“That’s very different, Emily. A private life is one thing. A professional life is another.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t think you’re upset with me because I’m a midwife. You’re upset with me because I didn’t trust you.”
He frowned, the lines around his eyes cutting deep. “Our relationship is a mixture of personal and professional, no matter how hard we try to separate them. But I’m going to have to tell my partners about this. They should know.”
Jared was a man of integrity and she’d expected as much. “I was right about my job being in jeopardy, wasn’t I?”
“If you had just told me—”
She had torn the thread of trust between them. Could Jared forgive her for that? Couldn’t he understand how much this job meant to her? How much
he
meant to her?
His phone rang, cutting through the tension. He moved to the end of the sofa to check the caller ID on the handset there. “I don’t recognize the number. I’m going to let the machine take it.”
They waited until the phone rang two more times and
then a male voice asked, “Dr. Madison? This is Jonus Wingate. I’m a reporter with the
Lubbock Sentinel
. The paramedics gave me your name. I’m writing an article about the birth in the grocery store today and I’d like your input. Please call me as soon as you can. My story will appear in tomorrow afternoon’s paper.” The reporter left a number.
“The paramedics didn’t know who I was,” Emily murmured.
“That’s a good thing,” Jared said wryly. “Don’t worry, I’m not calling him back.” He ran his hand through his hair and gave her another penetrating look. “Is this all of it? Have you told me everything? Or could this reporter dig up anything else if he learns your name?”
“The reporter won’t find anything else. But—”
“But?”
She didn’t want
any
secrets between them.
“My marriage was involved in all of this, too. We used a withdrawal from Richard’s pension for legal fees. He was trying to get a promotion and he didn’t want the publicity. I just wanted him to stand by me and tell me everything would be okay. After it was all over, he said I’d changed, that I wasn’t the woman he married. I suppose that was true. I felt like…I lost everything. That’s why I moved here to start fresh. I just wanted to pay him back what I owed him and forget about all of it.”
“You’re paying him back for the legal fees?”
“Every month. It will take a while, but I’m going to do it.”
After a few moments of silence, Jared said, “I can understand wanting to move someplace new and start fresh.” The depth to his voice led Emily to believe he really
did
understand.
But then he continued. “I can’t help but feel that you
deceived me by omission. The past few weeks, you’ve had the opportunity to tell me and you didn’t.”
Trust was very important to Jared. Maybe it was everything in a relationship. She could see how betrayed he felt. She’d been afraid to trust him and now that might have damaged everything they had together.
What did you have? a small voice asked.
She had a connection with Jared that had been growing deeper and deeper, and now she didn’t know if he wanted to be connected to her at all.
To save them both further embarrassment, she rose and picked up her purse. “I’d better go. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
He stood, too. “I’ll be at the hospital in the morning, but I’ll talk to my partners in the afternoon.”
As of tomorrow afternoon, she might not have a job. She couldn’t blame Jared for that. It was her own fault.
He walked her to the door, looking as much in turmoil as she felt.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tears lodged in her throat and she couldn’t speak. She just nodded. When she reached her car, she told herself not to look back, but she did.
Why couldn’t she learn that once something was lost, it couldn’t be found again?
When Emily opened the door to the receptionist’s office the next morning, Nancy stared at her as if she’d grown two heads and remarked, “I didn’t think you’d come in this morning.”
Emily had been dodging messages from the media on her answering machine. She’d also had to sneak out the
back of her house this morning. Last night she’d parked on the street behind it to avoid a news van at the front curb.
“Did a reporter slip in here, too?”
“No. But you’re on the news. Check MSNBC. They’ll run through the cycle and you’ll see it.”
“Cycle?”
“Of breaking news. You were on last night. The footage was from someone’s camera phone.”
“But nobody knew who I was!”
“Someone must have written down your car license as you drove away.”
So that’s how they’d tracked her down. Not through Jared.
Emily went into the waiting room where a flat-screen TV hung on the wall to keep patients occupied while they were waiting. Now she switched the channel to MSNBC.
“This footage isn’t the best,” one of the anchors was saying as Emily saw a fuzzy image of herself kneeling beside Patti after the baby’s birth. “A shopper downloaded this video to us from her cell phone,” the anchor went on. “The woman who delivered the baby in the cereal aisle was Emily Diaz. Apparently there has been some controversy surrounding Ms. Diaz, who was once a midwife. A lawsuit was brought against her in Corpus Christi. Now, however, she works as an obstetrical nurse practitioner for Dr. Jared Madison at the Family Tree Health Center in Lubbock, Texas. More on this story as it unfolds. Now we have breaking news concerning the wildfires in Colorado.”
Emily suddenly felt as if she’d entered an alternate universe. She was shaking all over. Her lawsuit was a matter of public record. It had been covered in the Corpus Christi papers.
“Emily? Are you okay?” Nancy asked, coming out from her cubicle.
“I’m fine,” she murmured, not feeling fine at all. She turned away from the TV. “I’ll be in my office if—”
“Your first two appointments canceled this morning,” Nancy said in a rush as if she didn’t want to deliver the news.
“Did they reschedule?” Emily hoped beyond hope the cancellations had nothing to do with the cable channel broadcast.
“Both Mrs. Janssen and Mrs. Davis said they’d only see Dr. Madison…or someone other than you.”
With Jared’s tight schedule, there was no way her appointments could be worked into his. She imagined the same was true for the other two obstetricians and their nurses. There was only one thing for her to do. The practice used nurses from a staffing agency when they got into a bind. There were two nurses at the agency who’d covered for vacations. Emily was going to find out if one of them was available.
Within the next fifteen minutes, she had done what she had to do. Her appointments could be covered. If any patients called in to reschedule, Nancy could tell them Emily was no longer working there.
Emily gathered her few possessions and put them into a box. Afterward, she sat at her computer, typed a letter, placed it in an envelope, which she laid in the center of Jared’s desk blotter. She stared at it a few moments, then returned to her office and gathered her belongings. Soon she’d be home where she could pull the shades, turn off the phone and lock the doors.
Soon she’d be home where the reality that she might never see Jared Madison again might sink in.
E
mily sat on the sofa, the evening paper folded on her lap, sadness washing over her in waves as she stared down at the article. Everyone in Sagebrush now knew what had happened to her in Corpus Christi. The reporter had made a point of explaining that neither the licensing board nor the jury had found any evidence of wrong doing against her, but would that make a difference? Could she find another job here in her field?
When Emily’s doorbell rang, she was tempted to ignore it. Two news vans were still parked at the curb.
But then the doorbell rang again and was accompanied by a
knock, knock, knock.
“Emily, it’s Jared. Open the door.”
Jared. She thought maybe he’d just accept her resignation and her exit from his life. But if he was
here
—
She hurried from the sofa, rushed into the foyer and unlocked the door.
Jared stood there, his hair disheveled as if he’d run his hand through it a number of times. “I had two deliveries this afternoon. I got here as soon as I could. We have to talk.”
“About my resignation?”
“Among other things. Can I come in?”
A member of a news crew started up the walk.
“Come in,” she said, grabbing Jared’s arm and tugging him inside as she slammed shut the door.
They stood together in the foyer, her fingers around his forearm, heat already prickling under her palm and up her hand. She released her hold.
He looked uncomfortable. “I talked to my partners about your resignation. Just for the record, I didn’t agree with it.”
“
You
didn’t?”
“No, but they did,” he said with an edge of disgust. “They’re doubting your professional abilities. They don’t like the cloud that’s hanging over you, as you said. They’re putting the reputation of the practice first and it’s two against one. I’m sorry, Emily.”
She had hoped…
What had she hoped? That they’d beg her to come back? That she was too valuable to lose?
Her gaze met Jared’s. Her lower lip quivered and tears filled her eyes.
Jared suddenly hung his arm around her shoulders, then pulled her to his chest and just held her. “Everything will be all right.”
She looked up at him. “Not if I can’t find a job.”
“Come on.” He guided her to the living room. “Let’s talk.”
“About me keeping a secret from you? You’ll never look at me the same way.” She was so sad about that, so sorry if she’d hurt him. “After we got…involved, I knew I should tell you. But I was afraid to.”
Jared tugged her down onto the sofa with him. “I should have been more understanding yesterday. Everyone has a past and a private life. Sometimes secrets are involved and sometimes they aren’t. I reacted so strongly because…secrets hurt.”
He looked away for a few moments, then returned his gaze to hers. “When I was a kid growing up, I thought I had an ordinary childhood. My mom worked part-time but was at home when I got home from school, baked cookies, always listened. My dad coached my Little League team. But when I was ten, I was in an automobile accident with my dad. He wasn’t injured, but I had to have my spleen removed. He offered to donate blood for my surgery and found out his blood type and mine weren’t compatible. Wyatt wasn’t my father.”
Emily could hardly imagine that shock for a ten-year-old…that type of crisis. Forgetting her own problems, she covered his hand with hers and asked softly, “What happened?”
“It turns out, my mom was engaged to Wyatt when an old boyfriend returned to Lubbock for a business conference. They had dinner. One thing led to another…. When she became pregnant, she wanted the baby to be Wyatt’s. But when I was born, she asked about my blood type and knew I wasn’t. She’d kept the secret from both of us all those years. From then on their marriage was damaged. Two years later, they divorced.”
He had summed up the emotional trauma, but those years must have been chaotic. “Did you search for your biological father?”
Jared leaned back against the sofa and replied dispassionately, “Years later. Reunions don’t always work. I was twenty by then, and at that point, my father had a family
and didn’t need another son. We didn’t connect. He wasn’t interested.”
On top of everything that had happened, Jared had been rejected by his biological father! “And your stepdad?”
“After he found out, our relationship changed. I saw him once a month, but nothing was the same. He looked at me differently, and I knew he was thinking I
wasn’t
his son. After a year or so, he moved to Arizona, and I only visited once a year. When I was in med school, he had a heart attack. I went to see him and our relationship got stronger. But he died a few years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Jared must have questioned everything about who he was and where he belonged.
“I think what happened when I was small pushed me to choose medicine and to focus too much on my career. That’s why my marriage didn’t work. My career took up too much of my time. If Valerie hadn’t felt so overburdened…”
His voice lowered as if the telling of this was difficult. “The girls were a year old when Valerie asked me to take care of them for a few weeks so she could take the trip of her dreams to South America. I agreed. She died while she was there.”
“Oh, Jared.”
“She didn’t tell me she had pancreatic cancer. She didn’t tell me she only had a few months to live. She made sure she left when she knew the end was near. I’m a doctor, Emily. How blind could I have been? More important, why couldn’t she have trusted me to take care of her at the end? I could have gotten her the best medical care.”
“She wanted you to be with your daughters. She wanted their lives to be as normal as possible.”
“She didn’t trust me to help her…and she died alone.”
Because of what Jared had revealed, she understood him so much better.
Side-by-side with him on the sofa, she could feel his strength. But now she also knew his vulnerability. “How are you able to trust?”
“I don’t trust many people. They have to earn it.”
And she hadn’t. She’d kept important information from him. She asked, “Why did you come over?”
Her heart was beating so fast she could hardly breathe. Maybe he’d come to end everything they’d had together once and for all.
“I went back to the articles in the Corpus Christi papers, the editorials, the letters to the editor. Everybody had an opinion. But I know the statistics on stillborn births. The autopsy showed nothing. The mother had presented no alerting symptoms. Everything was fine until it wasn’t. Being a midwife or a doctor wouldn’t have changed that.”
“You’re so sure?”
“I’m sure…because I
know
you. You trust your intuition. At the first sign of anything amiss, you would have called for help.”
She saw the respect in his eyes, the certainty that he trusted her as a professional. But did she see something else, too? Something that went beyond their professional relationship?
His voice was husky when he said, “I hate the idea of you leaving the practice. Number one—because you’re damn good at your job. But number two—I’m going to miss seeing you there every day.”
A lump formed in her throat. She pushed words past it. “I’m going to miss you, too.”
As she gazed into Jared’s eyes, she felt everything she’d experienced from the first day she’d met him. Current that
had made her heart race and her hands tremble vibrated now between them. But along with it was so much more—admiration for Jared as a dad, respect for him as a doctor. And suddenly she knew she loved him whether she should or shouldn’t, whether it was risky or not, whether the time was right or the time was wrong. She ached for him to touch her, hold her, love her.
When Jared opened his arms to her, she didn’t hesitate to nestle against his chest, to let his strength flow into her. He lifted her chin and his lips came down on hers in a kiss that was hungry and aching. Neither of them knew what would happen next or where their lives would lead them. She wanted to experience everything she could with him right now. She kissed him back as if tomorrow would never come, as if the universe could stop, stay at this point forever, and she’d be perfectly happy. Desire they’d both been keeping at bay ran rampant. His firm exploration of her mouth, his hands in her hair, his groan of satisfaction when she returned every enthusiastic stroke of his tongue told him she had no doubts about what they were doing, no doubts about anything more they might want to do.
Jared broke the kiss to gaze at her, his eyes filled with hungry desire. “I want you, Emily. If we keep this up, we’re going to be naked on the sofa again. Is that what you want?”
“I think naked sounds good,” she teased, letting him know she wanted this. “But we’d have more privacy if we went to my room.”
Jared smiled, tugged her to her feet then swept her up into his arms. “Which way?”
She told herself this wasn’t a dream. She told herself they still had issues to settle. She told herself to forget about everything but now.
Jared carried her up the steps to her bedroom. The
yellow-and-white plaid curtains, the white chenille spread gave a pristine look to the room. But Emily’s crafting yarns and needles spread on a card table, her collection of perfume bottles on the dresser, the large print of a little girl and boy sitting at the beach on the edge of the shore, personalized the space as Emily’s.
Jared held her in his arms looking around the room. Then his gaze came back to her. “I like who you are.”
She laid her hand on the side of his cheek, ran her thumb over his jaw. “I like who
you
are.”
Her words broke any thread still binding his restraint. His lips came down on hers possessively and she welcomed them; she welcomed him. Still kissing her, he set her down next to the bed.
They kissed as he undressed her, long, wet, erotic kisses that made her head spin. Finally he broke away and lifted her blouse over her head. His fingers whispered over her skin as they found the clasp of her bra. When he bent his head and kissed her breasts, her knees almost buckled. His hot lips on her skin made her whole body tingle, and when his tongue touched her nipple, she thought she’d come apart.
But Jared knew how to keep the anticipation building. He kissed down her stomach to her navel, and then he removed her slacks. He would have gone further, but she stayed his hands. “My turn to do half of you.”
He laughed, dropped his hands to his sides and let her pleasure him. She unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his chest. He sucked in a breath as her lips trailed lower to his waist.
“Maybe we should move on to something else,” he said huskily.
“No problem,” she teased as she unfastened his belt. By doing that, it was as if she unlocked all of his hunger and everything he’d been holding back.
A few minutes later, he’d completely undressed her, rid himself of the rest of his clothes and lay beside her in the bed where she’d spent so many nights alone.
She supposed what surprised her most was that Jared
cared
about her pleasure. He seemed to revel in the sighs that came from her mouth, the small moans she couldn’t keep in, the trembling that invaded her whole body the longer he kissed and touched and caressed.
When he stretched out on top of her, he didn’t enter her. Rather he rocked against her slowly, erotically, increasing her anticipation and her need.
“Jared!” She dug her fingers into his shoulders.
“What?” he asked, and she thought she heard amusement in his question.
“I want…I want…”
“Tell me,” he requested, still sliding his body against hers, still making her crazy.
“I want
you
inside me.”
“That’s what I want, too.” Then he entered her with the same lazy slowness that he’d used to bring her to complete arousal.
She wrapped her legs around him to take him deeper. When he groaned, she knew she was doing something right. This wasn’t the mechanical lovemaking she’d experienced with her husband. This was exciting and exhilarating and even scary in its intensity.
He kissed her neck, took her earlobe between his lips and that’s when it happened. Without warning, her whole body tightened. She felt suspended between the present and the future. Then in an erotic rush, she was overcome by a deluge of sensation that sent fire to her nerve endings, made her heart race as if she’d run a marathon and left her shaking with pleasure, dancing from her head to her toes.
She called Jared’s name and held on, never wanting the glorious rush of feeling to end. He thrust into her again and again. Her muscles contracted around him and embraced him as if he belonged in her life.
Jared’s shudder and deep groan signaled his release. He collapsed on top of her, his fingers lacing in her hair.
“That was incredible,” he rasped into her neck.
All she could do was rub her cheek against his in agreement, reveling in the sensation of his beard stubble, loving everything about what had happened between them.
They were still holding each other, still floating in the aftermath of excellent lovemaking, when Emily heard the crunch of a car on gravel outside on the driveway to the detached garage.
Jared felt her stiffen. “What’s wrong?”
“Francesca’s home. It will only take her a few minutes to lock up the garage and come into the house.”
“Do you want to pretend this didn’t happen?” Jared asked, withdrawing from her, rolling onto his side.
She reached out and touched his shoulder. “No. But I’d like to be dressed when she comes in.”
He took Emily’s hand and kissed her palm. That kiss started her nerve endings tingling all over again.
“I’m a fast dresser,” he assured her.
Emily scrambled from the bed, hurriedly picked up her underwear, bra, slacks and blouse and dashed into the bathroom next door. When she returned to the bedroom to slip on her shoes, Jared was dressed and waiting for her.
They heard the front door open and then close. “Emily?” Francesca called.
“Up here,” Emily called back, then added, “Jared’s with me.”
There was silence on the first floor as she and Jared
went down the steps and found Francesca standing in the foyer waiting for them.