The Nurse's Newborn Gift Read Online Free Page A

a good chance she’d collapse to the floor. “I can’t have this baby. Not yet.” She rubbed her belly, wasn’t ready. “It’s too soon.” The baby kicked. At least that was a good sign.
    Krissy could hear Spencer talking but she paid no attention to what he was saying, thoughts of Jarrod swirling in her head. He’d gone into the army because of her. He’d been killed because of her. I’m sorry. So sorry .
    Spencer knelt down beside her. “How far along are you?”
    â€œI’m due in five weeks.” He repeated what she’d told him into his cell phone. “Who are you talking to?”
    â€œAn ambulance is on the way.”

CHAPTER TWO
    U PON THEIR ARRIVAL at the hospital, the ambulance crew whisked them right up to the Labor and Delivery floor where Spencer stood by helplessly—something he was not used to and did not like one bit—while the doctor examined Krissy and the nurse hooked her up to a fetal monitor. Forty-five minutes later, they were alone, Spencer sitting in a guest chair, holding on to a black and white sonogram picture. Krissy in a hospital gown, lying on her side in the bed, facing away from him. The sound of her baby’s rapid heartbeat—correction: her and Jarrod’s baby’s rapid heartbeat—filled the tense silence between them.
    What had Jarrod been thinking, asking someone as irresponsible and self-centered as Krissy to have his baby, especially when he wouldn’t be here to, at the very least, keep an eye on her? And now he expected Spencer to do it? He shifted in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Friendship had limits. Even after death.
    Ten years.
    For the past ten years, since his father had collapsed on a subway platform and died of a massive heart attack when Spencer was only seventeen, he’d been the man of the family, helping his mother, looking out for his two younger sisters. Finally, just this year, with Reagan in graduate school out in California, Tara finishing her first year of college in Massachusetts, and Mom moved out of their old apartment and into a smaller, more affordable one close to her new boyfriend, he’d earned his freedom.
    He had his own place, outside of New York City where his mother still lived, could come and go as he pleased without having to check in with anyone. In the off season he could spend the winter skiing in Utah or on the beach in the Caribbean. Or he could do both! He was responsible for no one but himself...finally.
    And now this. Krissy was having a baby, and Jarrod expected Spencer to look after them both? He wanted to run from the room screaming, Noooooooooo.
    Seeing her for the first time since high school—her face fuller, but still beautiful, the blue eyes that used to haunt his teenage dreams, her breasts looking even more voluptuous beneath her baggy scrubs—had been like a punch to the gut. And the way she’d been looking him over, with lust in her eyes.
    Why couldn’t she have looked at him like that back in high school? Why couldn’t she have set Jarrod straight all those years ago? Told him, in no uncertain terms, that they’d never be more than friends? Then Jarrod could have gotten a real girlfriend and he wouldn’t have gone into the army and he wouldn’t be dead! Long buried anger, frustration, and blame had resurfaced. He’d wanted to hurt her, like she’d hurt Jarrod, so many times, like she’d hurt him. So Spencer had emptied the load he’d been carrying, telling her everything.
    It was as if nine years had not gone by, as if he hadn’t changed at all. As if he was still the antagonistic jerk he’d turned into all those years ago.
    But this evening’s little bit of bad behavior aside, he had changed. He was more tolerant and understanding, at least he tried to be...usually. Now, when he wanted something, he went after it, regardless of who else wanted it.
    Maybe she had changed,