To Have the Doctor's Baby

“As do I.” She could feel the warmth from his body and smell the slightly spicy scent of his skin. Quivers started inside her and rippled everywhere. Bumping up against the bittersweet recollections. “The decorated tree would have been fabulous in the front window as people drove by and looked at the outside decorations.”

“But we wouldn’t have enjoyed it.” He held out his hand and indicated the large room. “Here, we could see it along with a fire in the fireplace, watching TV, or eating dinner.”

His insistence was ironic since he’d hardly ever been there for dinner, nights in front of the fire, or watching TV together. But that was water under the bridge.

“You won. We did it your way.” She’d given in because making him happy was her goal. Now it was her turn to get what she wanted.

“Other than that, how does it look?” he asked.

“The same. And I’m a little surprised.”

“Redecorating isn’t my thing.” The teasing tone was missing from his voice.

Was he feeling nostalgic, too? Not the Nick she remembered.

“That’s not what I meant.” She looked up at him. “I’m surprised you didn’t sell the house after the divorce.”

“I had my reasons.”

The dark look in his eyes made her wonder. “Such as?”

“I didn’t get around to it, then the housing market tanked. Moving is time-consuming and it really doesn’t much matter where I get my mail.”

All practical reasons, she thought. If the situation had been reversed, she’d have sold it at a loss simply because it was too painful to share the space with the ghosts of what would never be.

“And I’m hardly ever here,” he added.

That wasn’t new information. It was time to move forward. Literally.

“So,” she said brightly. “Where do you want me?”

A sexy smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “Do I get a vote?”

She didn’t have to ask where his thoughts had gone. That made two of them, but she wasn’t here for that sex. This wasn’t personal.

“I meant which bedroom.”

“Take your pick,” he said. “Although there’s not really much of a choice.”

She walked upstairs to check it out for herself. The master bedroom was off the landing at the top. She peeked inside at the four-poster bed, matching oak dresser and armoire. A pair of running shoes beside the walk-in closet and a towel carelessly tossed on a corner chair indicated he still slept in here.

Ryleigh moved past the doorway and peeked into the room beside it. “This would make a great nursery.”

“That’s what you said the first time you saw the house.” His voice was husky.

That wasn’t something she would have expected him to remember, and the sweetness of it made her chest tight. “It’s a good-size room, close to the master. If the baby cried, one of us would have heard.”

“So you said.”

But it was still empty, a reflection of what her marriage had become. Not at all like her romanticized vision before she’d realized that being in love by herself wasn’t working for her.

She quickly checked out the other three bedrooms and realized he was right about not having choices. The room farthest away from Nick’s was the only one furnished. She’d wanted a comfortable guest room, just in case they needed it and had started decorating there. In her plan, the others could wait for the babies they were going to have. But plans changed and the family never happened.

“I’ll take this one,” she finally said.

“I figured.”

He went back downstairs for her things and she was glad to be alone. How ironic was that? She’d never felt like that when this was her home. So now she was over the first hurdle, the one she’d dreaded most. Facing down the past. Part of her had wanted to turn down Nick’s offer to stay here, but that would have given it importance, adding complication and breaking their cardinal rule.

Now she’d walked down memory lane and somehow felt more whole. Stronger. Unlike the immature girl who’d lived here before, she was a woman going after what she wanted. Until zero hour, she’d be sleeping as far from Nick as she could get. With luck it was far enough to keep any more memories from following.

On the up side—she and Nick never had sex in the guest room.

The night after moving into Nick’s place, Ryleigh juggled a pizza box in her hands, then rang the doorbell of her friend’s condo. Almost immediately it was opened and Avery O’Neill stood there in jeans and a royal-blue sweater. She had blue eyes, a blond pixie haircut that was incredibly flattering and she barely weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. At just over five feet, she was shorter than Ryleigh. Almost no one was shorter than her. This woman was too cute for words, but Ryleigh didn’t hold that against her. They were best friends.

“Hey, you.”

“Hey you back.”

“Get in here.” Avery pulled the door open wider and took the pizza. She walked the length of the extensive tiled entryway and into the kitchen. The white cupboards topped with black granite were a big, bold look for her pretty petite friend. After setting down the box, she opened her arms. “Now for a proper welcome-home hug.”

Ryleigh squeezed her hard, then held her at arm’s length and studied the new look. “Love the hair.”

“Thanks.”

“It makes you look like a fairy, like you belong in a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings book.”

“Spencer Stone calls me Tinker Bell.”

The doctor was the finest cardiologist at Mercy Medical Center and Nick’s best friend. Ryleigh still remembered the look on his face when he thought she planned to approach the guy to father her baby. It could have been jealousy. A girl could hope anyway. But probably it was just shock.

Her friend was the hospital controller and handled the day-to-day hospital money issues. They’d met when Ryleigh was executive assistant to the administrator. “Is Doctor Drop-Dead-Gorgeous still giving you a hard time about all the cardio equipment he wants to buy for Mercy Medical Center?”

“Always,” her friend said.

“If he was a pediatric cardiologist I might be able to help you out. But he’s a big-people doctor.”

“Yes, he is. And likes to brag that he fixes broken hearts.”

“He does.”

“And he’s good at it,” Avery admitted grudgingly. “If he weren’t it would be a lot easier to dislike him.”

“But you manage?”

Her friend shrugged. “He hits on women like crash dummies hit windshields.”

“And that’s a problem?”