The Rescue Doc's Christmas Miracle. Amalie Berlin

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СКАЧАТЬ she’d begged off for the afternoon, she hurried out and summoned a cab. Earbuds and her streaming music service allowed her to shut down for the ride home. It wasn’t until she opened the door into her own private space that guilt began to ooze from her chest. She could feel it rising off her like toxic vapor.

      She should’ve told Gabriel more gently and she really shouldn’t have thrown the test at his head. He hadn’t deserved that. But he’d just hit that sore spot, maybe unknowingly, and her knees had jerked. In those few words he’d made her feel she was on the cusp of being rendered helpless again, like a wheelchair waited around the corner, crouched and sinister. Like any second she’d revert to being an observer in her own life.

      The flight suit she always changed out of before coming home still hung on her, so she dropped her bag on the way to the stairs to her bedroom loft above to go change into something lounge-worthy, then headed back down to fling herself onto the sofa.

      If it was already two months in, she’d have seven, or something, to go. She should make an appointment with a doctor she didn’t share genetics with. But how long before she was shuffled off to the side just by virtue of being pregnant, regardless of how healthy she remained during her pregnancy? How long before they took her off the chopper and made her work every rotation on the floor in the emergency department?

      How long before she was sidelined by her baby?

      She stared into the open rafters above, sighing at herself. There was a worse emotion to attach to an innocent baby than disappointment. Resentment.

      That word didn’t apply yet, but she could see it on the horizon, a black monolith on her own internal skyline. Would that be better or worse than the emotion she couldn’t even deny to herself: the fear that her child would be cripplingly sick just like she’d been, but not be one of the lucky twenty percent?

      * * *

      Darkness fell over the city before Gabriel’s day ended. Manhattan was never truly dark, but during the holiday season it was even brighter than normal. Everywhere he looked he saw festive reminders of the holidays, glittering lights, red bows, and jingle bells. In front of Penny’s Tribeca building, a leafless tree had been wrapped in tiny blue lights that transitioned to purple and pink. Even the tiniest branches glittered like crystal, but in a funky way that let the outside world know the eclectic apartments they’d find inside the converted factory.

      He liked Christmas in a vague sort of way, mostly as a quiet Christmas Day with his parents, but the rest of the season left him flat.

      The test felt like an anvil in his pocket, and had all day. From his flight suit to the street clothes he now wore, it had stayed with him. Even now, hours later, he didn’t know how to feel about it any more than he could figure out how to get it out of his mind.

      He’d had his shot at marriage and a family a decade ago, and had proved insufficient to the task of husband, so he’d never gotten to the father stage of family life. It had been planned—big family, lots of children—but he’d missed important steps somewhere along the way, and hadn’t yet figured out where he’d gone wrong. Once marriage had been taken out of his future plans, so had the idea of being a father, one of the many reasons he’d always been meticulous about safe sex.

      As he made his way across the lobby, the differences in their lives came into focus. Temperamentally mismatched. Historically mismatched. Socially mismatched. Financially mismatched. He did well, but by Davenport standards... If she decided to exclude him from his child’s life, the attorneys she could hire could see it done.

      Her name on the directory pointed him to the top floor. Penthouse, of course. Old wealth.

      Which put his next move in a light that people would probably misconstrue, but he’d make it anyway. Even if he’d failed spectacularly as a husband the first time out, even if they were entirely different kinds of people. Marriage before the child came would increase the strength of his rights. He’d like to think he knew Penny well enough to rule out the likelihood she’d bar him from his child’s life, but he wasn’t willing to bet on it. Look at how wrong he’d gotten things with Nila.

      If he and Penny could work things out, it would actually be a good thing. She might be impulsive, but she was also kind, and the days they didn’t work together, he missed the optimism that rolled off her for most of the day. He could live with that being part of his daily life. They were extremely sexually compatible. If they could work out some kind of understanding about the rest of it, it could work, at least long enough to provide the kind of stable base their child deserved.

      Once outside her door, he rang the bell, and she opened it so quickly she could’ve been just standing there, waiting for him. Except she was disheveled and had the soft look of sleep about her eyes, along with wearing some rumpled cotton pajamas.

      As soon as the door stood fully open, she launched in.

      “Gabriel, I am so sorry.” The words came in a rush and her arms hitched halfway up her chest and back, like she was about to hug him, but wasn’t sure he’d let her.

      It was the opening he needed. He stepped through the door, closed it and flipped one of the locks before turning back to her.

      The stricken look on her face had him reaching for her cheek. It had been in him just to comfort her, let her know he wasn’t angry, let her know that things had changed again, but the haunting light of vulnerability in her eyes pulled him in.

      Instantly, when his hand cupped her cheek, her eyes fell closed and she tilted her head into the touch, like she’d been just as worried about their fight, like she needed comfort too. Mercy, he wanted to kiss her. And he shouldn’t, that would be a jump too far, too soon.

      Instead, he gave a little tug to bring her to him. Her arms opened and slid around his ribs and he let himself hold her in an easy, relaxed embrace, his chin resting atop her head as she breathed out so slowly and deeply that he knew she’d needed it.

      How do you feel about underwear hugging?

      Her question from months before swam back to him, bringing a grin with it. There was something about her that felt great in his arms. Maybe it was her perfect height compared to his, and the way his chin rested on her forehead when she tucked in close, and how he could feel the fan of her eyelashes on the side of his neck. Maybe it was the combination of her slender, feminine frame and the strength he felt in it, or the mop of soft, wavy hair and how, when even slightly ruffled, her delicate scent drifted out, calling to something in his chest.

      He just knew he liked it. He liked it enough to force his way through the rest of the questions and worries he’d had all day. Start the conversation. Get it going. Keep things calm. That had been his mistake earlier when she’d grown frustrated and pelted him with a pregnancy test.

      “Are you all right?”

      “Are you all right?” she answered, without moving an inch, but alarm bells sounded in his head. Health conversations always set her off, even if this was entirely a health concern.

      “You felt bad earlier.” He squeezed her a little tighter as he spoke, a tool he’d never had the opportunity to use to calm down these conversations in the past, so who knew how well it’d work?

      “I was shocked. Sort of. I didn’t feel sick, I just felt, I don’t know, unsettled? Kind of nervous?”

      He simply nodded, still trying so hard to take it slowly. Not to rush ahead, not to demand answers, not to drag СКАЧАТЬ