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Chrissie had a baby. She’d been curvier than before, but he’d just figured she’d put on a few pounds. Definitely, he’d never suspected she’d given birth. He didn’t recall any noticeable stretch marks on her belly, but then, not all women got many stretch marks. Plus, he’d been so paranoid about his own scars that he might not have noticed.
Or so caught up in his physical need that he might not have noticed because he’d wanted her something fierce. They’d taken things slower in his tent, but they’d been in the dark and had needed to feel their way.
Chrissie had a baby.
Chrissie was a mother.
His brain reeled at the implications.
“That’s why you just left? Because you have a baby?”
Agnes’s eyes were saucers now and Bud was likely going to have bruises from how she was elbowing him.
“Yes.” Chrissie sounded flustered.
“I don’t understand why that meant you couldn’t say goodbye to me.”
“You and I have a baby, Trace.” She enunciated each word with great clarity. “A three-year-old son.”
She kept talking, but her language might as well have been foreign because Trace couldn’t make out her words, just bits and pieces of sounds that echoed through his mind.
You and I have a baby. A three-year-old son.
He was her baby’s father?
He was a father?
She was lying.
They didn’t have a son.
He didn’t have a child.
Only it was possible...
CHAPTER TEN
CHRISSIE HAD WORKED five twelve-hour shifts straight and was exhausted when she picked Joss up from her mother’s that evening. Still, she put on a happy face for him, fed him, then gave him his bath.
Three bedtime stories and lots of giggles later she put him to bed, then went to shower.
When her phone rang, she figured it was Savannah to check on her after her mini-meltdown at work that day. Calling Trace and blurting out the truth wasn’t exactly what she’d planned, at least, not over the phone. She could hardly believe that she’d let a patient get to her that intensely. She’d call Savannah back when she got out of the shower.
Letting the hot water sluice over her body and wash away the day’s grime, she wished she could as easily wash away the stress. If only it were that easy.
A downpour wouldn’t wash away her day’s stresses. Not today. Stress she’d caused herself by calling Trace. Why had she called him?
Because a pitiful man sitting over his unconscious son’s body had gotten to her as she’d listened to his story. Bits and pieces of that story had resonated a little too close. Had reinforced what had been eating at her from the moment she’d laid eyes on Trace again.
She had to tell him about Joss. Not to was wrong. She hadn’t needed to hear the man’s words to know that. But maybe she’d needed to hear them to make her get beyond the past and act.
Because she was scared. And selfish.
When she got out of the shower, the number showing on the cell phone wasn’t Savannah’s.
It was the number she’d programmed into her phone after Alexis had given it to her. The number she had called earlier that day because she’d gotten so emotionally tangled up that the need to call him had about done her in.
Trace’s number.
