THE STARLIGHT HILL COMPLETE COLLECTION: 1-8

by Bell, Heatherly

  She remembered him. The way he liked to be touched, everything he’d taught her about how to please him. And she’d done that tonight, with the kind of passion he remembered. Ivey wasn’t shy or retiring with him, she was eager and took what she wanted. This had to be love, the kind that didn’t fade away, and from now on he wasn’t going to settle for anything less.

  If it meant he had to make more sacrifices, give up more of himself, lose sleep, he’d do it. He didn’t know how Ivey felt, but he’d find out soon enough. This time, he wasn’t going to let her walk away without an explanation.

  There was a short, insistent knock on the door, and Jeff halfway convinced himself that Ivey was back, having forgotten her key. Instead an older woman stood in front of him, dressed in a peasant top, jeans, and Birkenstocks.

  “I heard from my friend Marissa that Ivey Lancaster is living here. Is she here now?”

  “Sorry no, she’s with a patient.”

  “Don’t tell me at the hospital.”

  “She’s covering for a midwife who’s out of town. It’s going to be a while, I think.” He hoped the woman would get the message. She should come back later.

  “Fine. I’ll wait for her if you don’t mind. I’m up from LA, trying to talk her into letting go of this foolishness with the hospital. I heard all about it from Marissa. Ivey and I used to work together.”

  Jeff moved aside and waved the woman inside. Apparently he would have company for a while. “You must be Babs. She’s talked about you.”

  Babs took a seat on the couch, and for the first time he noticed the overnight bag. Great. Did she think she would stay the night here? He stared at the bag, trying to mentally telegraph that she wasn’t going to be able to. On the other hand, Babs could have Scott’s room and Ivey could stay with him. Face it, as far as he was concerned, she’d never sleep in Scott’s room again.

  “Ivey and I go way back. Never would have thought I’d mentor one of my own patients, but Ivey was special.”

  He froze. “Excuse me?”

  “I said she was special.”

  “You said she was one of your patients. Maybe I heard wrong.” Wouldn’t she have told him if she’d been pregnant? They’d been discussing labor and delivery for weeks, and she never thought to add her own personal experience? Why hide that from him? Did she think he of all people would judge her? Or — the other thought that immediately ran through his mind was too terrible to be true.

  Bab’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. What did you say your name was again?”

  “I didn’t. How long ago was she your patient?”

  Now she looked nervous, and Jeff could feel anger roiling around in the pit of his stomach. But it couldn’t be true. Ivey wouldn’t have done this to him.

  “I think you should talk to Ivey,” she said with a mortified look that gave him his answer.

  But it was much too late for her to stop talking now. He forced himself to speak calmly. “Answer the question. How long ago? A year ago? Five years ago? When?”

  Babs sighed and looked directly in his eyes. “I’m not going to say anymore, but you’re asking the right questions. Ivey was my patient five years ago.”

  His baby? How did he miss it? Five years ago, Ivey had been suddenly clingy and tearful. Out of the blue she’d asked him about family housing for married students. He’d only felt the noose tighten around his neck and made up some lame excuse about it being too crowded. Too expensive. Too late to sign up. He’d wanted her to be patient. It was going to be bad enough being married on a resident’s salary, but he couldn’t stand the thought of having his wife work to put him through school. No, waiting and planning was best.

  Obviously he hadn’t had all the facts. Ivey had been pregnant with his baby. Didn’t think he had a right to know. Phased him out, just like that.

  Jeff had never felt hot molten lava course through his veins before, but damn if there wasn’t a first time for everything. “I have to go. Stay here as long as you like.”

  “Wait. Where are you going?” The woman wouldn’t stop talking, but he could barely hear her words, little bites of sound in the distance.

  Suddenly the past had ringing clarity to it, even as red seemed to cloud his vision.

  His fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and he hit the dashboard with his fist. So many questions to be answered from the one woman who couldn’t seem to stop hurting him. This one final dig, taking his child away, was almost more than he could take.

  He didn’t care that he’d be interrupting, as he drove to the Foster house. He didn’t care anymore because he needed answers and he wasn’t going to wait another second for them.

  12

  It might be a long night with little sleep for any of them, but at the end of it Asia would hold her baby in her arms for the first time. Ivey still wasn’t sure how Asia had managed to nail her delivery date so accurately. Call it luck or good timing, but the Fosters seemed to have both in spades.

  “You’re sixty percent effaced and two centimeters dilated.” Ivey took her gloves off.

  “Two? Only two? Tell me why I feel like I’m at twenty.”

  “Honey, it’s okay.” Asia’s husband Derek massaged her back.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Derek looked wounded, and Ivey gave him a little apologetic smile. “Prodromal labor is hard, but you’ll get there. You probably have a big baby, and he or she is tiring your poor womb out. But this is going to happen soon. We need to wait the baby out. So far everything looks great.”

  “You’ll stay with us. Right?” Derek asked, the high pitch in his voice and the terror in his eyes giving her a clear idea of his level of apprehension. She’d give him a ten, ninety-nine percent effaced. Poor guy.

  “I’m not going anywhere. Why don’t you get her some more ice chips?”

  Derek, given a green light to do something away from his wife, took off at a near run.

  “Remind me why I did this,” Asia said. “Why have his baby? He’s so damn big, no wonder his baby is big. Why couldn’t I have fallen in love with someone smaller? Thinner?”

  Glad Derek was out of the room, Ivey wiped Asia’s face with a soft, damp towel. “Because you love him?”

  “Oh, God help me, I do.” Asia sobbed. “I was so mean to him. Derek! Come back here. I didn’t mean it. I love you, baby.”

  Derek didn’t waste any time hightailing back into the room with the ice chips, the look of a happy puppy dog in his eyes. “You called me, baby?”

  Ivey left the bedroom, giving them a moment. This was the best part of a home birth. Home. She’d be in the kitchen if they needed her. In a few minutes, she’d be back to suggest that Asia take a walk and move around some more. Meanwhile, time was their best friend.

  But it wouldn’t be the same in a hospital setting, even if the women’s center had birthing rooms they’d designed to look like bedrooms. It wasn’t home, and Ivey could see Marissa’s point.

  Being an employee of the hospital would mean that Ivey would be used for more than one function and maybe more than one patient at a time. It was in the economy of health care. Time spent waiting for nature to take its course might not fit into the natural ebb and flow of the hospital.

  From the kitchen window, Ivey saw the bright headlights of a car pull up the driveway. The Fosters were private people, and they hadn’t invited any extended family to the event. They weren’t expecting anyone.

  Ivey made her way to the front door to discourage any eager friends or relatives from coming any further when she noticed Jeff. One look at him, his purposeful stride towards the house, and she realized something had changed. It was in the set of his jaw and in the way he held himself like a tightly wound cord. In an instant she knew.

  She rushed to meet him on the front lawn of the home. They couldn’t do this. Not here, not now. She needed a minute, or another month. Another year. She wasn’t ready, even after all this time.

  “We need to talk,” Jeff said.

  �
�Now’s not a good time.”

  “Then make it a good time, because this isn’t going to wait.”

  “It has to wait. I have a patient—”

  “What did you do with my child?” He took another step toward Ivey, the heat of his anger nearly emanating off of him in waves.

  Oh, not this. She’d wanted to spare him all along. Maybe she’d been selfish, or maybe she’d been selfless. Either way, Jeff was about to hurt in places he didn’t even know existed and all because of her.

  “Answer me!”

  The emotion she heard in his voice mixed in with the anger turned her answer into a strangled sob. “There is no child. I had a miscarriage.”

  He flinched like he’d been slapped, and his body seemed to cave in a little at that answer. “Why?”

  She realized that he wasn’t asking why she’d lost the baby. It was a bigger why. He wanted to know why she’d never told him.

  “You didn’t want me anymore. If I told you, I knew you would have done the right thing. You would have married me, and you didn’t want to get married. Not then. I have enough pride to want to be married because someone loves me and not out of obligation.”

  “So this was all about you? No—you made a decision for both of us. And you didn’t have the right to do that.”

  Those words were like bullets hitting her heart. Yeah, she had no right, but she’d done it anyway. “You wouldn’t be a doctor today. You might have had to drop out of school.”

  “So you did it for me?” The tone in his voice left no doubt that he didn’t believe her for a second.

  “For you and for me. I was going to tell you someday.”

  The words sounded so empty. So false. Because they’d been the words and thoughts of a scared and stubborn twenty-year-old who didn’t know any better. Who wouldn’t listen to what anyone else told her.

  “Some. Day.”

  “If I’d given birth, I would have told you. Eventually. I would have let you be a part of our baby’s life.”

  He slashed a hand through his hair. “Would you? That’s really big of you.”

  He moved another step toward her, closing the distance between them.

  “Look, I get that you’re mad. But this is not the time or the—”

  “Mad? Ivey, what you did went so far over the line that the line is a dot in the distance.”

  “But—I did it for you. You had our lives planned out, and the baby didn’t fit in.” Why couldn’t he see the noble sacrifice she’d made so that he could finish school without complications? What about that?

  “We made love tonight. What if you’d gotten pregnant? Would you tell me this time or would you walk away again?”

  “That’s not fair. Of course I wouldn’t. It’s different.”

  “What’s different? I loved you then, and I love you now. I don’t care about any of the details. We would have worked it out.”

  With one swift move his right hand pulled her forehead to his own and held it tightly in place. She felt the strength of his anger, barely restrained and bubbling beneath the surface. But it was the tears forming in his eyes that caused another sob to hitch in her throat.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You. Had. No. Right.”

  He released her and stomped back to his car, taking off without another look in her direction. She stayed rooted to the spot on the Foster’s lawn, right near the azalea bush. Wondering as she watched Jeff drive off if those were the last words he’d ever say to her.

  Turned out that no one thought having their choice taken away was any kind of favor. Jeff included. She ought to know that better than anyone. Wasn’t she fighting so that women could have more choices in a hospital setting? And yet she hadn’t given Jeff the same respect.

  It dawned on her how much she’d hurt him.

  “Miss Ivey?” It was Derek, calling out to her from inside the screened front door. “You okay?”

  Ivey kept her back to him as she wiped the tears away, and squared her shoulders. “I’m fine.”

  “I thought I heard shouting.”

  She turned to see the concerned look of a Daddy-to-be, already in full-fledged protective mode. He’d be a good dad.

  Like Jeff would have been.

  And suddenly Ivey couldn’t breathe. Maybe this was why she hadn’t wanted to come home for so long. Why she’d stayed away. She’d already lost enough, hurt enough, and cried enough.

  But not with him.

  The only person who’d ever said anything that made any sense was Babs, who after the miscarriage had told Ivey that no one but the baby’s father would fully understand her grief. But she hadn’t shared that with him. She hadn’t shared her grief with anyone.

  Everything had been all right while she pretended, while she kept the truth locked away safely in her heart.

  “Miss Ivey?” Derek stood at the door, and it didn’t look like he’d be going back inside anytime soon.

  Ivey swallowed back a sob. “It was a big misunderstanding.”

  The width and span of which might be too great to ever get over.

  * * *

  Jeff drove because he had to keep moving. If he didn’t move, he would have to hit something. Hard. He had to get away from Ivey, because he was too angry to talk any more. Too hurt to try to understand. Like a lighthouse to a ship, the hospital beckoned. The best thing to do after a shocking, life-changing event had to be something normal. Routine. That’s what he needed right now.

  And he still wanted to check on Frank. When he’d dropped by earlier in the day, Frank had been out of his room for more tests. Jeff still wanted to know what he’d missed. In the ER he’d run every test he could think of and come up with nothing. Somehow, though, he’d missed it. Frank had a heart condition.

  He took the elevator up to the cardiac wing of the hospital and asked the night shift nurse for Frank’s room number. By now he was under the care of a specialist, and maybe Dr. Bryans would have some answers.

  Jeff ran into Dr. Bryans in the hallway. “How’s Frank Sullivan? I came to check on him.”

  “He’ll be fine. Thanks to all those tests you ran on him, I had a basis of comparison. He’s healthy for the most part, but his heart shows some cardiomyopathy, probably from the undiagnosed arrhythmia. Never caught it on the EKG, so it’s probably paroxysmal. Something his regular doctor should have caught with a twenty-four hour Holter monitor.”

  “He didn’t seem to have a regular doctor.” Something Jeff should have pressed Frank on. Should have demanded to talk to someone at the assisted living center or a relative and make sure they followed up.

  “Yeah, that’s what he told me.” Bryans grabbed the elevator. “Not to worry. He’ll be fine.”

  Jeff wasn’t fine though. He’d had Frank in the ER for a few hours at a time, sometimes several times a week, and he’d still missed it. Sometimes if you turned your head for a second you could miss so much.

  More and more it appeared emergency medicine wasn’t for him. He wanted, needed, to be more involved in the outcome.

  Ivey had denied him that, but no one else would ever again. He should have been there for her, in those days when she would have been scared and alone. When he might have made a difference. Or not.

  But at least he would have been there for her, for their baby. She hadn’t given him that chance, maybe because she didn’t trust him enough. Couldn’t trust that he’d take care of her, because no else ever had. And she didn’t believe he loved her. Not enough.

  And whose fault is that, idiot?

  Jeff sat on an empty chair beside Frank’s bed for several minutes until the man’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Well, hot damn. My favorite doctor.”

  “Thought you might want to see what I look like without a stethoscope around my neck.”

  “No bags under the eyes, either. Doc, have you been relaxing?”

  “Something like that.” He supposed he’d been happy, for about a nanosecond. And Ivey had something to do with it, lik
e as she had everything to do with his misery now. “I did have a couple days off.”

  “Just what I ordered.” Frank winked.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Jeff reassured him. “Now that we know what’s wrong, we can fix it.”

  “What about you? Can we fix what’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m fine,” Jeff closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Or he would be anyway. Someday.

  “If you say so, Doc. But if I promise not to come to the ER any more, will you promise you won’t always be here? I’d like to think of you, young as you are, enjoying life.”

  “Why? Work is a good thing.” It was all he would have now, and maybe all he’d ever need.

  He’d see about switching specialties soon, maybe cardiology or pediatrics. Something in which he could be around for the duration. Witness the outcome. He’d have to start over again but that was okay. Ivey had done it, and so could he.

  “Work is great, it’s just not enough. No lie, trust me, it’ll never be enough.”

  Jeff didn’t believe him. For years now, medicine had been front-and-center in his life and he hadn’t questioned it. Not until Ivey had come back to town and sent his heart and hormones into overdrive. “Let’s talk about you. Do you have any family? Someone who can be here with you?”

  “I have kids, but I hate to bother them.”

  “How many?”

  “Six.” Frank grinned. “I was a busy man in my youth, Doc.”

  “Yes, you were. I’m sure they’d want to know what’s going on with you. Did someone call them?”

  “I have my oldest son on the contact list. He’s flying out from Utah.” Frank sighed. “He won’t be happy.”

  “I’m sure he’s worried.”

  “It’s not that. He works all the time. Anyway, I can’t complain because his salary pays for the prison—I mean the assisted living center. Because you know, I’m too old to remember how to turn off a stove. Might burn the place down.” Frank rolled his eyes.