Dave gripped the paper bag in one hand and wiped the other on his jeans.
Two police cars were still outside the clinic, along with an older-model sedan and another newer, flashier car. Maybe this was a bad idea. He kept thinking that but then he also kept thinking about what Josh said.
So he opened the clinic door and stepped inside.
Robin was still working at the desk and looked up. “Hi, Dave. Sorry, our walk-in’s closed for today.”
“Josh found me,” he said in a low voice. “I came to see Charlie.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks colored a bit. “Let me just check with her.”
He waited, his toe tapping nervously, until Robin came back. “Come on in,” she invited. When she started to lead him down the hall, he stopped her. “It’s okay. I know which one is her office.”
“Right. Okay.” Robin looked a little flustered and Dave figured she wasn’t used to this much excitement at the office. At the end of the hall he gave Charlie’s door a tap and poked his head inside.
“Hey,” he said softly.
She looked up and his heart slammed against his ribs. She looked terrible and wonderful all at the same time. A few strands of hair were coming out of her bun, her eyes looked tired, her shoulders were slumped. In short, she looked done in. But she was still his beautiful Charlie.
His. From the moment he’d first held her in his arms, he’d thought of her as his. He wasn’t sure why he’d fought it so hard. Now wasn’t the time for that conversation, though. They could get into that later.
“You heard,” she said wearily, leaning back in her chair and rubbing her temples.
“I heard. Are you okay?”
“Me?” Her brows lifted in surprise. “Of course I’m okay. But the girl in the next room is having a hell of a day.” She tried a weak smile. “You might as well come in.”
He stepped inside and lifted the bag of food. “I guessed you hadn’t eaten yet, so I brought you dinner.”
“Dave…”
“Don’t.” He lifted a hand. “Charlie, you’ve had a crazy day and you’re exhausted. It’s as simple as that.”
She nodded, smiled wearily, then waggled her fingers. “Get it out then. I’m starving and that smells like Gus’s handiwork.”
It was. This close to Christmas Gus specialized in two things: oyster stew and roast turkey. Dave had opted for the turkey, thinking it would be better warmed up if she couldn’t eat it now.
He presented two takeout containers, plastic forks and knives, napkins, salt and pepper packets, and a separate container with gravy. “Merry early Christmas,” he murmured, handing her the gravy.
“To you too,” she said quietly. She met his gaze. “Thank you for this, Dave. Really. It was very considerate.”
“Can you tell me what happened? I mean, are you allowed?”
Charlie sprinkled pepper on her vegetables. “She wanted to make sure the baby was okay. I convinced her to turn herself in. She’s just a young girl, Dave. Mixed up and afraid, who made a bad choice. She’s not a bad kid.” She paused, with her fork hovering over her potatoes. “I guess I still want to believe there’s a happy ending in it for her.”
Dave looked at her, felt a wave of love wash over him. God, she had such a generous and forgiving heart. He loved that about her. Hoped that her forgiveness extended to him too, because he really wanted to start over with her. Make things right.
Charlie looked up, met his gaze. “I want to help her, Dave. Whatever shape she wants her life to take, I’d like to help her get pointed in the right direction. We were right. She chose the manger because she wanted him to be found, and she stayed nearby until she saw us take him. She didn’t just dump him without a thought. That’s got to count for something.”
“Phew.” Dave shook his head. “It’s still crazy to think about that night, isn’t it? I wonder why she didn’t just leave him at a hospital, or police station.”
“I don’t know. I suppose she might have been worried about being seen. I got the impression it wasn’t really thought out.” She cut into her turkey and took a bite. “Anyway,” she finished, waving her fork in the air, “one good thing about it. The mystery of baby Daniel’s mom is solved.”
They ate in silence for a few moments until Dave couldn’t take it anymore.
“What does this mean for Daniel?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m reminding myself to be realistic. He was never mine to begin with. I always knew I’d have to give him up eventually. With the break in the investigation, I suppose things will move forward a little faster.” Her lips quivered for a second. “At least we’ll have Christmas. I doubt anything will happen before then.”
She was hurting, and trying to cover. “You’ve been sick, Josh said.”
“I didn’t realize you and Josh were buddy buddy.”
“We’re not. He’s worried about you. Seeing you today, so am I.”
“I’m just tired. I had that nasty bug going around and so did everyone else in Jewell Cove, I think. We were putting in some long days. I’ll be fine.”
“I think, Charlene Yang, you tell everyone you’re fine whether you are or not.”
She stopped eating and stared at him.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I just mean that … well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. You tell people you’re fine, you give of yourself, but you never really let anyone in. You don’t want to be any trouble. And you don’t want to give someone the power to really hurt you either. Because you’ve been disappointed a lot in your life. And it works but only a little because deep down you’re lonely and you need someone to give all that love to. Being a doctor is perfect. You get to help people without becoming personally involved.”
“Wow. That’s some psychoanalysis.”
“And that’s exactly what I’d say if I wanted to avoid the issue and turn the tables. We’re more alike than you think, Charlie.”
“Except I did let someone in. You.”
He hadn’t expected her to admit it, and it took him by surprise.
“We don’t have to talk about this now,” he said. “On top of everything else.”
“Or ever, right?” She picked up her fork again, and stabbed it into her mound of potatoes, her lips set in an angry line.
“I didn’t come here to pile on, Charlie. Not after the day you’ve had.”
“You pretty much said it all anyway,” she reminded him, playing with the potatoes but not eating them.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t say nearly enough. And I certainly didn’t say the right things.”
Her fork stopped moving. He might have imagined it, but he thought he saw her lower lip give another little quiver before she bit down on it.
“I went to see Nora,” he explained. “And the whole time I was watching their family all together I was thinking about you, and the fun we had together, and how easy it is to talk to you, and how much I loved kissing you … and … and how much I missed you.”
Her chin started quivering again.
“I was an idiot, Charlie. I let my fear of being tied down get in the way of what I really wanted. You. I told myself I didn’t want to settle down, but the truth is I’ve moved around so much, I’ve never had much luck with romance that … well, I wasn’t sure I was ready to put down roots. If I’d ever be ready.” He swallowed. “I’m probably saying this all wrong…”
“You’re doing okay.”
She was looking at him with luminous eyes and he pushed forward. “I love you, Charlie.”
* * *
Charlie hadn’t been expecting those words. Not today, not ever. And damn him for getting to her on a day she was emotionally vulnerable to start with. She blinked to clear away the moisture that had sprung to her eyes. “Don’t say that,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
“Why?” he asked. He walked around her desk and turned her steno chair so it was facing him, then squatted down in front of her, just like she’d done with Michelle earlier. “Why don’t you want me to say it? Because you don’t want to hear it or because you want to and you’re afraid?”
“It’s been barely a month of you and me doing a dance and … whatever.” She fumbled the words, words she’d dreamed of hearing and that now scared her to death. He was right. Because if he said them and didn’t mean them, she was bound to get her heart broken. And if he did mean them …
If he did …
“Do you believe in fate, Charlie?”
She swallowed. Hard. “I don’t know.”
“I do.” His fingers dug into her knees as he held on to her. “I think I landed here in Jewell Cove for a reason. I think I came here because I needed to. That night at the tree lighting something happened. I turned around with that baby in my arms and saw you and nothing has been the same since.”
She heard the echoes in her head, echoes from her past. “Make sure you keep up your marks, Charlene. Don’t forget to wear your best dress, Charlene. This is important to the family, Charlene. Don’t disappoint us, Charlene.”
She was no better than he was. She had dreams of a family of her own and it turned out she was too chicken to act on it when she had the chance. And now here was the man of her dreams standing in front of her telling her he loved her and she was backing away. What the hell was wrong with her?
He lifted his hand and touched her cheek. “A month isn’t very long. But it was long enough for me to come to my senses. Long enough for me to recognize that I’d met someone who made me smile again, made me laugh, made me actually look forward to the future rather than just going from day to day. Do you know how rare that is?”
She put her hand over his and drew it away from her face, down into her lap. “Dave,” she said quietly, “it was barely a week ago when you stood in your kitchen and told me flat out that you couldn’t give me what I wanted. What changed? Why should I trust that?”
He got up from his squatted position but held onto her hand, gave it a tug until she was out of the chair, and reversed positions so that he was in the chair and he pulled her into his lap.
His arm was strong as it circled her, his face utterly open and sincere as he looked up at her. “Charlene.”
She waited. He seemed to be gathering his words, and there was a sense that whatever he said next was going to be of utmost importance. Butterflies winged through her stomach and her fingers trembled. It terrified her how much she wanted to believe him.
And then there it was, a look in his eyes that was so beautiful that it felt like her heart was melting right there in her chest. It made her breath catch and a strange sort of excitement pulse through her veins. “David,” she whispered, and reached out and placed her hand along the side of his face, feeling the stubble against her skin.
He turned his head slightly, kissed the curve of her palm.
“There are so many things I might have done differently,” he said, his arms still tight around her hips. “I might have not gotten together with Janice. I might have put off having kids, or stayed in the Navy. I realize that right now, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. In Jewell Cove. With you. And that I wouldn’t be here if any of those things hadn’t happened. They all led me to you, Charlie. You are where I’m meant to be. You make my world make sense.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?”
“With my life. I don’t need to count weeks or months to figure it out. And it won’t be perfect all the time. I know that. I just know I want to try.”
It won’t be perfect all the time. She rolled those words around in her head a few times, mulling them over. She thought about Michelle in the next room, struggling so hard to make decisions, thought about Josh, who’d lost his wife overseas mere weeks before she was due to return home. She thought about Lizzie’s mom, and how she’d had to be put in full-time care. Truth was, there was no such thing as perfect all the time, and perhaps that was Charlie’s problem. She’d built up this imaginary dream life to be so perfect that it was an impossible, unattainable goal.
Instead she had a wonderful, slightly damaged, sexy, beautiful man holding her tight and asking her to give them a shot. And it occurred to her that perhaps she’d been demanding too much, because what he was offering was everything. Himself. All he asked in return was that she meet him halfway.
“You really mean that you love me?”
She relaxed into his arms, curling into his embrace so that her face was nestled in the curve of his neck. “Oh yes,” he answered softly. “Charlie, there was a moment. I know you remember it. You have to. A moment when we were making love and our eyes met and it was like lightning.”
She did remember. It had been a magical, soul-deep connection beyond anything she’d ever known. It had been the moment that had given her hope that the life she longed for might be within her grasp.
Now he was telling her it was. And she could either choose to believe him or walk away.
She thought of what Lizzie would say right now and she laughed a little, holding on to him a bit tighter. Lizzie would tell her to stop being a chicken and take a chance, because if she didn’t, she’d always regret it.
“Is that a good laugh or a bad one? Cripes, woman. I spill my guts to you and you laugh?”
She pushed on his chest so that she was sitting up and could look him square in the face. “David Ricker, I am terrified of having my heart broken. But lucky for you I’m more afraid of what will become of me if I don’t take a chance. So here it is. I fell in love with you too. Right about the time you turned around with a baby in your arms and told me we had a problem.”
A smile bloomed on his face and he pulled her close, kissing her like she was a cool glass of water and he was a man dying of thirst. With a heart full of hope, she kissed him back, melting into him, loving the taste and feel of him until she realized someone was knocking on her office door.
Reluctantly she removed her lips from his and then felt heat rush to her face as she saw Josh standing in the doorway, his knuckles resting on the door frame and a goofy grin on his face.
“I hate to interrupt this reunion, but Michelle is getting ready to go now. She asked to see you first.”
Charlie turned to Dave. “Do you want to meet her? She seemed very interested in knowing who found her baby.”
“She brought us together, didn’t she? Of course I’ll meet her.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Michelle agreed to meet Dave, and Charlie loved the way he smiled at the girl when she walked through the office door. He had a big heart too, whether he realized it or not.
“Thank you,” Michelle said quietly. “For saving my baby.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered, and he came forward and shook her hand. “Don’t worry, okay? You’ve got Dr. Yang in your corner. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that when she’s got your back, it’s not the end. It’s just the beginning. You’re going to be just fine.”
Michelle nodded, shouldering her backpack, and then she suddenly smiled. “Oh!” She let the pack slide to the floor and hurriedly undid the zipper. “I nearly forgot. I took this the night I left him in the manger. I didn’t mean to steal it, I just wasn’t sure…”
She stood up. It was the doll from the manger, still diapered and swaddled and wrapped in Dave’s soft shirt.
Charlie started to laugh, and so did Dave. She put her arm around Michelle’s shoulders. And in that moment, she knew that everything was going to work out exactly as it should. And it had nothing to do with facts or figures. It was all down to one simple thing: faith.