Bound by Trust (16 page)

“What
do you want?” she snipped.

“I
want you to get cleaned up and come with me to the club. There is a company
function going on and I don’t want to go alone.”

“Well,
go with your husband.”

“He’ll
be there, but he had to go early to set up something. I’m driving myself and I
want you to go with me.”

“No,
I’m perfectly happy here. Besides, a company function denotes company, and I
don’t feel like any.”

“Madison
Elizabeth McCarthy, you have been cooped up in this house for two weeks moping
and crying and I say, enough is enough.” Meredith stood at her full height to
admonish her older, allegedly wiser, sister. “Now, either you get in there and
take a shower, or I will go get Jared to put you in the car in your pajamas.”

“Fine,
I’ll go, but I will not like it.”

“I
don’t care if you like to not, I’m only interested in getting you there.”

Forty-five
minutes later, with a light snow falling in front of the headlights, that was
just beginning to stick to the frozen ground, the two ladies headed out in the
bitter cold to the club. Madi wasn’t happy about it, but Meredith seemed to be
pleased with her victory. Bundled up in their winter coats, they barely
squeezed the seatbelts around their swelling middles. While Madi sulked, her
sister happily hummed along with the Christmas carol crackling out of the
stereo.

Wonderful, Meredith has
turned into whatever the opposite of Scrooge is.

“So,
what is going on exactly?” Madi pried, thinking maybe talking would make her
sister quit her incessant, nerve-plucking humming.

“I’m
not sure, a mixture of Christmas party, slash some meet-and-greet thing.”
Meredith had to suppress a smirk.

After
almost an hour of maneuvering the slippery roads, they pulled into the club
parking lot only to find Aiden waiting with his cell phone to his ear.

“Where
the hell have you two been anyway?” he demanded, his voice a mixture of concern
and irritation.

“We
got pulled over by a jolly old elf in a tiny sleigh pulled by eight reindeer,”
Meredith said innocently.

“That’s
not funny, Meredith, the roads are getting slick. I was beginning to worry.”

“Okay,
okay. Miss Grungy Pink Robe here took forever to get ready. But we are here now
and in one piece, so stop worrying.” She tiptoed up, kissed his cheek, and whispered
in his ear, “Is he here?”

“Yes,”
he whispered back through gritted teeth. “But there is trouble at the Alamo,
Jill’s here too and is hanging on him like a leech.”

Madi,
tired of seeing the two of them shower affection on one another, pushed past
them, and went inside the club. When her eyes adjusted to the neon bar lights,
she looked around and saw exactly what she had been afraid of seeing. Rafe. But
the part she didn’t expect to see was tall, blonde Jill hanging on him with a
piece of mistletoe over his head, her lips planted on his in a heated kiss.
Infuriated by not only the knowledge that he had lied to her, but the fact that
she had to see it firsthand, she stomped off toward where they stood.

Grabbing
Jill by the arm, she jerked her from Rafe’s arms and shoved her a few feet
back. “Sorry to interrupt, but I’d like a word with my husband. Then you can go
back to what you were doing.”

Jill
looked shocked, then embarrassed, as she slithered away and disappeared into a
covey of other blood-sucking women.

“Madi,
that wasn’t what it looked like,” Rafe defended himself.

“Really?
Well, it looked an awful lot like kissing to me, and it also looked like you
were enjoying it. And do I detect…” She sniffed for dramatic purposes. “Chanel
in the house?”

“Honey,
I didn’t kiss her, she kissed me and I swear to you nothing else has happened
between us.”

“You
expect me to believe that,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “After all the lies
I lived with before…”

Frustrated,
she twisted a half-circle with her hand on her head, then stopped, turned back,
and took his left hand. For a moment she twirled the gold band around his
finger, then slowly pulled it off.

“Gage
never wore one either, at least he didn’t try to deceive me into thinking he
was pretending to be married,” she whispered, placing the ring in his palm
followed by her own. “Now you don’t have to either.” She closed his palm around
their symbols of attachment and left him standing there.

Outside,
she was tugging on the car door that was already freezing shut when he caught
up with her. He put his hand on the door, keeping her from opening it any
further than she had already managed.

“Madi,
please, don’t go. I don’t want this to end like this. I swear to you, nothing
is going on with Jill. I did not sleep with her, and what you saw didn’t mean a
damn thing. I love you.” Rafe’s voice hitched.

With
her chest heaving, Madi screamed back at him, “And just how would you like it
to end then, Raphael McCarthy? When you get killed too, and they send your
girlfriends home in a box for me to find? Or maybe you can top him and video
tape it for me to find on the compu—”

Before
she could finish, she doubled over with her hands on her stomach and cried in
pain.

“Madi.”
Rafe stuffed the rings in his front pocket and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Madi, honey, what’s wrong?”

Her
face contorted and she gasped as another wave of pain threatened to tear her in
two. By that time Meredith was at her side and Aiden was struggling with the
car doors.

“Oh,
Madi, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Meredith pushed Rafe’s hands away
and helped her into the front seat of her Malibu when Aiden finally got it to
pop open. “Aiden, drive,” she said, slamming the door behind Madi and getting
in the passenger side behind her. “Rafe, get in, if you’re coming.”

“Meredith,
get my phone,” Madi managed in between ripping pains. “Dr. Pearlman is in my
speed dial, tell his service to page him to the ER.”

“Who
the hell is Dr. Pearlman?” Rafe demanded, reaching up and taking Madi’s hand.

“Her
obstetrician,” Meredith answered, dialing.

*
* * *

Sirens,
flashing lights, bright sterile white, she was in the sky, floating away.
Madi’s thoughts wandered over a collage of events she knew happened, but
couldn’t quite completely remember. Her eyes fluttered and opened to see a
blurry, dim, ethereal florescent glowing. Paralyzed with wonder, her senses
told her everything was horribly wrong. Had she died? Did the baby? No she
couldn’t be dead, she felt herself breathing. Where was she then, if not in
heaven?

Hesitantly,
she turned her head and it was then that she saw the IV bags hanging beside the
bed with a long tube running into her arm. Looking further, she discovered
Rafe’s head laying on the edge of the bed. His eyes were closed and one arm
dangled precariously below his waist while the other was draped across her
belly. Gingerly, she eased up until she could reach him and gently ran her fingertips
over his stubbly cheek. He twitched his nose then his eyes fluttered and
opened. For a moment they just looked at each other, and then he lifted his
head up, pulled his arm from across her, and took her hand.

“Madi?
Oh, honey, you scared the hell out of me.” He stood and leaned over to kiss her
forehead.

“I’m
sorry.” She felt her throat constricting. “Is… Rafe, did I…”

“Shhh.”
He placed his fingers tenderly over her lips. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Why
didn’t you tell me, Madi?”

“I
tried, the night you left, that was what I was trying to explain to you.”

He
closed his eyes and sighed. “And I wouldn’t give you the chance.”

“No,
the baby was due the same time you were supposed to report in. All I wanted to
know was if they could hold off a few weeks, until the baby and I could travel.
I wasn’t trying to get out of going.” Hot tears burned her eyes and fell down
her cheeks. “But I guess we won’t have to worry about it now.”

“Oh,
honey, no, no.” He reached behind him to a monitor and twisted a knob a quarter
turn. A gentle
throom
,
throom
,
throom
emanated from the machine. “The baby is fine.”

“Is
that…”

“Yes,
that’s our baby’s heartbeat, Madi.” He stroked her cheek. “They have you on an
internal monitor for now. It wasn’t preeclampsia, but your blood pressure did
shoot up because of stress, and caused you to start contracting. You’re on some
meds now, to keep that stopped.”

“Where
am I?”

“Columbia.
They airlifted you here after they stabilized you. If you stay stable, you can
go home in a few days, but you’re going to have to be on bed rest.”

“For
the next five months?” She sighed and put her hand on top of her head. “I have
the recital to finish getting ready for.”

“Madi.”
Rafe leaned down and looked her straight in the eyes. “You have to quit
worrying about all of it or your blood pressure will shoot back up and you’ll
never get out of here, and quite frankly, I’m tired of sleeping alone. Not to
mention I don’t know what I would do if I lost you or our baby, so please,
relax.”

“What
about your orders?”

“What
did I just say? None of it is important right now.”

*
* * *

A
drive that should have taken a mere two hours, took Rafe almost four to
accomplish three days later when he was allowed to take Madi home. It had been
snowing steadily for forty-eight hours and the roads were treacherous to say
the least. He’d wanted to bring her home in the Lexus so she’d be more
comfortable, but in the end felt safer with her in the truck. So, it was with
her padded with pillows, and her mother and Duncan in the backseat, that he
sweated buckets for a little over a hundred miles in his attempt to get his
wife and baby home in one piece.

“Are
you okay?” he asked again, squeezing her hand.

“I’m
fine, and if you ask me that one more time, I’ll get out and walk.”

Never
had she felt more suffocated than since Rafe found out he was going to be a father.
She didn’t know how she was going to get him to go back to work after the first
of the year. It took her until that morning to convince him she could feed
herself.

“Madi,
he is just concerned,” her mother piped up. “We all are; you gave us quite a
scare.”

Madi
blew out a long breath; the next five months were going to be long.

When
they got to the house, Rafe plucked her from the truck like a ripe peach he was
afraid of bruising and carried her in. Aiden and Meredith’s car was in the
driveway and when they got inside, she discovered that Liz and Jared were there
as well. After Rafe put her down gently on the couch, the women surrounded her
like a bunch of mother hens and the men retired to the kitchen to eat. Liz had
provided a big pot of vegetable soup and a pan of cornbread.

“Now,
dear sister, here’s the deal,” Meredith began. “There will be no more scares.
You and Rafe are not to fight, speak crossly at each other, or even blink the
wrong way toward one another. One of us…” she indicated herself and her
accomplices, “will be here at all times when your husband cannot be. And you
are to behave and do everything the doctor tells you to, if it means staying on
this couch or in the bed until that baby comes.”

“Okay,”
she agreed. “Believe me, I don’t want a repeat, either. But what about the
recital? Nev and the other kids will be crushed if they can’t perform. They’ve
worked so hard at it.”

“We’ll
figure out a way. They can have rehearsal with you on the couch,” Liz
suggested. “If we have to, we’ll have Rafe pull the piano back in here
temporarily.”

“Well,
no one get underneath it prior,” Madi said sarcastically. “He can do some
damage if you give him the proper tools.”

The
women rang out a chorus of laughter.

“At
least you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” Julia said, wiping her eyes.

Somehow
the recital came together, and a few days later, with Nev perched on the piano
bench flanked by the two violin students, a tiny girl with a cello bigger than
she was, and the little boy Madi had discovered could sing like no one’s
business, Madi directed them from the couch. With all their parents listening
and watching in wide-eyed wonder at their musical prodigies, the kids pulled
off a near flawless mini-concert of traditional Christmas carols and a few
nontraditional personal favorites. Madi was quite satisfied with their success.

With
the recital over, she could concentrate on making sure Rafe knew what to do to
pull off a successful Christmas dinner. Since she was forbidden from travel,
except to and from the doctor’s office, everyone decided that dinner would be
held at their house.

“Madi,
do we really need all this?” Rafe was staring at a list a mile long.

He
couldn’t believe she actually expected him to locate all the things on the
paper just two days before Christmas. He was further hoping she didn’t expect
him to know what to do with it all. Mary’s cooking lessons didn’t include formal
dinners for nine.