Bride for the Single Dad

by Jennifer Taylor

  He waited a second or two longer, and then she murmured, “It’s safe.”

  It wasn’t. Not by a long shot. But that didn’t stop him from turning around to face her once again. This time she was fully dressed, her close-fitting jeans topped with a dark green tunic that she’d belted around her waist. Her sleeves came down past her elbows, a habit she’d adopted in her teenage years and still preferred, even on the hottest days of summer. Her hair was a dark disarray of curls that bounced past her shoulders, and he knew from memory that they slid all the way down to the slope of her lower back. She’d always kept those dark locks long.

  And he’d never thought of that as sexy before. Until now.

  He was in trouble.

  “Is Sebastian here?”

  Natália glanced around, eyes wide in what had to be fake fear. “I don’t know. Did he come sneaking in too?”

  “I didn’t come sneaking. And you know what I mean.”

  “No. I really don’t.” She slung a purple bag over her shoulder, the silver chain matching the color of the belt links. “But I never knew you were the peeping Tom type.”

  “I’m not.” He scowled to cover the fact that he’d done exactly that for the first five seconds after entering the room.

  No, you tried to leave as soon as you realized what was happening.

  And if Natália had been doing something other than changing? This time it was his face that was growing hot. Not in embarrassment, but in anger. He’d never even seen her hanging out with a man, much less caught her in the act of getting it on with one.

  Why would he even care?

  Because Sebastian wouldn’t approve.

  And you, Adam? Would you approve?

  Hell and double no. He and his friend had always tag-team protected Nata.

  “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date.”

  A date? Adam swallowed. Was that why she had on those sexy undergarments? Because she had always seemed the type to lean more toward utilitarian selections when it came to clothes. Or was he just remembering Nata as a kid and forgetting that she was now a grown woman?

  She had a date.

  Well, good for her. Adam might not have found happiness at the altar of so-called love and matrimony, but that didn’t mean that someone else couldn’t find a partner who would honor their vows.

  Or at least not cheat on him with someone from the same hospital.

  Priscilla had remarried almost before the ink had dried on the divorce decree.

  Bile washed into his gut. If someone tried to do that to Natália after everything she’d been through, he would put a fist down their throat.

  “Adam?”

  His gaze jerked to her face to note that her head was tilted and she was staring at him as if he’d grown horns. “Sorry, did you say something?”

  “I was asking if you were going to keep blocking that door.” She tugged her left sleeve down just a little bit lower. He’d always hated it when she did that.

  Despite her veiled request, he didn’t move right away. And he almost didn’t move at all. He wanted to know where she was going in all that pink lace. “So you have a date, do you? Does Sebastian know?”

  “Yep and no. My plans for tonight are none of my brother’s business.” The smile she threw him was one he recognized all too well. Full of mischief and laughter, it said she wasn’t about to tell him what he wanted to know. Instead she arched her brows in a very feminine move that Adam would have never pictured her doing. Before panty-gate, anyway.

  Panty-gate? Oh, brother. He rolled his eyes and stepped to the side, gripping the door handle and pulling the door open in one swift move designed to let her out so that he could finish his day and see his last patient. And try not to think about what else he had seen or what Natália was going to do that she didn’t want her brother to know about. In the meantime, he was going to mind his own business and forget—or at least try to forget—that this unfortunate encounter had ever happened.

  * * *

  Natália Texeira swished down the hallway, trying to look a lot more confident than she felt. In reality, her legs were shaking and her heart was pounding. A date? Well, that was a great line.

  Not so great was the look of shock on his face. Did he think she couldn’t get one? Well, he could just go and...

  Better not to even think that. Because while he might have been surprised about her so-called date night, his reaction to seeing her undressed had been totally masculine.

  And totally hot.

  She’d dreamed about him looking at her like that for most of her teenaged and young adult years. But since he was six years older than she was, he’d always thought of her as a little kid. Those days were long gone. They were both adults now. He’d been married and divorced. They’d moved past childhood infatuations.

  Not that Adam had ever had a crush on her.

  She wanted to look behind her. Was dying to know if he was still staring at her. There’d been something in those deep brown eyes that had made her insides sizzle. Of course she’d kept her scarred arm facing away from him, although she had no idea why. He had to have seen it at some point over the years. More than once, despite all her efforts to keep it hidden.

  “Nata? Did you forget something?”

  His voice sounded from right behind her. Not only was he looking. He’d followed her. She couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. Heart in her throat, she spun around to face him.

  In his hand he held something brown and shiny and... Her barrette.

  The tiny zing of anticipation died a hard death. Ugh. What had she thought he was going to say? That she’d forgotten to kiss him goodbye? Not in this lifetime.

  “Thanks.” She forced a smile, hoping it was bright and cheery. She gave her sleeve a tug and then held out her hand for her errant hair ornament. In her haste to get away from him, she hadn’t realized she’d left her hair down.

  “Why do you keep doing that?”

  She blinked. “Doing what?”

  “Pulling at your sleeve. Is your arm hurting you?” His brows puckered in... Concern. Oh, God, no. Not again.

  Her smile disappeared. “No. This shirt is just snug.”

  Liar. Her top was a stretchy, flowy material. The opposite of snug.

  “When was the last time you had it checked?”

  “Are you kidding me, Adam?” This time it wasn’t anticipation that tingled up her back until it hit the base of her skull but raw anger. “I’m a doctor. I think I would know if my prosthesis was giving me trouble.”

  His wince was unmistakable at her bald words. Well, what she’d said was true. Her prosthetic device might not be visible to the world, but it was there just the same. And for him to ask her about it after the encounter they’d just had was almost unbearable. So much for feeling sexy and confident. He’d just transported her back to when she was sixteen and woken up in a hospital bed with seven inches of her left humerus gone, replaced by a shaft of metal. She found herself bending her elbow, a subconscious response to thinking about the osteosarcoma that had almost taken her arm. If she’d never gotten sick, her life would be very different now.

  And maybe Adam would have looked at her through different eyes.

  But it was what it was.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The man actually looked penitent, something she couldn’t normally say about the handsome orthopedic surgeon. He’d had a reputation as a playboy back in high school, college and for most of med school. All that had changed when he’d gotten married and then divorced a couple of years later. Women still threw themselves at him, but from all accounts those advances were ignored with a quick smile as he went on his way.

  Except the way he’d looked at her in that exam room... If she’d wrapped her arms around his neck would he have rebuffed
her?

  Um, yes, if this conversation was anything to go by. And she would be mortified to have him set her aside like a child. She wasn’t a child. And she was going to show him that once and for all.

  Only she had no idea how. Or why.

  Up went her chin. “You and my brother need to get it through your thick skulls that I do not need protecting. I’m a big girl with big girl panties, and I’ve been wearing them for quite some time.”

  “So I’ve seen.” The words were muttered in a low pained tone. At first she thought she’d misunderstood him, but since he was now avoiding her eyes like the plague, she was pretty sure she’d heard him correctly.

  Well, then. Maybe she hadn’t been wrong about his adult male reaction after all. “That’s what you get for walking in on someone—”

  “In an unlocked exam room. What if I’d been the hospital administrator?”

  “You weren’t. Karma wouldn’t do that to me.”

  At least she hoped not. She tried to be nice to those around her. Except when a certain overprotective brother and his hunky cohort started to meddle in her affairs.

  Not that she had any affairs worth meddling in.

  “Oh, I think karma has a pretty twisted sense of justice.”

  Was he talking about his divorce? She’d heard his ex-wife had not only married another doctor but she’d gotten a hefty settlement during the divorce trial. Due to some ridiculous lie about how he withheld himself from her emotionally after she’d told him she didn’t want children.

  Adam was no cold fish. And surely his wife had known how much he wanted a large family. Natália remembered him always talking about wanting lots and lots of kids. Of course, he would tweak her nose as he said it, adding something along the lines of hoping all his little girls were as cute as she was. Only that was never going to happen. Not now. And unlike his ex-wife, it wasn’t because Natália didn’t want children. “Maybe it does, since you happened to be the one who caught me. Someone who is practically family.”

  The dig was meant to get a reaction out of him, but she was sorely disappointed. He merely nodded.

  She flexed her elbow again, then stopped mid-movement when his eyes followed the gesture. “It’s fine. Just a bad habit.”

  Kind of like her crush on Adam had been. A bad habit that she’d had the hardest time breaking. But she had. Finally.

  Right?

  Absolutely. Maybe karma really did have a twisted sense of justice. She couldn’t give him what he wanted. In more ways than one.

  “If you’re sure,” he said.

  “I am.”

  He glanced at her face, lingering there for what seemed like an eternity before his gaze brushed down her nose...across her lips. She swallowed, then his index finger came up and tapped under her chin. “I like your hair down, by the way. I don’t think I’ve seen it that way in...well, a long time.”

  Her mouth popped open, but before her sluggish brain could even think of a response he’d dropped his hand to his side with a lopsided smile. “I’d better go. I have a patient to recheck before I clock out. And you evidently have a hot date.”

  That’s right. She was supposed to be going out on a date with someone besides a bowl of yakisoba from a nearby takeout joint. If her food was hot, it counted, right? Why had she ever concocted that lie? Maybe because she’d been so flustered to have been caught there in her underwear by the very man she’d fantasized about for so many years. “Yep. I’d better go and get ready then.”

  He started to say something, and then gave his head a brief shake. He took a step or two in the opposite direction and then threw a single line over his shoulder without looking back. “Call me when you get home from your date.”

  What? Oh, no!

  She would be home in a half-hour. Forty-five minutes, tops. And then she would have to come up with a plausible reason why her “date” hadn’t lasted longer than it had. She could ignore his order. And have him call Sebastian and very possibly the police?

  Not if she could help it. A slow smile curved her lips. That was fine. She’d call him. But she’d wait a couple of hours and make him sweat a little.

  He rounded the corner, leaving her standing alone in the hallway with nothing more than her thoughts—which were now running wild with all sorts of possibilities.

  But one thing she did know. When she finally put that call through, she was going to have a tale to tell that beat all tales. Of being wined and dined long into the night. She could pick up a bottle of wine with her takeout and watch a romantic movie. So it wouldn’t be a total lie. Right?

  And he would stay on the other end of that line and listen to the whole darned thing. After that, it was doubtful that Adam Cordeiro would ever try to play big brother to her again.

  * * *

  She was stranded.

  Dammit. She turned the key in the ignition of her small car again, only to hear the same ominous click she’d heard for the last five minutes. She’d tried to call three of her girlfriends, including Maggie, but so far two of them had gone to voicemail. The other was working the graveyard shift and Natália hadn’t had the heart to ask her to leave the nurses’ station right after she’d gotten to work.

  She could call Sebastian. And have him give her a lecture about having her car serviced regularly? She tried to remember when the last time had been. But life was so busy with all these hot dates and everything...

  She rolled her eyes. Natália had had one serious relationship in her life. And in reality she was too self-conscious about her scar and the questions that would invariably come up. Plus the fact that her chemo treatments meant she could develop lymphoma at some point in her life. And, really, how did one bring up subjects like that with someone you were just getting to know? And yet to not talk about the realities she faced seemed dishonest somehow. To let someone fall in love with her and then suddenly spring it on him: “Hey, I had cancer. And chemo. And a complicated surgery that included having most of my arm bone removed. Oh, and by the way, I’m sterile and might not live to a ripe old age.”

  Her lungs went tight all of a sudden at the thought of not ever having a baby. Dammit, Nata, you hold babies every single day.

  But it wasn’t the same. She sighed in exasperation.

  So, yeah, she never could figure out how to deal with any of that so she just did the next best thing. She didn’t date. Or at least she rarely dated. Her boyfriend hadn’t even lasted long enough for her to think about The Talk. Maybe because she’d been an uptight neurotic mess the whole time they’d dated. Undressing in the dark had been a huge turnoff for him, and she hadn’t wanted him to see her scars so that she didn’t have to go into explanations... And, well, it had just been too exhausting to keep up the act.

  It was easier just to deal with eating takeout and sleeping alone.

  She was going to have to do what she’d vowed not to do. But at least she had the great story she swore she’d have before she talked to him—she had her bottle of wine right next to her. Ugh! She could just catch one of the many buses that came through the area, but in São Paulo, leaving a car unattended was just asking to have it stolen. Or at least stripped down to almost nothing.

  Kind of like she’d been in that exam room.

  That got a smile out of her.

  He had told her to call him, right? And she had wanted to make it uncomfortable for him, hadn’t she? Well, what could be more uncomfortable than having to come and give her a ride back to her apartment—after calling for a tow truck to have her car transported to her place, at least until she could find a service station that had time to fix it.

  Securing the carton of yakisoba behind her purse on the seat so it wouldn’t dump out all over her floorboards, she fished out her cellphone. She didn’t bother wondering if his number had changed since the last time she’d called him, because sh
e was pretty sure it hadn’t. Adam had had the same phone number for the last several years. He didn’t deal well with change.

  So his divorce had probably not been the easiest thing for him to deal with. But he’d survived. Just like she’d survived a life-changing illness. His ex had been bad news. In Natália’s book he was much better off without her.

  She took one deep breath and then two, her lips moving as she went through the story she was going to give him when he answered the phone. Then she found his number in her list of contacts and hit the dial button. The phone rang. And rang. And rang again before clicking to voicemail. Natália ground her teeth. Okay, so maybe Adam wouldn’t get the satisfaction of rescuing her after all. There was no choice. She had to call Sebastian. Just as she punched in the first two numbers, the cellphone began to ring. She glanced at the screen.

  Adam.

  Only now she was all frazzled, the planned words swept away.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Adam, it’s me, Natália.”

  “I know who it is. Sorry, I was in the shower and didn’t hear the phone right away.”

  The image of Adam standing on a bathmat with water streaming down his chest was something that made her brain freeze even further. “I know I said I’d call you when I got home, but I’m...um...kind of stranded.”

  “Stranded? What do you mean, stranded?” There was silence for a second or two, then his voice came back. “Meu Deus do céu. I want a name, Nata.”

  The low quiet tone held a wealth of menace. How humiliating was this? But she’d called the man. She could hardly pretend she hadn’t said the words. “I’m at the yakisoba place down in Santo Amaro.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes. But I’m still waiting for a name.”

  She gulped. “Okay. Palácio de Yakisoba.”

  “Not the name of the restaurant. The name of your date.”

  The name of her...

  Deus!