The Promise (Thunder Point #5)(69)

“Bullshit! I’ve seen you at work in my practice with women who jeopardize their lives with pregnancy because of their cardiac condition! I’ve seen you!”

“No, you haven’t,” she said coolly. It was true, they’d had the rare patient who couldn’t survive a full-term pregnancy, and neither could the fetus. It was an awful situation, one rife with heartbreak. “My patients get the facts, the best information I have, but I would never force anyone to make a decision that they’d always regret. Not even if it threatened their life—that’s not my decision. It’s the patient’s decision. Krissy could be irreparably damaged by being forced to do something she’s violently opposed to. It could be harder for her to recover from that than from early motherhood. Besides, there are other options. There’s adoption. There’s even open adoption. Oh, Ted, talk to your daughter.”

“That’s her mother’s job!”

“It’s also yours!” she shouted. Suddenly she realized her forehead had broken out in a sweat, and she wiped it with her palm. “Listen, Ted, I can’t help you. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t help you. Krissy has never listened to a thing I’ve said. She hates me. If she doesn’t actually hate me, she definitely resents me. I would be of no use to you. You’re on your own.”

She walked past him, heading for the clinic.

“Peyton, please,” he said. “Please. There isn’t anyone else to ask.”

She slowly turned back. “Yes, Ted. There are lots of people to ask. Call an OB. Maybe a women’s health NP. Tell them what you’re up against and ask for some real high-end counseling. Explain you’re divorced, a single father, you’re up a creek and you don’t know how to help your fifteen-year-old daughter, but you need to hear all the options. If you can’t think of anyone, ask the triage nurse in your practice—she’s very savvy. She can point you in the right direction. But don’t come back here and ask me. When all I wanted in the world was to love you and your kids, none of you cared. You didn’t help. You didn’t support me, and then you betrayed my trust.” She started walking again, then she turned back toward him. “My God, did you really think I’d go back to your practice and your house?”

“I hoped,” he said.

“Ted, why did you fight for joint custody when you and Olivia divorced?”

“Don’t make this about my divorce! I’ve always loved my kids!”

“I think you really believe that, but you’ve never spent time with them. You never gave up a golf game to be with them.”

“I worked like a bloody slave to make sure they had everything they needed, that they’d have a decent school, a good house, a college savings....”

“That’s all money. Most of my college was paid for by scholarship. I also worked and saved. Did you think I’d take care of your office, your three kids, your new baby and a grandchild? Did you?”

He didn’t answer right away. “You have no idea how much I need you.”

“And here I thought you loved me,” she said softly.

“I do love you! I’ve always loved you! I tried to show it.”

“Why didn’t I know this about you?” she asked in a soft voice. “I thought you at least loved your kids in your own clumsy, inadequate way. I thought you were just too permissive, but you just couldn’t be bothered.” She shook her head. “Those poor kids. They’re going to be such a mess, and they have nowhere to turn.”

“You could help,” he said. “I’ll do anything you say.”

She shook her head. “I can’t help you. Ted, I don’t love you.”

“You did once,” he argued. “You could love me again.”

“No. I can’t manufacture that just because it’s what you want.”

“We could try one more time.”

“No,” she said firmly. “What you have to do is admit your mistakes, live with them and take responsibility.”

“What is it you think I’m doing?”

“Trying to get someone else to take up your responsibility, that’s what you seem to be doing. As usual.”

She put her hands in the pockets of her sweater and, head down, she went back to the clinic. The whole situation made her heart hurt. They were doomed unless someone helped them, and it certainly couldn’t be her—no one in that entire family cared for her or respected her enough to even take her seriously. But left in her wake was a man she had deluded herself into thinking had really loved her, and a teenage girl facing the biggest crisis of her young life. It was crushing.

The fact that there was nothing she could have done didn’t make it any less painful. Or maybe the worst was that she’d thought herself so smart, so perceptive and intuitive that a man like Ted couldn’t get anything by her. Yet he had. She’d never seen it coming.

When she got to the clinic, she found Mac McCain and Eric Gentry standing in front, ogling the midnight-blue Lamborghini parked there. Eric had a reputation as one of the best classic car restorers in the Pacific Northwest. And Mac’s office was the clinic’s next-door neighbor.

“Hey, Peyton,” Mac said.

“Hey, Mac. Hey, Eric.”

“Peyton, this here’s a Lamborghini,” Mac said.