A Daddy for Her Daughter

by Tina Beckett

  Something banged repeatedly against a hard surface.

  The figure behind her sat up and turned her onto her back, a slight smile playing around the edges of his mouth.

  Kaleb. Wow. So it hadn’t been a dream.

  None of it. Heat swept over her body as she remembered the second he’d lowered that zipper.

  Light peeked around the edges of her curtains. It was morning.

  Something pounded again. It was a little too early for repairs, wasn’t it?

  “Someone’s at your door.” His thumb came out to slide along her lower lip. A shiver went over her.

  She stretched, enjoying what met her eyes. His chest was naked, the sheet just barely covering his...

  ...at the door?

  “Maddy? Hello? Are you home?”

  A voice... The sound was no longer outside, but inside the apartment!

  Inside!

  Wrenching herself upright, she stared at Kaleb, no longer in admiration, but in abject panic as she recognized the sound. “It’s my sister,” she hissed. “You have to get out of here. Now!”

  He leaned closer, that lazy grin sliding across his face. “Do you want me to leap from your window?”

  “No, I just...” She cleared her throat and made her voice loud enough to be heard. “Just a second, Roxy. I’m just now getting up.”

  Scrambling from the bed, she stripped his shirt from her chest and tossed it at him. “You. Dressed. Now!”

  Maddy dragged her clothes on as fast as humanly possible, not caring that it was the same outfit she’d worn yesterday. Then she yanked her fingers through her tangled hair. “Coming.”

  She didn’t stop to check whether or not Kaleb was doing what she asked; she simply whisked through the bedroom door, pulling it shut behind her. As long as she could keep Roxy—or, worse, Chloe—from discovering that Kaleb McBride had spent the night in her bed, she would be fine. She hoped.

  The man had to have known he rocked her world. No one had made love to her like that in...well, forever. There were no comparisons, and that scared the hell out of her.

  She strolled down the hall and into the living room, wearing the biggest smile she could muster. “Hey, you two...”

  Her voice died. Because, yes, Roxy and Chloe were there. In fact, her daughter launched herself into her arms and hung on tight. But standing just behind them was someone she hadn’t expected.

  “Mom? What are you doing here?”

  Keeping one arm around Chloe, she glanced back at the bedroom, hoping against hope that Kaleb was not going to pull that door open and let everyone know he was there.

  Roxy, she could handle; her sister had had her share of lovers over the years. Not so much recently, but in their younger days. Maddy could have even come up with some kind of funny explanation for Kaleb being here—although nothing sounded particularly humorous to her at the moment.

  But her mom?

  Oh, no. She would see right through the ploy. She would know. She always did.

  Her mom laughed and came over to kiss her cheek. “I’m happy to see you too, dear.” She glanced around the room. “You’ve been trying to get me to come out here for a visit for a while, and after...well, what happened with Matthew, I wanted to see where you lived. I would have come for your birthday yesterday, but Roxy told me she’d promised you a night alone.”

  Oh, Lord. She’d definitely not been alone. Not then. And not now.

  “Mommy? My head hurts.”

  The words came from Chloe, and while she did her best to concentrate on what they meant, she was still trying to figure out why her mom had really come. Today of all days. How was she going to get Kaleb out of that room?

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Maddy said. “Do you need some medicine?”

  “No. It’s not a sicky headache, just a normal one.” Chloe got migraines from time to time, but it had been months since her last one. She always wondered if she’d handed her daughter some kind of defective gene. If maybe her asthma had passed itself off as migraines in Chloe. Ridiculous. She knew it was, but there was always a tiny shard of guilt every time her daughter suffered through one of her bad headaches.

  She decided she was going to have to enlist her sister’s help if she was going to get through this. “Chloe, how about if you show Nana your room? Jetta was sleeping on your bed last time I saw him. Maybe he’s still there.”

  So what if the last time she’d seen the cat was after midnight, just as Kaleb was carrying her to bed after making love to her in the bathroom? Maybe the cat really was still there.

  “Sure! C’mon, Nana. It’s right down this hallway.”

  Her mom threw Maddy a quick frown, but followed her granddaughter. As soon as they were out of earshot, she grabbed Roxy’s arm. “You’ve got to keep them in there for about five minutes.”

  Her sister tilted her head. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s no time to explain.” She half dragged her down the hallway. “Just do it. Please.”

  Maddy stopped with her hand on the doorknob to her bedroom. Her sister’s eyes got wide. She whispered, “You...you’ve got a man in there.”

  That struck her as insanely funny for some reason. “Well, it’s certainly not a pony.”

  “Oh, my God, Maddy. You are so going to spill when this is all over.”

  At this point, she didn’t care what she had to do. So long as Kaleb was on his way out of her apartment before her mother came out of that room.

  Roxy hurried down the hallway, her voice much louder than necessary. “I haven’t seen good old Jetta in ages. Can I join in?” Her sister threw Maddy one last grin before disappearing into the room.

  Before she could turn the knob on her own bedroom door, it opened so fast she practically fell inside.

  “You have to leave,” she whispered. “Right now.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.” His voice didn’t sound nearly as friendly as it had a few minutes ago. “What’s wrong with Chloe?”

  “Wrong?” She tried to hurry him along, thanking God they’d had the foresight to throw his jeans into the dryer last night. She did her best not to remember how those same jeans had felt scraping over her legs as he’d climbed into the tub.

  “She said her head hurt.”

  “Oh. Yes. She gets headaches periodically. She’s fine.”

  Kaleb’s face unexpectedly blanched, turning a sickly white. Probably worried about getting caught, just as she was. She wouldn’t be surprised if her own face was rather pasty right now.

  They made it to the front door, and she quietly opened it. “Thanks for everything.” She closed her eyes for a minute. “I mean... Well, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes.” He stepped outside the door and paused. “Have you had them looked at?”

  “Sorry?” She was doing her best to keep her voice down to a whisper, but she was running out of time. And patience.

  “The headaches.”

  “We’ve already been to a couple of specialists.” She did her best to smile. “I really, really don’t want my mom to find you here. Sorry.” With that, she shut the door with as soft a click as she could and prayed he hadn’t left anything lying...

  Yanking in a quick breath, she raced through the hallway and glanced into the bathroom. Nothing there, thank God. She tiptoed back a few steps to peek into her room. Unmade bed, but that was to be expected. It was barely—she glanced at her watch—eight o’clock.

  Just then she spotted two towels beside the bed. She went in and grabbed them, hoping she could hurry to the bathroom and throw them over a towel bar. Just as she came out of the room, her mom and the rest of her entourage appeared. And two pairs of adult eyes swung to her hands, which clutched one blue towel and one white towel. Her mom’s eyes slowly shifted back t
o hers, a question in them Maddy had no intention of answering.

  “Just cleaning up from last night.” Realizing how that sounded, she hurried to add, “Roxy kept Chloe for me and sent me home with a bag of spa treatment goodies, and so I took full advantage of it.”

  “Full advantage. I’ll say.” Roxy’s amused voice held a wealth of meaning, but Maddy ignored it the best she could.

  “One towel for my hair and one for the rest of me.”

  Her mom’s brows cranked up in steady increments. “Why are you explaining, dear?”

  “Well, because...” She was so going to get struck by lightning for lying. “...I wouldn’t want you to get any strange ideas.”

  “I’ll just put these away so you can go make us some coffee. It looks like you could use some.” Roxy plucked the towels from her hand, leaning down to whisper, “If she didn’t have any ideas before, she certainly does now.”

  “Just what I need,” Maddy breathed in return. But really she was glad to have something to do. And that Kaleb had made it out of the house unnoticed.

  Just then the doorbell rang. Oh, no! What more could possibly happen? She looked through the peephole and was met by a familiar face. Her heart careened through her chest. Sending up a quick prayer, she opened the door and pretended he was a complete stranger. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  Kaleb wasn’t smiling. And the flirtatious demeanor from this morning was long gone. But at least he kept his voice low. “I think I left my keys in your bathroom.”

  Roxy appeared beside her. She glanced at Maddy and then at the man in the entryway. “I think you might be looking for these.” She let the keys dangle from her fingertips.

  “Yes, that’s them. Thank you.” He took them from her with a perfunctory smile.

  Then the worst thing that could have happened did. Without a word to her, Maddy’s mother marched right up to him and held out her hand.

  “Since my daughters have evidently forgotten all their manners, hello, my name is Linda.”

  A muscle worked in his jaw, but he shook her hand. “I’m Kaleb McBride. I work at the hospital where your daughter practices.”

  Her mom blinked. “Nice to meet you. You work there as a...”

  “I practice concierge medicine.” As if anticipating her next question, he added, “The hospital has a contract with the hotel across the street. I split my time between the two places.”

  She could practically see the wheels in her mom’s head turning, rotating far too many times for comfort. Two towels. A colleague leaving his keys at her place. Her granddaughter staying with Roxy overnight.

  Please don’t.

  She sent her mother a quick look begging her not to take this line of questioning any further. Instead her mom nodded. “Well, it was nice to meet someone that Maddy works with.” She took her granddaughter’s hand. “Now, if you’ll tell me where that medicine is for her headache, I’ll get it for her.”

  “It’s already all better,” Chloe said. “It wasn’t one of the mean ones.”

  Her mom leaned down to kiss Chloe’s cheek. “I’m glad.”

  “Could I have a glass of apple juice, though?”

  Maddy swallowed, glad for the distraction and an excuse to send them away for a few more minutes. “Chloe, would you show Nana where the glasses and juice are? And see if she wants something to drink as well.”

  “I’ll show them.”

  Roxy was being extraordinarily helpful all of a sudden, moving away with the duo and talking a mile a minute about the kite festival.

  Once again, she was left alone with Kaleb.

  He flipped his keys into his palm, brown eyes meeting hers. “Sorry about that. I got all the way to my car and realized I forgot to put them back in my pocket.”

  She’d forgotten as well. But now she could see it happen all over again in her mind’s eye. Kaleb’s big hand sliding into the front pocket of his jeans as he slowly extracted his keys and dropped them on the vanity in the bathroom. Of the way her breath hitched in her throat when she realized he was going to step into her tub without removing his pants. She wasn’t likely to forget what they’d done. Not for a long, long time.

  It was then and there that Maddy realized she was in serious trouble. She’d dug herself a deep pit and had hopped right into it, not thinking about the consequences of her actions. And now she was stuck at the bottom with no way to escape. But she’d better either figure it out or find a ladder tall enough to climb to the top. And soon. Because if she didn’t, her mom would discover what she’d done last night. And not only her mother. But her sister, her daughter and probably the whole damn hospital.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I DON’T WANT to go to the hospital.”

  The woman lying in the bed in her hotel room was in obvious respiratory distress, her words coming out in a disjointed series of wheezes that reminded him of his encounter with Maddy in the lobby of this very hotel.

  Last week had thrown him for a loop, and he realized what a huge mistake he had made by staying at her place. It was why he never stayed at a woman’s house. The less he knew, the easier it was to walk away when the night was over.

  Instead, he’d wandered around Maddy’s living room, looking at intimate glimpses of her life. He’d even met her mother, for goodness’ sake. Something that never would have happened if he’d stuck to his internal rule book. He could have brought her back to his own place and made love to her without a care in the world. But no. He had to go and act as if he could do whatever he wanted without it costing one red cent.

  How wrong he’d been.

  Chloe saying that her head hurt had sent a shaft of pain through him that had cut him to the core. He’d heard that same phrase almost word for word from his own daughter. “Daddy, my head hurts.”

  A few weeks later, she’d been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

  Forcing his attention back to his patient, he put the stethoscope in his ears and asked her to sit up for a minute. “When I tell you to, can you breathe deeply for me?”

  “I’ll try.”

  He pressed the chest piece of the instrument to her back. “Okay, breathe.”

  Where Kaleb should have heard deep clear chest sounds, there was an ominous crackling instead, that originated in the lower lobe of Gloria Lowell’s right lung. He moved it a little higher. “Again.”

  The crackling sound diminished dramatically the higher he got. He moved to the other side and had his patient take another deep breath. There it was again. Bi-basal crackling. Could be pneumonia. Could be something interstitial. But whatever it was, it wasn’t going away without treatment.

  Her husband, who was standing nearby, must have seen something in his face. “What is it?”

  “She needs to go to the hospital.” It was his second attempt to convince Gloria to head across the street. He addressed her directly. “I need to do a chest X-ray. You could have pneumonia.”

  “Are you sure?” She gave a labored cough that left her gasping for breath all over again.

  “That you have pneumonia? No. But I am hearing some sounds in your lungs that are cause for concern. Your husband can stay with you every step of the way.”

  Mrs. Lowell had to be pushing seventy-five or maybe eighty. Lung infections at that age were worrisome. The couple was in Seattle on a whirlwind vacation. He could understand why she didn’t want to wind up in a hospital so far away from home.

  As his daughter had?

  They too had been on vacation when Grace had got her first headache. They’d gone to an emergency room, and had left with antibiotics. But things had got better, so they chalked it up to a sinus infection. In the end, they’d waited until they got home to follow up with their regular doctor, not knowing it was already too late. If he’d just taken her symptoms more seriously, would th
ings have ended differently?

  “It’s right across the street. We won’t even need to call an ambulance.” He crossed his fingers mentally, hoping this would work and that Gloria wouldn’t board her scheduled flight later on today. “I have a friend who can bring a wheelchair over from the hospital. We’ll just take you across, and if nothing’s wrong we’ll bring you right back. You still have several hours before you need to be at the airport.”

  He prayed what he was thinking would work.

  “Clyde? You’ll stay with me?”

  He took ahold of her hand. “Always, baby.”

  The obvious love between the husband and wife made his gut tighten. If Grace had lived, would he and Janice have made it until “death do us part”? Although if their relationship had been strong enough, it should have survived even Grace’s illness and death. But it hadn’t.

  Gloria took a deep breath and then immediately went into another coughing fit. Once she stopped, she nodded. “Okay. But no ambulances. My daddy died after going to the hospital in one of those.”

  “No ambulance.” He paused. “Let me just make a quick call.”

  Pulling out his cell phone, he hoped he wasn’t making a terrible mistake. It had been less than a week since he’d spent the night with Maddy. She could very well hang up on him. He knew he’d acted like a jerk on his way out of her house, but Chloe’s headache...

  Damn.

  He pressed the numbers for the hospital and then asked the operator to connect him with Maddy. He waited as the line started ringing. He could only hope she wasn’t with a patient and picked up rather than letting the phone go straight to voice mail. Although once she realized who it was, she might very well not answer it.

  The ringer sounded for the third time when he heard a familiar click. “Dr. Grimes.”

  “Maddy? It’s Kaleb.”

  “Hi.”

  “Sorry to bother you, but I have a patient over here at the Consortium. Breathing problems—”

  “Asthma?” The tone of her voice immediately shifted, moving into the realm of a professional in a single breath.