The Bride Ran Away

She gritted her teeth, determined not to cry. Weeping over a bodyguard who’d simply done his job would be ludicrous and humiliating.

Yanking the zipper on her jeans as high as it would go, she wrapped herself in her coat, wadded her wedding dress underneath her arm and fled through the nearest marked exit. The frigid night reminded her of Tennessee. The mountains that held Bardill’s Ridge in their safe embrace would be full of mist in the morning.

She yearned to be there.

Because she was sliding on the icy sidewalk, she crunched through the frozen grass, hurrying around the church to her car. She opened the door, tossed in her dress, hitched up her jeans and climbed in.

How many times had Gran asked her to work at the “baby farm,” a clinic and spa for pregnant women who wanted time out and pampering before they delivered their babies? Sophie had always resisted. Though she loved her family, she’d wanted to be the only Calvert she knew, not a minor member of the teeming crowd.

What had she been trying to prove? She shivered, planting one frozen hand between her thighs as she used the other to insert the key in the car’s ignition. Her baby needed family—not a dutiful father, but a family whose special gift was unstinting love.

She stared at the church doors as her car shuddered to life and her breath hung in the icy air. She could deliver a baby one-handed in the middle of a typhoon. She always carried a well-stocked medical bag in her car, but she knew nothing about raising a child. Maybe she needed family, too.

Time to see if Gran still wanted an OB/GYN who had no idea how she’d managed to get herself pregnant.

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE MORNING Sophie forced herself to stop and rethink her next move. Getting pregnant had taught her everything she needed to know about following impulses.

Two weeks passed while she considered the consequences of staying and of going home to her family.

She used her caller ID to screen Ian’s calls. He showed up at her office one cool evening, and she brushed past him. He waited on the porch at her town house that same night for twenty minutes before he gave up. He’d broken her trust, and she refused to forgive him.

She wasn’t proud of her own behavior. One slip, a lie that even she could see he’d meant for the best, and she felt justified in taking their baby far away. Maybe a more trusting woman would be able to meet Ian halfway, but she had to assume that lying for a good reason might be something he did as a habit.

Her longing for the people she could depend on grew with each hour.

She’d felt safe in Bardill’s Ridge. Her family interfered, but they knew when to back off and when to race to the rescue. And they understood moderation. No one threw away their own lives and freedom—as Ian had been so damn anxious to do.

Still, she made no effort to see a lawyer to end her marriage. She blamed her lethargy on total exhaustion. A pregnant woman couldn’t deliver a patient’s baby at three in the morning and then rush out to arrange a divorce before her office hours began.

Another lie. If she really wanted the divorce, she’d find the energy.

She hardly felt married. When the certificate arrived in her mailbox, she tossed it into the rubbish bin before she remembered she might need it to break her legal bond to Ian.

At the beginning of her third week of married life, the baby moved. That first little flutter gave her plenty of energy and a reminder that she wasn’t on her own anymore. That had her deciding on her next move.

She rearranged her patient schedules, and while she was at it, brought up the topic of taking over her patients for good with the colleagues who had agreed to fill in for her.

Next step—talk to Gran. She dialed, and the receptionist immediately answered.

“The Mom’s Place. May I help you?”

“Leah, this is Sophie Calvert.” She cleared her throat of its nervous vibration. “I’d like to make an appointment with Gran.”

“I’ll put you through.”

“No.” She tried to stop Leah, but too late.

“What’s wrong, Sophie?” her grandmother asked. “Are you ill?”

“Not at all, but I need your undivided attention for an hour or so.”

“Here? At my office, I mean.” Her grandmother’s tongue clicked. “Something’s wrong or you wouldn’t have asked for an appointment. Tell me before I imagine the worst.”

“Don’t imagine anything. I just need advice.” She didn’t want to discuss the possibility of working with Gran over the phone. “Don’t mention it to Dad, okay?”

“Sure. Ethan won’t be mad at me if I hide the fact you’re coming home.”

Sophie laughed. “I’m depending on you. Will you send me back to Leah, and tell her when you’ll have an hour free?”

Two days later she flew to Knoxville, rented a car and drove into the blue-and-green Smoky Mountains beneath a bright sun. Up here spring was slower to take hold. At the baby farm, she climbed out, sniffing the faint sharp scents of young honeysuckle and azalea. Their slightly spicy fragrances sat well with her iffy stomach. That had to be a good omen.

Sophie tucked her hands into the hem of the sweater that had felt too warm in Knoxville but disguised her pregnancy nicely. She mounted the granite steps that led to the resort’s entrance. Overhead, tall pines swayed against their maple and oak neighbors, rustling in hushed whispers.

A group of six young women were sprawled in chairs around a sunny table on the terrace, listening to a lecture on quadratic equations. The fees paid by customers who came here looking for extra care, or maybe just time off to pamper themselves during their pregnancies, went to help local teenagers who found themselves in trouble with no real support systems. These girls studying math on the wide cobbled patio would attend college if Greta Calvert had any say about it.

Now that her gran had her mitts on them, these young women were like part of the family.

Inside the glass-fronted lobby, Sophie waved at Leah, who nodded toward Gran’s office. Sophie took courage from her own determined footsteps on the polished granite floor. She knocked at the door, nervous for the first time in her life about facing Gran.

She’d have to tell her family about the baby soon. She glanced through the glass at the outdoor math class. She didn’t have to worry about being disowned, but no one would be pleased at her stupidity.

Had Ian told his parents? She pushed the question out of her mind. The answer was no longer her business, and she couldn’t afford to think of him. She had to get her own life back on track.

“Sophie, is that you?”

Just hearing Gran’s voice made her happy. After turning the knob, she leaned around the door and smiled. Her heart swelled and her throat felt too tight to speak. She searched the shadowy room for the vigorous mainstay of her life. “Gran?”

A white-haired woman with a desk as tidy as her pragmatic approach to life put her telephone back into its cradle and hurried through the slashes of sunlight across the thick carpet.

With arms outstretched, Greta Calvert uttered a sound that resembled a sob. Sophie choked back tears of her own as she stepped into her grandmother’s hug. Gran would love her no matter how big a mess she’d made.

“Honey, honey…” Greta Calvert sang and cried. Holding on to Gran’s deceptively frail body, Sophie let the tears fall for the first time since her wedding.

Everything in the room told her she was home. Her father had built Gran’s desk more than twenty years ago. The pictures marching side by side on its glowing honey-colored surface, stacked in lines up and down the walls, slotted unsteadily in corners on the bookshelves, offered a history of Calvert family endeavors. Graduations and baptisms, weddings and rowdy conversation shared across crowded dinner tables. Sophie scanned them all, swimming in memories, hearing echoes of the stories her dad and aunts and uncles told.

Gran kept every gift given to her in love, wildflowers, now dried, her resort guests had collected on their walks up the ridge, and paintings the Calvert grandchildren had done. She even stored pens and pencils in a clay mug Sophie had made in Girl Scouts.

As Sophie composed her emotions, Gran leaned back. Surprisingly tall, she met Sophie eye-to-eye. Her affection eased Sophie’s second thoughts.

Everything would be okay. She’d made a couple of dumbfounding mistakes, but Gran had heard stranger stories, and she possessed an unlimited capacity for love. Where Gran forgave, so would the rest of the Calverts.

“Tell me your deep, dark secret, Sophie,” Gran said teasingly, as if she didn’t believe it could be anything serious.

Just that quickly Sophie got scared. Gran had always known when she’d sneaked an extra cookie or waded in icy streams before winter left the mountains, but a baby put such trivial things as cookies and wet jeans in perspective.

Best get to the point. “Are you still open to having me join you in practice here?”