"No problem. Let's just focus on finding out what's wrong with her. At least I know where to start looking." Gray placed his hand on her belly, palpated lightly and frowned. Magda flinched, doubling over. He rested his stethoscope over her stomach. His eyes widened. "Uh, oh." Magda coughed. Groaned. Gagged.
"Lori, move!" Gray scooped the little girl up and ran full-out to the bathroom, positioning her head over the toilet howl with only seconds to spare.
Lori trailed after them helplessly.
Gray held the back of Magda's neck and looked at Lori. "Not pneumonia this time. She's just got an old-fashioned case of the stomach flu."
"Stomach flu." Relief diffused the tension from her, and she slumped against the bathroom door. Adrenaline gushed through her in waves, leaving her with an absurd urge to laugh.
So much for concerns about late-night passion and mood-setting moments. If Magda's green pallor was any indication, Lori had a long night ahead of her and romance wasn't even an option.
Four hours and countless loads of laundry later, Lori sagged onto the floor beside Magda's bed. She leaned her head against the mattress with a weary sigh.
She needn't have worried about ending up in some unexpected, mind-numbing clench with Gray. They'd both been too busy taking turns cleaning up after Magda.
It was a miracle there weren't more only children in the world. How did parents ever find the energy necessary for the sex to make another baby?
Who'd have thought taking care of one sick kid could suck the life right out of a person? They hadn't even been dealing with anything life threatening. Just a simple stomach flu like the one going around the base.
Lori watched Gray as he strode through the bedroom door. Thank God she'd had his help.
Doubts slunk in with insidious force. How was she ever going to manage alone? How easy it would be to succumb to the temptation of calling for his help over the next month. A dangerous mix of alarm and anticipation fizzed within her.
Gray dropped down beside her, having just changed into clean workout clothes from his car. "Any noise from our little patient?"
"Nope. She" s sleeping, for a while at least."
"Probably worn-out."
"She's not the only one."
Propped open, the French doors ushered night breezes and sounds inside, clearing away the dank, sick-room odor and replacing it with a tantalizing intimacy. Bells chimed four times, the distant rush of waves echoing from the harbor a few blocks over.
Lori shifted toward Gray. "I didn't even think to ask. You're not on call are you?"
"Not until Sunday."
"Oh, good. Thank you for coming. I know I don't have any right to ask—"
"I want to help. I've told you that already."
And he had helped, so much. His steady calm and frequent smiles had lent her a confidence she needed. "I don't know what I would have done without you."
"You would have managed."
Maybe, but his smiles had helped more than he could know. More than she wanted him to know. "I don't really have that much experience with kids. I never had younger cousins around, never baby-sat."
"I guess not, with moving so much."
"I feel like such a fraud. What do I know about taking care of a child long-term?"
"You've been a foster parent. You have training."
"Short-term placements. And all the textbook training in the world can't teach me how to deal with this for real. She's counting on me, for so much more than food and a temporary place to sleep." A gust ruffled the sheers on the French doors, swirling the room with hints of ocean and marsh. Warmth and hints of bay rum waited an arm's reach away. "What if I screw up? The stakes are so high here, and I'm all she has."
"Parents make mistakes, Lori, but you've already got the tough parts figured out. Some people are just born to be parents."
"And some aren't?"
"Some aren't."
Frustration edged away wiser constraints on her mouth. "Why, Gray?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Lori—"
She forged ahead, in spite of him, maybe to spite him for once. "Why do you think you're not meant to be a father?"
Finally she dared to ask the question that had tormented her for over a year. Of course, now she no longer wanted to know for herself, but some lucky child deserved this man as a father. She didn't linger overlong on the thought of the woman who might give him that child. "You're great with kids. Look at how you deal with Magda. And I've heard you talk about your nieces and nephews. You obviously adore them."
"That's different."
"Because they don't come with a wife?"
"Partly." He met her gaze dead-on, honest as he'd always been, even when it hurt.
Lori swept aside the shards of pain his single word had sprinkled over her and hated that he still had the power to wound her.
So he didn't want a wife.
Not that she wanted the position. She needed a man who wasn't afraid of commitment, a steady man who wanted to put down roots and build a life rather than play games and sing Karaoke until the end of time.
But how she would miss his smiles.
Why couldn't she have smiles and constancy wrapped up in a package that sent her heart stuttering like it did with a simple look from Gray? "So you're just a confirmed bachelor who plans to shower Barbie dolls and Tonka toys on other people's kids for the rest of his life."
"It's better that way."
"Why?" she demanded, confused, angry and more curious than she wanted to be.
He twined a length of her hair around his fingers, linked to her but not touching. Gray stared at the simple lock as if it might hold the answer. Slowly he released it, one strand at a time. "Why do you want to know? It won't accomplish anything."
Good question. She struggled for an answer. "Aren't we both trying to find a way to say goodbye to each other? You talk about helping me with Magda, but I think there's more to it than that." His eyes darted away from hers, confirming her suspicions. She stilled the unproductive disappointment and charged ahead. "Is that what this is all about? Putting the past to rest for good?"
"Seems like you know me pretty well after all. Maybe you can tell me why I don't plan to get married."
"Ever? Not to anyone?"
"Ever."
All confusion about the two of them aside, she couldn't help but ache at the thought of Gray spending the rest of his life alone. "If I knew the answer, Gray, we wouldn't be sitting here right now."
Would he respond? While always truthful when he spoke, he sometimes opted for silence or covered the moment with a laugh and a smile. Would this be one of those times? A lone car drove past, and she almost gave up. What difference would it make, anyway?
Gray scratched a hand over his heavy, five-o'clock shadow. Lori prepared herself for his lighthearted quip.
Not a smile in sight, he said, "My dad."
Confusion muddled her tired brain. "Your father?"
"My father was a POW in 'Nam."
"Oh, Gray, how awful." She had to touch him. Taboos be damned, she couldn't let such a revelation go past without contact and comfort. Lori laid her hand over his on the floor. Gray twitched, but didn't pull away.
She searched in the dark for something to say, but he hadn't given her much to go on. "I knew your father was active duty Air Force, but you never told me… How long?"
"Four years overseas. Three of them in the camp."
Lori stroked his fingers one at a time. "You must have been young when he left."
Tendons and veins bulged and rippled along the top of his hand. "I was five. Davis was three. Mom was pregnant with Mary Ann."
"Your poor mother." Poor young Gray, she thought but didn't dare say. Instead she linked their fingers without giving him a chance to say no.
His jaw worked double time. "Damn straight."
"But your father came home."
Gray's grip tightened, painfully. "Yeah, he came home."
"What happened?" she asked, then wished she hadn't His hold slackened, and he slid his hand free.
"He finished out his time in the service, retiring at thirty years."
"End of story?"
"For him maybe. It didn't matter to him what it cost my mom to see him put on that uniform every day. It didn't matter that it almost killed her to send him off to fight in other conflicts around the world." Gray pinned her with eyes that glittered in the dark like the fluorescent lighting of his aircraft. "It didn't matter because the military is in his blood. It's a calling, something he couldn't turn his back on no matter what it cost. Even if it cost him his family."
"But your parents are still together. They're still a family." She tried to take his hand again, offer something to smooth away the harsh lines she'd never seen on his playful face before.
He gripped her wrist and held it between them. "Lori, your training should have taught you better than that. Just because two people live together and exchange a few vows doesn't make them a family. We haven't been a family since he walked out the door to Vietnam."
The bitterness in Gray's voice stopped her cold. She'd asked for this, thinking there had to be something more beneath the songs and smiles. But she hadn't expected an intensity that almost scared her. For herself or him, she wasn't sure.
The vaporizer chugged in the silence. He carefully released her arm with exaggerated control.
Gray looked out the French doors as if searching for something in the night sky. "I'm just like him, Lori. Whether I'm a flyer, doctor, or a ditch digger, I'm going to do it in the military. It's in my blood. Some men can juggle it all, family and service. I'm not one of them. I'm too much like my father, too driven, too selfish. And I won't do to any woman what he has done to my mother."
"How do you know if you haven't tried?"
"Who says I haven't tried?"
Steamy air weighted her lungs until she couldn't find the breath to talk.
"I tried twice. Desert Storm wrecked one relationship."
She inhaled that thick air, but it did little to ease the band constricting her sides. "And the other?"
Silently he stared back at her with the answer they both already knew. Did she want him to say it? What would it gain either of them?
He looked away, and the moment passed. Lori deflated against the bed.
Gray was damn right she'd picked up a trick or two about human nature in all those counseling courses. Her every professional instinct shouted there was more about his father and his family than Gray was sharing. Even so, his set jaw as he stared out at the twinkling sky told her it wouldn't do any good to push him. He'd spilled as much as he planned to. End of discussion.
Lori rested her head against the mattress and closed her eyes as if that would somehow block out visions of the man beside her. Regardless of the rest of his story, he'd made it clear. He had his reasons for staying single. He had plenty of commitment in his life. He'd just committed himself to the Air Force.
Knowing that should have freed her.
It didn't. Instead of hearing his words, she saw his eyes, the flash of pain that had likely not been as well hidden in the young boy.
More than anything, she wanted to cradle that child to her and make his world right. She wanted to comfort the man and thank him for finally sharing a part of himself with her, even if it scared her more than a little and pushed them farther apart.
How sad something that should have sent her hot-footing it away only made her want to hold him even more.
Legs stretched out on the floor in front of him, Gray stared through the French doors for what seemed like hours. He'd tracked air traffic, civilian and military, as it circled the city, any distraction to keep from thinking about what he'd told Lori.
