Their Baby Miracle (Silhouette Special Edition) Read online

  He riffled a hand through a section that shouldn’t be sticking crookedly up from the back of his head, the way it was. He hadn’t brushed it since…couldn’t remember. Day before yesterday, possibly.

  “The place is quiet, this morning,” he said. “We should be able to get walk-in appointments. There must be more than one salon here. Then we’ll go back to the hotel and swim in that pool.”

  “I forgot to get Carla to pack me a swimsuit.”

  “So you’ll buy a swimsuit, too.”

  “Maggie—”

  “—wants you to have a new swimsuit.”

  “Oh, she does?”

  Aha, he’d gotten her to laugh! Note to self—get printouts of humorous anecdotes off the Internet, tune the TV in the hotel suite to sit com rerun channels, call the executive handling his workload in New York and ask her to express mail some joke books.

  “She’s very fashion-conscious,” he continued, as if this was easy, instead of a huge, painful effort. “It’s, like, a total drag for her to have a Mom who wears three-minutes-ago swimsuits.”

  “I guess it would be.” Reba was working at it as hard as he was, he could tell. “So what does she want me to get?”

  “Something hot. Oops, no, that’s me.”

  “You want me to get something hot?”

  She slid a sideways look at him—a real, genuine sideways look, instead of a fake, effortful, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny one—right at the same moment when he was sliding the same sideways look at her, and the two looks met half way with a crash of sparks.

  Yeah, that’s right, I remember now, he thought.

  Last September. The sizzle, the edge, the overpowering and almost competitive attraction they’d both almost forgotten, over the past two weeks, what with so much else overlaid on top.

  “Yes,” he told her, keeping the lock on their gaze. “I would very much like to see you in something hot, Rebecca Grant.”

  But they had haircuts first—Reba’s was just a trim and a conditioning treatment—sitting side by side in the black vinyl chairs, pretending to read magazines while secretly sneaking glances at each other, via the wall of mirrors in front of them, to check if the other one was…well…still sneaking glances.

  What was happening here?

  The rational section of Lucas’s severely compromised brain elbowed the out-of-control emotional section into a tighter space and said very clearly, “Careful! You thought this was just a fun interlude last year, and look what happened. You’re connected to this woman, for good or ill, through Maggie. That means any other connection you make with her has to be thought through a lot harder. Don’t blow it. Make sure you know what you really want.”

  Yeah, didn’t he already know what he wanted?

  Her body, back in his arms, twisting, responsive, giving, electric, hot.

  Beyond that…

  “My point exactly,” said that really annoying rational brain lobe.

  Beyond that, he had no idea, and not a lot of faith, and he couldn’t pretend those issues weren’t important. They were critical. For Maggie’s sake, they couldn’t afford to get to the point where they hated each other.

  Stick with the retail therapy for now, big guy.

  They shopped for a couple of hours, including a break for ice cream.

  Lucas’s idea.

  Sitting across from Reba at their small table, he had to mistrust his motivation for suggesting it. Just to give them both more time out? Who was he kidding? Seriously, hadn’t he just wanted to watch the way she opened her full, sensitive mouth? The way she narrowed her eyes in sensuous appreciation of the taste? The way she licked the sticky pink and cream scoops?

  What had he told himself about wanting her so much, only an hour ago?

  For the moment, he couldn’t remember.

  She bought two tops, a spring skirt, and a swimsuit that she refused to let him see until they got back to the hotel. She put it on in the bathroom, then emerged to perform a laughing and gawky-cum-graceful parody of a catwalk sashay.

  And it was…strange, because the rational Halliday brain insisted, This suit is not hot. There is not enough skin showing for that. But other sections of the Halliday anatomy didn’t take any notice of this assessment.

  It was just a simple black two-piece, with a whole three inches of skin showing around the middle of her rapidly flattening belly, where he glimpsed a stretch mark or two. But it showed off her long legs and her long body, and clung to taut breasts that filled their cups to overflowing.

  “Would Maggie approve?” she asked, pivoting.

  “Maggie might not. She has teen fashion magazine taste. I’m not sure where we went wrong, there.”

  “Maybe we’re letting her watch too much TV.”

  “I approve, however.”

  “I’ll have to content myself with that, I guess.”

  “Yeah, I guess you will.”

  They swam for nearly an hour. The early April weather hadn’t yet warmed up, but the outdoor pool was well-heated and had beautifully landscaped surroundings. It felt great to lie back and feel the sun on his face and the buoyancy of the water, and it felt even better to power up and down until he’d done sixty lengths, loosening his frame, making a small start at getting back some of the condition he’d lost lately.

  But then, while he was still doing his laps, Reba needed to go pump again, and Lucas could tell it hadn’t gone well, after he got back to their suite, because she’d taken a long time over it and came out of the bedroom with a tight look on her face and a tiny amount in the sterile jar.

  “Don’t sweat about it,” he told her. “Your section of the neonatal unit freezer is practically full.”

  “What if it’s not enough for her to put on the right amount of weight? What if my supply stops just when she gets to the point where she can feed on her own?”

  “Hey…” He tried to hug her but she shook her head and wrapped her arms stiffly around the front of her body before they’d even touched.

  She paced around their suite and zeroed in on the book he was reading about a California neonatal unit—a responsible, factual, heartrending, page-turning work by a highly regarded journalist. She picked it up, flicked it open at Lucas’s bookmark, made a strangled, angry sound, then snapped it shut again and threw it half way across the room.

  “How can you do this to yourself, Lucas? Reading all this stuff? All these worst-case scenarios that we might never have to know about.”

  “Knowledge is power, some people say.”

  “No, it’s not!” she yelled. “It’s just terror! Let’s get back to her. I—I just need to see her and touch her again.”

  At the hospital, Reba’s red-haired waitress friend Carla was waiting for them, just outside the unit, and Reba seemed to have calmed down a little by this time.

  “Oh, it’s so great to see you!” Carla said. “I’ve wanted to come down since she was born, but the kids have been sick, and I wasn’t going to risk bringing an infection. The nurses wouldn’t let me in without you here. You look great!”

  “No, I don’t. I’m a wreck.” Reba gave her friend a tight, warm squeeze, but she seemed pretty tense, so Lucas stayed in the background after he’d been introduced, a little wary about how this visit would pan out.

  He detected a surge of protective feeling in his gut that spooked him. What was that about? He had no place interfering in anything between Reba and her friend. Carla had known Reba a heck of a lot longer than he had.

  How much did that count, in a situation like this? Which was more important? A shared history, or a shared terror about the future?

  “She’s so small!” Carla said to Reba, a few minutes later.

  She’d been through the correct hand-washing procedure, and wore a blue disposable gown and cap, both of which seemed to fit even worse on her compact yet sturdy frame than they fit on most people, and contrasted wildly with several escaping strands of her red hair. She looked a little pale and queasy, to Reba’s eyes, as if she’
d had to gear herself up to this visit the way people had to gear themselves up to a dental appointment for root canal.

  “I can’t imagine—I mean, I knew, but I didn’t—I’m sorry, I—” she said, after she’d looked silently down at tiny Maggie for another few moments. “You know, my guys were both such bruisers! Over nine pounds!”

  She gave an upside down smile, that was part empathy, part apology and part helpless pride, and Reba felt ill with an emotion that she knew was envy, but couldn’t do anything about. She had to tense every muscle in her body not to show it.

  Carla’s boys were still small, aged nine months and almost three. She’d been through pregnancy and childbirth for the second time just last year, but both her experiences had been so different to Reba’s. Those strong, healthy babies had been born in nearby Cheyenne and were sent home, already feeding vigorously, when they were less than twenty-four hours old.

  What would it be like?

  To hold your baby at birth?

  To see her skin whole and pink, instead of stained with jaundice and bruising, and with huge areas of it covered in the tape that held all those lines and monitors in place?

  To go home with her?

  To feel happy and proud and hopeful, instead of terrified?

  Reba couldn’t even imagine.

  After the births of both Carla’s boys, she’d brought gifts, she’d held the babies and she’d cooed at the warm, darling little bundles, but she probably hadn’t understood at all, back then, Carla’s feelings of love and success, just as Carla seemed light years away from understanding the very different experience that Reba and Lucas were going through right now.

  “We still think she’s beautiful,” she managed to say. “Perfect.”

  “Oh, honey, she is. I didn’t mean that.”

  “We wouldn’t change one thing about her, except to make her as healthy and strong as she can be.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “And her heart condition has resolved. She’s put on some weight.”

  “Has she?” Carla’s jaw dropped, despite her clear effort to keep her expression under control. “Wow, you mean she was—?”

  “Even smaller. Yes. Redder and thinner, with more hair on her body, and her eyes only just escaped being fused shut. Not to mention the bruises she developed, from all the needle sticks. She still has some of those.” Deliberately, Reba didn’t mince her words. “And the jaundice. For a couple of days, she looked as if someone had dyed her with mustard.”

  “Oh, Reba!” Carla whispered. Her eyes were bright with tears, but this couldn’t soften Reba’s raging, raw, rebellious heart. “I’m just, you know, in awe, that’s all. About how brave she is, how brave you are.”

  “Brave? What’s brave about it? We don’t have a choice. And neither does she.” Reba heard her own voice begin to harden and rise, beyond her control. Blood thudded in her ears. Her limbs were shaking and her queasiness threatened to rise in her stomach. “It’s not courage, to be stuck in a situation you never, ever would have chosen and can’t get out of.”

  Carla nodded tightly. “Right. I get it. Is she…? Is she…? I don’t want to ask the wrong thing.”

  “You’ve done nothing but ask the wrong thing, and say the wrong things, ever since you walked in, Carla.”

  “Oh, Reba, I—”

  “Don’t, if it’s so hard. I don’t need to stand here and watch you gritting your teeth about this, comparing her with your boys.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m not. Not in a bad way.”

  “Oh, stop! Just leave. Okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” Carla whispered.

  She put one hand to her mouth and one hand to her stomach and fled for the door, almost stumbling between two empty isolettes parked crookedly on either side of it. In another moment, she had disappeared, and so, very slowly, did the agonizing rage that had swelled inside Reba like poison.

  Damn, damn, damn!

  She wheeled around, close to tears herself, and found Lucas watching her. He’d heard every word, although she’d been in such a fog of pain and wild hatred of the whole universe that she hadn’t even thought about him. Now, his eyebrows were slightly raised, as were his shoulders, and his whole expression was wary.

  “That went well,” he said. “Nice when someone cares enough to come all this way.”

  Reba took several breaths that felt so painful it was as if someone was cutting her lungs to shreds. She bit the inside of her cheeks and the teary feeling temporarily went away, to leave an unnatural calm.

  “Thanks for your support,” she said.

  “Don’t mention it.” Lucas clearly recognized at once that the calm was a facade.

  They stared at each other for a moment, then Reba’s whole body began to feel as if it was deflating like a balloon. “What did I just do?” she asked him.

  “You exploded at your friend,” he said, in a conversational tone.

  “Did she deserve it?”

  “No, not really. I guess she could have been a tad more sensitive, but it’s pretty confronting, this place.”

  “I’d better go after her.”

  “You going to yell at her again?”

  “Not this time. I hope. Maybe she’ll yell at me.”

  “Want me to come along, as referee? Put you in a strait-jacket, maybe.”

  She bit her lip and shook her head, recognizing that he had a right to say such things, after the way she’d lost control. “Better on my own. I really need to—”

  Get my best friend back.

  If I can.

  Reba raced for the elevator, but the doors closed before she reached it and the other elevators were all on distant floors. Still, she waited, dived into the first one that arrived, and pressed the first floor button with the jab of a finger. The elevator seemed to crawl down to the ground.

  When it got there, and when the doors dawdled open, she raced toward the most likely parking lot, through the cold April air, but it was huge and she couldn’t see Carla or the gray pickup she always drove.

  Either Carla had already gone or she’d parked in the other lot on the far side of the main hospital building. Reba raced in that direction, cursing her lack of condition following the birth. Her lungs again felt as if they were being sliced into, and her eyes stung because…what if Carla couldn’t forgive this?

  She saw the pickup, finally, turning out of the lot and onto a side street, with a redhead at the wheel. “Carla! Wait! Carla!”

  But the windows were up and Carla couldn’t hear. The vehicle kept going, turned right at the first intersection and disappeared, with Reba still chasing it in vain, red-cheeked, breath heaving and eyes stinging.

  Chapter Nine

  “She lost it with her friend?” Angela said to Lucas, seconds after Reba left.

  “Uh, yeah. Did you hear?”

  “Some.”

  Angela was just about to go off shift, and had been at the nurses’ station having a brief meeting with the incoming staff. Lucas had seen her return and hover nearby, at about the point where Reba started shaking and giving Carla her emotional definition of how courage wasn’t the issue.

  Reba hadn’t yelled, because both she and Lucas instinctively kept their voices down here in the unit, as did all of the NICU staff and the other parents, but Angela wouldn’t have needed to hear the exact words to work out what was happening.

  “Should I have let her go?” Lucas asked her. “Do you think she’ll only make it worse if she catches up to Carla?”

  Angela flicked a glance into his face and didn’t fully manage to mask her surprise.

  Yeah, he thought, who’d have thought Lucas Halliday would ever be heard asking for advice? And not about stock options or pork belly futures from a specialist source, either.

  “Most people don’t take it personally,” Angela told him. “If Reba’s friend is worth keeping, she’ll understand. I’m more concerned about Reba herself. How did the retail therapy work out today?”

  “Good, for wha
t it was worth.” Already, their session at the mall seemed like days ago, although they’d only been there this morning.

  “Wasn’t enough?” the nurse suggested.

  He sighed. “I’m not sure what would be enough, right now, Angela. A time machine? No, strike that,” he added, as soon as he’d said it.

  Weird, but no, he wouldn’t want to jump ahead to Maggie’s discharge, because then he would have missed everything in between, all those milestones he and Reba were both hanging out for—getting to hold Maggie in their arms for the first time, her first real feed, her growing back up to birth weight, her weaning to room air. And he wouldn’t have been here for her, making those figures on her monitors improve with the firm cupping of his hand around her little body.

  “No, there’s nothing,” he finished. “Nothing would be enough.”

  “Why don’t the two of you get away, just for a couple of days? Maggie’s doing real well, but she’s going to be in here for a good while yet.”

  “Another couple of months, Dr. Charleson said.”

  “You know we love her to pieces. We’ll take real good care of her, and she should be ready for you to hold her when you get back. Take some time while you can. Pace yourselves a little.”

  “I’m fine,” Lucas assured her automatically. “But Reba, yes. It would be great if I could get her away.”

  “Home?”

  “Wherever she wants to go.”

  An image flashed into his mind—the little mountain cabin at Seven Mile. Dad and Raine had taken a look at it during their brief visit to the ranch over Christmas, but despite all the firewood Lucas had had hauled up there, they hadn’t actually used it.

  “What were you thinking, Lucas?” Raine had asked him, chastising him with a mocking pout of her overfull mouth.

  “I thought you’d think it was cute.”

  “You know that with me cute only goes so far. But I agree, the setting of the whole ranch is spectacular. We’re going to put a little chalet on the cabin site, Swiss-style, and a real home on that gorgeous site where that old place is now, overlooking the mountains and the river, with an indoor pool.”

  Would it be a gift to Reba, to take her for a final visit to the place where they’d conceived their child? Or would she find it too hard?