DADDY BY CHOICE

by Paula Detmer Riggs

  "All right," he conceded with a sigh. "Give me a few months to scale back my patient load."

  Boyd shook his head. "A week, two tops."

  "Not a chance. I have a dozen ladies ready to go any minute now, almost all of them having potential for major complications."

  "You have a potential for major complications—like permanent paralysis if those wonky disks cut into your spinal cord."

  "Unlikely."

  Boyd snorted. "Lord save me from stubborn jack-asses."

  "Stubborn, hell. I agreed to let you cut into me, didn't I?"

  "Fine. Let's nail down a date."

  * * *

  Ninety minutes and counting after Madelyn had walked into the ugly redbrick medical building, she was perched on the padded paper-covered table with the dreaded stirrups, waiting for Luke.

  She had a lot of experience at that, she realized, fighting the sudden urge to laugh hysterically. Agonizing months of waking up every morning expecting her shy lanky bronc buster with the amazing blue eyes and irresistible smile to walk up the crumbling front steps of the shabby old house on Alamo Street, a wedding ring in the pocket of his Wrangler's. Just like a movie she'd seen once—except that her hero hadn't come in time.

  Half out of her mind with grief, she'd sent him away, then regretted it with every atom in her body. If he loves you, he'll be back, her pastor had told her over and over. But he hadn't come back, and her life had gone on. Obviously his had, too. Very nicely, it seemed, she decided, glancing around for the umpteenth time.

  Though the examination room was small, the signed lithograph of a lone rider silhouetted against a dying sun was by a famous Southwestern artist. The diplomas and certificates that marched next to the print were even more impressive. A bachelor's in biology from Arizona State, a medical degree from Stanford. A chief residency at Portland General. A clutch of fellowships and honors. Not bad for a high-school dropout with lousy grammar who'd sworn up one side and down the other he'd never set foot in a classroom again.

  A knock on the door had her pulse skittering. But it was Esther, the rotund nurse with smiling eyes, who entered. "Doctor just phoned from the hospital and he's on his way," she offered as she wrapped the familiar black blood pressure cuff around Madelyn's arm. "Shouldn't be long now."

  * * *

  The sky was a solid gunmetal gray and the air smelled like rain as Luke limped across the grassy median separating Port Gen from the medical building.

  In spite of the three cups of coffee he'd gulped down with the breakfast he'd grabbed in the cafeteria, he was still a little queasy from the meds he'd reluctantly taken to soothe the inflamed tissues in his spine. Though he'd showered and shaved, he still felt grimy and battered, pretty much how he'd felt after a day on the rodeo circuit.

  Dorie Presley, his iconoclastic frizzy-haired receptionist, looked up as he slipped through the back door to his ground-floor office suite, her Celtic blue eyes sharply assessing. A transplanted Californian who had grown up in a San Francisco mansion, she was married to a surgical resident who adored her enough to overlook her haphazard housekeeping and lousy cooking.

  Luke couldn't care less about her lack of domestic skills. All that mattered was her ability to keep him organized and halfway on schedule, a skill he'd never mastered. She also made the best coffee he'd ever tasted, which meant a lot to a man who lived on caffeine.

  "You look terrible, L.J."

  "Thanks, I needed that," he muttered as he shrugged into the starched white coat he'd learned to wear because some patients had trouble trusting a doc who wore frayed jeans, scuffed cowboy boots and plain old cotton work shirts.

  "This should help," she said, handing a mug of the extra-strong boiling-hot French roast she'd started brewing the instant he'd called to say he was on his way.

  "Darlin,' you're a pearl beyond price."

  He took a greedy sip, far too aware that he really should cut back. The chronic burning in his gut wasn't exactly an ulcer, but it had the potential.

  "How's Mrs. Greaves?" Dorie asked, looping his stethoscope around his neck.

  "Awake and thrilled with her twin daughters."

  "Congratulations, boss!" she said, grinning. "You beat the odds again."

  Luke allowed himself a private moment of deep satisfaction. Phyllis Greaves had lost four babies before coming to him. The Greaveses were nice people who would make wonderful parents. "Thanks, but most of the credit goes to Phyllis." The determined lady had spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed and never once complained. He admired her grit.

  "Your messages are on your desk in order of priority. Nothing urgent, but Dr. Horvath at Rogue River definitely needs a return call before five."

  "Remind me, okay?"

  Dorie's grin flashed. "I live to serve, oh exalted healer."

  Luke snorted. "Do we have a full house or did some of my ladies get tired of waiting?" he asked over the muted ringing of the phone.

  "Definitely stacked full, so don't dawdle," she said before snagging the phone.

  While she dealt with the call, he slugged down the rest of his coffee, then patted his pockets, looking for his reading glasses before he remembered he'd left them in his locker at the hospital.

  While dealing with a question for the patient on the other end, Dorie fished his spare pair from her bottom drawer and handed them over. He grunted his thanks before tucking them safely into his breast pocket, along with a pen he filched from the jar on her desk, and heading down the hall toward the examining rooms.

  All four doors were closed, with patient charts lined up neatly in the Plexiglas slots on the wall. He stopped at number one. The folder was yellow and tagged in blue and red. A new patient, high risk, the only kind he had time to treat these days.

  Moving his shoulders to relieve the tension that had started the instant he'd walked through the back door, he plucked the chart from its plastic slot and flipped it open.

  The name was printed on the tab in Dorie's neat boarding-school script. Madelyn Smith Foster.

  His breath dammed up in his throat. My God, Maddy? Here? The last time he'd seen her he'd been standing on her porch with his hat in his hand, begging her to forgive him.

  While he'd been having a high old time in Canada, flirting with more pretty girls than there were fleas on a dog, she'd been twisting and turning through two days of torturous labor, only to hemorrhage and nearly die before the frantic GP had taken the baby by cesarean. Her parents had waited less than twenty-four hours before offering her an ultimatum—give the tiny but perfectly formed baby girl up for adoption or take the kid and leave.

  It hadn't been much of a choice for a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl with no job skills and no money, so she'd signed the papers that had taken her baby away forever. It hadn't been easy for her, however. Anything but. Her eyes had still been puffy and glazed with grief two weeks later when she'd opened the screen door to his nervous knock.

  Forcing himself to breathe again, he scanned the patient-info sheet. Thirty-nine years old. Employed as a guidance counselor at Whiskey Bend High School. Divorced. His mind stuttered over that fact before moving on to the medical history—the usual childhood illnesses, an appendectomy at the age of seven. On the night they'd made love she'd been embarrassed to let him see the scar—

  "Luke, are you all right?"

  His head shot up and for an instant he felt disoriented. "What?"

  "Don't take this wrong," Dorie murmured, looking both concerned and amused. "But you look exactly like a man who's taken one where it hurts the most."

  He managed an off hand grin. "It's my office. I can look anyway I want, sugar."

  Unimpressed gray eyes, sharp as lasers, zoomed in on his face. Heat crept up his neck as he dropped his gaze to the chart. "This … this patient, what do you know about her?" he asked, careful to keep his voice low.

  "Just that she's a referral from a GP I never heard of, has excellent insurance through a group policy for Texas-state employees, arrived
early for her appointment, seems a bit aloof, but pleasant—and definitely anxious, though she hides it well. On a scale of one to ten, style-wise, I give her a twelve."

  "What the hell is 'style-wise'?" Luke muttered. He was always edgy when he was caught off-guard.

  "You know. Style. Presence." She lifted an eyebrow and he frowned. "The way a woman dresses and wears her hair and carries herself."

  "Mrs. Foster is a twelve?"

  "Absolutely." Done grinned, clearing enjoying herself. "If I had to guess, I'd say she bought the suit she's wearing from Neiman Marcus, probably not on sale. Same with her shoes. Lizard pumps, probably Italian. And hair to die for. Thick, sun-streaked and blond, which has to be natural or the best dye job I've ever seen."

  Luke felt a little dizzy. The Maddy he'd known had worn jeans or short cotton skirts and flirty shirts that showed off her ripe breasts to perfection. Her hair had definitely been glorious, however. Long and silky and the exact color of honey shot through with sunlight.

  "You're sure she's here as a patient?" he pressed, more confused than ever.

  Dorie offered him a curious look. "Since she filled out the new-patient forms, I think that would be a safe assumption, yes."

  "Damn." He raked his hand through hair still damp from his shower. The rare nervous gesture from a man who prided himself on his control had Dorie narrowing her gaze.

  "Luke, is there a problem?"

  "Hell if I know."

  Dorie regarded him strangely for a beat, then broke into a knowing grin. "Aha, an old girlfriend. And from the panicked look on your face, I'd say the flame is still flickering inside that lean mean bod of yours."

  Luke bit off a crude reply. "Don't you have insurance forms to fill out?"

  "Yes, sir." Dorie snapped him a mock salute before disappearing into the reception area.

  Luke braced one hand against the wall and dropped his head. His heart hammered in his chest as he fought to regulate the breathing that threatened to tear through his throat like a feral howl.

  He'd struggled for years to drive his darlin' Maddy Sue out of his head. Years and years of going weak in the knees whenever he heard bubbling laughter or caught a glimpse of thick blond hair shining in the sunshine. Of feeling his gut knot and twist whenever he saw a woman holding a baby.

  He should have figured God wouldn't let him slide forever, he thought as he pushed himself away from the wall, squared his shoulders. He'd sell his soul for a drink right now, he thought as he took another ragged breath, then opened the door.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  The white coat with his name embroidered in red above the pocket said he was an MD. The calendar said he was six weeks away from his forty-first birthday. Two steps into the room and he was an eighteen-year-old rodeo bum, with a crushing pressure in his chest and shock waves in his gut from a hard-knuckled punch in the solar plexus.

  It was exactly the same as it'd been that blistering-hot day in Texas, he realized with a kind of stunned dismay. One minute his life had been under his control, the next he was reeling.

  Maddy had been as pretty as a picture at seventeen. Now she was stunningly beautiful. A sophisticated lady exuding poise and a quiet confidence, even perched on the end of his examining room table with her spine as straight as a die and her chin pridefully high.

  The big hair that had mesmerized him was gone, but the glorious color was that same shade of honey shot with sunshine. Once it had spilled to her shoulders in glossy waves, swishing like molten silk with every sassy toss of her head. Now, however, it had been tucked back out of the reach of man's hands into a chic twist right out of one of Dorie's glossy magazines. He wanted to ask why she felt she had to keep all that wonderful sunshine hidden away, but he'd lost the right to ask her that kind of question.

  "Hello, Maddy," he said after closing the door behind him. He hadn't felt this wired since the last time he'd dropped from the top rail of the chute onto the back of a nightmare.

  "Doctor." She inclined her head, queen to subject. Damn, but she was something, he thought, fascinated in spite of the wariness skimming his nerves.

  Ordinarily he offered his hand to a new patient, the first fragile thread of trust. Only the certain knowledge that it would cost him more to touch her than he wanted to risk had him trying a smile, instead.

  "You look terrific." His voice came out rusty as hell, but he had a feeling it was the words themselves that had her eyes narrowing between those long fluttery lashes.

  He let his gaze drift lower, skimming the curves that filled out the pale yellow jacket in all the right ways to mess with a man's head. She was also pregnant, he realized with a jolt that twisted all the way through him, leaving him a little breathless. About six months along was his best guess.

  He still remembered the jagged despair in her voice when she'd told him that the surgical field had gotten contaminated during her C-section, and the resulting infection had scarred her fallopian tubes, rendering her sterile. The guilt he'd carried had been a bloody hole in his gut ever since.

  "So you really are a patient," he added when she remained silent. "I wondered."

  "I didn't lie to you when I told you I was sterile," she said, her drawl softer than he remembered, though flavored now with a hint of tension. "According to Doc Morrow, the odds of my ever conceiving again were too small to even measure."

  "Doc Morrow?"

  "My family doctor in Whiskey Bend. He delivered me when I was born and he delivered my … our baby." She took a quick breath, the only sign of distress he could detect. "He was also the one who arranged for the adoption."

  Pain was a vicious hand wringing him dry. "I'm sorry, Maddy. Deeply sorry."

  A hint of some fierce emotion darkened her eyes. "Sorry enough to make sure I keep this baby?"

  He had a long list of questions, all of which filtered down to one. "Why me?" he asked quietly.

  "I have a fibroid that's growing." She hesitated, then added with the barest suggestion of a tremor in her voice, "Doc's only treated one similar case, and that patient went into premature labor at six months." She took a breath, her eyes suddenly sad. "She lost the baby."

  Luke cursed silently, one pithy vehement expletive. It could be worse, but not much, he thought as he leaned his butt against the edge of the sink and shifted most of his weight to the leg that didn't throb.

  For years he'd tortured himself with thoughts of how it would be if he saw Maddy again. It was a game he played with himself when he had trouble sleeping.

  Mostly his fantasies had been shaded toward raunchy—in a respectful sort of way, of course, since Maddy was a good girl. But this… His chest tightened, the way it used to right before a ride. Like a fist grinding against his sternum.

  "There are a lot of good baby docs in Texas," he hedged. "Marston and Wong at Baylor, to name two."

  She dismissed that with a brief frown. "I contacted them both. Each said you were the leading doctor in this area. As did the two other experts in high-risk pregnancy I consulted. I've also read the article you wrote about treatment of fibroids during pregnancy."

  "Which one?"

  "The one in the Journal of the American Medical Association."

  He nodded. "JAMA published three. Which one did you read?"

  That brought her up short, but she recovered quickly. "The one that explained why the kind of fibroid I have can't be surgically removed without risking a miscarriage." Her hand crept to her belly. "The more I read the more I realized how easy it would be to lose this child."

  He crossed his arms over his chest and marveled at the woman she'd become. Bright, confident and way way out of his league. "I'm sure your research told you that myomas are unpredictable. They can cause some really mean complications one month and go dormant the next." They were also decidedly dangerous when they took a notion to grow, a fact she obviously knew as well as he did.

  "Since this … this baby means everything to me, I'll do whatever i
t takes to carry it to term."

  "Even tolerate my presence in your life again?"

  "Obviously." Her chin came up. "Since you're considered the best, you were my first choice."

  It was an answer that should have pleased him. Instead, it terrified him.

  When he'd been facing a tough ride, he'd survived by paring his mind to the basics. Things he knew how to do, like shoving his butt hard against the rigging and keeping his head tucked tight so his neck didn't snap. Skills he'd practiced until they'd become second nature. It was a knack he'd come to value during life-and-death emergencies he'd learned to expect every time he walked into a birthing suite. It was a knack he fell back on now.

  "You realize you'll have to move to Portland until you deliver?"

  "I'm prepared to do that, yes."

  "What about your job? Your … family?"

  "My mother has agreed to look after my house and garden, and I've already arranged to take a leave of absence from my job for the next school year. The principal has four children of her own, and she's been wonderfully understanding. A godsend, really."

  He nodded. Cleared his throat. "It says on your info sheet that you're divorced."

  "Yes, for almost four months now."

  "I assume Mr. Foster is the baby's father?"

  "Yes, although I think that if he could, he would erase every scrap of his DNA from the baby's cells."

  "I take it he's not gonna be interested in participating in the baby's delivery?"

  "No, he's relinquishing paternity." She hesitated, then added, "Wiley Roy never wanted children, and since I thought I was sterile, he didn't bother to get a vasectomy when we married. When I found out I was pregnant, he … he gave me an ultimatum—the baby or him. I couldn't have both." She glanced down at her hands. At the thin white line on her finger where he deduced her wedding band had been. Her mouth firmed as she folded her hands, then lifted her gaze to his. "I chose the baby. The next day he went to Juarez and divorced me."

  "Man's a fool."

  She shrugged. "He's a decent man and a wonderful teacher. He prides himself on being an example for his students, and in his own way, he was a good husband. He simply doesn't want to be a daddy."