Best of Three (Counting on Love) (34 page)

Emma shook her head. The point was, Shannon had ideas and Emma made them happen…and cleaned up the messes that resulted. Shannon was now old enough to make some of her ideas happen on her own. But she wasn’t good at cleaning up. Or even caring that she might make a mess in the first place.

Fuck. Emma had screwed this all up.

“What happened then?” Emma asked, feeling weighted down and very, very tired all of a sudden.

“The guy grabbed me and Michael lost it. He punched the guy but then three of his friends jumped in. Michael’s really hurt, Emma.”

She paused and Emma could hear her sniffling.

“He was unconscious when I last saw him, but they wouldn’t let me go with him.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know what I find out about Michael,” Emma told her.

“Wait. Are you coming to get me?”

“No, honey I’m not.” Emma braced herself against the guilt. It wasn’t as strong as she’d expected. “You’re going to have to call your mom.”

Dena wasn’t great at cleaning up messes either, but why would she be? Emma had always done it.

“But Emma—”

“Sorry sweetie.” Emma started to hang up, but she quickly added, “I love you.”
Then
she hung up.

She went to Nate. He’d hung up a couple minutes before and was standing under the eaves of Trudy’s, simply breathing.

“You okay?” she asked. Stupid question. Really, really stupid question.

“I assume you know what’s going on?”

“How is he?”

“Still unconscious.”

That wasn’t good. “That wasn’t him on the phone?”

“It was Shane.”

She was relieved. Hearing the story from a friend and teammate might make it easier.

“He broke up the party?”

“Yes, and accompanied Michael to the hospital.”

She reached out and gripped his arm. “Let’s go.”

Nate didn’t say anything but let her take his hand and pull him off the sidewalk and into the parking lot. They were literally across the street from St. Anthony’s, so she slipped her hand in his and headed across the loose gravel of the parking lot. At the curb, they paused, then ran across the four lanes of traffic and over the grassy lawn of the hospital until they got to the sliding doors of the emergency room.

Nate was, of course, well known in the department and the receptionist jumped from her seat the moment she saw him.

“In here, Dr. Sullivan.”

He started after her, his hand slipping from Emma’s. She missed his touch immediately. She crossed her arms and watched him go. When he disappeared through the inner sliding doors, she turned to the receptionist. Emma knew Lisa. She was a regular at Trudy’s.

“How’s Michael?”

Lisa knew that Emma wasn’t family but she still said, “He’ll be okay. He’s waking up now.”

Emma nearly wilted with relief. “I’ll be…” She turned in a full circle. “Over here,” she finally said, pointing at the benches along the far wall of the waiting room.

Lisa nodded. “I’ll let him know.”

Chapter Twelve

He couldn’t believe she was still here. Nate stopped in the doorway of the ER waiting room and studied her. Emma’s head rested on the wall behind the bench, her eyes were shut and she was breathing steadily.

“How is he?”

But she wasn’t asleep.

He crossed the room and sat next to her. He’d been in with Michael and the doctors for the past forty minutes. He was going to be sore and the black eye would last for awhile, but Michael was going to be fine. Still, having Emma here with him felt good. He leaned back, copying her posture, his head against the wall. He reached for her hand and linked their fingers.

“Fine. Resting. He can go home tomorrow.”

“Thank god.”

“Definitely.”

They sat for a few seconds without talking.

“I’ve been thinking,” Emma finally said.

“Uh, oh.”

She opened her eyes and rolled her head to look at him. “No, you’ll like this.” She swallowed. “I’ll move in. I’ll live with you. We’ll both be there for the baby.”

He frowned and sat up. “What?”

“It’s the right thing. And…” She swallowed again. “You should have full custody.”

He felt like she’d slapped him. “If we’re married, there’s no question about custody. We share it.”

“About that. I’ll move in. But we need separate rooms and…I won’t marry you.”

He worked on not gripping her hand too tightly. This had been a long ass day. First work, then her news about the baby, then Michael and now this. He was going to crumble into about a thousand pieces. As soon as they got one thing straight. “There is no way that you are sleeping in my house and not sleeping in my bed.”

“We can have sex,” she said agreeably. “We just need our own space…and stuff.”

That made complete sense. “No.”

She sighed. “And we’re back to this.”

“As long as you’re going to say ridiculous stuff, yes.”

“Ah, a yes.”

He worked on keeping cool. They couldn’t both lose their minds and apparently right now was Emma’s turn. “You’re the one who should be saying yes. As in, ‘yes Nate I will marry you’.”

She didn’t say anything at all.

Finally he sighed. “What’s going on?”

“It’s a bad reason to get married.”

“Having a baby together?” he clarified. “Bringing a child into the world is a bad reason to get married?”

“Yes.”

“Then marry me for my money.”

“This isn’t funny, Nate.”

He turned to her. “I’m not joking. I don’t care why you do it, as long as you do it.”

She looked so sad, he wanted to pull her onto his lap and hug her. Finally she said quietly, “But I do care why.”

“Em—”

“Look, Nate,” she said, pulling her hand from his and pivoting on the bench and tucking her foot up underneath her. “I’ll live with you because this baby needs you. The kid you raised all by yourself is amazing. He’s smart and sweet and funny and now with Shannon…he takes care of her. He stepped in to save her tonight. He put himself in danger for her. The kid I helped raise, on the other hand,” she said, regret clear in her tone, “got too big for her britches and got mouthy—don’t know where she could have gotten
that
from—and because of it, her boyfriend is now in the hospital. Tough choice on who’s the better parent.”

They sat in silence for a long moment. A million thoughts tripped through his mind. He wanted her. He wanted this baby. He was excited—down underneath the fatigue and shock—that this woman was carrying his baby.

But Emma Dixon was one of the most stubborn people he’d ever met.

It was one of the things he loved about her.

“Would it make you feel better if I told you we could break up if it didn’t work?” Because it
would
work. He’d make sure of it. “People have kids together but hate each other all the time.”

She shook her head. “But we won’t. No matter what happens, we’ll be there for our kid and that means we’ll get along and we’ll figure things out.”

He couldn’t believe it. Talking about how they could reserve the right to break up made him more and more positive that he was in love with her. “You’d stay?”

“As long as it was what was best for my kid. And you’ll always be what’s best for my kid, Nate.”

She was a fighter. Where Stacie had taken the easy way, Emma was assuring him she’d do whatever it took. And where Trisha had done everything to
make
things easy, Emma was ready to tough it out.

Nate reached over and took her hand. “Emma, if this baby is a girl, I hope she’s exactly like you and Shannon. Smart, strong, sure of herself, beautiful. I want her to say what she thinks. I know that it might get her into trouble sometimes, but if she’s anything like you, then she’ll have a ton of people who love her and who will back her up. So I won’t have to worry.” He paused. “I still will of course, but I won’t need to.”

Emma was staring at him like she’d never seen him before.

“What?”

“It’s amazing,” she said.

“What is?”

“Sometimes you open your mouth and it makes me nuts—like I want to smack you. Sometimes you open your mouth and it makes me hot—like I want to strip you down.”

Nate felt heat and need streak through him. He started to lean in, but she kept going.

“But sometimes, like now, I don’t know what I’m feeling or what I should do.”

He freaking loved that. “Sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.”

She licked her lips and took a deep breath. “I have something to say and I have no idea what you’re going to feel or do about it.”

“I might be at my quota of hearing strange things from you today.”

She nodded. “You might be right.” She sat back. “You tell me when you’re ready to hear this.”

She stood and grabbed her purse.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Home.”

“I thought you had something to say.”

“I thought you didn’t want to hear it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She stood, watching him, her hand on her hip. “Well, yes or no? We both know which of those two words you like best.”

He wasn’t sure about this. Not much he’d heard today would be chalked up as good news.

Regarding the woman in front of him, he immediately adjusted that thought though. She was gorgeous. Trim, tight and sassy. And she was going to get big and round. With
his
baby.

And she would still be sassy.

The sudden urge to pull her into his lap gripped him hard.

She was going to make him a dad again. Boy or girl, this child was going to have a mom who was strong and independent and willing to do whatever was needed to make the kid happy and safe. Maybe not every choice with Shannon had been the right one, but Emma had been there, making choices. That mattered.

And he definitely wanted to pull her into his lap.

“Yes, Emma. I want to hear this.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “You sure? It’s big.”

He dropped his gaze to her stomach, then moved it back to her eyes. Her cheeks got a little pink. He smiled a smile he knew would drive her crazy. It was a smile that said “I know you”. He did too—what made her crazy in bed and what made her just plain crazy.

But all he said out loud was, “I think I can handle it.”

She shrugged. “Here it is. You want to marry me because of the controlling thing you can’t seem to help. If I’m married to you, everything mingled, then you get to make sure that I do things the way you think I should, and that I don’t do anything stupid. But I can’t do that, Nate. When it involves clits and cocks, I’m all about you getting bossy.”

Nate shifted on the bench and glanced around. The room was empty and Lisa was the only one at the reception desk and guaranteed she’d heard more interesting things than this.

“But,” Emma went on. “When it comes to my life and my
child
, it’s not gonna work. It made me nuts always biting my lip when Dena made decisions about Shannon and when you got all riled up about Shannon and Michael, I couldn’t sit back. I jumped into the truck so that I could be involved in what happened. So, with my own son or daughter, I don’t see me sitting back and letting you run the show.”

Nate leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “I don’t intend to be a single parent again, Emma. I want you involved. I’ll insist on it.”

“See, there. That,” she said pointing at him. “Insisting and stuff. No, Nate, I can’t do it.”

“But we are going to do this
together
,” he said. “I am going to have a say.”

“Yes, but if we’re not married then I have…” She trailed off. Then shook her head and lifted her chin.

“An out,” he filled in, his heart turning over. He’d known the controlling asshole thing was going to come back to bite him. “If we’re not married and we have separate rooms, then you think you have an out. A way of keeping space between us and a way of exerting your own control over situations.”

He rose from the bench and she took a step back.

“But you know what I think?” he asked her.

She swallowed hard.

“I think it’s your way of keeping your distance. You’re trying not to get too close because you’re afraid you’ll never want to leave.” He took another step forward and caught her arm before she stepped back. “But, Emma, you never have to leave. And you’re right about one thing—once you’re mine, I’ll never let you go.”

She thought he was going to kiss her. He could see it in her eyes.

He loved surprising her.

So he kissed her on the forehead and headed for Michael’s room.

Emma wasn’t sure she’d ever actually trudged anywhere in her life. But she most definitely trudged up the front walk to her condo after the Longest. Day. Ever.