“But not with you.”
She flinched. “Well, at least we have that clear.” She raked her hair from her face and grabbed her tote, clutching it as if it contained her life’s worth. Which, aside from the baby on Adam’s lap, it did.
“This room has its own bathroom,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower and then I’m going to find the laundry facility that Dr. Patel mentioned and wash my clothes. And you and Linus will have this place all to yourselves while I do. And that’s the best I can do right now to give you your space. Once the baby’s well enough to go home, I’ll figure out the next step. Shocking though it might be, I am actually capable of figuring some things out on my own!”
Linus’s face screwed up in an expression very similar to his mother’s and he let out a loud wail.
“Now look what you’ve done!”
“Me?” Adam stood, jiggling the baby, which didn’t do the least bit of good to soothe either one of them. “You’re the one yelling.” He looked to the doorway, expecting to see Eric rushing through it at any moment. “He’s not used to either one of us.”
“Babies are resilient.” She lifted Linus out of Adam’s arms. “He’ll adjust.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know!” She carried Linus around the room in a rocking, swaying sort of way that had as little effect as Adam’s jiggling. “I read it somewhere!”
Listening to the baby cry was almost as hard to bear as Laurel’s tears. “Just go get him,” he said roughly.
“Get who? Dr. Patel? I don’t think he—”
“Eric!” Adam swore when Laurel just stared at him like he’d grown another head. He crossed the room in a couple strides and threw open the door, fully expecting to see the other man in the hallway, waiting.
But the only person in the hall was a white-haired woman pushing an oversize rack of meal trays.
The wail from inside the room was nearly as loud outside the room. Adam reentered and closed the door. Laurel was still walking Linus around the room. “Where is Eric?”
“How would I know? Gone home? Gone to his office?”
Adam propped his fists on his hips. “Why the hell isn’t he here?”
“Why the hell should he be?”
God save him. “Because you went after him!”
Laurel stopped, midstep. “To tell him I was sorry. Not to ask him to stay.”
Linus hiccupped into silence. He’d found his thumb and dropped his head onto Laurel’s shoulder.
“You were going to marry him.”
“And as I’ve had pointed out to me more than once, I backed out!” She exhaled audibly and pressed her cheek against Linus’s head. “I wasn’t in love with Eric. Not the way I should have been.”
“You don’t remember, though.”
“I don’t need to,” she said tiredly. “If I’d been in love with him the way I—” She broke off and carried Linus over to the changing table and laid him atop the padded surface. “I wouldn’t have slept with you if everything had been right between Eric and me. I might not remember everything, but that’s one thing I am absolutely certain about.”
She fumbled with Linus’s stretchy outfit, finally managing to extract his legs so she could change his diaper. “No wonder you were wailing,” she crooned. “All wet like this.”
Considering she hadn’t been hands-on with Linus since he’d been a couple weeks old, she changed his diaper with impressive speed. Then she was maneuvering his legs back into the sleeper and she picked him up from the changing table.
Adam lifted the baby out of her arms. “Go and take your shower,” he said gruffly.
“You’re going to stay, then?”
He grabbed the soft blanket hanging over the side of the crib and the colorful ball from the floor, and sat down in the rocking chair. “For now.”
When Laurel came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, Adam was still holding Linus on his lap in the rocker, face mask askew.
And both of them were sound asleep.
She pressed her hand against the ache in her chest and just stood there, watching them and memorizing the precious sight.
Then she heard the soft, distinctive ping from Adam’s phone where it was sitting on the counter near the door and she finally moved again. She lightly brushed her fingers through Linus’s wispy-soft hair. Then she slipped the empty baby bottle from Adam’s lax fingers and leaned over and lightly brushed her lips over his before adjusting his mask and then her own.
He didn’t stir a muscle.
She straightened and quietly gathered up the tote and pocketed some of the cash. She also picked up Adam’s phone and slipped out of the room, pulling the smoothly heavy door closed after her. She pulled off her mask again, pressing her lips together for a moment, savoring the lingering warmth she’d felt from his.
There were two nurses at their station, laughing over something, and they pointed the way to the laundry when Laurel asked. It was empty when she got there and she dumped every piece of clothing save the T-shirt and shorts she was wearing into the machine. There wasn’t a charge for it, though there was a collection kitty next to the industrial-sized containers of supplies. She pushed a crumpled bill through the slot in the kitty and with the washing machine clicking and whirring busily through its cycle, she swiped the screen on Adam’s phone and an image of the two of them from the balloon in Durango appeared, stealing her breath for a long moment.
Was it a random coincidence? Or did it mean something more?
She entered his password then pressed the call icon, and the image was replaced by the keypad. She started to press the first number, but then she hesitated, struggling against the spurt of nerves that felt way too familiar and way too old.
But if she wanted to prove to herself once and for all that she was as capable as she’d claimed, she needed to start somewhere.
She still felt
