Roz’s eyes snapped shut and her chest heaved a c
ouple of times through some deep breaths. “Actually, coffee would be good.”
Despite being certain she’d found yet another avoidance tactic since she couldn’t use sex, he nodded once and put a hand to her waist to guide her out of the room. After all, coffee had been his suggestion, but not because he’d intended to give her an out. It was a little uncomfortable to realize that while he might not be censoring his words with her, that didn’t mean she was returning the favor.
And he wanted to know what was swirling beneath her skin. He wanted to know her. They might be on the downslide, but he couldn’t contemplate letting her go, not right now. There was still too much to explore here.
Instead of taking her to the cafeteria where the coffee would be weak and tepid, he texted his driver to hit the Starbucks on the corner, then found the most private corner in the surprisingly busy children’s ward. He let Roz choose her seat and then took the opposite one.
She stared out the window, and he stared at her. The severe hairstyle she’d chosen pulled at her lush features, but nothing could change the radiance that gave her such a traffic-stopping face. When he’d left her this morning, she’d still been in bed, her long dark hair tumbling over her shoulders the way he liked it.
But he didn’t think she’d appreciate it if he pulled the pins free right here in the middle of the hospital. “Coffee’s on its way.”
She nodded. “Thanks. I need it.”
“This is the conversation you want to have?”
Her mouth tightened. “I didn’t want to have a conversation at all.”
“But you needed the air,” he guessed and her wince said he’d called it in one. “Roz, I’m not going to bite. If you want to talk to me, I’m not going anywhere. But if you don’t, then let’s sit here while you collect yourself. Then we’ll go back and do clowns with no one the wiser that you had an anxiety attack or whatever.”
Her double take was so sharp, it should have knocked her off the chair. “Anxiety attack? Is that what it looked like? Could you tell I was mid-freak-out? Oh, God. Did any of the cameras pick it up? They did. Of course they did. They’re all over the place and—”
“Sweetheart, you need to breathe now.” He gathered up both her hands in his and held them in his lap, rubbing at her wrists as he racked his brain for information about what he’d accidently triggered with his random comment. “Breathe. Again. Roz. Look at me.”
She did and no, he hadn’t imagined the wild flare of her irises a moment ago. Something had her spooked. But she was breathing as instructed, though the death grip she had on his hands would leave a mark, particularly where her wedding rings bit into his index finger. Didn’t matter. He didn’t have any intention of letting her go.
His driver appeared with two lattes, set them on the table and vanished quickly. Hendrix ignored the white-and-green cups in favor of his alternately white-and-green wife, who, if he didn’t miss his guess, might actually be about to lose her lunch.
“Um...” How did you go about delicately asking your wife if she had a positive test result to discuss? “Are you feeling faint? Do I need to call a doctor?”
What if she was pregnant? A thousand different things flashed through his head in an instant. But only some of them were of the panicked variety. Some weren’t that unpleasant. Some were maybe even a little bit awed and hopeful.
“Oh, God, no!” she burst out. “Please don’t bother anyone. I’m fine.”
“Of course you are,” he murmured and rubbed at her wrists again. “But maybe you could give me a little more to go on as to why we’re sitting here in the corner not drinking the hot coffee that I got for us?”
She slipped a hand from his before he was ready to lose the contact and palmed her cup, sipped at the contents and shot him a fake smile. “See? Drinking.”
“See?” He waved a hand in front of his face. “Still sitting here in the dark about what’s going on with you. Roz, we’re married. I’ve touched you in the most intimate places. I’ve done more illicit, dirty, sinful things with you than with anyone else in my life. You fell asleep in my arms last night. What is all of that but a demonstration of trust? There is nothing you can say to me that would change—”
“I’m afraid of clowns.”
* * *
Oh, God. Now it was out there and Roz had nowhere to hide. She’d blurted out her deepest secret and even worse, she’d done it in the middle of Helene’s shot in the arm for Clown-Around.
Hendrix wasn’t laughing. He should be. There was nothing scary about clowns. Especially not when it was her mother-in-law underneath the makeup. Geez, she’d half thought seeing Helene all dressed up would be the magic bullet to fix all of the crazy going on inside that had only gotten worse the more Roz forced herself to be around the source of her fear.
“Okay.” Hendrix’s beautiful eyes flashed as he removed the coffee from her grip and recaptured her hand. As if he knew that holding her in place was something she desperately needed but didn’t know how to ask for. “That’s not what I thought you were going to say.”
“No, probably not.” Her mouth twisted into a wry smile designed to disguise the fact that she wished she could cry. “I wasn’t expecting me to say it, either. It’s dumb, I know.”
He shook his head fiercely. “No. What’s dumb is that you’re holding all of it inside when I’m here. Tell me what I can do, sweetheart.”
That’s when her heart fluttered so hard that there was no way it could possibly stay behind her rib cage. Now she was feeling light-headed and like she might need a doctor to fix whatever he’d just broken inside her.
“Hold my hand,” she mumbled because what else was she supposed to say when his impassioned statements might loosen her tear ducts after all?