The Pregnancy Pact. Kandy Shepherd
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finally, finally be happy. All the pieces were in place.
Weren’t they? If they were, why did Jessica feel a sudden desire to weep? It was that crack on her head. It was the throbbing in her arm. It was her day gone so terribly wrong, nothing according to her plan.
“Mr. and Mrs. Brennan?” the doctor asked, again, baffled by the lack of response.
“Yes,” Kade said.
“No,” Jessica said at the very same time.
He looked stubborn, a look Jessica remembered well.
She didn’t think she should admit a sudden urge to kill him in front of the doctor, so she shrugged. “We’re nearly divorced,” she informed the doctor. “He was just leaving.”
Kade gave her a look, and then got to his feet and prowled around the small waiting area.
“Well, if you could come with me.”
Jessica stood up from the wheelchair to follow the doctor. She wobbled. Kade was instantly at her side.
“Sit down,” he snapped.
Really, she should not tolerate that tone of voice from him, that tendency to bossiness. But the sudden wooziness she felt left her with no choice.
Kade pushed her down the hallway with the doctor, and they entered a small examining room. The doctor put the X-rays up on a light board.
“It’s not a complicated break,” she said, showing them with the tip of her pen. “It’s what we call a complete fracture. I’m going to set it and cast it. I think you’ll be in the cast for about four weeks and then require some therapy after to get full mobility back.”
Four weeks in a cast? But that barely registered. What registered was that this was her arm with the bone, showing white on the X-ray, clearly snapped in two. Her wooziness increased. She had to fight an urge to put her head between her knees.
“Is it going to hurt?” Jessica whispered, still not wanting Kade to see any sign of weakness from her.
“I wish I could tell you no, but even with the powerful painkiller I’m going to give you, yes, it’s going to hurt. Do you want your husband to come with you?”
Yes, part of Jessica whimpered. But that was the part she had to fight! Aware of Kade’s eyes on her, she tilted her chin. “No, I’m fine. Kade, you don’t have to wait.”
YOU DON’T HAVE to wait was not quite as firm as you can leave now. Jessica forced herself not to look back at him as the doctor took her to a different room. But she had to admit she felt grateful that he did not appear to be leaving.
A half hour later, her arm in a cast and immobilized in a sling, with some prescription painkillers and some instructions in her other hand, Jessica was pushed by a nurse back to the waiting area. Her feeling of wooziness had increased tenfold.
Because she actually felt happy that Kade was still there. He sprang from a chair as soon as he saw her, and then shoved his hands into his pockets.
“You didn’t have to wait,” Jessica said in stubborn defiance of the relief.
“I’ll make sure you get home safely,” he said. “I had someone from the office drop off my car for me while I waited. I’ll bring it around to that door over there.”
And then, before she could protest on a number of fronts—that she didn’t need him to drive her and that she was going back to work, not home—he was gone.
She didn’t want to admit how good his take-charge attitude felt sometimes. By the time he’d arrived at the door, she’d realized there was no way she was going to work. She was also reluctant to concede how good it felt when he held open the door of his car for her and she slid from the wheelchair into its familiar luxury. Moments later, with the wheelchair returned, he put the car in gear and threaded through what was left of the morning rush with ease.
Why did she feel glad that he didn’t have a different car? She shouldn’t care at all. But he’d bought the car after they’d graduated from university, well before he’d been able to afford such a thing.
“But why?” she’d asked him when he had come and shown it to her. The high-priced car had seemed as if it should not be a priority to a recent university graduate.
“Because when I marry you, this is what we’re driving away in.”
And then he’d shown her the ring he couldn’t afford, either. Three months later, with the roof down and her veil blowing out the back, they had driven away to a shower of confetti and their cheering friends.
One of her favorite wedding pictures was of that scene, the car departing, a just-married sign tacked crookedly to the back bumper that trailed tin cans on strings. In that picture Kade had been grinning over his shoulder, a man who had everything. And she had been laughing, holding on to her veil to keep it from blowing off, looking like a woman embracing the wildest ride of her life.
Which marriage had definitely turned out to be, just not in the way she had expected. It had been a roller-coaster ride of reaching dizzying heights and plummeting into deep and shadowy valleys.
Jessica took a deep breath. She tried to clear her head of the memories, but she felt the painkilling drugs were impeding her sense of control. Actually, she did not know which impaired her judgment more: sitting in the car, so close to Kade, or the drugs.
She had always liked the way he drove, and though it felt like a weakness, she just gave herself over to enjoying it. The car, under his expert hand, was a living thing, darting smoothly in and out of traffic.
They pulled up in front of the house they had once shared. It was farther from downtown than her business, but still in a beautiful established southwest neighborhood with rows of single-story bungalows, circa 1950.
Oh, God, if getting in his car had nearly swamped her with memories, what was she going to do if he came into the house they had once shared? There was a reason she had asked him to meet her at her business.
“Kade,” she said firmly, wrestling the car door open with her left arm, “we need to get a divorce.”
* * *
Kade made himself turn and look at her, even though it was unexpectedly painful having her back in the passenger seat of the car.
He forced himself to really look at her. Beneath the pallor and the thinness, he suspected something.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She wouldn’t look at him. She got the car door open, awkward as it was reaching across herself with her left arm.
“You could have waited for me to do that,” he said, annoyed, but she threw him a proud glare, found her feet and stepped out.
But her fighting stance was short-lived. She got a confused look on her face. And then she went very white. And stumbled.
He bolted from the car and caught her just as her legs crumpled underneath her. He scooped her up easily and stared down at her. And there he was, in the predicament he would have least predicated for the day—with Jessica’s slight weight in his arms, her body deliciously pliant against his, her eyes wide on his face. She had a scent that was all her own, faintly lemony, like a chiffon pie.
She licked her lips, and his eyes moved to them, and he remembered her taste, and the glory of kissing Jessica.
She seemed to sense the sudden hiss of energy between them and regained herself quickly, inserted her good hand between them and shoved. “Put me down!”
As if he had snatched her up against her will instead of rescuing her from a fall. He ignored her and carried her up the walkway to the house.