Right by Her Side. Christie Ridgway
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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