Seeing them warmed him. Most everything Kate did to the house seemed to warm him. Everything except the photos. He walked back to the buffet and looked at each of the photos again. They disturbed him. He opened a drawer in the buffet and began to put them away.
“Why don’t you like them?” Kate asked from behind him, catching him by surprise.
He slowly turned. “You walk quietly considering your—”
“—girth?” she supplied wryly.
“I was going to say your stage of pregnancy.”
She walked to his side with a slight waddle that amused him, but he kept that to himself.
“Why don’t you like the photos?”
“I remember how I felt then,” he said, looking at another picture. “Helpless, hopeless, trapped. I hated it.”
“Every minute?”
He shrugged. “A lot of minutes.” He walked toward the Christmas tree and picked up a sprig of mistletoe from an end table. Kate had put it all over the place. She’d said Christmas was for kissing.
He saw her gather the pictures and again walk/waddle toward him. “Not every minute. Look,” she said, lifting up a photo of him shooting a foul shot. “What do you see?”
He glanced at it. “A gangly teenager passing the time in a drafty gym.”
She shook her head. “I see something else. What are you looking at?”
He glanced again, still idly messing with the mistletoe in his hand. “The basket. What else would I be looking at?”
“Look at your eyes, how focused they are. You look like you could shine a laser beam between you and that basket. I bet you made it.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So even then you had incredible focus. That focus is part of the reason you’re so successful today.”
He conceded her point. “Okay.”
“What about this one?” she asked, showing a picture of him holding a certificate for winning the high math award in fourth grade. “Too tough for a smile, but you can still see the pride.” She pulled out the lone picture with his mother. “This is my favorite. See how her arms form a circle of love around you?”
It was strange, but it hurt to look at that picture. “She died and the circle of her arms couldn’t protect me.”
“No, but she gave you something that helped make you the guy who gave Harold Grimley chocolate chip cookies, and the man who donates computers and hires the home for unwed teenage mothers for off-site contract computer work.”
His chest grew tight and achy. Her eyes searched his like that laser she’d mentioned earlier, and he felt it shining a light on his dark soul.
“The reason I like these pictures is they show the makings of the man you’ve become, but I don’t have to leave them out if they bother you. Putting them away won’t take those parts away from you. They just show a few of the reasons I love the boy you were and the man you are.”
Michael felt as if a bomb was going off inside him. He swallowed hard over a lump in his throat. He hadn’t expected a declaration of love from her. He felt unworthy of it.
“Why do you love me? I’m the Tin Man. No heart, remember?”
“I may have had a choice at one time, but I can’t not love you now. When I look at you, I see much more than the Tin Man.” Her eyes grew shiny with unshed tears. “I just hope that someday you’ll feel safe enough with me that you can share all of you with me.”
His chest clenched so tight he could hardly breathe. He pulled her against him and swore. “Kate, I don’t deserve you. But I sure as hell am not giving you up.” Remembering the mistletoe he’d nearly crushed in his hand, he lifted the greenery above her head and kissed her.
The following day, Kate felt distracted as she conducted a tutoring session at the home for unwed teenage mothers. She was worried about Michael. His identity was so tied up with the company that she feared what might happen if he lost it. She wasn’t worried about money or him having a job. She was worried about how the takeover was affecting his heart because try as he might to believe he didn’t possess a heart, Kate knew he did.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Kate said to Tina, who was now the mother of a baby boy. “Let’s decorate the tree.”
Tina nodded in agreement. “I brought the ladder and lights down from the attic this morning. Let me go get the ornaments. I’ll be right back.”
Kate walked into the formal living area and approved the tall Fraser fir. Rubbing her lower back, she walked around it, deciding which side should face the window. She carefully got down on her hands and knees and adjusted the tree stand, then slowly rose. She felt the baby move and touched her stomach. The movements always made her smile.
Humming “O Little Town of Bethlehem” she unraveled a string of lights from one of the boxes and laid it out on the floor. She unraveled a second and eyed the ladder. Michael would kill her if she climbed it, but she felt perfectly balanced. A few steps up wouldn’t hurt, she told herself.
Taking one of the strings of lights, she climbed two steps and paused. “Seems sturdy,” she murmured, and climbed two more. Leaning to the side, she looped the strand around the top branches. The sticky branches didn’t immediately cooperate, so she learned a smidge further.
She heard a gasp behind her. “Mrs. Hawkins!” Tina cried.
Kate whipped her head around at the sound of Tina’s distress and lost her perfect balance. She shifted her feet to try to regain her equilibrium, but she slipped and felt her feet fall out from under her. She crashed downward on her side.
Pain immediately seared her.
“Oh, Mrs. Hawkins!” Tina dropped the boxes and rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”
Beads of nervous perspiration formed between her br**sts and unbidden fear throbbed in her pulse. Another pain sliced through her. “I don’t know,” she said, trying to gather her composure. “I think I am.” She tried to stand, but the pain kept her on the floor.
“Oh, no,” Tina said, wringing her hands. “I could slap myself for startling you.”
Panic trickled in, but Kate took a careful breath. She felt wet on the back of her dress. “My water broke,” she said, feeling a mixture of relief and anticipation. “It’s my water,” she said, but when she glanced at the back of her dress, it wasn’t water. It was blood.
Eleven
W ayland’s VP of Acquisitions continued to refuse Michael the autonomy he demanded for CG Enterprises. An assortment of lawyers from both companies and Michael and his own VP were attending the meeting, which had been going for four hours straight.
“We have more resources. We can provide the backing necessary for you to expand at triple the rate you’ve projected,” Stone Davidson, “the shark,” said. “But we can’t give you carte blanche. We have requirements for how the backing is monitored.”
“What you’re saying is that there are strings,” Michael said. “I understand. There are always strings, but if you’re not careful the strings can tangle up a process that’s already working. Strings can also choke the life from a company that’s already profitable.”
Michael looked into Stone Davidson’s hard face and had a revelation. He’d been searching for the leverage and he realized that he was the leverage. Irony flashed through him. “If you want me to remain at CG, you will have to provide greater autonomy. Otherwise you can color me gone.”
The room sat in stunned silence. Stone’s jaw twitched. “I have difficulty believing you would abandon your own company.”
“It wouldn’t be my company anymore.”
Unbelievably, Michael’s assistant du jour chose that very moment to enter the room. He had instructed her not to interrupt him for any reason. He glared at her.
Clearly cowed by him, she darted over to him and handed him a piece of paper, then ran out the door. Michael scanned the note and felt his blood drain from his head. Kate was at the hospital. His heart pounded in his chest and he broke into a sweat. “I have an emergency,” he said, standing. “I have to leave.”
Stone stood, the picture of indignation. “Mr. Hawkins, nobody walks out on negotiations with Wayland.”
Michael didn’t bother to answer; he let his actions do his talking for him. In his mind, he was already at the hospital with Kate.
Driving with grim determination and speed, he made it to the hospital in less than ten minutes. He had no details except that there’d been an accident at the home for unwed teenage mothers. What kind of accident? he wondered. How bad was it? If anything happened to her, he didn’t know what he would do.
He found a nurse familiar with Kate’s situation. Scanning a chart, she wore a guarded expression. “Mrs. Hawkins lost consciousness soon after she arrived. She’d apparently fallen and lost a lot of blood. She was taken into surgery. That’s where she is now. You might prefer to wait in the surgery waiting area upstairs.”
Lost a lot of blood. Michael’s heart stopped. He could barely form the words, “Is she going to be okay?”
“The doctors are doing everything they can.”
“The baby?” he said, hearing his voice crack.
“Was in distress. The prognoses for your wife and baby are uncertain right now,” she reluctantly revealed, her eyes solemn. “I’m sorry we don’t know more. There’s a phone in the surgery waiting area if you need to make any calls.”
Michael blindly walked toward the waiting area. What if he lost Kate? What if he lost Kate and the baby? He’d worked himself into the ground the last six months to protect their future, and what if there was no future?
A wave of hopelessness he’d thought he’d left behind consumed him. This was why he never wanted to count on another human being. This was why he didn’t believe in love. If he truly didn’t possess a heart, though, why did he feel as if he’d been gutted?
If he lost Kate, he would lose every bit of light in his life. He would lose his reason for living. Sinking down on a plastic chair, he leaned forward with his head in his hands. “She has to live,” he whispered.