His Touch (15 page)

“Reid’s lucky to have you. The only way you can mess this up is if you forget that and start obsessing over why he’s with you instead of every other girl in the world. Don’t go down that road. Don’t try to figure him out. Just let him be.”

Kara stared into her coffee cup and wondered how she was supposed to do that.

*

The week passed
by at warp speed. Nadia continued to thrive in her new school, picking up new words every day.

Kara wished she had a word for whatever it was that she and Reid were doing.
Friends
was too weak. He was so much more than that.
Lovers
was too, well, sordid though Kara supposed it was certainly accurate. And
partners
was just too presumptuous.

She thought of her mother. Mom would have called it
keeping company
. She may have juggled millions of dollars in assets each day, but she could be hopelessly old-fashioned when it came to love and marriage, and living together? She’d have borrowed Aunt Enza’s wooden spoon if she’d known about Steve Orland.

But somehow, Kara had this feeling her mother approved of Reid… of what she was doing with Reid.

Whatever that was.

She hadn’t told him that because she didn’t want to freak him out. She respected his boundaries. He’d been clear from the beginning that he didn’t want to talk about the daughter he’d lost, and while her obsessive, anxiety-producing self might have worried how exposing
her
daughter to him could be perceived as an unhealthy substitute, there was always this peaceful sense of
right
that enveloped her whenever he was with them.

Mom’s influence. Definitely.

He wasn’t with her when she stepped through the door of the restaurant where she’d agreed to meet Steve and she felt his absence acutely. But he’d pulled an extra tour.

It had been over two years since she’d had any contact with the man she’d planned to marry, to spend the rest of her life with, and she was thinking about the guy she’d met weeks ago instead.

That had to be a sign.

She sat at the bar, ordered a soft drink, tried—in vain—to wait patiently. Five minutes passed, then ten. She grabbed her purse, intending to leave when a throat cleared behind her. “Um, hey, Kar.”

She’d hated that nickname. Her name had four letters and two syllables. It didn’t need shortening. She turned, set eyes on her daughter’s father. And felt absolutely nothing.

“Hey.”

He leaned in for a kiss but she dodged him. Was he kidding?

He cleared his throat again. “You look, um, different. Not so glamorous anymore, huh?” He waved a hand over the hair she’d cut since having Nadia.

He looked…old. Not just older. But old. His dark hair was showing some gray streaks at the temples. There were new lines on his forehead. The bright blue eyes her daughter had inherited were duller than she remembered.

“Have a seat.”

He managed half a smile and sat next to her, ordered a beer. “You didn’t bring her.”

Her eyebrows went up. “I thought it best that we speak first.” She lifted her glass.

He nodded like he completely supported that decision. “So, uh, Nadia, huh? Why did you pick that name?”

Her shoulders tensed and the glass froze halfway to her lips. “What do you mean,
that
name?”

Steve picked up his beer bottle, gave her a little shrug. “It’s just…so unusual, you know? Why didn’t you pick a normal name?”

Kara managed half a laugh and dropped her glass to the bar with a thud. “If you wanted a say in her name, maybe you should have stayed.”

And even as the words left her mouth, Kara realized she was happy he hadn’t. The thought was unsettling. What did that say about her judgment? About her values? She’d made a baby with this man. How could she have been so completely off-target?

Steve hunched over his beer. “She’s okay? Healthy, I mean?”

“She’s perfect. Would you like to see pictures?” Kara reached for her phone, but Steve stopped her with a hand over hers.

“Kar, I’m sorry. I really am. I know you don’t believe that but it’s true. I had reasons for not wanting to bring a child into this world. Good ones.”

“Yes, and I shot those plans to hell when I got pregnant all by myself.”

“I didn’t say that—”

A strong arm landed across Kara’s shoulders. “This him?” A terse voice demanded.

Kara’s heart lifted along with her spirits. She turned into Reid, saw he was in uniform. “Reid! You’re here. Are you still on-shift? You’re not going to get in trouble for this—”

“I’m on a meal break,” he replied, eyes stuck on Steve.

“Meal break,” Steve said with a knowing look at Kara. “Didn’t take you long to move on.”

She never saw Reid move.

One second, Reid’s arm was around her shoulders and the next, he had Steve pinned face first to the bar, arm twisted behind his back.

“Reid!”

Reid ignored Kara and leaned down, spoke directly into Steve’s ear. “Here’s how this is gonna work. You’re gonna speak to Kara with respect, not insults, or I’m going to tear you apart and then treat your wounds just so I can do it again. We clear?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Reid let Steve go, signaled the wary bartender who had one hand on her phone, and ordered a soft drink and a burger. “You hungry?” He asked Kara, but she shook her head. Her stomach was too twisted to eat.

Steve ordered the same and leaned forward. “Okay. I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean to—” He broke off with a curse and started again. “I wanted you to move on. I wanted you to be happy and you obviously are.”

She waved a hand, impatiently. “Why are you here? Why now?”

Steve grabbed his beer, slowly picked at the label on the bottle. “You know that scar I have here?” He jerked a thumb at his chest.

“Yes. You fell off your bike.”

He shook his head. “That was a lie. I never fell off my bike.” He snorted out a sad laugh. “I, uh, can’t ride a bike. I wasn’t allowed to when I was a kid.”

“So that scar was—”

“Surgery. I was born with a heart problem, Kara. My brother had it, too.”

Kara stared at him. “Your brother. The one who died when he was fifteen.” And then her eyes went wide. “Oh, God. You said he died in accident. Was that a lie, too?”

Steve nodded.

Kara crossed her arms and glared. “Why. Tell me why you would lie about a thing like that.”

“I swore I’d never involve you in this.” Steve scrubbed a hand over his face. “I was nine when David died. My folks had no idea he had a heart problem until it was too late. When we discovered I had it, too, my life came to a full screeching stop. My parents were reeling from losing David and then, the thought of losing me, too…well, it was too much for my mom. She pulled me out of baseball. She pulled me out of gym class. The following year, she decided to home school me.”

“You have no idea what it was like.” Steve paused, swallowed some beer. “I love my mother, Kar, I really do. But she…I don’t know. She just totally lost it after David died. There were nights I woke up and found her in a chair, just watching me sleep.”

Kara shook her head slowly. He’d never said anything. He’d never trusted her with this. “My God. Wasn’t there someone you could talk to? Your dad. Your relatives?”

Steve waved his hand. “My dad was no help. Whatever crazy things Mom came up with to ensure my health and safety were just fine with him. I had no life. I swear to you, if she could have put me in a plastic hamster ball, she would have. I never told anybody.”

“Not even me.”

“Especially not you. Kar, you have no idea how much work it took just to let her agree to let me go to college. I had to promise not to go too far away, to call her a dozen times a day, and to see whatever doctor she needed me to see. You were the first normal thing I ever had in my life since Dave.”

Tears spilled from her eyes when Kara took Steve’s hand and squeezed it. “You should have told me, Steve.”

“I should have. But I couldn’t. It was easier to keep you separate. It…well, it was like a vacation. I could put up with Mom’s hysteria for you.”

“What about after college? What about coming here?”

“When I got the job up here, I thought I had it made. New York was far enough away that I could live on my own without her constant presence. She was happy with the phone calls and reports from my doctors. For a while.”

Kara’s eyes snapped to his. “Doctors? You had more than one?”

The server came, put baskets of food in front of both men. Steve picked up a fry, ate it with his eyes shut. “If she could see me eating artery clogging food, she’d—”

When he broke off, shook his head, she knew. “Oh, God.” Kara pressed both hands to her mouth. “When did she die?” Beside her, Reid shifted, but still didn’t touch his meal.

Steve shook his head. “She’s not gone. Dad and I committed her. A few weeks ago.”

Kara lowered her head, tried to process all of this. It made sense now. Their weird on-again/off-again romance, the way he’d always done holidays and visits by himself. Even the fights they’d had about all the activities she’d wanted to do but he always said no—it all made sense now.

And then her blood chilled. Her hand groped for Reid’s, found it. Clung.

“Steve. You said you and your brother…could Nadia?”

He looked away. “It’s possible, Kara. I don’t know.”

Her baby. Her precious, beautiful baby.

Reid pulled out his phone. “What’s wrong? With your heart.”

“I have something called COA. Coarctation—”

“Of the aorta.” Reid nodded, typing it into his phone. “You showing any symptoms?”

“Not until I was about ten or twelve. Breathing issues, cold extremities, pain during activity.” Steve pulled out an envelope from his pocket, put it on the bar. “Test results, doctor reports, all of it.”

“I could…” Kara pressed her lips together. “Oh, God, Steve! I could
lose
her. And you kept this from me!”

“Stop.” Steve shoved his food aside and took Kara’s hands. “Listen to me. You cannot run around like the sky is falling, do you hear me? That’s why I left and that’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want my mother anywhere near you and if she knew about Nadia—” He broke off, flattened his lips. “No kid should go through what I did. I was a prisoner, Kara.”

Reid took the envelope, stood up, tossed some cash to the bar. “I’m due back on shift. Orland, why are you here? Why now?”

Steve and Reid stared down, unblinking. Kara looked from one to the other and figured it out.

Steve was here because he thought that with his mother safely in a hospital, he had another shot with her.

‡

R
eid strode back
to the fire house, a to-go bag holding the lunch he couldn’t eat.

“Hey, man.” Gene jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Mmm, what did you bring me?”

Reid tossed the bag at his partner. Gene opened the bag, found a whole burger, bit through half of it in a single bite. Reid threw himself into a chair while Gene stuffed his face, and opened the envelope Steve Orland had given Kara.

COA. Coarctation of the aorta.
Son of a bitch
.

He skimmed the contents of various reports. Orland was mostly symptom-free but did have low blood pressure in his legs. Reid went over it in his head, every minute of Nadia’s ambulance ride to the hospital. Had he missed this? Was it really spasmodic croup or were her symptoms just the first emergence of a congenital defect that her moron of a father passed on to her?

He drummed his fingers on the table and dug deep into his memory. She’d had a cough—the classic barking seal cough. Her throat was swollen. And she’d responded to steroids. He’d never checked the blood pressure in her legs. And Kara had reported that her extremities were blue that night.

Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ. He raked his hands through his hair, tried to remember the symptoms, the prognosis for COA but he couldn’t think, couldn’t see past the agonizing crush of memories of his own dead daughter, pounding on their cell door.

Nadia.
God, no
.

On a shaky breath that sounded dangerously close to a sob, Reid was about to feign illness and skip the rest of his shift but the tones sounded and Dispatch directed them to a stuck elevator over on Wall. While Gene drove around traffic, lights and siren hot, Reid prayed.