“This area’s rarely quiet. He’s used to it.”
“Then, I’ll order something in.” He tossed his jacket back over the chair.
“Which brings us back to my original question. Who’s going to deliver here? Now?”
He didn’t bother answering the obvious.
She sighed. “Renshaw influence.”
Influence? An understatement. But making use of it now was a rare perk in the weight of being a Renshaw.
“I guess even I would deliver a meal in this mayhem if someone paid me enough.” She held up both hands fast. “But you’re leaving.”
He pulled out his iPhone as if she hadn’t spoken. “What do you want to eat? Come on. I’ve been overseas eating crappy mess hall food and M.R.E.s for a year. Pick something fast and don’t bother saying no. You’re hungry. I’m hungry. Why argue?”
Hugging herself, she stared back at him, indecision shifting through her eyes. She was stubborn and determined, but then so was he. So he stood and waited her out.
Finally, she nodded, seeming to relax that steely spine at least a little. “Something simple, not spicy.”
“No spices? In New Orleans.”
She laughed and the sweet sound of it sliced right through him as it had before. He’d deluded himself into thinking his memory had exaggerated his reaction to her. And yet here he stood, totally hooked in by the sound of her laughter. Whatever she wanted, he would make it happen. He thumbed the number for a local French restaurant his stepmother frequented and rattled off his order from the five-star establishment. His dad’s new wife brought hefty political weight to the family. And politicians needed privacy.
Order complete, he thumbed the phone off. “Done. They’ll be downstairs in a half hour.”
She placed her hands over his jacket on the chair, her fingers curling into the leather. “Thank you, this really is thoughtful.”
“So I’m forgiven for my question about Max’s father?” The answer was important. Too much so. Jazz music, cheers and air horns blared from below, filling the heavy silence.
“Forgiven.” She nodded tightly, her fingers digging deeper into the coat. “You’re a good man. I know that. You’re just stubborn and a little pushy.”
“I’m a lot pushy.” The only way to forge his own path in a strong-willed family full of overachievers. “But you’re hungry and tired, so let me take charge for a while.”
“Look that good do I?” She rolled her eyes as she walked past him and dropped into an overstuffed chair.
Curled up with her long legs tucked under her, she looked…beautiful, vulnerable. He wanted to kiss her and wrap her in silk all at the same time, which she’d already made clear she didn’t want from him.
So he would settle for getting her fed, and hopefully along the way, figure out why she had dark circles under her eyes that seemed deeper than from a lack of sleep. He crouched in front of her. “You look like a new mom who hasn’t been getting much rest.”
And she looked like a woman still in mourning.
Her eyes stayed on the nursery nook, the crib a shadowy outline behind the mosquito net privacy curtain. “He has to eat more often, smaller meals to keep down any food at all.”
There was no missing the pain and fear in her voice. Right now it wasn’t about him. Or even Kevin. It was about her kid. “When was the problem diagnosed?”
“At his six-week checkup we suspected something wasn’t right.” She adjusted a framed photo, the newborn kind of scrunch-faced kid with a blue stocking cap. “He wasn’t gaining weight the way he should. By two months, the doctors knew for sure. Since then, it’s been a balancing act, trying to get him stronger for surgery, but knowing he can only thrive so much without the operation.”
With every word she said, he became more convinced driving here had been the right thing to do. She needed him.
“That has to be scary to face alone. Is your family flying out?”
“They came over when he was born. There’s only so much time they can take off from work, especially since I live so far away.” She set the photo down and crossed her arms again, closed up tight. “They offered to let me live at home, but I need to finish school. We’re settled in a routine here with our doctors and my job.”
“How do you hold down a job, go to school and take care of a baby?”
“I do web design for corporations—something I can do from home.” She waved at the hutch in the corner. “Half my classes are online. Max spends very little time with a sitter, an older lady who works part-time at the antique store downstairs. She comes here to watch him when I’m away. I’m lucky.”
Lucky? A single mom running herself into the ground to care for a sick child considered herself lucky? Or just so damn independent she refused to admit she was in over her head?
“What about Kevin’s family? Are they helping?”
Her chin thrust out. “They don’t want anything to do with Max. They say he’s too painful a reminder of their son.”
Hank should have figured as much. The one time he’d met Kevin’s family, they’d come across as self-absorbed, more into their vacation than their son. More likely they were ignoring Max because he interfered with their retirement plans. “At least Max has his father’s life insurance money.”
She stayed silent. Her fist unfurled to flick the gold fringe on a throw pillow.
Damn. He sat up straighter. “They did give him the money, right? Or at least some of it?”
“Kevin didn’t know Max existed.” She folded her hands carefully on her knees. “Kevin’s parents were listed as his beneficiaries.”
“I’ll speak to them. And if they don’t come through it shouldn’t take much to contest—”
“My son and I are getting along fine,” she interrupted. “We don’t need their money.”
Prideful? Needing to forge your own path? He understood that. Which made him the perfect person to help her. “You’re doing an admirable job by yourself. I didn’t mean to insinuate otherwise. I only meant that it can’t be easy.”
“That’s an understatement.” She smiled wryly.
“What about your parents?”
“Hello? I thought we already settled this. I’m fine.”
“No one should have to carry a load like this by themselves. I recall from Kevin that your parents are good people.” Although they lived an ocean away, in Germany.
“They are, and I did consider going home right after I found out I was pregnant. But I was already knee-deep in my graduate studies when I found out about Max. Sure, things are tight now, but I need to finish my degree, my best hope for providing a good future for my son.”
“About those dark circles…?”
“I’ll sleep after Max has his surgery because he won’t be hungry all the time. He will feel happy, content… .” Unshed tears glinted in her eyes. “I have to believe he’ll be okay.”
Her tears undid him now just as much as they had a year ago. He shifted from the sofa to crouch in front of her. He took her hands in his, her soft hands that had once tunneled into his hair, then down to score his back. Except now those nails were chewed with worry.
And he had to fix that. He couldn’t let her go on this way alone with no one to help her. Staring at her bitten-off fingernails, he knew exactly what he had to do.
“That’s the reason you’re staying here rather than going to your parents, isn’t it? Once you found out he was sick, moving to another country…”
“I couldn’t start the medical process over again and waste precious weeks, days even. We’re here, and we’ll get through it.”
He squeezed her hands. “But you don’t have to go through it alone. I’m on leave for the next two weeks. I’ll stay in New Orleans. I owe it to Kevin to be a stand-in father for Max.”
* * *
A stand-in father?
Gabrielle froze inside. Outside. She couldn’t move or speak. She’d barely gotten over the shock of Hank showing up here unannounced and now he’d said this? That he wanted to be some kind of replacement for Kevin with Max?
There had to be something else going on here. She’d heard of survivor’s guilt. That wasn’t healthy for him—or for her. “Hank, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here. But Max already has a father, and he’s dead.”
His grip tightened around hers, almost painful. “Believe me, I know that better than anyone else.” His throat moved in a slow swallow. “I was there.”
Oh, my God. “When he died?”
“Yeah… .” His grip loosened, his thumbs twitching along her palms.
His head dropped, and he looked down at their clasped hands, the strong column of his neck exposed. Her eyes held on the fade of his military cut. And strangely, she ached to touch him there, to stroke and comfort him. To hold on to him and let him hold on to her, too. They’d both suffered the loss of Kevin, and right now that pain linked them so tightly it brought the crippling ache rushing back full force.
Please, don’t let her reach for him, which would have her crying all over his chest. The hint of tears a minute ago had brought him here in front of her…and when she’d cried before, they’d betrayed a man they both cared so much about.
So she gathered her emotions in tight and focused on him, and what he was saying.
“I tried to call you afterward from overseas, a couple of times, but calls out were few and far between.”
“I got the messages,” she whispered.
He looked up fast. “And you didn’t write back? Email?”
His voice on those recordings had poured alcohol on her open grief. “It was too painful then.” And his presence now? She didn’t know what she was feeling. “I figured hearing my voice would hurt you as much as it hurt me to hear yours.”
“Do you still feel that way?”
His deep blue eyes held hers, waiting, asking. She didn’t have the answers and her life was scary enough just dealing with Max’s surgery. She looked down at their joined hands and, holy crap, how long had they been holding each other like that?
She snatched her arms back, crossing them over her chest. “What are we doing here, Hank? Are you here to pick up where we left off after that kiss, now that Kevin’s gone? Because you have to realize that was a mistake.”
A dark eyebrow slashed upward. “If you have to ask that, you don’t know me at all. I mean what I say. I just want to be here for Kevin’s kid.”
“But you didn’t know about Max when you arrived.” And why hadn’t she thought of that until now? “What are you doing here?”
He shoved to his feet and paced in the space she’d decorated with such hope and plans, a blend of her dual roots. Then she’d met Kevin and thought, finally, she had found roots of her own, a sense of belonging.
Hank’s powerful long legs ate up the one-room apartment quickly, back and forth in front of the nursery nook before pivoting hard to face her. “Kevin wanted me to deliver a message.”