Her Secret Valentine

As soon as he was gone, Ashley let out a long breath. Her slender body seemed to deflate. “I’m sorry about that,” she said, shaking her head. “He should have called first, let us know he was coming.”

“He’s family, Ashley,” Cal corrected his wife gently. “Your father doesn’t have to call for permission first. He’s welcome here anytime. In fact, I wish he would come here more,” Cal said sincerely. Perhaps if Ashley and her parents spent more time together their relationship wouldn’t be so strained. He knew they loved each other. They just hadn’t quite figured out how to show it. A lot more interaction, on a more casual basis, might help that.

Ashley looked full of resentment. “If my father’d been coming here on business, he would have called ahead out of courtesy.”

“Maybe he thought you’d duck him if he gave you too much notice,” Cal teased gently and waited for her reaction. As he expected, it wasn’t long in coming.

Ashley turned to Cal, moisture brimming in her china-blue eyes. “I love him.”

“I know.” Cal wrapped an arm around her shoulders and brought her in close to his side.

“I love both my parents,” she insisted thickly.

“I know that, too.” He comforted her with a kiss on the top of her head.

Ashley leaned into his embrace, as if soaking in the comfort he was trying to give, then moved away. She threw up her hands in frustration as she paced back and forth. “They just drive me crazy.”

Cal knew that, too. “You could just tell your father you don’t want to talk about the job search.”

“That wouldn’t stop him from putting his two cents in,” she complained.

Probably not, Cal thought and released a long, frustrated breath.

“Anyway,” Ashley sighed. She started to run her hands through her hair, the way she always did when she was restless, then stopped when she encountered the sleekly arranged chignon and pins. Looking as if she no longer wanted to discuss this, she eyed him up and down, taking in his ancient sweats and running shoes. “Did you say something about going for a run with me?”

He had, but that was before she was standing in front of him, looking so…wrung out and pale. He didn’t want to say so, but physically she didn’t look up for a long walk never mind a run in forty-degree weather. “Yeah, but—” Cal paused as the beeper at his waist began to buzz. He looked at the numbers running across the front, grimaced. He glanced at Ashley in apology, aware this was something he’d forgotten to mention. “I’m on call this weekend.”

He turned the beeper off and headed for the phone.

“That the hospital or a patient?” Ashley asked.

“Hospital.” Which meant it wasn’t likely a problem that could be solved over the phone. He picked up the phone and dialed. Ashley was still waiting when he had finished talking. “I’ve got to go. A sixteen-year-old kid got hurt on an ATV. From the sound of it, I’m going to be a while.”

He was already grabbing his keys and wallet. “I’ll call you later,” he said.

Ashley flashed him a wan smile.

Cal headed for the door then came back, hooked an arm about her waist and pulled her close. Aggravation boiling up inside him, he kissed her soundly. He wished the demands of their profession weren’t separating them again so soon. “Damn, I hate leaving you today,” he said.

This time her smile was real. And sexy as all get out. “We’ve got time,” she murmured reassuringly. Both hands on his chest, she shoved him in the direction he had to move. “Now, go.”

LOOKING BACK, Ashley didn’t know how she managed it. But she waited until Cal had driven off before she gave in to the nearly overwhelming nausea that had plagued her from the moment she had woken up. She rushed to the bathroom, where she promptly threw up.

Telling herself it was just nerves—and the pressure her parents were exerting on her to find a job “worthy” of her education and training—Ashley forced herself to shower and dress. And then she threw up again.

Wondering if she were coming down with something, she took her temperature, found it normal. Then she said to hell with it, and went back to bed.

By the time an hour had passed, and she had napped a little more, she felt remarkably better. At least as far as the steadiness of her stomach was concerned.

As far as the rest of her went…well, the more she thought about it, the more questions she had. And there was only one way to get the answers she needed. So she got up, grabbed the keys to the Mustang, and went to see an old and dear friend.

Chapter Five

“Thanks for meeting me at the office on a Saturday afternoon,” Ashley told Carlotta Ramirez, a petite beauty with dark hair and eyes and olive skin. Carlotta had been Ashley’s “big sister” when she’d entered medical school—the fourth-year student assigned to help Ashley adjust. Now an obstetrician-gynecologist with a thriving private practice in Holly Springs, Carlotta was also married to another doctor, and the mother of three children: one born during her undergraduate years, the next while she was in medical school and the third during Carlotta’s Ob/Gyn residency.

“No problem.” Carlotta unlocked the door to her office suite, flipped on the overhead lights to dispel the wintry gloom and led the way inside. “I heard you and Cal were back this morning and I’ve been dying to see you. So how was Hawaii?” Carlotta continued as she shut the door behind them. “Beautiful?”

Ashley thought about the white-sand beaches, blue skies and even bluer ocean, the lush vegetation and a temperature that never varied much below seventy degrees or above eighty. “Very.”

“I envy you the chance to do your fellowship there.” Carlotta shook her head in awe. “Talk about paradise.”

It had been, Ashley thought. But it would have been so much better if Cal had been there with her. Maybe then she wouldn’t have felt such soul-deep loneliness the whole time she was there.

“So how long have you been feeling lousy?” Carlotta asked as they walked through the deserted inner office.

Ashley paused as Carlotta stopped at the linen closet and got out a soft pink cotton gown and a folded linen sheet, and handed both to Ashley.

“I just started throwing up this morning,” Ashley said, telling herself that what she was worried about couldn’t possibly be true.

“But—?” Carlotta prodded, experienced enough to know there was more.

Ashley confided reluctantly, “I’ve been tired and over-emotional and I suddenly can’t fit into my pants.”

“Any chance you might be pregnant?” Carlotta asked casually.

Yes, as a matter of fact, there was a slight chance—even though Ashley kept telling herself it couldn’t possibly be true. “Cal and I were together in mid-November for a weekend in San Francisco,” Ashley admitted with a rueful smile.

Carlotta grinned. “Sounds romantic,” she teased.

Romance involved feelings, which Cal and Ashley had both been careful to keep tamped down. “It was certainly passionate, anyway,” Ashley joked right back, aware her palms had begun to sweat as she faced finding out the absolute truth of her situation. A truth she wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with.

Carlotta paused at another cabinet, and withdrew what she needed to do a screening test for iron-deficiency. “Did you two use protection?”

Ashley blushed as Carlotta tore open an antiseptic packet. An Ob/Gyn, too, she knew these were the kind of questions she should be asking others, not answering herself. “I’ve been taking oral contraceptives.”

“And that’s it?” Carlotta asked.

Ashley cleared her throat, embarrassed to find herself in this position. “Right. Which was foolish, I know, since nothing is absolutely foolproof in and of itself.” How many times had Ashley counseled her own patients in the women’s clinic to use two methods of contraception simultaneously, and not just one, if they wanted to make absolutely sure they did not conceive?

Looking back, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t followed her own oft-given advice. But she had missed Cal so desperately, and making hot, wild love with him had always been the one sure way the two of them could connect, even when every other method of communication failed abysmally. Not wanting anything between them, she’d told him to forget about condoms and had been a little reckless.

“Well, there’s one way to find out.” Carlotta swabbed the end of Ashley’s third finger with the antiseptic wipe, then pricked her finger. “I can do an in-office urine pregnancy test for you right now and, if that’s positive, of course, we’re going to want to take some more blood to send to the lab for a complete prenatal work-up and screening.”

“Sounds good.” Ashley watched as a dot of blood appeared on her finger and waited for Carlotta to fill a small plastic cylinder with a sample of her blood for the iron-deficiency screen.

Finished, Carlotta swabbed Ashley’s finger again, then gave her a small plastic cup.

By the time Ashley emerged from the bathroom with the cup full, her blood sample was already in the machine that would render the results. Carlotta completed the in-office lab tests while Ashley undressed in one of the exam rooms.