His Baby Bombshell

by Jessica Matthews

  * * *

  His Baby Bombshell

  Jessica Matthews

  * * *

  Toronto • New York • London • Amsterdam • Paris • Sydney • Hamburg • Stockholm • Athens • Tokyo • Milan • Madrid • Prague • Warsaw • Budapest • Auckland

  To my husband, Terry, my personal go-to guy for my golfing questions. To my daughter, Jessica, for all those golf tournaments I was privileged to watch you play, and to my son, Matt, for the music you bring to my life.

  "We can't. No." She shook her head and took a step back. "This doesn't solve anything."

  Maybe not everything, Adrian agreed, but in his opinion they were certainly headed down the right path. "I know it doesn't but—"

  "Why did you come?" Sabrina asked in a trembling voice. "Why couldn't you have stayed away?"

  "Because—"

  Gathering every bit of strength from within, she squared her shoulders and looked straight at him, fire flashing from her eyes. "You need to go. Out of my house. Out of my hospital. Out of our life!"

  "I know this is tough—"

  "You have no idea," she said bitterly.

  "But it isn't easy for me either. I'd go if I could, but I can't, Sabrina," he said flatly. "Not after knowing we made a beautiful boy. Don't ask that of me, because I can't. I just can't."

  Dear Reader,

  Some years ago while sitting at a mall food court, I overheard a conversation between two women who were sharing ideas on how to make their dollars stretch. Out of idle curiosity, I listened. After all, who can't use a few new cost-cutting ideas? But as they talked, my interest turned from the actual how-to tips to the reason those tips were necessary. One was saving money for her husband's upcoming birthday gift. The other was trying to pay for her son's private guitar lessons. And as they talked, one thing stuck in my mind—the willingness each one had to give up something they enjoyed out of love for a special person in their life.

  Naturally, I began to apply the idea of sacrifice to my as-yet-undefined characters. My hero or heroine had to give up something a bit bigger than lunch money or a daily espresso. It had to be bigger than working a second job. The sacrifice had to literally change the individual's entire life because it would be "the right thing to do." Not long after, my hero Adrian whispered his story in my ear…and now, dear reader, I'm sharing it with you. I hope you enjoy it.

  Until next time, happy reading!

  Jessica

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  SABRINA HOLLISTER knew she'd eventually see Dr Adrian McReynolds again, but she'd never dreamed that moment would come unexpectedly at a golf course or that she'd knock him senseless in the process.

  After a year of leaving her equipment in the back of her single-car garage to collect dust, her friend and fellow nurse Kate Ostmeyer had convinced her to brush off the cobwebs and participate in the First Annual Pinehaven Health Center Benefit Golf Tournament.

  Although her first-and second-hole scores weren't anything to brag about, she'd parred the next few before shooting an unbelievable eagle on seven. Not bad for a woman who hadn't swung a club since early last season.

  Between the excitement of continuing her game from where she'd left off and the thrill of being outdoors, instead of stuck inside on this beautiful summer day, life couldn't have been better.

  Until the eighth hole.

  Sabrina took her first tee-off practice swing seconds before Kate completely shattered her concentration.

  "Mercy Memorial is loaning us one of their ER docs," Kate announced, clearly proud of her news scoop.

  Sabrina froze and she felt her palms break out into a sweat inside her gloves. Steady, she cautioned herself. Don't jump to conclusions.

  Determined to only sound mildly interested instead of frantic, she asked, "Really? They've never loaned us one before."

  "There's a first time for everything," the OB nurse remarked cheerfully. "And why shouldn't Mercy send us a doctor? They're part of our consortium and the corporate folks decided that every hospital in the group would take their turn helping cover our ED until we hired a permanent physician. It's Mercy's turn."

  Mercy's turn or not, Sabrina scolded herself for leaping to conclusions. The man she'd known at her former place of employment surely wouldn't be the one who would come to her new stomping ground. However, her reassurance didn't stop her from mentally crossing her fingers as she struggled to inject the right note of idle curiosity into her voice. "When is this happening? Not for a few weeks, I hope."

  "Oh, he's already here. Started today. In fact, he's playing in this tournament. Apparently our chief of staff wants to make a good impression so he insisted on including him as a member of his foursome."

  Sabrina didn't care what Dr Mosby wanted. She did, however, care about working with whomever Mercy had sent. As a member of the nursing float pool, Sabrina was temporarily assigned to the emergency department until one of the regularly assigned nurses returned from maternity leave. Which meant she'd be sharing space with the new guy for the next three weeks.

  Don't let it be Adrian.

  Sabrina gritted her teeth and asked the obvious. "Do you know who he is?"

  "I forget his name," Kate admitted sheepishly. "But, hey, you worked there before you joined us, so I'm sure if you mention a few, I'll recognize his."

  "I've been gone for ages," Sabrina pointed out. "Turnover was high. The ED folks I knew probably aren't there any more."

  She wasn't telling a lie. Mercy always had new ER docs coming and going, although it boasted a core group who'd remained the same over the years. If hospital administration had been asked to supply a physician, most likely the ED director would assign one of the newbies. Those with seniority wouldn't be sent to another facility without good reason or unless they'd volunteered. She couldn't imagine Adrian offering to leave his house and his job when his gesture meant he'd be an hour and a half away from his family.

  Family. She was both envious that he had a family to call his own and bitter that he'd refused to share it with her. But both of those emotions were counter-productive, so she stuffed them back into the mental box where she stored "subjects not to think about".

  Kate tapped a forefinger on her chin in obvious thought. "All I remember is that it started with an 'M'."

  Sabrina ran through the few names she recalled, eliminating one in particular. "Monighan, Miller, Magee…"

  "Close, but not quite. Mac something, I think."

  Her chest tightened as only one person fit Kate's criteria. "McReynolds?"

  Kate snapped her fingers. "That's right. Dr McReynolds."

  Sabrina's entire world suddenly changed from living color to shades of gray. Blood rushed through her ears, drowning out all sound, and her heart seemed to thump through her chest.

  Adrian was coming. No, he was already here.

  Heaven help her!

  She'd wanted to put off meeting him in this lifetime until she was mentally and emotionally prepared to face him again—preferably in about fifteen or twenty years. Clearly, she'd have minutes or at most twenty-four hours, which wasn't nearly long enough for her to develop any sort of game plan.

  She'd dated Adrian for about six months and by the end of that time their relationship had subtly shifted to the point where they'd discussed theoretical topics such as how many children they'd like to have, the sort of house they'd want to live in, which area of Denver had
the best elementary schools. They'd been on the verge of a commitment, she believed, when everything changed in an instant.

  While riding his motorcycle, Adrian's twenty-four-year-old brother Clay had been sideswiped by a minivan on Interstate 70. He'd come into the ER more broken than whole, with his prognosis of being a paraplegic if his broken vertebrae had damaged his spinal column. Only time would tell.

  Determined to help the man she loved to bear the burden of caring for Clay, she'd been crushed when Adrian had broken off their relationship because "he had to focus completely on his brother". Although she'd tried to convince him that she wasn't asking him to put her ahead of his brother's needs, each passing day and failed attempt to see him had caused her hopes and dreams to slowly die. Finally, she'd surrendered to the inevitable and gave up trying to talk to him. Determined to avoid reminders of the man she'd grown to love and the places where they'd spent happy hours, she'd resigned her position at Mercy Memorial and headed for the growing northeastern suburb of Pinehaven, where she'd moved on with her life, just as Adrian had wanted.

  Now he had the audacity to appear and upset her hard-won composure. Yet she couldn't deny the hope that suddenly blossomed in her chest. Could he have volunteered because she was here and he wanted to see her? After all, as an ED physician with seniority, he normally wouldn't have been chosen for an assignment like this.

  But as the possibility raised her spirits, she warned herself to be cautious. Better for her to keep her imagination under control and not jump to conclusions. Extremely high hopes had a tendency to fall hard and land more painfully.

  When she really thought about his arrival logically, it didn't make sense for Adrian to tie himself to a job for three months just to see her again when he could have found her quite easily by other means. She may not have specifically given him her new address, but she hadn't moved to Pinehaven in secret—any number of her ex-coworkers knew her destination. If he'd wanted to talk to her, he would have telephoned, emailed, or appeared on her front porch before now, especially if one considered how Pinehaven Health Center wasn't far from Mercy—a mere ninety minutes' drive if traffic was heavy, less if it wasn't. No, if Adrian had truly and temporarily relocated here, he'd only come under duress.

  The realization hardened her heart.

  "Do you know him?" Kate asked, curiosity coloring her face.

  Did she know Adrian McReynolds? What a question!

  She knew details. He liked his coffee black, his food spicy, his work and living spaces clean and neat. He wore boxer shorts to bed, had silky smooth hair on his chest, developed five o'clock shadow twice a day, had the faintest scar near his left temple's hairline and a birthmark on his right hip, and was a fantastic lover. He was charming, had a wonderful sense of humor, was devoted to his younger siblings, and locked away his deepest feelings behind a wall of stoicism that only a few could breach.

  On the job, he was a perfectionist and demanded the best for his patients. He was completely immovable once he'd made a decision. At one time, she'd admired the trait because it showed tenacity, persistence and strength of character. Now she only saw it as a flaw of closed-mindedness.

  Did she know Adrian McReynolds? Apparently not as well as she should have or as well as she'd once thought.

  She hesitated before answering. Until she considered the ramifications of what his presence would do to her life, she refused to admit anything but the barest of details. She didn't want people to know they'd once been quite close or that he'd ended the relationship because he didn't want to make room in his life for her, so she stretched the truth almost to the breaking point.

  "I've run into him a few times," she said instead.

  "Then I'm sure he'll appreciate seeing a familiar face now that he's here for the next few months. And speaking of faces, the stranger over there with Dr Mosby's team must be our fellow."

  Sabrina lowered her club to study the group approaching the thirteenth green about fifty yards to her right. Instinctively, her gaze homed on the tall individual she hadn't seen in thirteen months, one week and two days.

  Even from this distance, she recognized his confident bearing, his long-legged walk, and his lucky black-and-purple Colorado Rockies baseball cap.

  It was Adrian. The man she'd never expected to see until she'd plotted out every second of their next encounter, until she could think of him as a casual acquaintance rather than a lover, until she could face him with the cool indifference he deserved.

  As aloof as she wanted to be, as often as she'd told herself she'd relegated him into her past and moved on with her life, seeing him with hardly any advance warning brought all of those painful emotions to the surface.

  Her chest hurt as she realized his presence affected more than her own heart. His untimely arrival complicated everything she'd built for herself during the past year. She'd prided herself on her ability to work with anyone and everyone, but working with Adrian on a daily basis for several weeks was a punishment she didn't deserve.

  If disrupting her professional life wasn't enough, he'd turn her personal life into a shambles, too. Pinehaven might be a suburb of Denver, but the people in this community were a close-knit group. Secrets were impossible to keep. All he had to do was ask the right question, and well-meaning people would share her meticulously vague story.

  The same story to which only he could piece together all the bitter details.

  Thank goodness his name had never crossed her lips. No one would associate him with the fellow who'd dumped her, not even Kate, her best friend and the OB nurse who'd coached her through her labor.

  Tears of frustration blurred her vision and she rapidly blinked them away, hating the inevitability of Adrian turning her world into chaos after she'd finally, and with extreme effort, whipped it in order.

  Instantly, her lungs seemed to deflate and she ran through the full gamut of emotions before finally settling on panic.

  "Are we going to play or stand here all day?" Molly Blake, a third member of their Rusty Clubs foursome, whined as she swiped her forehead. "You guys might prefer to swelter under the sun, but I'd rather hang out in the air-conditioned clubhouse."

  Sabrina's flight-or-fight response kicked into high gear. The only thought running through her mind was to escape before Adrian saw her. Contrary to what Kate might believe about familiar faces, Sabrina needed to postpone their imminent reunion so she could mentally prepare herself.

  Numb, Sabrina stepped up to her ball and swung blindly. As soon as her driver made contact, she knew without even looking that she'd sliced the ball.

  Time slowed as she watched it head in Adrian's direction like a computer-guided missile searching for its target. Oh, surely fate wouldn't be that cruel!

  "Fore," she yelled just before the projectile struck her nemesis on the side of his head.

  He dropped like a rock and lay motionless on the manicured grass.

  Horrified, Sabrina's club slipped from her hand as her heart pounded. Dear God, she'd killed him!

  She'd killed the father of her son.

  * * *

  "What the—?" Adrian squinted up at the blue sky, seeing stars when none had been a few moments ago. His head throbbed in time to his heartbeat and something warm trickled down his ear and neck.

  "Just lie still for a few minutes, son." A worried face hovered over his, blocking the sun from his eyes. "Give yourself a chance to recover."

  The world spun at all sorts of crazy angles, so he gratefully complied. "What happened?"

  "Golf ball." Mosby pressed a semi-clean golf towel to a spot above Adrian's left ear. "How's the head?"

  He took stock. "Sore."

  "Any dizziness, nausea?"

  "Some," he admitted, hoping the power of positive thinking would slow down the spinning and churning of his internal amusement park ride from Tilt-A-Whirl to a sedate carousel.

  Mosby peered into his eyes. "Pupils are equal and reactive, so you can rest easy on that account."

  "I'm
OK. Just give me…a minute."

  "Take all the time you need," Mosby advised, placing a hand on his shoulder. "An ambulance is on its way."

  "Not necessary," he croaked, hating to appear weak, especially on his first official day in town. "I'm supposed to work in ER, not check in as a patient."

  "It's very necessary," Mosby assured him. "We take care of our own, and as of eight o'clock this morning, you're one of us."

  Adrian folded one arm over his eyes, too befuddled to argue and quite content to lie on the grass until his wits returned. He heard voices and tried to focus on them through the pounding in his head, but none seemed to make any sense until he heard one so familiar it haunted him in his dreams.

  "How is he? Is he OK? He's breathing, isn't he?"

  Sabrina.

  He'd known he'd see her again—the hospital wasn't large enough to avoid it—but he wondered if her breathless concern would fade as soon as she realized that he was the one lying on the ground with a goose egg on the side of his head.

  He lowered his arm and opened his eyes to see her face above his. Through his slightly blurry vision, he recognized her retroussé nose, high cheekbones, kissable mouth and eyes as black as midnight. "Yeah, I'm breathing and talking," he answered for himself. "In a few minutes I'll be walking, too."

  "That was one helluva slice," Mosby commented. "I wonder who hit it?"

  Even with his head feeling as if his brains had been run through a blender, Adrian was alert enough to watch color wash over Sabrina's face. "I did," she admitted.

  Of all the people in this tournament, Sabrina had knocked him senseless? He wanted to laugh at the irony but his skull hurt too much. The best he could do was smile, and that turned out to be more grimace than grin.

  As he covered his eyes with his arm once again to wait for the paramedics, one thought ran through his mind as clearly as a church bell on a calm summer day.

  Paybacks were hell.

  * * *

  After seeing Adrian awake and alert, Sabrina felt marginally better, until she saw his ashen face and the blood trickling past his ear and down his corded neck to stain his shirt collar. In spite of everything that had gone wrong between them, in spite of past hurts, she'd never dreamed of physically harming him. Not that he didn't deserve it, of course…