The Baby Bond (12 page)

“Is the problem serious?”

“Frighteningly so. I missed an important deadline with a client.”

“Not the end of the world.”

“It wouldn’t be if other things weren’t going wrong and falling behind.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

What an interesting question. She shook her head. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m on my own.”

Nic snagged a chunk of the fresh bread he’d brought from his family’s bakery and slathered it with real butter. “Yeah, about that. Would I be prying to ask what happened to your parents?”

Over the years, she’d encountered the question dozens of times. She never let herself think deeper than the surface.

With little emotion, she swallowed a bite of cheesy lasagna and said, “They died when I was ten and Janna was seven.”

“Wow, bad deal. So that’s how you came to live with Cruella de Vil?”

“Nic,” she tried to scold, but her lips quivered with humor. “Grandmother did her best. She just isn’t that good with children.”

“Or puppies.” His eyes danced. “Sorry.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“Well, no. I’m not. So, what happened? To your parents, I mean. Car accident?”

Cassidy fiddled with the salad on her plate. Most people let the topic drop when she did. Not Nic. He had to pry. “They were missionaries teaching in a Christian school in the Philippines. There was an earthquake. The building collapsed.”

The buttery bread paused halfway to his lips. “Oh man. Cass.”

The sympathy in his dark eyes got to her in a hurry. A trembling started way down in her bones, the flood tide of emotion rumbled like a threatening volcano.

Cassidy licked her suddenly dry lips. “I haven’t talked about this in a long time.”

No one knew of the terror she’d sublimated in childhood, scolded by her grandmother, called a baby for being afraid in the dark. Thank God Janna had been spared and had never really known what Cassidy had gone through. She’d been in the States, quarantined with chicken pox.

Nic chewed and swallowed. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Did she? She wasn’t sure. She stabbed a piece of lettuce, swirled it around in the Italian dressing. In the far recesses of her mind, the dying cries for help stirred to life. A shiver of dread threaded down her spine.

Nic remained silent but she felt his gaze on her, steady, patient and compassionate.

“I survived,” she murmured, plain and simple, almost hard. “They didn’t.”

Nic carefully laid aside his fork. “You were with them then?”

“In the same building. They were on the bottom floor. I wasn’t.” The lasagna began to lose its flavor. She didn’t know why she’d started talking about this. She pressed a hand to her stomach.

Chair legs scraped loudly against the tile as Nic moved his chair closer to hers. “Hey.”

With a touch gentle enough for Alex, he smoothed a hand over her head, letting it rest on the ends of her hair. His empathy throbbed between them, both surprising and welcome.

“You were alone in a collapsed building? How long? What happened?”

Throat tight, she swallowed. “About two days. In the dark. Under bricks and rubble.”

The implication pulsed in the room, broken only by the sound of Alex’s movements.

Now that she’d begun, she needed Nic to know. Maybe then he’d understand her fear and leave her alone. Maybe she could scare him away.

More than that, she needed to talk about the unspeakable. No one, not one person had ever listened all the way through.

“I couldn’t see or move,” she said, in a voice that sounded oddly detached. “But I could hear things falling and shifting, and I could hear the cries and moans.”

“Others in the building?”

She nodded. The light pressure of Nic’s fingers against her hair encouraged her. He listened with such intensity, she could almost believe he cared.

“After a while, the sounds faded away.” She’d known somehow in her ten-year-old mind that the people around her were dead. Terrified, she’d called for her parents. They never answered.

“You had to be scared.” He stroked her hair again. “So scared.”

“I was. The smoke was the worst. I could smell it growing thicker and thicker but I could never see any flames. I kept thinking I would be burned alive with no means of escape. Later I discovered the fires had been far away in another section of the city. Wind had carried the smell everywhere.”

But the scent of smoke stayed with her, a haunting kind of torture made worse by the loss of her sister.

“How did you get out?”

“Rescue workers heard me crying. I was transported back to the States. My parents were found later, but Grandmother never shared the details.” For years she’d harbored the fantasy that her parents had survived and would be coming for her.

“First your parents and now your sister,” Nic murmured softly. “No wonder you’re overprotective of Alex.”

“Everyone I love dies, Nic.” She turned her face, saw her pain reflected in Nic’s dark eyes. “I don’t understand why I’m still here and they’re all gone.”

She hadn’t meant to say the words, but they were true. Why had God spared her but taken everyone else?

“Not everyone, Cass.” Nic gestured toward Alex who had rolled onto his back and was happily exploring his upraised feet. “Maybe you’re here to raise that little boy the way your parents and your sister would have wanted.”

“That’s the only thing I can think of. But his own parents would have done a better job than I’m doing.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.” He leaned closer. Cassidy’s pulse ratcheted up a notch. Nic had the softest eyes. She swallowed, suddenly nervous about the expression she saw in those espresso depths. Before she could think of a reason to move away, Nic reached out and brushed back a loose strand of her hair. His fingers grazed her cheek, a rough-gentle touch that raised goose bumps.

“I think,” he said, “that you are one strong, amazing woman and Alex is a lucky little boy to have you in his corner.”

At the gentle words, tears formed, threatening to spill over. She didn’t need this. Couldn’t bear to let go in front of Nic.

She used the mention of Alex as an excuse to escape the throbbing emotion.

“The baby,” she said lamely.

Before Nic could assure her that Alex was fine, she pushed away from the table, breaking contact with Nic’s eyes and fingertips. As she reached for her sister’s baby, Cassidy suffered from an uncomfortable truth. Maintaining an emotional distance from her new neighbor might not be as easy as she’d hoped.

S
tudy. He had to study.

Nic kicked back in the brown leather recliner commandeered from his brother Adam’s overcrowded apartment and propped an enormous medical tome on his chest. A double jolt of java waited at his elbow for those times when he went cross-eyed.

Moving out on his own was going well so far. The apartment looked pretty good with its hodgepodge of furnishings donated by family and friends, all of whom dropped by on a regular basis. Too regular for a guy who wanted to secretly cram for his medical school entrance exam.

Today, everyone assumed he was out of town. He hadn’t exactly lied to anyone, but he’d hinted at a rock-climbing expedition with a couple of his firefighter buddies. Anything to get some peace and quiet so he could study. Grateful, he bowed his head to the book.

He read two pages about synapses and ganglions before his mind wandered to Cassidy. She occupied his thoughts way too much lately.

She’d gotten to him the other night when she’d told him
about her parents. He had thought his heart would rip right through his T-shirt when she’d talked about being buried alive. As a firefighter, one of the worst fears and the most planned for scenarios was the danger of collapsing buildings. But he’d never lived through it. She had. Worse yet, she’d been a child, alone and scared and trapped.

He hadn’t been blowing smoke when he’d told her she was amazing. Her faith amazed him, too. He’d heard people with far less heartache rage against God for their troubles. Cassidy had never done that. She’d questioned, but she’d stood strong.

Watching Cassidy over the past few weeks had got him to thinking about his own relationship with God. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe. He did. But his brothers claimed he was riding on his parents’ prayers instead of his own. He didn’t know about all that but it was food for thought.

He sighed and dragged a hand down his face.

How was he supposed to study when the orange blossom smell of Cassidy’s hair, the silky texture of it beneath his fingers, kept intruding?

The woman didn’t even like him.

He’d wanted to comfort her, had been sorely tempted to kiss her, but she’d bolted like a startled deer.

After all she’d told him, one thing stuck in his peanut brain like a thorn, and he’d turned it over and over inside his head. While she was trapped, she’d smelled smoke and feared burning alive. Then a house fire had taken her sister. He’d also noticed a smoke detector in every room in her apartment.

Could Cassidy be fire-phobic? Was this why she jumped every time he got close?

Nah. The notion didn’t make sense. He didn’t cause fires. He prevented them, put them out. She should feel safe with him, not threatened.

Firefighters were the good guys. That’s why he loved his job.

The medical book grew heavy in his hands. He stared down at it. Yeah, well, he loved being a firefighter, but he’d love being a doctor, too. Time to get serious.

He started reading again, revisiting scientific principles, absorbing as fast and as much as he could. When brain overload threatened, he paused to ponder all he’d studied and to sip the cold, stout coffee.

Contrary to popular belief, his IQ was greater than his shoe size. Some folks would be shocked to know that.

He chuckled and rotated his neck left and right, listening to the crackles. Without giving it much thought he cataloged the anatomy of a neck ache. The upper portion of the trapezius as well as the levator scapula had stiffened to create tension, thereby contracting against cervical vertebra one through four.

Movement past his front window caught his attention. He turned his head, grimacing at the stiffness, and then sat up straight. The recliner emitted a metallic pop. His feet hit the wood floor with a thud.

Was that Cassidy?

He jogged to the door and yanked it open. Sure enough, his gorgeous neighbor was journeying down the sidewalk pushing a familiar navy-blue stroller complete with an alert, bright-eyed baby. Nic’s mood elevated and he hadn’t even looked at the white mood bowl.

“Hey, lady.”

She turned toward him, the movement catching the light in her sun-drenched hair. She was dressed in running clothes, complete with classy sunglasses and a bright-blue headband.

He didn’t know a single woman who compared with her. Or at least with the way he felt around her. The rest were friends, contrary to another popular myth. Friends with Cassidy was a start, but there was something else going on there, too.

Nic got a funny feeling beneath his rib cage. He must have fried his brain on the books.

Cassidy pushed the shades up on top of her head, a classy, movie-star action. “Nic, I thought you were gone for the weekend.”

She was paying better attention than he’d suspected. Nice.

He struck a casual pose, leaning on the edge of his open front door. “Changed my mind. I had some study—” Nic caught himself in time. “—stuff to do.”

He wasn’t ready to admit his med-school failings to a woman he wanted to impress.

The thought startled him, but once it had taken form he realized it was true. Weird. He’d have to figure that one out later.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re busy. I guess I shouldn’t keep you then.”

Was that disappointment lurking behind that beautiful smile?

He pushed off the door and sauntered outside. The bright May morning drew him almost as much as the woman and child. “Where are you headed?”

“For a run. This stroller has worked out great.” She patted the shiny metal handle. “Did I say thank you for thinking of this?”

The jogging stroller had been a brilliant idea, even if he
had
thought of it himself. His sister-in-law owned one and he’d known it was the answer for Cassidy’s need to run and still be with Alex. He’d given the gift the other night when she’d told him about her parents, a stroke of genius that had broken the bizarre tension between them.

“About a dozen times, but guys like gratitude. Go ahead and thank me again.”

She bent to adjust the awning over Alex’s face, but not before Nic saw the gleam of humor. He crouched next to the baby to say hello. Alex flopped both arms and grinned.

“Things must be going better with Alex,” he said.

He wanted to ask about the other night, to make certain he hadn’t crossed some invisible line, but he didn’t. Not yet. Sooner or later, he’d bring up the topic again. If she’d developed a phobia of fire, he wanted to know.

“We’re getting there. Slowly.” She grimaced but there was humor behind it. “Very slowly.”

He squinted up at her. “The fact that you have enough energy to run again must mean something.”

“True. Your mom reminded me that exercise energizes. And that I have to take care of myself in order to take care of Alex.” When he frowned, confused by her mention of his mother, Cassidy went on. “Didn’t she tell you I’ve called her a few times?”

“No.” And he felt a tad annoyed that she hadn’t. But then, he hadn’t been hanging around the home place as often lately, either.

“Your mother has truly been an answer to my prayers. I’ve never met anyone quite like her. She even prayed with me on the phone one day when I was in a panic over a rash on Alex’s bottom.” She bit her bottom lip and looked away. “You’re blessed to have a mother like her.”

Nic thought of the times around the kitchen table when both his parents had counseled and prayed with him about some problem or another. Now he understood how fortunate he’d been. Cassidy hadn’t had that.

“Family can be a pain, but yeah, they’re a blessing, too.”