Page 36 of A Really Bad Idea

“The patient is rapidly filling up with fluid. We had to tap the lung and move the surgery date. I went back to the ER on my way out. Annabelle is sporting a light-green cast. She had me sign it,” he says with a rather proud tone.

“Look at you. A superhero and a celebrity in one day.” I play with the edges of the pages, picking at the corners. “You cashing in for the night?”

“I’m reading about transcatheter mitral-valve replacement in a patient with myelofibrosis. You?”

I lift my book and scan the cover of a half-naked man with abs like speed bumps. “Same.”

His laugh radiates through the phone like a bedtime story. “Reading one of your tawdry novels, aren’t you? Make sure you take notes. The love scenes in those are pretty racy.”

“Like you’ve ever read one of my romances.”

“Remember when I spent a week on your couch? I might have flipped open a page or two while you locked yourself in your room.”

I smile to myself as my head falls back on the headboard. That’s Christian. The man who came here and nursed me back to sanity after my marriage fell apart. Just like the man who carried a little girl and paid an absurd amount of money to get her to the hospital in the magical fashion she desired.

He’s a caregiver. A provider. A man who makes magic with his hands, healing you from the inside out, and ensures your safe recovery. It’s why he became a heart surgeon—to heal. Christian Gallagher can take a life on the brink of destruction and make it whole again.

He made me whole again.

“You’re awfully quiet,” he whispers. “What are you thinking about?”

“That was a great thing you did today,” I sweetly tell him. “You even went back to check on her.”

“Would it make me a total sap if I said I went to the gift shop and got her a bubble wand and a candy bar?”

I laugh out loud and smash my lips together with a grin. “No. It makes you, you.”

The line goes silent again. I want to ask him a million things. I want to explain a hundred more. What exactly, I’m not sure, so I say nothing. The pages of my book are bending permanently.

He eventually fills the silence. “Have you thought about it?”

“Thought about what?” I grip my book and close my eyes, half-praying he says what I want him to say and half-dreading it.

“You and me?”

I gasp in relief. “A little.”

“I gave you time to think this week because I also needed time to think. I made a promise that night I wasn’t sure I could keep. And do you know what happened?”

“What?” I ask, my heart stalling in my chest, the air not wanting to escape.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Playing around every scenario. Do you want to hear them?”

“Sure.”

“You and I have the baby, but I have this fellowship at the hospital, and we’re on a breakthrough on a new procedure. I’m traveling a lot—sometimes to learn new techniques and test out equipment, other times to teach. I can’t be there for you like I promised, and I become one of those dads who’s in the kid’s life, but he doesn’t really know who I am because my work always comes first,” he declares, and I can picture him running his hand through his hair. “Or you meet someone in a year from now, and he’s perfect for you, but he hates the fact that you have a baby with some other guy, so you cut me out of your life to make him happy.”

I’ve played many scenarios out in my head, but I didn’t think of that one because it’s ridiculous. “Christian, I’d never let a man cut you out of my life. Baby or no baby. I never have and never will.”

“You kind of did. I wasn’t in your life the way I should have been when you were with Brock.”

“You were in San Francisco.”

“He was jealous of me,” he states, and he’s right. “And we were just friends. Now, we’d have a child. Men fall in love with women with children every day. But having a best friend who also fathered your kid? It would intimidate most men.”

Most men are already intimidated by Christian. I mean, he’s a gorgeous, successful heart surgeon with an awesome personality. He’s hard to compete with.

He continues, “You could resent me because, even though you were content to do this on your own, you did it with me, and I’m not around like you need me. I won’t be your husband or your boyfriend. Hell, I’m a second-rate dad who gets the kid every other weekend and gives you money for school. I’ll be like a bad ex-husband you can’t stand.”