Christie Ridgway - Right by Her Side

This woman didn’t come close to that description.

Determined to get her out of his office and get on with the rest of his workday, he focused on her Portland General Hospital name tag. “Well, Rebecca Holley, R.N., I’m a busy man. Why, exactly, did you stop by?”

She sank into the chair across from his desk, doing that distracting suck-worry-pop with her lower lip again. “This is a little difficult to say….”

But to his shock, she managed to get it out, anyway, in a few brief sentences. A mix-up at Children’s Connection. His sperm. Her pregnancy. Throughout her explanation, Trent could only stare at her again, numb.

Disbelieving.

Disbelieving and numb.

When she wound down, he realized she expected a response from him. “My sisters put you up to this,” he tried. “It’s a little late for April Fools’, but—”

“I wouldn’t joke about something like this,” she snapped, her spine straightening and her voice sharpening. “I wouldn’t joke about my baby.”

Baby. Baby.

Memories rushed into his mind. His sisters as chubby, chortling infants. The hero worship in his little brother’s eyes. The hair rising on the back of his nine-year-old neck the day Robbie Logan had gone missing while playing at their house. Twenty-plus years later, the choking sensation in his lungs when he’d learned his baby nephew had been kidnapped.

Then that sickening, bat-to-the-gut blow when his wife had stood in an examining room at Children’s Connection and finally admitted that the only fertility problem she suffered from was him. That she’d lied about going off the pill because she didn’t want to bear his child—or even be married to him any longer.

Yesterday’s headache slammed into the base of his skull and lingered there, pulsing pain. “It’s a joke,” he said aloud, his voice harsh. “It’s got to be someone’s idea of a joke.”

His gaze lasered on the pretty little Victorian valentine who might not be a spy, but who was playing some criminal game all the same. He pointed his finger at her, but kept the volume of his voice under strict control. “And I won’t be laughing if you’re still sitting here when I get back.”

With that, he rose to his feet and stalked toward the door. He pulled it open.

“Wait—”

But he didn’t pay attention to the woman. Instead he marched unseeing into the hall, almost knocking his assistant over. His hands shot out and he steadied her. “Sorry, Claudine. I’m sorry.”

She stared up at him. “Trent? What’s the matter?”

Nothing. Everything. It couldn’t be true. He swung his head around, trying to find something else to focus on. Proposals. Reports. Spreadsheets. The business details that had always filled his life.

But he couldn’t turn off thoughts of chortling babies, missing children, kidnapped toddlers. Hopes that had never been born.

Then he sensed movement behind him, and knew he couldn’t stay a moment longer. He couldn’t face her, the woman who’d dredged up all this in his mind. Already heading for the stairs, he called back to Claudine, “Take the rest of the afternoon off. You deserve it.”

“No! The company bully is giving me time off? And going home early himself?”

He didn’t have the heart to come up with a matching insult. But that was good, wasn’t it?

After all, hearts were a damn inconvenience.

A fter a long, less-than-uplifting day at the hospital, Rebecca was halfway up the walk to her small duplex when she halted, arrested by the sight of a pair of men’s leather loafers resting on her welcome mat. She was still blinking at them when they moved, and the body they were attached to shifted from its position against her shadowed front door and into the evening light.

Trent Crosby. He’d strode out of his office the day before, his face expressionless, and she hadn’t heard from him since. She’d dared to hope it would stay that way.

“What do you want?” she called out, not getting any closer to him. She had reason to be wary. He’d accused her of being a spy one day and a prankster the next. Who knew what would come out of the man’s mouth now?

“We need to talk,” he said, his voice quiet. His steady gaze met hers. “You need to give me a chance.”

She’d already given him a chance. Yesterday. Though she’d been embarrassed by their encounter in the parking lot the day before that, by the time she’d driven home she’d rethought the situation. In good conscience she couldn’t blame the confusion on him, not when she hadn’t stuck around long enough to clear things up. So she’d tried again, with no better results.

As she continued to study him in silence, he took a step closer.

She took a step back.

He stilled. “I’ll make it worth your while.” His watchful expression eased into a coaxing smile. “I’ve brought you a present.”

Oh, no. That charming smile scared the heck out of her, because it slid over his mouth with so little effort and then without any more it was already affecting her, warming her icy misgivings of him.

So she scowled. “Present?”

She reminded herself that rich men found it easy to hand out gifts. Her ex had been big on giving them, too. The ones he’d charged to their credit cards had tipped her off that he was cheating on her, because the glittering baubles and sexy little nothings hadn’t come her way. “What kind of present?”

Trent half turned and dragged something over that she hadn’t noticed in the shadows of her porch. “Boxes,” he said. “There was a pile by the Dumpsters as I was leaving the office today and I thought of you.”

He’d brought her boxes.

Of course, the only reason why that knowledge was melting the ice inside her was because she’d spent an hour after her shift with Merry, the asthmatic child to whom she’d promised a playhouse. Those boxes meant she could tell the little girl tomorrow that she was making progress on the project.

With that in mind, she hurried toward Trent. He’d brought boxes all right. Six flattened boxes of the ideal, extra-large size that would provide the main construction materials for the kid-size cottage she had in mind. “Thank you,” she said, thinking of Merry again. Rebecca’s fingers tightened on her keys as she took a breath. “I suppose…I suppose you can come in.”

But she’d keep her guard up. That wouldn’t be hard. Her navy-brat years, while they had given her good skills in getting along with people, had also trained her to maintain a safe distance from them as well. Not only wasn’t it smart to trust others on short acquaintance, but if you got too close, it hurt too much when the next base posting came along. And then there were the lessons her ex had taught her…

Trent followed her through the front door into her small living room. As she hung her purse on the bentwood coatrack that stood beside the door, from the corner of her eye she saw him taking in the surroundings. A tissue-thin Oriental carpet over clean but scratched hardwood. A love seat “slipcovered” with an old quilt she’d found at a yard sale and then tucked around the torn cushions. The simple curtains that had started life as sheets until she and her sewing machine had spent some time with them. The cinder-block-and-plywood shelves that were the staple of college students and women who were restarting their lives after a failed marriage.

As she turned to face him, she felt herself bristling. He couldn’t think much of her modest home.

His gaze moved from the entry that led to her never-remodeled kitchen and onto her face. “Nice,” he said. “Homey.”

Hah. Homely was more like it. But there wasn’t a note of snideness to his voice or any derision in his eyes.