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She reminded herself that rich men found it easy to hand out gifts. Her ex had been big on giving them, too. The ones he’d charged to their credit cards had tipped her off that he was cheating on her, because the glittering baubles and sexy little nothings hadn’t come her way. “What kind of present?”
Trent half turned and dragged something over that she hadn’t noticed in the shadows of her porch. “Boxes,” he said. “There was a pile by the Dumpsters as I was leaving the office today and I thought of you.”
He’d brought her boxes.
Of course, the only reason why that knowledge was melting the ice inside her was because she’d spent an hour after her shift with Merry, the asthmatic child to whom she’d promised a playhouse. Those boxes meant she could tell the little girl tomorrow that she was making progress on the project.
With that in mind, she hurried toward Trent. He’d brought boxes all right. Six flattened boxes of the ideal, extra-large size that would provide the main construction materials for the kid-size cottage she had in mind. “Thank you,” she said, thinking of Merry again. Rebecca’s fingers tightened on her keys as she took a breath. “I suppose…I suppose you can come in.”
But she’d keep her guard up. That wouldn’t be hard. Her navy-brat years, while they had given her good skills in getting along with people, had also trained her to maintain a safe distance from them as well. Not only wasn’t it smart to trust others on short acquaintance, but if you got too close, it hurt too much when the next base posting came along. And then there were the lessons her ex had taught her…
Trent followed her through the front door into her small living room. As she hung her purse on the bentwood coatrack that stood beside the door, from the corner of her eye she saw him taking in the surroundings. A tissue-thin Oriental carpet over clean but scratched hardwood. A love seat “slipcovered” with an old quilt she’d found at a yard sale and then tucked around the torn cushions. The simple curtains that had started life as sheets until she and her sewing machine had spent some time with them. The cinder-block-and-plywood shelves that were the staple of college students and women who were restarting their lives after a failed marriage.
As she turned to face him, she felt herself bristling. He couldn’t think much of her modest home.
His gaze moved from the entry that led to her never-remodeled kitchen and onto her face. “Nice,” he said. “Homey.”
Hah. Homely was more like it. But there wasn’t a note of snideness to his voice or any derision in his eyes.
The crack in the ice inside her widened more. “Well, you might as well come into the kitchen,” she said. It wasn’t any fancier than the rest of the place. “Would you like some cold tea?”
He would, and she poured it as he took a seat at the tiny table. When she slid the glass in front of him, he stared into its depths.
“Green tea?”
“Yes, it’s decaffeinated. Is that all right?”
He nodded without looking up. “It’s perfect. Just perfect.”
She pulled out the other chair and dropped into it. As her bottom settled onto the seat, the past few sleepless nights and her long shift at the hospital seemed to settle onto her shoulders. Lifting her own glass of tea, she tried to hide her sigh of fatigue.
But his hearing must be excellent. “Is something the matter?” he asked.
She tried to smile. “Nothing more than a long day, pregnancy and a strange man in my kitchen.” Tiredness soaked into her bones.
His gaze sharpened on her. “Have you eaten?”
“Sometime today.” Her hand waved. “Lunch.”
He was out of his chair and rummaging through her cupboards before she could blink. “You need food.”
“Wait, no—”
“Stay,” he ordered, as she started to push her chair back. “I’m a bachelor. I can scrounge together the semblance of a meal when I have to.”
Surprise kept her glued to her seat. In silence, she watched as he made up a plate of crackers accompanied by slices of cheese and apple.
Then he set it in front of her with a no-nonsense clack. “Now eat. Are you taking prenatal vitamins?”
Her jaw dropped. “Um, yes. How did you—”
“Sisters. Two of ’em. One a new mother, the other one pregnant.” His head swung around and he swooped down on a plastic bottle near the sink, then placed it in front of her. “In the early days, the vitamins made Ivy queasy unless she ate them with crackers. For Katie, it was cold, buttered spaghetti.”
“They don’t bother me,” Rebecca murmured. In spite of herself, she was…intrigued. Oh, fine. She was almost charmed. Who would have thought that this big bad businessman knew the details of his sisters’ pregnancies? “You’re, uh, well-educated.”
He shrugged, then sat down and nudged the plate of food closer to her. “Well-informed is more like it. I’m the oldest in the family. I grew up wiping noses and doling out kiddie aspirin. I guess the younger ones still tell me when they don’t feel well.”
“I’m the oldest, too.” But while her siblings had looked up to her as the big sister, they’d gone to Mom or Pop when they were sick.
Instead of responding to that, he reached over to slap a piece of cheese on a cracker, then he lifted her hand and dropped the cracker on the flat of her palm. “Eat,” he commanded.
“All right, all right.” Her first bite tasted heavenly, but then that fatigue turned into full-blown exhaustion. Each subsequent chew seemed to take more and more energy.
“I spoke with Morgan Davis,” Trent said.
Rebecca swallowed, a shot of adrenaline making her more alert. “And?”
“And he explained there had indeed been a mix-up. They’re trying to track down the exact problem. He told me he’s concerned about the clinic’s reputation and potential legal problems. But Children’s Connection has done so much good that I’ve assured him I won’t sue. He said you told him the same.” Trent ran his hands through his hair. “So, I’m, uh, sorry about the way I reacted yesterday afternoon when you told me. I wasn’t expecting…”
“That I was, and thanks to you?”
He blinked, then laughed. “Yes. Exactly.”
Rebecca smiled back at him; she couldn’t help herself. With the light of humor in his eyes, with that easy grin on his face, it was hard to think of him as the rich, powerful Trent Crosby who might threaten the happy future she’d planned for herself and Eisenhower.
He was just a man, a caring man, who had brought her boxes and knew something about pregnancy. It was going to be all right, she thought, and then said it out loud. “It’s going to be all right.”
Trent’s gaze swept over her, then around the kitchen. “Yes, I agree. I think it’s going to be fine.”
Rebecca managed another sip of her tea, but her head felt so very, very heavy. Her pregnancy book said that tiredness in the first trimester was common, and she was tired. Very, very tired.
“Rebecca?”
At her name, her lashes lifted. Had she dozed off? Her face flushed. It wasn’t like her to fall asleep at the table, not to mention in the company of a man she didn’t know, a man she couldn’t afford to trust so soon—if ever. “Yes?”
He was pulling her out of her chair. “Let me help you. You look beat.”
Her feet must have been moving, because she was leaving the kitchen. Trent had his arm around her and she could smell the scent of him. It was spicy, good, and if she wasn’t so very sleepy, she might like to bury her nose against the tan column of his throat.
“Let’s get you to your bedroom, Rebecca.”
Her feet stopped moving. “What?”
He chuckled. “Don’t rouse yourself. I just want to help you to bed before you start snoring on your kitchen table.”
“I don’t snore,” she protested. But he wanted to help her. That sounded nice. And she thought maybe she could trust him to do it, because he was an older brother and knew about prenatal vitamins. “This way to my bed.” She managed to point with a limp finger, and then her hand fell.
He laughed again, then directed her down the short hallway to her small room. Rebecca didn’t think about how shabby it must look in his eyes. She only thought about the bed and her pillow and how good she’d feel under the light weight of the last blanket her mother had ever crocheted.
In moments it was just as she imagined. Trent must have taken off her shoes—she knew she didn’t have the energy for it—because her toes wiggled freely as he stood beside the bed, looking down at her.
“Good night, Rebecca Holley, R.N.”
“Good night, Trent Crosby.” Big bad businessman—not. “Sorry we didn’t get to talk more.”
But they would, because he was a nice man. A trustworthy man who would stay out of her and her baby’s life when she asked him to. Which she would. A yawn nearly cracked her jaw in two.
He lingered.
“Is there something you wanted to say?” she asked, the words slurring as her eyes drifted closed. “Sorry, but I worked a long shift and I’m so, so tired.”
“I can see that. And I have a solution to our problem that I’d like you to think about.”
“Mmmmm.” She wasn’t even sure he was still nearby, or that she was still awake. Tomorrow she’d think about how she could relax with a stranger in her room. Oh, but that answer was easy, because he was trustworthy, after all. She knew that now.
So she let herself slide into slumber. His last words drifted into her ears and then drifted out before they could trigger a nightmare.
“Once you have the baby,” Trent’s voice said, “if you give custody to me, I’ll give you half a million dollars.”
Sitting at his desk, Trent doodled on a pad, then caught himself and threw down his pen in disgust. He didn’t doodle!
He refocused his attention on the report opened in front of him. It wasn’t any more interesting than it had been five minutes before, but he made himself read every damn word. Then he checked the time again.
Two-thirty. Forty-two hours. He hadn’t seen or heard from Rebecca Holley in forty-two hours. Well-practiced in negotiation, he knew the next move was hers, but the waiting was driving him nuts. Admitting his concentration was shot, he pushed up from his chair and headed out of his office.
Claudine looked up from her desk, situated a few steps from his door. “Have we finished going over the departmental reports?”
He gave her his best malevolent glare, all the while blessing her for offering the distraction. “Again? How many times do I have to tell you not to refer to me as ‘we’?”
“It’s the royal ‘we,’” she replied. “Because you’re a royal pain in the patoot.”
He would have laughed, but he didn’t like giving her the satisfaction. Instead, he stalked past her.
“Where are you going, your majesty?” she called out.
“Human Resources. To get the necessary forms to have you fired.”
“Without me, you couldn’t find Human Resources, let alone fill out one of their forms.”
“Shrew.” He strode into the hall.
“Despot.”
Still moving, he raised his voice, determined to get in the last word. “Nag.”
Her response reached his ears, anyway. “Oligarch.”
That one stopped him. He retraced his steps and poked his head into her sanctum. “Oligarch? That’s good. That’s very good.”
Claudine’s smile was smug. “Of course I am.”
He snorted, then started to move off again.
“Trent?” Claudine again.
But this time her tone lacked its usual caustic edge, causing him to backtrack once more to meet her gaze. “Is something the matter?”
“That was my question.” Her eyes were serious, her expression kind. “Is there a problem I can help you with? All of us in Admin talked over lunch and we realize something’s bothering you. We’d…well, we’d like to help if we can.”
Oh, hell. If Admin was talking about him… Next thing he knew, his competitors would get wind of his lack of focus and use it against the company. When he found himself distracted, then doodling, then drawing the concern of his domineering assistant and her henchmen, it was time to take a new tack in the negotiations.
He sighed. “Cover for me, will you, Claudine? I might be out a couple of hours.”
It was time to confront Rebecca Holley and demand—in concise, clear terms—what he wanted from her.
Problem was, Trent thought a short car ride later, it was going to be hard to make any kind of demand to a woman sitting on the floor with a baby in her lap and a bigger kid hanging around her neck. Peering around a large poster announcing a children’s health fair in the hospital parking lot the following weekend, he watched her through the glass door leading into the crowded playroom on the Pediatrics floor. After another minute, though, he pushed open the door and walked in, because she was laughing and…and the happy expression on her face made him feel as if he hadn’t laughed since he was nine years old and Robbie Logan had gone missing while Trent was playing basketball in the rear yard.
She glanced up as he strode into the room, the smile on her face dying. “Oh!”
The last time he’d seen her, her face had been pale with fatigue and her eyes heavy with sleep, but now she looked flushed and alert. “Rebecca.” He nodded a greeting.
She rose to her feet, cradling the baby in her arms. Trent noticed the little guy had two full leg casts and three teeth.
“Gawaa!” Three-Teeth said, waving a fat arm.
Rebecca’s cheek touched the top of the baby’s head, a caress so natural he wondered if she was even aware of it. “This is Vince, one of my pediatric OR patients,” she said, then looked down at the other child she’d been playing with. “And Merry.”
“Nice to meet you,” Trent said, nodding again.
Merry wiggled the fingers of her thin hand.
Baby Vince made another wild gesture, a right hook that almost connected with Rebecca’s nose. “Gawaa! Gawaa!”
“Right back at ya,” Trent murmured, coming close enough to capture the contender’s little fist. The baby grinned at him, then took Trent’s hand to his mouth to gnaw on it like a bone.
“Oh, sorry.” Rebecca tried to step back, but Trent halted her movement by capturing one of her shoulders in his other hand. Beneath his palm, the small curve felt feminine, delicate, reminding him of how fragile she’d seemed when he’d helped her to her bedroom.
“Have you been eating?” His voice sounded abrupt, he knew it, but thinking about her body beneath those dumpy scrubs was doing something to him…. Arousing him. Making him worried, because getting hot over a woman covered in pale pink with raspberry flamingos had to be the first symptom of some weird sexual perversion.
“I’ve been eating fine,” Rebecca assured him. “And getting more rest, too.” Her face flushed as bright as those long-legged birds she was wearing and she glanced around at the kids and their parents who were involved with toys or puzzles or who were watching some kids’ show on the TV in the corner of the room. “I want you to know I’m sorry about dozing off on you the other night. I’ve never done that before.”
“It’s all right.”
“Well, thank you.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Is there…something you wanted?”
He frowned. He wanted her response to his proposition, of course. Then he jumped, startled by the sharp nip Vince gave his knuckle. “Yowch!”
The little guy grinned without an ounce of repentance. “Ga—”
