The Child Who Changed Them, page 9
He’d have his house. Sooner than expected, now that he had a child coming.
Just had to take things one step at a time. Figure out the career move, first. And thinking of which... “I talked to administration today and the ED position is still open and still mine if I want it.”
“Are you going to take it?”
“I think so, yes.” What was there to figure out? He was kidding himself if he thought he was actually going to consider going anywhere but Marie Cove. Not while his child was growing up there.
He couldn’t tell whether his answer pleased her or not, or even whether she’d had any reaction at all. She’d turned to the wall with drapes that went almost to the ceiling, pulled the cord. The sun was setting, and gave him a view of the gorgeous, naturally landscaped backyard with a shed way in the back.
“Are you using that shed?”
“No. It was Wood’s. He continued to use it for a while, coming here to do what woodworking he did, but he finally got one built to the side of the house he and Cassie now own together.”
Their relationship was a little complicated for him. Wood, her ex-husband, had continued to use the shed at his old house with Elaina, his ex-wife—even after he’d married Cassie? There were so many questions there.
He asked none of them. “So I could use the shed to store the rest of my things? Just while I’m staying here?” He could buy shelves...
“Of course.”
Another problem solved.
None of these things, his job, his living arrangements, storage, were major issues. He and the woman he was standing with were bringing their child into the world. They were going to be parenting together.
And he knew so little about her.
And she, him.
“Does Wood know I’ll be occupying his suite?” They had to start somewhere.
Leaning against the door frame, she shook her head. “I haven’t told him and Cassie that I’m pregnant yet, and they’d need to know that to understand why you have to be here. But it’s not his anymore. I bought the house from him when he and Cassie got married.”
She looked relaxed, leaning there, even with her long dark ponytail as pristine as her house. He missed seeing her hair down.
Around him.
Not a place he could go. Absolutely not, if he accepted her invitation to live there.
And he had to do that. He couldn’t lose the chance to be around his unborn child. To feel the baby move. Or be there if something went wrong...
He glanced around, picturing his furniture in the empty space. Seeing himself living there. Wanting to live there.
And still needing to know more.
“You do plan to tell Wood and his new wife about the baby, then?” What was he walking into?
“Of course. They’re my family.”
And about that...
“Have you told your parents?” She’d never mentioned them but had never asked about his, either. Had she even considered that her baby was going to have two sets of grandparents?
Of course, until the day before, they hadn’t even known if the baby was his.
There he was, rushing into things again. Wanting it all done at once.
Elaina straightened then, arms crossed, leaned against the doorjamb again. “My parents are dead, Greg. I thought you knew that.”
His heart stilled. And ached, too. “I’m so sorry. I...how would I have known that?” How couldn’t he have known that? He’d been sleeping with her, exclusively, for more than a year, longer than any lover other than his ex-wife, and he didn’t know she was an orphan?
“What happened? How long ago?”
“They were killed in a car accident when I was in college. My sophomore year. I was an only child and already dating Peter then, and he was wonderful to me. He and Wood...they took me into their home, their family, as though I’d always been a part of their world...”
Everything slowed. His thoughts. The air pulling into his lungs. The vacant room seemed too full. “Did you say...Wood?” He homed in on the one thing that he could grasp.
She nodded. “He was Peter’s older brother. Their dad died when Peter was little, and then, when Wood was seventeen, their mom died, so Wood quit school to take care of Peter. He even put him through medical school.”
She’d lost her parents in a car accident. And then lost her first husband the same way? The fact that the woman was standing there, owner of her own home, planning a life for herself...spoke volumes to him. She was a survivor. One who didn’t give up. No matter what the cost.
And... “You married your husband’s older brother.” It was all coming at him so fast. He was both fascinated and horrified, feeling the need to get out of there and also wrap his arms around her, hold her and never let go.
She met his gaze, held it for what seemed like forever. He held hers, too. It was all the touching they could do. They weren’t lovers anymore. And couldn’t be anything else. Still, Greg had to know who she was, this woman he’d taken to his bed for so many months, and who was going to have his child.
“It was Wood’s idea,” she said, sounding as though she had to reassure him of that point. He wasn’t sure why. “And we were never intimate—just emotionally connected. But I should have realized what it was going to cost him.”
“Cost him?” He’d gotten Elaina. There was no price to be put on that...
“He’d given up so much of his life to raise Peter, to see his brother through medical school. And just when he was about to get his own chance to make a life for himself, there I was, needing him, and he started all over again with me.”
Greg considered the man lucky. To have had Elaina needing him...
Forcing himself to focus on what she was trying to get him to see, he asked, “How did marrying you equate to raising a little brother and seeing him through school?”
“I was just starting medical school. He was my support system.”
“What about insurance? Surely with the accident...”
“The driver wasn’t insured. At least not enough to make a difference. And Peter only had the minimum underinsured policy.”
“And he didn’t have life insurance?”
She shook her head. “And I was on his health insurance plan, which was only going to be good for another thirty days. By marrying Wood, I was able to get my hospital stay and treatments, on his insurance. Without that, I don’t know what I would have done.”
He frowned. It was like she was trying to get him to see someone else. As though she saw herself as weaker than the woman he knew her to be. If the plan were the only reason to marry, she would have purchased her own policy. Gone on a short-term interim plan. She was still holding his gaze. As though telling him things her mouth wasn’t saying.
Was it about what she’d said the night before? About her leaning on men? Was the independent woman he knew only a small part of the person she was? Was that what she wanted him to believe? Because he didn’t see it. At work the woman had shoulders the size of a mountain. She took it all on.
“I sure wouldn’t have been able to start my classes on schedule and then would have had to reapply to med school,” she said. “And who knows if, by then, I’d have done so. Or made it in if I had. And yet...that wasn’t Wood’s problem.”
“If he loved you, it was.”
She nodded. And then said, “I loved him, too. He was my brother—still is. He was the only family I had left. I leaned too hard.”
“You were his only family, too, then, right?”
She shrugged again. Nodded.
Something else was nagging at him. “You said you wouldn’t have made it to school without insurance—and that was why you married Wood, so he could take care of you?”
He knew she’d been in the car when Peter had died. A nuclear med tech had mentioned it along the way, but when more information would have been forthcoming, he’d shut it down, figuring Elaina would tell him what she wanted him to know.
With his own truths to keep to himself, he had to respect the rights of others to do the same.
“You’ve seen the scars,” she said. The allusion to him having her naked in his bed shot straight to his groin. Yes, he’d seen the silver lines along her lower spine. And the ones on her abdomen. He’d never asked much about them. She’d said only that they were from the car accident, had asked if they bothered him.
They hadn’t. At all. He’d spent quite a lot of time showing her how very much they didn’t bother him, as he recalled.
When what he should maybe have done was ask her how much they bothered her.
“I knew you were hurt. I assumed you had stitches. Bruising. Maybe a surgery if there’d been internal damage. But...none of that would have prevented you from going to medical school.”
“I...couldn’t walk.”
“What?” Greg was shocked. He strode toward her, not sure what he was going to do when he got there, but when he saw the blank look that came over her face as he reached for her, he stopped about a foot from her, his arms dropping to his sides.
“You couldn’t walk...” he said. Years of medical training caused all kinds of horror scenarios to play in his mind, scaring him. Dealing with images of Elaina gravely injured was beyond anything his training had taught him. And he had to remind himself that she was fine. Standing right in front of him, healthy and perfect.
And pregnant with his child.
“I was paralyzed,” she said, as though telling him she’d lost a tooth. “For a while there they thought it was permanent, but with surgeries and Wood’s constant care, and a minor miracle or two thrown in, I recovered.”
She made it sound like she’d managed to make a good dinner when she didn’t know how to cook.
“You recovered,” he said. He knew about spinal cord injuries. “You had to have gone through pure hell,” he said. “Learning to walk again...and the pain...it had to have taken months of constant work...”
And more strength than he figured he possessed.
“Wood was there,” she said.
And he was beginning to understand a bit more. At least he thought he was. Hoped he was. “You were all the family he had left.”
Pressing her lips together, she nodded.
“He’d lost his parents, just as you had. You’d both lost Peter...”
She didn’t say a word. Just kept standing there, as though awaiting a sentence to be passed upon her.
As though she didn’t see her incredible strength. Her endurance. As though taking for granted those things that made her so incredibly unique and wonderful.
“You may have leaned on Wood, as you say,” he told her, “but it was a reasonable choice, Elaina.”
“Reasonable to take my recovery, my happiness, at his expense? And then to allow it to go on for years?”
“Or maybe you gave him something to hold on to while he recovered from his own grief. Maybe you gave him a reason to keep going.”
Her shrug, then, was a little slower. A little less self-deprecating.
And he was glad.
Chapter Ten
There were other things Greg was going to have to know. Despite them having shared some important memories with one another, Elaina knew they were virtual strangers responsible for the physical health, emotional health and happiness of a new person on the earth. Still hardly able to wrap her mind around it all—seemingly so different from her original plan to raise a child on her own—she led Greg back out to the kitchen, through the French doors and out to the backyard. He’d been there once before, but hadn’t had a chance to explore it.
The air was a little cool as the sun set, but felt nice.
“This is something else,” he said, looking impressed as he glanced around the yard, headed over to the built-in barbecue by the pool, and on to the kiva fireplace close by. Dropping down to one of the padded wrought iron chairs by the fireplace, as if to try the experience on for size, he asked, “Does this work?”
With a flip of a switch in the wall of the barbecue, she turned on the flame, sat down opposite him. Wood had built the barbecue, fireplace, pavers and all, because she’d asked for them. And she could count on one hand the times they’d sat out there together. She should have invited him out to do that more.
It just hadn’t occurred to her. She’d figured he’d come out if he wanted to. Because she’d been so deeply into her own world that she hadn’t even thought to ask about his.
“What about you?” she asked Greg, forcing herself out of her own head. Thinking about him. “Do you have family who need to know about the baby?” She blinked, shivered, lifted her hands to the warmth of the fire. Or... “Do they already know?”
What family did he have? Biological family to the child she couldn’t even feel moving inside her yet.
“My parents are in Nevada,” he told her, sitting back, an ankle across his knee, seemingly content to hang out. “Both retired. Dad was a plumber. Mom worked in Human Resources for the local school district. No siblings. Five sets of aunts and uncles, all but one younger than my parents. A slew of cousins, but none that close to my age. We all lived in a town of about ten thousand people and yet I mostly only saw my cousins at holiday get-togethers. And you might as well know... I was the quintessential small-town nerd. Not one of the popular guys. Truth be told, I think my younger cousins, two of whom were cheerleaders, were kind of embarrassed to have people know they were related to me.”
At first she thought he was kidding. No way could Greg Adams have been unpopular. Nurses all over the hospital practically drooled when he walked into a room now. They tripped over themselves to beat each other to tend to his needs—medically speaking, of course.
But he wasn’t smiling. Nor was he frowning, really. He seemed at peace with his past. Maybe even fond of it.
She liked that about him.
And...on to the tense stuff... “Do they know about the baby?”
“Do you see them on the doorstep?” He grinned with that one.
She shook her head and he grew serious. “I won’t tell them without you and I deciding together that it’s time,” he told her. “And certainly not before we get our immediate situation worked out.”
His words brought a wave of alarm. That made no sense. “It’s not worked out?” she asked, upset to know that. “You don’t want the suite?”
Maybe she should offer him something to drink. Make him feel more welcome to a potential home instead of letting him feel like he was on trial.
“I want it,” he said quickly, and her muscles relaxed a bit. “Hell, I’m already mentally moved in. But that’s only the beginning. Where do we go from there? We’ll want a pretty firm plan before we bring my mother into the picture. She’s going to have questions, and she’ll want answers.”
He wasn’t kidding but didn’t seem to be complaining, either. She liked that about him. Even more than she’d lusted after his gorgeous body all those months.
“So, just to be clear, you’re going to move in.”
“Yes. And I intend to pay rent, too, so I’ll need you to come up with an amount.”
She hadn’t expected him to offer that. In fact, she was about to argue the fact when she realized he was right to make that part of their agreement. She named an amount that was less than what she knew a neighbor was charging for an adult child to live at home but was still not dirt cheap; she said it included utilities, and wasn’t surprised when he just nodded, agreeing automatically.
And just like that, she apparently had a new tenant.
“When were you thinking you’d move in?” she asked, a little bit scared at how fast things were progressing. And a little bit excited, too.
Her life really was moving forward. She wasn’t sure she was ready, not that she had any choice in the matter with a baby growing inside her, but she was certain about not wanting to be stagnant anymore.
“I’m off tomorrow,” he said. “I’d like to get started then. I already have a lot of things packed. I had a mover lined up for later in the month, to get me to LA. I can arrange with the company to make that a local move. But I’d like to get shelves in the shed, first.”
He really did rush right in. In her world of dragging her feet and letting things ride, that adrenaline wasn’t a bad thing. Feeling almost...invigorated—a sensation so foreign to her current life she’d almost forgotten what it felt like—she tried to slow herself down.
To focus on the one thing in front of her as she’d taught herself to do, so that the periphery didn’t crowd the air out of her lungs.
The one thing. First, her focus had been grieving for her parents. Then Peter. Falling in love. The wedding. Getting him through medical school. Grieving again. Marrying Wood. Learning to walk again. Medical school. Wood leaving. The baby.
The baby. That was the one thing. Except...here was Greg. A person. With feelings. Who made her feel things. Moving in. Temporarily of course, but he wanted to put shelves in the “shed.”
“It’s not a shed,” she said. “It’s a workshop.” The designation mattered. Wood had found his own survival out in that building. She’d finally figured that out when she’d brought lunch out to him one afternoon and saw how lovingly he was working on Alan’s crib. That day had been a no-turning-back moment for her. She’d seen what she’d unwittingly been doing to him. Holding him captive in a life that was going nowhere. Because she’d felt safe there. Content to go nowhere.
“There’s already a full wall of shelves. And a built-in workbench. There are drawers from floor to ceiling on one end, full electric...” Her heart cried a little as she thought of the years that Wood had given to her. And knew she couldn’t allow herself to use the man seated with her. Wood meant so much to her. And Greg...he was waking things in her...and in so doing, meant more to her than anyone else in her life.
“Would you rather I not use it?”
