Lullaby for Two / Child's Play. Karen Rose Smith

And the woman I’ve hired to take care of him knows how to do it, too.”

      Even as a teenager, Tessa had foregone perfume for more natural scents like fruity shampoos and lotions. Vince inhaled a hint of vanilla and strawberries that took him straight back to necking sessions with her in his beat-up pickup.

      She crossed to the door and opened it. “Good luck with Dr. Rafferty. Make sure he sends me a report.” Her expression softened a little. “I know what a stress this must be…to be worrying about Sean.”

      Their eyes locked and his heart pounded as he approached the doorway where she stood. Tessa pulled her gaze from his and touched Sean’s hand. The baby took hold of her finger and looked up at her with seven-month-old fascination.

      Vince knew exactly how his son felt.

      Tessa removed her finger from Sean’s fist. “Good luck, little one,” she murmured.

      After Vince gave her a nod and a muttered, “Thanks,” he held Sean a little tighter and walked down the hall. How often had Tessa said those words before? How often had she looked at a baby and thought about her own? How often had she thought of him and blamed him for the hysterectomy she’d had no choice in having?

      He might never know the answer. He and Tessa had been finished long ago. She obviously wanted to keep it that way.

      Tessa hurried through the lobby of the Family Tree Health Center, hardly aware of the bright sunshine pouring in the plate-glass windows, barely noticing the photographs of children, moms and dads and families hung in casual to formal frames on the pale yellow walls. She was in a daze as she veered toward the coffee shop to the right of the main entrance, passed the bird-of-paradise potted plant and a ledge lined with pothos ivy.

      Stopping to gain her focus again, she spotted the table where Emily Diaz and Francesca Talbot were sitting. She was late meeting them for lunch…late pulling herself together…late trying to push the image of Vince’s face out of her head…late trying not to remember the feel of baby Sean in her arms.

      Vincent Rossi was back in Sagebrush and she was just going to have to deal with it.

      Masterful at hiding what she didn’t want others to see, she’d found she could let her guard down with Emily and Francesca. The three of them not only lived in a refurbished Victorian together but had become best friends.

      Francesca greeted her first, sleek chestnut hair slipping over her shoulder, her green eyes sparkling as she beckoned Tessa toward their table. A neonatologist, Francesca had her office on the second floor of the center. She had office hours all day Monday, but spent most of her time at the hospital with her tiny patients.

      Emily Diaz’s big brown eyes were already studying Tessa as she approached the table. Emily had pulled her curly black hair back from her face and fastened it with a navy scrunchie. Wearing Dr. Madison’s staff smock—Emily was his obstetrical nurse—she could fade into the background if she wanted to and usually did want to. Tessa still didn’t know why. Emily had only lived with her and Francesca for five months, but the empathetic way she had of listening had endeared her to both of them. Although Tessa realized they didn’t know her whole story yet, she didn’t push. Emily would tell them in time.

      “We ordered the grilled-chicken salad for you and the peach iced tea. Is that okay?” Francesca asked.

      They were usually short on time and both Emily and Francesca knew Tessa always ordered the same lunch.

      “That’s fine,” she assured her with a distracted wave of her hand, taking her seat and dropping her purse to the floor.

      “Rough morning?” Francesca asked.

      Was it so obvious? Was she pale? Did the strain show? Had Vince realized how he had affected her?

      Slipping the lemon slice off the side of her water glass, she squeezed it then dropped it in. After taking a few sips, she made sure that when she breathed in and then out it was deep and even.

      “What happened?” Emily asked her, her concern obvious. “Problems with a patient?”

      Tessa never discussed specifics about her patients and both women knew that. They were bound by the same terms of confidentiality. But they could talk in general terms.

      “No, not a patient,” Tessa replied quietly.

      Her friends waited expectantly.

      Tessa glanced around and saw that at their corner table they had relative privacy. “A ghost from my past walked into my office today.” That was all she could say. Although Vince wasn’t her patient, his son, Sean, was.

      After exchanging a look with Emily, Francesca asked, “Not Vince Rossi?”

      Because Tessa had lived with Francesca since her return to Sagebrush from California two years ago, the neonatologist had known Tessa’s story. On the other hand, Emily, who had lived in Corpus Christi all of her life until her recent move to Sagebrush, only knew Tessa had had a hysterectomy, not the whole story behind it. It wasn’t that Tessa hadn’t wanted to confide in Emily, she just hadn’t wanted to dredge it all up again. The hysterectomy had affected her life and still affected it now. She’d discussed it with her two friends when she’d decided to apply to become an adoptive parent, but not why or how it had happened.

      “Who’s Vince Rossi?” Emily asked.

      Tessa dropped her chin into her hands, rubbed her face, pushed back her hair and realized it was time Emily knew her history, too. Maybe excavating the hurt would remind her to stay away from Vince.

      Of course she’d stay away from Vince! Once his little boy’s surgery was over, he’d be gone. That was Vince. He left.

      After taking another sip of water, Tessa explained, “Vince and I met in high school.” Saying those words brought it all back…back to that morning in the library during her senior year when she’d been sitting in a far corner out of the way and hadn’t been able to keep her tears from falling.

      She hadn’t known Vince well. He’d taken vo-tech courses and she’d taken academic preparation. She’d attended a private girls’ school until ninth grade, then had made a deal with her father. She’d go to any college he chose, if he’d let her attend public high school.

      So there she was, tears falling down her face, when a deep voice at her side asked, “Are you okay?”

      Vince Rossi was everything she shouldn’t have been attracted to, with his dark, handsome looks and brooding gray eyes, his wrong-side-of-the-tracks attitude. With few flirting skills and little experience, she’d been afraid to get close to him.

      “I’m fine,” she’d told him, but her tears stated a different story.

      He sat down beside her. “You don’t look fine.”

      Back then she didn’t have close friends because her father had still controlled her life, her comings and goings and who she could bring to the house. Female classmates cut her out of their cliques. She was an outsider who couldn’t break into groups with friendships established since grade school. A couple of girls who did befriend her only tried because of her father’s wealth and what they could enjoy because of it. It hadn’t taken her long to catch on.

      So because of all that, because she felt alone much of the time, she’d told Vince the truth. “We had to put my dog to sleep. He was my best friend and he had a stroke. I miss him so much.”

      Vince’s expression had reflected kindness and her own sadness. “I know what it’s like to miss someone. My mom left when I was a kid.”

      “My mom died when I was born,” she’d replied softly.

      They’d gazed into each other’s eyes, and she’d fallen in love with Vincent Rossi right then and there.

      “Tessa?” Francesca called her name, bringing her back to the present.

      “Oh, I’m sorry, I—” She took a breath