Chapter One

      “Be careful, Molly. Dr. Reynolds’s bite is worse than his bark.”

      I spun around to see my friend Lissy Franklin hurry past me pushing a med cart. “Tiptoe softly,” Lissy mouthed before turning into one of the birthing rooms on the third floor of the Bradshaw Medical Center.

      I took a deep breath and recalled all I’d heard about Dr. Reynolds in the few short weeks he’s been at Bradshaw General. It isn’t pretty, at least not from my professional perspective.

      He’s a great ob-gyn physician, no doubt about that. His reputation preceded him from his former position at a large hospital in California. He’s only been practicing medicine in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul for three months and already women are booked weeks in advance to be his patients. I, however, hadn’t had a client who was his patient until today.

      He’s cute, too. Gorgeous, actually, with dark hair, impossibly blue eyes and a trim physique that, it’s rumored, comes from running and working out two hours a day. Where a doctor gets time like that, I don’t know, but maybe it helps take the edge off his temper. It’s his personality that gets low points from all the nurses. He demands perfection and settles for nothing less. Felicity, or Lissy as I usually call her, says he can make them cry with a look.

      Maybe not all the rumors are true. Fortunately, at least one of my personal experiences with him has belied that opinion.

      “I’m so glad you agreed to come to this visit with me,” new mother Tiffany Franks had told me several weeks ago as we sat together in the waiting room of her pediatrician’s office. “I didn’t want to go to the baby’s first doctor visit alone. My husband said he couldn’t take time away from work and no one else was available. I’m still so nervous with the baby.” The baby in question was a solid sleepy lump in my lap, hardly a reason for Tiffany’s anxiety.

      A week or two of experience would resolve that. “The doctor will tell you little Max looks great and you will feel a hundred percent better in no time.”

      We were examining Max’s chins—all four of them—when a man strode into the office and up to the receptionist’s desk. “Is Dr. Harley in?”

      The receptionist looked up at him and her eye-lashes began to flutter like hummingbird wings. “Why…uh…who?”

      “Dr. Harley,” the insanely handsome Dr. Reynolds said. “Your boss?”

      “Oh, yes.” She blushed. “Do you have an appointment?”

      “Do I look like I should?” he snapped impatiently as he opened his hands to show that there was no baby in them.

      His legs, however, told a different story. A blond toddler with lemonade curls and sapphire-blue eyes had glommed onto his left leg. She held her teddy bear in one hand and clung to his calf with the other. On his right leg, a little boy proceeded to run a Matchbox car up and down as if his expensive trousers were a vertical racetrack. Two or three other children were creeping closer to get a good look at the man.

      “I’ve never seen anything like it!” Tiffany whispered. “He’s like the Pied Piper. The children don’t seem to have any fear of him at all.”

      He appeared accustomed to being a human jungle gym.

      “I’m Dr. Reynolds,” he told the starstruck receptionist. “We’ll be working closely since I deliver babies and he picks up where I leave off. I need to talk with him.” His words were clipped.

      “Of course. I’ll just…” The woman’s voice trailed off. She seemed to have lost track of her job description under his expectant and impatient gaze.