Karen Smith - Custody for Two

Nothing would have happened, she told herself now.

She’d never indulged in quick affairs. She hadn’t slept with a man since Chad had broken up with her her…since she’d learned his grant in India was more important than she was…that his career didn’t include dragging a wife everywhere he went. He’d pulled the proverbial wool over her eyes and she’d felt like a fool. Sure, she’d tried dating. No man had lit an inner fire. No man had tempted her to give up her life as she knew it. At twenty-nine, she realized she was as set in her ways as any woman her age.

When she entered the cafeteria, she headed toward the beverage area. A few minutes later she was sitting at a table, staring into a cup of coffee when a cheery voice said, “Only one cup if you don’t put any food in your stomach.”

The sound of Gwen Langworthy’s voice always made Shaye smile. Looking up into her friend’s beautiful dark brown eyes, she asked, “What are you doing here on a Saturday?”

“One of my patients delivered her baby this morning. I stopped in the NICU to see if you were there but the nurse told me you’d come down here. Are you okay?”

“Timmy’s coming off the ventilator. I’m fine.”

Gwen was a nurse practitioner, specializing in obstetrics. “Off the vent! That’s great. You’ll be taking him home soon.”

Both Gwen and Kylie had called Shaye often over the past week, offering their support and their presence if she wanted it. Usually Shaye loved spending time with her friends but between her visits to Timmy and the turmoil Dylan caused, she had just wanted to try to sort it all out on her own.

“I hope so,” she breathed fervently.

Pushing her mop of curly dark auburn hair away from her face, Gwen asked, “You don’t think Julia’s brother’s going to contest custody, do you?”

“I don’t think so, but he—” She stopped because at that moment Dylan walked into the cafeteria.

When he saw the two of them, he gave a slight wave to Shaye and went to buy coffee of his own.

As he was paying for it, Shaye said, “That’s Dylan Malloy.”

Gwen’s eyebrows arched and she looked at Shaye curiously. “Is he the reason you haven’t wanted us around this past week?”

“I always want you around,” she protested. “I just had things to sort out.”

Gwen put up her hand to stop her excuse. “I was kidding.” She took another look at Dylan. “But now I’m wondering if he doesn’t have something to do with those things you were sorting out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! You know what he does for a living.”

“Yes, but I can also see he has enough sex appeal to stoke the fantasies of every woman in Wild Horse Junction.”

As Dylan came toward them, Shaye knew Gwen was right. There was something very sensual about Dylan in the way he moved, in the way he talked and in the way he looked at her.

While he approached them, Shaye felt all her senses come alive in a way they didn’t when he wasn’t around. “Dylan, this is Gwen Langworthy. We’ve been friends since we were kids.”

“It’s good to meet you,” Dylan acknowledged, extending his hand to Gwen.

She shook it quickly. “It’s good to meet you, too. I’m sorry about Julia.”

“Thank you. If I’m interrupting…” he started.

“Oh, no,” Gwen assured him. “I have to be going. I just wanted to check in on Shaye.” Leaning down, Gwen gave her a hug. “Take care of yourself,” she murmured. “If you need to talk, call.”

“I will.”

Then, with another smile for them both, Gwen left the cafeteria and Dylan sat in the chair across from Shaye.

Watching him, Shaye noticed Dylan didn’t give her friend a second look, which was unusual. Gwen was beautiful with her curly hair, her deep brown eyes, her figure rounded in all the right places. Shaye and Kylie had always admired their friend’s attributes. But Gwen played them down. Ever since her fiancé had left her at the altar, Gwen had withdrawn from the dating scene.

“Phone call all taken care of?” she asked.

“Derek, a journalist who was with me on the shoot in Tasmania, left that message at the nurses’ desk. My publishing house is moving up the timetable on the book we’re working on.”

“What were you photographing in Tasmania?”

A smile the likes of which she hadn’t seen before brightened Dylan’s face. “Gray kangaroos.”

“What kind of book are you working on?”

“A coffee-table book of wildlife around the globe—reindeer in Scotland, hippos in Botswana and orangutans in Borneo. We even did some underwater photography for the book.”

“You like to take risks,” she said, not approving.

“I don’t take unnecessary risks. I do like to get as close as I can get to my subjects. It’s one of the signature elements in my photos. It’s how I keep working.”

“Which do you like most—the danger or the travel?” Her question wasn’t meant to be a challenge. She was really interested.

“I don’t know if I can separate them. As I said, it’s not the danger than I crave, it’s my interest in my subject that takes me where I need to be.”

“I can’t believe that you and Julia were so different. She liked being a teacher, going to school every day. That must seem boring to you.”

“Julia felt safer with a definite schedule. That came from having our lives torn apart. She liked her day structured from the outside, I just organize mine from the inside. My life seems random but it’s not. I know exactly what I’m doing and where I’m going.”

As they were talking, Shaye couldn’t help but admit that Dylan was a fascinating man. She couldn’t begin to understand why she was attracted to him because she knew she shouldn’t be. Maybe she reacted to him so strongly because they’d been thrust into a high-crisis situation and bonded because of it.

After a few long swallows of coffee, he suggested, “Maybe we should go back upstairs.”

She knew what he was thinking. If they were upstairs, they’d be closer if anything went wrong with Timmy. She was praying nothing would go wrong.

When they returned to the floor where the NICU was located, Shaye greeted the nurses they passed as they walked along the hall.

“You said your father is a cardiologist. Do you run into him much here?” Dylan asked.

“No, just now and then. He’s usually in an operating room or consulting. Dad doesn’t see Randall much, either, even though they both spend a lot of time here at the hospital. It’s just not Dad’s way.” Shaye wished her father could be more in tune with all of them, but he wasn’t and she’d gotten used to that.

In the waiting room, she tried to concentrate on a magazine rather than another conversation with Dylan. However, he paced and she couldn’t help but watch him as he did. She couldn’t help but picture him in the wild, riding an elephant, camouflaging himself in the brush, hiking where other men wouldn’t go.

When they heard footsteps in the hall, Shaye hoped they belonged to Dr. Carrera. The middle-aged neonatologist came into the waiting room with a slight smile on his face. It was the first Shaye had seen since this whole situation had begun.

“How did it go?” she asked, worry sticking in her throat.

“He’s breathing on his own.”

Dylan moved close to her then, so close their arms brushed. “Can we see him?” he asked.

“For a few minutes. The lab results are promising, too.”

Shaye experienced such relief she almost felt dizzy with it. To her surprise, Dylan settled his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go.”

The contact felt right and she didn’t stop to analyze why.

As they sat with Timmy, they reached to touch him. Sadness gripped Shaye when she thought about Julia and Will never holding their son, never feeding him, never kissing him good-night. Shaye couldn’t wait until she could actually hold Timmy in her arms and she wondered if Dylan felt that way, too.