Ross Crawford had swept her off her feet with his practiced flirtations and she had fallen hard and fast. He was a musician, the bass guitarist in a band that had several popular albums out. She had met him on the airplane. His appearance in first class was so different from the one he presented while onstage. He was clean-cut in his khakis and crisp white shirt, his hair neatly cropped, face clean shaven, smile dazzling. He had such charisma, such humor! Onstage he wore ripped jeans, chains, and affected a scruffy three-day growth of beard that he only let grow out before he performed, and long shaggy hair that wasn’t his. She knew the band; it made her laugh to think it was the same man. Abby fell in love with a semifamous rock star and even saw her own face on the cover of a tabloid more than once.
When she met him, Ross had been returning to Los Angeles after being in drug treatment, a secret carefully guarded from the public. But the secret wasn’t that Ross had used drugs, but rather that he’d stopped; there was a certain druggie mystique about rock stars that made them seem more edgy and dangerous, more popular. The fact he was in recovery didn’t deter her from seeing him; she was proud of him. He went to meetings every day and couldn’t talk about anything but his program. His sincerity was riveting. The other guys in the band didn’t use, he said. In fact, they were the ones that did the intervention, demanded the life change if he was going to stay with them. He spoke the gospel; he was clean as a whistle, proven by regular urine tests. He wanted a stable life, a wife, a family, something genuine to come home to.
Abby had married him too quickly because she was with him every day and night anyway. After only a few weeks of marital bliss, Ross was back on tour with the band. The daily phone calls lasted only a couple of weeks and though she could arrange her flying schedule around his tour pretty easily, he told her he was just too busy with the band, rehearsals, travel and grueling performances. But she knew—he started using again right away. She could hear it in his voice—first the slur of alcohol, then the sharp euphoria of cocaine as well. Then he stopped picking up her calls; she went straight to voice mail.
Her own naivete had so embarrassed her that for weeks that turned into months she tried pretending everything was all right, that it was simply difficult being separated while he was on tour with the band. Then his picture started appearing in the media with other women. Then his lawyer called her; she was served papers. Ross had never bothered calling, himself. By the time she gathered with some of her girlfriends at Nikki’s wedding in Grants Pass, everyone knew it had fallen apart long ago and she was faced with their pity. So she had slipped away from the reception before it was over, then out of town first thing in the morning.
A turning point for her had been a night of wonderful love in the arms of a stranger. It had been a complete accident. When he left her in the bar to book a room, she had no intention of spending the night with him. She got up from her table and went to the elevators to go to her own room. But when he saw her there, thinking she was waiting for him, the look on his face was so sweet and sexy, she melted. When he took her hand and pulled her carefully into his arms, the need to be held and treated with love surpassed any common sense she might’ve possessed.
At the time she was glad to have had that night. Something about it showed her that life wasn’t over, that after the divorce was final she might actually find happiness someday. It had been her intention to just go back to work, careful not to allow herself to get close to any flirtatious passengers, and go about the business of recovering from the shattered expectations she had had of love. Then she would start anew. When the divorce and her recovery were complete, she thought she might get in touch with that beautiful stranger and maybe get to know him better.
But in the chilly days of late October, her divorce still not final, she was sitting in her doctor’s office, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I just don’t see how this could have happened. I’ve been on the pill forever and never before…”
Dr. Pollock took her hand in both of his. “I can tell you exactly how,” he said. “You were taking antibiotics for an ear infection and it rendered your oral contraceptive ineffective. Didn’t they warn you about that at the clinic? When they prescribed the antibiotic?”
“They might have,” she said with a sniff. In fact, who knows what they said? There were many colliding facts—one, she had to have something to heal her ears—she was flying after all. When she realized she couldn’t clear her ears without pain and would be on duty in three days, she went to the airline’s outpatient clinic right away. If they’d said anything about her birth control being useless to her, she wouldn’t have given it a thought—she wasn’t making use of her birth control. Her husband was gone; his lawyers had called her every week about that divorce. And then, a handsome young doctor had found her sad and lonely in a hotel bar, bought her a couple of champagne cocktails, led her upstairs and made incredible, unforgettable love to her.