Daddy By Choice. Paula Detmer Riggs
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But as a man who’s got an empty space the size of Crater Lake in his belly, I’m wondering how long it’ll take you to decide on dinner.”
Those sexy green eyes darted a quick look at his midsection. He nearly sucked in his gut, before he caught himself. He was in some fairly major trouble here, he realized. Wantin’ to show off for the lady like the conceited fool he’d been at eighteen. Block it out, Jarrod, he told himself firmly. The lady was his patient. Only his patient.
“Oh, right, dinner, then conversation,” she said, stepping back. “Please come in while I get myself together.” She turned away, leaving him to close the door.
“How’s Mrs. Gregory?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. No longer sleepy, her eyes were dark with what looked like genuine concern. He liked that about her, he decided, the fact that she could step outside her own anxiety to care about a woman she’d never met. He liked it a lot.
“She’s holding her own,” he told her with a smile. “The next twenty-four hours are crucial.”
“But she has a chance?”
“She has a chance.”
Relief bled into her eyes, but there were still shadows. Bad memories, he thought, the kind he’d never been able to shuck for all his trying. “And…and the baby?”
“A little boy, four pounds, six ounces. He has a chance, too.” He hoped she didn’t ask him how good a chance.
“Was the daddy…where was the little boy’s daddy?”
“Last word I got he was on his way home from a business trip to L.A.” He lifted a hand to scrub some of the tiredness from his face. The past two days were starting to catch up with him. “Turns out the elderly man who hit her had a heart attack. His chances ran out on Powell Street.”
A fleeting expression of sorrow crossed her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” He shifted his weight to his good leg. The numbness hadn’t returned, but the ache left behind refused to ease. “I, uh, figured we could eat in the dining room downstairs, if that’s all right.”
“Fine.”
She started to turn away, then swung around with a taunting swish of silk to look at him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. “I don’t remember giving you my room number.”
“You didn’t. I got it from the desk clerk.”
“They do that in Oregon? Just give out a room number to anyone who asks?”
“Not in the Mallory they don’t, so don’t be worrying yourself.”
“But you just said they gave it to you.”
“I told the desk clerk I was checking on a patient.”
Skepticism filled her eyes. “And she believed you? Just like that?”
“Actually I delivered a baby here once. On the third floor. A tourist from Japan who’d been too polite to call for help until it was almost too late. I was just leaving the restaurant when the desk clerk got the call and started yelling. Same one’s on duty tonight and she remembered me.”
Her expression cleared. “Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself in my case.”
“Just remember not to worry about calling for help, even if you’re not sure you need it. Us doctor types would rather handle things in a well-equipped hospital than a hotel room. Makes us real nervous when it’s a room-service waiter passing the instruments.”
She choked a laugh. “I’ll make a note.”
Since she hadn’t invited him to sit down, he checked around for something sturdy enough to lean against while he waited.
“How long has it been since you slept?” she asked, studying his face.
He shrugged. “Baby docs learn to sleep in snatches.”
“In that case why don’t you grab a quick nap while I shower?”
Luke glanced at the bed, still made but a little rumpled from her nap. The idea of shutting down for a few minutes was nearly irresistible. “Better not. I’ve been known to crash hard when I’m this tired, and I still have rounds to make tonight.”
“At least sit down and rest. I won’t be long,” she said before disappearing into the bathroom with another maddening swirl of silk against sleek calves. An instant later he heard the rush of water through the pipes in the connecting wall.
Feeling as though he was strangling, Luke managed to lower his aching bones to the mattress, found the remote and turned on the TV. After surfing until he found a Mariners game, he eased to his side, bunched the pillow she used under his head and set his mental alarm for fifteen minutes. Between one breath and another his mind simply shut down.
Through the closed door Madelyn heard the indistinct sounds of a baseball game on TV as she unzipped the small brocade bag containing her jewelry. She had one pearl drop affixed to her lobe and was searching for its companion when she heard the muffled ringing of the phone by the bed.
Muttering a curse, she hurried from the bathroom in her stocking feet. Luke was asleep, sprawled on his belly with his scarred boots hanging over the edge of the bed and his head turned toward the TV. His long arms were wrapped around the pillow, his cheek half-buried in the soft foam. His corners of his mouth were still tense, however. And his black brows were drawn together in a frown, as though something in the fathomless void of sleep was troubling him.
She managed to snatch up the phone on the third ring. He didn’t move. Turning away, she whispered an impatient hello into the receiver.
“Madelyn? Is that you?” Her ex-husband’s voice carried the strident edge of irritation that had become far too familiar.
“Wiley, how’d you get this number?”
“From your mama. She also told me you were consulting a specialist, but then, you always did overreact.”
She glanced over her shoulder, her stomach knotting. Only Doc and her best friend Emily Weldon knew the name of the man she’d come to see. The last thing she needed right now was another scandal. “What do you want, Wiley?”
“Simply to complete the dissolution of a marriage that’s become intolerable for both of us.”
Madelyn closed her eyes and used her free hand to rub at the pinprick of pain in her right temple that invariably exploded into a full-blown headache whenever Wiley started in on her. “Intolerable,” she repeated in a low tone. “Yes, I suppose it is now.”
It hadn’t been so intolerable when he’d come to her every Saturday night for an hour of regimented sex that had left her feeling more and more lonely and unsatisfied, however. Or when she’d nursed him through a battle with lung cancer, holding the basin as he retched after surgery and emptying bedpans because he was too modest to ask the nurse. No, good old Wiley hadn’t found her intolerable then. Shaking with hurt and a healthy dollop of disgust at the loyalty she’d shown a man who so clearly had none for her, she stiffened her spine and took a bracing breath.
“All right, Wiley. I’ll get an attorney. We’ll work out a settlement.”
“No need. Judge Berdette and I have already worked out the details.”
“I’ll just bet you have.”
“The judge was my father’s best friend before Daddy passed on to his heavenly reward, as you well know, and as such has always looked out for the best interests of the Foster family.”
When had the stability she’d valued so much in Wiley Roy turned to a really ugly stuffiness? she wondered.
“Perhaps you’d better explain the details of this settlement.”
“I suppose I must.” His voice was perilously close to a whine. “I’ll deed my share of