Authors: Kelly Stuart
Love's Awakening
LOVE’S AWAKENING
Kelly Stuart
Love’s Awakening
Copyright © 2012 by Kelly Stuart
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the permission of the author.
Yellow
Zebra
Books
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Book cover design by Melody Simmons
E-book formatting by Maureen Cutajar
Blurb for “Love’s Awakening”
Thirty-year-old Celia Hall is falling in love with a man she dares not pursue, and at exactly the wrong time. Celia knew that life after having her baby would be different, especially since her husband did not love her anymore. But Celia never expected post-baby life to be this difficult. David, her husband of three years, is in a coma that turns into a vegetative state. Oliver, David’s twenty-nine-year-old son, is forced into the awkward position of revealing David’s secrets to Celia.
Celia and Oliver share a perfect, passionate kiss that they cannot stop thinking about. Plus, they can help each other in ways no one else can. They try to build a friendship, but their growing attraction gets in the way. Can Celia and Oliver move past the taboo of their attraction and find their path together?
Table of Contents
Celia Hall sighed, trying not to say her husband’s name, even if it was just in her mind. But she could not help it.
David.
David.
Where
are
you?
There’s
no
excuse.
It’s
10
a.m.!
Their son was five hours old, and the labor had lasted ten hours. So why was David not at the hospital yet? Yeah, he and Celia had fought. And yeah, Celia had accused David of behavior bordering on emotional abuse. She had threatened separation.
But this was a baby, their baby. Maybe Celia was not worth more to David than the plastic crap at Dollar Tree, but the baby was. David getting a hotel room had nothing to do with the child. So why was David not at the hospital yet? Celia and her mother, Lynn Zimmer, had left so many messages on David’s voice mail that it was full. The front desk clerks at the Holiday Inn probably hated Lynn’s raspy ex-smoker’s voice. No one at the law firm had seen or heard from David.
Maybe because the baby had come a couple of weeks early, it had not entered David’s mind that all the messages were about the arrival of their son. Better to believe that than other things.
Celia reached for the picture a nurse had snapped of her and the baby. “For David,” the nurse said with a sympathetic smile. Celia hardly recognized herself. She usually had a perfect part in the middle of her head for the dark hair down to her waist. Not so in the picture. From the neck up, Celia epitomized a classic horror movie damsel in distress, maybe having just fled Freddy or Jason. Manic lurked in her eyes, and her hair struggled to escape its ponytail. Red splotched her cheeks, and sweat shone everywhere on her face. She looked forty-five, not thirty, and her body was a new mother’s funhouse-mirror mixture of willowy and bulge. The photo did not show one of her prettier moments, but her son was worth it. If only she could focus on him and not on the whereabouts of his father.
Celia studied her mother, who cuddled the baby and rocked him. “You’re a good boy, good boy, yes, you are,” Lynn cooed. Celia’s mother was nearing sixty, but years of alcohol abuse, cigarette abuse, and sun worship had accelerated her aging. She was rail thin and possessed a fondness for gaudy jewelry. Today’s necklace centered around a plastic rhinoceros, courtesy of David. The guy sure did know the way to his mother-in-law’s heart.
Lynn met Celia’s eyes. “He’ll come,” Lynn said firmly. Like mother, like daughter. They would not say David’s name to each other, not yet. They would keep it unspoken that something could be gravely wrong.
But things already
were
gravely wrong.
“What the hell,” Celia muttered. Time to say the name out loud. “David doesn’t love me, Mom. Not anymore. We’re done. It’s too exhausting.”
Lynn raised a disapproving eyebrow. “You’ll work it out. Be patient.”
Anger rushed through Celia, and she forced a deep breath.
Calm
down.
The
person
you’re
really
mad
at
is
David.
At least Lynn had come. At least Lynn had been with Celia when the baby was born.
“Oh, David,” Celia muttered. “Where are you?”
Her husband, of all people, was supposed to be different. He was older, fifty-six. He had salt and pepper hair and lines of wisdom crinkling his eyes. David admitted readily that he had used to sleep around but had not for years. He was done sowing his oats. Right? Perhaps not. Celia had no idea anymore what to think. If nothing had happened to David, that meant he was acting like a child, pouting and not coming to the hospital to be with his wife and new baby.
“David loves you,” Lynn persisted. “He does.”
Celia did not answer. No point. Lynn knew squat about romantic relationships. She was a busy bee who found joy in sampling countless flowers. Kind of like Oliver, David’s adult son from his previous marriage. However, Oliver was in a relationship now, if on and off seemingly every other week for one year counted as a relationship.
In any case, David had not slept in the same bed as Celia for the past three weeks. He refused to say why and barely spoke to Celia, except to criticize her or to inquire after the pregnancy. The freeze-out had begun about six months ago with no apparent cause. Was there another woman? David had said no.
David
got
drunk
and
ran
away
with
the
other
woman,
the
mistress.
David’s
been
in
a
car
crash.
David’s
ignoring
me
because
he
thinks
I’m
tiresome.
Because
I
have
crazy
hormones.
David’s
pulling
a
gigantic
April
Fool’s
joke.
How
long
should
I
wait
before
calling
the
police?
I’m
going
to
kill
David.
The door opened. “Hello!” came two excited shouts and a trail of blue balloons. David’s parents. Richard and Shirley had driven the eight hours from Rhode Island to the Inova Fairfax Hospital in northern Virginia.
“Hey!” Celia smiled. David’s parents were good people, and she was glad to see them. Sometimes she had a hard time believing Shirley and Richard were eighty-two years old. They looked more alive, more energetic, than leathery Lynn.
Shirley darted for the blue bundle in Lynn’s lap. “He’s beautiful,” Shirley exclaimed, awe filling her voice.
“He’s the spitting image of David,” Lynn agreed, letting Shirley take him.
Shirley cradled the child. “He has your beautiful blue eyes, Celia.”
Thank
goodness
he
doesn’t
have
Richard’s
ears.
Richard was a beanpole with high, floppy ears. Shirley was her husband’s opposite, plump and barely topping five feet tall. Her hair was mostly white, but a few black skunk-like streaks survived. She and David had brown eyes, but Shirley’s tended toward friendliness, while David’s were almost always intense. No gaudy jewelry for Shirley; she would not be caught dead with a plastic rhino on her chest. Her necklace was pearl, simple and understated. She was from old Providence family money and had married Richard, a poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks.
“What’s the baby’s name?” Richard asked.
Celia shrugged. “I haven’t decided.” She liked the name Brandon for a boy; David liked the name Caleb. The baby was one of the few subjects David talked about with her in more than one-sentence or two-sentence replies. They had been discussing a compromise: Brandon Caleb Hall or Caleb Brandon Hall.
“I called the hotel right before we arrived,” Richard said. “Seems like David hasn’t been back to the room.” Richard did not ask why his son and Celia had been fighting, although the curious lilt of his voice gave his interest away.
“Did we miss Oliver?” Shirley asked.
Celia stifled a snort. David not being at the hospital was unsettling and upsetting. Oliver’s absence, on the other hand, was same old, same old. Celia and Oliver were not close. Oliver’s choice, not hers. Probably the curse of a same-age stepchild. Well, mostly same-age stepchild. Right now, Oliver was twenty-nine, but four months out of the year, they were the same age.
Celia could not resist Shirley’s beaming, expectant face. Shirley wanted good news, and by golly, she would get good news. “Oliver’s coming,” Celia murmured. “He’s out searching for David.” Oliver, like his father, had not answered his cellphone, but Celia would give her stepson the benefit of the doubt.
Be
a
good
stepmother.
The
baby
will
need
his
big
brother,
especially
if
David’s
out
of
the
picture.
*****
Celia’s best friend, Janet, and her husband, Chester, stopped by and threatened to kidnap the baby because he was too adorable for words. Janet and Celia had been friends since their diaper days, and Janet was a big reason Celia had come through the past few months relatively sane.
And then Oliver appeared in the doorway. Celia blinked; could this really be her stepson? Her indifferent stepson deigning to visit her and the baby?
“Door was open,” Oliver mumbled. His voice was slightly off, and if this were just another day, Celia would not have picked up on the tremor in his words. Oliver’s brown hair, which he kept casually tousled, was now a messy bramble thicket. It hung in his eyes and reminded Celia of her own
Nightmare
on
Elm
Street
hair in the picture with the baby.
Celia peered closer at Oliver. Was that a five o’clock shadow? And dirt and grease streaking his hair? Last but not least, why was the lower half of his left arm in a fresh cast?
“Oliver!” Shirley exclaimed. She passed the baby off to Richard and strode to her elder grandson. She placed a delicate hand on the cast and tried to look into Oliver’s avoiding eyes. “Your arm! What happened?”
Oliver muttered something, Celia had no idea what, probably a platitude to tide his grandparents over. He let Shirley brush his hair out of his eyes.
White eyes. Clear eyes. Largely uncommunicative, yes, par for the course when Oliver was around Celia. The main thing: Oliver wasn’t in pieces. He wasn’t distraught. He hadn’t been crying—and surely he would if his father was dead. Other than the cast, Oliver was fine.