Right by Her Side. Christie Ridgway

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      “Martinet.”

      Then they smiled at each other and set off in opposite directions.

      Trent was still smiling when he pushed open the door to his office. But the smile died as the “nice” and “pretty” woman in one of his visitors’ chairs jumped to her feet and swung around to face him. It was the box lady.

      “You,” he said.

      The first thing out of her mouth was something he already knew. “I’m not a corporate spy.”

      Of course she wasn’t, he acknowledged, letting out an inward sigh. But he’d been grinding his teeth through a brutal headache yesterday when he’d glimpsed someone skulking around the Dumpsters and he’d flashed on the ugly explanation. Claudine accused him of cynicism.

      The way he figured it, expecting the worst of people ensured he was never disappointed.

      “I know you’re not a spy,” Trent admitted to the young woman. “As you were scuttling to your car, I realized you couldn’t be.”

      She blinked. “What cleared it up for you?”

      The little thing had big brown eyes, the long-lashed kind that made him think of Disney characters or his sisters’ baby dolls. “The scrubs. Maybe if they were that sick, surgical green, but ones like yours…” He gestured, indicating the loose-fitting pants and smock that enveloped her. Today they were lemon-yellow and printed with cross-eyed clown fish. “Not spy wear.”

      She didn’t respond, only continued standing there, staring at him with…anticipation? Expectation? Trent stared back, cursing Claudine for denying him his jolt of caffeine. He needed something to pop out the apology Big Brown Eyes obviously awaited.

      “Look—”

      “Look—”

      They spoke the word at the same time and when she broke off, she flushed. It took his attention off those Bambi eyes and onto her fair, fine-pored complexion. For a second he wondered what her skin would feel like beneath his stroking thumb.

      Damn, he needed that coffee.

      “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Is that what you’re after?”

      “No!” Her head shook back and forth. “I don’t want anything from you. That’s, uh, that’s why I’m here.”

      Okay. Stumped by that puzzling remark, he watched her suck in her bottom lip, worry it a moment, then let it pop free. Inside his pockets, his fingers curled as he found himself with a sudden fascination for her mouth. Her little suck-worry-pop had flushed it rosier. The lips looked soft and pillowy.

      He hadn’t had a good nap in a long, long while.

      Forcing himself to look away, he crossed to his desk and sat down. Get your mind back on business, Trent. Think of the memo. The reports. The satisfying hours of work ahead.

      He didn’t have the time or inclination for romance, and this woman, with her baby-fine skin and her wavy hair, had a face that resembled a sentimentalized Victorian valentine. The face alone shouted she wasn’t his type, but then there were those figure-shrouding scrubs. Trent liked women who wore tight minis and flashy Manolos, women who liked their encounters as brief as their skirts and their men as blunt and to the point as their high heels.

      This woman didn’t come close to that description.

      Determined to get her out of his office and get on with the rest of his workday, he focused on her Portland General Hospital name tag. “Well, Rebecca Holley, R.N., I’m a busy man. Why, exactly, did you stop by?”

      She sank into the chair across from his desk, doing that distracting suck-worry-pop with her lower lip again. “This is a little difficult to say….”

      But to his shock, she managed to get it out, anyway, in a few brief sentences. A mix-up at Children’s Connection. His sperm. Her pregnancy. Throughout her explanation, Trent could only stare at her again, numb.

      Disbelieving.

      Disbelieving and numb.

      When she wound down, he realized she expected a response from him. “My sisters put you up to this,” he tried. “It’s a little late for April Fools’, but—”

      “I wouldn’t joke about something like this,” she snapped, her spine straightening and her voice sharpening. “I wouldn’t joke about my baby.”

      Baby. Baby.

      Memories rushed into his mind. His sisters as chubby, chortling infants. The hero worship in his little brother’s eyes. The hair rising on the back of his nine-year-old neck the day Robbie Logan had gone missing while playing at their house. Twenty-plus years later, the choking sensation in his lungs when he’d learned his baby nephew had been kidnapped.

      Then that sickening, bat-to-the-gut blow when his wife had stood in an examining room at Children’s Connection and finally admitted that the only fertility problem she suffered from was him. That she’d lied about going off the pill because she didn’t want to bear his child—or even be married to him any longer.

      Yesterday’s headache slammed into the base of his skull and lingered there, pulsing pain. “It’s a joke,” he said aloud, his voice harsh. “It’s got to be someone’s idea of a joke.”

      His gaze lasered on the pretty little Victorian valentine who might not be a spy, but who was playing some criminal game all the same. He pointed his finger at her, but kept the volume of his voice under strict control. “And I won’t be laughing if you’re still sitting here when I get back.”

      With that, he rose to his feet and stalked toward the door. He pulled it open.

      “Wait—”

      But he didn’t pay attention to the woman. Instead he marched unseeing into the hall, almost knocking his assistant over. His hands shot out and he steadied her. “Sorry, Claudine. I’m sorry.”

      She stared up at him. “Trent? What’s the matter?”

      Nothing. Everything. It couldn’t be true. He swung his head around, trying to find something else to focus on. Proposals. Reports. Spreadsheets. The business details that had always filled his life.

      But he couldn’t turn off thoughts of chortling babies, missing children, kidnapped toddlers. Hopes that had never been born.

      Then he sensed movement behind him, and knew he couldn’t stay a moment longer. He couldn’t face her, the woman who’d dredged up all this in his mind. Already heading for the stairs, he called back to Claudine, “Take the rest of the afternoon off. You deserve it.”

      “No! The company bully is giving me time off? And going home early himself?”

      He didn’t have the heart to come up with a matching insult. But that was good, wasn’t it?

      After all, hearts were a damn inconvenience.

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