His Touch (17 page)

“My apologies. Why is there a blanket fort in my daughter’s room?”

“Hey, when a little girl invites me to
pway
, I
pway
.” Reid grinned at Nadia. Nadia grinned right back.

That’s when Kara felt it. Deep inside that spot in her heart, the one that held her memories of Mom and Steve, the one that demanded protection from further damage, she felt warmth grow and spread and realized she was in love with Reid Bennett. “Damn,” she whispered.

Reid’s smile faded. “Yeah. It’s time to go.”

She didn’t correct his mistaken perception for her whispered oath.

Minutes later, they’d wrestled baby, bag, stroller, and print-outs into a cab and were heading to New York Presbyterian. “Doctor Tully is a friend. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s sharp, kind of abrupt so don’t let him rattle you,” he coached.

Kara nodded, nibbling her nails.

“Do you want Elena?”

She took Reid’s hand because it touched her that he would think of that. But she shook her head. “I haven’t told her about this. Any of it.”

“Why the hell not?” He frowned.

“Because.” She sighed. That wasn’t an answer and just as he was about to call her on it, she continued. “Because she’s a newlywed and deserves to enjoy that. Because she’s already done so much for me.”

“And because you still think you have to do every damn thing by yourself.”

Her mouth set in that mutinous twist he now knew too well.

“Reid, please.” She hadn’t let go of his hand. That was something. He looked down, studied the way his rough hand swallowed her softer one. The nails were short and unpolished. He’d ribbed her about that once. Made some snarky comment about manicures. Kara never did things for herself like manicures or Starbucks. As far as he could tell, she hardly wore makeup except for some mascara and whatever the stuff was that she dotted on the purple circles under her eyes.

Suddenly, it hit him that he’d never done anything for her either. Brought her flowers. Taken her to a movie. Something. Her phone let out a single ping and she let go of his hand to check it.

“Oh. Right. Reminder to pick up a present for Jade’s shower. I forgot all about it. Ever since that day in TJ Maxx…” she trailed off, tucked the phone back in her bag with a shudder.

The day he’d blasted her between the eyes with both barrels. The day he’d told her she didn’t deserve to have kids.

Jade. He remembered that name. One of her circle. These people were important to her. Her mother’s sorority sisters and their children.

The cab pulled to the curb and he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before climbing out and unloading his precious cargo.

‡

T
he hospital gave
Kara the willies.

She’d been here twice in all the years she’d lived in New York. The first time was a similarly desperate cab ride while she was in labor and dressed to the nines for a holiday party she’d gotten to enjoy for all of twenty minutes before her water broke. And the second time was Nadia’s ambulance ride.

Reid carefully strapped Nadia into her stroller, pushed it through the automatic double doors. At the main desk, he asked for Doctor Tully, and they were directed to take the elevator to the eleventh floor. Tension radiated off him in waves, and she wanted to tell him to leave, this wasn’t his fight.

But she wanted him to stay. She wished Nadia were his. With all her heart, she wished it.

They were the only ones on the elevator—unusual for a New York City hospital on any given day. She fought the ridiculous urge to laugh when she wondered if it was a sign. Oh, why hadn’t she called Laney? She needed her sister, her family around her right now. And Al, who always knew where to look for—and find—comfort.

She wondered if the eleventh floor had any meaning. When she’d given birth to Nadia, they’d assigned her to room six eighteen—her mother’s birthday. But eleven?

Nothing.

Oh, Mom
, she prayed.
Please, please help me.

Reid chose that precise moment to turn to her and flash the full grin, the one that revealed teeth, the one her sister and her friends would have dubbed PD—panty-dropping. He was dressed in cargo shorts, a loose T-shirt and sported a day’s scruff under eyes that bore the effects of a sleepless night.

And still, he stopped her heart.

The elevator doors slid open. Reid pushed Nadia’s stroller down the corridor, around wheelchairs and carts holding everything from linens to food.

“Hey, Bennett, good to see you.” A tall man wearing a lab coat extended his hand, grinning at Reid. He turned to Kara. “Hi. Sean Tully.”

“Hey, Doc. This is Kara Larsen and her daughter, Nadia.”

Kara found her voice. “Thank you so much for seeing us today, Dr. Tully. I don’t think I can close my eyes until I know for sure.”

Dr. Tully shook Kara’s hand. He was young, probably not much older than she was. He had a small lion clipped to the stethoscope looped around his neck. When he crouched down to make a funny face at Nadia, Kara was immediately at ease. “Come on into my office. Reid emailed me some of the details. Maybe you can fill in the blanks?”

He led them into a carpeted office, and indicated a small sofa against a wall instead of the huge desk that dominated the room. Framed diplomas hung on the wall above the desk. By the computer, a tiny skeleton stood, suspended from a hook. Kara and Reid sat side by side, but Nadia began to fuss in her stroller. Before Kara could distract her, Dr. Tully took the lion off his stethoscope and handed it to her while Kara relayed everything Steve had told her.

Dr. Tully took her back through her pregnancy and delivery, Nadia’s health history including that frantic ambulance ride for croup, her immunization records, and her developmental milestones. He took the stethoscope off his neck, inserted the ear pieces and listened to Nadia’s heart and lungs.

He grabbed a pediatric blood pressure cuff from his desk and wrapped it around Nadia’s arm. “Ninety-five over sixty-seven.”

“Is that bad?”

Reid squeezed Kara’s hand, shook his head. “It’s fine.”

“COA patients tend to have high blood pressure, so this is good.

Kara’s heart lifted.

He repeated the blood pressure procedure on Nadia’s leg. Nadia fussed and threw the lion on the floor.

“Hey.” Reid held up a finger and looked stern. The baby’s lip jutted out in a pout, but she settled down. Kara stared at him in amazement. She’d never seen her daughter respond like that.

“Eighty over sixty.”

Reid’s face went blank and Kara’s stomach jumped to her throat. “What? What is it? What does this mean?”

“Kara, it doesn’t mean anything, not by itself.” Dr. Tully took the stethoscope out of his ears, gave Nadia back the lion toy. “Has Nadia been diagnosed with a heart murmur?”

“What? No!”

Dr. Tully sighed. “I’d like to get her in for some more tests. Ideally, a chest x-ray, but at her age, she’ll never sit for it unless we sedate her. I’d like to do an echocardiogram as soon as possible. That will tell us if her heart is enlarged and confirm the presence of a murmur.”

Kara swallowed. “Confirm it?”

Nodding, Dr. Tully nodded. “It’s faint, maybe a grade one, but it’s there and ordinarily, I wouldn’t be concerned about it, but given her father’s medical history, it’s worth a closer look.”

Reid’s phone buzzed. He gave Kara’s knee a pat and stepped outside to answer the call.

*

“Hey, Reid, you
busy?” Gene asked.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Reid strode across the corridor to a tiny waiting area boasting a flat panel TV hanging on the wall and a small selection of toys and books for young children.

“Oh. Uh, nothing. Just wondered if you were up for another try with Vickie’s cousin? She’s coming up from Atlanta for—”

“No.”

“Jeez. Okay, man. You don’t need to bite my head off. What’s up with you? Are you…are you at the hospital?” Gene asked as a PA system paged someone
stat
.

“Yeah. Kara’s kid.” Reid sank into a plastic chair, read the sports stats crawling by on the flat panel TV bolted at the top of a wall.

“Kara’s kid. So you’re off the market? You’re in this thing with Kara all the way?”

“No. Yes. Christ, I don’t know.” And before Reid could stop it, he was blurting it all out, every stupid twisted word.

“So let me get this straight,” Gene interrupted when he reached the part about the heart defect. “The guy that left Kara pregnant suddenly shows up because Mommy’s in a padded room and he figures he can have a life now and then adds,
Oh by the way, your daughter may have this life-threatening heart defect
?”

“Yeah.”

“That is seriously whacked.”

Reid would have gone with a different phrase, but
whacked
worked too.

“Okay, Bennett, I have to ask. With baby daddy back in the picture, where do you fit in?”

Reid shifted the phone to his other hand. “It’s…complicated.”

Gene cursed. “Come on, man, you’re not an idiot. She’s got a kid with that douche. No matter how whacked he is—that puts him in a different category than you.”

Reid’s muscles coiled. Gene wasn’t wrong. So why the hell did that piss him off? “You were the one who told me to go for it.”

“Yeah, that was before! Can you honestly tell me you don’t already love her little girl?”

Reid’s eyes slipped shut. “I gotta go.” He spotted a book on the floor, under a chair. He crouched down and reached for it.

“Reid, wait. I’m sorry, buddy. Just…just be careful, okay? You’re like the son I never had.”

A laugh snorted out of him. They were the same age. “Okay. Dad.” He rolled his eyes.

“Suck me,” Gene said and ended the call.

Reid stared at the book in his hands and then at Dr. Tully’s office. He did love that little girl, God help him. And if he were being completely honest, he was in love with her mother, too. A man would have to be dead not to love Kara Larsen. But Reid was a realist. Losing Erin taught him that love doesn’t fix everything and in some extreme cases, makes the broken things a hell of a lot worse.

It was because he loved her that he did not go back inside that room.

‡

A
n hour later,
a knock on the door had Kara’s heart leaping. She’d wondered if Reid had been called in to work. But it wasn’t Reid who walked in.

“Lucas. What—” A wave of emotions surged through her. Relief and joy and love. A second later, Luke’s best friend, Al, followed him.

“Reid called Elena, she called us.”

“Oook!” Nadia, naked except for her diaper, kicked her pudgy legs and wiggled to get to her new uncle. Luke took the happy toddler from her mother, a frown furrowing his brow.

Al put an arm around Kara. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, Al.” The emotions she’d felt a second ago gave way to panic and despair. Tears choked her, but Kara explained everything.

“COA,” Luke repeated. “Jesus Christ, Kara! Why did you not call us?” Luke demanded.

Kara shook her head. “You have your own things to worry about. I didn’t want to add—”

“Bull—”

“Luke!” Al cut him off with a pointed look at the baby in his arms and Lucas sighed.