The Nurse Who Saved Christmas

“I’m pregnant, Dirk.” Dropping the test back onto the coffee table as if the plastic had scalded her hand, she turned to him, wide-eyed and stunned, grabbed his hands and squeezed. “We’re going to have a baby.”

A baby. What

could he say? He couldn’t hurt Abby, couldn’t suggest they consider their options, because even if he could ask, she wouldn’t do that. He didn’t have to hear the words to know that.

“Oh, God, I’m going to have a baby.” Her chest rose and fell rapidly. Her eyes grew bigger and bigger. Her face grew paler and paler, as if she was on the verge of a panic attack. “What am I going to do with a baby?”

“You’ll be fine.” Had that really been his voice? Had he really sounded normal? He didn’t feel normal. He felt as if he’d been dipped in ice water and stuck to the North Pole.

“Other than from nursing school, I don’t know anything about babies. Nothing.” Was she even talking to him? Or just thinking out loud? Talking to herself?

She grabbed his arm, shook it as if to get his attention. “What if I don’t know how to take care of him or her? Then what?”

“You’ll be fine,” he repeated, unable to think of anything better. Unable to think, period. Abby was pregnant. With his baby. He was going to be a father again. He didn’t want another baby.

Yet he couldn’t look away from Abby’s pleading eyes, couldn’t shut out the need he saw there.

But he wanted to. He wanted to run from her Christmas-filled house and never look back. Never have to face the fact that he’d fathered another child when he didn’t have a heart to love him or her with.

Leaving Oak Park to escape his family and friends this holiday season had backfired. He’d jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

He pulled his hands free, turned from her to stare at her Christmas tree. God, he hated Christmas. Hated having to dredge up the past, but since she was having his baby, there were things Abby needed to know. Things she wouldn’t like. By the time he was finished, she wouldn’t like him. Which was fine. He hadn’t liked himself in a long, long time either.

“I was married.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“MARRIED?” Jack Frost zapped a frigid coating of ice over Abby’s spine. Surely she’d heard Dirk wrong. Hadn’t she been thinking earlier about how little she really knew about him? For all she knew, he could still have a wife and family back in Oak Park where he’d come from.

How could she be pregnant by a virtual stranger?

Only when he’d kissed her, made love to her, he hadn’t been a stranger. Far, far from it. He’d known her better than anyone, had touched her soul right along with her body. She’d looked at him and felt she’d known the essence of who he was, all she’d needed to know.

But she hadn’t. She hadn’t known he’d been married.

She was pregnant. Dirk had been married. Why wasn’t he saying more? Why was he sitting there with his hands tightly fisted in his lap, with his jaw clenched and his eyes glazed over as if he were fighting demons? Had his marriage been that bad?

Was. That meant he wasn’t still married, right? Why wasn’t he explaining his bombshell statement?

“You were married?” she prompted.

He took a deep breath, raked his fingers through his hair. “Sandra and I married too young. I was still in medical school, gone most of the time, didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but we loved each other. Then Shelby came into the picture.”

Another layer of ice settled over Abby’s nerves.

“Shelby?” Was she a girlfriend? A mistress? A brief fling he’d had on the side? A—?

“My daughter.”

His daughter? Abby blinked, sure she’d heard wrong. He had a daughter? Why hadn’t he mentioned a daughter? How could she have not known such pertinent details?

Then again, why would she have known? She wasn’t important to Dirk. Why would he have told her? Disgust filled her. How could she have been so foolish?

Outside work she’d spent a total of four—four!—days with him. The day she’d gotten pregnant, his Santa stint, the Christmas party, and today, the day they’d found out she was pregnant.

God, what must he think of her?

Then again, she hadn’t been alone in that bed. She refused to abide by some double standard that said it was okay for him to sleep with a woman he barely knew, but that for her to do the same made her less of a woman.