The Nurse's Baby Secret

“Just something light would be good. I really don’t want to be a bother. Maybe some eggs and toast?”

She wasn’t a bother. Far from it. He was glad she was there, that he was able to do something to help, something to stop himself feeling so helpless, something to help amend all the wrong he’d done.

“With strawberry jam?” he offered, knowing she loved the stuff.

Her face perked up. “You have strawberry jam?”

Bingo.

“I do as of this morning.”

“Then, yes, I’d like jam with my toast.”

* * *

Charlie had waited on her hand and foot for the past couple of evenings. Her friend Chrissie had sat with her during the daytime, which was great and gave Savannah someone to spill her heart to.

“Being here is driving me crazy,” she moaned. “How am I supposed to forget the man when I’m staying at his house?”

“Doesn’t matter. You weren’t forgetting Charlie when you were in Chattanooga and he was here.”

Savannah frowned at where her friend sat on the floor playing with her two-year-old son. She started to argue that she was, but Chrissie didn’t look as if she’d believe her. “Sure I was. But it helped when I wasn’t having t

o look at him every night.”

Chrissie’s eyes widened. “He’s sleeping in here?”

“Only because I’m in his bed and he hasn’t set up the guest bedroom yet. I tried to get him to let me stay on the sofa, but he said he didn’t want me lying on the sofa day and night.” Because he was being thoughtful. Ugh. This would be easier if he wasn’t being so nice. If he was being a jerk, like he was in Chattanooga, she could tell herself she was better off without him. She was better off without him. He’d told her point blank that she didn’t matter as much as his career did. He’d left her when she’d thought things were perfect. “So,” she continued, “I’m in his bed night after night. It’s torture being here.”

Chrissie snapped two blocks together and handed them to Joss. “Because it’s where you want to be?”

Okay, so she wasn’t as immune to the man as she’d like to be. This wasn’t breaking news. But she didn’t want to be here.

“I know his housekeeper changed the bedding before my arrival, but the room smells like him. This whole apartment smells like him. Everywhere I look, every breath I take, he’s there. I’m surrounded by him,” she whined. “And, even though I can’t stand him, it is torture to have to be here when he’s pretending to be all nice.”

Helping with another two blocks, Chrissie laughed. “Keep telling yourself you can’t stand him, if you must, but you still have it bad, girl.”

“No, I don’t. I took my heart back when he made the decision to move from Chattanooga without so much as a word to me first.”

Chrissie shrugged, eyeing her son. “Since when does the heart just let us take it back when it’s convenient? The heart knows what it wants even when our brain tells us otherwise.”

Savannah eyed her friend, grateful for what she heard in her voice because it distracted her from her own woes.

“You never told me about Joss’s dad,” she gently reminded.

“Yeah, well, that’s because he isn’t what my heart wants so don’t go getting ideas about me,” Chrissie warned. “He was just a guy I met in Atlanta at a charity fundraiser we’d both volunteered at. I never saw him again. He hasn’t been at the annual fundraiser since so I don’t imagine I ever will.”

Interesting that her friend had obviously thought he might be. “He worked in the medical profession?”

“I think he was a nurse or a paramedic. I don’t know.” Chrissie shrugged. “He was working triage so I guess he could have been anything.” Her friend gave a wicked little smile. “We really didn’t talk much.”

Interesting. It was difficult to imagine her friend hooking up with a man she didn’t know. Chrissie had barely dated prior to Joss being born and almost never now that she had her son. “A wild weekend, I take it?”

Chrissie’s smile faded. “A weekend where I forgot who I was and just went with the flow. Look where that got me.” She gestured toward her son, who looked up at her and grinned a grin destined to break a million hearts someday. Chrissie’s face lit with love.

“Right where you wouldn’t trade lives with anyone,” Savannah reminded her. “He’s precious.”

Chrissie smiled and leaned forward to kiss the top of Joss’s head. “That’s true. I love this little guy more than anything.”