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  But Connor had gone to New Orleans to look up some more of his extended family. She hadn’t been able to reach him the one time she did try.

  She hadn’t bothered to leave a message. There was no time.

  She was on her own, Brianna thought. Just the way she always had been.

  “We’re going to get through this, honey,” she promised her daughter, just as much to bolster Ava as to bolster herself. “And you’re going to be better than ever. You’ll see.”

  Brianna prayed she was right.

  * * *

  “Pneumonia?” Brianna repeated the diagnosis numbly. “She has pneumonia?” she asked the weary-looking ER physician. The latter had returned to her with the news once all the results of the tests that had been taken had come in.

  The diagnosis still hadn’t penetrated. It just didn’t make any sense. Ava was just so little. How could she have gotten pneumonia?

  “Are you sure?” Brianna asked, her voice all but breaking.

  “Very sure,” Dr. Valdez replied solemnly. “We’re going to have to keep your daughter here at least overnight. She’s having trouble breathing,” he continued matter-of-factly, “so for now we’ll be putting her on oxygen.”

  “On oxygen?” Brianna echoed. She knew that would frighten Ava. “Is that really necessary?”

  “Hopefully, this is just a precautionary measure. But her breathing is labored, so before it gets any worse, we need to do this.”

  Brianna nodded numbly. “Of course. I understand.” The words were coming out almost mechanically. She could feel fear all but freezing her vocal cords. “Ava’s not—she’s not in any danger, is she?” Brianna couldn’t get herself to phrase it any differently, afraid to say anything more specific, as if saying the words would make something awful come true.

  The doctor’s expression softened slightly, as if realizing just how scared she really was.

  “There’s always a risk in these cases,” he told her, “but I think you came here just in time. Is there anyone I can call for you?” he asked. “To come stay with you, or to take you home?” he said gently.

  She looked at him blankly for a moment, a mixture of numbness and fear playing tug-of-war with her emotional state. Then, as the doctor’s question registered, she shook her head. “No, there’s no one,” she answered quietly.

  Accepting Brianna’s answer, the doctor changed the subject. “As soon as we have Ava set up in her room, I’ll have a nurse come get you and you can stay with your daughter.”

  Her room.

  She hated saying this, it seemed so crass and petty, especially at a time like this. But she needed to have the doctor aware of her circumstances.

  “Doctor, I can’t afford to pay for a private room for my daughter.”

  “Don’t worry, the hospital only has single care units for patients. However, the insurance companies process them as if they’re semiprivate rooms,” he explained.

  Brianna wasn’t really sure what that meant. Everything seemed to be running together in her head. But she nodded anyway. The important thing was to have her daughter taken care of, and this hospital had the best reputation in the area.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she murmured.

  She found a chair in the waiting area and sat down.

  * * *

  “Bri, what happened?” Connor cried as he rushed into the room. He looked beside himself with concern.

  Exhausted, sleep-deprived—she’d been here for close to twenty-four hours—she looked up at Connor. She didn’t even know where to begin, so she just let him go on talking.

  “When I didn’t find you or the kids at home, I called Beth and she told me that you had taken Ava to the hospital.”

  Even as he said the words, Connor looked at the sleeping, pale little figure in the hospital bed. They had run out of beds in her size and had put Ava into an adult-size bed for now. She looked even smaller and more helpless in it than she would have appeared in the children’s bed.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he wanted to know, almost afraid of the answer. “Why does she have those tubes running through her?”

  He had come back from New Orleans ready to celebrate. The trip to find his newly discovered relatives had gone particularly well. The first thing he’d done once he’d landed was hurry over to see Brianna to share the news with her. When he couldn’t find anyone there, he’d grown progressively more worried.

  But nothing could have prepared him for this.

  Connor felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach and all the air had been knocked out of him.

  “Bri?” he asked when she hadn’t answered him yet. “Why is she here?”

  “Ava has pneumonia,” Brianna began shakily.

  “Pneumonia?” Connor echoed. There was an edge in his voice. An edge because fear had seized his gut. He turned to look at Brianna. “Just like that? You didn’t see it coming? There was no warning?”

  It sounded as if he was accusing her, she thought. She was already taking herself to task over that. She didn’t need him making it worse.

  “She said she felt achy,” Brianna answered. “I thought she had a cold.” With each word, she felt guiltier and guiltier that she’d allowed her daughter’s condition to get to this stage.

  The guilt coupled with anger. She was sleep-deprived and half out of her mind with concern and worry. Brianna felt as if she was backed into a corner.

  “There’s a difference between a cold and pneumonia,” Connor pointed out. All sorts of thoughts began popping up in his head. What if something awful had happened? What if Ava had wound up dying?

  The thought suddenly materialized, seizing his heart and haunting him.

  Brianna felt as if he was attacking her. Something snapped inside of her. Everything she’d been feeling these last few hours suddenly came pouring out.

  “I know that, Einstein,” she retorted sarcastically. What right did he have to talk to her this way? Connor hadn’t even been here to support her when she needed him the most.

  The sight of the little girl, looking so ill, sent a panicky feeling through him. He couldn’t take it, couldn’t take the thoughts he was struggling to tamp down.

  “I’m going out. I need some air,” he suddenly said to Brianna.

  “Go ahead. Go get your air,” she snapped at him. “And while you’re at it, just keep on going.”

  Connor turned to look at her, stunned at the anger he heard in her voice. Stunned at what it sounded like she was telling him. He had to be wrong.

  “What are you saying?”

  The more she spoke, the angrier she got. She’d been wrong about him. He was bailing at the first sign of a problem. Well, she wasn’t going to placidly stand for it. “I’m saying I want you to get out of here. Now!”

  “You don’t mean that. I just need to get out for a minute,” he told her. “Brianna, calm down.”

  “Calm down?” she shot back, incensed. “Look, you weren’t here. I had no one to talk to, no one to turn to and my little girl was sick. I don’t have money to run to the doctor every time one of them has a cold. So I gambled and nearly lost my daughter.” Angry tears glistened in her eyes.

  “Bri—” He reached for her but she pulled away.

  “You have no right to criticize me. Now get out of here!”

  “Bri—”

  “Now!” she insisted.

  He looked at Brianna, and then at Ava. All sorts of scenarios filled his head. Scenarios he couldn’t deal with. Scenarios that threatened to bring him to his knees.

  All he wanted to do right now was get away so he could pull himself together.

  “All right,” he told Brianna.

  And he left.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When his heart finally stopped racing ninety miles an hour, and the cold, clammy feeling he was experiencing th
roughout every inch of his body finally receded, Connor was at last able to think more clearly.

  He understood now why fear had seized him in such a viselike, death grip.

  For several awful minutes, all he could think of was what if Ava had died. He hadn’t been here to help Brianna, to give her his support, his money, whatever it took to prevent this from happening, or at least to lessen its impact on Brianna.

  If Ava had been taken to see a doctor when all this had started, he felt that it definitely wouldn’t have evolved to this degree.

  Guilt ate away at him out there in the darkened parking lot.

  Seeing a doctor took money, he realized. Picking up and going to see a doctor was something he took for granted. He’d always taken it for granted, he thought ruefully. He hadn’t stopped to think what it was like for people in Brianna’s circumstances. He’d never had to budget money out of necessity the way he knew Brianna always had.

  Damn it, why hadn’t he given Brianna money just in case something unforeseen came up while he was gone? He shook his head, annoyed with himself. But he had never had to think that way, so he hadn’t.

  She wouldn’t have taken it anyway, he thought now. Connor felt guilty, helpless and afraid as he got into his car.

  At a complete loss what to do with himself, he knew he needed to clear his head as well as calm down before he could approach Brianna again.

  Turning on the ignition, he slowly pulled away from the hospital and began to drive home.

  The guilt wouldn’t leave him alone, threatening to all but consume him.

  He should have been here for her. He shouldn’t have allowed his obsession to play such a big part in his life, pushing him to meet more and more of his extended family so he could warn them about Charlotte. Who did he think he was, Paul Revere?

  The only thing he had to do was be here for Brianna and her kids.

  The road before him was empty and desolate.

  The look on her face haunted him as the sound of her voice ordering him to go away echoed over and over again in his head. He continued driving.

  Connor desperately wanted to turn his car around to drive back to the hospital, to apologize to Brianna again for not being there when she needed him. But he knew she needed time. She needed to calm down first. She had been through a crisis—if he felt this awful about almost losing Ava, how much worse was this for Brianna?—and she needed to regain her mental equilibrium before he approached her again.

  He wanted her to forgive him, not permanently cut him out of her life. He needed to be patient when patient was the last thing he was.

  Blowing out a huge breath, Connor forced himself to continue driving to his parents’ house. Things needed to have a chance to settle down.

  Everything, he told himself, would be better in the morning.

  * * *

  But it wasn’t.

  Morning arrived and it was pure agony for him to wait until a decent hour before calling Brianna. As anxious as he was to talk to her, he didn’t want to wake her. When he saw her in the hospital room, she had looked really wiped out. She needed her rest.

  As for him, Connor had hardly slept all night. He finally gave up trying and got up by five. He was dressed within five minutes, then paced around until eight.

  At eight o’clock on the dot, he called Brianna.

  His heart sank when he got her voice mail instead of her.

  Tempted to hang up, he left a message instead. “Hi, it’s me. How is she?” he asked tensely. When he’d left, the prognosis had been positive, but he was taking nothing for granted. “Brianna, I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I wasn’t here for you. And that I fell apart in the hospital room. You have to understand that—”

  A metallic beep went off, telling him that his time was up. He was cut off.

  Connor dialed again. The same recording came on, telling him to leave a message.

  “Bri, I need to talk to you. I have to explain what happened. You need to know that I—”

  Another beep. He was cut off again. Apparently only very short messages were to be left.

  Frustrated, fearing the worst even as he tried not to jump to conclusions, Connor called the hospital this time, requesting the nurses’ station on the pediatric floor.

  “Can I speak to the nurse taking care of Ava Childress?” he asked the person who had picked up.

  “Just a minute.”

  Placed on hold, he found himself listening to some song he couldn’t identify. It played all the way through, and then started again from the beginning. He was almost all the way through it again when he heard the receiver finally being picked up.

  “Hello?”

  He talked fast, afraid of being cut off. “I’m calling to find out Ava Childress’s condition. She was brought in over a day ago with pneumonia.”

  “Are you a relative?” the young voice asked him.

  Connor hesitated, then was forced to say no, he wasn’t.

  “Look, I know it’s against the rules, but...could you just tell me how she’s doing? I’m really worried.”

  The woman on the other end paused, as if debating what to do. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Connor—Connor Fortunado. I’m a good friend of the family.” He wasn’t used to lying and his heart was pounding. “Please, I really need to know. How’s Ava doing?”

  The woman looked around to see if anyone was listening. Her expression softened. “She’s doing better. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you any more than that, though.”

  Connor closed his eyes. Relief flooded through him like a river swollen with rainwater, making him almost weak.

  “Thank you,” he told the nurse. “Thank you so much. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am to hear this news.”

  The young woman nodded. “If you’ll excuse me, I really have to go.”

  Before Connor had a chance to say another word, the nurse was gone and he found himself listening to a dial tone.

  He sighed, drained. At least he knew that Ava was recovering. That she was going to be all right.

  Now all he had to do was get her mother to return his calls.

  * * *

  She didn’t.

  Over the course of the next few days, Connor must have called Brianna at least a dozen times. She never picked up.

  Each time he called, he left her a message. She never returned a single one. He would have gone to see her at the hospital, but he didn’t want to cause a scene. Connor was afraid that might upset Ava, and right now, the little girl needed to get well more than he needed to get Brianna to listen to him and forgive him.

  To keep from thinking about Brianna, as well as making himself crazy counting the minutes as they dragged by, Connor focused his attention on something else.

  Something positive.

  * * *

  It felt as if she’d been gone for an entire month instead of just a few days, Brianna thought when she finally drove up to her home again.

  The doctor had pronounced Ava recovered and he had released the little girl from the hospital that morning right after nine.

  Parking her car, Brianna got out and came over to the rear passenger side. She was all set to carry Ava from the car into the house, but the little girl pushed her hands away.

  “I’m all better, Mama. I can walk,” Ava insisted.

  Brianna had her doubts, but she didn’t want to argue on her daughter’s first day back.

  “Okay, I’ll let you walk into the house, but then you’re going straight to bed, young lady. You still need to rest,” Brianna told her.

  Ava pouted. “But I’m better. The doctor said so,” her daughter reminded her.

  Apparently things were getting back to normal, Brianna thought. “I know, baby,” she said with a smile, “but humor me.”

  “What’s that?” Ava
wanted to know, puzzled.

  Both of her kids were so precocious, there were times that she forgot she was talking to children, not adults. “It means do as I say, please.” They walked up to the front door slowly. Brianna unlocked the door, then paused to look at her daughter. “You gave me quite a scare, baby.”

  Ava looked up at her, confused. “I’m not scary, Mama.”

  Brianna laughed and shook her head. “No, not anymore,” she agreed. “But you were, baby, you were.”

  They’d walked in and Ava cocked her head now, listening. “Axel’s laughing,” she said, recognizing her brother’s voice. “Did you tell him I was home?”

  “No, not yet,” she answered. “We just got in.” Brianna paused and listened herself.

  There was someone else with her son, she realized. She heard a deep, male voice laughing with Axel.

  Beth came out of the kitchen just then. Brianna had told her friend that she was bringing Ava home from the hospital today and asked Beth to come to the house with Axel.

  She looked at her friend quizzically now.

  Before she could ask, Beth said, “He’s been over to my house every day to see Axel while you were in the hospital with Ava. He told me that he didn’t want the boy to worry about his sister or to feel like he was being left behind. When I told him you were coming home with Ava today, he said he wanted to come with the boy in case you needed help.”

  Beth smiled at her. “I think you finally have yourself a keeper, Brianna, but that’s just me. I left Harry with the kids,” she went on, “so I’d better get going. The kids tend to overwhelm him after an hour.” She squeezed Brianna’s hand, then looked at the little girl. “I’m glad to see you home, Ava.”

  Ava smiled. “I’m glad to see me home, too,” she said to her mother’s friend. Turning toward her mother, Ava complained, “They’re having fun without me.”

  “Well, we’ll just see about that,” Brianna answered. “But you have to promise you’re going to lie down very soon.”