Читать книгу Custody for Two - Karen Smith Rose - Страница 9

When Dylan came into the NICU Saturday morning, Shaye’s pulse raced.

He was later than usual this morning. Most days he arrived about 8:00 a.m. Already it was midmorning.

“How is he?” Dylan asked. Those were usually his first words to her, sometimes his only words.

“Dr. Carrera seems pleased with the lab results.”

Dylan’s appearance was stark against all the white of the hospital. He wore a black turtleneck today with black jeans and boots. Although she was trying not to react to his presence, her heart sped faster and a cogent excitement she’d never experienced before seemed to fill her body…especially when he came closer and stood at the foot of Timmy’s bed.

This week had taken its toll on Dylan. There were more lines etched beside his eyes and his mouth, a weariness that had more to do with grief than with fatigue. They’d been avoiding each other ever since he’d almost kissed her, wandering to other parts of the hospital rather than being in the waiting room together. Most of all, they definitely hadn’t spent another night in the same vicinity.

Yesterday at Julia and Will’s memorial, Shaye’s heart had broken for Dylan as he’d endured the service. She’d watched as he’d said goodbye to Will’s mother who was returning to Nebraska that evening. He’d been stoic but she’d known how he hurt inside because she hurt, too.

Shaye rose to her feet.

Before she turned away, Dylan caught her arm. “You don’t have to go.”

His fingers seemed to scorch through her blouse. The sensation shook her. She knew better than to get involved with a man like him, a man who was here one day and gone the next.

After he dropped his hand, however, she didn’t move. Something about Dylan today was pulling her toward him rather than urging her to run away.

“I scattered Julia’s ashes this morning.” His anguish was mirrored in his eyes.

“Where?” she asked gently.

“She had a favorite spot on Bear Ridge, about a mile south of town. We hiked there, had picnics, just sat and talked. That’s where she told me she was pregnant.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he went on, “I couldn’t just bury the ashes. I wanted her to be in a place she loved. Do you know what I mean?”

Shaye’s chest was so tight she could hardly breathe. “I know exactly what you mean.” Reaching out, she touched his arm this time. “I know doing that had to be hard for you.”

When he looked away, she saw his throat work and she wished they were alone somewhere, alone where they could really talk.

Dr. Carrera entered the NICU and saw them. Chart in hand, he checked the monitors and the readouts around Timmy. “I have good news. I’m going to take Timmy off the ventilator, but I want the two of you out of here. I’ll send someone to the waiting room to let you know when you can come back in.”

If Timmy could breathe on his own, Shaye just knew everything would be all right.

“Go on, now,” the doctor said with a smile. “Go get some breakfast or lunch.”

“Coffee would be good,” Dylan agreed, his gaze on his nephew, worry etching his brows. Then he turned and headed into the hall.

“If we go to the cafeteria for coffee rather than getting it from the vending machine,” he said over his shoulder, his voice rough, “it might taste like more than colored water.”

Shaye followed him, feeling his turmoil and his hope.

As they passed the nurses’ desk, one of the nurses looked up. “Mr. Malloy, we had a message for you.” She handed him a slip of paper. “He said he couldn’t reach you on your cell phone.”

After scanning it, he told Shaye, “Since I can’t use my cell phone in the hospital, I have to find a pay phone and make a call. Go ahead to the cafeteria. I’ll meet you there.”

In a way, Shaye was relieved to be going to the cafeteria on her own. She felt such a tugging toward Dylan that she needed a reserve of energy to resist it. Over the past few days she couldn’t help imagining what a kiss of his would be like and she couldn’t keep from picturing what might have happened if he hadn’t pulled away.

Nothing would have happened, she told herself now.

She’d never indulged in quick affairs. She hadn’t slept with a man since Chad had broken up with her her…since she’d learned his grant in India was more important than she was…that his career didn’t include dragging a wife everywhere he went. He’d pulled the proverbial wool over her eyes and she’d felt like a fool. Sure, she’d tried dating. No man had lit an inner fire. No man had tempted her to give up her life as she knew it. At twenty-nine, she realized she was as set in her ways as any woman her age.

When she entered the cafeteria, she headed toward the beverage area. A few minutes later she was sitting at a table, staring into a cup of coffee when a cheery voice said, “Only one cup if you don’t put any food in your stomach.”

The sound of Gwen Langworthy’s voice always made Shaye smile. Looking up into her friend’s beautiful dark brown eyes, she asked, “What are you doing here on a Saturday?”

“One of my patients delivered her baby this morning. I stopped in the NICU to see if you were there but the nurse told me you’d come down here. Are you okay?”

“Timmy’s coming off the ventilator. I’m fine.”

Gwen was a nurse practitioner, specializing in obstetrics. “Off the vent! That’s great. You’ll be taking him home soon.”

Both Gwen and Kylie had called Shaye often over the past week, offering their support and their presence if she wanted it. Usually Shaye loved spending time with her friends but between her visits to Timmy and the turmoil Dylan caused, she had just wanted to try to sort it all out on her own.

“I hope so,” she breathed fervently.

Pushing her mop of curly dark auburn hair away from her face, Gwen asked, “You don’t think Julia’s brother’s going to contest custody, do you?”

“I don’t think so, but he—” She stopped because at that moment Dylan walked into the cafeteria.

When he saw the two of them, he gave a slight wave to Shaye and went to buy coffee of his own.

As he was paying for it, Shaye said, “That’s Dylan Malloy.”

Gwen’s eyebrows arched and she looked at Shaye curiously. “Is he the reason you haven’t wanted us around this past week?”

“I always want you around,” she protested. “I just had things to sort out.”

Gwen put up her hand to stop her excuse. “I was kidding.” She took another look at Dylan. “But now I’m wondering if he doesn’t have something to do with those things you were sorting out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! You know what he does for a living.”

“Yes, but I can also see he has enough sex appeal to stoke the fantasies of every woman in Wild Horse Junction.”

As Dylan came toward them, Shaye knew Gwen was right. There was something very sensual about Dylan in the way he moved, in the way he talked and in the way he looked at her.

While he approached them, Shaye felt all her senses come alive in a way they didn’t when he wasn’t around. “Dylan, this is Gwen Langworthy. We’ve been friends since we were kids.”

“It’s good to meet you,” Dylan acknowledged, extending his hand to Gwen.

She shook it quickly. “It’s good to meet you, too. I’m sorry about Julia.”

“Thank you. If I’m interrupting…” he started.

“Oh, no,” Gwen assured him. “I have to be going. I just wanted to check in on Shaye.” Leaning down, Gwen gave her a hug. “Take care of yourself,” she murmured. “If you need to talk, call.”

“I will.”

Then, with another smile for them both, Gwen left the cafeteria and Dylan sat in the chair across from Shaye.

Watching him, Shaye noticed Dylan didn’t give her friend a second look, which was unusual. Gwen was beautiful with her curly hair, her deep brown eyes, her figure rounded in all the right places. Shaye and Kylie had always admired their friend’s attributes. But Gwen played them down. Ever since her fiancé had left her at the altar, Gwen had withdrawn from the dating scene.

“Phone call all taken care of?” she asked.

“Derek, a journalist who was with me on the shoot in Tasmania, left that message at the nurses’ desk. My publishing house is moving up the timetable on the book we’re working on.”

“What were you photographing in Tasmania?”

A smile the likes of which she hadn’t seen before brightened Dylan’s face. “Gray kangaroos.”

“What kind of book are you working on?”

“A coffee-table book of wildlife around the globe—reindeer in Scotland, hippos in Botswana and orangutans in Borneo. We even did some underwater photography for the book.”

“You like to take risks,” she said, not approving.

“I don’t take unnecessary risks. I do like to get as close as I can get to my subjects. It’s one of the signature elements in my photos. It’s how I keep working.”

“Which do you like most—the danger or the travel?” Her question wasn’t meant to be a challenge. She was really interested.

“I don’t know if I can separate them. As I said, it’s not the danger than I crave, it’s my interest in my subject that takes me where I need to be.”

“I can’t believe that you and Julia were so different. She liked being a teacher, going to school every day. That must seem boring to you.”

“Julia felt safer with a definite schedule. That came from having our lives torn apart. She liked her day structured from the outside, I just organize mine from the inside. My life seems random but it’s not. I know exactly what I’m doing and where I’m going.”

As they were talking, Shaye couldn’t help but admit that Dylan was a fascinating man. She couldn’t begin to understand why she was attracted to him because she knew she shouldn’t be. Maybe she reacted to him so strongly because they’d been thrust into a high-crisis situation and bonded because of it.

After a few long swallows of coffee, he suggested, “Maybe we should go back upstairs.”

She knew what he was thinking. If they were upstairs, they’d be closer if anything went wrong with Timmy. She was praying nothing would go wrong.

When they returned to the floor where the NICU was located, Shaye greeted the nurses they passed as they walked along the hall.

“You said your father is a cardiologist. Do you run into him much here?” Dylan asked.

“No, just now and then. He’s usually in an operating room or consulting. Dad doesn’t see Randall much, either, even though they both spend a lot of time here at the hospital. It’s just not Dad’s way.” Shaye wished her father could be more in tune with all of them, but he wasn’t and she’d gotten used to that.

In the waiting room, she tried to concentrate on a magazine rather than another conversation with Dylan. However, he paced and she couldn’t help but watch him as he did. She couldn’t help but picture him in the wild, riding an elephant, camouflaging himself in the brush, hiking where other men wouldn’t go.

When they heard footsteps in the hall, Shaye hoped they belonged to Dr. Carrera. The middle-aged neonatologist came into the waiting room with a slight smile on his face. It was the first Shaye had seen since this whole situation had begun.

“How did it go?” she asked, worry sticking in her throat.

“He’s breathing on his own.”

Dylan moved close to her then, so close their arms brushed. “Can we see him?” he asked.

“For a few minutes. The lab results are promising, too.”

Shaye experienced such relief she almost felt dizzy with it. To her surprise, Dylan settled his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go.”

The contact felt right and she didn’t stop to analyze why.

As they sat with Timmy, they reached to touch him. Sadness gripped Shaye when she thought about Julia and Will never holding their son, never feeding him, never kissing him good-night. Shaye couldn’t wait until she could actually hold Timmy in her arms and she wondered if Dylan felt that way, too.

They didn’t talk much except to comment on a monitor or readout, but their gazes met often and quiet understanding passed between them. They both had this child’s best interests at heart.

When their allotted visiting time was up, they returned to the waiting room again, which had become a second home.

“Are you hungry?” Shaye asked, feeling pangs of hunger for the first time in several days.

“Actually, I am,” Dylan responded with a smile as if he were surprised.

“If you’d like to come back to my place, I can make us something to eat. I thought you might like to see where Timmy will be living. All the hours I’ve been waiting here, I’ve been planning what I’m going to do with my spare room.”

He took a few moments to respond, as if he was coming to grips with her guardianship of his nephew. “Do you have groceries at your place?” he asked. “We could stop on the way.”

“Grocery shopping is probably a good idea. We can call the hospital once we get to my town house to make sure everything is still okay.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

They both drove their cars to the grocery store and Shaye was glad of that. Being cooped up with Dylan inside a vehicle would be altogether too nerve-tingling. However, the trip through the store was almost as bad. They only used one cart, and he pushed it. The sensation of shopping with Dylan should have seemed strange, but somehow it didn’t. Their hips bumped as they walked down the canned goods aisle.

When Shaye glanced at Dylan, he was looking at her.

As she moved ahead of the cart, she left him to navigate on his own. But he was always right there beside her. Their hands tangled as they reached for the same apple. Their fingers brushed as they realized they both liked the same kind of salad dressing. When Dylan insisted on loading the grocery bags into his SUV, she helped him, the sleeve of her jacket rubbing against his, his hands coming to within a few inches of her body when he took a bag from her grasp.

Sliding into her car for the drive to her town house was almost a relief, yet a disappointment, too. She was glad Dylan had agreed to go to her place for lunch.

The older streets of Wild Horse Junction were lined with larch and aspen. Pines decorated backyards and towered high over decades-old houses. Shaye, however, lived in a newer section of town where the western Victorian flavor wasn’t as prominent. The groupings of duplexes had high-peaked roofs with modern trim. With tan siding and blue shutters, they announced that Wild Horse Junction wasn’t just a small Western town, but rather a growing town. Retirees who didn’t mind the volatile winters moved here every year. Tourists on vacation who fell in love with the town sometimes relocated whole families into the area. Wild Horse Junction fostered a sense of community and that’s what Shaye liked most.

“Nice section of town,” Dylan commented as Shaye opened the front door and they went inside.

“I like it. Gwen lives in a ranch house on a street behind this one.”

“Is that by design or coincidence?” he asked with a smile.

“By design. She lived with her father for a few years after she got her training, but then decided it would be better for both of them if she was on her own.”

That decision hadn’t been an easy one for Gwen, Shaye knew. Her father, an alcoholic, had played on her sense of responsibility for years until finally Gwen realized she was enabling him. That was when she’d moved out.

After Dylan set the bags on the table in the kitchen, he scanned the downstairs.

“This is nice,” he remarked, his gaze passing over the rust, brown and turquoise Southwestern design on the sofa, the light oak tables, a sculpture of The End of the Trail, as well as a landscape painting of the Rocky Mountains above the sofa. All of the colors coordinated, coming together in the braided rug on the floor.

“I have two bedrooms upstairs,” she said in a chipper voice that didn’t come off quite that way. Talking with Dylan about bedrooms made her heart beat much too fast.

To cover her confusion, she said, “I’m going to call the hospital to make sure Timmy’s still doing okay.”

With a nod, Dylan slipped off his jacket and hung it around one of the kitchen chairs. She unzipped her parka and arranged it on a chair across from his. Their gazes met and she felt a trembling start inside.

He broke the silence. “I’d better stow away the eggs and milk while you make the call.”

They’d decided on grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches for lunch, along with deli salads. The meal would take about five minutes to prepare.

Crossing to the counter, she picked up the cordless phone and dialed the hospital. When she reached the nurses’ desk, Dr. Carrera happened to be there. Apparently from her conversation with the nurse, he realized who was calling and asked to speak to her.

“The nurse said he’s stable. That’s true, right?” Shaye asked the physician.

“He’s stable. By the end of the week, hopefully we’ll take out the feeding tube and he can eat on his own, too. Now I want you to stop worrying, Shaye. Relax. Try to find your life again, because as soon as you take this baby home, it’s going to change.”

“How long do you think that will be?”

“A few weeks. A month. I can’t tell you for sure. But to get ready, you have to stay well, get plenty of rest and stop worrying.”

Over the past week Shaye had wrapped her professional demeanor around her, the one that stayed in control, took everything in stride, was assertive when she had to be. Now at Dr. Carrera’s words, that facade cracked along with her voice when she answered, “I will.”

As she set the handset in the base, tears came to her eyes. They spilled over and ran down her cheeks. There was absolutely nothing at all she could do about them.

She felt Dylan come up behind her. She felt his strong, tall body close to her back. His large hand capped her shoulder. “Is Timmy all right?”

“He’s fine. It’s just…Dr. Carrera told me to relax and stop worrying. Ever since this whole thing started, I’ve been operating on autopilot and—”

Dylan turned her around, put his palm under her chin and made her look at him. “I know what you mean. I did the same thing. It’s habit for me. After my parents died, I had to come up with a plan…not give in to the loss. Julia and I talked about that once. For me, anger took over instead of grief. It didn’t go away until I was finally her legal guardian and we were really brother and sister again. Now, losing Julia was awful, but I have to think about Timmy.”

“I know, and she would have wanted us to think about Timmy first. You know that as well as I do.” Her tears were falling again. “I just know I miss her and I’m still worried—”

When Dylan enfolded Shaye in his arms, she knew he was giving comfort. As he bent his head to hers and kissed her, she knew they were looking for escape and they needed to affirm life. She never expected to get so lost in Dylan…never expected to respond to his kiss as if her life depended on it. Her hands laced in his shaggy hair, loving the feel of it, the coarse texture of it. While his tongue slid into her mouth, his hands pulled her even closer. There was no space between them. The entire length of her body was pressed against him, and she was excited by the maleness of every aspect of him. His chest was hard. His belt buckle pressed into her tummy. And below that…

How long had it been since a man had wanted her? Since she’d wanted a man? How long had it been since she’d felt fully alive as a woman? How long had it been since touching and being touched hadn’t seemed important anymore?

Much too long.

Dylan broke away to trail kisses down her neck, and her knees felt weak. As his fingers fumbled with the buttons on her blouse, she pulled his turtleneck from his jeans. She slid her hands underneath onto his bare skin…into the soft chest hair. He groaned, a deep guttural sound that made her wet. Time and place and reason disappeared as they undressed each other in a frenzy of wanting to touch and taste and enjoy.