a connection to the little guy in spite of all that.
Which had him wondering about the same question he’d asked a hundred times. How was it possible that Bree didn’t want that kind of connection someday with a child of her own?
Everything in him seemed to squeeze until he couldn’t breathe. Since he didn’t know how to manage the band of emotions strangling him, he forced himself to ease away from Bree, not wanting to think about all that. About her relationship with Emma, about how and why his life and Bree’s had gotten tangled up then ripped apart. About the day his sister had introduced her freshman dormitory roommate to him, insisting they should meet after Bree had moved to San Diego to work in the same hospital he did.
His first sight of her was still branded into his brain. He knew it would be branded there forever.
She’d stood silhouetted in his doorway wearing a pale yellow sundress. Tall and proud, lean and fit. Backlit by the bright, Southern California sunshine, a confident smile tipping the corners of her beautiful lips. Her lively, intelligent eyes had met his and held—eyes that were such a mesmerizing sea green he’d almost forgotten how to breathe. Her thick, shining hair, a color somewhere between golden honey and liquid fire, had skimmed her tanned, bare shoulders, and he’d had to stop himself from reaching out to see which was softer—those silken strands or her smooth skin.
He’d never believed in love at first sight. Who did something so stupid as that? Who let themselves fall in love because of hormones or lust or chemistry, and not because that woman and you were truly compatible? Not concerned with whether or not they shared a mutual vision of the future? Whether or not that person might break your heart?
Who did that? Him, apparently, and he had the deep scars on that vital organ to prove it.
Bree’s nearness, the caring softness in her eyes, made him really look at her. Made him take in the sight of her beautiful face marred by disturbing swelling, scrapes and blood. Those physical reminders of how easily she could have been even more badly hurt, or worse, made his throat close and his gut clench. Had him wanting to pull her close, wanting to take care of her.
Wanting to never let her go.
But wanting that and having that were two very different things. Wanting that still tied him in knots.
Having that had proved impossible.
He lifted his hand to her banged-up face, carefully stroking his thumb across a cut on her cheekbone liberally smeared with dried blood. The full reality of what had almost happened tonight slammed into him all over again, and he had to try twice before he could speak. “Time to get yourself looked at. Get these cleaned up and make sure there’s nothing more serious that you’ve hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
Of course she was, despite what she’d gone through tonight. That was his independent Bree in a nutshell, wasn’t it? Except she wasn’t his anymore.
He dropped his hand from her cheek. The hollow ache in his chest seemed to physically hurt, his body started to shake again from the inside out, and he knew he had to get out of there before he did something horrifying. Like grab Bree up and plead with her to change her mind, to come back to him again. Beg her to love him again.
The room suddenly felt claustrophobic, and he gulped in a breath, trying to get air. “I need to go to the OR, see what injuries Emma has.”
He strode out the door and could feel Bree’s eyes on his back. Imagined pain in them, the hurt, maybe, that he wasn’t sticking around for her when she’d obviously been through hell and back in the past hours.
His steps slowed and he nearly turned. Until he remembered how vehemently she’d assured him she didn’t need a man in her life to take care of her. That she’d never need that, when all he’d wanted had been for them to take care of each other, form a partnership, the way his parents always had. What his father had said he wanted for both of his children—a deep love with one special person, having children together, to form the best kind of foundation for their adult lives.
She’d claimed that his vision for their future had somehow been all about him trying to change her, or be someone different from who she was, and how she’d figured that he just didn’t understand. There wasn’t one single thing he could think of that he’d want to change about Bree Donovan, except her conviction that children would never fit into her life. He couldn’t deny that making a family with her was a vision he’d had a hard time letting go.
Somehow he forced himself to keep walking. But the distance felt as if yet another seismic shift shook his heart, sending the cracks that already crisscrossed throughout splitting wider than the Grand Canyon.
“ANYBODY KNOW WHERE Dr. Latham might be?”
Bree had asked that question at least a dozen times in the past half hour as she’d roamed the hospital hallways. The emergency department, the surgical floors, the Trauma ICU, the NICU. She got the same answer as all the previous times, which was no.
Where in the world was he? And why wouldn’t he answer his darn phone? She was positive he wouldn’t have just gone on home while Emma was in critical condition. Knew that she’d just missed him when she’d finally been able to go see how Emma was doing. Knew he’d been to the NICU to see the baby, too, who was thankfully doing remarkably well, considering his terrifyingly abrupt entry into the world.
But all that had been over an hour after she’d left the ER. Dr. Kurz had insisted on a battery of tests and X-rays to make sure Bree didn’t have some kind of underlying injury that might surface later, which had been a frustrating delay. But she’d known it was necessary. Head injuries were no joke, and, since she’d been briefly knocked out, she was glad she didn’t seem to have a concussion. So all she had to deal with, which in comparison was nothing, were the aches and pains she felt from head to toe now that the crisis with Emma was over. At least, over for now, but her condition was still far from stable.
Maybe there was someone else who just might need her right then in a way that unconscious Emma didn’t. How could Sean not need comfort after the shock and scare of nearly losing his sister? And if he did, no matter what, she wanted to be there for him.
His family was so very different from her own. It almost seemed that being aggravated with one another sometimes was part of their love and closeness, and Bree couldn’t figure that out. Her own family’s disappointments and frustrations with one another ran deep, keeping them farther apart instead of closer.
She knew from the way Sean talked about his mother and sister that he loved them unconditionally. Knew from the indulgent expression she’d seen on his face most of the time he was looking at them, from the smile in his eyes, even when he was giving them grief about something. Obviously similar to the way Emma had told her their father had loved them. Bree wished that she could have met the important, missing piece to their family. Gone, but still with them in their hearts, in so many ways, every day.
Bree’s family? From the time she was little, she’d learned excelling at something was the best way to get her father’s attention. Winning a tennis match, or a surf competition, being on the dean’s list, getting into medical school. He’d left her and her mother when Bree was ten years old to marry a high-powered lawyer, and after that she rarely saw him. He did keep in touch, though, sending her notes when she did something he approved of, or had her photo in a surf magazine.
