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“Even before you were pregnant, you’d forget to eat. Many a night I think you would have forgone eating altogether if I hadn’t already had you something ready.”
“That’s in the past. Since my pregnancy test, I’ve made myself eat three times a day even when I’m so nauseated I can barely stomach a cracker.”
“Good for you, but you still look awful.”
“Thanks,” she snorted.
“Sometimes the truth hurts.”
“Like the truth that you left me for Dr Weaver?” Why had she said that? She knew he hadn’t left her for the cardiologist. Jealousy, pure and simple in its ugly, green-eyed form.
“I didn’t leave you for Kristen,” he immediately denied. “Kristen is my friend, nothing more, and never will be. I left because you failed to value our relationship, weren’t willing to give what I needed.”
Wasn’t that why she’d pushed him away, too? Because he wouldn’t give her what she wanted? A baby.
But he had given her one. Unintentionally, but his baby was growing within her belly all the same.
“I valued our relationship.” And how did he know what she hadn’t been willing to give? Was he referring to his asinine suggestion that she sell her practice and move to Nashville?
“Really? From where I’m sitting, it didn’t appear so. I asked you to give me one night and you couldn’t even manage that.”
Guilt flooded through her, but given the same set of circumstances she’d make the same choices if she had to do it over again, even knowing that she’d come home to an empty house.
“I wanted that night to be special, James.” Her eyes blurred as memories assailed her—her excitement over the way she’d looked, the silky dress that she’d ended up throwing away because of the bloodstains she’d been unable to remove. “I had my makeup and hair done, bought a new dress, but then I got a call that a little girl had come into the office and—”
“And you had to go to her rescue,” he finished for her.
Melissa nodded.
“It’s not that I don’t admire what you do,” he began. “You’re a wonderful and caring doctor. It’s just that you’re a wonderful and caring doctor to the exclusion of all else. Nothing and no one comes before your patients. If that’s the life you want, then that’s your choice. I love medicine, but I want a life, too.”
“You’re being overly dramatic, James. I have a life.” Not recently, but she had had a life until he’d walked away.
“Really?” He looked genuinely curious. “Tell me about your life, Melissa. What do you do outside medicine?”
“Lots.” But she couldn’t think of a single thing at the moment. But wasn’t it natural that she’d bury herself in work? Anything to distract herself from the fact that only an empty house waited for her?
“When we first got together you took time to go to medical meetings with me. We’d travel to conferences, go canoeing, bicycling, or just sit on the sofa, watching a movie and eating popcorn.” He closed his eyes, memories playing across his features. “How long has it been since we’ve spent any real time together?”
Finally a question she knew the answer to. “We went out to eat the night before my ultrasound,” she reminded him.
“Not that our strained dinner counts, but I’m talking about prior to my moving back to Nashville.”
She thought over the weeks before that horrible night when Ray Barnes died and, in grief, his wife overdosed.
“The day we worked in the yard, planting flowers and clearing away winter debris. We spent the entire day together.”
The night, too. It was the last time she recalled making love with him other than quick sex during the night to satisfy physical need.
“That was in April. It’s almost October.”
She thought harder, then realized if she had to think that hard, he’d proved his point.
Why hadn’t she made love to him every second he had been in her life? Kissed him and told him how wonderful it was to wake up next to him? She’d been blind.
“We weren’t spending enough time together,” she admitted.
“No,” he agreed. “We weren’t.”
