“It’s cold outside. How about hot tea instead?”
He was trying to distract her, which only meant that something was wrong. Horribly wrong. The knot tightened.
“Cole,” she warned. “I know it’s cold, but I’m not thirsty or hungry. Something is obviously on your mind. What is it?” As a thought occurred to her, she gasped. “Oh, no. We can’t go on our trip, can we? Something happened and Chris can’t cover for you at the hospital. Oh, Cole,” she finished on a wail. “Not again!”
“Sara,” he interrupted. “Stop jumping to conclusions. This isn’t about my schedule. Just. Sit. Down.”
She sat. With her hands clasped together in her lap, she waited. He sank onto the chair beside hers and carefully set his mug on the table. “An attorney spoke with me today.”
Dread skittered down her spine. A lawyer never visited a physician with good news. “Is someone suing the hospital? And you?”
“No, nothing like that. Mr. Maitland is a partner in a law firm based in Tulsa.”
“Tulsa?” Knowing he’d grown up in that area of Oklahoma, she asked, “Does this involve your relatives?”
“No.”
“Then what did he want with you?”
“Do you remember reading the newspaper article about the medical helicopter crash the other day?”
“Yes. We’d talked about one of the nurses. I can’t remember her name …”
“Ruth Warren,” he supplied.
“Yeah. What about the crash?”
“As it turns out, I did know this particular Ruth Warren. Quite well, in fact.”
His shock was understandable. She reached out to grab his hand, somewhat surprised by his cold fingers. “I’m sorry.”
“In high school, we were good friends, although I’ve only seen her once since then. At our class reunion a few years ago.”
She furrowed her brow in thought. “You never mentioned a class reunion. When was this?”
“Remember those ten days in July, after you and I had broken up?”
“Yes,” she said cautiously.
“During that time, I went to my class reunion. It was over the Fourth of July weekend, and I didn’t have anything else to do, so I went.”
“Really? Knowing how you’ve avoided going back to the area so you can’t accidentally run into your relatives, I’m surprised.”
“Yeah, well, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” he said wryly. “Anyway, during that weekend, I met up with Ruth.”
She touched his hand. “I’m glad you had a chance to reconnect with her after high school. Had you heard from her since then?”
“No. Not a word.”
Sara had assumed as much because Cole had never mentioned her, but he was a closemouthed individual and often didn’t mention those things he considered insignificant.
“Then what did the lawyer want?”
“He represents Ruth’s estate. She named me, us, in her will.”
Sara sat back in her chair, surprised. “She did? What did she do? Leave you her box of high school memorabilia?”
She’d expected her joke to make him smile, but it fell flat, which struck her as odd.
“She left us something more valuable than a box of dried corsages and school programs,” he said evenly. “She entrusted the most important thing she had to us. Her son.”
“Her son?” Of all the things he might have said, nothing was as shocking as this. “How old is he?”
“He’s two and a half. His birthday was in April. April 2.”
Surprise and shock gave way to excitement. “Oh, Cole,” she said, reaching across the table to once again take his hand, her heart twisting at the thought of that motherless little boy. “He’s practically a baby.”
As she pondered the situation, she began to wonder why this woman had chosen them out of all the people she possibly could have known.
“Exactly why did she appoint us as his guardians? She never met me and you said yourself that you hadn’t kept in contact with her. What about the boy’s dad? Or her family? Didn’t she have friends who were closer to her than you are? I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m only trying to understand why she gave him to people who are, for all intents and purposes, relative strangers, instead of choosing substitute parents who were within her current circle of friends.”
“She had no family to speak of,” he told her. “Ruth grew up in foster care and as soon as she graduated, she was on her own.”
“If you hadn’t seen her for three years, it’s especially odd she’d ask us to take care of him. There has to be a connection—”
“There is,” he said, clutching his mug with both hands. “But to explain it, I have something to confess.”
Once again, warning bells clanged. “Okay,” she said slowly.
“Ruth and I—that weekend we were together at the reunion …” he drew a deep breath as if bracing himself “… I did a stupid thing. Several stupid things, in fact. I was angry that you weren’t satisfied with our relationship as it was—”
“Just living together,” she interjected for clarification.
He nodded. “I was hurt that after all those years of being a couple, you wouldn’t be satisfied or happy until I put a ring on your finger.”
“Oh, Cole,” she said, disappointed that he hadn’t fully understood why she’d pressed him to take their relationship to the next level. “It wasn’t about flashing a gold band or a huge diamond. It was what the ring represented—a commitment to spend the rest of our lives together.”
“I realized that. Later. But during that first week we were apart, while I was angry and hurt and feeling everything in between, I went to my reunion and …” he took another deep breath “… drank a few too many margaritas. A lot too many.” He paused.
She was surprised to learn that Cole—a man who couldn’t even be classified as a moderate drinker—had over-imbibed. While she wasn’t condoning his action, she figured most people had done so at one time or another. His actions weren’t smart or ideal, but drinking too much on one occasion wasn’t an unforgivable offense, in her opinion, even if at the time he’d been old enough to know better.
“And?” she coaxed.
“When I saw Ruth again—we confided a lot in each other during our teen years—we talked. We both unloaded on each other and she helped me admit a few hard truths—”
“Do you mean to say that your friend Ruth convinced you to propose?” She’d always believed that he’d come to that conclusion on his own. It was disappointing to imagine that he’d been persuaded to marry her not because he loved her but because of a relative stranger’s advice.
“Ruth didn’t convince me to do anything,” he insisted. “She pointed out what I already knew but couldn’t quite admit—that I loved you and couldn’t imagine my life without you—which was why I was so angry and hurt and miserable. And if I loved you, then I had to face my fears and propose.”
Fears? He’d been afraid?
“Wait a minute.” She held up her hands to forestall him so she could sort through his confession. “You’d always said that you wouldn’t marry until you were ready, but now I learn that you were scared?