“Angelica told me earlier,” Adam said.
“Perfect. Use the call button if you need anything.” She clipped her pen onto her lanyard and squeaked out of the room. A moment later, she’d slipped into the room next door, leaving Adam and Laurel alone.
“Hope you don’t mind.” She held up his phone before setting it on top of the medical chart.
“No.” Though he was mighty curious about whoever she’d called.
Her canvas tote was looped over her shoulder and she unloaded the clothes inside into one of the drawers built into the wall near the crib. Then she looked down at Linus and lightly covered his legs with the edge of the blue blanket.
“How’s the mattress?” she asked in a low whisper.
“Didn’t try it.” Adam hadn’t planned to spend the night. There was too much to take care of at Provisions in the morning. And the rental car. And the insurance. He literally had a dozen tasks that needed handling.
Laurel slipped around him and sat experimentally on the corner of the mattress. “More comfortable than it looks.” She patted the space beside her. “Give it a try.”
“If I do, I’m not going to want to get back up.”
“You of all people have earned some sleep. More than you got in the rocking chair.”
“I wasn’t thinking about sleep.”
She gave him a quick look before her lashes swept down again. “Give it a try,” she said again. Even more softly.
The words sank through him. Tempting. “Not a good idea.”
“Because...?”
“Because we’re both too raw after the last few days.” He walked over to her and closed his hands around her face, tilting it upward. Her pale blue eyes seemed to glimmer in the dim light. “Because it’s been more than a year since I’ve touched you and when I do, I don’t want it to be in a hospital room with our baby sleeping two feet away. But even more, because I’m not sure I can survive another dose of Laurel Hudson.”
Her eyes were solemn. “I’m that poisonous?”
“Ah, sweetheart.” He leaned over and deliberately pulled off her mask to press his mouth lightly, lingeringly, against hers. It would take nothing, nothing at all and his tenuous hold on practicality would scatter like dandelion fluff. “You’re that addictive.” He dropped the mask in her lap.
Then he moved to the crib and leaned over the side to kiss his son’s soft cheek. “Take care of Mommy,” he whispered.
Then he straightened and scooped up his phone before reaching for the door. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Adam?”
His hand tightened on the door handle. He looked back at her.
“What’s going to happen to us when Linus is ready to come home?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But we’ll figure it out. All right?”
Her fingers were pressed against her throat. She nodded. “All right.”
He pushed down on the door handle.
“Adam.”
He steeled himself yet again. “Yeah?”
“I wish I had said yes.”
There was no pretending he didn’t know what she meant.
But a lot of years and a lot of words had happened since then.
With the knot in his throat nearly strangling him, he pushed open the door and he left.
Chapter Sixteen
Adam turned off the truck engine in front of the clay-tile-roofed house and looked at Laurel, sitting on the seat beside him. “Here we are.”
Laurel exhaled audibly. Her eyes skipped to his and then away. Ever since they’d left the hospital in Houston that afternoon for what he dearly hoped was the last time, she’d grown increasingly quiet. More quiet than Linus was being in the back seat, at any rate.
Sprung from the hospital with Dr. Patel’s and all of the nursing staff’s heartfelt blessing, Linus had jabbered and chortled and played with the raucously noisy toy his uncle Kane had given him the entire way.
“You’re sure about this? About staying here?” He spread his fingers, taking in the house in front of the truck. “Just because Callum offered the place doesn’t mean we had to take him up on it.” Adam hadn’t even agreed to his cousin’s offer until Callum had accepted Adam’s insistence on paying monthly rent for the place. Family or not, Adam didn’t take charity. “You and Linus could have it all to yourself if you’d be more comfortable.”
She gave him a look as she unsnapped her safety belt and pushed open her door. “Don’t start that again. Linus should have both of his parents with him. We agreed on that a week ago.”
A week ago, he’d figured they’d be returning to the bungalow where Kane’s presence would help keep Adam from forgetting that they weren’t just any regular family. But that was before Callum’s brilliant idea that they move into the empty guesthouse situated on the grounds of the Fame and Fortune Ranch he’d purchased nearly a year ago.
“Yeah, but if you change your mind, all you have to do is say so.”
“Have you changed your mind?”
“No.”
“Then stop harping on it!” She hopped out of the truck and closed the door a little harder than necessary before she opened the rear door and began unbuckling Linus from his car seat.
Adam got out, too, and lifted his duffel and the small suitcase that had replaced her canvas tote bag from the truck bed, and they headed toward the front door. “Kane should have dropped off the crib and the rest of the boxes of baby gear by now.” He’d have liked to refuse the stuff Eric had sent to the bungalow on a JLI truck a few days ago, but Linus shouldn’t have to suffer just because his father was churlish.
Laurel’s head was like a swivel as she took in their surroundings. “When you said this wasn’t a working ranch, I didn’t expect to see so many horses.” She rubbed her nose against Linus’s. “Want to learn how to ride, sweet pea? I was a year old when I
