Miracle Baby (Harlequin American Romance) (8 page)

Maggie tossed and turned, her face brushing against the dampened pillow again and again, her mind locked in a dream she couldn't shut off. It was a dream she'd had often. Yet this time there was a sound—a staccato tapping she didn't remember.

Had the truck driver knocked on the window before retrieving her from underneath the car?

The tapping grew louder.

Had she smacked the window to get out?

The tapping morphed into a pounding sound that startled her awake. She bolted upright, her gaze coming to rest on the journal she'd worked on all night. Still open to Natalie's First Christmas, the book was surrounded by colorful pens, spools of delicate ribbon and scraps from cut photographs.

A smile tugged at her lips, until she heard again that pounding from her dream.

“Maggie, are you there? Please, Maggie, I need to know you're okay.”

Rory.

Had it been him knocking all that time? She glanced
at the clock, noted the late morning hour. If Natalie were alive, Maggie would have been up hours ago—singing songs, reading storybooks and playing with shape sorters, building blocks and baby dolls….

“Maggie?”

She considered ignoring his knock, but the concern in his voice pulled at something inside her chest. He was worried. Scared, even. She knew what that was like, knew what it was to call for someone again and again, only to hear nothing in response.

Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she slipped her feet into the well-worn pink slippers she'd tossed in her suitcase at the last minute, the aging footwear one of only a handful of items she'd opted to bring when she left Missouri. Other than a few pictures, her clothes and her box of mementos, nothing else had really mattered.

A click echoed through the suite, followed by the sound of footsteps. She peered out into the living room, her eyes widening at the sight of Rory O'Brien standing in the middle of her living room, a key clenched in his fist.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked, her voice rising in anger, only to fade as images from their evening together flooded her mind. He was clad now in a pair of faded blue jeans and an oatmeal-colored shirt that hugged his arms in all the right places, his very presence jettisoning her back to the sofa in his living room and the way he'd held her close as they'd kissed.

He held up his hands. “I'm sorry. I really am. But I started knocking twenty minutes ago. At first I thought you weren't answering because you couldn't hear me, so
I knocked louder. Then I thought you were ignoring me, and figured I should just leave. But when I remembered why I'd come, I decided to give it one more shot. And that's when I got nervous. You were so…I don't know…
detached
last night when you left that I was afraid maybe you'd—” He stopped, took a long slow inhale and then shrugged. “I'm sorry, Maggie. I was just worried, and I couldn't stand by and do nothing. Not this time.”

It was hard to stay angry at someone who was only trying to do the right thing. She opened her mouth to let him off the hook, then closed it just as fast as his attention clearly dropped from her face to her powder-blue silk camisole and matching shorts.

“I'm sorry. Were…were you sleeping?” he asked as he deliberately raised his eyes upward once again. The look of hunger she saw in them was unmistakable.

She shrugged, the motion causing one of her straps to slip down her arm. His eyes followed. “I guess you could call it sleeping. I think I heard you knocking, but thought it was…” With a wave of her hand, she steered the topic from a path she simply didn't want to venture down. “Anyway, it's okay. I shouldn't have been sleeping this late. But since I didn't finish until nearly seven this morning, I guess I crashed.”

“That's good, right?”

“I suppose.” She willed her focus off the man in front of her, forced it onto
anything
other than him…and his arms…and the taste of his lips….

Maggie reached across the bed, grabbed hold of the journal and tugged it toward her. “Would you like to see what I did?”

“Absolutely.”

Perching on the edge of the mattress, she patted the spot next to her as she once again lost herself in the pages she'd created throughout the night. “This is my Natalie,” she whispered as Rory's leg grazed hers. “See?”

He leaned a little closer. “Oh, wow…Maggie, she's beautiful.”

Maggie beamed. “She is, isn't she? And what a sweet, sweet disposition she had. Once she figured out how to smile, she never stopped.”

He leaned still closer. “Her chin and her smile are the spitting image of yours.”

“You really think so?” Maggie stared at the little face that hovered in her thoughts morning, noon and night. “I always thought she smiled more like Jack.”

“I didn't know your husband, so I can't comment as to whether there was a similarity, but trust me, that smile is yours.” Rory looked up from the book and studied her closely. “And just like yours, it's breathtaking.”

Feeling her face grow warm, Maggie rushed to change the subject, keenly aware of Rory's thigh against hers.

She flipped to the front of the album, to the page that started it all. “This is the day she was born. She came bright and early, just as the sun was starting to rise.” Pointing toward the upper right corner of the page, Maggie couldn't help but sigh. “See her little footprint? Wasn't it tiny?”

He leaned forward for a closer look, his nearness making her heart flutter.

“Wow. Her whole foot wasn't much bigger than my big toe.”

She turned to the next page. “And this was the day she came home from the hospital.”

“Is that wallpaper?” he asked.

“Not exactly.” She tapped her finger on the photograph of Natalie's nursery that showed the border stencil Maggie had created around the room. “It's really just a slip of paper I used to make sure I didn't mess up the real thing.”

He stared at her. “You painted those teddy bears?”

“I used a stencil. But a stencil I'd created.” She looked again at the piece of paper where she'd practiced the bears' facial expressions in order to get the shading just right. “You probably think I'm silly, saving a piece of scrap paper, huh?”

“Nah, I'd have done the same thing.”

She opened her eyes. “Really?”

He nodded. “I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. Which explains why my spare bedroom looks the way it does.”

“I don't understand.”

“It's filled with boxes. And I do mean boxes. Most of it is stuff from my parents' house after they passed away. Delilah says I should have an estate sale, and I guess on some level I know she's right. But it's hard to let it go. I mean, I flipped through those books as a kid, I used that silverware throughout my entire childhood, I—” He stopped, his face turning crimson. “Wow. I must sound like an idiot.”

Maggie laughed. “No. Not at all. It makes you even more…” Realizing what she was about to say, she stopped and changed course, turning their attention back to the
book in her hands. “Once I got the pictures and the keepsakes where I wanted them on each page, I wrote a paragraph or two about that particular day.”

“May I?” he asked, as he pointed toward the book, a smile curving his lips.

She nodded in assent.

But as he leaned close once again, she couldn't help but second-guess her decision. Especially now, with the memory of his kiss still so raw.

Scooting back so as to lessen their proximity, she couldn't help but feel the unfamiliar pull somewhere deep inside her soul. A pull that countered everything her head was saying.

Sure, he was good-looking. Extremely good-looking, if she allowed herself a moment of honesty. And he was thoughtful beyond comparison. Bringing her the journal despite her rudeness was proof of that.

Her rudeness…

She looked down at the back of his head as he continued to read, her hands virtually itching to touch him. Just once…

Instead, she willed herself to pay close attention to the words that suddenly poured from her mouth. “Rory? I'm sorry about last night…about leaving a nice evening on such a negative note. But—” she swallowed as he sat up to look at her, momentarily throwing her off her game “—but mostly…I—I'm sorry for kissing you the way I did. I had no business doing that.”

For a moment it was there in his eyes—a disappointment so raw, so vivid, that it nearly broke her heart. Then, just as fast as it appeared, it was gone, in its place a look
so compassionate, so full of understanding and concern for her that she couldn't speak another word.

“I'm sorry, too. I should have known you weren't ready.”

She looked down at the precious pictures of her daughter. “I'll never be ready,” she whispered.

His hand covered hers and squeezed ever so gently. “You will be. One day. When the right man comes along. And you'll know it when he does. He'll make you laugh. He'll give you hope. He'll make you catch your breath. And he'll creep into your thoughts when you least expect it. Because that's what the right one does.”

Make her laugh? Give her hope? Creep his way into her thoughts?

She sucked in her breath as an unexpected realization struck. That was exactly the way she felt about—

Rory.

 

H
E GRABBED FOR
the journal as she leaped to her feet, her movement so sudden, so unexpected that it nearly knocked him off the bed. “Whoa. Did I say something wrong?” he asked, hanging on to the mattress with one hand and the journal with the other.

She whirled around to face him, the silky straps of her pajama top slipping still farther down her shoulders.

He swallowed. Hard.

Even with that look of unexplained horror on her face, Maggie was still one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. And the red-rimmed eyes she'd sported when he'd first arrived? They just made him want to pull her close and protect her from all the hard parts of life.

“I'm going to have to ask you to leave,” she said, her slipper-clad feet moving in the direction of the living room. “I—I'm not feeling very well right now.”

“Are you sick?” he asked. Carefully, he placed the journal on the bed, then joined her in the main room. “It's awfully cold in here and wearing those slippers on a cold wood floor certainly doesn't help.”

“My slippers are fine.” Her hands found her hips in record fashion.

“Well, you must admit they've seen better days.”

“You're right. They have.”

He cocked his head to the side and studied her, the double meaning behind her words not lost on him. “For now…maybe. But that doesn't negate the fact that the floor is cold. And so is this whole room.” Bypassing her, he strode over to the fireplace and plucked a log from the holder. “Let me make a fire for you, okay? It's the least I can do after barging in on you the way that I did.”

“You were worried. I get that.”

“Terrified is more like it.” He turned to face her one more time, felt his breath hitch at the unexpected look in her eyes. Not sure what to say, he dropped to his knees beside the grate and shoved a few logs into the hearth. “This'll just take a minute. Then I'll be out of your hair.”

It's not that he wanted to go, because he didn't. But Maggie no longer wanted him there, he was certain. At least he had been until this moment.

Suddenly he wasn't so sure. Something about what he'd said had struck a nerve. Her reaction was quick and fleeting, but he'd seen it, plain as day. The problem
was trying to decipher what it meant and how best to respond.

It was a constant push and pull between his heart and his mind. One he'd experienced all night as he'd pretended to sleep. One minute he'd remember the kiss, his body reacting to the memory in undeniable fashion. Then, just as he'd start to get carried away, he'd remember the pain in her eyes as she'd pulled back.

Maggie was hurting. A deep, penetrating hurt that had seeped into every facet of her life, essentially trapping her in a world from which there was no escape.

What she needed was a life raft. Something to hang on to while she found her footing.

He tossed some kindling onto the logs, then struck a long match, igniting the material with a flick of his wrist. Turning to face her, he offered what he hoped was a nonthreatening smile. “That should help warm things up in here.”

“Thank you. But I'd still like to be alone.” She shifted from foot to foot, the sadness in her eyes almost more than he could bear.

Throw her a life raft, dude.

A life raft…

“Wait! I have to give you something first.” He jogged toward the door and yanked it open, finding the box he'd intended to deliver sitting right where he'd left it when he opted to let himself into her suite with his master key. Lifting it off the floor, he retraced his steps into the living room. “This is why I stopped by. To give you this.”

She looked from his face to the box and back again, curiosity pulling her eyebrows upward. “What is that?”

“Just some stuff I found,” he lied. “Came across these things in one of the rooms I'm rehabbing. Thought maybe you could find a use for some of it.”

“I don't know, Rory. I don't really need any extra stuff. I'm not sure how long I'm going to be staying here, anyway.”

Ignoring the last part of her statement, he set the box on the coffee table and gestured to its contents. “Well, just take a look. If you want me to find another home for it, I will. In the meantime, though, I better give you your space.” He strode toward the open door, only to stop a few inches from his target. Glancing over his shoulder, he drank in one final look, his gaze lingering on the sleep-tousled hair that cascaded over her bare shoulders like a waterfall.