God, he couldn’t breathe. And he didn’t know how in hell he was going to make any of this happen. Or follow through on it. They were discussing a new life. And his world revolved around the memory of a dead woman.
“Okay.”
He blinked. Stared at her. And then down into the ravine. He loved the browns and golds of the desert. But sometimes that green just looked so good. Cool and peaceful and…breathing.
“Really?”
She nodded. “You’re his father. I have no right to deny you access to his life. As long as you understand that except where it’s absolutely necessary, you have no role in my life.”
That was that. Much easier than he’d expected.
Then why did he feel so…out of his league? Why did he feel he wanted to start running and not stop until he collapsed on the ground?
Meredith should be here. Spending the next months with him. Learning it all with him.
But she wasn’t. The pain of that was almost unbearable. As he’d known it would be. When he’d lost Meredith, he’d vowed never to have children. She’d been too much a part of that dream.
And now here he was, having a child with a woman he barely knew.
He should resent Caroline.
But he didn’t.
“CAN I ASK YOU something?”
Caroline glanced over at him, her auburn hair glinting in the light from the setting sun. “I guess.”
John didn’t know how it had happened, but they’d been there for over an hour. Sometimes talking. A lot of the time lost in their own thoughts. There was so much to discuss, so many decisions to make. But he didn’t really feel like doing these things. And, perhaps, neither did she.
He pulled out the bottles of water, opened one and handed it to her before taking a long swig from his own.
“Why did you react so strongly when I referred to the pregnancy as a predicament?”
She took a small sip of water. Recapped the bottle. Held it with both hands on the rock between her knees. He wasn’t used to spending time with women who didn’t wear makeup and was surprised by how much he liked the freshness of her natural beauty when she turned toward him.
“Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered where you belonged?”
“No, I don’t think so,” John said slowly, watching her.
“Or considered the idea that your life was worth less than the lives of those around you?”
“No.” He’d had the usual teenage insecurities, of course. But his parents had always encouraged him to believe that the world was his to do with what he could. He’d been dreaming big his whole life.
Until the dream came crashing down.
“I have,” she said.
And although he didn’t want to know, he had to ask. “Why?”
She wasn’t going to tell him. He’d overstepped the boundaries she’d set less than an hour before. Her chin was set, her eyes showing very little of the emotion that he suspected must be roiling around inside her.
And then her mouth softened, her eyes focusing on the distance, perhaps a farther distance than the vista spread before them.
“For starters, I was an only child,” she began. “On a farm out in the country in Kentucky. That in itself is very isolating. And no matter what I did, I never fit in. Not at home with my folks. And not at school, either. I was different from everyone else. Saw the world differently. When it came time to make decisions, my opinions were almost always opposite to my parents’. Things that mattered to me didn’t seem to concern them, and a lot of the time, the reverse was true.”
Caroline pulled her feet up on the rock, the worn, rounded toes of her brown leather boots hanging over the edge. Arms wrapped around her knees, she shifted back slightly. John wondered what she was thinking.
“I had this insatiable need to know. Not what other people in town were doing, or who was marrying whom, but why the sun rose and how. And where air came from. I wanted to know who was in national office and I cared about every major decision out of Washington.” Her grin was a little sad. “My poor parents. They were worried about having enough fertilizer for the field and finding ways to make the equipment last another year while I went on about global warming. I’m sure I drove them crazy.”
Mesmerized, John didn’t move. He didn’t want to do anything that might remind her he was still there, make her aware that she was opening up to him after just telling him he could play no part in her personal life. He didn’t want to lose this glimpse of her.
When he’d first met Caroline Prater he’d found her an interesting enigma. And—not that he allowed himself to dwell on that night—she’d been a pretty decent lover, as well. Now he was just plain intrigued. He’d never known anyone with so many facets. All of them different. And all of them sparkling in their own way.
“Anyhow, one day when I was about seven, I yelled at my mother in a fit of frustration, telling her I couldn’t possibly be her kid because she didn’t care that a popular hamburger chain—I’d only eaten out twice in my life and both times it had been there—was being accused of stealing characters from my favorite television show, H.R. Pufnstuf.”
A quick grin accompanied her words before her focus turned once again to the desert. “You can imagine how surprised I was—and how little I suddenly cared about the company’s ad campaign—when my mother yelled back that I wasn’t her child. I was adopted.”
Shit. What a way to tell a seven-year-old kid something as earth-shattering as that. John didn’t know what he could possibly say that would make any difference. So he said nothing.
“I’d already been considering that I’d been planted in Grainville by aliens.” She laid her cheek on top of her knee. “From that point on, I quit fighting. I’d already been rejected by one set of parents. What would happen if the second set decided I was too much trouble?”
John, not detecting even a note of self-pity in her tone, wondered for a split second what it would’ve been like if he’d met her at a different time. Say fifteen years before, when they were both starting out.
He had a feeling he’d have liked her. A lot.
“I spent the next ten years of my life feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere. In a town as small as Grainville, where everyone belongs to everyone else, feeling that way wasn’t easy.”
He wondered what had happened to her at seventeen to change that but didn’t ask.
She stood up, brushed herself off, gave a shaky laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on like that,” she said, heading back the way they’d come. “Put it down to overprotectiveness. I just don’t want any child of mine feeling that way. Not if I can help it.”
Propelled by something he didn’t dare analyze, John caught up to her, grabbing her hand only long enough to pull her to a stop. She turned, facing him. “I may not have chosen these circumstances,” he said, his eyes locked with hers. “But that baby will always know I love him and want him in my life.”
Tears pooled in her eyes before she blinked them away, nodded and began walking again.
“NOT TO KEEP HARPING on it, but I’d really like to know what you’re planning to do about medical care,” John said as they sped down the highway toward Shelter Valley. Caroline had said that Bea Howard served dinner at five-thirty sharp and they’d stayed longer in the desert than he’d intended.
“I’ve called the clinic in Shelter Valley. The obstetrician there can take me.”
“Do