Page 3 of Silver Fox's Secret Baby

"I told you. It was a mistake." I squared my shoulders and awaited my punishment, praying for Lily's sake that it wasn't that bad. There were loopholes in the policy that allowed the board room for leniency, but I didn’t think we'd get any, judging by the expression on Allen's face.

"Well, your mistake has cost you." He sat back down and unbuttoned his jacket as he did so. Then he picked up a manilla file folder from the table in front of him and opened it. The thick gray mustache resting on his upper lip twitched as he read from the file. "Dr. Matthews, you are on probation. You will report directly to Dr. Hastings in all matters. She will oversee your practice for the next six months. Your pay will be docked twenty percent for the duration of your probation, and any further infraction will be grounds for termination."

So they weren't going for the jugular, at least not with me. But I knew Lily was vulnerable. Being a resident, she was held to the highest standard. The hospital wouldn't employ doctors who couldn't follow rules, and most of them were weeded out during residency to avoid more problems when they had larger salaries and practices.

"Dr. Carter, you're fired." Allen slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose and looked at Lily over them. I had to force myself not to look, especially when she started crying. "Youmight think long and hard about your life choices before signing up for a residency anywhere else. What you do in your formative years of medicine follows you the rest of your career. You can't afford to make poor choices like the one you made with Dr. Matthews. You're dismissed—both of you."

Lily turned abruptly and walked out, and I followed on her heels. With her being terminated, we'd be free to pursue our relationship now without the struggle, though I didn’t know where she'd get a job now. I wasn't celebrating that, though, because I knew how difficult it would be for her and what this would mean for her career going forward.

When we were back in the hallway, I reached for her hand and she yanked it away. "Don't touch me." Lily sobbed and covered her mouth as she walked right up to a trash can and threw up. It was hard watching her hurt so desperately. I held her hair back for her through the worst of it, and she smacked my hand away when she took a breath. "I said don't touch me."

A nurse pushed her med cart past us and gave me an odd look, but I didn't care. Right now, Lily was the only thing that mattered.

"Listen, I'm here. We can talk now." My chest was tight and my mind was racing. She'd been upset with me before, but never like this. Never upset enough to push me away.

"Talk now? You mean after you called me a mistake?" She straightened and swiped across her face with the sleeve of her lab coat before tearing it off and throwing it in the trash can, covering her vomit.

"Please… Lily, a one-time thing doesn't look as bad to the board. If we'd been honest about?—"

"If we'd been honest, I'd have said I was in love with you and that I wanted a family with you. I wouldn't have called you a mistake." She turned and stormed up the hall, and I chased after her.

"Could you please listen to me?" I grabbed her hand, and she spun around and with her other hand, she smacked me hard across the face.

Her entire body shook with anger and emotion. "Was it ever real, Ethan? Did you really mean it when you said you loved me, or was that a mistake too?" The rage in her tone coupled with the pain in her eyes had me speechless. I fumbled for words, uttering unintelligible words until she was in the elevator on her way down to the ground floor.

I stood there staring at the closed elevator doors wondering what the heck just happened. We were so happy last week, so in love. I was going to ask her to move in with me and eventually to be my wife, and now it felt like I was losing her entirely. I pressed the elevator call button furiously, hoping to catch the next box down, but the light stayed lit, the elevator doors shut.

So I ran. Nurses looked at me oddly, and one orderly with a mop bucket cursed at me as I raced past, but I ran to the stairwell and downward. I had to catch her before she left. I didn’t want her driving home on icy roads as angry as she was. Denver was a bear in winter, and she wasn't thinking clearly right now.

I'd been a fool. I'd used my own anger at the situation as a barrier between me and my emotions, and Lily had been the one to pay for it. I hated myself for that. But by the time I got down to the ground floor and back to the main entrance, I saw her tail lights as her car pulled out of the parking lot. She was really angry this time. I'd really done it. I stood there watching the red of her taillights fade into the bleakness of a gloomy winter morning, wishing there were a way for me to undo what had been done. I only prayed that when I called her, she would answer.

3

LILY

Ihovered over the trash can in my parents' kitchen wishing this nausea would go away. I'd been dealing with it for weeks, knowing in my gut what it meant. I just hadn’t had the courage to take the test to confirm it. Though, I had purchased one.

"Honey, you get yourself so worked up." Mom was there, holding my hair up and rubbing my back as my stomach emptied itself for the second time today. I hadn’t spoken to Ethan since the board meeting on Monday morning and now, being Thursday afternoon, I still had no intention of returning his calls.

"Tissue," I grunted, and Mom left my side. When she returned, she had the box of tissues from the living room in hand. She pulled a few out and handed them to me, and I blew my nose and wiped my face clean. She was a smart woman. She'd figure it out soon enough, but even still, I couldn't face that thought. If I was pregnant, I was doing it alone, and that hurt. Almost as much as Ethan's words in front of the board.

"I can't believe I'm fired, Mom. I needed that job so badly." I tossed the tissues into the trash and slogged over to the dining room table and sat down. Not even the view of the Rockies outthe kitchen's picture window could cheer me up, and I'd been missing this view since I took that residency on the other side of Denver last summer. Despite only being three hours away, it seemed like worlds apart from my parents’ place.

"I know, honey, but you'll find something soon." Mom sat with me, carrying her cup of tea, the smell of which was what had triggered the vomiting, not the emotion like Mom thought.

Her warm brown eyes were compassionate as she touched my hand softly and smiled. "You're a brilliant woman, Lilian. Any place would be lucky to have you."

Dad offered to pull some strings and help me get into a good residency here, but I didn't want favors. I wanted to do this on my own, the way all other doctors did. It was bad enough that I was back under their roof at the age of twenty-five. I felt useless and desperate.

"I just can't believe he said I was a mistake." The tears welled up again as I thought of the tone of Ethan's voice when he told the board chairman that. It was a hot knife in my chest that I still couldn't pull out. How could he call me a mistake? After everything we'd done together, the way he told me he loved me and the way we dreamed about a future together. I deserved better than that. I deserved an explanation, but I didn’t even want one. It wouldn’t matter. It hurt too badly to hear the first time.

"You deserve someone who doesn’t have any doubts about you or your future. Someone who will fight for you in difficult situations. Lily, it sounds like maybe this Ethan fellow just isn’t the right one for you." She patted my hand then squeezed it, and I felt my stomach knot up again.

Ethan was the perfect man for me. I loved everything about him. We had an ease to the relationship that most people never had. We almost never argued, but when we did, we were able to step back and talk rationally when it was over. We could talkeasily for hours about anything. He made me laugh, and I made him happy, or at least I thought I did. Until he called me a mistake.

"Yeah…" I agreed numbly with Mom's words, but up until Friday, I'd have said Ethan was that man who had no doubts about me. Now, I didn’t know if I'd ever know when a man was being truthful with me again.

Everything changed the instant Dr. Hayward walked in on us. Ethan had been overly cautious the whole relationship, and I knew why. He told me he was afraid something like this would happen, that one of us would be fired. But now I knew deep down that he was just ashamed of his "mistake". It made me question whether any of the past nine months with him were even real or if he'd just been stringing me along for the amazing sex.

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