Capturing the Single Dad’s Heart by Kate Hardy Page B

who’s actually in the wheelchair then I outrank her in the validity of my opinion.’
    â€˜And the political journalist goes back into using long words and a fancy sentence structure,’ she teased, wanting him to change the subject.
    â€˜Erin.’ He took her hand. ‘When are you going to forgive yourself, sweetheart?’
    She couldn’t answer that. Mainly because she was pretty sure the answer was ‘never’.
    â€˜Look at you. Think how many lives you’ve made a real difference to at work,’ Mikey pointed out. ‘If I hadn’t had the accident, you might not have become a doctor, let alone a neurologist. The way you were going when you were fifteen, you might have ended up drifting from dead-end job to dead-end job, never settling to anything for long.’
    She knew he was right, but she still thought that the price had been too high. And the fact that he’d been the one to pay it was unacceptable.
    â€˜And,’ he added gently, ‘you might have been the mother of a thirteen-year-old yourself right now—which is another reason why I think you’re stepping in to help. This girl is the child you could’ve had.’
    â€˜Mikey, I’m not trying to replace the baby. I came to terms with the miscarriage a long time ago. And you and I both know I was too young anyway to be a mum, back then. I wouldn’t have given my daughter a good life.’
    Her little girl.
    Would her daughter have looked like her? Would she have had the same unruly fair hair, the same dusting of freckles across her nose? Would they have clashed as badly as Erin and her own mother did, or would they have been friends as well as mother and daughter?
    When she’d first realised she was pregnant, Erin had been horrified, unable to believe it was true. She’d gone into denial about it and pretended it wasn’t happening until her best friend had found her crying in the toilets and taken her home to talk to her mother—and Rachel had really helped her come to terms with it and see that the baby was maybe a gift, a chance to have the parent-child relationship she didn’t have with her own parents. Losing that had devastated Erin; once she’d accepted the idea of being pregnant, she’d planned to put her child first, to give her child a feeling of importance and security that she’d never had herself.
    It had taken a lot of hard work for her to come to terms with the miscarriage and realise that maybe it was her own second chance, and she could turn her life around.
    â€˜You don’t know for sure that it would’ve gone wrong,’ Mikey said, ‘and things are never that clear-cut. Yes, having the miscarriage meant that you could go on to concentrate on your studies instead of having to drop out; but at the same time you missed out on having a child. I think you’re still missing out, because you don’t let anyone close enough to date you for more than a couple of months, and settling down really doesn’t seem on the cards for you.’
    She suppressed the ache. ‘Maybe. But be honest about it, Mikey. Relationships don’t work for me.’
    â€˜Because you don’t give them a chance.’
    She scoffed. ‘You and Rachel are the only people who’ve ever been there for me. And look what I did to you.’
    â€˜I was the one driving,’ he reminded her, ‘and it was an accident. Have you told this Nate guy what happened?’
    She shook her head. ‘He knows you had an accident, but he doesn’t know it was my fault.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘And he doesn’t know about the baby.’ She never talked about the baby to anyone nowadays—except when her brother made her talk about it.
    â€˜The accident wasn’t your fault,’ Mikey said again, ‘but maybe you should tell him what happened, and he can make you see that.’
    â€˜Or he might run a mile in the