Along Came Trouble: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (36 page)

He studied her. She was rumpled and small, with tired, scared eyes and more bravado than any one woman should possess. He felt sorry for her. It was marginally better than feeling sorry for himself.

With a sigh, he sat back down. “I don’t want to talk about Ellen.”

“Fine. Deal the cards.”

Jamie started playing something on the piano, and Caleb and Carly settled into a game of strategy best suited for eight-year-olds. After a few minutes, she rubbed her temple again, then stretched her shoulders as if they were bothering her.

“You have a headache?” he asked.

“Little bit.”

He put down his cards. “How long have you had it?”

“It’s no big deal.”

“How long?”

“Since this morning,” she admitted.

“What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

“Nothing.”

He stared at her until she started to squirm. “It aches. But I’ve been laying in bed all the time. Of course I’m going to have some aches and pains.”

He stood up and peeled back the covers from her feet.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Caleb wrapped his hand around her bare ankle and pressed his thumb against her skin for a few seconds. When he took it away, the imprint remained in her swollen skin. Edema.

“You need to go to the hospital. Don’t move.”

She swung her legs over to the side of the bed, and he pointed a finger at her and raised his voice. “Don’t even think about it. For once in your life, you’re going to listen, and you’re going to keep your ass
right there
.”

Carly’s eyes widened with the first flash of panic.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, more gently. “The baby will be fine. But you need to go to the hospital. I’ll handle it.” He left the room.

“Callahan,” he called as he took the stairs two at a time. “Can you pick her up?”

“Carly?”

“Yes, Carly. Can you carry her, or do I have to do it?”

Jamie gave him a blank look.

“She needs to go to the hospital. She has a headache, shoulder pain, edema, and a stomachache. Those are all signs of preeclampsia. Can you pick her up or not?”

“Yes.”

“Get her and carry her down to my car.” Caleb tossed him the keys. “I’ll meet you out there. Tell Nana to stay put. I’m going to send Ellen over for her.”

He walked out of the house, through the yard, and straight up to Ellen’s side door, where he pounded for what seemed like a long time before she opened it. For half a second, he thought he saw something in her eyes. Something good, like hope. Delight. But whatever it was, she killed it off quickly and fixed her lawyer expression in place.

“I’m taking Carly and your brother to the hospital. I need your help. Can you and Henry go over and pack up some of Carly’s stuff and drive Nana over? The quicker, the better. I don’t know where to find Carly’s purse with her insurance card or any of that, but Nana should know. She can’t handle it by herself, though.”

“What’s wrong with Carly?”

“Nothing, I hope.”

“I don’t understand. You said—”

He wanted to touch her, but he stopped himself. She’d asked him to back off. “Ellen. Focus. Can you do it?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.”

As he walked away, he heard Henry ask, “Cabe doin’?”

Ellen said, “Caleb is taking care of Carly now, Peanut, and you and I are going to grab your diaper bag and go for an outing to the hospital …”

Her voice faded as he crossed back to Carly’s driveway. He didn’t think about it. Refused to think about anything except the mission at hand.

“Eric!” he called, jogging to the SUV. “We’re taking Short to the hospital. Callahan’s going to be with us. I need you to call ahead to hospital security and tell them what’s happening. I’ll be pulling up to the ER entrance. Tell them to let us through and Ellen’s car, but nobody else. It’s going to be a madhouse over there within an hour. They need to be ready for it. Tell them we can loan them men, and have them call me if they need to. Then call Katie and tell her what’s going on. Tell her I want Sean with me, and I might need her at the hospital, too. You stay put and keep the show running here. Nobody gets into either house. You understand?”

“Got it.”

Caleb glanced up to see Jamie putting Carly into the backseat of the car. “All right. Clear the barricades for me. We’re out of here in one minute.”

By the time he reached the car, Jamie had Carly inside and buckled in. He was leaning close, holding her hand and speaking soothing words in her ear, and Carly looked a little less scared than she had in her room.

“Okay, Short Round,” Caleb said as he pulled out onto Burgess and a dozen camera flashes went off. “Here’s where all your years of reckless driving pay off. Tell me again what the fastest route to the hospital is.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Carly threw up in Caleb’s nice car, and then she threw up in the wheelchair on the way to Labor and Delivery. Her headache got so bad, she wished someone would take pity on her and lop off the top of her skull. Instead, the nurses hustled her into a hospital gown and stuck her in a bed with an IV in her arm.

She’d seen that
Baby Story
show enough times to know the scary music was playing now, and it was time to either be brave or dissolve into helpless, mascara-streaking tears.

Carly had no problem with brave. She’d been born brave. It would be easier if she didn’t feel so astonishingly horrible, and if she weren’t terrified for the Wombat, but she could suck it up. She was going to be a mother. Sucking it up was her job now.

They’d given her some kind of steroid to help develop the Wombat’s lungs more quickly. She knew what it meant, even if no one seemed to want to say it out loud. It meant the Wombat might be breathing air soon. It meant they might have to take the Wombat out of her body before being pregnant killed her.

Being brave meant not thinking too hard about this. Which wasn’t a problem, because the ice pick in her head made thinking kind of unpleasant anyway.

Every single inch of her skin itched like mad. “Scratch me,” she told Jamie, who sat beside the bed, holding her hand.

“Hmm?”

“I’m itchy. Make yourself useful.”

He smiled at about a quarter of his usual wattage and shook his head. “It’s the magnesium sulfate,” he said, gesturing toward the IV. “The nurses said it might do that. I don’t think scratching’s going to help.”

The magnesium sulfate was to keep her from having a seizure. Another thing she didn’t want to think about. “Then distract me,” she demanded, squeezing her eyes shut. “Tell me something good.”

She felt the bed dip beside her as Jamie sat down on the edge. Behind her lids, she could see him—his tousled blond curls and those blue eyes soft with concern. He had on jeans that probably cost as much as her car payment and a Western-style shirt with pearl snaps that made him look like a rodeo cowboy. The sexy kind, not the real kind with manure on their boots. She hoped she hadn’t puked on it. She really liked that shirt.

“This would probably be a bad time to tell you I love you,” he said.

“Terrible,” she agreed. But she squeezed his hand tighter, and something near her sternum got all warm and buttery. Heartburn.

The mattress bucked and creaked as Jamie maneuvered awkwardly, moving behind her, curving his body around hers. He wrapped an arm over her and snugged their clasped hands to her breasts. “Okay?”

She took a deep breath and relaxed against him, grateful for his warmth and the rise and fall of his chest. Grateful he was here. She tried to remember why she hadn’t been speaking to him, but her head hurt, and she decided high blood pressure and the possibility of seizures gave her a free pass.

“The Shrimp has hair now,” he said in his warm-honey voice. “He weighs more than three pounds, which is the same as four navel oranges.”

“That’s the least helpful weight comparison ever.”

He smoothed her hair back and kissed behind her ear. “Don’t blame me, I read it online. He has toenails, too. I figure that means he’ll do okay, even if he has to be born soon. Hair and toenails—those are the finishing touches, right? He’s all done cooking. The rest of the pregnancy is just to fatten him up.”

It was a comforting thought, and she liked knowing Jamie had been reading about the Wombat on the Internet. Also, her headache didn’t bother her as much with him holding her.

“It could be a girl,” she said.

“Yeah. What are you going to call her?”

“I don’t know.”

A nurse came in, took her blood pressure, and made an announcement Carly couldn’t follow about protein in her urine and ultrasounds and the doctor’s schedule. Jamie listened. Carly decided to delegate listening to him. The nurse left.

“Jamie?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you think of Isadora?”

“Isadora Short?”

“Too pretentious?” She’d had trouble with names. None of them sounded quite right.

“I like Isadora Callahan better.”

She snorted. “When you have a baby, you can call her that.”

His arm tightened around her, and he pressed his face into her hair. “I
am
having a baby, Carly. With you.”

She thought maybe she ought to have an objection to that. Something about her independence, or his lack of resolve. Except here they were together, and she didn’t want to be independent if it meant she didn’t get to have Jamie. Plus, he seemed to have returned from L.A.
with resolve to spare.

“Are we getting married, then?”

“I’d like to think so.”

She let that sink in. Marry Jamie Callahan. Share the Wombat with him. Share her whole life with him. The possibility settled in her bones and became inevitable.

This was where they’d been headed from the beginning. They’d started on the laundry room floor, and now they were here. How improbable.

How lucky.

He smoothed his hand over her stomach. “What are we going to call him if he’s a boy?”

“Not Jamie.”

“God forbid.”

“I was thinking of Austin, after my grandfather.”

“Austin Short?”

“Maybe Austin Callahan.”

“Yeah, that works.” She could hear the smile in his voice. Full wattage this time.

He pushed himself up on an elbow so he could lean over and kiss her forehead. “I love you, Carly.”

“I know.” She did. She had all along, really.

Telling the truth was part of being brave. So she told him. “I love you, too.”

She’d never said the words to him before.

He pushed up the sleeve of her hospital gown a few inches and kissed her bare shoulder. “I know.”

They lay there together, and even though her skin itched and her head hurt and she was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life, she was happy, too. This was her man. Jamie Callahan. Of all the crazy, impulsive decisions she’d ever made, he was the very best one.

“Jamie?” she said after a minute or two. “I’m not changing my name.”

He laughed. “No. No, you wouldn’t, would you?”

And that pretty much settled it.

“We could really do that? Tap into their security feed and monitor the entrances from one spot?” Caleb asked.

“Sure,” Sean said. “You could even do it off a laptop.”

The two of them were in a busy hallway in the maternity ward, talking logistics. Caleb liked to bounce these kinds of problems off Sean, who became almost talkative if you gave him something interesting to think about.

“That would be great. If I don’t need a man at every entrance, I can free up four or five
guys for other jobs.” Four or five guys he desperately needed. Trying to protect three separate sites on short notice was stretching his resources to the breaking point. “Let me talk to the chief of security here and see what he says.”

Sean nodded agreeably. “I can handle the computer end if you …”

He trailed off, and Caleb looked down the hall to see what had grabbed his attention. Katie was making her way toward them, carrying overstuffed paper grocery sacks in both arms. Two more plastic bags hung from her wrists.

“Hey, guys,” she said. “A little help?”

Caleb stepped toward her, but Sean moved faster, relieving her of the groceries. Then he simply stood there, blank and silent as a robot awaiting his next command. The contrast to the animated guy Caleb had just been conversing with couldn’t have been more dramatic.

It was true, then. Sean didn’t talk to Katie. She’d mentioned it, but Caleb had figured she was exaggerating. Apparently not.

Katie had also said Sean hated her, but he wasn’t picking up any evidence of that. Sean seemed guarded and wary, not disapproving.

Quite the opposite, if Caleb had to guess.

“Food?” Caleb asked.

“Yep. Sandwiches. Thought everybody might be getting hungry.”

“Thanks. Visitor’s lounge is that way.” He pointed to the left.

Katie led the way, with Sean close behind. As she unloaded the sandwiches and set out napkins and bags of chips in the kitchen attached to the lounge, Caleb watched Sean, and Sean watched Katie. When she bent over to put a coffee cake on the lowest shelf of the fridge, he fumbled a two-liter bottle of soda, sending it crashing into a tower of paper cups. For the first time all day, Caleb almost felt like smiling.

“Subtle,” he said under his breath.

The dismay that flashed across Sean’s face confirmed it. Sean had a problem with Katie, but it wasn’t what she thought. Katie had it backward.

With a shake of his head, Sean sighed, grabbed a sandwich, and cleared out, all without risking another glance in her direction.

Katie made up a few plates. She stuck one in his hand and said, “Eat.”

Turkey sandwich in hand, Caleb wandered over to the wall of windows in the lounge and looked out on the lot. He couldn’t see the entrances from here, but off to the side was the line of cars where the hospital guards had been directing the photographers to park. He counted twenty-seven before Katie said, “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

She put her hands on her hips and tipped her head toward the sandwich in his hand,
staring until he took a bite. After he swallowed it, she handed him a cup of ice water. “Drink.”

He did as he was told. “I’m fine,” he said, knowing the half-assed reassurance wouldn’t put her mind at ease. “I’ll live.”