Care for me, p.1
Care for Me, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Any characters, organizations, places, or events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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CARE FOR ME
Copyright © 2022 by Linda Seed
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This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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The author is available for book signings, book club discussions, conferences, and other appearances.
Linda Seed may be contacted via e-mail at linda@lindaseed.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LindaSeedAuthor. Learn more about Linda Seed’s novels at www.lindaseed.com.
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Cover design by Kari March.
Created with Vellum
By Linda Seed
The Main Street Merchants
Moonstone Beach
Cambria Sky
Nearly Wild
Fire and Glass
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The Delaneys of Cambria
A Long, Cool Rain
The Promise of Lightning
Loving the Storm
Searching for Sunshine
* * *
The Russo Sisters
Saving Sofia
First Crush
Fixer-Upper
Loving Benny
* * *
Otter Bluff
The Icing on the Cake
Christmas in Cambria
Love and Joy
Then, Now, and Always
The Bridge Street MDs
Heal Me
Care for Me
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
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Prologue
“I’m pregnant.”
When Rowan Brody heard those two words—words he’d dreaded hearing since puberty—he could have responded in any number of ways.
He chose the very worst one.
“You’re pregnant? Are you freaking kidding me? Is it even mine?”
In retrospect, it was the last part—the part about whether the baby was his—that had caused Ashley to slap his face so hard his ears rang. That, and the fact that she’d just learned he was cheating on her.
He didn’t blame her for the slap, really. He might have done the same thing in her place.
It had all happened in front of his family at a backyard barbecue that had doubled as his brother’s engagement party. Now, the party was still going on, and Rowan and Ashley were in an upstairs bedroom at his parents’ house talking about what she’d just told him.
His face still stung.
“When did you find out?” he asked. They were sitting on the neatly made bed in a guest room, far enough away from each other that they could have fit another person between them.
“About a week ago.”
“And you waited this long to tell me?”
“Honestly, Rowan? I had considered not telling you at all.” Ashley had been crying, and her mascara was smudged under her eyes, making her look bruised. “I was going to get an abortion. You never had to know.”
It was a lot of information to take in. So much that Rowan’s mind couldn’t make sense of all of it. He decided to take things one point at a time.
“But you’re telling me now,” he said.
“I decided to have the baby. But I’m going to give it up for adoption. Which means you’ll have to sign the paperwork when the time comes. That’s all you’ll have to do, Rowan. Just sign the papers and it’ll all be over.”
He was an asshole with women much of the time, but he wasn’t so much of an asshole that he didn’t know what was required of him.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked. “To give it up? I mean, a decision like that—”
“I’m sure. I don’t want a baby. And I especially don’t want yours.”
He flinched as though she’d slapped him again. “But why? Why not mine? I mean—”
“You’re joking, right?” She gave him a wry, bitter smile. “Twenty minutes ago I found out you’re screwing someone else. Now you think I want to be tied to you for the next eighteen years? I don’t think so.”
“But you didn’t want to have the baby with me even before you found out about that,” Rowan replied.
“I didn’t know there was someone else. But if there wasn’t, there would have been eventually. I knew that much. I’d have to be a masochist to sign up for a lifetime of that.”
After their talk, Ashley left. Rowan sat on the bed a while longer, feeling numb, waiting for the reality of what she’d said to sink in.
A baby? In less than eight months there would be a baby out there in the world with his DNA, maybe with his eyes or his hair, growing up in the home of strangers. It didn’t feel real. He didn’t know what to think, and he didn’t know what to do.
Of course, Ashley had told him he wouldn’t have to do anything. He would only have to sign his name on the appropriate line when the time came, and that would be the end of it. He could forget this ever happened. He could forget his son or daughter existed.
How surreal would that be? And what if he came across the child one day? What if he or she was brought into Rowan’s examining room with the flu or asthma or a broken limb? Would he know? Would his instincts tell him this was his own progeny?
He was sitting motionless on the bed, staring at the wall across from him, when he heard a light knock at the door.
“Rowan?” Aidan, Rowan’s brother, poked his head into the room. “I saw Ashley leave. Are you okay?”
“I’m …” He rubbed his face with his hands, then raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know, man. I’m kind of lost, to tell you the truth.”
Aidan came into the room and sat on the bed next to Rowan in the place Ashley had vacated. “That’s some heavy news.”
“Yeah.”
They sat with that for a moment, neither of them speaking.
After a while, Aidan said, “So, what’s her plan?”
“Adoption.”
Aidan nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“She said … She told me she doesn’t want a baby with me. That’s how she said it. Not that she just doesn’t want a baby, but she doesn’t want one with me.”
“Yeah, well. Not to pour salt on the wound, but she’d just found out about you and Paige, so …”
Rowan had been seeing two women at the same time, and he’d inadvertently invited them both to today’s cookout. Rowan seeing more than one woman at a time wasn’t unusual for him, but a slip-up like that sure as hell was.
“We never said we were exclusive. I never made any promises. I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t mean it. She was free to see other people, too. That’s why—”
“That’s why you asked her if the baby was yours,” Aidan finished for him. “Leading to her slapping the crap out of you.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think it was that unreasonable a question.”
He hadn’t meant to insult her when he’d asked. He wouldn’t have judged her if the baby hadn’t been his or if she hadn’t known one way or the other. He and Ashley hadn’t been serious. They’d been having fun. At least, Rowan had been. But it seemed now as though things had been less fun for Ashley.
“You’re a doctor,” Aidan reminded him. “And you didn’t think to use a condom?”
“It broke.” Rowan sat slumped on the bed, as though the air had been let out of him. “Sometimes they break.”
“I guess. But the Plan B pill …”
“I suggested it. I even got it for her. I just assumed she took it. And now … Well, that ship has sailed, hasn’t it?”
Aidan got that look on his face that said he was being the mature, sensible one among the Brody siblings. “Did she even ask you what you want? Whet her you want to give up the baby?”
“No. She didn’t.”
“Well, do you? It’s still your choice whether to sign the papers. Just because she gives up her parental rights doesn’t mean you have to.”
The idea came as a shock. Raise the baby on his own? Was there anyone in the world who thought he was responsible enough to do such a thing? Or that he would even want to? The things Ashley had said about him rang in his brain. How she’d dismissed him, the anger and disdain in her eyes.
“It’s the right thing,” Rowan said. “Giving up the baby. It’s what’s best.”
“If you’re sure.” Aidan clapped Rowan on the shoulder in a way that was probably supposed to be reassuring. It wasn’t.
Rowan wasn’t up for a party anymore after that. He went downstairs, waded through family members and friends who were celebrating Shane and Lily’s engagement, said goodbye to the happy couple, and headed for the door.
“Rowan? You’re leaving?” His mother caught him before he could make a clean getaway.
He shrugged. “I’m not really in the mood for a party anymore.”
“But, do you want to talk? Do you—”
“Not right now.”
“But we will, won’t we? I mean, honey—”
“Yeah. We’ll talk. Just not now, okay? I need to go home and let all of this … absorb.”
His mother could have scolded him for two-timing Ashley and Paige. She could have asked him when the hell he was going to grow up. She could have lectured him on the irresponsibility of impregnating a woman when he didn’t have the will or the capacity to commit to anyone. And he would have deserved all of it. The fact that she said none of it made him so grateful he nearly wept.
Instead, his mother pulled him into a tight hug. The familiar scent of jasmine in her perfume comforted him.
When she let him go, he went home alone. Alone was how he would always be, in the end, if something didn’t change.
As the pregnancy ran its course, he very nearly decided to sign the papers without even seeing the baby. But he happened to be at the hospital to check on a patient when Ashley delivered. She’d called him to tell him it was time to sign away his daughter.
Just a peek wouldn’t hurt, he thought. Just one look at his child before someone else raised her. That way, he’d have no regrets. He’d see her face and not have to wonder what she looked like, how she’d sound, how he’d feel when he saw her.
Because he had privileges at the hospital as a pediatrician, he was able to walk right into the nursery to see his newborn child.
She should have been in her mother’s arms. She should have been nursing, feeling skin-to-skin contact, enjoying those first hours of bonding with the woman who’d borne her. Instead she was here, waiting to be assigned to a family of strangers.
Which would happen as soon as he signed the papers.
It wouldn’t hurt to just pick her up first. It wouldn’t hurt to hold her for a minute.
He lifted the baby into his arms, smelled the sweet scent of her head—and was lost.
Had he ever thought he could sign away this perfect child? Had he ever thought he could turn her over to some random couple he didn’t know?
Maybe I can do this.
It was a crazy thought. Pure folly. And yet.
I can do this, he thought. He went to find Ashley and tell her the news.
Chapter One
Rowan Brody gazed down at his newborn daughter—at her eyes, so much like his, at her lips in a precious pout, at her tiny brows knit together in consternation—and knew, without any trace of doubt, that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.
“Oh, God. What did I do?” he asked the baby in a gentle, singsong voice, crooning it to her as though he were singing a lullaby.
He had the luxury of crooning to her because she’d finally stopped crying for what seemed like the first time in hours. He held her in his arms and bounced her rhythmically, hoping to delay the inevitable meltdown.
She was healthy and fed and she had a clean diaper, so she should fall asleep soon. But Molly had a way of defying that kind of logic in a way that had Rowan, just one week into his daughter’s life, worrying that he might never eat or sleep or work again. He might never again do anything but soothe his angry child, offering her one comfort or distraction after another in a futile attempt to stop her tears until they both grew old and eventually died.
And here it came—the hitching in of breath, the reddening of her face, the scrunching up of her nose and mouth until, at last, the wailing began.
Molly wanted her mother. Rowan was certain that was it. She wanted the woman who had carried her for nine months before bringing her into the world. She wanted to nurse and fall asleep on her mother’s chest, breathing in the familiar smell of maternal skin.
Rowan had had the hubris to think he could raise his child on his own, acting as mother and father both. He’d imagined he could function as the baby’s sole caregiver.
He’d pictured sweet moments of bonding between himself and his daughter, quiet evenings holding her, bath time and bedtime stories, her tiny face looking up at his with adoration.
What an idiot he’d been.
“Please, honey,” he told Molly as she wailed in his arms. “Please quiet down. For me? For daddy?”
She completely disregarded his request, screaming as though she were being attacked by wolverines. If this was any indication of how well she was going to listen to him in her teen years, then he was well and truly screwed.
Molly was yelling so loudly that Rowan didn’t hear the doorbell, and he didn’t even realize his mother had come into the house until she was standing next to him.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said gently to the baby. “What has your father done now? Come here, sweetheart.” Fiona took Molly from Rowan’s arms, cuddled the baby against her chest, and bounced lightly until Molly’s sobs subsided into a gentle series of hiccups.
“How did you do that?” Rowan asked his mother.
“Years of practice. You don’t raise six children without learning a few things.”
Rowan scrubbed his face with his hands, then ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. He hadn’t showered, he hadn’t shaved, and he hadn’t done laundry, so he was on his last clean pair of sweatpants.
His living room looked like an explosion of baby supplies—diapers and wipes, little onesies, tiny blankets, pacifiers, a reclining seat that vibrated, bottles both used and clean, burp rags, and a variety of toys Molly wouldn’t care about for some time yet. The coffee table bore the remains of takeout meals Rowan hadn’t had the time to finish or to clear away.
“Rowan, honey, I just came by to—”
“Doesn’t matter why you’re here, I’m just glad you are,” he said, interrupting her. “Can you hold her while I take a shower? Please?”
“Well, I was only planning to pop in for a minute.”
“Mom, I’m begging you. I stink. Molly’s spit up on me twice and peed on me at least once since the last time my body experienced soap and hot water. For all I know, she’s been crying because of the smell.”
Fiona relented. “All right. Don’t take too long, though. I’ve got my University Women meeting in half an hour, and I can’t miss it. I’m the membership coordinator this year.”
“Oh, God. Thank you.” He kissed his mother’s cheek and fled the room before she could change her mind.
