The Child Who Changed Them, page 16
“I wasn’t sure you’d still want to shop with me,” she said as she climbed into the front seat of his new big SUV, having changed out of her scrubs into a dark, tie-dyed tank sundress. She’d redone her ponytail, too, leaving her shoulders bare. With the humid eighty-degree temperature that day, he understood her need to be cool. Comfortable. He could have done without seeing those shoulders, though, so soon after having buried his head in them.
“We have to eat,” he told her a second later than he probably should have. She surely knew he’d been thinking of something else.
And smart as she was, or more accurately, as well as she knew him, she’d probably know what he’d been thinking about, too.
“And the way to handle what happened last night is to face it head-on,” he hastily said. “If we pretend it didn’t happen, it’s just going to lie in wait, and get us again.”
She nodded. “You must have been...uncomfortable...”
“I took care of it.” She could make of that what she liked, but he hoped she was picturing him with his hand active—and wanting it to have been hers—since he’d been picturing the hand as hers.
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t,” she replied pragmatically.
So much for her sharing his lustful solution. He needed to face it head-on, but wasn’t so fond of being hit on the head with it.
“For future reference, can we keep that kind of information to ourselves? Unless of course you want us both to share every time we have...um...difficult nights?”
She chuckled. “You’re going to hold me to the fire, aren’t you, Adams? Making sure that I don’t require anything of you that isn’t also required of me.”
“Would you have it any other way?”
“No.”
They rode in silence for a couple of minutes and, laying her head back on the seat, she sighed, looking more relaxed than he’d seen her outside of his bed immediately after sex.
“You’re certainly a different passenger than I had riding with me to Mission Viejo earlier in the week,” he said, wanting her to see that they really could get through the tough times. Less than twenty-four hours since they’d almost made a horrible mistake, and there she was, comfortable going grocery shopping with him.
“I feel safer in the bigger car,” she told him. “And safer when I’m the driver.”
And he felt like an A-class idiot.
He’d been all over what it had to have taken her to recover from paralysis. And to deal with the death of the love of her life in a vehicle.
He’d failed to process that she’d been a passenger in a fatal car accident. No one forgot something like that. He saw too many incidents of post-traumatic stress in his line of work.
“Were you conscious?” he asked, wanting her to know that she didn’t have to be alone with whatever horrors were stored in her mind. “After the crash?”
She nodded. And then said, “And it’s not that I don’t want you to talk about it, but can we please just keep the conversation easy while we’re on the road?”
Note taken. She needed his attention fully on his driving. Not on her.
As did anyone else driving within his vicinity.
Elaina might think she didn’t have enough to offer, might think she did all the taking, but Greg knew differently.
Even if he hadn’t been in love with her, even if she never returned his love in the same way, in her quiet, unassuming way, she was giving him a much fuller awareness of everything around him. Making his world more alive.
How could a man not stick around for that?
* * *
Pushing her cart out to his car, Elaina was happier than she’d been in a long, long time. Peacefully so. With anticipation for the future lingering around the periphery of her mind. She’d grasp at it and it would fade, but if she didn’t pay attention, it would flit around again.
She loaded her groceries and Greg loaded his—on opposite sides of the huge space in the back. “We’re probably wasting money here,” he said, closing the hatch.
“I supposed we could figure out a monthly average and include it in the rent,” she allowed hesitantly, waiting for her mind to come up with some reason why it wasn’t a good idea. Or some stab of guilt to poke her from the inside out.
Pulling her seat belt down, fitting the clasp into the holder, she let it go when she did feel a sudden stab from the inside out.
“What’s wrong?” Greg, instantly attentive as her seat belt snapped back, turned toward her.
“Nothing,” she told him, afraid to move this time, lest her little one freeze again. “Put your hand on my stomach,” she said. “Right where I put it last night.”
“The baby’s moving?” He glanced at her, and then at her belly, as though he expected the child to just pop right up and say hello.
“Yes,” she said softly, not wanting her voice to distract her little one from exercising.
Placing his hand gently right where she’d helped him place it the night before, Greg applied a very slight pressure. And sat completely still.
Reminding her of a time she’d seen him with his stethoscope on a patient’s chest, counting heartbeats. He looked like he was concentrating that completely. Was intensely focused.
The baby moved again, more strongly. Greg’s face blanked. As though he was in shock. She watched him, waiting for him to glance up at her. Waiting for his smile.
He didn’t look up. He just kept staring at his hand on her belly, his eyes moist. Then welling. And tears dripped slowly down his face.
Elaina, unable to hold back her own tears, thanked whatever fates whose bad side she’d been on for so long, for allowing her to give Greg this gift.
* * *
“I think maybe it’s time to find out the gender of the baby.” They’d put away their groceries and Greg made the comment to her as he returned from putting the toothpaste he’d purchased away in his bathroom. She was standing at the sliding glass door in the dining room, watching Beldon out in the yard, and as he spoke, she opened the door and walked outside, leaving the door open.
Because she was coming right back in? Or as an invitation to follow her?
Greg took it as invitation. “Unless you don’t want to,” he amended his statement, plopping down in a chair on the patio right outside the door. There were two padded chairs and a love seat there, with a wrought iron table. He’d never seen any of it used.
She laughed as Beldon came running over to her and sat, his whole body seeming to wiggle with his tail. When she didn’t pet him or hand down a treat, he jumped up on her.
“Down,” Greg said, kindly but with the firmness that told everyone at work to do as he said at once. And then realized that he’d just rushed right into something that wasn’t his business.
“Down,” Elaina repeated, taking the dog’s paws off from her belly and lowering them to the ground.
“I shouldn’t have butted in.”
Sitting down opposite him, Elaina called Beldon to her and started petting him. “Of course, you should have,” she said. “You’re going to be here indefinitely, and he’s part of the household. The way I see it, we’re co-parenting him, too. Although the responsibility of Beldon is all mine, I’m not shoving that off onto you...”
He hadn’t thought for a second that she was.
“It actually worked, huh?” she asked, smiling again as she looked at him. “You’re right, he needs to know that he can’t jump up. Most particularly after the baby comes. I just wasn’t thinking about that...”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Finding out the sex of the baby.”
Ah. Curious, he asked, “What do you think about it?”
She shook her head. Which made him need to know even more. He waited.
“I want to know,” she said. “It’s time. I get that...”
He nodded, not following.
“Right now...” Putting both of her hands on her belly, she continued, “This is just the beginning. We have a heartbeat and movement. It’s a safe happy place to be...and not much else to think about...”
Or worry about. Greg stood up, reached a hand down to her, and when she hesitated, shook his hand a bit. “Come on, walk with me,” he said.
Warmth flooded his entire being as she put her hand in his and stood, walked with him across the yard to the shed, Beldon trotting along beside them as though certain that he’d been included in the invitation.
Taking a key out of his pocket, he opened the door and stepped aside, showing her, on the workbench side of the building, the beginnings of a new project.
“You work with wood?” she asked, sounding shocked enough that he could have been offended. Except that her shock was valid.
“I’ve never tried before,” he told her. “But you’ve talked so much about the great work Wood does and so... I called him and asked if he’d mind giving me a hand in making a crib for the baby.”
They’d looked at furniture. Hadn’t landed on any crib that seemed like...the one.
“You called Wood.” She stared at him, and by the blank expression on her face, he couldn’t tell if he’d upset her or not.
So he just continued on with what was. “I did. And he’s come over a couple of times while you weren’t here, to help me get started. I’m doing the legs,” he said. They were the most basic. “And I’m on my seventh one.”
“The crib’s going to have seven legs?”
“Five are in the trash.”
Elaina glanced toward the two good stems he had sitting on the worktable, with the router he’d recently learned to use, and said, “You think you’ll have it done in time?”
Practically speaking, the question had merit. “I know I wouldn’t if I was doing it myself,” he told her. “Wood’s making the majority of it at his place. I’ve been there once, and then he set me up here with the legs.”
“Wood’s making us a crib?” Her eyes lit up at that one. And after having seen her ex-husband’s abilities, the bedroom and nursery furniture in his and Cassie’s home, Greg understood Elaina’s excitement.
“We’re making it together,” he told her. Because he had a point to make. “When you talked about Wood making Alan’s furniture, it made me want to do the same for my baby. I’m a doctor, good with my hands and doing math. I’m great at figuring out puzzles and putting things together...but I don’t know the first thing about woodworking. What tools to use for what. How they work. The glues, the types of woods...yet I couldn’t get that idea of a finished crib, handmade, with my work in it, out of my head. Maybe I wasn’t going to be living where the crib would live, but even more so if I wasn’t, I was jazzed by the idea that my child would sleep in a crib I’d helped make...”
She was looking silently from him to the workbench with those two spindles of wood, while Beldon went back out to run in the yard.
“I might not end up doing much of it,” he said. “I might not ever get the legs right. But I’m happy if all I do is sit and think about how cool it would be. If I let fear of the unknown stop me finding out, I’ll miss a whole bunch of experiences along the way.”
Her gaze turned on him, not in a particularly friendly way. “You think I’m letting fear stop me from moving forward? Because let me tell you...”
“...I think you could let fear rob you of enjoying every step of the way,” he interrupted her. “And I think you’re so set on doing it all on your own that you don’t factor in the Woods in your life. Wood being one of them. But there’s Cassie. And me. Among others. Yeah, the more the baby grows, the more we find out, the more real it all becomes, but... You want to know the sex of the child. And yet you’re holding back...”
“When I should be moving forward, enjoying every step, no matter what it brings?”
Spoken by a woman who’d walked more incredibly painful steps than he’d ever fully grasp. Her words stopped him.
“You’re right, Greg.” The soft tone had him looking up at her. “I need to let myself enjoy more. To reach for more.” She was looking at him in a way he recognized from their previous situation and his body lit up.
And then she reached for one of the crib legs. “This is actually pretty good,” she said, sounding impressed.
“I thought so, too, but it hasn’t passed Wood’s inspection yet. I have to tell you, Wood isn’t going to let anything less than perfect on that crib.”
“I can’t believe he’s making us a crib!”
“I can’t believe you didn’t know he would,” Greg said. “When I talked to him about it, he’d acted kind of hurt that you hadn’t already talked to him about what you wanted. Apparently you weren’t shy about asking for the bedroom set he made you.” He hadn’t known until then that Wood had furnished Elaina’s suite.
Elaina’s hands ran slowly, almost lovingly, along the sanded edge of a crib leg. “That was a while back...”
“To hear him tell it, that bedroom set saved his life.”
She turned back to him. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s up for him to tell you, but I gather that he was on some thin ice after Peter died. And felt that, with his lack of education, there was little he could do for you, except give you a home that welcomed you, a bed to sleep in that pleased you, landscaping that spoke to you...”
Her eyes teared and Greg had to fight not to reach out for her as he said, “You were so determined to fight on your own, as I think you had to be to survive. Yet you welcomed him into your life, built a home with him, which neither of you would have had without the other, from what I can see. You did as much for him as he did for you, Elaina...”
She nodded, rubbing the leg of the crib again, caressing it, and Greg knew his first bout of jealousy of an inanimate object.
“Once we know the baby’s gender, it will all be more real,” he said softly. “We’ll be loving on a deeper level as the baby takes on an identity. Maybe our worries will grow, too, but so will the joy.”
She nodded. Smiled. But he saw a tear slide down the side of her face that was visible to him, knew that he’d pushed as far as he should.
“This was supposed to be a surprise, by the way,” he said, picking up the second good leg. “My idea, not Wood’s, so we can let him know you know.”
Elaina glanced up as she took the leg she’d been fondling into both hands. “It seems too good to be true...the way this is all working out. It makes me afraid of what could be around the corner.”
“I know.” And he understood why. There was no denying that she’d suffered more than a lot of people. Had memories of horror locked away in her brain. No taking away the shock of tragedy from her emotional instincts. “Just know that I’ll be there...and others will be there with you. Around every corner.”
If she got that he was telling her he loved her, so be it.
If not, then that was okay, too. He didn’t want to give her more than she was ready to handle. And wasn’t ready to know if she didn’t return his feelings.
One step at a time.
For both of them.
Chapter Seventeen
Elaina was in the kitchen that weekend, making a cup of tea, when Greg came in from the shed. Now that he was no longer hiding his project, he’d spent most evenings after work outside. Sometimes Beldon was with him, sometimes not.
Sometimes she had to shake herself to put it all together. How could it be that she was experiencing some of the things she’d enjoyed with Wood—watching him working wood in the shed and seeing a dog in the yard—and yet experiencing them in a whole new way?
A much fuller, more alive way?
Greg had said that much of the life she and Wood had shared had been of her own making. And that she’d saved Wood as much as he’d saved her. More and more, she was beginning to see truth in that belief. But still, she feared every good thing that was happening.
She wanted the baby. Didn’t doubt her ability to love it. To give it a happy life.
And yet...she couldn’t accept the possibility that her own life could be happy, as well. It was like she had a mental roadblock she just couldn’t get around.
Watching Greg come into the kitchen just then, she felt the pang of her inner battle worse than ever. He wanted her. She wanted so badly to give him what he wanted. To try to make him happy. Sexually. Emotionally. For life.
And yet...to do so...felt wrong. Even the thought of it brought forth feelings of immense guilt. She fought them. Fought with herself. Was fighting for her personal emotional freedom and right to feel utter joy. But couldn’t figure out how to win the battle.
“I’ve chosen a name if it’s a boy,” Greg announced, sending a spiral of emotion through her. Anticipation. Excitement. An instinctive hold on both.
They had an ultrasound scheduled the following morning. And if that didn’t reveal the gender of the child, they would have a blood test done at the same time.
Greg hadn’t said another word about finding out the gender after their talk in the shed. She was the one who’d made the decision. Who’d pushed to have it done.
Because she did want to be fully alive.
To that end, she looked up from the cup of microwaved water into which she’d just dropped a tea bag. “What is it?” she asked, trying not to notice how sexy he looked in the jeans and white undershirt he’d adopted as his woodworking attire. She didn’t even care about the sawdust that clung to the material and would soon be leaving a little trail down the hallway.
If Greg noticed, he’d vacuum it up. If he didn’t, she would.
If she were a different woman, she’d be rubbing herself against him and getting some of that sawdust on herself.
