Wedding Date with the Army Doc Read online

  That didn’t matter since it was probably all over now, and she owed him the truth. The man who couldn’t wait for his youngest son to turn twenty-one so he’d be relieved of full-time parenting wouldn’t want to start over again.

  Making the call wouldn’t be so scary if, in all the times they’d made love, he’d just once whispered that he loved her. She’d been foolish enough to hope he would, even while knowing it was too early for a declaration like that. Now, since the probability of him breaking things off was huge, and she’d never get the chance to hear those words from him, she had to prepare for the worst. She used that tissue again, wiping her eyes and nose. Would she ever hear “I love you” again? From anyone? Stop thinking about what may or may not happen, get on with right here and now.

  One thing she knew without a doubt: telling a man something as monumental as this needed to be done face-to-face. Too much could be hidden over the phone. With the news she was about to lay on him she needed to see his eyes, to see his sincere reaction. And he needed to see how important this change in life plan was for her.

  Her insides quivered, and it had nothing to do with feeling nauseous.

  With trepidation she speed-dialed his number, making a snap decision to do something completely out of character, to lead with her feelings. Tell him how she really felt about him. Could she admit she loved him, or would it feel forced right now? Then, definitely, she’d have to get around to the other part of the issue. Or maybe she should feel him out first, to see how he felt about her. Oh, hell, nope. It was her call. Her “situation,” and she should be the one to be boldly honest. She might not be able to say “I love you” yet, but she sure as heck had other feelings about Jackson.

  An unexpected sense of hope took hold as his phone rang. I know what I’m going to say. But the instant I hang up I need to jump into the shower and clean up because...man, oh, man...I’m a mess and he cannot see me like this when I break the news.

  * * *

  Jackson stirred from a restless sleep and looked at the time. It was midnight. And Charlotte was calling. He hoped she wasn’t horribly sick. He’d left those messages, asking her to let him know if there was anything he could do. He’d even considered stopping by on his way home from work. But knowing how independent she was, he’d opted to wait to be invited. On alert, he sat up and answered the phone.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m crazy about you.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you how crazy I am about you for some time now.”

  Was she dialing drunk? She was the most practical lady he’d ever met. Why would she call and blurt out such a thing unless...? Maybe she had a fever and was delirious.

  “Will you come over?”

  She’d just told him she was crazy about him, was probably a little tipsy, and now she’d asked him to come over. With all the possibilities that proposition held, how could he refuse?

  “I’ll be right there.”

  As he cleaned up and got dressed, an odd thought about the midnight invitation to his lady’s house made him smile. Plus she’d said she was crazy about him, which was totally out of character but made him feel like a prince. Who’d have ever guessed when he’d first noticed her all those months ago that the prim-looking and earnest-as-hell pathologist would have turned out to be a sexy drama queen? The funny thing was, he liked it. He really liked it.

  Several other thoughts forced their way out of the recesses of his mind as he drove to her house. How Charlotte was healing him and how grateful he was for that. He’d been shedding layer after layer of protective defenses since he’d met her. Something about her had made him like her right off, but now that they’d got close—in fact, closer than he’d been to anyone other than his wife—it seemed he was becoming a new man. Because she’d made it okay. She accepted him. He felt things again. Life was something to look forward to, not simply to manage to get through day by day. And because of his changing, he thought about a future. Maybe right here in California.

  Sometimes the way he and Charlotte got along made him wonder if he had ever really been close to his wife like that. Their hasty marriage hadn’t felt like his idea. He hadn’t felt nearly ready for it, or for becoming a father twice before he’d turned twenty-four. To everyone else, his family, hers, he’d been a young doctor with a bright future. They had been the perfect couple. So he’d learned to work that to his advantage. A wife and kids completed his package as a safe bet to hire into a respected surgical practice, to groom for bigger and better things, like taking on the role of department head of surgery at Savannah General. His stay-at-home wife had made it easy for him to shine, too. He was grateful for it. While he’d spent hours and hours working his way up, she’d raised the kids. Mostly alone. Especially after he’d signed on for the medical unit in the army reserves and had started volunteering for disaster missions. Had they ever been close?

  Andrew and Evan had been the highlights of his life, though—he couldn’t dispute that, even when working sixty-hour weeks and going away one weekend a month. He smiled as he sat at a red light, remembering the heat he’d taken from his grandfather for not strapping Andrew with the name of Jackson Ryland Hilstead the Fourth. Evaline had stood by him on that decision. He sure hoped Drew appreciated it. So his ex-wife had given him his family and had stuck with him until he’d fallen apart. What more could a man have asked?

  For better or worse? For both legs? For a wife who wasn’t repulsed by him? Someone to stand by him through the toughest trials in his life, not just the successes?

  His smile dissolved. Those wishes required a lot in return. He’d let their relationship grow empty. Truth was, he hadn’t been there for her beyond providing a home and a lifestyle loaded with the perks of being the wife of a wealthy doctor. And that hadn’t been enough. Because he hadn’t been around. For most of their marriage that situation had been satisfactory for her. Until he’d changed for the worse after taking that second tour in the Middle East in the army reserves and had come home from Afghanistan.

  Coming home a hot mess—to use his mother’s favorite saying—broken and disfigured. Coupled with his PTSD and withdrawal, it hadn’t been nearly enough for her anymore. He’d stopped being able to run a department. To do surgery! The one thing he’d come to think was the reason he’d been put on the planet.

  Truth was, he hadn’t been willing to fight for Evaline like he supposed he should have. He’d hit bottom so fast and hard his heart had splattered. He hadn’t had anything left. It made him wonder if he’d ever really loved her. Or vice versa.

  So now he was forty-two, driving after midnight to a new woman’s town house because she’d dialed drunk, told him she was crazy about him and invited him over. Crazy, right? But he was excited about it. In fact, he hadn’t felt excited about much in life since the war injury...until Charlotte. The woman who was helping him heal step by step. He was a better man because of her.

  And if her calling meant she wanted to take him to bed, hell, yeah, he was all for it. Even if her virus or whatever it was that had made her leave work got him sick, it would still be worth it. Because there was something close and tender they shared beyond the crazy-hot sex. It was called total acceptance, and that special part, her accepting him as he was, and him doing the same with her, was bringing him back to life. He could only hope she felt the same.

  * * *

  Charlotte’s heart fluttered when the security light came on from the entrance gate. She hit the entry button to allow Jackson to pass and park, her lungs forgetting to breathe on their own. With damp palms she finger-combed her hair and took a quick glance in the hallway mirror. Did it really matter how she looked? Something far greater than her appearance was at stake.

  He knocked, and she nearly lost her nerve. Could she run to the bedroom and hide under her pillows?

  Willing strength she was
n’t sure she had, she bit her lower lip and opened the door. There stood Jackson in all his post-midnight glory. Hair dashingly disheveled, eyes bright and blue, huge questions in them. Late-night stubble. “You don’t look sick to me. You look great.” His expression was lusty and hopeful.

  Her eyes closed as she inhaled before she could answer, picking up his fresh application of spiced aftershave and fighting a wave of nausea. “I’m not sick in the classic sense, though God knows I’ve been nauseous all day. Well, all week, actually.”

  He scrunched up his face, trying to follow her meandering explanation. With his high intelligence he was probably already putting the equation together. Or choosing to ignore it, in which case she’d have to hit him over the head with it.

  “May I come in?”

  Oh, God, she hadn’t even let him inside. “Of course.” She stepped back, but he reached for her arm and squeezed as he kissed her hello. She flinched, but for one instant the gesture, his warm lips pressing against hers, calmed her. What would he think? Then her roiling nerves took over again. “Have a seat.”

  His glance seemed to ask, Why so formal? What if I want to stick around and keep kissing you? Yet he dutifully went to her beige couch and sat. “I get the impression you have something important to say.”

  Her eyes lifted to the ceiling. “That’s an understatement.” She halted any further comment from him by using her hands to tap the air. “Let me figure out how to best say this. Okay?”

  “How to say what?”

  She paced and glanced at him, could read confusion or irritation in his expression, or maybe it was concern. She was being too obtuse, and needed to get to the point of why she’d called him out in the middle of the night. He might really think it was just to have sex. She stopped walking and faced him, then took a deep breath, deciding to go full speed ahead.

  “Okay, let me start from the beginning.” She had his total attention and the responsibility seemed more than she could bear, but she forced herself to pull it together. She had no choice, so she blurted, “It seems I’m pregnant.”

  The words had the expected effect of hitting him like a brick. He didn’t smile or jump up to hug her with joy. No, that was the fantasy version of how this conversation would go. Instead, his eyes flashed wide and his head jerked back. Far too authentic for her to handle right now. Apparently she’d left him speechless. So, with her feet planted, she opted to continue her story. “I never expected to be pregnant. I’m not trying to trick you into marriage or anything.” She assumed he’d gone right to the conclusion that history was repeating itself all these years later. “I swear. But since you’re the father, I owe it to you to be honest and up front.” She stopped to swallow and take a breath. “I’m choosing to keep my baby.”

  And there it was, the horrified look, the you-blew-every-great-thing-we-had expression. The tension around his brows reminded her how he’d laid out the rules right from the start. He didn’t want to get married. He never wanted to be a father again. Her insides clutched.

  “I know. You don’t want to be a father ever again. You made it very clear. And yet here I am telling you I want this baby. After swearing I never wanted to pass my cancer genes on to a child of mine.” Her chin quivered, but she refused to let the emotions gathering speed inside take over, so she bit down hard on her lip and counted to three. “I am afraid and filled with guilt about my decision, guilt for you and for the baby, but I can’t say I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  Finally, she had the nerve to look into his face and eyes again. True, at first he’d looked horrified, or that was how she’d read it, but now his mien seemed perplexed, as though he was trying to solve a mathematical problem. A very big and complicated mathematical problem.

  She remembered the words he’d repeated to her before the first time they’d been together, and the more that she was getting used to being pregnant and dealing with it, she bent those words from Dr. Gordon and decided to toss them back at him.

  “You were the one who quoted the good doctor that ‘life shouldn’t be about what might happen,’ otherwise we never would have made love in the first place, right?”

  She suddenly had his undivided attention, the dumbfounded look nearly causing his mouth to drop open. She wanted to sit beside him and plead for him to understand, but she stayed right there, on the other side of the coffee table from him. “So that brings us back to what is happening right now. Yes, I’m pregnant.”

  “You’re pregnant.” Evidently he was still feeling stunned.

  “Yes, and you made me that way.” Her finger shot up. “No, that isn’t exactly right. We got that way together. We’re pregnant.”

  Still Jackson remained painfully silent. It cut like a blade through her center.

  She’d just laid her fear, pride and guilt on the table and he wasn’t rushing to save any of it. Her decision to stay pregnant seemed to be hanging in the balance of his grace. She couldn’t allow him to have that control over her body and her baby. Could she stand to hear him tell her thanks but, no, thanks? Oh, God, no, it would hurt too much. Fear took over about what he might say, and as was her pattern of dealing with fear, she rushed into a response before he’d had time to digest her news and form the words for a reply. She simply couldn’t take this agonizing pause. If he wasn’t going to say anything right this instant, she needed to step in, take control, preempt the outcome. “Please, leave. Now.”

  “Charlotte.” She heard pleading and frustration in the single word of her name.

  She shook her head. “I promise not to upset your carefully planned-out life. I get it. You told me from the start. You’ve done the fatherhood thing and never want to do it again. You’re counting down the days until Evan turns twenty-one.” Her fear seemed to change to anger from one breath to the next and she couldn’t bite her tongue to stop the next thought from coming out. “I know you never want to get married again. Hell, you can be an old lonely man for all I care. I’m having this baby.” Damn the break in her voice, the surge of hurt childishness, the threatening tears welling in her eyes. Damn them all. And damn him, too.

  She scanned the table for more used tissues.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “You’re reading all kinds of things into this, and I don’t deserve your insults. Can you understand that I might need to digest everything you’ve just told me? You owe me a little time to think, don’t you?” He stood, imploringly, it seemed, taking a couple of steps toward her.

  She moved back. “Sure.” She sounded terse.

  Had she hoped for and maybe even expected too much from her Southern gentleman? He didn’t rush to her or make a single promise. He’d simply stood there looking all befuddled. You’re what? What he asked for was time. And a reasonable person would grant him that. But she was anything but reasonable in her pregnant and scared sightless state.

  The saying that actions spoke louder than words hit her like a full frontal head butt, knocking her fear aside and fueling her anger. He obviously didn’t want any responsibility for this baby growing second by second inside her. If he didn’t want to jump on board with the pregnancy, that said all she needed to know, and so she didn’t have time for him. If she were a princess, she would have him banished, but she was a modern woman dealing with a life-changing event, and it hurt to have to go through it alone, to not get from him the support that she’d secretly prayed for. Her secret dream. But so be it.

  “Go,” she said, trying to cover up her true feelings. “Think all you want. Nothing is changing on this end. Go. Go!” Had she actually yelled at him?

  Because he didn’t budge, she grabbed his hand, pulled and led him to her front door, and only because he was still stunned and didn’t seem to have the ability to resist her did he allow her to push him out. Or maybe he wanted her to, to let him off the hook. She kicked me out! he could claim later—which only made her angrier. She closed the d
oor with a bang, nearly in his face.

  She wanted to cry and scream and drop to her knees with disappointment, but the only thing she could do right that moment was respond to his muffled protests on the other side. “Charlotte. Charlotte. Come on. Don’t be like this.”

  She searched for her voice and mustered all the nerve she had left. “Just to make it clear, I said nothing is changing on this end. Except whether or not I’ll ever let you back.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  JACKSON WASN’T EVEN sure how he’d made the drive home. His head swam with thoughts yet nothing seemed clear enough to grasp. Charlotte was pregnant, the one thing they’d both agreed from the start would never happen.

  And she planned to keep the baby.

  Where did that leave him? With an intense sense of déjà vu.

  Think straight!

  First, he needed to admit he loved her for helping him get his life back, and though he’d been on the verge of telling her—his midnight visit had seemed like the perfect time—the news that she was pregnant had knocked him completely off track. It had rocked the thoughts in his brain until they were so jumbled up he couldn’t think.

  The monumental revelation, that he loved something Charlotte had done for him, helping him heal and grow, deserved its own moment in time. He’d planned to indulge in the new thought for days to come, that he might be able to love again, to hold the concept in his hands and pass it back and forth, to get a feel for it, savoring the secret, and then and only then to find the nerve to say it out loud. To see how it sounded: Charlotte, you’ve revived me, and I’m finally open to a complete relationship with you. Are you ready to see where this goes?