with Ms. Flannigan, please?”
Ms. Flannigan? What?
As if she didn’t feel unattractive enough, now he was making her feel like the mean woman who ran the orphanage in Annie. Wait, no, that was Miss Hannigan. Still, no one called her Ms. Flannigan. Especially not the hot guy who’d gotten her pregnant.
The nurse cast him a look.
“It will be fine, Sally. Becca and I are old friends. We need to catch up.”
Old friends? She forced herself to not look at Kate. If she looked at Kate, she was sure Sally would be able to see everything in the glance they’d exchange.
Nick met Becca’s eyes again. “I’m sure your friend won’t mind giving us a moment, will she?”
Becca opened her mouth to answer. However, suddenly, she didn’t want Kate to leave.
But she and Nick needed to talk. The thought of being alone with him knocked the wind out of her.
“Becca?” Kate asked. “Is that okay?”
What was she supposed to say? No? Don’t leave me?
God, she was so unprepared for this. Then again, it seemed as if she’d been unprepared for everything these past three months.
Just another day in her life. Only this one included the father of her child. The thought sent her free-falling.
She nodded. “It’s fine.”
Sally looked dubious, but she motioned for Kate to follow her. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Kate asked.
“I’m fine,” Becca repeated.
“We shouldn’t be long,” Nick said, his gaze trained on the tablet in his hands.
Kate cast an uncertain glance at Nick, but she followed Sally out into the emergency room. Once they’d cleared the curtain, an awkward silence stretched between Nick and Becca.
Nick lowered his voice. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Quite a surprise,” she said. “I didn’t realize you’d taken the job.”
“I didn’t at first,” he said. “But we finally came to a meeting of the minds. So, is there something we need to talk about?”
* * *
“Yes, we have quite a bit to talk about,” Becca said. As Nick watched her lips move, he tried to process what was happening.
Becca Flannigan looked like the girl next door with her silky brown hair and piercing blue eyes with golden flecks and a navy circle around the iris. They were the kind of eyes that tempted a guy to stare a little too long. That’s what had happened the night he’d met her, when her sister had been screaming at her, telling her to leave the hospital, blaming Becca for her son’s accident, even though the kid had admitted he’d been drag racing. As he was on his way out after interviewing for the ER job, he’d witnessed Becca trying to ask a question about her nephew’s condition, and then he’d watched the boy’s mother tear into her. He probably shouldn’t have—he should’ve left well enough alone and gone back to his hotel—but as Becca had been walking away, he’d called her back and answered her question.
She’d looked so fragile that night, some protective instinct had sprung to life. He’d wanted to help her, set her mind at ease.
Even now she stirred that same visceral reaction that had previously attracted Nick. And when he’d walked into Bentleys across from the hospital to get some dinner before going back to his hotel and saw her sitting there, she’d been a ray of sunshine on his gray horizon of plans.
And he realized Becca had been talking, but he hadn’t heard a single word she’d said—except for pregnant and yes, we absolutely need to talk.
In the span of five minutes his entire world had upended. He couldn’t be a father. Well, yeah, he could be, but they’d used a condom. How had this happened?
He raked a hand through his hair as unsavory words galloped through his mind. What if this wasn’t his baby? What proof did he have other than one night with her around the time of conception? How well did he know this woman? He didn’t, beyond the fact that he’d been mesmerized by her that lone night three months ago.
He set his jaw to ensure his thoughts didn’t become words and escape into the ether.
Instead, he said, “Would you like to tell me how this happened?”
Becca frowned at him as if he was an idiot, and he realized how that must’ve sounded. Idiotic.
“Never mind,” he amended. “I’m—”
Something clattered on the other side of the curtains—a dropped supply tray, maybe, or something else metallic and noisy. Somewhere in the distance, a child cried, “I want my mommy.” He could hear one of the nurses in the adjacent area conversing with a patient as if she were standing next to him talking in his ear.
Suddenly, everything seemed amplified. They couldn’t talk about this here. Nick trained his eyes on the patient chart tablet for a long moment, trying to gather his thoughts—looking for something, anything, that might right this rapidly sinking ship. Her emergency contact was her friend Kate, or at least he assumed it was Kate. Kate Thayer, the chart read, friend. No husband or boyfriend or significant other. Becca had named her parents as next of kin. Which completely eliminated the possibility that she’d gotten married since the last time—the only time—he’d seen her. But wait—he scrolled back up to the top of her chart to check. Yes, marital status was listed as single.
He looked back at Becca.
She was the last person he’d dreamed he’d run into today.
He’d wanted to see her again. In fact, he’d thought about her often since that night. When he’d finally accepted the job, he’d planned on trying to look her up. How many Beccas could there be in Celebration, Texas? But he hadn’t had much spare time lately. Between wrapping up his job in San Antonio and moving to Celebration, he’d been slammed. He’d been in town only five days. His possessions were still in boxes stacked inside his apartment because he’d hit the ground running since moving.
And here they were. Reunited.
And she was three months pregnant. He didn’t need a calculator to do that math.
“When did you get back into town?” she asked.
Her question answered something that had been lurking in the back of his mind. Had she come here looking for him?
Of course she hadn’t. It said right on her chart that food poisoning had brought her into the emergency room.
Then another question elbowed its way into the forefront of his mind: When had she planned on telling him? Was it even part of her plan? If he hadn’t changed his mind and accepted the job, would he have even known about the pregnancy?
“I’ve been here less than a week.”
“I see.”
