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Thomas had to smile. “Good to see you, too, Mrs. Brennan.” Though she’d been with him for the eight years since she stepped off the plane from Dublin to live with her daughter’s family here in Alexandria, and he knew her first name full well—Aileen—he’d never dared use it. It seemed disrespectful somehow, and he was pretty sure she’d drop kick his ass into next week if he ever tried it. He, on the other hand, had to submit to dearie, love, young Thomas or whatever other silly nickname that she felt like bestowing on him. Not that he minded. Much. “How was your weekend? How’s the grandbaby?”
“Oh, well, she’s the little heart of my heart, now, isn’t she? Working on one teeny little tooth in the front. Here’s a picture.”
She flipped around the digital frame on her desk, showing him a chubby and smiling green-eyed baby with yellow fuzz and a smear of what looked like spaghetti sauce across her face and, sure enough, the hint of a white tooth on her bottom gum.
Oh, man. What a beauty.
Staring at the child, he felt … a pang. Of … something.
Probably nothing more than hunger, not that he’d admit it to Eagle Eyes here.
“You’re very lucky,” he said.
“That I am.” She spun the frame back into place and nailed him with that concern again. “And don’t think that you’ve managed to distract me from your dietary habits, either, young man. Oh, is that coffee for me? Cream and two sugars?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
“I don’t think so.” He held the Starbucks cup just out of reach of her grasping hand, determined to get this bargain struck as soon as possible. “By accepting this beverage, you agree not to comment on my personal life. Deal?”
Mrs. Brennan glowered until her white brows ran straight across her forehead. “For how long?”
“The whole week.”
“Go on, then,” she said, snatching the cup out of his hand and drinking long and deep. “Nothing but trouble, you are. Here. Eat a protein bar. Get some nutrition.”
She tossed him a bar from the inner depths of her desk drawer. God alone knew what all she kept in there; one of these times he meant to ask for a walleye fishing lure just to see if she could produce it.
He caught it with gratitude because he was still hungry, although he felt compelled to point out a pertinent fact. “I’ll have you know I ate a turkey croissant on the elevator just now.”
She didn’t look remotely impressed. “A grown man like you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself calling that a meal. Eat the bar, and just say thanks.”
Well, she had him there.
“Thanks. I’m going to see how many calls I can make before the meeting at one.”
“Sign the letters on your desk for me.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” He started down the hallway, ready to collapse into his chair and rest for a minute. Every one of his thirty-six years was really starting to show. Used to be he could stand and operate all day, see patients, handle meetings, go for a run, do paperwork into the wee hours and then collapse into the bed of his woman of the moment before getting up and doing it all again the next day.
Now all he wanted was a two-week nap.
And, come to think of it, a life.
“How were the residents this morning?” she called after him. “Giving you fits?”
Brown and his hapless stammering flashed through Thomas’s mind, quickly followed by his beautiful defender. She’d been interesting, that one. There’d been something about her that almost distracted him from her unfortunate tendency to butt into the conversations of perfect strangers.
“Giving me fits?” His mind’s eye focused in on the woman’s smoky voice … the breasts that were plumped against the lacy white top she wore under that severe suit … the wide hips and shapely bare legs … the startling intensity in her brown eyes. His skin prickled with remembered awareness, and he could swear that the faint scent of her perfume, which was sophisticated and spicy, had followed him all morning. That was a neat trick, considering all the other, less pleasant smells the hospital had to offer. “You have no idea.”
Inside his office, he collapsed into his chair, rested his elbows on the desk and his face in his hands. Man, he was tired. He’d been on last night, and then removed the diseased left lung of an unrepentant, forty-year smoker, which was the medical equivalent of redecorating the staterooms on the Titanic. Then he’d had rounds and the unfortunate run-in with Brown before he’d had a meeting with some of the other doctors in his practice group.
But that Brown thing … it bothered him.
Partially because the kid had been at the tail end of a thirty-hour stint, a point when it was hard for the best of them, even a perfectionist like himself, to fire on all cylinders. Partially because Brown was a competent physician and Thomas hadn’t meant to let loose his temper and humiliate him like that. Partly because it dinged his ego to be read the riot act for his bad behavior by a stunning and undaunted woman, especially when he was at his most daunting.
Especially when he deserved it.
Who was she? Why was he still thinking about her?
He didn’t know, but there was only one way to find out: he’d ask Dr. Dudley about her and track her down. Something was telling him he’d regret it for a good long time if he didn’t.
His phone beeped, and Mrs. Brennan’s voice came over the intercom. “Your da’s on line one.”
Brilliant. Just what he needed to make his day even more of a nonstop thrill fest.
And why did the woman insist on referring to his father as Da when she knew damn good and well that, as a retired admiral, the man would never appreciate or answer to anything as pedestrian and affectionate as Da, Dad or, God forbid, Pops.
He stared at the phone, wondering if he could pretend he hadn’t heard.
“I know you heard me,” Mrs. Brennan’s voice said.
“Why would you think I’d want to talk to my father?”
“Don’t be a twit, dearie. You can always talk to the man who gave life to you.”
The man who gave life to him. That much was true, Thomas supposed, and the man had reared him—when he wasn’t at sea, anyway—and instilled his relentless discipline in him. So, for that, Thomas was grateful.
On the other hand, they’d always had a prickly relationship punctuated by periodic disownings, most notably when Thomas turned down his commission to the Naval Academy in favor of college and medical school, which were inferior enterprises as far as the Admiral was concerned.
Still. The man was the only blood he had since Mom died two years ago.
“Put him through,” he said grudgingly, and the next thing he knew, the Admiral was booming over the speaker at him. The Admiral always boomed.
“I saw the full exposé in the paper this morning. All the details are finally coming out. Two-inch headline, Hopewell General Downplayed Drug Scandal—Fired Intern. Nice. What the hell kind of Mickey Mouse operation are you people running up there? And who’s in charge of your PR? Donald Duck?”
“Thanks for calling.” Thomas balanced the phone on his shoulder, found the stack of letters and started signing. “Nice of you to be concerned.”
A snort from the Admiral. “Someone’s got to be concerned. First the drug thing, then your buddy Lucien De Winter had to step down as chief resident because he was hooking up with one of his interns—”
Unbelievable. “They weren’t hooking up,” Thomas interjected. “They’re engaged. As you well know.”
As usual, the Admiral trampled right over Thomas’s half of the conversation. “You folks are about to run a perfectly good hospital right into the ground with these scandals—”
“The hospital will recover.”
“—and if you’d followed in my footsteps like you were supposed to do, you wouldn’t have these kinds of issues.”
There it was. The inevitable reminder of the greatest of Thomas’s alleged failings. His accomplishments, including his scholarships to Dartmouth and then Columbia for medical school and subsequent spectacular career as a surgeon, never made their way into these conversations.
“Good point,” he said. “The military never has scandals.”
“Don’t you get snippy with me, boy,” the Admiral began, but a commotion out in the reception area diverted Thomas’s attention.
“I don’t know who you think you are, missy.” Mrs. Brennan’s voice, outside his office and closing in now, sounded harassed and shrill, which was a disturbing first in all the years he’d known her. “But you cannot just march into Dr. Bradshaw’s office and—”
“Watch me,” said another woman’s voice.
Wait a minute, Thomas thought, his heart rate kicking into overdrive as determined footsteps stopped outside his door. I know that voice.
And then, there she was, standing in his doorway.
Brown’s defender, a woman who was, he now realized, as beautiful as any he’d ever seen.
Their gazes locked for a moment, during which she seemed to gather her thoughts and he seemed to forget how to breathe. Man, she was fine. Her cheeks were flushed with pretty color, and her eyes were a startling flash of brown fire. There was something about her body language—squared shoulders, fighting stance and firm chin—that told him she’d come armed for battle, and he discovered, much to his surprise, that he couldn’t wait to engage her and see how well their wits matched up for round two.
“I need to talk to you,” she told him. “It’s important.”
Something inside him answered even before he got his thoughts organized.
Yes. Everything between them felt like it could be important. Did she also feel it?
Slowly, he got to his feet.
“—and I don’t know how you can practice medicine in that circus,” the Admiral was now saying in his ear.
This was not the time for his father. “I’ll call you back,” Thomas said, and hung up on the Admiral’s splutter of surprise.
Mrs. Brennan burst into the office, edging the woman aside and dividing her gaze, giving him an apologetic glance and the woman a killing glare. “I’m so sorry, Doctor. I don’t know who on God’s green earth this woman thinks she is.”
This was not the time for Mrs. Brennan, either. “Give us a minute,” Thomas told her.
Mrs. Brennan’s jaw dropped. “But I can have security here in a jiff—”
“I’ll call you if I need you.”
Even Mrs. Brennan at her feistiest couldn’t mistake the finality in his tone. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she muttered darkly, slipping out the door.
The woman clicked the door shut behind her and crossed the room to stand in front of his desk. “Thank you. For your time.”
Sudden urgency made his voice hard, but he needed to know.
“What’s your name?” he demanded.
She hesitated. “Lia Taylor.”
An unusual feeling of shame made him launch into his explanation even though he rarely, if ever, felt the need to make himself understood to others. Normally, he did his thing, which was performing his job to the best of his excellent ability, and if someone had an issue with his occasional abrasiveness, then that was just too damn bad. If people preferred a surgeon with a sweeter temper but unsteady hands, then that was their choice, right?
Normally, that was.
With Lia Taylor, on the other hand, he was happy to spill his guts.
Anything to convince her that he wasn’t a complete SOB.
“Just so you know,” he said, “Dr. Brown’s earlier mistake means that our patient is unstable and needs antibiotics for several days. Which means that we have to postpone her surgery for several days. Which isn’t good.”
“Oh.” Lia blinked. Something in her expression softened, and he felt a corresponding easing of his own tension. Did he have a chance with her, then, if she realized he wasn’t a bastard? “It was none of my business.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I’m not sure what got into me. I’m a crusader, I guess. I usually root for the underdog.”
“Good to know. I’ll bear that in mind.”
“But that’s not why I’m here.”
“No?” His belly tightened with delicious anticipation. “Why are you here?”
It took several long beats for her to answer.
“I’m here about my son.” She drew a deep breath, then another, clearly gathering courage to tell him something big. “I’m here about … our son.”
Chapter 3
Our son.
The two words hung in the air, hovering over his head like one of those giant anvils that Road Runner was always using to nail Wile E. Coyote in those old Looney Tunes cartoons.
And then they hit him, along with the stinging realization that this woman had no personal interest in him whatsoever.
“Our son?” he echoed, reeling.
“Yes.”
“Bullshit.”
She seemed to have expected this reaction, because she flinched but quickly recovered, plowing ahead with grim determination. “I know you don’t believe me, but he’s sick. And I need your help.”
Oh, okay. He got it. With a bitter laugh, he strode to the door and opened it, the better to speed this little liar on her way. “Nice try. I hate to tell you this, but your theatrics won’t get you to the front of my waiting list for new patients, okay? You need to wait your turn like everyone else. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
To his utter shock, she put her warm little hand on top of his where it rested on the knob, and stared up at him with such a wild mix of hope and desperation in her face that he had to turn away from it. “I’m not making this up. Look at me. I swear on Jalen’s life that I’m not making this up. Please hear me out.”
Jalen.
Weaker and more foolish than he needed to be where this one woman was concerned, he looked at her.
Mistake.
Tears sparkled in those big brown eyes, clinging to her black lashes and threatening to spill onto smooth brown cheeks that had to be the softest things in the world, not that he’d ever know. Worse was her unblinking earnestness, which was unexpected but unmistakable. Whatever else she might be, Lia Taylor didn’t appear to be off her meds, a wacko or a plain vanilla liar.
Or maybe that was just his lust talking.
Snatching his hand free—maybe he could think better when she wasn’t touching him—he stalked back to his desk, anxious to put some distance between him and her and between him and his growing sense of unease.
“Start talking,” he said. “Why don’t you start with explaining this miraculous event, since you and I have never laid eyes on each other before today, much less had sex.” He let his gaze scrape down her body, lingering on a few key points, trying to insult her the way she’d insulted his intelligence by expecting him to believe this fairy tale. “You didn’t think I’d forget having sex with you, did you, sweetheart? Because there’s no chance of that. Let me assure you.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart. This is hard enough without you being patronizing.” She shut the door again and took a few steps farther into the office. “And of course it wasn’t an immaculate conception—”
He leaned against his desk, crossing his arms and his legs. “Oh, I get it. This is the part of the conversation where you try to convince me that we had sex after some college frat party and I was too drunk to remember.”
“No, actually,” she said, her voice cooling several degrees and her tears long gone by now, “I’ve never been sexually attracted to drunk people.”
So she wasn’t going to pursue that line of argument, eh?
Smart choice. Especially since the chance of him forgetting a night with her, drunk or not, were the same as him playing starting center for the L.A. Lakers. Anyway, he’d been too busy studying to have many drunk nights in college, and too careful of his future to have unprotected sex with random women.
“Well, feel free to enlighten me.”
“My husband and I—” she began.
The H-word didn’t sit well with him, which was insane. “You’re married?”
“Widowed.” She had the nerve to raise one delicate brow with obvious annoyance. “Are you going to let me get a complete sentence out?”
He waved a hand for her to continue.
After a pause to make sure he wouldn’t interrupt again, she started over.
“My husband was older than me. We wanted kids. He couldn’t have them. So we went to a sperm bank.” She hesitated. His belly knotted, apparently realizing before the rest of him that a missile strike was headed straight for the space between his eyes. “The Hopewell General sperm bank.”
Thomas’s heart stopped cold.
Lia’s voice gentled, as though she knew that she was flipping his world up on its end. “I was artificially inseminated. I got pregnant. We were ecstatic.” Tears sparkled in her eyes again, and she struggled, her voice cracking. “Until he was killed in a car crash before Jalen was born.”
Ah, shit.
He waited, giving her time to collect herself, which was probably a mistake.
After a deep breath, she got it together enough to keep on kicking the ground out from under Thomas’s feet. “That was nine years ago. Now Jalen is sick and he needs your help, which is why I’m here. The end.”
It was the end, all right. The end of Thomas’s ability to stand upright with his knees nice and strong. Bracing his palms on his desk for support, he took his time lowering himself into his chair and wished he could handle this crisis as well as he handled the ones inside the operating room.
Think, man. THINK.
Didn’t Hopewell General have privacy policies in place to protect the anonymity of anonymous sperm donors?
Hell, yes.
He looked up to find her hovering over the desk, watching him intently, as though the world—their world—hung in the balance. Which, he supposed, it did.
“How do you know?” he wondered. “How do you know I’m the father?”
Her gaze wavered. “I … hacked into the hospital’s records.”
The words rattled around inside his head, making no sense. He tried to imagine what had to be involved in such a task—break-ins, firewalls, passwords, encryptions, decryptions and probably a whole bunch of other computer wizardry that he’d never heard of and could never understand.
“You … hacked into the records?”
“Yes,” she said, defiant now. “I’d do anything for my son.”
“You don’t just hack into—”
“You do if you’re an FBI analyst. And I hope you realize that I’ve just given you enough information to ruin my career and send me to jail for a long time. So I hope you’ll use it wisely.”
He was a bright guy, but it took his spinning thoughts way longer than it should have to coalesce into something coherent. “Hang on. You’re the hacker?”
Impatience leached into her voice. “Yes.”
“So what the hell were you doing with the chief of staff earlier, hanging out like you’re new BFFs?”
“They don’t want to put the hospital through the scandal of prosecuting me, so they’ve hired me to build a stronger security system.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Her lips twisted a little, as though she, too, appreciated the irony.
They watched each other for a couple of beats, both wary.
“Do you believe me now?” she asked.
His answer took much longer than it should have. An automatic and emphatic Hell, no! should have been flying out of his mouth, but it seemed stuck in his throat. Crazy, right? He hadn’t signed up for a kid, had always taken steps to prevent producing a kid and wasn’t ready for a kid. Hell, maybe there really wasn’t a kid.
Maybe this complete stranger was looking for a baby daddy with resources to pay for the kid’s braces. Maybe she’d researched him and his family and knew the kind of money they had. Maybe she wanted to get rich quick on child support. Other women had certainly tried, unsuccessfully, to tap into his wallet over the years, so he wouldn’t be surprised. Plus, the hospital was up to its neck in scandals, and it wouldn’t do his personal reputation around here any good if he turned out to have a baby mama, not that he’d ever cared too much about people’s opinions of him, even his colleagues’.
And yet …
Hold up. There was no and yet, even if the idea of having a son tugged at some primal daddy thing inside him. He was too shrewd to be played for a fool.
“Why would I believe the word of an admitted hacker and felon who barges into my office to tell me I have a son but doesn’t have any proof? Or do you have proof? My bad.”
Flashing him a look withering enough to melt his spine, she reached into a skirt pocket, pulled out a smart phone, tapped a couple of buttons and handed it to him without a word.
Whereupon his limbs froze with sudden paralysis.
If he looked at that picture, there was a chance that his life would change forever. Except that, looking into Lia’s eyes, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d passed that point of no return a while back.
Taking the phone, he looked.
“Oh, my God.” His fingers tightened in a convulsive grip. “Oh, my God.”
The kid—Jalen; his son’s name was Jalen—was holding a disgruntled gray rabbit in his arms and smiling with delight into the camera. It would have been tempting to accuse Lia of somehow stealing a photo of Thomas when he was a child, but he’d never had a gray rabbit and certainly had never owned an Avatar: The Movie T-shirt.
The eeriness of it made his scalp tingle and the hair stand up on his arms.
He was looking into a younger version of his own face. The Mini-Me to his Dr. Evil. They could have been twins, separated by twenty-eight years.
They had the same chocolate skin with red undertones. The same point at the corner of their right ears. The same straight nose.
The boy’s eyes were keen and intelligent and …
Oh, man. Those were his eyes, looking back at him.
Hell, they even had the same right eyebrow, which was flatter than the left.
He stared, looking for differences, and there were some, but not enough. Jalen had his mother’s dimples and her high cheekbones, but he was, God help him, clearly Thomas’s son. And suddenly, he couldn’t look at the picture for one more second. Not one.
Too stunned to think, he handed the phone back to Lia, who gave him a moment by walking over to the window.
He stared down at his desk through the sudden blur of hot tears, and he couldn’t decide if he was mostly stunned, mostly angry or mostly …
Thrilled.
He was a father. Jalen was his son.
“I’ll want to meet him,” he told her. “After the DNA tests.”
He waited for some sort of refusal or outrage, but there was none.
“Okay,” she said.
Good. She was savvy enough to know that the legalities had to be observed in cases like this. He liked that.
“I want to be part of his life.”
This time, her agreement took a little longer in coming. She looked startled, as though she hadn’t thought quite so far ahead.
“Well,” she began.
“That’s not up for debate.” Later, when his thoughts weren’t buzzing like wasps in a jar, he’d have to give some thought to how he could go from not knowing he had a son to insisting on a place in his son’s life—all within the space of ten minutes. For now, all he knew was that boys needed fathers, and he planned to be a great one. Just because he’d missed the first several years of Jalen’s life didn’t mean he’d willingly miss any more. “Understand?”
A curt nod was his only answer.
Those details thus concluded, they stared at each other in shell-shocked silence.
Then some of his anger at being blindsided like this began to surface. It wasn’t about the child or the money. It was about this woman he’d never seen before having the power to walk into his life and rearrange it, as though she’d swiped her hand across the chessboard, ruining a game well in progress.
“You’ll want child support, I suppose.”
Much to his surprise, she looked shocked. “Child support?”