“I don’t know,” she whispered, hot tears falling.
Noah pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest, surrounding her with his strength and heat and that scary, unwavering certainty. “We’ll figure it out,” he promised. “Together, we’ll figure out what’s best.”
For just an instant, Caitlyn allowed herself to believe that. She desperately wanted to hold on to the possibility that there was an answer that worked for both of them. But in every scenario she envisioned, she lost.
* * *
Noah knew a baby wasn’t in Cait’s plans, not right now, anyway. It killed him to see her so utterly miserable when he wanted to shout his joy from the rooftop. The timing might be lousy in so many ways, but the news filled him with hope that this child would bind the two of them together forever.
She’d been right about one thing: marriage and sharing a medical practice was his dream. He’d wanted that from the minute she’d started on his service at the hospital with her exhaustive textbook knowledge of medicine, her instinctive diagnostic skills that even now she didn’t recognize that she possessed and her unquenchable thirst to learn everything he had to teach her. Her silky skin and untamed red curls had captivated him, too, no question about it. Every male at the hospital stared after her as she bounced through her days with boundless energy and optimism, spreading smiles in her wake.
Over the next few weeks they’d shared enough late nights and coffee it was a wonder either of them had ever slept a wink with all that caffeine racing through their systems. He’d never been much of a talker, but with Caitlyn, he hadn’t been able to keep quiet. There’d been so much he’d wanted to share, so many things about her he’d wanted to learn.
She’d made him laugh with her endless stream of stories about her large Irish-American family and teased him unmercifully because his own background was Scottish. She’d claimed she could never take him home because of it.
He’d thought at the time she was joking, but now he couldn’t help wondering. They’d been inseparable for most of the past year, but he still hadn’t been invited to Chesapeake Shores, which wasn’t that far away. Was he wrong about how much he meant to her? Was he only someone with whom she could spend time until the day she finished her residency and went off to begin her “real” life? Did she view him as safe, someone she could leave behind without regrets?
No, he thought heatedly. He wasn’t wrong about their feelings. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t the only one in love. Cait loved him, too. He might not have a lot of experience with serious relationships—how many doctors had enough time to properly date during all those years of school and training, after all?—but he could recognize that what he’d found with Cait was special.
Sitting across the room on the edge of the bed where she’d left him, he watched her now as she pulled her strawberry-red hair into a severe knot intended to tame the curls. He smiled as a few escaped to brush her cheeks. It reminded him of the way she lived her life, desperately trying to control everything, but a wild streak coming out when she least expected it. He could recall with total clarity the last time she’d cut loose with total abandon. He liked imagining that was the night this baby had been conceived, with neither of them thinking of anything but each other.
“Cait,” he said softly. “I think it’s time I meet this crazy family of yours.”
In her mirrored reflection, he saw her eyes go wide with alarm.
“Now?”
“Can you think of a better time? They have to be told about what’s going on.”
She shook her head. “Not a chance, Noah. Not until we know what we’re going to do. Maybe not even then. My mom, she’s great. She’ll handle this okay. My great-grandmother—”
“Nell O’Brien, right?”
She nodded. “She’ll be worried, but she’ll support whatever I decide to do.” As she spotted his frown reflected in the mirror, she quickly corrected herself. “Whatever we decide to do.”
Noah let it go, shoving aside his sense that she really did intend for this to be her decision and hers alone.
“With the two of them in your corner, what’s the problem?” he asked. “Maybe that’s just what you need right now, two women you respect giving you some advice.” He held her gaze. “And the advice will be more meaningful if they’ve met me and know how committed I am to you.”
“I can’t deny that talking to them might be helpful,” she acknowledged, her expression turning wistful. “And Nell is incredible. She’s wise and compassionate. She won’t judge me.”
“Well, there you go,” he said, as if that settled the matter. “It’s time to head to Chesapeake Shores.”
She shook her head. “For me, maybe. Not you.”
“But I’m in this with you,” he protested, digging in. “They need to know that. I don’t want them to think for a single minute that I’ve left you to deal with this alone.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” she said, looking visibly worried. “Two, actually. My grandpa Mick is likely to beat you to a pulp first and ask questions later and my stepdad will help him. Trace has managed to convince himself that I have never, not even once, gone on a date, much less slept with anyone.”
“You have to be joking!” Noah said. “What does he think is going on with you and me?”
She flinched. “I haven’t mentioned you.”
He froze as the implication sank in. “Your stepdad doesn’t know you’re in a committed relationship?” he asked slowly, not able to believe she’d kept something like that secret given how close she was to her family.
“It hasn’t come up,” she said defensively. “Actually, no one back home knows.”
Shock nearly rendered him speechless. “But your mother works less than an hour away,” he said at last. “She’s been here. Surely she’s wondered about finding my clothes scattered about.”
“The past few months I’ve managed to steer her away from here,” she admitted. “The couple of times she has stopped by, I’ve had enough notice that I’ve had time to tidy up.”
“Meaning exactly what?” he asked, trying to remain calm. “You’ve hidden away all traces of me?”
“Pretty much,” she said, then gave him a defiant look. “It was better that way, Noah. You have to trust me on that. If anyone in my family knew about you and me, they’d be pestering us every minute about our plans for the future. Neither of us needed that kind of aggravation or distraction.”
He resisted the urge to confess that he’d be interested in hearing her response to that question about their future himself, especially now. If he went down that path, they’d only wind up arguing and there was a more pressing issue on the table right now: the baby.
“How have you managed to keep your mother and everyone else so conveniently out of your personal business? I thought they were constitutionally incapable of not meddling.”
“Which is exactly why I haven’t mentioned you,” she reminded him. “It keeps their attention on my work. They think I’m a bit of a boring drone.”
“You’ve deliberately steered all of them away from visiting, too, haven’t you?” he said, realizing how deliberate her actions had been. “How did you pull that off so well? You told me yourself that their drop-in visits were constantly disrupting your study time, yet you couldn’t seem to prevent them from showing up.”
Cait flushed guiltily, then shrugged. “I guess I finally got through to them that my schedule is even more demanding now that I’m doing all these rotations at the hospital. Half the time I’m there, so they’d