Currant Creek Valley - By RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,96
heart was broken and I didn’t want any part of Marco in my life.”
“Completely understandable.”
“I had some vague idea of giving the baby up for adoption, maybe, but I needed to work to survive, so I took a job at a restaurant near Bologna. A terrible place, with a horrible little man for a chef.”
The breeze sighed through the treetops and she sighed along with it. “I worked sixteen-hour days, six days a week. Some days I forgot to eat. I didn’t go to a doctor. I just wanted to pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened. I had loved him so much and I still couldn’t believe he didn’t want me. That he could hurt me like my...” Her voice trailed off abruptly.
“Like your father did,” he finished, wishing he could reach out and touch her. An arm around her shoulder, a hand on her arm. Anything.
“Claire does have a big mouth,” she said after a moment.
“She cares about you.”
“Yes. I couldn’t believe he could hurt me like my father. He abandoned us, and Marco basically did the same.”
This was why she was so careful to keep her relationships light and casual. The men in her life had been assholes, all of them, and she wanted to remain in control so she didn’t have to risk being hurt.
He had no idea how he could heal a lifetime of disappointments.
“You should know,” he said carefully, “nothing you’ve told me makes me suddenly discover I can’t possibly be in love with you.”
She looked at him, her face pale and lovely against the shadows around her and completely solemn. “Oh, just wait.”
The dog moved closer to her, resting his chin on her leg, and her hands absently moved through his fur.
“When I was about six months along, still working sixteen-hour days on my feet in a hot, crowded restaurant kitchen and not taking any kind of care of myself or the baby, I started having pain under my rib cage. Severe pain.”
He ached for her, for what he sensed was coming.
“It went on for two days. I didn’t go to a doctor. In fact, I continued working and told myself it would pass. On the second day, I fainted just before the dinner rush while I was slicing tomatoes for the insalata caprese and I started hemorrhaging all over the floor.”
His own blood ran cold thinking of her, a young woman alone in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language well in dire need of medical attention.
“I was rushed to the hospital where it turned out the pain I had been so stubbornly ignoring had been a placental abruption. The baby didn’t survive. I nearly didn’t.”
He could feel his insides tremble at the thought of how close she might have come. “But you did.”
“Yes. More or less intact. Well, less, actually. They had to take out everything to save my life. All the girly parts, I mean.”
She said the words as if they had some great significance, but he was just a big dumb carpenter and didn’t understand why she thought that would matter to him.
“And where is the part where you killed your baby?” he asked.
She stared. “Haven’t you been listening? If I had taken proper care of myself, seen a doctor, stayed off my feet for five minutes, maybe, the baby might have survived. Instead, I was so busy hating myself for my stupidity and naïveté and hating Marco for being an ass and even hating the baby for ruining everything that I let an innocent child die because of it.”
Again he chose his words carefully. Everything—everything—hinged on him not screwing this up. “Sorry, but I’m not seeing it. You made poor choices, but you didn’t kill your child.”
She made a strangled noise as if gearing up to argue and he purposely hardened his voice. “I served three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. I know what it means to kill someone, defending myself or my platoon or the mission. I also know the difference between that and an emotionally battered young woman alone in a foreign country neglecting her health while she tries to survive. Trust me, there’s no comparison.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DESPITE THE SUMMER EVENING, she shivered at his blunt words.
He had killed people. She probably shouldn’t have been surprised. He had been a Ranger, after all, but it was hard to reconcile the soldier he had once been with the man who talked to Ethan with such patient gentleness and taught him to use a hammer and was building