His Baby Bombshell

“I won’t.”

She eyed him dubiously and he continued, “Working together will be good for us.”

Her jaw dropped. “You clearly need another CT scan. Your brain is obviously bruised.”

Adrian laughed at her response. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

The apparently happy baby now yelled its rage so loudly Adrian heard him through the closed door.

“I have to go,” she said instantly.

She couldn’t leave yet! He hated the idea of spending the rest of the evening with only the television, his thoughts, and the eager-beaver nurses for company. More importantly, they hadn’t had time to talk about his idea of starting over with a clean slate.

“What’s the rush?” he asked. “It’s still early. You can share my pizza.”

“It’s later than you think,” she mumbled before she lifted her chin in defiance, “and I’m not hungry. Besides, I have things to do and…and someone’s waiting for me.”

The news caught him by surprise, although it shouldn’t have. Bree, as he’d called her, always had a lot of girlfriends coming and going and he said so.

She bit her lip. “It’s not a friend. He’s my…guy.”

He’d been celibate since their break-up and the idea of Sabrina having a relationship burned like a hot poker in his gut. After giving her the freedom to date someone else, his response was completely illogical. “Someone special?”

“Someone I love very much.”

His spirits deflated like a punctured inner tube. It was depressing to think she’d moved on with her life so easily when he’d struggled. For now, he simply summoned a smile to hide his resentment and disappointment. “Be sure to introduce us.”

“Yeah. Probably. Some day. I have to go.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Right. Tomorrow.”

Adrian watched her scurry from the room like a mouse escaping a cat before it could pounce. Sabrina had never been secretive before and if she’d been a typical woman scorned, she would have rubbed his face in the fact that she had a new man in her life. Yet she hadn’t. She hadn’t bragged or said anything about him—hadn’t even mentioned his name—which seemed odd. In his experience, the women he knew never stopped talking about their latest love interest, whereas Sabrina had practically run away before she could.

Now that he thought about it, shouldn’t she also have acted grateful toward him? After all, if they’d stayed together, she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet this new man of her dreams.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Whether she had a boyfriend or not, he’d come to Pinehaven to do his job and salvage his career. For the sake of everything he held dear—his profession and his family—he had to make his peace with Sabrina, then leave the past where it belonged.

You should have told him about Jeremy, Sabrina’s alter ego scolded in the dark of the night, long after she’d finally tucked her son into bed. You had the perfect opportunity.

No, I didn’t, she argued back. The perfect opportunity had been when she’d first learned she was pregnant, but at the time he’d still refused to talk to her.

In the days immediately after Clay’s accident, she’d done everything she could to help Adrian and his family during their crisis. She’d sat by Clay’s bedside so he wouldn’t be alone, even though he’d been too groggy from pain meds to know she was there. She’d fixed meals for Adrian because he’d focused completely upon Clay to the exclusion of everything else. She’d run errands and washed a few loads of Adrian’s laundry so he could spend more time with Clay. She’d understood his need as Clay’s elder brother and head of the McReynolds family to be at the hospital every chance he could.

She’d also tried to be the emotional rock they’d needed, encouraging them to think positive and not give up hope when the experts had admitted there was a chance that Clay might be a paraplegic.

Little did she know that this news became a turning point for her. Two days later, Adrian told her to stay away; he was ending their relationship because Clay required all his attention and energy. He didn’t have room in his life for her, he claimed.

She argued her case that she could help, that she knew and understood how Clay was his priority, but he remained adamant. She begged and pleaded and told him how much he meant to her, but none of her entreaties made an impression.

He refused to reconsider. It was for the best, he told her.

From then on he didn’t answer her phone calls, return her messages or speak to her in the hall. It was as if she had become a complete stranger.

Deciding she was only setting herself up for more pain, she changed her schedule so their paths couldn’t accidentally cross, only visited Clay on a rare occasion when she knew Adrian wouldn’t be there, and erased Adrian’s number from her cellphone directory. Meanwhile, she prayed he’d come to his senses and kept her distance in every way possible.

Until the little test strip turned blue.

She waited outside the hospital after his shift had ended, hoping to catch him on his way to his car, but before she could rise off the park bench, a tall, beautiful redhead burst through the ER entrance doors and rushed after him. He turned, they talked, then he grabbed her close, swung her around with such exuberance that Sabrina could hear their laughter across the lawn.

His apparent no-time-for-romance philosophy only seemed to apply to her. Her spirits crushed, she slipped away before he could see her.

Pride stopped her from trying to contact him again. If he didn’t have time for her, he certainly wouldn’t have time for a baby. During her weak moments she debated about sending him a letter, but she was afraid his over-developed sense of family would force him to propose out of a misguided sense of obligation. She wasn’t about to marry a man under those circumstances. After her mother had died, her uncle and his wife had taken her in because they’d felt they had to, and she’d been reminded of their sacrifice too often. Asking her child to suffer through the same was out of the question.

Another possibility was that he’d offer financial support, but strings always came with money. She’d have to share her baby with him and she wasn’t inclined to do that either.

He’d wanted to go separate ways, so she’d honor his wish. Having made her decision, she planned her future to become a single mom.

She arranged for a transfer to another hospital in the same consortium in order to maintain as many employee benefits as possible, announced her departure, hid her condition, which wasn’t easy because she’d been so ill, then moved to Pinehaven to start over.

Now Adrian had arrived and no doubt would muck up her new life.

As she stared at the dark ceiling above her bed, she wished he’d never left Denver. The reasons for his arrival didn’t matter, but what concerned her now was how he’d respond when he learned about his son.

Although Sabrina didn’t expect Adrian to stay home the next day and give himself another twenty-four hours to recover, she hoped that good sense—or John Mosby—would rule the day. Unfortunately, Adrian reported for his shift bright and early at six a.m., looking quite strong for a man who’d spent the night in the hospital under observation.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as he caught her reviewing the contents and arrangement of the traumaroom cupboards.

“My shift starts at six, remember?”

“I know that,” she said stiffly, “but Dr Mosby couldn’t have discharged you already. He doesn’t make rounds this early.”

“John called after you left last night. He said, and I quote, ‘If you don’t have any problems, you can leave first thing in the morning’. So I did.”

“I doubt if he meant for you to check out before dawn.”

“As far as I’m concerned, five-thirty can be considered ‘first thing’. Just so you know, my vital signs passed muster all night, so after finding my way around the doctors’ lounge to shower and change clothes, here I am.”

And, indeed, here he was, wearing a long white lab coat over the pair of tan trousers and pale green dress shirt she’d delivered to him last evening. Surprisingly enough, he appeared well rested, which was hardly fair when he should have been the one to suffer a sleepless night instead of her.

He frowned as he studied her with similar intensity. “No offense, but you look more frayed around the edges than I do. A stiff wind would blow you away.”

To think she’d spent extra time this morning with her make-up to hide those dark circles under her eyes! She’d obviously wasted those minutes, along with her beauty products. As for the stiff wind, she’d lost all of her pregnancy weight and then some, because, for her, coping with a job and a newborn all by herself had been a terrific diet plan. Hating that he’d noticed, she changed the subject.