Читать книгу The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child: The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child - Brenda Harlen, Brenda Harlen - Страница 8

Ashley was a big fan of retail therapy. A great pair of shoes could put a smile on her face on the gloomiest of days, and she was positively beaming when she pulled onto Chetwood Street heading home after her shopping expedition Thursday afternoon.

Only two and a half weeks until the first day of school, and she was as excited as any of the first graders who would be entering her class.

She’d enjoyed the summer break and had, in fact, needed both the time away from the classroom and the solitude to let her bruised and battered heart heal. But six weeks of intense rest and relaxation along with some quality time spent with Marg & Rita had her feeling a lot better about herself and her future. Okay, so maybe she’d wallowed a little, but she’d eventually pulled herself out of the funk and now she wasn’t just ready but eager to move forward. Deciding to have a baby was a big step forward, but one she was more than ready to take.

Her already high spirits got another lift when she spotted the SOLD sign down the street. She hadn’t known the previous owners except to say hello in passing, but she’d heard that they were newlyweds when they’d first moved in and now, three years later, newly divorced. Maybe that was part of the reason she’d felt inexplicably saddened when they’d packed up, or maybe she’d just hated to think that the beautiful home had been abandoned, but today, the SOLD sign seemed to her another beacon of hope.

She pulled into her driveway already speculating about the new owners, wondering where they were from and when they’d move in. Were they another newlywed couple? Empty nesters? A family with kids? The neighborhood was an eclectic collection of each, including a few singles like herself.

Because she was thinking about her potential neighbors, she didn’t see the package propped up against the door until she was sliding her key into the lock. It was wrapped in brown paper and blended in with the paint, suggesting that she really should repaint the door to give the outside a little boost of color and a more welcoming feel. Since she wasn’t getting married and moving any time in the near future, she should consider adding some personal touches to make the house more distinctly her own.

She felt a slight pang when she thought of the wedding that wouldn’t be, but only slight. She was totally over Trevor now and determined not to let the absence of a husband prevent her from having the child she wanted.

She shifted her other bags, then tucked the flat parcel under her arm and carried it inside. She dumped everything on top of the dining room table before backtracking to the kitchen. She opened the fridge, found a can of her diet soda next to the regular Pepsi her sister favored and popped the top.

Megan had been married for three months now, but Ashley still missed having her around. She certainly missed her more than she missed her former fiancé—she shook her head, pushing him firmly out of her mind. She wasn’t going to ruin a perfectly nice day thinking about Trevor and what he’d done.

Instead, she carried her drink into the dining room, back to the mysterious paper-wrapped package. She couldn’t remember buying anything that needed to be delivered, but the neatly printed label had her name and address on it, so she turned the parcel over and lifted the tape.

As she pulled back the paper, revealing a polished walnut frame and the edge of a cream-colored mat, she realized it was a picture. Tearing the paper further, she sucked in a breath at the image of herself wrapped in the arms of her supposedly devoted fiancé.

The frame slipped from her fingers and crashed to the ground.

The glass broke, a long jagged crack across the center, slicing neatly between the images of Ashley and Trevor.

She’d canceled the wedding and everything related to it. She’d made the phone calls herself to the florist and the caterer; she’d notified the band and the pastry chef. She’d been too late to stop the order at the printer, but she’d been certain to shred each and every invitation and response card and personalized thank-you note when they were delivered. She knew there was no way she would have forgotten to contact the photographer.

Then she spotted the piece of paper tucked into the bottom corner of the frame. She reached for it, frowning as she unfolded it. If it was an invoice—

No, it was a note.

From Trevor.

Ashley,

I just wanted you to know that I’ve been thinking about you and missing you. I haven’t given up hope that we can find a way to work things out. I’m sending this picture to remind you of the happy times we had together, and to let you know that I want us to be together again. I love you. T xo

She tore the note into tiny pieces and let them fall from her hands like confetti. Of course, thinking of confetti made her think of weddings and that made her even angrier.

She picked up the broken frame and carted it to the kitchen to dump it in the garbage where it belonged. She was over him. She really was. Wholly and completely. But apparently she wasn’t over being mad.

She pulled the waste basket out of the cupboard and shoved the picture in it, determined to put Trevor out of her mind. As she pushed down on it, she felt a quick, slicing pain. She felt the blood, warm and wet, dripping down her hand, before she saw the streaks of red. And when she did, her stomach pitched.

She’d never done well with the sight of blood. Although cuts and scrapes were common occurrences with first graders, those cuts and scrapes could usually be fixed with a Band-Aid or an ice pack. Ashley peeked at her hand again and didn’t think a Band-Aid was going to do the job. Not this time.

She grabbed a clean dish towel from the drawer and wrapped it around her palm.

A quick glance at the clock revealed that it was almost five, so she knew that the phones at her doctor’s office would already have been turned over to the answering service. But she’d been a patient of Uncle Eli’s since she was a child and the duration of their relationship, combined with the fact that he’d been a good friend of both of her parents, meant that she could show up at his office at this late hour and know that he would make time for her. Hopefully that would save her a trip to the emergency room.

Fifteen minutes later, she was ushered into an exam room by the nurse.

“The doctor will be in to see you shortly,” Irene told her.

And Ashley, feeling a little queasy from the loss of blood, nodded gratefully, reassured that she’d made the right decision in coming here rather than the hospital.

An opinion that changed as soon as the doctor walked into the room.

Cam had been at the office since 8:00 a.m.

He knew that the nature of a family practice required a certain degree of flexibility with respect to unexpected emergencies, but as the day wore on and he worked through lunch, he wished that Courtney—the receptionist and general office manager—would show some appreciation of the same fact and schedule appointments with more than ten minutes between them.

By five o’clock, the number of patients in the waiting room had diminished sufficiently that there were enough chairs for those still waiting. By that same time, he’d managed to take half a dozen bites of the sandwich that Courtney had brought back for him when she returned from her lunch break. The thinning of the crowd combined with the silencing of his stomach gave him hope that he might actually get out of the office before he needed to return the following morning.

He was reaching for the file in the slot outside of exam room number two when Irene—Dr. Alexander’s sister and longtime nurse—slipped out of room number four. The guilty flush in her cheeks warned him that she’d squeezed in yet another patient who didn’t have an appointment.

He sighed. “I thought you wanted to go home as much as I do.”

“You need a home in order to go to it,” she said.

“I’ll have one soon enough,” he told her. “And you’re not going to distract me that easily.”

“I’m not trying to distract you at all.” She took his arm and steered him towards the door she’d just exited.

“I thought Mrs. Kirkland was next.”

“Mrs. Kirkland is a hypochondriac, but this patient is really bleeding.”

He sighed again and took the folder she thrust into his hands, not even having a moment to note the name on the tab before he walked in the room.

And found himself face-to-face with Ashley Roarke.

He faltered, at a sudden loss for words since “Hello, Ashley, I’m Dr. Turcotte”—the standard greeting he’d given to Dr. Alexander’s other patients—seemed a little ridiculous in light of their history.

But it was long ago history and he’d seen her only once since he’d left town more than a dozen years earlier—just a few months before at their high school reunion. Ashley had made it clear to him then then that she didn’t forgive him for leaving her and that she had no interest in reminiscing with him.

She’d also told him that she was getting married in a few months, he remembered now. But her purse was clutched in her left hand and the impressive diamond she’d worn at the reunion wasn’t on it.

Her other hand was wrapped in a bloody towel, and it was the blood that jerked him out of the past and firmly back into doctor mode.

He couldn’t think of her as the first woman he’d ever loved, the only woman he’d never forgotten. She was a patient, and it was his job to ascertain the nature of her injury and prescribe treatment.

“I, uh, came to see Eli,” she told him, breaking the awkward silence.

“He’s at the hospital.”

“Oh. Well.” She cleared her throat. “Okay. I’ll go there then. To the hospital. To catch up with him there.”

She was babbling, obviously not any more prepared for this unexpected meeting than he was. And though he was tempted to let her go, it was apparent that she hadn’t come to chat with Eli but for medical attention, and he wouldn’t shirk his duty.

“You’re dripping blood,” he told her.

She glanced down, and quickly averted her gaze again.

“I think I should take a look at that before you go anywhere.” He reached into a box on the counter to pull out a pair of disposable gloves.

“I’d rather have Eli look at it,” she said.

“Stop being stubborn, Ash.”

“I’m not being stubborn,” she denied. “I’d just feel more comfortable seeing my doctor.”

Despite her close relationship with Elijah Alexander, she obviously hadn’t heard that he wasn’t doing patient rounds at the hospital but spending time with his wife, who was in ICU after suffering a near-fatal heart attack the previous evening.

So all he said to her was, “And I’d let you go if I didn’t think it was likely you’d pass out while you were driving and potentially cause more harm to yourself and/or others.”

He wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but her face got even whiter. “Have I lost that much blood?”

He chuckled as he tugged on the second glove. “Hardly.”

She scowled. “Then why do you think I’d pass out?”

“Because I was there when you fell off the stone wall at Eagle Point Park and cut your knee open. You said you were okay, then you saw the blood and your face went white just before your eyes rolled back in your head.”

He shouldn’t have mentioned the incident, because it was an admission that he still remembered that day, even so many years later. As he remembered so many things they’d done and moments they’d spent together. He had too many memories of Ashley. Memories that haunted his waking moments and taunted him in dreams.

“I was nine,” she said, her indignant response forcing his attention back to the present.

“And you’re as pale now as you were then,” he told her.

Since she couldn’t see her face, she really wasn’t in a position to deny his accusation. Instead, she lifted her arm and thrust her towel-wrapped hand toward him.

“Fine. Take a look and give me one of those butterfly bandage things so I can go home.”

Cam took her hand and carefully began unwrapping the towel. At another time, he might have lifted his brows at the parade of little goslings embroidered along the hem, but now it was the blood soaked into the fabric that held his attention.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

“Broken glass.”

He was a doctor—he’d seen far worse than a three-inch gash in the flesh of a woman’s hand. Except that this was Ashley’s hand, and the gash ran down the side of her palm before abruptly detouring toward her wrist. Luckily, it stopped short of her ulnar artery, but his heart skipped a beat in his chest when he realized how close it had come.

“Must have been a big piece of glass,” he noted.

“Eleven-by-fourteen.”

It only took him a second to figure out the reference. “A picture frame.”

She nodded, but kept her gaze firmly affixed to the opposite wall.

He tore open the packaging of a gauze pad, dabbed gently at the skin around the wound. “Well, I think it’s going to take a little bit more than one of those butterfly bandage things to fix this up.”

“How much more?”

“Probably ten to fifteen stitches.”

He thought of the patients still in the waiting room and considered sending her to the hospital for the procedure. Now that he’d examined her injury, he was confident the repair was something any ER doctor could handle.

But she was already here and he had everything he needed on the premises to get the job done, and he would take care to minimize, as much as possible, any scarring.

“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” She sighed. “Okay. Let’s just do it.”

“Well, Ashley Roarke, I never thought I’d hear you say those words to me again,” he teased.

That remark brought color to her too-pale cheeks and a flash to her lovely violet eyes.

Eyes that had haunted his thoughts and his dreams for longer than he was willing to admit.

“The stitches, doctor.”

He grinned, unrepentant. “Of course.”

He released her hand and went to the door, poking his head out to ask Irene for a suture tray.

She must have anticipated his request, because she came in with the necessary equipment less than a minute later.

Her eyes grew wide when she saw Ashley’s injury.

“Oh, honey, what have you done?”

“I lost a fight with a piece of broken glass,” Ashley told her.

“Well, don’t you worry. The doctor will have you fixed up in no time.”

“But you’re going to jab me with that first, aren’t you?” she asked, warily eyeing the needle that the nurse was prepping.

“Actually, the doctor is going to jab you with it,” Irene told her. “But you won’t feel him poking at you after that.”

Cam fought against a smile as Ashley’s cheeks colored again.

He’d remembered so many things about her, but he’d forgotten how easily she blushed, how much he used to enjoy making her blush. But that was a long time ago.

Now he had to forget that they were ever lovers and concentrate on doing his job.

“There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Irene said.

“You wouldn’t be asking that question if you’d been on the other end of the needle,” Ashley told her.

The nurse chuckled. “You never did like getting shots,” she remembered. “And your sister wasn’t any better. How’s she doing, by the way?”

He didn’t know if Irene had asked the question because she was anxious to catch up on Roarke family gossip or if she was trying to distract Ashley from what he was doing, but since the patient wasn’t paying any attention to him or the needle sliding through her skin, he was grateful.

“Meg’s great,” Ashley responded. “She seems to have adapted to marriage easily and blissfully.”

“Good for her,” the nurse asserted. Then her voice gentled when she said, “But I imagine it must have been difficult for you.”

Ashley didn’t move, but Cam sensed her tension.

“Megan getting married so soon after you ended your engagement, I mean,” Irene clarified.

“I was—am—happy for her.”

“Well, of course you are. And I have no doubt that someday you’ll find a man who’s perfect for you, too.”

“I’m not looking for a man—perfect or otherwise,” Ashley said.

She spoke with such conviction, he found himself wondering about the details of her broken engagement, and whether he might be able to subtly pry them out of the nurse at another time. Because he had no doubt that if there were details to be known, Irene would know them.

But for now, he clenched his teeth together to hold back the questions he wanted to ask. He had no business asking any questions, no business feeling anything for the woman who had once meant everything to him.

“Are you up to date with your tetanus shot?” he asked instead.

Ashley shifted her attention from the nurse to him. “I had a booster two years ago.”

“Then you don’t need another one.”

“Must be my lucky day.”

He smiled, appreciating that she could find humor in the situation.

“Since you’re just about finished up here, I’ll go check on Mrs. Kirkland,” Irene told him. Then to Ashley, “Take care of yourself, hon.”

“I will.”

“How do they look?” he asked, after Irene had gone.

Ashley glanced down at her hand, at the dark thread that stood out in stark contrast to her pink skin. “It looks … good?”

He smiled again. “It looks raw and ugly, but it will look good when the wound has healed.”

“How long?” she asked.

He tore open a sterile gauze pad, affixed it to her skin. “Seven to ten days.”

“At least they’ll be out before I go back to school.”

“Too bad,” he said. “I imagine fifteen stitches could be the object of intense fascination for a bunch of first graders.”

She looked up, surprise evident in those stunning eyes.

He was suddenly aware of how close they were sitting. That he was still holding her hand. And that she had made no effort to pull away.

“How did you know I teach first grade?”

He shrugged. “It’s what you always said you were going to do.”

“I didn’t think you would have remembered something like that,” she murmured.

“You’d be surprised what I remember,” he said. “What I couldn’t forget.”

Her gaze dropped away, and he cursed himself for speaking aloud a truth he’d only recently acknowledged.

He wrote her a prescription for some painkillers, tore off the page and handed it to her.

“Try to keep your hand elevated as much as possible, keep the stitches dry, and set up an appointment with Courtney to have them checked next week.”

“I’ll do that,” she said. “Thanks.”

Cam nodded and moved to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob.

“I never forgot you, Ashley. And I don’t think you forgot me, either.”

He walked out before she could reply. Because even if she denied it, even if she had forgotten about him, he was going to make sure she remembered him now.

This time, he wasn’t going to walk away.