Doctor, Soldier, Daddy (The Doctors MacDowell Book 1)

by Caro Carson

  She felt her cheeks redden and tried to laugh at herself. She wasn’t a blushing bride. She wasn’t a virgin. She’d lived on a dozen beaches where people of both genders and all ages walked around half-clothed. Yet, seeing Jamie in sweatpants and bare feet felt so incredibly intimate.

  I’m going to have to get over this if I’m going to live with the man for...

  For how long? Had Jamie thought beyond his son’s upcoming surgeries, or past Jamie’s own time in the army reserves? If she was Sam’s mother throughout his childhood, what would they do once Sam grew up and moved out of the house? Would they stay friends and quietly get a divorce once Sam got his college diploma?

  Am I wife for a year? For a decade? Forever?

  She didn’t know.

  Kendry turned off the TV and went to bed. Alone. In the guest room of her husband’s house.

  * * *

  Kendry glanced at the institutional clock on the playroom wall. She only had a few minutes left on her shift, and she still hadn’t found a way to tell Bailey that she’d gotten married. It was a hard thing to work into conversation.

  Hey, pass me those diaper wipes, please. So, yesterday after work, I went to the courthouse with Dr. MacDowell—the E.R. one, not the cardiologist—and got married. I think Susie needs the crayons.

  “I’m gonna take your temperature now,” Bailey said to the preschool-aged Susie. “You don’t even have to stop coloring.”

  As a medical assistant, Bailey had the duty to take each child’s temperature. The task was a piece of cake with the latest device that let her swipe each forehead for a few seconds.

  “No Sammy here this morning,” Bailey said conversationally.

  This was the opening Kendry needed. She liked Bailey, and she wanted to tell someone her world-changing, life-changing news. This weekend, she planned to write her parents a letter and mail it to the last tropical address they’d given her, but that wasn’t the same thing at all.

  “Too bad for us, huh?” Bailey continued. She wrote the child’s temperature on her chart.

  Kendry chickened out. “Y-yes. Sammy is my favorite.”

  “Sammy is everyone’s favorite. If Sammy’s here, we get to see his daddy at pickup time, and Daddy is definitely a favorite. Man candy. Yummy.”

  “I like candy,” Susie announced.

  “Can you draw me a picture of candy?” Bailey asked. “I know Miss Kendry likes candy, too.”

  Kendry pushed her taped glasses into place with one finger. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  Bailey waved her thermometer at Kendry. “We all like candy.”

  Kendry cleared her throat. “So, about Sam...”

  Bailey put her hand out and grabbed Kendry’s wrist. Hard. “Oh, my God.”

  “What is it?” Kendry looked at each child in the room, searching for the one who was in trouble.

  “I’m gonna die right here. Right now. Check out the new wrapper on that candy.”

  Kendry turned to see a soldier approaching the playroom’s glass door. He wore camouflage and walked with a purpose. He carried a baby, and when he made eye contact with Kendry through the glass, he smiled.

  “I’m gonna faint,” Bailey whispered.

  “Me, too.” Kendry covered her mouth, but it was too late. The words were out. Bailey giggled and nudged her as Jamie opened the door.

  “Hi, Kendry,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

  She used the fingertips covering her mouth to give him a little wave.

  He handed a willing Sammy to her. Jamie greeted Bailey with a nod and a smile. In fact, Kendry thought he looked awfully smiley for a man who’d spent the night sleeping in a chair. The recliner must be comfortable.

  Bailey smiled right back at Jamie. “I know Kendry is Sammy’s favorite, but he and I will get along just fine when she has to leave. Don’t worry about a thing, Dr. MacDowell.”

  Jamie glanced at Kendry with one brow raised in question. “Thanks, but Sammy and I are here to pick up Kendry. We’ve got some errands to run before I report for drill this weekend.”

  Bailey stared at Jamie for a moment. “I see.”

  Clearly, her tone said she did not. Kendry cleared her throat and made a halfhearted gesture toward Jamie. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you yet, but Dr. MacDowell and I...kind of...got married yesterday.”

  Bailey stared at her. “Seriously?”

  Kendry patted Sam on the back. “Yes, so I could be Sammy’s mommy. He’s got some surgeries coming up.” Saying it out loud made it sound odd. No one got married because they had a surgery coming up.

  Then Jamie took a step closer. His arm encircled her shoulders, the surprisingly smooth material of his uniform sliding across her back. The heat of his body competed with the shock on Bailey’s face for Kendry’s attention.

  “I only had to ask her a half-dozen times,” Jamie said.

  “No, he didn’t. Just twice.” Kendry wanted to explain things to Bailey so that it all made sense, but Jamie’s nearness was distracting.

  “Just twice,” Bailey repeated. “You got married yesterday?”

  “It’s not like that.” Kendry stopped talking abruptly when Jamie squeezed her shoulder in a kind of warning.

  “I wasn’t going to let her change her mind once she finally said yes,” he explained. “We eloped.”

  Silence followed that statement. Silence, except for the pounding of Kendry’s heart. Eloped was such a dramatic way to describe their civil vows. Such a romantic way to describe them.

  “Miss Bailey, my crayon’s broken.”

  The child’s voice seemed to break the spell Bailey was under, because she threw her arms open wide. “Well, congratulations!” She tried to close her arms around Kendry, but Sam and Jamie were there.

  Bailey laughed and hugged Kendry as best she could, anyway. “Why didn’t you tell me? We could have had a bachelorette party, or at least I would have bought you a cinnamon roll for a wedding cake this morning.”

  “Oh, I made sure she got fed this morning.” The way Jamie said it made Kendry want to drop through the floor. He made it sound like he’d fed her while she was stark naked in bed or something, when they’d really stopped at a pancake place on the way to the hospital.

  Bailey gave Kendry a playful shove in the shoulder, which moved Jamie and Sam, too. “You sly thing, I didn’t even know you two were dating.”

  For the life of her, Kendry couldn’t think of a thing to say. Bailey had gotten the completely wrong impression, and Jamie had made sure she did.

  Bailey made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go on, get out of here. Clock out and enjoy those errands.”

  * * *

  It took Kendry at least five minutes to think up and then discard fifty-five ways to broach the subject on her mind. Finally, she blurted it out. “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?” Jamie looked curious as he drove toward their first errand, whatever it was. Curious, and calm, and completely in control. The camouflage only made him look that much more in charge.

  He looked that much more out of her league. No wonder Bailey had been so shocked.

  “You made Bailey think we were really married.”

  “We are really married.”

  “I mean, like we got married because we were in love.” There, she’d said it. She’d gotten that monumental word out there.

  Her soldier-husband shrugged as if the L-word didn’t matter. “Most people will jump to that conclusion anyway.”

  “I don’t think they will.”

  That seemed to bother him a little. “Why not?”

  He had to be pretending he didn’t know. It was kind of him, but it was unnecessary. “We don’t look like a couple. Most people don’t even see me to start with, but, Jamie, look at you. You�
�re the hottest bachelor at the hospital. You must know it.” She paused deliberately, wanting him to acknowledge the truth.

  He shrugged again. “Quinn doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s the hot one.”

  Kendry burst out laughing. “True enough.”

  Jamie pulled into a car dealership and parked. He turned in his seat to focus on her. Kendry found she couldn’t hold his gaze.

  She clasped her hands in her lap. “The point is, you don’t have to pretend we’re in love. I’m not vain. It’s not going to hurt my feelings when people say how shocked they are that you married me. They’ll guess that you needed someone to watch over Sam, and that’s okay.”

  “That’s not okay.” Jamie placed one warm hand over her two tightly twisted ones. “As part of my family, you’re important to me, and I don’t want to see you get hurt. I’m not going to stand by and do nothing if someone acts shocked and you feel embarrassed.”

  “Bailey isn’t mean. She wasn’t trying to embarrass me.”

  “I know, but others will do it on purpose. If I can tell a true story, and believe me, it feels like I asked you a hundred times before you agreed to marry me, or if I can hold your hand and make gossip stop, then I’m going to do it.”

  Kendry should be firm in this. She should insist that they not pretend to anyone, because no one’s opinion mattered. Jamie’s plan was unnecessary.

  Unnecessary, but tempting.

  Jamie wanted to touch her in public. He wanted to tell people things about her that sounded romantic. She’d compromised in every area of her life, it seemed. This compromise, at least, would allow her to live a little bit of her fantasy. For a few moments at work, whenever they encountered gossip that Jamie wanted to silence, she would be treated like a woman who’d enthralled a man. Not just any man, but Dr. Jamie MacDowell, who drove a motorcycle and saved lives and wore a soldier’s uniform.

  She took a deep breath and looked Jamie in the eye. “If that’s the way you want it, then okay.”

  Jamie gave her hands a brisk pat, then opened his door. “Great. Let’s go get you a car.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the end, of course, she compromised. She didn’t want a car. Rather than tell Jamie that she didn’t trust herself behind the wheel, she’d pointed out that the gossip would surely say she was a gold digger.

  Jamie had countered with some disappointingly reasonable logic. “My unit drills in Dallas. I can’t leave you stranded at the house all weekend. You’ll need to get groceries. You’ll want to go back to your place and pick up some clothes. What if Sam starts running a fever and you need to take him to the hospital?”

  Kendry had let Jamie rent her a car to use while he was away. Before she signed the rental contract, she triple-checked that they’d added the optional insurance. On that, there was no compromising.

  In the rental-car company’s lot, Jamie pulled a large box out of the back of his truck and proceeded to install a new baby seat in the back of the rental. Then he handed her a new iPhone, showed her how to send photos with it, and told her that he, Quinn, his mother and an older brother in New York named Braden, whom she hadn’t known existed, were already programmed into the speed dial. He put two hundred dollars “for groceries” into her hand, along with the keys and rental-car paperwork.

  All these things he handed over to her easily. Sam took a moment longer. After a kiss on the top of his son’s head and a squeeze that might have been tight enough to make Sam protest a bit, Jamie handed Kendry his son.

  “I won’t be gone that long,” he said. “Just two nights. The time will fly.”

  “I know.” Kendry wasn’t sure if Jamie was trying to convince himself or her.

  His hand drifted from the top of his son’s head to her chin, as he’d done before. After lifting her face to look into her eyes, his hand drifted over her shoulder briefly, almost like he was connecting his son and his wife together in his mind with one gentle sweep of his hand.

  He stepped back and nodded, then spoke in a husky voice. “Thank you. If I can’t be with him, then I’m glad he’s with his new mom.”

  He walked away. Kendry lifted Sam’s hand to wave as his daddy drove off, back to the military career that had ended with a lost love and a new baby.

  “He’s not going to lose you, too, Sam. I’m going to take good care of you.”

  She drove the rental car back to Jamie’s house like an actress who set the perfect example in a driver’s-education movie. Considering how badly her hands were shaking once they parked in the driveway, Kendry was grateful she only dropped the car keys twice, and not the baby.

  * * *

  Friday night eventually became Saturday. The long, late-September Saturday turned into Sunday. As the time passed, Kendry discovered that taking care of Sam around the clock, day and night, for every feeding and for every diaper change, was...

  ...a joy. There was something empowering in being able to comfort a baby. Whether he needed food or a toy, whether he needed to be soothed or entertained, Kendry was able to make Sam’s world better. In return, he paid attention to her like she was the center of his universe. For this weekend, she was. Sam snuggled into her like she was the most comfortable place to be.

  Kendry herself couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so comfortable. The shower with its modern rainfall spray was sinful, and she sinned whenever Sam napped. Her lemongrass shampoo made her hair feel almost as soft as a baby’s. She’d found some disposable men’s razors under the sink, so now her shaved legs were nearly as soft as Sam’s, too.

  The refrigerator dazzled her in stainless steel, and the ability to open the double doors wide and see shelf after shelf of brightly lit, icy-cold food was a luxury she hadn’t had in years. Jamie had said they were low on food, but there were two kinds of breakfast cereals in the pantry—a pantry! A whole room just for food!—as well as a loaf of bread and a package of lunch meat in the fridge, so there was no need. She organized all the bottles of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, pickles.

  The washing machine was the best of all, a miracle of technology after hand-scrubbing everything she owned with a bar of soap in a tiny sink. Kendry gathered up Jamie’s T-shirts and sweatpants, cut the tags off the last set of her new scrubs and put everything in the machine. She pushed a few buttons and walked away. Kendry had never had this luxury.

  Never. Certainly not during her childhood, living with parents who enjoyed rustic living to the extreme. Her parents had thought if they were going to learn pottery techniques from natives in a rainforest, then they should live in a wooden, thatched hut like the natives, too. When the Harrisons had returned to the States for the odd school year, beat-up Laundromats with their rusted carts and change machines had seemed the height of modern convenience.

  Jamie had married her and brought her to his palace, indeed. Kendry napped, she slept, she played with Sam. She was on vacation in a luxury resort.

  She only had her new scrubs to wear in the luxury resort, but that was okay. It made it easier to justify eating the man’s food and showering in his house if she felt like a hired nanny in professional scrubs.

  The rental car stayed in the driveway. Kendry had no desire to go to her own place and bring her old clothes into this paradise. She wanted to enjoy this fantasy a little longer. It was so much easier than deciding how to tell Jamie that his real wife had a really messed-up life.

  * * *

  There were some things a man shouldn’t tell his mother over the phone. Jamie’s marriage was bound to come as a shock, so the least he could do was tell his mother in person that he was now a married man. It would be easier to explain face-to-face why he’d taken a woman he’d known for a month to the local courthouse and bound himself to her.

  Quinn gets it. Dad would have gotten it. Mom will understand when I explain it.

  That’s wh
at he told himself as he traveled the last graveled piece of road that led to the River Mack Ranch. The truth was, as the grand white house came into view a few acres in the distance, he felt like a little kid about to explain to his parent that the detention slip in his backpack was not as bad as it appeared.

  The ranch was located nearly an hour and a half outside of Austin. Jamie hadn’t had enough time on Friday to stop by on his way to reporting to his reserve unit in Dallas. Now, on his way home, he had no excuse not to stop and reveal to his mother who, exactly, had been watching Sam for him these past few days.

  He’d tell her the good news that he was married, and then he’d leave. He was impatient to get home. The entire weekend he’d been texting Kendry, and she’d been using her new iPhone to send him all the photos of Sam he could want. Her photos were funny and quirky, like a close-up of a messy baby hand along with the caption, Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I can’t use a spoon, but I can feed myself oatmeal.

  It had seemed natural to start sending back photos of where he was, what he was doing, whom he was with. He’d sent her a photo of the tasteless substance that passed as cake in the army’s dehydrated, portable meal system, and had promised to pick up fried chicken on his way home. They’d have to pretend it didn’t taste like heaven, so Sam would be content with his oatmeal while they devoured the Colonel’s original recipe.

  Soon. He’d be home soon. But first he had to tell his mom he had a wife. She’d obviously seen his truck coming up the road, because she was waiting on the porch, looking as if she’d been expecting company in blue slacks and a crisp white shirt. Like many Texan women of her generation, she always had her hair and makeup done, just in case.

  “Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” she said. “Where’s the baby?”

  “He’s home. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine. I could have taken care of him for you.”

  Jamie gave his mom an extra hug. “I’m glad to hear you’re feeling up to it. Which rheumatologist did you end up seeing?”

  “Oh, some new kid. He looks younger than you, and all he offered to do was run a bunch of tests.”