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Contents:
Prologue
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Epilogue
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Prologue
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It was hotter than hell the day Luke Jarrod returned to West Texas. Overhead the merciless sun beat down on the cab of his truck, while inside the air conditioner blasted ice from the vents.
Slouched behind the wheel, his eyes gritty from too little sleep and his shoulders stiff from too many hours driving without a break, Luke was sweating like a bridegroom with a .12-gauge shotgun at his backbone. Which was real appropriate, considerin' he was about to become a daddy at eighteen.
It scared him some to think of his Maddy girl having a baby, her being so tiny and all. And only seventeen. Too damn young to know better, so he should have.
It had been opening day of the Whiskey Bend Stampede at the county fairgrounds when he'd first laid eyes on her. A bunch of ROTC kids from Whiskey Bend High School had been bringing in the flag, just like every other rodeo in every other town he'd seen that season. Strung tight and desperate for prize money to keep himself in tacos and his cutting horse, Cochise, in oats, he'd been standing with the more seasoned competitors in the dusty ring with his hand over his heart, watching the chicks twirling batons when his buddy Buck Mehan had dug an elbow into his ribs.
"Son," he said, "were I ten years younger I'd be all over that little yeller-haired darlin' in the third row, the one swishing all that glorious hair like there was no tomorrow. Man could die happy did he belong to her."
Luke had never wanted to belong to anyone. Belonging meant obligations and responsibilities, two things he'd avoided for as long as he could remember. But one look at those slinky tanned legs and tight little butt sashaying past him, her itty-bitty skirt swishing this way and that, and he'd fallen about as hard as a man can fall without cracking wide open.
Her name was Madelyn Sue Smith, and she'd been flat-out adorable, her crazy little cat's face lit with excitement and her eyes full of spirit. It had been high noon, and the sun had coated her honey-colored hair with shimmering gold. He'd never seen hair like hers, bunches of tousled curls all the way to her shoulders. It had been prettier than a palomino's coat, which was just about the prettiest thing he'd ever seen. When they'd been together, he'd spent hours running his hands through all that glorious stuff.
Lord help him, he hadn't intended to let things get out of hand. But she'd been so sweet, and her smile had taken the edge off the sadness that had plagued him from the moment his mother had abandoned him when he was only nine, taking the baby sister he adored and leaving him to cope with his father's bitter rages.
His body stirred at the memory of the stolen hours they'd spent together in a cheap motel room near the fairgrounds. That last night he'd bought her flowers—white carnations with petals almost as silky as her skin—and made sure the sheets had been clean. She'd been a virgin, and he'd tried to be gentle.
A thousand times he'd played back that scene, the teasing flick of her tongue against his, the purr of need in her throat. The adoration and trust in her eyes when she'd told him she loved him. A thousand times these past eight months he'd taken out that memory, hoarding each flash of those river green eyes, each dimpled smile, the soft little huff of wonder when she'd explored his body for the first time. When she'd finally worked up the courage to touch him, he'd damn near come right up off the bed.
For the first time since quittin' school at sixteen to join the junior circuit, he'd been reluctant to move on. Especially when she'd cried and clung to him like there was no tomorrow.
I'll write every day, she'd promised between frantic kisses. And she had at first, four letters for every one of his, telling him over and over how much she missed him—and how she couldn't wait for him to come back when the season was over with the engagement ring he'd promised.
The more she wrote about them getting married, the tenser he'd become. Hell, he'd just gotten old enough to drink legal in a few enlightened states. The last thing he wanted was a noose around his neck. Thing was, though, he'd promised, and like his old man always said, a Jarrod never broke a promise.
Bent a few, though. And it wasn't like he'd been real specific about when the season ended.
What with one thing and another, he'd started looking for reasons to put off goin' back. Things like not havin' enough money to support a wife. Or even the prospect of a steady job. Hell, he had no education to speak of. Nothing but a talent for stayin' glued to the back of a raging tornado in horseflesh for the eight seconds it took to put money in his jeans.
Since his father had remarried and started another family, he didn't even have a home to offer her—not a real one, anyway. So he kept puttin' off that long drive back to Texas. As the months rolled by, there'd been other dusty towns and inevitably, other girls. Soon he'd been impatiently scrawling a few lines on a postcard. And finally he'd stopped writing altogether.
So had she—eventually—which was why he'd been so surprised to see the letter waiting for him at his daddy's ranch outside Wickenburg. Damn thing had followed him halfway around the country—Canada, too—forwarded so many times the envelope had been raggedy and smudged.
All the way from Arizona he'd been picturing her with a big belly. The more he'd thought about it, the more awestruck he'd become. That sweet girl was havin' his baby. His. It humbled him as much as it scared him.
Sweat beaded under the band of his dress Stetson hat as he made the left turn that would take him to her place. What was done was done, he told himself as he pulled into the driveway of the ugly brown house. He'd had his fun. Now it was time to pay the piper.
But as he climbed down from the truck and straightened his shoulders, he realized he was glad she was pregnant. Maybe it wasn't the best way to start out a lifetime with his lady, but he'd make it work. If it took him a lifetime, he was determined to show her just how much he loved her. His Maddy girl.
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Chapter 1
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Twenty-two years later
"I don't mean to frighten you unnecessarily, Maddy Sue, but I wouldn't be doing my duty as your doctor if I didn't lay out the worst-case scenario."
Sixty-seven-year-old Dr. Horace Austin Morrow had been Madelyn Smith Foster's doctor from the moment she was born. Or, more precisely, from the moment of her conception, as he liked to tease with a twinkle in those still-bright blue eyes whenever she was being mulish.
Madelyn trusted him implicitly. She also loved him like the father she should have had. She liked to think he cared deeply for her, as well. Certainly he had stood by her when almost everyone else in her life had turned against her.
After Luke had broken her heart, she'd cried on Doc's broad shoulder so many times she'd come to associate the smell of his starched lab coat with fathomless sorrow. When Doc had haltingly told her that the odds of her ever becoming pregnant were too minuscule to measure, she'd collapsed in those strong arms, sobbing until she was empty inside.
Five months ago, when he'd given her the astounding news that she'd beaten those odds and had actually conceived, she'd also cried in his arms. From joy this time. But now…
"You said I just had a small cyst, that it was nothing to be concerned about." Her voice was a thread, pushed past the sudden constriction in her throat.
"Actually it's more like a benign tumor. Folks generally call these things fibroids, but the correct medical term is myoma."
Instinctively her hand went to her tummy where the fragile little soul she already adored was curled into a warm ball under her heart. "You mean I … I could lose this baby?"
"It's possible, honey. These here myomas are like W
est Texas weather—real unpredictable. Sometimes the weatherman forecasts a big old tornado, and all we get is a piddling little blow. On the other hand it only makes sense to duck on down to the cellar when you see the warning signs."
Madelyn bit her lip, her gaze fixed on the fuzzy black-and-white image of her child in the ultrasound photo. Along the curve of her uterus was a black smudge, more like a thickening than her idea of a tumor. Certainly it didn't look menacing, at least not to her untrained eye. However, the dark shadow was bigger in this photo than the one taken a month earlier, which Doc claimed was a big old red flag.
"Would you mind going over the possible … complications again, please?" she asked when he remained silent, his homely face set in somber lines.
"I wouldn't mind at all, honey." The springs of Doc's chair protested as he shifted his bulk a little closer to where she was perched rigidly on the edge of her chair. "These are only maybes, you understand," he said, lifting his shaggy salt-and-pepper brows.
"Yes, I understand." And if she didn't, she soon would—even if she had to steal Wiley Roy's precious laptop computer and search every database on the Net.
Doc held up the same gnarled hand that had held hers while she'd screamed in agony during her first delivery. One by one he ticked off potential problems. Each one was worse than the one before. Each one had the potential to precipitate early labor or worse. By the time he finished, she felt light-headed and her throat was dust dry.
"What do you suggest I do?" she managed to squeak out after swallowing several times.
"Get yourself to a specialist who handles these kinds of cases on a regular basis, one of those new high-risk docs that are all the rage these days. I've been doin' some callin' around just in case, and I've come up with five names." He reached for a folder and flipped it open. "Two are at Baylor, one at UC San Diego, one at Mount Sinai and one up in Oregon at Portland General."
Madelyn cast a wary glance at the collection of faxes and printouts he was shuffling through, refreshing his memory. "Is there one that's better than the others?" she asked when he glanced up.
"They're all excellent. Some I've heard tell of here and there, some I haven't. I met Candace Marston once at an internists' conference in Austin three or four years ago. She's a few years younger than you, but sharp as a tack. The others are all men."
"I don't care about gender. I care about my baby, and I want the best, whoever he or she is."
Doc studied her in thoughtful silence through his half glasses for a long tense moment before nodding. "In that case, this is the man you should see. The best of the best." He lifted a sheet of paper with a brief bio typed at the top of a long list of published articles and honors.
Her breath dammed up in her chest when she read the name printed in bold letters at the top: LUCAS OLIVER JARROD, M.D.
"It can't be," she said, her voice flat.
"According to everyone I asked, Jarrod's considered the premier expert on myomas, among other things. Way I heard it, he's got women flying in from all over the world, just so's he can watch over 'em."
"I don't care." Her heart seemed as if it would pound clear through her chest, and her blood felt hot in her veins. Not once, in all the years since the social worker had taken her child away forever, had she stopped loving her daughter or wondering about her. Nor in all that time had she ever stopped hating Luke Jarrod or blaming him for her loss.
Yet, paradoxically, the man she'd married had the same lean build and pantherlike way of walking that had first attracted her to Luke.
"It took me years to stop hating him. I … it can't be good for the baby to stir all that up again."
"Then don't let it be stirred." Stern, suddenly, and intense, Doc's eyes bored into her. "If you want to give that little one a chance, get yourself on the next plane to Oregon. Charm the man if that's what it takes. Play the guilt card if he balks. Remind him of all he cost you if you have to, but convince him to take you on."
Madelyn bit down on the urge to refuse paint-blank. This baby meant everything to her. Everything. Yet, how could she bear to rake up the misery of the past all over again?
"Maddy, you're a strong woman," Doc said gently but with audible conviction. "You've handled much worse than this and survived. You've made yourself into a real role model for the young folks in this sorry old town. You even married a man who didn't value you near enough because your folks liked him."
At the mention of the baby's father, her gaze dropped. The eldest of eight children, Wiley Roy Foster had been adamant in his desire never to be a father. Since four specialists had told Maddy she would almost surely never conceive again, theirs seemed an ideal match. And they had been happy in the beginning. Gradually, however, the hopeful early years settled into a mundane routine. Wiley Roy wasn't so much a bad husband as a complacent one. Nothing she tried could shake him from his rut, while little by little, she found herself feeling lonelier and lonelier.
When she'd told him she was pregnant, Wiley Roy had stunned her by issuing an ultimatum. Perhaps he'd provided the sperm, he'd said but he was in no way a father. She had to choose between him and the child. He'd moved out of their split-level Spanish colonial home on the day she refused to terminate this pregnancy. His rejection had hurt, but the pain was already fading. The hurt Luke had caused never had.
Sensing the tangle of emotions, Doc reached over to take the hand she'd clamped like a talon around the arm of the chair. "Madelyn, I've checked this man out thoroughly. He has some of the most impressive credentials I've ever seen and an impeccable reputation, both professionally and personally. Everything I've learned tells me he's no longer that callous hell-bent-for-leather rascal who sloped out on you when you needed him most."
"What if you're wrong?" she asked, studying the familiar face carefully.
"Read his curriculum vitae, and then if you're not convinced, we'll move on down to the next name on the list."
Still she hesitated, dropping her gaze to hide her eyes from Doc's too-perceptive gaze, her stomach in knots and her heart beating so fast she had trouble catching her breath.
"Maddy, I know I didn't take as good care of you as I should have the first time, but believe me, I wouldn't recommend this if I didn't think it was exactly what you needed right now." Very gently Doc's hand squeezed hers, drawing her gaze back to those kindly eyes. "Think of the precious little one who's counting on you to protect him or her, Maddy. Think of your baby."
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It hurt to talk. Hell, it hurt to breathe. Since Luke was pretty much forced to do both, he set his jaw and pushed himself past the pain. It was a skill he'd developed a lot of years back and had saved his sorry ass more than once.
"You gonna give me your opinion or are you just gonna stand there, wasting time neither of us can spare?" he grumbled at the big blond man leaning with arms crossed against the sink in one of the emergency-room cubicles, watching him through narrowed eyes.
Boyd MacAuley was one of the best neurosurgeons in the country. He was also a good friend. Luke's best friend, if he had to choose. Although it was only a little past nine in the morning, Boyd had the look of a man in need of eight solid hours of deep sleep. It was a feeling Luke knew all too well. In the past thirty-six hours he'd only managed a couple of catnaps between deliveries.
"You know my opinion, hoss." Boyd's voice was edged with an impatience to match Luke's own. "I've given it to you at least once a month for the past two years. You need to have those disks repaired. As it is, I'm amazed you're still on your feet."
"I don't have time for more surgery."
"Make time."
Luke sucked in his breath and sat up. He was used to the sharp stab of pain in his lower back every time he moved. It had been the sudden weakness in his right leg that had nearly sent him crashing to the floor in the operating room. Fortunately he'd already performed the emergency C-section on Phyllis Greaves and was fixing to apply the staples to the incision when his left leg had buckled on him.
&
nbsp; As luck would have it, the first-year resident assisting him had once been a linebacker for Oregon State, which meant that he'd been strong enough to catch Luke's one hundred and ninety pounds without keeling over himself. Otherwise Luke was pretty sure he'd be nursing a few major bruises, as well as a battered ego.
Now, an hour later, the numbness was gone, replaced by a throbbing that felt exactly like a red-hot poker had been jabbed through his calf muscle. He knew the cause of course—scar tissue surrounding the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae impinging on the sciatic nerve. Mostly he could ignore it, but when he was tired, like now, he tended to limp badly. Today was the first time his leg had actually gone numb, however.
"If I do let you cut, how long before I can go back to work?" he asked when it was safe to breathe again.
"Two, three weeks, then six, eight more of restricted activity. In a brace of course."
"Bull. I've done my research. I figure three months before I can handle even routine deliveries. Longer for the high-risk moms."
Boyd let out an exasperated sigh. "So you scale back for a while. I know a half-dozen third-year ob/gyn residents who would kill to work under the great Luke Jarrod."
"Shove a sock in it, MacAuley."
Luke swung his legs over the edge of the table, then waited out the renewed surge of pain. An accident his last year on the circuit had blown out his back. High-risk surgery had gotten him back on his feet. The brace he hated had kept him going through his last two years in med school. Years of back-strengthening exercises and therapy had gradually allowed him to shuck the brace.
After the accident his mentor at Stanford, Dr. Danton Stone, had done his best to tout him off obstetrics, telling him repeatedly about the toll a specialty like that would exact on his ruined spine. Dan was right, Luke thought with a pang of resignation. So, unfortunately, was Boyd. Much as he hated to admit it, he couldn't keep up his present pace much longer without surgery.
DADDY BY CHOICE Page 1
