To Begin Anew (Blue Jay Romance) (6 page)

In unison, she swore it was in unison, both of them chirped, “Morning!!”

Debra fought not to wince and, as she absorbed more caffeine, she wondered for the first time why she wasn’t super self conscious that there was a man staring at her first thing in the morning with what she knew to be devastatingly awe-inspired bed hair.

Eric caught Debra looking at him and, not for the first time since having met her, he wondered what she was thinking. What he had been thinking was dangerous - he’d been mulling over the reasons why having her here in the morning, with the boys the happiest they’d been in months, felt like a normal thing. A wonderful thing. He knew this wasn’t going to last, that as soon as Debra was overcome with her work during the busy season she would have to leave them. Well acquainted with the rigors of demanding work, he knew full well that she wouldn’t responsibly be able to do both.

Eric sighed, looking at the watch on his wrist that never seemed to tell him that he had enough time to do anything, and he said, “It’s time to get moving. I’ll drop you and the boys off at your place on the way to work, and you can take them to school.”

Debra nodded. “Did they have breakfast?” When she didn’t get an instant answer, she asked, “Did
you
get breakfast?”

Eric juggled his coffee cup in one hand as he ran the other hand through his hair. He’d wanted to make breakfast, but then he’d wanted to make breakfast for
her
. He let his eyes drift upwards from his coffee cup again. “No. We were waiting on you to get up and then, well…”

Debra smiled. “Okay then, so we’ll leave now and I’ll make you all a breakfast you won’t forget.”

~*~*~

Eric sat back from the meal - feast really - that Debra had whipped up for them. He felt so wonderfully full that he didn’t care if he waddled into work late or not. If there was anything he could appreciate in a woman - and had appreciated - it was one who could cook. Not only could Debra do that astoundingly well, but she put her own flavor to things and the best word he had at his disposal to describe it was that Debra’s food tasted like home. It had been as if he’d walked into his saintly mother’s kitchen as a child, smelling bread baking in the oven or cookies cooling on the counter.

It was a literal shame that he had to leave for work. Duty called and all that, but he disliked the idea of disrupting the atmosphere Debra had created with such ease that it was threateningly understandable if, in no time at all, he got used to it.

Eric removed himself from Debra’s table, inhaling the scents of her cooking to hold him for the road, and said, “You’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve got to get to work.”

David and Danny, their sandy heads bobbling so that they could get a good look at him, smiled as they left the table to hug him goodbye. Together, they said, “Have a good day at work, Daddy.”

Eric hugged his boys, smiling, and out of nowhere he looked up at Debra and smiled at her too. There was a brief flash of pain before the exchange was over, as well as the private memory that had been attached to it, and he let go of David and Danny. As was the morning ritual, he said, “Have a good day at school, and behave yourselves.”

Debra watched Dr. Nelson leave, breathing easier as he disappeared past her front door. Breakfast with him had been too normal, too easy, and before long she could envision the meals she’d cook, the menus she’d run up just so she could see all of their happy faces as they enjoyed her cooking. And it had to stop right where it started.

She told herself it wasn’t going to happen, that she wasn’t going to entangle herself with anyone ever again. Her freedom had been too hard won to lose it all again. And as much as she was beginning to like David and Danny, their father was another story and she couldn’t -
wouldn’t
- allow herself to like him too. No, it wasn’t going to happen.

She redirected her attention and thoughts to the twin sets of eyes leveled at her. “You two, come help me in the kitchen. I’ll wash, and you two can help each other rinse.”

After they were done with the dishes and Debra was pleased that they had done a good job, she had each of them grab their school bags. When she’d piled them into her little cherry red four-door, she gave each of them a blueberry muffin for their hard work. They were sweet, the blueberries she’d used in the mix hand picked from a gracious neighbor’s greenhouse. Debra had to smile all the way to the elementary school, loving the sounds of their mmm-hmms and smacks as the pair of them relished their reward.

As she pulled into the drive, a circular-styled drop off, she stopped the car, turned off the engine and hopped out with the boys as they bounced up and down. She couldn’t understand why they were so eager to get to school, knowing that she’d never been the type to enjoy the confines the institution demanded.

“Trevor’s gonna be here!” David sang.

Danny chimed in after him, “Yeah, he said he would meet us up front with his mommy!”

Debra had just enough time to look upwards as she saw a boy, his dark hair swishing in the wind as he ran across the school yard and, winded, shouted, “Hey! There you are!” She started to smile, but then her eyes noticed the boy’s mother and the blood rushed from her face.

Trevor, Danny and David wandered off from the front of the school, and Debra didn’t even have a chance to shout a goodbye at them all before she was ambushed.

“Well, look who’s playing mother. Again.” The voice was mocking, snide, and irritatingly familiar.

Eric strolled into the hospital, not bothering to glance at the nurses that gathered in the halls to gawk at him, and after visiting the locker room to put on his white coat, he moved to his office to look over the patients he would be seeing for the day.

A nurse poked her head in, but when he didn’t pay her any attention, she frowned and unstuck her head from the jamb of the door. Eric sighed in her wake. It had been like this - the constant look-sees - since that stupid news stunt was pulled. He wondered briefly if this was what deer felt like when they saw the hunting signs.

It wasn’t that he was through looking for a woman - he knew in his soul that Tina would have wanted him to be happy, that she would have wanted him to stop wallowing in his grief over her and look for someone to fill the empty hole she’d left behind. It would be what he would have wanted for her.

Pulling his schedule up on his computer, he noticed that his first appointment took place in less than half an hour and that he would have to grab any records he could find, since the patient he was to see to was new to his roster.

“Emily Stone,” he said out loud. Eric sat back in his chair, thumbed a pen between his fore and middle fingers and then, as he let his thoughts roam, he put the pen in his mouth. Nasty habit, he knew, but it helped curb the itch to grab a cigarette. Yet another bad habit.

Thinking about smoking, then about quitting, always brought a smile to his face. He’d given up smoking cigarettes when he married Tina, a habit she’d not been entirely fond of. When a person got married, they ceased being an individual - his life had joined with Tina’s to create a life they spent together.

Eight years had been too short. They had just begun to really know each other, to really and truly understand the love they had for one another, and then - Eric kept his thoughts from going into that painful territory again. It was a strange thing the brain did - thoughts were harmless until emotions were attached to them.

He printed all that he would need to know about Miss Stone, then removed himself from his desk. The moment he stepped foot out of the door, he caught sight of a familiar shape and then a nurse was shouting at him.

“I tried to stop her sir!”

Eric frowned as he folded his arms to his chest. It wasn’t common for him to lose his temper, but at the sight of Julia waltzing down the hall, her hair bouncing as her shoes squeaked on the sterile tile, he had to admit that he was close.

As Julia sidled up to him, she glanced around her at all the blinking, astonished eyes and before he could stop her, she put her arms around him. “I missed you.”

The first thought he had wasn’t a good one, so Eric tried to have a better one the second time around. He removed himself from Julia’s hold and then, gently but firmly taking her by the arm, he ushered her into his office.

He let go of her just as he managed to close the door and cut off the curious stares. He said, facing Julia, “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

Julia smiled, but it lingered on her lips for only a second before she frowned. “I couldn’t let you fire me, I just couldn’t.” Her eyes watered on cue and then she said, her hands lifting to emphasize her words, “Don’t you understand how I feel about you?”

Eric had to blink. “Feel about me?” His lips went from forming a frown into a very thin line of irritation. “I don’t think you understand the situation. I hired you to take care of my children, nothing else. I apologize if anything I said or did led you to believe there was anything else.”

Julia’s hair slid from behind an ear and came forward to fall over her shoulder. She looked at him, her eyes almost brimming with tears, then looked away as if the sight of him was too much to bear. She said, her voice soft, “I … I didn’t think you felt the same way, but … but I had to come here to tell you how I felt. I…,” and at this point, she looked at him. “I think I love you.”

Eric thought he had to be hallucinating. Maybe someone had put something into the air vents in the hospital and with each breath he was slowly succumbing to the poison. This couldn’t be happening. As he felt Julia touch him, he knew it was.

He backed out of her reach. He tried to keep his voice even, tried to keep the irritation out of it. “I’m flattered, really. But it would be cruel if I said I felt anything for you. I think you did a wonderful job with…”

“You found someone better, right? Couldn’t keep your eyes on just one woman, you had to go around and…”

Eric felt the first tendrils of true anger hit him as he interrupted her. “I think you should leave. Right now. You shouldn’t be here in the first place, this is a hospital.”

Julia glared at him, her eyes glittering as if they’d been set on fire. “You’ll wish you’d said something different.” Her words splashed on him like acid and as she flew through the door, the sound of it slamming behind her was as if a bomb had gone off.

When Eric stepped from his office a minute later, he was chorused by a thousand whispers.

~*~*~

Debra took a deep breath and braced herself for what she knew was coming. As her twin charges chased after their new-found friend, Darcy walked up to her, short hair shining in the early morning sun. She could see, even as little Trevor looked back to wave at his mother, the relation between her old friend and David and Danny’s new one.

Lord, please don’t let me bite her head off
, Debra pleaded.

The comment that came out of Darcy’s mouth irritated her, but it wasn’t going to spoil the morning she’d had and planned to continue having. She said, “Oh you know, Darce, I just couldn’t help myself.”

Darcy smiled, but it was cruel and without a shred of friendly spice to spare. “Have eyes on the father too, do you? You know, I have to say, your taste has improved a little. Think this one will leave you at the altar like the last one?”

That was uncalled for. Debra straightened her back, thought of the many things she’d like to say, and then said, “Don’t you have better things to do? I would think my life and the way I choose to live it wouldn’t concern you very much.”

Darcy lifted an eyebrow. “I think you might be right, it doesn’t concern me.” She flipped a hand through her short hair as she turned and walked off, a perfect punctuation to her completely pointless attempt at creating a problem.

Debra sighed, mostly to get the irritation to leave her and then, as she returned to her car, she wondered how bad her feud with Darcy would become if she had to see the woman on a regular basis. Now that her boys - yes, she’d begun to think of them as hers, for some odd reason - had taken a liking to Trevor, there wasn’t a doubt that Darcy was going to be a household name.

The tears didn’t fall until she was almost home, and then the waterfall really began as she entered her home and smelled the remnants of the morning’s joy. That woman had no idea what it took for Debra to repair herself after losing so much, even if Darcy’s dig at her failed engagement was just the tip of the iceberg.

Debra’s arms wrapped around her as she fell into her favorite plush chair and, curling in on herself, she knew there was no one to see the pain that took her over. She let it have its way with her.