Читать книгу Substitute Daddy - Kate Welsh - Страница 14

Brett wished Melissa would come back so she could explain what he was supposed to be seeing in the ultrasound print. He stared down at the confusing black-and-white photo trying to see a tiny human form. He felt ignorant and out of touch, sure there was some well-known trick to deciphering the picture.

When several minutes had gone by and Melissa didn’t return, he began wondering where she’d gone so suddenly. And why. She’d looked a little upset, he acknowledged. Worried, but feeling like an intruder, Brett cautiously followed and found her in a darkened hall staring at herself in a mirror and crying silent tears. He stepped behind her, very much aware that she didn’t realize he was there.

“Melissa? Hey, Melissa,” he whispered.

Her eyes shifted a bit and she focused on his reflection. “It’s like looking at a pastel version of her, isn’t it?” she asked, tears choking her voice. “She was so alive and vivid. How can she be gone?” Her eyes slid back to her image again. “And yet never gone. Always staring back at me, taunting me because it isn’t her I see.

“She wanted a girl,” Melissa whispered, her voice as broken as her heart apparently was. Her lower lip quivered and her face started to crumple. “She wanted that so badly. And now—Oh, God. Leigh!”

To Brett there was nothing scarier in the world than a crying woman, except maybe a crying baby. He had no clue what to do. What was he even doing here? He desperately wanted to run from the intimacy of Melissa’s tears and grief. But then he glanced down at the picture he still held.

This scrap of humanity he couldn’t even correctly discern had been his brother’s fondest wish, as well as Leigh’s. Gary had wanted a daughter to cuddle and protect and love just the way he did her mother. And now he would never get to hold her, hear her first cry or later her childish laughter.

“Think of how happy you made the last two weeks of their lives,” Brett told her, then found himself biting his lip and fighting tears as well.

He hadn’t allowed himself to cry for Gary, not even once. He didn’t know why for sure. Maybe because there was no one in his life to hold him while he did. Or maybe because he’d been afraid that if he gave in and let himself cry, he’d never stop. Suddenly sharing this crushing grief with the only person in the world who actually shared it and fully understood it was all that mattered to him.

He turned her away from the mirror and into his arms, holding her close. Brett didn’t know how long they stood that way just clutching each other and crying silently. But after a while she wrapped her arms around his waist and something shifted in him.

The feel of her in his arms suddenly registered. He felt as if he’d taken a one-hundred-fifty-volt charge to his heart. And he felt like a heel for noticing how perfectly she fitted against him. But, dammit, he wasn’t made of stone and had never claimed to be a saint. When he’d had her in his arms that night they’d met, her body had promised ecstasy. She was an unfulfilled promise that he’d never quite gotten out of his system.

Brett swallowed. This was dangerous. She wasn’t the kind of woman he got involved with. Ever. And this woman above all others had to stay off-limits.

“Come on,” he whispered against her hair. “Let’s go sit on that nice safe porch I almost finished for you today.” In the shelter of his arms he guided her the few feet down the hall to the dimly lit living room.

Melissa looked up then and the tears in her eyes seemed to be magnifying their clear blue-green color and gave them all the sparkle of precious gems. Her gaze caught his and one of them turned toward the other. He didn’t know which one. It didn’t seem to matter once their lips met in a charged union he’d always sworn could not have felt the way it had. But once again it did.

Brett cupped her face, his fingers threading in her soft hair, and deepened the kiss. He tasted her tears and probably his. Then Melissa moaned in the back of her throat and Brett broke the kiss, afraid it was a protest—terrified it wasn’t.

“We have to stop this. Forget it too. You were right earlier when you pointed out that we come from different worlds.” He took her hand and put the ultrasound photo into it, but not before the image before him exploded to life in his mind. Fighting to maintain his resolve, he continued, “But our worlds have crossed into each other’s because of her and there’s no way to change that.”

Her expression changed from dreamy to one he’d have to analyze later. Then she raised her chin and he knew she meant to challenge him. “You could just go back to your world and leave me alone to raise her in mine.”

He lifted the hand holding the photo and kissed her fingers, shaking his head. “I’ll be back,” he said, and melted back into the deeply shadowed hall.

His whispered promise barely stirred the air.

As he drove north, Brett came to the conclusion that he’d never get the picture of Melissa’s face when he’d turned away from her out of his head. The hurt and the fear he’d seen written on her lovely features had nearly brought him to his knees.