The Bride Ran Away

“You mean with a string of dates and a proposal and a virginal wedding and eventually a baby? You can’t have that with me. I don’t know what happened between us, and I must have been in a daze until tonight, but I’m not binding myself to a man who’s doing me a favor.”

He curved his hands around her shoulders, his grip tight but not painful—as if he knew just how much strength to use. “What you overheard was panic. I want you and our baby.”

She shrugged, and he tightened his fingers instinctively to hold her. She gripped his wrists and pushed him away. “I—don’t—need—you.”

Something shattered behind his eyes. She’d managed to hurt him, but she couldn’t afford to care and she didn’t look back.

The rest room door swished closed behind her and this time Ian stayed put. She made straight for the bride’s room and finished dressing, though her arms and legs seemed to refuse input from her brain.

She gritted her teeth, determined not to cry. Weeping over a bodyguard who’d simply done his job would be ludicrous and humiliating.

Yanking the zipper on her jeans as high as it would go, she wrapped herself in her coat, wadded her wedding dress underneath her arm and fled through the nearest marked exit. The frigid night reminded her of Tennessee. The mountains that held Bardill’s Ridge in their safe embrace would be full of mist in the morning.

She yearned to be there.

Because she was sliding on the icy sidewalk, she crunched through the frozen grass, hurrying around the church to her car. She opened the door, tossed in her dress, hitched up her jeans and climbed in.

How many times had Gran asked her to work at the “baby farm,” a clinic and spa for pregnant women who wanted time out and pampering before they delivered their babies? Sophie had always resisted. Though she loved her family, she’d wanted to be the only Calvert she knew, not a minor member of the teeming crowd.

What had she been trying to prove? She shivered, planting one frozen hand between her thighs as she used the other to insert the key in the car’s ignition. Her baby needed family—not a dutiful father, but a family whose special gift was unstinting love.

She stared at the church doors as her car shuddered to life and her breath hung in the icy air. She could deliver a baby one-handed in the middle of a typhoon. She always carried a well-stocked medical bag in her car, but she knew nothing about raising a child. Maybe she needed family, too.

Time to see if Gran still wanted an OB/GYN who had no idea how she’d managed to get herself pregnant.

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE MORNING Sophie forced herself to stop and rethink her next move. Getting pregnant had taught her everything she needed to know about following impulses.

Two weeks passed while she considered the consequences of staying and of going home to her family.

She used her caller ID to screen Ian’s calls. He showed up at her office one cool evening, and she brushed past him. He waited on the porch at her town house that same night for twenty minutes before he gave up. He’d broken her trust, and she refused to forgive him.

She wasn’t proud of her own behavior. One slip, a lie that even she could see he’d meant for the best, and she felt justified in taking their baby far away. Maybe a more trusting woman would be able to meet Ian halfway, but she had to assume that lying for a good reason might be something he did as a habit.

Her longing for the people she could depend on grew with each hour.

She’d felt safe in Bardill’s Ridge. Her family interfered, but they knew when to back off and when to race to the rescue. And they understood moderation. No one threw away their own lives and freedom—as Ian had been so damn anxious to do.

Still, she made no effort to see a lawyer to end her marriage. She blamed her lethargy on total exhaustion. A pregnant woman couldn’t deliver a patient’s baby at three in the morning and then rush out to arrange a divorce before her office hours began.

Another lie. If she really wanted the divorce, she’d find the energy.

She hardly felt married. When the certificate arrived in her mailbox, she tossed it into the rubbish bin before she remembered she might need it to break her legal bond to Ian.

At the beginning of her third week of married life, the baby moved. That first little flutter gave her plenty of energy and a reminder that she wasn’t on her own anymore. That had her deciding on her next move.

She rearranged her patient schedules, and while she was at it, brought up the topic of taking over her patients for good with the colleagues who had agreed to fill in for her.

Next step—talk to Gran. She dialed, and the receptionist immediately answered.

“The Mom’s Place. May I help you?”

“Leah, this is Sophie Calvert.” She cleared her throat of its nervous vibration. “I’d like to make an appointment with Gran.”

“I’ll put you through.”

“No.” She tried to stop Leah, but too late.

“What’s wrong, Sophie?” her grandmother asked. “Are you ill?”

“Not at all, but I need your undivided attention for an hour or so.”

“Here? At my office, I mean.” Her grandmother’s tongue clicked. “Something’s wrong or you wouldn’t have asked for an appointment. Tell me before I imagine the worst.”

“Don’t imagine anything. I just need advice.” She didn’t want to discuss the possibility of working with Gran over the phone. “Don’t mention it to Dad, okay?”

“Sure. Ethan won’t be mad at me if I hide the fact you’re coming home.”

Sophie laughed. “I’m depending on you. Will you send me back to Leah, and tell her when you’ll have an hour free?”

Two days later she flew to Knoxville, rented a car and drove into the blue-and-green Smoky Mountains beneath a bright sun. Up here spring was slower to take hold. At the baby farm, she climbed out, sniffing the faint sharp scents of young honeysuckle and azalea. Their slightly spicy fragrances sat well with her iffy stomach. That had to be a good omen.

Sophie tucked her hands into the hem of the sweater that had felt too warm in Knoxville but disguised her pregnancy nicely. She mounted the granite steps that led to the resort’s entrance. Overhead, tall pines swayed against their maple and oak neighbors, rustling in hushed whispers.

A group of six young women were sprawled in chairs around a sunny table on the terrace, listening to a lecture on quadratic equations. The fees paid by customers who came here looking for extra care, or maybe just time off to pamper themselves during their pregnancies, went to help local teenagers who found themselves in trouble with no real support systems. These girls studying math on the wide cobbled patio would attend college if Greta Calvert had any say about it.

Now that her gran had her mitts on them, these young women were like part of the family.

Inside the glass-fronted lobby, Sophie waved at Leah, who nodded toward Gran’s office. Sophie took courage from her own determined footsteps on the polished granite floor. She knocked at the door, nervous for the first time in her life about facing Gran.

She’d have to tell her family about the baby soon. She glanced through the glass at the outdoor math class. She didn’t have to worry about being disowned, but no one would be pleased at her stupidity.

Had Ian told his parents? She pushed the question out of her mind. The answer was no longer her business, and she couldn’t afford to think of him. She had to get her own life back on track.

“Sophie, is that you?”

Just hearing Gran’s voice made her happy. After turning the knob, she leaned around the door and smiled. Her heart swelled and her throat felt too tight to speak. She searched the shadowy room for the vigorous mainstay of her life. “Gran?”

A white-haired woman with a desk as tidy as her pragmatic approach to life put her telephone back into its cradle and hurried through the slashes of sunlight across the thick carpet.

With arms outstretched, Greta Calvert uttered a sound that resembled a sob. Sophie choked back tears of her own as she stepped into her grandmother’s hug. Gran would love her no matter how big a mess she’d made.

“Honey, honey…” Greta Calvert sang and cried. Holding on to Gran’s deceptively frail body, Sophie let the tears fall for the first time since her wedding.

Everything in the room told her she was home. Her father had built Gran’s desk more than twenty years ago. The pictures marching side by side on its glowing honey-colored surface, stacked in lines up and down the walls, slotted unsteadily in corners on the bookshelves, offered a history of Calvert family endeavors. Graduations and baptisms, weddings and rowdy conversation shared across crowded dinner tables. Sophie scanned them all, swimming in memories, hearing echoes of the stories her dad and aunts and uncles told.

Gran kept every gift given to her in love, wildflowers, now dried, her resort guests had collected on their walks up the ridge, and paintings the Calvert grandchildren had done. She even stored pens and pencils in a clay mug Sophie had made in Girl Scouts.

As Sophie composed her emotions, Gran leaned back. Surprisingly tall, she met Sophie eye-to-eye. Her affection eased Sophie’s second thoughts.

Everything would be okay. She’d made a couple of dumbfounding mistakes, but Gran had heard stranger stories, and she possessed an unlimited capacity for love. Where Gran forgave, so would the rest of the Calverts.

“Tell me your deep, dark secret, Sophie,” Gran said teasingly, as if she didn’t believe it could be anything serious.

Just that quickly Sophie got scared. Gran had always known when she’d sneaked an extra cookie or waded in icy streams before winter left the mountains, but a baby put such trivial things as cookies and wet jeans in perspective.

Best get to the point. “Are you still open to having me join you in practice here?”

Happiness flashed in Gran’s eyes. Sophie pressed her fingers to her mouth as relief washed over her, but then Gran sobered with a wary question. “Why?”

That wasn’t supposed to happen. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

Gran urged Sophie onto the sofa and then settled beside her, smoothing a soft, printed skirt over her knees. “What’s wrong?” she asked again. “Not more than a few months ago I begged you to come home, but you said this town was too small. You knew too many faces here. You were happy in Washington among strangers.”

Her spin made Sophie smile. “I doubt I put it like that.”

Clearly not in the mood for a joke, the other woman waited.

“I’m ready.” Sophie looped her hair behind her ears, trying to look as if she had nothing to hide. She hated disappointing her grandmother. “I’ve had enough big city.”

Mysteriously, it was true the moment she said so. As her grandmother searched her face, she realized she might not have been so open to Ian if she hadn’t grown lonely. Gran folded her hands in her lap and still said nothing.

An uncomfortable tingle darted up Sophie’s spine. “Where’s my rip-roaring welcome?”

Gran traced her skirt’s paisley pattern with a delicate, pearl-tipped fingernail. “You’re lying. I never thought I’d see the day.”

Sophie squelched a groan. If only she’d inherited Gran’s talent for culling truth from a lie. “Can’t you take my word for it?” A momentary twinge of sympathy for Ian troubled her as a headache began behind her forehead. She was asking her beloved grandmother to trust her—exactly what she’d refused to do for Ian.

“You’re running from something. Or someone.” Cool, capable brown eyes pinned Sophie to her side of the sofa. “It’s that man, isn’t it? That Ian.” She screwed up her face as if his name tasted bad.

Surprise jolted Sophie. “You don’t like Ian?”

“He’s not right for you. Not some man who wanders the world without a mat to call his own. I saw you liked him. I should have butted in. I was afraid he’d hurt you, but I trusted your good sense.”

Sophie remembered what had kept her out of Tennessee all these years. “Why do you all do that? Ever since the day Mom left Bardill’s Ridge, every female in our family, including the ‘marry-ins’ has tried to save me from myself. None of you believed in my ambition. You were all waiting for me to come to no good because Mom didn’t know how to be a mother.”

“Nita may have left, but you had Beth and Eliza and me.” Beth and Eliza were Gran’s other two daughters-in-law. “We should have pretended you had a normal family and you didn’t need us?”

Sophie gripped the trim on the sofa cushion so tightly the beads bit into her palms. She’d proved their worst fears about her. Before Ian had come along, she’d been heart-whole and content with her job and her Washington friends. She’d thought she was too smart, too careful to get hurt. But the truth was, she’d never cared enough about any other man.

Even now, three weeks after their sham wedding, she missed Ian, and missing him felt irrational. She’d compromised her pride for him. She’d punched holes in all her best walls of defense, and he’d betrayed her trust.

“Sophie, I can’t offer you the job unless you tell me why you want it. I need another doctor—and I want a good one like you—but I’m after someone who’ll take over, someone I can depend on.”

“Why take over?” The family all assumed Gran would work here until they carried her out feet first. She’d promised she was quitting a million times before. Sophie felt a chill.

“Nothing’s wrong. Don’t jump to conclusions,” Gran said, and kneaded Sophie’s hand. The same touch had comforted Sophie all her childhood. “You remember I promised your grandfather I’d retire on our anniversary?”

“Yeah, but no one believed you.”

“Grandpa did.” Gran laughed, a touch embarrassed. But Sophie knew she had the courage to take the necessary steps. “If I’m not working here, someone as good as I am has to take my place.”

“You’re sure that’s all?”

“Positive.” Gran kissed her forehead. “I’ve done good work and I want it to continue. If you take over, I could help you until you know the place the way I do.”

Gran wasn’t arrogant. She’d trained at Vanderbilt when most Tennessean young ladies were learning how to sew a fine seam. Despite getting married and soon giving birth to her first son, she’d finished at the top of her undergraduate class and stayed there all the way through med school. Not one of the powerful men in charge of those male-dominated institutions had ever given her a break.

She deserved an honest, long-term commitment from her granddaughter. It wouldn’t be fair to take temporary shelter in the mountains. “What if I think it over to make sure?” Sophie asked. “I don’t want to waste your time with training and then let you down.”

Gran pulled back, satisfied. “Take a few days. Are you staying in town?” She stood, ushering Sophie to the door. She was a busy woman. She made time for family, but she didn’t dawdle. Sophie took no offense. She’d learned her work ethic from her grandma.

“I’m on my way to Dad’s.” She’d decided to tell him about the baby now. Lucky thing Ian was too far away for her father to set an armed posse on him. She’d be lucky if her dad didn’t turn the posse on her.

Gran reached for a file from the top of her in-box. “Listen to him for a change. Ethan’s a smart man.”

“You say that about all your sons.”

Gran slid on her glasses and smiled over the half lenses. “Bring him up to dinner tonight. Grandpa will want to see you, too.”

Sophie doubted food would be one of her dad’s priorities after she dropped her bomb. He’d be too busy trying not to let her see she’d disappointed him. “I’ll call if we’re coming.”

“Fine.” Gran nodded at the door. “I’ll walk out with you. My next appointment should be waiting.”

Gran darted around her as they exited her office. Sophie took her time, studying the spacious waiting room as if she’d never seen it before, the easy chairs squatting, fat and comfortable, in front of the far windows, the hefty ottomans just waiting to prop up a pregnant woman’s swollen feet.

She could work here. She already felt her share of family pride in the place.

Several patients glanced up from their magazines. Gran’s patrons were usually the only strangers in town and even they couldn’t maintain their anonymity forever. They obviously wanted to know who she was.

The pressure mounted. This was for real. These women would be her patients, and she’d be leaving an office full of women in Washington—her first patients in her first practice.

Sophie headed for the door. She’d often thought of how it would feel to work here, but she’d never imagined scurrying home to Bardill’s Ridge, pregnant and conveniently married. She flattened both hands on her stomach.

She’d manage fine with the patients, but how would she survive her grandmother’s on-the-job mothering? It might be a good idea to end her marriage before Gran discovered it. Greta Calvert believed in family enough to think Sophie should give Ian a second chance.

And the other citizens of Bardill’s Ridge? Sophie’s mother had left town with a man who wasn’t her husband. Sophie could see the heads nodding. Wild like her mother.

Nita had never possessed the instincts that guided some moms. Marriage was a piece of paper she could simply burn, and when she had a date, her daughter was usually an inconvenience.

Sophie understood that her mom just didn’t “get” motherhood. And while Sophie loved her, she didn’t want to be like her.

In D.C., her soon-to-be unmarried state wouldn’t provoke a ripple of interest, even among her own patients. Bardill’s Ridge would consider such an attitude too progressive to abide within the city limits. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to protect her reputation with a marriage that existed only on paper.

With one hand covering her belly, Sophie pushed open the glass door. She’d be a good mom. Her dad, her cousin Zach, her grandfather and Molly’s dad, Uncle Patrick, would be strong father figures in her child’s life.

“Sophie?”

Her grandmother’s startled voice spun Sophie around on the threshold. Gran’s eyes were fastened on the hand covering Sophie’s stomach.

Stricken with guilt and regret, Sophie dropped her hand to her side, allowing Gran to study the bulge of her stomach unimpeded.

When Gran looked up, her gaze was a mixture of happiness and confusion and regret. After a moment she turned away.

“Wait.” Sophie could barely speak over her own despair. She’d hurt one of the two people whose love and respect meant more to her than anyone else’s.

“Tell your father,” Gran said curtly. “And then we’ll talk. I just don’t want you or a child to be hurt, Sophie.”

Sophie stanched the urge to defend herself. She nodded and turned to descend the granite steps.

The weather had changed. The Mom’s Place looked less rosy under a now cloudy sky, and a chill breeze mussed her hair. Even the girls had taken their books inside.

Sophie glanced toward her car and froze. Ian had materialized, seemingly out of nowhere. Long and lean, feet crossed at the ankles, he was braced against her car. Her first thought was that he had to be cold in his light camel-colored windbreaker. Then she saw anger in his blue eyes. His mouth was a thin slash of pain.

She walked toward him. “Why are you following me?” she asked. She couldn’t control the desire she felt at seeing him, but then stiffened against it. Her body was no longer running her relationship with Ian.

“You’re my wife. You’re carrying my child. I want to be with you. Take your pick.”

“You’ve prepared a series of stories?” She had to get Ian out of here before Gran saw him and called for family reinforcements. “Let’s start with the one where you want to be with me. You’re saying that because you think that’s what I want to hear. We can drop that whole ‘wife’ concept, because we’re getting divorced. That leaves you thinking you owe something to my baby.” She halted, prepared to shove him aside to reach her car door. “You owe the baby nothing. I’m the one who depended on a condom.” She was allergic to the Pill, but she’d never explained that to Ian. Who’d have thought she’d need to? “This is my child.”

“Mine, too.” His dogged gaze devoured her. He might be looking for changes in her body, but his regard turned her heart into a battle drum.

She longed to throw him off her mountain. Her sense of his betrayal was still so strong she wanted to call her cousin Zach, the local sheriff, to chat with Ian about stalking.

“Even if you plan to be the baby’s father, you have no business near me until I deliver.” She fished her keys from her purse and held them up. “Will you move?”

He straightened, his skin taut across his cheekbones. “I made a mistake.” Tired and anxious, his voice softened with a plea that unsettled her. Ian never begged.

“It’s too late.” She lifted her keys again.

He ignored them. “I’m sorry.” She could hear the ache in his tone. “I don’t know how to be a husband, but I’ll do my best if you give me a chance. How can I convince you?”

“Make me forget you lied about wanting to be one.” A horrible truth dawned on her. She actually wished she could forget what he’d said at the church. “I trusted you.”

“I didn’t lie.” He held himself still, his only movement the rubbing of his right thumb against his index finger. One night as they’d lain in a moonlight-painted bed, he’d told her that finger, unnaturally straight from middle knuckle to nail, tingled in cold weather.

She’d never asked how he’d damaged it. Why hadn’t she? Why hadn’t he told her, anyway? None of that mattered now.

“If I thought I couldn’t be with my child any other way,” she said, “I’d pretend I wanted you, too.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking. She suddenly found herself focusing on it. She remembered how it felt beneath hers, moist with passion, seductively destroying that common sense her grandmother had mentioned. She’d glimpsed a future in his kisses. She’d believed in him because she’d thought no one could make love as they had without sharing more than just physical need.

“Sophie.” He curved his hand around her forearm. “When you look at me like that…”

He dragged her closer, but it wasn’t hard. She forgot to resist. His breath whispered against her lips.

He paused, his seemingly defenseless gaze almost asking permission. She could break away if only she could remember how to make her feet move. She might have been dangling in midair. She’d made another mistake, putting herself within his reach.

She was about to make a worse one. She closed her eyes and sighed in absolute, physical relief when Ian brushed his lips over hers.

A sane inner voice commanded her to run. She made herself deaf. She hadn’t touched him in nearly three weeks, and she’d pined for his hands on her, his kiss, his beating heart pressed against her seeking palm.

This was their strongest bond, and she needed him in ways she didn’t begin to understand. He closed the chilly space between them. Sophie slid her hands into the hair at his nape and pulled his head down to hers with strength born of inexplicable longing. Holding Ian was more like coming home than driving up the mountain road had been.

He tightened his arms as if surprised to find her in them. His warm hands bunched her sweater. She breathed in as his fingertips traced her spine, her rib cage, the curve of her breasts.

A moment’s shame flitted through her as she welcomed his touch. She’d run from that church because she hadn’t wanted to need him. Letting him hold her like this, giving vent to her desire, put the lie to that, but she’d stopped feeling whole without him.

A groan slipped from his mouth to hers, melting her against the car. She arched, claiming him, offering herself. But somehow sanity reminded her where they were.

“My gran,” she said against his throat, unable to make herself look over at the resort’s open windows.

At once he released her. They were both breathing hard. He caught her left hand. “Where’s your ring?” She’d never heard his passion-thickened tone in public.