by Caro Carson
“You don’t have to. You were going to make time to eat dinner tonight, right? I’m just asking you to eat dinner at the stadium.”
Friday night rush-hour traffic was taking all of Kendry’s concentration. She couldn’t recall her carefully persuasive phrases and the gentle arguments she’d lined up.
“I thought you understood,” Jamie said. “With Sam’s medical concerns, he’s my only after-work concern.”
A driver cut in front of Kendry, and she tapped the brakes a little too hard, angry at the stranger’s carelessness. “Sam isn’t sick,” she bit out through clenched teeth.
“I can’t believe you said that.” Jamie sounded stunned. “Are we talking about the same kid? He was born prematurely, with a bad heart and poor swallowing reflexes. We have to track his development. He’s—”
“He’s not sick. He’s got a couple birth defects that are being fixed, but in the meantime, he’s not sick.”
“We dodged that pneumonia bullet. We were lucky.”
“Yes, we were, but you know what else, Jamie? His immune system overcame that challenge. He’s not an invalid. He’s actually pretty normal, and he and I want to do something normal tonight. We want to go to a football game at his dad’s old high school.”
Jamie was silent. Kendry couldn’t take her eyes off the road to gauge his facial expression. One second of inattention was all it took for an accident to happen and a life to be altered.
“I don’t think of Sam as an invalid,” Jamie said. “I just don’t think a football game is a great place for a baby.”
“I brought him a bottle and some cookies. If he gets fussy, we can leave, okay? But I think Sam is going to love his first real live football game.”
Right on cue, like a little gift from heaven, Sam squealed in happy agreement.
When the silence continued, she added softly, “Maybe I’m the one who needs to see something besides the hospital and the house.”
Jamie only grunted. Kendry finally stole a peek at his profile. He didn’t look angry, just resigned.
“Was that grunt a manly sound of agreement?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood.
Jamie sighed dramatically and leaned against the headrest. “That,” he said, gazing at the roof above him, “is the sound of a man who has lost his first argument with his wife.”
Kendry welcomed the little bubble of happiness in her chest. “Was it so bad?”
Jamie rolled his head from left to right. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not the Sam Houston Huskies win tonight. I’d hate to go through one humiliating defeat only to watch another.”
The little happiness bubbles multiplied. “In that case,” she said, joining the long line into the stadium parking lot, “go team, go.”
* * *
Jamie had never seen Kendry so excited. He had to admit, the bright stadium lights against the night sky stirred a certain something in the soul. The sound of the marching band warming up under the bleachers and the smell of the gooey, artificially orange cheese substance on the corn chips were a combination he hadn’t realized he’d forgotten.
Kendry was loving it. It was obvious in the bounce in her step and the smile on her face. “Isn’t this great?” she kept asking. “It’s so All-American, you know?”
Jamie was reminded how different his upbringing had been from Kendry’s. He hadn’t missed a home game in four years of high school. Kendry hadn’t made a complete semester in America. She carried Sam and the nachos as she led the way from the snack bar to the bleachers. Jamie followed with the empty car seat and the drinks, wondering how the scene looked through her eyes.
He’d never considered all that Kendry had missed because of her unconventional upbringing. Not being part of a sports team, for example. He looked at her speculatively as she led the way up the bleachers’ metal stairs. What sport would she have played, if she’d had the chance? He had no idea what she enjoyed. With her slender build, she looked like she’d run cross-country, maybe. She wasn’t too tall, but in those jeans, it was easy to tell that she was all legs.
At that moment, Kendry looked over her shoulder at him, an automatic move to see if he was still following. He was, and damn if he didn’t feel like he’d been caught checking her out. His own wife. As if a man would check out his own—
Well, yes, he supposed most men did check out their own wives. That’s how women became wives in the first place, wasn’t it?
That wasn’t how Kendry had become his wife. It seemed wrong to start checking her out now, not when they’d made promises to each other for a different kind of relationship. Theirs had been entered into from a logical standpoint, knowing they would be compatible, having similar values toward family and shared interests in things like medicine.
It was the kind of relationship a woman might hope for if she lived in a country like Afghanistan. The kind of relationship a woman in that part of the world would trust her family to contract on her behalf. The kind of relationship Amina had probably grown up dreaming about.
Jamie had given Amina’s dream to Kendry.
He stumbled on the next step and caught himself, looking down at his own jeans and well-worn boots. He was a born and raised Texan, as Western as a man could be. Kendry, in her red sweater and blue jeans, looked as American as a slice of apple pie in a suburban high school stadium.
Neither one of them was from Amina’s world, yet he expected his American bride to keep to an Afghani-style commitment to family, not to romance. Slowly climbing the stairs with a hundred other people, listening to the marching band playing a fight song as the announcer directed his attention to the home team running onto the field, Jamie felt like he was in the right place for the wrong reasons.
Yes, he should be at his alma mater’s game with his wife and his child. But should he be in a relationship where admiring the way his wife sashayed up a set of bleachers was off-limits?
That’s what you offered. That’s what she accepted. You can’t change the rules now. You’ll embarrass her by checking her out.
But Jamie couldn’t keep his eyes off her now. It was like being told not to think about a pink elephant. He was trying not to think about his wife’s body, trying not to look at the swish of her hair, trying not to admire the glimpses of her face as she searched the rows for available seats.
She turned to talk to him again, making Jamie feel like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Jeez, this was ridiculous.
“Is this high enough, do you think?” she asked, beaming with excitement. “I want to see everything.”
A man’s voice, unexpected but instantly recognizable, called out behind him. “Jamie MacDowell. Heard you were back from overseas. Good to see you.”
“Luke.” Jamie greeted his old football teammate, someone he’d once spent four hours a day with, five days a week, during Austin autumns like this one. “Good to see you, too.”
He meant it. It had been two years since Jamie had left for Afghanistan, but Luke was looking good as always, still physically fit, unlike too many of their friends who’d become desk jockeys at office jobs. They shook hands.
“You’ve been a stranger.”
“Just busy,” Jamie said, an automatic excuse to answer the unspoken question. He and Luke and the rest of the crowd all moved up another step.
Jamie couldn’t ignore his wife and baby standing a few steps above him. Introductions had to be made. Ready or not, Jamie was about to drop some big news on his old world. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Kendry.”
“Your wife?” Luke looked shocked, the same reaction the hospital staff gave. Luke’s gaze zeroed in on Sam. “You’ve got a baby, too?”
“Told you I’ve been busy. Kendry, this is Luke Waterson. We went to school together.”
“How do you do, ma’am?” Luke whipped out his Sunday manners and greeted Kendry with a proper Texas twang to his tone.
Jamie knew what was coming next. He and Kendry had been through it often enough with coworkers. People would look at Sam, then at Jamie, and they’d nod to themselves, as if they understood his marriage. Oh, he needed someone to help him take care of the baby. Jamie didn’t want to go through it. Not here. Not now. Not again.
Instead, Luke asked something no one at the hospital ever did. “How did you two meet?”
Kendry hiked Sam an inch higher on her hip. In the split second before she answered, Jamie had the horrible intuition that she was going to tell the truth, that Jamie had sought her out because he needed a mother for Sam.
Jamie didn’t want the truth. He didn’t want anyone to know that his marriage was different than everyone else’s. He was essentially a widower, unlike any of his friends. He had a baby who could be deported, a situation none of his friends could imagine. His marriage might be right for him, but tonight it seemed out of place, wrong for this setting and this part of his life.
“We met at the hospital,” Kendry said, smiling at Luke like she was enjoying herself. “We both work there.”
God, that sounded so blissfully normal, Jamie could have kissed her in relief.
“I’ll bet he didn’t give you a chance to say no once he’d set eyes on you.”
Kendry shook her head immediately, dismissing the compliment. She was so easily flustered by compliments.
Luke must have caught her embarrassment, and being the stand-up guy Jamie would never admit out loud that he was, Luke changed the subject slightly. “I know you’re not from around here, because I would have scooped you up first. How long have you been in Austin?”
As Kendry answered, Luke listened with real interest. For once, Jamie’s wife was getting all the attention, not his son. He felt something fill his chest, something dangerously close to pride. Luke Waterson, one of his oldest friends, was clearly seeing what Jamie had always seen. Kendry was interesting to talk to, world-traveled and an intelligent woman. It was good to have someone else appreciate his wife.
Luke turned to him. “You kept her out of my sight until you got a ring on her finger. Smart man. You know I’ve always had a soft spot for redheads.”
A redhead? Jamie looked up at her again. Sure enough, lit by the stadium lights from above, his wife was a dazzling full-color woman against the black night sky behind her. Her hair shone more red than brown, thick and wavy.
Sexy as hell.
Back in the day, he and Luke would have fallen all over themselves trying to catch the attention of a woman like this.
Kendry laughed at something Luke said, and her smile lit her green eyes. Although she held a baby, men were still taking a second glance as they passed her on the bleacher stairs.
She looked as sexy as hell, and damn if that didn’t make Jamie as uncomfortable as hell. He tore his gaze away and nodded at the parents around them. “We better take a seat before kickoff, or all this Texas friendliness will disappear real quick.”
“Football is serious around here,” Luke said to Kendry. “No one knows that better than ‘The Doctor.’” He clapped Jamie on the shoulder. “Hey, you really are a doctor now, aren’t you? That there’s what you’d call ironic.”
“Clever as always, Waterson. You sitting with us?”
“Can’t. Got a date. High maintenance, and I expect it’s already gonna cost me dearly for making her sit alone this long.” He nodded at Kendry again. “Good to meet you. Great to meet you.” To Jamie, he said, “You know I’m going to hound you for more details. Jamie MacDowell is a married man, and my momma is gonna want to know everything. You know how it works.”
“I know how it works.” Jamie’s arrival at the stadium with a woman and a baby was going to top everyone’s list tomorrow morning when they recapped the game with family and friends. Unless, perhaps, the team did something astounding on the field.
Go team, go.
Chapter Nineteen
“Luke seemed really nice.”
His wife spoke conversationally while they completed a complex exchange of items that ended with Sam in Jamie’s lap, nachos in Kendry’s lap, a car seat on the bench below them, a diaper bag in the car seat and two cups of icy soda set carefully under the metal bench they sat on.
“What did he mean when he said it was ironic that you were a doctor?” she asked.
Sam lunged for the nachos, so Jamie dug around in the diaper bag for Sam’s cookies. “It was a nickname I had in school. The Doctor.”
“Because your dad was a doctor?”
“It started sophomore year. I was the backup quarterback and got called in for the fourth quarter. We won.” He shrugged. “Coach said the team was dying, and I’d brought them back to life. The Doctor. Maybe it did have something to do with my dad.”
“Stop.” Kendry looked like she was in shock. “Stop.”
“What?”
“Are you telling me you were the high school quarterback?”
“I wasn’t the starter until junior year, but yeah.”
“I married the high school quarterback? Are you kidding me?”
Jamie couldn’t tell if this was a bad thing or a good thing. Kendry was absolutely wide-eyed. She’d grabbed his arm in her intensity.
“Is this significant somehow?” he asked. “We’re talking about twelve years ago.”
Kendry threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, my gosh. My mom is going to flip out. I’m about to flip out. Me, little old me, married to the high school quarterback.”
Jamie watched her laugh and listened to her go on for a moment. Who knew that Kendry had a thing for quarterbacks? He shook his head and spoke to Sam. “She’s gone off the deep end, son.”
“You don’t understand. My mom hated the cold weather. I spent every fall and winter taking correspondence courses under coconut trees on whatever island called to my parents that year. But deep down, my dearest secret wish was to cheer on guys in shoulder pads.
“When I did go to high school, it was a tiny place that had kindergarten through twelfth grade in one building. Still, even at that little country school, even in the spring when the season was over, the quarterback was the Big Man on Campus. I didn’t stand a chance with him. But you,” she said, gesturing from his chest to the stadium at large, “at this practically NFL stadium, you were the quarterback of a real team. And I married you.” Kendry nearly squealed the last word and thumped his arm for good measure.
“You’re telling me I can still get mileage with girls for being a high school has-been quarterback?”
“I’m your wife. I’m the one who gets mileage for snagging the quarterback.” Kendry popped a chip in her mouth and winked at him.
Winked at him? Serious Kendry, so interested in kidney-function tests and lumbar punctures?
Jamie wasn’t certain he could resist this new version. Sexy hair, tight jeans, flirting and laughing. The desire to sleep with her had never been stronger.
The familiar guilt returned. Lust wasn’t the same thing as love. Amina should be the one sitting next to him in the bleachers. Amina should be handing a cookie to Sam.
Amina hadn’t wanted this life.
Jamie looked around the stadium. The Huskies were winning. The band was in full regalia, filing out of the stands and lining up behind the end zone, preparing for the halftime show. Parents and fans filled the stands, cheered their boys, called greetings to each other.
Kendry scooted an inch closer to him on the metal bench. She still held his arm, and squeezed it in excitement. “Look how big the marching band is. This is like something out of a movie. I love your school.”
Kendry thought his life was wonderful. Everything Amina had rejected, Kendry wanted.
&n
bsp; What he had was good. It really was. Amina hadn’t been the right woman for his life.
And that thought, that one unacceptably disloyal thought, was enough to kill his joy in the evening. What was wrong with him? He’d loved Amina. They’d created a child together—something else it was disloyal to doubt—and he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to leave her mission and her world. If she hadn’t died in childbirth, they would have worked things out, somehow. They hadn’t been able to find a way during the eight months before Sam was born, but they would have come to some compromise, had she lived.
The woman sitting next to him now hadn’t asked for any compromise. Kendry had agreed to live with him on his terms, wholly.
He looked down to see Kendry’s hand, plain and unadorned, touching his thigh to get his attention. Amina had refused to wear an engagement ring for fear of alienating the local women she wanted to help. Rings symbolized romance. Amina found that immodest. Kendry had married him without one.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.” He looked into her eyes, sometimes hazel, sometimes green, but always pretty and full of true concern. “Thanks for asking.”
Thank you for wanting what I have to offer.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. Gently, gratefully, unrushed. He lingered for a moment, feeling the softness of her skin under his lips, the brush of her hair on his face.
He wasn’t breaking any rules. As he’d told her, he couldn’t love her like he’d loved Amina. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t value the tenderhearted woman he’d made his wife.
Kendry leaned forward to fuss with the diaper bag, breaking their contact. Her hair hid her face as she pulled out a blanket for Sam.
Sam was the reason he’d made this woman his wife. For a minute, Jamie had forgotten that this was all about Sam. It had almost felt like it was all about his marriage.
“We can go now, if you’re tired,” Kendry said. “It’s getting colder.”
“Sam’s happy where he is. Let’s stay. You want to see the halftime show pretty badly, I’ll bet, even if the quarterback doesn’t do a thing in it.”