Читать книгу The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child: The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child - Brenda Harlen, Brenda Harlen - Страница 10

Ashley stumbled back and cried out in pain. The obvious distress in her voice effectively doused Cam’s raging libido. He drew in a slow, deep breath then reached for her hand. She shook her head and took another step back, as if she couldn’t bear to have him touch her.

He didn’t know what he’d done to make her withdraw so abruptly and completely, but he wasn’t thinking about that at the moment. He was thinking about the fact that her eyes were clouded with pain now rather than lust, and he worried that she might have re-injured her hand.

“I just want to make sure that you’re not bleeding again,” he told her.

This time when he reached for her hand, she didn’t object. He carefully peeled back the gauze to check the wound, pleased to see that none of the stitches had opened up.

“It looks okay,” he said, refastening the tape.

She nodded.

“But I want to know why you’re not taking the painkillers when it’s obvious that you’re in pain.”

“I told you, I don’t like taking any medication unnecessarily.”

Ashley had never been practiced in the art of deception, and the fact that she didn’t look at him when she spoke told him more clearly than her words that there was something she was holding back.

“If you’re hurting, it’s necessary,” he insisted.

“I’m fine.”

“What medications are you taking that you didn’t want to tell me about?”

The question was a stab in the dark, but her lack of response made him believe it had been an accurate one.

“We can argue back and forth for another few minutes if you really want,” he told her. “But I’m not backing off until you tell me.”

“Fedentropin,” she finally said.

He frowned. “I’m not familiar with that one.”

“It’s an experimental drug to help alleviate the symptoms of endometriosis. I’m part of a clinical trial at Richmond Pharmaceuticals.”

“I didn’t realize …” He wasn’t sure what he meant to say, what was the right thing to say. He’d had no idea that she had to endure what he knew was a painful and chronic condition for a woman, and he hated to think of her suffering.

But Ashley just shrugged. “It’s not something that comes up in conversation.”

“It should have been noted in your file,” he said.

“Eli knows—I talked to him before I was accepted into the test group, but I haven’t had an appointment with him since.”

Cam believed there still should have been a note in her file, but right now he was more concerned about her current situation. “Is your sister running the trial?”

She nodded.

He picked up the cordless phone on the counter. “Call her.”

“Why?”

“I want to know if you can take the medication I prescribed or if I should write a scrip for something else.”

“Look, Cam, I appreciate your concern, but I took some Tylenol when I got home and I’m okay.”

She wouldn’t have cried out in pain if she was okay and since he figured they were both aware of that fact, he only asked, “Why don’t you want to call your sister?”

“Why won’t you back off?” she countered.

“Because I care about you.”

Maybe he was surprised by the admission, but not by the feelings. He did care about Ashley. He’d always cared about Ashley.

She turned away from him, but not before he saw the glint of tears in her eyes.

“You have no right,” she said, her tone laced with both hurt and anger. “No right to barge into my life after twelve years and make such a statement as if it gives you the right to interfere.”

It was true. He’d given up any right he might have had when he’d ended their relationship a dozen years earlier. But his feelings for Ashley had never been rational, and even when he’d gone away, his feelings for her never had.

“I’ve always cared about you, Ash, and I always will.”

She turned away to wrap up the leftover pizza, struggling a little because of her bandaged hand. “Thank you for your concern,” she said, not sounding thankful at all. “Now go away.”

He knew he should. But instead, Cam scrolled through the list of numbers stored in the memory of the phone still in his hand.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

He found “Megan & Gage” and pressed the call button. “Calling your sister.”

She stared at him, as if she didn’t really believe he’d do it.

“It’s ringing,” he warned her.

She grabbed the phone with her uninjured hand. As obviously unhappy as she was about making the call, she seemed to accept that he would talk directly to Megan if she continued to refuse and had likely concluded that her sister would have fewer questions for her than she would for him.

After a brief conversation, during which she reassured her sister numerous times that she was fine and didn’t need anyone coming over to check up on her, Ashley said goodbye and disconnected.

“That’s why I didn’t want to call her,” she said.

“Because you knew she’d be worried about you?” he asked, wondering why her sister’s concern should be a problem for Ashley.

“Because she’s spent too much time worrying about me, and even more over the past four months.”

“Since the broken engagement,” he guessed.

She nodded, making him suspect that she might be more distressed over the end of that relationship than he wanted to believe. And though he was undeniably curious about the ex-fiancé, he forced himself to focus on more immediate concerns.

“What did Megan say about the medication?”

“She said it’s fine. I just have to make sure that I inform the admin clerk of the dosage when I go in for my blood work.”

“Except you didn’t get the scrip filled, did you?”

“No, because I didn’t plan on taking it.”

He glanced at his watch. “I’ll call it in to Brody’s.”

“I’m capable of taking my own prescription in.”

“I know you are,” he agreed. “I’m just not convinced that you’ll actually do it.”

“Fine.” She thrust the phone at him. “Call it in and then leave me alone.”

He dialed the familiar number, spoke to the pharmacist and made arrangements for the medication to be delivered, throughout which Ashley continued to glare at him.

“It should be here within twenty minutes,” he told her.

“Do you plan on hanging around until it gets here?” she challenged.

“I don’t have anywhere else that I need to be, and I have no intention of letting you push me out the door until we’ve had a chance to talk about what happened in the kitchen.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she denied, but the flush in her cheeks told him otherwise. “It was a moment of insanity, that’s all.”

“The only insanity is in trying to pretend it didn’t mean anything, trying to pretend that we aren’t still as attracted to one another as we were twelve years ago.”

She folded her arms over her chest as she lifted her gaze to his. “I’m not going to deny that there’s an attraction, but I’m not looking to get involved with anyone right now.”

A personal relationship was the absolute last thing he’d been looking for when he’d decided to move back to Pinehurst, but then he’d kissed Ashley, and he’d realized that getting involved with her wasn’t a choice. But he understood why she was wary.

“You can’t close your heart because of what your ex-fiancé did,” he said gently.

“This had nothing to do with Trevor,” she denied.

“I’d say the picture in your trash can suggests otherwise.”

“You’re right,” she decided. “This has everything to do with Trevor. Because if he hadn’t chosen to send that picture to me, I wouldn’t have sliced my hand and you wouldn’t have needed to stitch it up, and you definitely wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Then maybe I should thank Trevor,” he said.

She glared at him. “In any event, I have no intention of picking up our relationship where we left off just because it’s convenient for you now.”

He felt his own anger stir. “My feelings for you were a lot of things,” he told her. “But convenient was never one of them.”

As soon as her prescription was delivered, Ashley took the requisite pills and sent Cam on his way.

From the moment she’d returned from her shopping trip earlier in the day, nothing had gone according to plan. Coming face-to-face with Cam had been unexpected, but it had also been unavoidable. Especially since he would be moving in down the street.

So while their meeting was inevitable, she’d been confident that when they did meet, they would simply exchange a few coolly polite words and go their separate ways. She certainly hadn’t expected anything like the kiss they’d shared in her kitchen.

Because while Cam might have made the first move, there was no denying that she’d been an equal—and willing—participant.

Yeah, that kiss had definitely been a mistake, because now she was dealing with the aftermath—a jumble of feelings that she hadn’t been prepared for and didn’t know what to do with.

It had only been one kiss. Nothing that should have the power to turn her world upside down. But it felt as if that was exactly what had happened.

He’d been absent from her life for twelve years but somehow, after only a few hours, he’d managed to churn up all kinds of feelings and desires that she’d buried a long time ago. Or so she’d thought.

She sorted through the mail, opened the cupboard under the sink to drop the flyers into the recycle box and saw that a new bag had been put in the garbage can. Cam must have taken out the other bag for her—the one with the broken picture frame and her engagement photo in it.

Because he thought seeing the photo again might upset her? Or because he thought she was clumsy enough to injure herself again when she took the bag out?

She closed the cupboard and sighed. She had no idea what Cam’s reasons were. She didn’t know anything at all about him anymore. And yet, there was something still there between them. Something that both thrilled and terrified her.

It had been easy for her to toss the picture of her fiancé into the garbage, because she had closed the door on that part of her life with no regrets. She had been happy with Trevor, at least for a while, and she’d wanted the life they had planned to build together. But the truth was, she’d never loved him as completely and wholeheartedly as she’d loved Cam.

It was an unsettling realization, and one she wasn’t ready to examine too closely. Determined to push the sexy doctor out of her mind, she went upstairs to get ready for bed.

The sun hadn’t yet set, but she was exhausted—physically and emotionally—and she wanted nothing more than to crawl between the sheets and sink into oblivion where thoughts and memories of Cam Turcotte didn’t exist.

Cam was surprised to find his parents’ car in the driveway when he got back to their house after his detour to Ashley’s. He walked through the back door and followed the trail of an enticingly spicy scent into the kitchen where his mother was stirring something on the stove.

“I thought tonight was your bowling night,” he said in lieu of a greeting.

“Your dad spent the afternoon at Harry Reiner’s, helping him lay patio stones,” Gayle told her son.

“He screwed up his back again, didn’t he?”

“He’s in bed with an ice pack now,” she confirmed.

“Why does he do things like that?”

“Because Harry helped stain our deck, and your dad insisted that this was his way of returning the favor.”

“A paintbrush doesn’t weigh forty pounds,” Cam noted.

His mother smiled. “Which is exactly what I said to him. But then I made the mistake of noting that he’s also several years older than Harry, which he interpreted as a challenge.”

“Because it drives him crazy the way Harry flirts with you.”

“Harry’s been widowed for nearly ten years, he’s lonely, and he flirts with every woman who crosses his path.” She finished scooping chili into a bowl. “Do you want some?”

“Oh. No, thanks. I had a couple of slices of pizza earlier.”

She carried her bowl to the table and sat down. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Because you’re a lot later than usual getting home and you seem a little distracted.”

“Busy day at the office.” He helped himself to a bottle of beer from the fridge and sat down with her.

He’d moved in with them when he’d returned to Pinehurst because it was convenient and gave him the opportunity to look for a place of his own. What had surprised him was how much he’d enjoyed spending time with them. After living so far away for so many years, it was nice to reconnect again, and to realize that he actually liked his parents.

“That’s why Elijah needed to hire you,” she said. “So what was different about today?”

He took a long swallow from the bottle. “I saw Ashley.”

She paused, her spoon halfway to her lips. “Ashley Roarke?”

He nodded.

“How did that go?”

He thought about their kiss—the soft responsiveness of her lips, the yielding warmth of her body—and her abrupt and complete withdrawal from him. “Better—and worse—than I expected.”

“I’m … sorry?”

He smiled. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected that she’d be happy about my decision to come back to Pinehurst now.”

“I would think, if her feelings for you are well and truly gone, she wouldn’t have much of an opinion one way or the other.”

He mulled that over for a minute. “The implication being that if she cares, she must still have feelings for me?”

“Twelve years is a long time, and you were both so young when you went away. And yet—” she smiled “—a woman never forgets her first love.”

“Spoken like a woman with fond memories,” he noted.

“I fell in love when I was fifteen—much to the chagrin of both my parents and his. He was nearly twenty, already in college, and our families were united only in their desire to keep us apart.”

“What happened?”

Her eyes sparkled. “I married him.”

“Grandma and Grandpa disapproved of Dad?” He couldn’t believe it. His father was the epitome of responsibility and respectability—certainly not the usual type that parents warned their daughters about.

“I was fifteen,” she said again. “I don’t think they would have approved of anyone I brought home at that age. And he was so … sexy. He worked in construction in the summer to earn money for college and he had all these rippling muscles and—”

“Please.” Cam held up a hand, urging her to spare him the details.

“If I hadn’t been attracted to your father, you wouldn’t be here,” she pointed out.

“Still, there are some things a kid doesn’t need to know.”

“Well, my point,” she said, “is that parents always want what they think is best for their kids, even when it conflicts with what their kids want. That’s why your dad encouraged you to go away to school, to put some distance between you and Ashley before you got too deeply involved.”

“He knew how I felt about her.”

She nodded. “And he was afraid that you’d give up your dreams to stay in Pinehurst with her.”

“Why did he think that?” he asked curiously. “Was there something he felt he’d missed out on by getting married so young?”

His mother was silent for a long minute before she said, “He wasn’t thinking about his own dreams, but mine.”

It had never occurred to him that his mom might have sacrificed her own plans to be a wife and a mother, because she’d always seemed so settled and content in those roles. “What was your dream?” he asked her now.

“After I met your dad, I only wanted to be with him.”

But he recognized the evasion, and his curiosity was piqued. “Before you met Dad?” he prompted.

“I was going to be a doctor,” she finally admitted.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He couldn’t believe that he’d never known his mother had once envisioned having the same career that he’d chosen for himself.

“A doctor,” he echoed.

She nodded. “In fact, I’d just been accepted to medical school when I found out I was pregnant.”

He set his now empty bottle down. “You gave up your dream because of me?”

But she shook her head vehemently. “No. By the time I got pregnant, my dream had changed. Finding out that I was going to have a baby was the most incredible moment of my life. I had no qualms about giving up medical school for motherhood.

“But when you first expressed an interest in becoming a doctor, your father was adamant that nothing would cause you to make the sacrifice he believed I’d made. But what he didn’t think about—what neither of us really considered—was what would make you happy.”

“You shouldn’t worry about that anymore,” he assured her. “I am happy.”

“A parent always worries. Especially when her kids grow up and move away.”

He knew she wasn’t just thinking of him, but of his younger sister, Sherry, who was now married and living in Florida.

“Well, I have no doubt that you would have been a great doctor,” he said. “But you made the right career choice, because you are definitely the world’s greatest mom.”

She smiled through the sheen of tears in her eyes. “And when a mother’s grown son says something like that, she knows she’s done her job well.”

When Ashley returned to the doctor’s office for her follow-up appointment, she was prepared to see Cam. Not just to see him, but to prove that she was completely unaffected by him, that the scorching kiss they’d shared in her kitchen meant nothing to her. Less than nothing, in fact.

When the door opened, however, it wasn’t Cam who came in—it was Eli. She felt a slight pang but assured herself it wasn’t disappointment. After all, it wasn’t that she wanted to see Cam except to prove that he didn’t mean anything to her. Not anymore.

But Eli meant the world to her, and her smile came easily for him.

“How’s Ruby?” she asked, having learned about his wife’s heart attack from Megan, who worked with one of the doctor’s neighbors.

“She’s doing well. Thanks for the beautiful flowers. She was so tickled that you remembered gerberas are her favorite.”

“I was hoping they would brighten up her room and her spirits.”

“The did both,” Eli confirmed. “And remarkably well, I’d say, since she’s scheduled to come home tomorrow.”

“You must be so relieved.”

He nodded. “We’ve been married forty-two years. After that much time, you start to take certain things for granted. But I’m not taking anything for granted anymore.”

Ashley wondered if she would ever know that kind of deep and abiding love, and realized that she still hoped she would. She hadn’t completely given up on the idea of finding someone to share her life, she’d just decided not to worry about doing so. And, in the meantime, she would happily lavish all of her love and attention on the baby she was going to have.

“But I know you didn’t really come here to talk abut me,” the doctor continued. “So tell me how you’re doing.”

“I’m anxious to get these stitches out,” she admitted.

He scanned the notes in her file, closed the folder and reached for her hand. “Let’s take a look then.”

While he was bent over her hand, she stared at the calendar on the wall on the opposite side of the room, breathing slowly and carefully as she silently calculated the days and then the hours and minutes until it was time to go back to school. She felt a few little tugs, but no pain, and as long as she didn’t think about the fact that he was pulling threads out of her hand, she didn’t feel dizzy.

She hadn’t felt anything when Cam put the stitches in, either. Of course, she’d been given an injection to freeze the site, but even without the artificial numbing, she knew her awareness of Cam would have eclipsed everything else.

“How does it feel?”

She glanced down, saw that he’d finished removing the stitches. She carefully curled her fingers into a fist, nodded. “It feels good.”

“Cam did a nice job,” Eli said. “In a few more weeks, the scar will barely be visible.”

Ashley uncurled her fist and was pleased to note that there was no residual pain in her hand.

If only the same could be said about the scars Cam had left on her heart twelve years earlier.