me. I couldn’t ask for better.” That was the truth, considering the circumstances, and it was painful to admit it, and to keep up the pretense even though she knew her marriage to Bri’s brother wasn’t forever.
“Did you enjoy the honeymoon suite?” Bri’s eyes sparkled with some teasing, and some womanly interest as well.
April shifted, mildly embarrassed. “Thank you for suggesting it to Jackson. It was very sweet of you,” she said, trying to sidestep the question.
Bri laughed. “Okay, it’s none of my business. But you look happy, and glowing, and I take that to mean you enjoyed more about the suite than the accommodations.”
Even with her best friend, this was almost more than she could share about Caleb and herself. “It was a lovely suite,” she said primly. “I’m going to go check on the babies now.”
“They’ve been in good hands, April. And they’re getting stronger every minute. Though they will require constant care for a long time.” Bri smiled at her, content to let wedding matters and honeymoon suites go for the moment. “Before you go, I do want to tell you how happy you made my father. He’s thrilled that you’re part of the family, April. I think Dad was always afraid Caleb would bring home a woman Dad wouldn’t be able to relate to.”
“Why?”
Bri shrugged. “It’s the radical element in Caleb. He’s different from the rest of us. His feelings are in a deep dark place. But Dad thinks you’re wonderful, and that you’re going to be great for Caleb. All that sweetness is bound to rub off on him somehow. Anyway, it’s wonderful to have someone in the family who’s blissful. My brother, Adam, and his wife, Maggie, are at the other end of the marriage spectrum. Not that they don’t love each other, but they’ve been praying for a child of their own for so long. Fertility treatments have been unsuccessful so far, and it’s all beginning to take a toll on them. I’d like to see them happy together again. Like you and Caleb. I’m telling you the truth, Dad was the happiest man at the wedding yesterday.”