HER SECRET, HIS DUTY Page 12

  He followed the bright red signs that pointed him to the emergency area and found his mother already seated in one of the chairs. She rose at the sight of him, her features taut and radiating her own worry.

  “I’ve let them know I’m here, but so far nobody has told me anything about her condition,” Kate said. She had changed out of her evening gown and into a pair of black slacks and a blue-and-black-print blouse.

  She looked tired and afraid, and seeing his mother’s fear only increased Trey’s. “How long have you been here?”

  “Just a few minutes. They assured me that a doctor would be out as soon as possible to let me know what’s going on and how she’s doing.”

  Trey leaned back and released a deep sigh. Patience wasn’t one of his strong suits. He wanted to rush through the double doors that separated him from wherever she was and demand immediate answers.

  He needed to know that she wasn’t clinging to life by a mere thread. But he also understood that he had to be patient and let the doctors perform whatever miracles needed to be accomplished to help Debra.

  A police officer appeared just inside the door. He walked over to the receptionist station and then was allowed back through the doors to the emergency rooms.

  Was he here about Debra? Had he been at the scene of the accident? Had anyone else been hurt? He felt as if he was going to explode with all the questions and frantic worry whirling around in his head.

  It felt as if they’d been sitting there for hours when a doctor finally came out to greet them. “Kate Winston?” he asked as Kate stood and nodded.

  “I’m Dr. Abel Morsi and I’ve been tending to Debra.”

  “How is she?” Trey asked, unable to hide the worry in his voice.

  “At the moment she’s just starting to become conscious. From what I understand from the police who were at the scene, she blew through a red light, got hit on the rear end by another vehicle, spun out and hit a traffic pole head-on going at an excessive speed. Thankfully nobody else was hurt.”

  “And her injuries?” Kate asked, her voice trembling slightly.

  Trey held his breath, his head pounding along with his heart in anxiety.

  “She’s a very lucky young woman,” Dr. Morsi replied. “The worst of her injuries appears to be a concussion. She also has enough bumps and bruises that she isn’t going to feel very well for the next few days. We’re moving her to a regular room now. We’ll keep her overnight for observation but she should be able to be released sometime tomorrow if all goes well and there are no complications.”

  Trey released the breath he’d been holding. “Can we see her?”

  The doctor hesitated a moment and then nodded. “She’s going to room two twenty-five. They should be getting her settled in there right now. My suggestion is that you peek in and let her know you’re here and that she’s in good hands, but don’t stay too long.”

  Trey grabbed his mother’s arm and pulled her toward the elevator bank, his mind tumbling inside out as he thought of what he’d just learned.

  “She hit a pole at a high speed?” He looked at his mother with disbelief as they stepped into the elevator. “Debra isn’t the type to speed or run a red light.”

  “Maybe she was so tired she didn’t notice her speed,” Kate replied. “Only she can tell us exactly what happened.” They exited the elevator and followed the signs that would take them to her room.

  They found it and entered, but stopped just inside as a tall nurse with long dark auburn hair was taking her vitals. She looked up at them, her eyes green like Debra’s. She gave them a soft, caring smile. Her nametag identified her as Lucy Sinclair.

  Debra lay on the bed with her eyes closed, a bruise already forming on her forehead and another on her cheek. She looked so pale, so lifeless. Trey could only imagine how many other bruises would appear over the next couple of days.

  Lucy was just about to move away from her bedside when Debra’s eyes snapped open and she gasped in obvious terror. Her hands rose out of the sheet and clawed the air.

  Trey took a step forward, but his mother held him back as Lucy grabbed one of Debra’s hands and leaned over her. “Debra, you need to relax. You’re fine.” Lucy’s voice was soft and soothing.

  “You’re in the hospital,” Lucy continued. “You’ve been in a car accident.”

  Debra’s arms dropped and her hands covered her stomach. “A car accident? Oh, God, my baby,” she whispered in what sounded like frantic desperation. “Is my baby okay?”

  Baby? Trey felt as if all air had suddenly been sucked out of the room, as if all the sound had completely disappeared. Debra was pregnant?

  It was at that moment that Debra turned her head and saw him and his mother standing just inside the door. Her eyes widened and she began to weep.

  Chapter 9

  Debra sat on the edge of the hospital bed, waiting to sign release forms and for one of Kate’s staff members to come and pick her up. The midafternoon sun shone through the nearby window, but there was a chill inside her that had refused to go away since the moment she’d opened her eyes that morning.

  A policeman had been her first visitor of the day, needing details from her of what had happened to file a report. She’d told him about her brakes not working, but when he heard where she had been right before the accident, she had a feeling he believed she might have been drunk. The blood work the doctors had arranged would clear her on alcohol being a contributing factor in the accident.

  But what had happened? Why had her brakes failed? She got her car maintenance done regularly. In fact, it had only been about two months since she’d brought her car in to have the oil changed and hoses checked. So what had happened?

  The chill intensified as she remembered the speeding of her car, the knowledge that she was going to crash and the frantic blare of her horn to warn anyone in her path.

  The horn blare still resounded deep inside her brain, along with the terror that had accompanied the sound.

  She’d been assured that the baby was fine, but there wasn’t a single part of her body that didn’t hurt. She felt as if somebody had taken the traffic pole she’d hit and beaten her with it over and over again.

  Kate had called at ten that morning to tell her that arrangements had been made for Debra to spend the next couple of days in a guest room at the Winston Estate. There had been no arguing with Kate and Debra had to admit that the idea of being pampered and waited on for a day or two held more than a little appeal.

  What she didn’t want to think about was that moment the night before when she’d asked the nurse Lucy Sinclair about the welfare of her baby and then had realized that Trey and Kate had also been in the room.

  They’d heard what she’d asked. They both now knew she was pregnant. The thought added to the echoing blare of the car horn from the night before, intensifying the headache that had been with her since she’d awakened.

  Trey’s face had radiated such a stunned expression and then Debra had burst into tears and the nurse had chased both Trey and his mother out of her room.

  The cat was definitely out of the bag, Debra thought as she plucked a thread from the sweater that Haley had brought to her an hour before. Kate had sent Haley to Debra’s townhouse to gather up not only clothing for her to wear while leaving the hospital, but also items for the next couple of days of recuperation.

  Although Debra knew Kate and several of her staff had a spare key to her townhouse, she assumed Haley had used the key that had been in her purse since her purse was now missing and the morning nurse on duty had told her somebody from the Winston family had come to retrieve it.

  “Here we are.” RN Tracy Ferrell swept into the room with a handful of papers in her hands. “Dismissal papers for your John Hancock, and your driver has arrived to take you home.”

  She was somehow
unsurprised to see Trey step into the room, followed by another nurse with a wheelchair. Debra’s hand trembled slightly as she signed the dismissal papers, knowing that she had some lying to do in a very short time.

  “How are you feeling?” Trey asked once the papers had been signed.

  “Like I’ve been beaten up by the biggest thug on the streets,” she replied. She winced as she transferred herself from the bed into the wheelchair.

  They spoke no more as they got on the elevator and then she and the nurse waited at the hospital’s front entrance while Trey went outside to bring the car to the curb.

  Aside from the aches and pains that seemed to exist in every area of her body, she now had to face Trey and lie to him about the baby she carried.

  As she slid into the passenger seat she saw the fatigue that lined his face; she could only guess the stress and concern that had probably kept him tossing and turning all night long.

  “I was so worried about you,” he said as he waited for her to pull the seat belt around her. “When we got the call that you’d been in an accident, I was scared to death.”

  “It isn’t yours,” she said, wanting to put him out of his misery as soon as possible. “I was already pregnant on the night we slept together.”

  His features showed nothing as he pulled away from the curb. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive,” she replied with all the conviction of a woman telling the truth.

  “So the baby is Barry’s?”

  “The baby is mine,” she replied firmly.

  He shot her a quick glance and then focused back on the road. “I’m assuming it wasn’t an immaculate conception,” he replied dryly.

  “As far as I’m concerned that’s exactly what it was,” she replied. “Barry definitely isn’t father material. I have no intention of telling him or ever talking to him again. The baby is mine and I’ll... We’ll be just fine.”

  He was silent for a long moment. “I’d want to know. If a woman was pregnant with my child I’d definitely want to know.”

  His words were like arrows through her heart, but she couldn’t allow her own personal wants and desires to screw up his whole future, and that’s exactly what this baby would do to him. She couldn’t tell him the truth. She had to maintain her lie because despite what he’d just said to her the consequences to him were just too high.

  He’d want to know, but he also wanted to be a senator and there was no way that she could see that the two could fit together.

  “Barry wouldn’t care,” she finally replied. “A woman having his baby wouldn’t change the kind of man he is, and he’s not a good candidate for fatherhood. I’d rather raise my baby alone.”

  They drove for a few minutes in silence and she was sure that she’d convinced him the baby wasn’t any of his concern. “So what happened last night?” He broke the slightly uncomfortable silence. “The report we got was that you were speeding and blew through a red light.”

  An arctic breeze blew through her as she thought of the night before and the certainty that she was going to die. “I was speeding and blew through a couple of red lights because my brakes didn’t work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged and winced as every muscle in her back and shoulders protested the movement. “I braked and the pedal hit the floor, but nothing happened. I even pulled up the emergency brake, but the car still didn’t slow.”

  A shudder went through her. “I was going down that big hill in front of the hotel and I picked up speed, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even slow down. I kept thinking if I could just make it to the bottom and then start going uphill the car would slow enough that I could maneuver it off the road, but I never got the chance. I think the police officer who spoke to me this morning thought I left the party drunk last night and that’s what caused the accident, but I didn’t have a drop of alcohol last night.”

  “We’ll get it all sorted out,” he said. “Right now I’m just glad you survived. I was scared about your well-being, Debra.” His voice was smooth as a caress and she wondered if he charmed all the women he came into contact with. It was possible he wasn’t even aware of how deeply he affected her when he spoke to her, when he gazed at her with those beautiful blue eyes of his.

  She settled deeper into the seat, exhausted both by her thoughts and the emotions that were far too close to the surface.

  Thankfully the rest of the ride was accomplished in silence and by the time he pulled up at the front door of the Winston Estate, she was ready for a pain pill and bed.

  Maddie met her at the front door and took her directly to the elevator that would carry her upstairs to the bedrooms. “You poor dear,” Maddie said as she wrapped a gentle arm around Debra’s shoulder. “We’ll just get you into bed and take good care of you until you’re feeling better.”

  Emotion rushed up inside her and tears burned at her eyes. Debra had never had anyone in her life who had taken care of her and right now she was more than grateful to Kate for insisting that she come here for a couple of days.

  “Ms. Kate thought you might feel better with a nice new nightgown. It’s hanging in the bathroom, if you’d like to change and go back to bed for a nap.”

  “That sounds perfect,” Debra replied wearily. From a small sack she’d been sent home with she took out the bottle of pain pills she’d had filled at the hospital pharmacy and slowly walked to the adjoining bathroom. She’d been assured by the doctor that the pills were a low dosage that could cause no harm to her baby. Besides, she only intended to take one or two and then she’d be fine without them.

  The nightgown was long white cotton with green trim and had a matching robe. Debra was grateful it wasn’t silk. She was a cotton girl when it came to her favorite sleepwear.

  A glance in the mirror showed her what her earlier reflection had shown her in the hospital bathroom. She had no idea how she’d gotten the bruise across her forehead, but since the accident it had turned a violent purple. Lovely, she thought and turned away.

  The rest of her injuries were bruised knees, a friction burn on her shoulder from the seat belt and just the overall soreness of muscles. With a moan, she got out of the clothes she’d worn home and pulled on the nightgown that Kate had provided for her. The soft cotton fell around her like a comforting cloud.

  She used a crystal glass next to the sink to wash down two pain pills and then carried the glass and the pills back into the bedroom where Maddie awaited her.

  “You need to rest now,” Maddie said as she took both the pill bottle and the glass from her and set them on the nightstand. She then tucked the sheets around Debra like a mother hen securing her chick for the night. “Myra is making her famous chicken soup for you to have later.”

  “She shouldn’t go to any trouble,” Debra replied, already feeling a deep drowsiness sweeping through her. The trip home from the hospital and the conversation with Trey had exhausted her.

  “Don’t you worry about it. Don’t you worry about anything. You just relax and if you need anything, Birdie is working up here today and she’ll be checking in on you regularly. You call for her and she’ll come running.” With a final sympathetic smile, Maddie left the room.

  “Birdie” was actually Roberta Vitter, a fifty-year-old woman who worked as one of the maids in the house. Her domain was the upstairs, dusting and cleaning the bedrooms and baths so they were always ready for any guest who might arrive.

  Debra had been placed in the bedroom they all referred to as the blue room. The walls were a faint blue and the bedspread was a rich royal-blue. The lamp next to the bed had a blue-and-white flower pattern and the furniture was all dark cherry.

  It was a beautiful room, but as Debra waited for sleep to take her all she could think about was that the blue of the room reflected the blue of Trey’s eyes and the blueness of her
emotions.

  She’d done it. She’d managed to make Trey believe the baby wasn’t his. She should be feeling enormous relief, as if a big weight had been lifted from her heart.

  Instead her heart felt as if somehow in the past half an hour it had irrevocably broken.

  * * *

  Trey had left the Winston Estate the moment he’d delivered Debra there, knowing she would be in good hands between his mother and the staff. He’d driven to Adair Enterprises and holed up in his office.

  A deep weariness made the sofa look inviting, but he knew a quick power nap wouldn’t solve the problems. At the moment he wasn’t even sure what the problems were, he only knew he was troubled on a number of levels.

  He should be feeling triumphant. The morning paper had carried a photo of him and Cecily with the headline of North Carolina’s New Power Couple, and had gone on to quote part of his speech from the night before and his aspirations to serve as senator for the beautiful state that was his home.

  However, the trauma of Debra’s accident and then the bombshell news that she was pregnant had kept him awake most of the night. He’d alternated between praying that she would be okay and wondering if the baby she carried was his, and if it was, what he intended to do about it.

  He hadn’t come to any concrete conclusions other than he would support Debra and be an active participant in his baby’s life. He wanted children and while he hadn’t thought about a pregnancy being the consequence of the night he’d shared with Debra, he realized he wasn’t so upset to believe that he might be the father of her baby.

  He’d been oddly disappointed this morning when she’d told him the baby wasn’t his and that small twinge of disappointment had only managed to confuse him. He wasn’t sure he absolutely believed that the baby was Barry’s and not his. Unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it as she’d told him so.

  She’d created a confusion in his life since the night they’d spent together. Since that night he had desired her to the point of distraction, but he had to be stronger than his desire for her.