A Christmas Baby Surprise

Where had the traces of herself gone?

The sense of being watched pulled her back into the room, where she found her husband standing by the four-poster bed with a tray of food. He wore a T-shirt and jeans now, the pants low slung on his hips as if he’d lost weight recently. Perhaps he’d been worried sick about her and Thomas. She tried to imagine what the past month had been like for him, but came up empty. It was hard enough for her to grasp her own situation, let alone empathize with his when she didn’t know him beyond what the past week had shown her. But all of those interactions had been in the hospital with its sterile environment and lack of privacy. The four and a half years they’d supposedly known each other were wiped clean from her mind. Not so much as a whisper of a memory.

“I thought you might be hungry. There wasn’t much of a chance to eat with the trip home, settling Thomas and my mother’s surprise arrival.” He set the tray on a coffee table in front of the sofa at the foot of their bed. His thick muscled arms flexed, straining against the sleeves of the cotton tee. She tried not to notice, but then felt slightly absurd. He was her husband and yet a stranger all at once.

“That’s thoughtful, thank you.” She watched him pour the tea, the scent of warm apples and cinnamon wafting upward. “Between a night nanny for the baby and a full-time cook-maid, I’m not sure what I’m going to do to keep myself occupied.”

“You’ve been through a lot. You need your sleep so you can fully recover. I’m here, too. He’s my child.”

“Our child.”

“Right.” Porter’s eyes held hers as he passed over the china cup of tea with a cookie tucked on the saucer. “He needs you to be well. We both do.”

The warmth of the cup and his words seeped into her and she asked softly, “Where are you planning to sleep?”

He studied her for a slow, sexy blink before responding, “We discussed that in the car.”

“Did we?” She wasn’t certain about anything right now.

“We did.” He sat on the camelback sofa, the four-poster bed big and empty behind him as he cradled a cup of tea for himself in one hand. “But just to be clear, nothing will happen until you’re ready. You’re recovering on more than one level. I understand that and I respect that. I respect you.”

His sensitivity touched her. She should be relieved.

She was relieved.

And yet she was also irritated. She couldn’t help but notice he still hadn’t said he loved her, that he wanted her. He wasn’t pushing the physical connection that obviously still hummed between them. Was he giving her space? Was he holding back because she couldn’t possibly love a man she didn’t know? She kept hoping for some kind of wave of love at first sight. But they were fast approaching more than a few hundred sights and still that wave hadn’t hit.

Attraction? Yes. Intrigue? Definitely. But she was also very overwhelmed and still afraid of what those memories might hold. She wasn’t able to shake the sense that she couldn’t fully trust him. If only he would say the right words to reassure her and calm the nerves in the pit of her belly.

She looked around the room, everything so pristine and new looking, a beach decor of sea-foam greens, tans and white. More of the matched set style that, while tasteful, didn’t reflect her preferences in the least. “How often did we come here?”

“I have a work office in the house. So whenever we needed to.”

She set aside the tea untouched. “You’re so good at avoiding answering my questions with solid information.”

A flicker of something—frustration?—flexed his jaw. “We spent holidays here and you spent most of your summers here.”

“Then how do I not have any friends in this area?” Where were the casseroles? The welcome home cookies? Or did the überwealthy with maids and night nannies not do that for each other?

“Many people around here are vacationers. Sometimes we invited friends or business acquaintances to stay with us, but they’re back home in Tallahassee or at their own holiday vacation houses. We also traveled quite a bit, depending on my work projects.”

“So I just followed you around from construction job to job?”

“You make that sound passive. You’re anything but that. You worked on your master’s degree in art history for two years. One of your professors had connections in the consulting world and our travels enabled you to freelance, assisting museums and private individuals in artwork purchases. You did most from a distance and we flew in for the event proper when artwork arrived.”

That was the most he’d said to her at once since she’d woken from her coma. And also very revealing words. “We sound attached at the hip.”

He rested his elbows on his knees, staring into his empty teacup. “We were trying to make a baby.”

His quiet explanation took the wind right out of her sails. She’d guessed as much since they were adopting and had no other children, but hearing him say it, hearing that hint of pain in his words, made her wonder how much disappointment and grief they’d shared over the years while waiting for their son. Then to have that joy taken from them both because she couldn’t remember even the huge landmarks in their relationship that should be ingrained in her mind—when she’d met him, their first kiss, the first time they’d made love...

“And starting our family didn’t work the way we planned.”

He looked up at her again. “In case you’re wondering, the doctors pinpointed it to a number of reasons, part me, part you, neither issue insurmountable on its own, but combined...” He shrugged. “No treatment worked for us, so we decided to adopt.”

Thomas. Their child. Her mind filled with the sweet image of his chubby cheeks and dusting of blond hair. “I’m glad we did.”

“Me, too,” he said with unmistakable love.

The emotion in his voice drew her in as nothing else could have. She sat beside Porter, their shoulders brushing. It was almost comfortable. Or did she want it to be that way? So many emotions tapped at her, dancing in her veins. “He’s so beautiful. I hate that I don’t remember the first instant I laid eyes on him, the moment I became his mother.”

“You cried when the social worker at the hospital placed him in your arms. I’m not ashamed to say I did, too.”

Oh, God, this man who’d not once mentioned love could make a serious dent in her heart with only a few words. It was enough to make her want to try harder to fit into this life she didn’t remember. To be more patient and let the answers come.

She touched his elbow lightly, wanting the feel of him to be familiar, wanting more than chemistry to connect them. “This isn’t the way Christmas was supposed to be for us.”

“There was no way to foresee the accident.” He placed his hand over hers, the calluses rasping against her skin, another dichotomy in this man who could pay others to do anything for him yet still chose to roll up his sleeves.

“I never did ask how it happened. There have been so many questions I keep realizing I’ve forgotten to ask the obvious ones.”

“We picked up Thomas at the hospital. Since it was so close to our beach house, we considered staying here for the night, but instead opted to drive back home to Tallahassee. A half an hour later, a drunk driver hit us head-on.”

“We wanted our son in our own house, in his nursery.”

“Something like that.”

“What does his nursery look like at our house in Tallahassee?”

“The same as here, countryside with farm animals. You said you wanted Thomas to feel at home wherever he went. Even his travel crib is the same pattern. You even painted the same mural on the wall here.”

She remembered admiring the artwork when she’d laid the baby in his crib, enjoying the quiet farm scene with grazing cows and a full blue moon.

“I painted it?” Finally, something of herself in this house of theirs. Her eyes filled with tears. Such a simple thing. A mural for their son in their two homes—or did they have more?—and yet she couldn’t remember painting the pastoral scene. She couldn’t remember the shared joy over planning for their first child, or the shared tears.

And right now she was seconds away from shedding more tears all over the comfort of Porter’s broad chest.

When would she feel she belonged in this life?

Three (#ulink_2c3dea9d-0044-5db0-b6e8-0554ef6fea19)

Porter woke from a restless sleep. He would have blamed it on staying in the guest room, but he’d bunked here more than once as his marriage frayed. He knew that wasn’t the reason he couldn’t sleep. Sitting up with the sheets tangled around his waist, he listened closer and heard it again. Someone was awake.

The baby?

He swept the bedding away and tugged on a pair of sweatpants. Even having a night nanny, he couldn’t turn off the parenting switch. Over the past few weeks, the accident and time in the hospital had kept him on high alert, fearing the worst 24/7.

A few steps later, he’d padded to the nursery, determined to relieve the night nanny and watch Thomas himself. He’d worked with minimum sleep before. Actually, this past month had made him quite good at operating on only a few hours of rest. He was still so glad his son was okay that being with him was reassuring, even in the middle of the night. Those quiet hours also offered the uninterrupted chance to connect with his child.