At seventeen, she’d never seen a more perfect example of manliness,

Madelyn thought, thinking back to when she first met Luke. One look and she’d wanted him to be the first to make love to her. Now, watching him sleep, a shimmer of female appreciation still ran through her.

She wasn’t sure about anything when it came to Luke. She just knew he was important to her—and not just as her doctor.

His lashes fluttered as he opened his eyes, and he frowned.

“Maddy?” His voice was rusty and threaded with disbelief.

“Go to sleep, Luke,” she soothed.

“Baby?” he muttered.

“He’s fine.”

His mouth moved. “Sorry he’s not mine.”

“So am I,” she said on a suddenly shaky breath.

He smiled then. “Keep you safe, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Even from me.”

It was at that moment that she realized she still loved him.

Dear Reader,

This is a very special month here at Intimate Moments. We’re celebrating the publication of our 1000th novel, and what a book it is! Angel Meets the Badman is the latest from award-winning and bestselling Maggie Shayne, and it’s part of her ongoing miniseries, THE TEXAS BRAND. It’s a page-turner par excellence, so take it home, sit back and prepare to be enthralled.

Ruth Langan’s back, and Intimate Moments has got her. This month this historical romance star continues to win contemporary readers’ hearts with The Wildes of Wyoming—Hazard, the latest in her wonderful contemporary miniseries about the three Wilde brothers. Paula Detmer Riggs returns to MATERNITY ROW, the site of so many births—and so many happy endings—with Daddy by Choice. And look for the connected MATERNITY ROW short story, “Family by Fate,” in our new Mother’s Day collection, A Bouquet of Babies. Merline Lovelace brings readers another of the MEN OF THE BAR H in The Harder They Fall—and you’re definitely going to fall for hero Evan Henderson. Cinderella and the Spy is the latest from Sally Tyler Hayes, an author with a real knack for mixing romance and suspense in just the right proportions. And finally, there’s Safe in His Arms, a wonderful amnesia story from Christine Scott.

Enjoy them all, and we’ll see you again next month, when you can once again find some of the best and most exciting romance reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Daddy by Choice
Paula Detmer Riggs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Annette Broadrick

A great Texas lady and a treasured friend.

PAULA DETMER RIGGS

discovers material for her writing in her varied life experiences. During her first five years of marriage to a naval officer, she lived in nineteen different locations on the West Coast, gaining familiarity with places as diverse as San Diego and Seattle. While working at an historical site in San Diego she wrote, directed and narrated fashion shows and became fascinated with the early history of California.

She writes romances because “I think we all need an escape from the high-tech pressures that face us every day, and I believe in happy endings. Isn’t that why we keep trying, in spite of all the roadblocks and disappointments along the way?”

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

It was hotter than hell the day Luke Jarrod returned to West Texas. Overhead the merciless sun beat down on the cab of his truck, while inside the air conditioner blasted ice from the vents.

Slouched behind the wheel, his eyes gritty from too little sleep and his shoulders stiff from too many hours driving without a break, Luke was sweating like a bridegroom with a .12-gauge shotgun at his backbone. Which was real appropriate, considerin’ he was about to become a daddy at eighteen.

It scared him some to think of his Maddy girl having a baby, her being so tiny and all. And only seventeen. Too damn young to know better, so he should have.

It had been opening day of the Whiskey Bend Stampede at the county fairgrounds when he’d first laid eyes on her. A bunch of ROTC kids from Whiskey Bend High School had been bringing in the flag, just like every other rodeo in every other town he’d seen that season. Strung tight and desperate for prize money to keep himself in tacos and his cutting horse, Cochise, in oats, he’d been standing with the more seasoned competitors in the dusty ring with his hand over his heart, watching the chicks twirling batons when his buddy Buck Mehan had dug an elbow into his ribs.

“Son,” he said, “were I ten years younger I’d be all over that little yeller-haired darlin’ in the third row, the one swishing all that glorious hair like there was no tomorrow. Man could die happy did he belong to her.”

Luke had never wanted to belong to anyone. Belonging meant obligations and responsibilities, two things he’d avoided for as long as he could remember. But one look at those slinky tanned legs and tight little butt sashaying past him, her itty-bitty skirt swishing this way and that, and he’d fallen about as hard as a man can fall without cracking wide open.

Her name was Madelyn Sue Smith, and she’d been flat-out adorable, her crazy little cat’s face lit with excitement and her eyes full of spirit. It had been high noon, and the sun had coated her honey-colored hair with shimmering gold. He’d never seen hair like hers, bunches of tousled curls all the way to her shoulders. It had been prettier than a palomino’s coat, which was just about the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. When they’d been together, he’d spent hours running his hands through all that glorious stuff.

Lord help him, he hadn’t intended to let things get out of hand. But she’d been so sweet, and her smile had taken the edge off the sadness that had plagued him from the moment his mother had abandoned him when he was only nine, taking the baby sister he adored and leaving him to cope with his father’s bitter rages.

His body stirred at the memory of the stolen hours they’d spent together in a cheap motel room near the fairgrounds. That last night he’d bought her flowers—white carnations with petals almost as silky as her skin—and made sure the sheets had been clean. She’d been a virgin, and he’d tried to be gentle.

A thousand times he’d played back that scene, the teasing flick of her tongue against his, the purr of need in her throat. The adoration and trust in her eyes when she’d told him she loved him. A thousand times these past eight months he’d taken out that memory, hoarding each flash of those river green eyes, each dimpled smile, the soft little huff of wonder when she’d explored his body for the first time. When she’d finally worked up the courage to touch him, he’d damn near come right up off the bed.

For the first time since quittin’ school at sixteen to join the junior circuit, he’d been reluctant to move on. Especially when she’d cried and clung to him like there was no tomorrow.

I’ll write every day, she’d promised between frantic kisses. And she had at first, four letters for every one of his, telling him over and over how much she missed him—and how she couldn’t wait for him to come back when the season was over with the engagement ring he’d promised.

The more she wrote about them getting married, the tenser he’d become. Hell, he’d just gotten old enough to drink legal in a few enlightened states. The last thing he wanted was a noose around his neck. Thing was, though, he’d promised, and like his old man always said, a Jarrod never broke a promise.

Bent a few, though. And it wasn’t like he’d been real specific about when the season ended.

What with one thing and another, he’d started looking for reasons to put off goin’ back. Things like not havin’ enough money to support a wife. Or even the prospect of a steady job. Hell, he had no education to speak of. Nothing but a talent for stayin’ glued to the back of a raging tornado in horseflesh for the eight seconds it took to put money in his jeans.

Since his father had remarried and started another family, he didn’t even have a home to offer her—not a real one, anyway. So he kept puttin’ off that long drive back to Texas. As the months rolled by, there’d been other dusty towns and inevitably, other girls. Soon he’d been impatiently scrawling a few lines on a postcard. And finally he’d stopped writing altogether.

So had she—eventually—which was why he’d been so surprised to see the letter waiting for him at his daddy’s ranch outside Wickenburg. Damn thing had followed him halfway around the country—Canada, too—forwarded so many times the envelope had been raggedy and smudged.

All the way from Arizona he’d been picturing her with a big belly. The more he’d thought about it, the more awestruck he’d become. That sweet girl was havin’ his baby. His. It humbled him as much as it scared him.

Sweat beaded under the band of his dress Stetson hat as he made the left turn that would take him to her place. What was done was done, he told himself as he pulled into the driveway of the ugly brown house. He’d had his fun. Now it was time to pay the piper.

But as he climbed down from the truck and straightened his shoulders, he realized he was glad she was pregnant. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to start out a lifetime with his lady, but he’d make it work. If it took him a lifetime, he was determined to show her just how much he loved her. His Maddy girl.

Chapter 1

Twenty-two years later

“I don’t mean to frighten you unnecessarily, Maddy Sue, but I wouldn’t be doing my duty as your doctor if I didn’t lay out the worst-case senario.”

Sixty-seven-year-old Dr. Horace Austin Morrow had been Madelyn Smith Foster’s doctor from the moment she was born. Or, more precisely, from the moment of her conception, as he liked to tease with a twinkle in those still-bright blue eyes whenever she was being mulish.

Madelyn trusted him implicitly. She also loved him like the father she should have had. She liked to think he cared deeply for her, as well. Certainly he had stood by her when almost everyone else in her life had turned against her.

After Luke had broken her heart, she’d cried on Doc’s broad shoulder so many times she’d come to associate the smell of his starched lab coat with fathomless sorrow. When Doc had haltingly told her that the odds of her ever becoming pregnant were too minuscule to measure, she’d collapsed in those strong arms, sobbing until she was empty inside.

Five months ago, when he’d given her the astounding news that she’d beaten those odds and had actually conceived, she’d also cried in his arms. From joy this time. But now…

“You said I just had a small cyst, that it was nothing to be concerned about.” Her voice was a thread, pushed past the sudden constriction in her throat.

“Actually it’s more like a benign tumor. Folks generally call these things fibroids, but the correct medical term is myoma.”

Instinctively her hand went to her tummy where the fragile little soul she already adored was curled into a warm ball under her heart. “You mean I…I could lose this baby?”

“It’s possible, honey. These here myomas are like West Texas weather—real unpredictable. Sometimes the weatherman forecasts a big old tornado, and all we get is a piddling little blow. On the other hand it only makes sense to duck on down to the cellar when you see the warning signs.”

Madelyn bit her lip, her gaze fixed on the fuzzy black-and-white image of her child in the ultrasound photo. Along the curve of her uterus was a black smudge, more like a thickening than her idea of a tumor. Certainly it didn’t look menacing, at least not to her untrained eye. However, the dark shadow was bigger in this photo than the one taken a month earlier, which Doc claimed was a big old red flag.

“Would you mind going over the possible…complications again, please?” she asked when he remained silent, his homely face set in somber lines.

“I wouldn’t mind at all, honey.” The springs of Doc’s chair protested as he shifted his bulk a little closer to where she was perched rigidly on the edge of her chair. “These are only maybes, you understand,” he said, lifting his shaggy salt-and-pepper brows.

“Yes, I understand.” And if she didn’t, she soon would—even if she had to steal Wiley Roy’s precious laptop computer and search every database on the Net.

Doc held up the same gnarled hand that had held hers while she’d screamed in agony during her first delivery. One by one he ticked off potential problems. Each one was worse than the one before. Each one had the potential to precipitate early labor or worse. By the time he finished, she felt light-headed and her throat was dust dry.

“What do you suggest I do?” she managed to squeak out after swallowing several times.

“Get yourself to a specialist who handles these kinds of cases on a regular basis, one of those new high-risk docs that are all the rage these days. I’ve been doin’ some callin’ around just in case, and I’ve come up with five names.” He reached for a folder and flipped it open. “Two are at Baylor, one at UC San Diego, one at Mount Sinai and one up in Oregon at Portland General.”

Madelyn cast a wary glance at the collection of faxes and printouts he was shuffling through, refreshing his memory. “Is there one that’s better than the others?” she asked when he glanced up.

“They’re all excellent. Some I’ve heard tell of here and there, some I haven’t. I met Candace Marston once at an internists’ conference in Austin three or four years ago. She’s a few years younger than you, but sharp as a tack. The others are all men.”

“I don’t care about gender. I care about my baby, and I want the best, whoever he or she is.”

Doc studied her in thoughtful silence through his half glasses for a long tense moment before nodding. “In that case, this is the man you should see. The best of the best.” He lifted a sheet of paper with a brief bio typed at the top of a long list of published articles and honors.

Her breath dammed up in her chest when she read the name printed in bold letters at the top: LUCAS OLIVER JARROD, M.D.

“It can’t be,” she said, her voice flat.

“According to everyone I asked, Jarrod’s considered the premier expert on myomas, among other things. Way I heard it, he’s got women flying in from all over the world, just so’s he can watch over ’em.”

“I don’t care.” Her heart seemed as if it would pound clear through her chest, and her blood felt hot in her veins. Not once, in all the years since the social worker had taken her child away forever, had she stopped loving her daughter or wondering about her. Nor in all that time had she ever stopped hating Luke Jarrod or blaming him for her loss.

Yet, paradoxically, the man she’d married had the same lean build and pantherlike way of walking that had first attracted her to Luke.

“It took me years to stop hating him. I…it can’t be good for the baby to stir all that up again.”

“Then don’t let it be stirred.” Stern, suddenly, and intense, Doc’s eyes bored into her. “If you want to give that little one a chance, get yourself on the next plane to Oregon. Charm the man if that’s what it takes. Play the guilt card if he balks. Remind him of all he cost you if you have to, but convince him to take you on.”

Madelyn bit down on the urge to refuse point-blank. This baby meant everything to her. Everything. Yet, how could she bear to rake up the misery of the past all over again?

“Maddy, you’re a strong woman,” Doc said gently but with audible conviction. “You’ve handled much worse than this and survived. You’ve made yourself into a real role model for the young folks in this sorry old town. You even married a man who didn’t value you near enough because your folks liked him.”

At the mention of the baby’s father, her gaze dropped. The eldest of eight children, Wiley Roy Foster had been adamant in his desire never to be a father. Since four specialists had told Maddy she would almost surely never conceive again, theirs seemed an ideal match. And they had been happy in the beginning. Gradually, however, the hopeful early years settled into a mundane routine. Wiley Roy wasn’t so much a bad husband as a complacent one. Nothing she tried could shake him from his rut, while little by little, she found herself feeling lonelier and lonelier.

When she’d told him she was pregnant, Wiley Roy had stunned her by issuing an ultimatum. Perhaps he’d provided the sperm, he’d said but he was in no way a father. She had to choose between him and the child. He’d moved out of their split-level Spanish colonial home on the day she refused to terminate this pregnancy. His rejection had hurt, but the pain was already fading. The hurt Luke had caused never had.

Sensing the tangle of emotions, Doc reached over to take the hand she’d clamped like a talon around the arm of the chair. “Madelyn, I’ve checked this man out thoroughly. He has some of the most impressive credentials I’ve ever seen and an impeccable reputation, both professionally and personally. Everything I’ve learned tells me he’s no longer that callous hell-bent-for-leather rascal who sloped out on you when you needed him most.”

“What if you’re wrong?” she asked, studying the familiar face carefully.

“Read his curriculum vitae, and then if you’re not convinced, we’ll move on down to the next name on the list.”

Still she hesitated, dropping her gaze to hide her eyes from Doc’s too-perceptive gaze, her stomach in knots and her heart beating so fast she had trouble catching her breath.

“Maddy, I know I didn’t take as good care of you as I should have the first time, but believe me, I wouldn’t recommend this if I didn’t think it was exactly what you needed right now.” Very gently Doc’s hand squeezed hers, drawing her gaze back to those kindly eyes. “Think of the precious little one who’s counting on you to protect him or her, Maddy. Think of your baby.”

It hurt to talk. Hell, it hurt to breathe. Since Luke was pretty much forced to do both, he set his jaw and pushed himself past the pain. It was a skill he’d developed a lot of years back and had saved his sorry ass more than once.

“You gonna give me your opinion or are you just gonna stand there, wasting time neither of us can spare?” he grumbled at the big blond man leaning with arms crossed against the sink in one of the emergency-room cubicles, watching him through narrowed eyes.

Boyd MacAuley was one of the best neurosurgeons in the country. He was also a good friend. Luke’s best friend, if he had to choose. Although it was only a little past nine in the morning, Boyd had the look of a man in need of eight solid hours of deep sleep. It was a feeling Luke knew all too well. In the past thirty-six hours he’d only managed a couple of catnaps between deliveries.

“You know my opinion, hoss.” Boyd’s voice was edged with an impatience to match Luke’s own. “I’ve given it to you at least once a month for the past two years. You need to have those disks repaired. As it is, I’m amazed you’re still on your feet.”

“I don’t have time for more surgery.”

“Make time.”

Luke sucked in his breath and sat up. He was used to the sharp stab of pain in his lower back every time he moved. It had been the sudden weakness in his right leg that had nearly sent him crashing to the floor in the operating room. Fortunately he’d already performed the emergency C-section on Phyllis Greaves and was fixing to apply the staples to the incision when his left leg had buckled on him.

As luck would have it, the first-year resident assisting him had once been a linebacker for Oregon State, which meant that he’d been strong enough to catch Luke’s one hundred and ninety pounds without keeling over himself. Otherwise Luke was pretty sure he’d be nursing a few major bruises, as well as a battered ego.

Now, an hour later, the numbness was gone, replaced by a throbbing that felt exactly like a red-hot poker had been jabbed through his calf muscle. He knew the cause of course—scar tissue surrounding the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae impinging on the sciatic nerve. Mostly he could ignore it, but when he was tired, like now, he tended to limp badly. Today was the first time his leg had actually gone numb, however.

“If I do let you cut, how long before I can go back to work?” he asked when it was safe to breathe again.

“Two, three weeks, then six, eight more of restricted activity. In a brace of course.”

“Bull. I’ve done my research. I figure three months before I can handle even routine deliveries. Longer for the high-risk moms.”

Boyd let out an exasperated sigh. “So you scale back for a while. I know a half-dozen third-year ob/gyn residents who would kill to work under the great Luke Jarrod.”

“Shove a sock in it, MacAuley.”

Luke swung his legs over the edge of the table, then waited out the renewed surge of pain. An accident his last year on the circuit had blown out his back. High-risk surgery had gotten him back on his feet. The brace he hated had kept him going through his last two years in med school. Years of back-strengthening exercises and therapy had gradually allowed him to shuck the brace.

After the accident his mentor at Stanford, Dr. Danton Stone, had done his best to tout him off obstetrics, telling him repeatedly about the toll a specialty like that would exact on his ruined spine. Dan was right, Luke thought with a pang of resignation. So, unfortunately, was Boyd. Much as he hated to admit it, he couldn’t keep up his present pace much longer without surgery.

“All right,” he conceded with a sigh. “Give me a few months to scale back my patient load.”

Boyd shook his head. “A week, two tops.”

“Not a chance. I have a dozen ladies ready to go any minute now, almost all of them having potential for major complications.”

“You have a potential for major complications—like permanent paralysis if those wonky disks cut into your spinal cord.”

“Unlikely.”

Boyd snorted. “Lord save me from stubborn jackasses.”

“Stubborn, hell. I agreed to let you cut into me, didn’t I?”

“Fine. Let’s nail down a date.”

Ninety minutes and counting after Madelyn had walked into the ugly redbrick medical building, she was perched on the padded paper-covered table with the dreaded stirrups, waiting for Luke.

She had a lot of experience at that, she realized, fighting the sudden urge to laugh hysterically. Agonizing months of waking up every morning expecting her shy lanky bronc buster with the amazing blue eyes and irresistible smile to walk up the crumbling front steps of the shabby old house on Alamo Street, a wedding ring in the pocket of his Wrangler’s. Just like a movie she’d seen once—except that her hero hadn’t come in time.

Half out of her mind with grief, she’d sent him away, then regretted it with every atom in her body. If he loves you, he’ll be back, her pastor had told her over and over. But he hadn’t come back, and her life had gone on. Obviously his had, too. Very nicely, it seemed, she decided, glancing around for the umpteenth time.

Though the examination room was small, the signed lithograph of a lone rider silhouetted against a dying sun was by a famous Southwestern artist. The diplomas and certificates that marched next to the print were even more impressive. A bachelor’s in biology from Arizona State, a medical degree from Stanford. A chief residency at Portland General. A clutch of fellowships and honors. Not bad for a high-school dropout with lousy grammar who’d sworn up one side and down the other he’d never set foot in a classroom again.

A knock on the door had her pulse skittering. But it was Esther, the rotund nurse with smiling eyes, who entered. “Doctor just phoned from the hospital and he’s on his way,” she offered as she wrapped the familiar black blood pressure cuff around Madelyn’s arm. “Shouldn’t be long now.”

The sky was a solid gunmetal gray and the air smelled like rain as Luke limped across the grassy median separating Port Gen from the medical building.

In spite of the three cups of coffee he’d gulped down with the breakfast he’d grabbed in the cafeteria, he was still a little queasy from the meds he’d reluctantly taken to soothe the inflamed tissues in his spine. Though he’d showered and shaved, he still felt grimy and battered, pretty much how he’d felt after a day on the rodeo circuit.

Dorie Presley, his iconoclastic frizzy-haired receptionist, looked up as he slipped through the back door to his ground-floor office suite, her Celtic blue eyes sharply assessing. A transplanted Californian who had grown up in a San Francisco mansion, she was married to a surgical resident who adored her enough to overlook her haphazard housekeeping and lousy cooking.

Luke couldn’t care less about her lack of domestic skills. All that mattered was her ability to keep him organized and halfway on schedule, a skill he’d never mastered. She also made the best coffee he’d ever tasted, which meant a lot to a man who lived on caffeine.

“You look terrible, L.J.”

“Thanks, I needed that,” he muttered as he shrugged into the starched white coat he’d learned to wear because some patients had trouble trusting a doc who wore frayed jeans, scuffed cowboy boots and plain old cotton work shirts.

“This should help,” she said, handing a mug of the extra-strong boiling-hot French roast she’d started brewing the instant he’d called to say he was on his way.

“Darlin,’ you’re a pearl beyond price.”

He took a greedy sip, far too aware that he really should cut back. The chronic burning in his gut wasn’t exactly an ulcer, but it had the potential.

“How’s Mrs. Greaves?” Dorie asked, looping his stethoscope around his neck.

“Awake and thrilled with her twin daughters.”

“Congratulations, boss!” she said, grinning. “You beat the odds again.”

Luke allowed himself a private moment of deep satisfaction. Phyllis Greaves had lost four babies before coming to him. The Greaveses were nice people who would make wonderful parents. “Thanks, but most of the credit goes to Phyllis.” The determined lady had spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed and never once complained. He admired her grit.

“Your messages are on your desk in order of priority. Nothing urgent, but Dr. Horvath at Rogue River definitely needs a return call before five.”

“Remind me, okay?”

Dorie’s grin flashed. “I live to serve, oh exalted healer.”

Luke snorted. “Do we have a full house or did some of my ladies get tired of waiting?” he asked over the muted ringing of the phone.

“Definitely stacked full, so don’t dawdle,” she said before snagging the phone.

While she dealt with the call, he slugged down the rest of his coffee, then patted his pockets, looking for his reading glasses before he remembered he’d left them in his locker at the hospital.

While dealing with a question for the patient on the other end, Dorie fished his spare pair from her bottom drawer and handed them over. He grunted his thanks before tucking them safely into his breast pocket, along with a pen he filched from the jar on her desk, and heading down the hall toward the examining rooms.

All four doors were closed, with patient charts lined up neatly in the Plexiglas slots on the wall. He stopped at number one. The folder was yellow and tagged in blue and red. A new patient, high risk, the only kind he had time to treat these days.

Moving his shoulders to relieve the tension that had started the instant he’d walked through the back door, he plucked the chart from its plastic slot and flipped it open.

The name was printed on the tab in Dorie’s neat boarding-school script. Madelyn Smith Foster.

His breath dammed up in his throat. My God, Maddy? Here? The last time he’d seen her he’d been standing on her porch with his hat in his hand, begging her to forgive him.

While he’d been having a high old time in Canada, flirting with more pretty girls than there were fleas on a dog, she’d been twisting and turning through two days of torturous labor, only to hemorrhage and nearly die before the frantic GP had taken the baby by cesarean. Her parents had waited less than twenty-four hours before offering her an ultimatum—give the tiny but perfectly formed baby girl up for adoption or take the kid and leave.

It hadn’t been much of a choice for a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl with no job skills and no money, so she’d signed the papers that had taken her baby away forever. It hadn’t been easy for her, however. Anything but. Her eyes had still been puffy and glazed with grief two weeks later when she’d opened the screen door to his nervous knock.

Forcing himself to breathe again, he scanned the patient-info sheet. Thirty-nine years old. Employed as a guidance counselor at Whiskey Bend High School. Divorced. His mind stuttered over that fact before moving on to the medical history—the usual childhood illnesses, an appendectomy at the age of seven. On the night they’d made love she’d been embarrassed to let him see the scar—

“Luke, are you all right?”

His head shot up and for an instant he felt disoriented. “What?”

“Don’t take this wrong,” Dorie murmured, looking both concerned and amused. “But you look exactly like a man who’s taken one where it hurts the most.”

He managed an off hand grin. “It’s my office. I can look anyway I want, sugar.”

Unimpressed gray eyes, sharp as lasers, zoomed in on his face. Heat crept up his neck as he dropped his gaze to the chart. “This…this patient, what do you know about her?” he asked, careful to keep his voice low.

“Just that she’s a referral from a GP I never heard of, has excellent insurance through a group policy for Texas-state employees, arrived early for her appointment, seems a bit aloof, but pleasant—and definitely anxious, though she hides it well. On a scale of one to ten, style-wise, I give her a twelve.”

“What the hell is ‘style-wise’?” Luke muttered. He was always edgy when he was caught off-guard.

“You know. Style. Presence.” She lifted an eyebrow and he frowned. “The way a woman dresses and wears her hair and carries herself.”

“Mrs. Foster is a twelve?”

“Absolutely.” Dorie grinned, clearing enjoying herself. “If I had to guess, I’d say she bought the suit she’s wearing from Neiman Marcus, probably not on sale. Same with her shoes. Lizard pumps, probably Italian. And hair to die for. Thick, sun-streaked and blond, which has to be natural or the best dye job I’ve ever seen.”

Luke felt a little dizzy. The Maddy he’d known had worn jeans or short cotton skirts and flirty shirts that showed off her ripe breasts to perfection. Her hair had definitely been glorious, however. Long and silky and the exact color of honey shot through with sunlight.

“You’re sure she’s here as a patient?” he pressed, more confused than ever.

Dorie offered him a curious look. “Since she filled out the new-patient forms, I think that would be a safe assumption, yes.”

“Damn.” He raked his hand through hair still damp from his shower. The rare nervous gesture from a man who prided himself on his control had Dorie narrowing her gaze.

“Luke, is there a problem?”

“Hell if I know.”

Dorie regarded him strangely for a beat, then broke into a knowing grin. “Aha, an old girlfriend. And from the panicked look on your face, I’d say the flame is still flickering inside that lean mean bod of yours.”

Luke bit off a crude reply. “Don’t you have insurance forms to fill out?”

“Yes, sir.” Dorie snapped him a mock salute before disappearing into the reception area.

Luke braced one hand against the wall and dropped his head. His heart hammered his chest as he fought to regulate the breathing that threatened to tear through his throat like a feral howl.

He’d struggled for years to drive his darlin’ Maddy Sue out of his head. Years and years of going weak in the knees whenever he heard bubbling laughter or caught a glimpse of thick blond hair shining in the sunshine. Of feeling his gut knot and twist whenever he saw a woman holding a baby.

He should have figured God wouldn’t let him slide forever, he thought as he pushed himself away from the wall, squared his shoulders. He’d sell his soul for a drink right now, he thought as he took another ragged breath, then opened the door.

Chapter 2

The white coat with his name embroidered in red above the pocket said he was an MD. The calendar said he was six weeks away from his forty-first birthday. Two steps into the room and he was an eighteen-year-old rodeo bum, with a crushing pressure in his chest and shock waves in his gut from a hard-knuckled punch in the solar plexus.

It was exactly the same as it’d been that blistering-hot day in Texas, he realized with a kind of stunned dismay. One minute his life had been under his control, the next he was reeling.

Maddy had been as pretty as a picture at seventeen. Now she was stunningly beautiful. A sophisticated lady exuding poise and a quiet confidence, even perched on the end of his examining room table with her spine as straight as a die and her chin pridefully high.

The big hair that had mesmerized him was gone, but the glorious color was that same shade of honey shot with sunshine. Once it had spilled to her shoulders in glossy waves, swishing like molten silk with every sassy toss of her head. Now, however, it had been tucked back out of the reach of man’s hands into a chic twist right out of one of Dorie’s glossy magazines. He wanted to ask why she felt she had to keep all that wonderful sunshine hidden away, but he’d lost the right to ask her that kind of question.

“Hello, Maddy,” he said after closing the door behind him. He hadn’t felt this wired since the last time he’d dropped from the top rail of the chute onto the back of a nightmare.

“Doctor.” She inclined her head, queen to subject. Damn, but she was something, he thought, fascinated in spite of the wariness skimming his nerves.

Ordinarily he offered his hand to a new patient, the first fragile thread of trust. Only the certain knowledge that it would cost him more to touch her than he wanted to risk had him trying a smile, instead.

“You look terrific.” His voice came out rusty as hell, but he had a feeling it was the words themselves that had her eyes narrowing between those long fluttery lashes.

He let his gaze drift lower, skimming the curves that filled out the pale yellow jacket in all the right ways to mess with a man’s head. She was also pregnant, he realized with a jolt that twisted all the way through him, leaving him a little breathless. About six months along was his best guess.

He still remembered the jagged despair in her voice when she’d told him that the surgical field had gotten contaminated during her C-section, and the resulting infection had scarred her fallopian tubes, rendering her sterile. The guilt he’d carried had been a bloody hole in his gut ever since.

“So you really are a patient,” he added when she remained silent. “I wondered.”

“I didn’t lie to you when I told you I was sterile,” she said, her drawl softer than he remembered, though flavored now with a hint of tension. “According to Doc Morrow, the odds of my ever conceiving again were too small to even measure.”

“Doc Morrow?”

“My family doctor in Whiskey Bend. He delivered me when I was born and he delivered my…our baby.” She took a quick breath, the only sign of distress he could detect. “He was also the one who arranged for the adoption.”

Pain was a vicious hand wringing him dry. “I’m sorry, Maddy. Deeply sorry.”

A hint of some fierce emotion darkened her eyes. “Sorry enough to make sure I keep this baby?”

He had a long list of questions, all of which filtered down to one. “Why me?” he asked quietly.

“I have a fibroid that’s growing.” She hesitated, then added with the barest suggestion of a tremor in her voice, “Doc’s only treated one similar case, and that patient went into premature labor at six months.” She took a breath, her eyes suddenly sad. “She lost the baby.”

Luke cursed silently, one pithy vehement expletive. It could be worse, but not much, he thought as he leaned his butt against the edge of the sink and shifted most of his weight to the leg that didn’t throb.

For years he’d tortured himself with thoughts of how it would be if he saw Maddy again. It was a game he played with himself when he had trouble sleeping. Mostly his fantasies had been shaded toward raunchy—in a respectful sort of way, of course, since Maddy was a good girl. But this… His chest tightened, the way it used to right before a ride. Like a fist grinding against his sternum.

“There are a lot of good baby docs in Texas,” he hedged. “Marston and Wong at Baylor, to name two.”

She dismissed that with a brief frown. “I contacted them both. Each said you were the leading doctor in this area. As did the two other experts in high-risk pregnancy I consulted. I’ve also read the article you wrote about treatment of fibroids during pregnancy.”

“Which one?”

“The one in the Journal of the American Medical Association.”

He nodded. “JAMA published three. Which one did you read?”

That brought her up short, but she recovered quickly. “The one that explained why the kind of fibroid I have can’t be surgically removed without risking a miscarriage.” Her hand crept to her belly. “The more I read the more I realized how easy it would be to lose this child.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and marveled at the woman she’d become. Bright, confident and way way out of his league. “I’m sure your research told you that myomas are unpredictable. They can cause some really mean complications one month and go dormant the next.” They were also decidedly dangerous when they took a notion to grow, a fact she obviously knew as well as he did.

“Since this…this baby means everything to me, I’ll do whatever it takes to carry it to term.”

“Even tolerate my presence in your life again?”

“Obviously.” Her chin came up. “Since you’re considered the best, you were my first choice.”

It was an answer that should have pleased him. Instead, it terrified him.

When he’d been facing a tough ride, he’d survived by paring his mind to the basics. Things he knew how to do, like shoving his butt hard against the rigging and keeping his head tucked tight so his neck didn’t snap. Skills he’d practiced until they’d become second nature. It was a knack he’d come to value during life-and-death emergencies he’d learned to expect every time he walked into a birthing suite. It was a knack he fell back on now.

“You realize you’ll have to move to Portland until you deliver?”

“I’m prepared to do that, yes.”

“What about your job? Your…family?”

“My mother has agreed to look after my house and garden, and I’ve already arranged to take a leave of absence from my job for the next school year. The principal has four children of her own, and she’s been wonderfully understanding. A godsend, really.”

He nodded. Cleared his throat. “It says on your info sheet that you’re divorced.”

“Yes, for almost four months now.”

“I assume Mr. Foster is the baby’s father?”

“Yes, although I think that if he could, he would erase every scrap of his DNA from the baby’s cells.”

“I take it he’s not gonna be interested in participating in the baby’s delivery?”

“No, he’s relinquishing paternity.” She hesitated, then added, “Wiley Roy never wanted children, and since I thought I was sterile, he didn’t bother to get a vasectomy when we married. When I found out I was pregnant, he…he gave me an ultimatum—the baby or him. I couldn’t have both.” She glanced down at her hands. At the thin white line on her finger where he deduced her wedding band had been. Her mouth firmed as she folded her hands, then lifted her gaze to his. “I chose the baby. The next day he went to Juarez and divorced me.”

“Man’s a fool.”

She shrugged. “He’s a decent man and a wonderful teacher. He prides himself on being an example for his students, and in his own way, he was a good husband. He simply doesn’t want to be a daddy.”

And neither did you, her expression said loud and clear. She was wrong. Once he’d gotten over the shock, he’d wanted that very much, but he doubted she would believe him. He straightened, sucking in a breath against the hot jolt of pain in his spine. “Is that your medical record?” he asked, indicating the bulging brown folder next to her on the table.

“Yes, everything from the moment I was born until my last visit with Doc right before I left Texas.”

“Which was when, exactly?”

“Two days ago, I took the 6:00 a.m. flight from El Paso yesterday morning.”

“May I?”

“That is why I brought it,” she said as she handed it over. “The information dealing with this pregnancy is on the top. Doc included his phone number, and I’ve already signed a release form authorizing him to answer any questions you might have.”

“Very efficient.”

She dismissed the compliment with an impatient frown. “I can’t afford to waste time. I doubt you can, either, Doctor.”

“True enough.”

After fishing his reading glasses from the pocket of his white coat, he leaned back against the sink again, flipped open the folder and started to read.

Madelyn kept her gaze trained on Luke’s face, scarcely daring to breathe. Beneath the tailored lines of the loose-fitting linen jacket, her heart was racing wildly, just as it had been that hot September day at the fairground when her gaze had met his across the dusty ring.

He’d changed of course. Grown older and…harder somehow. Inside and out, she decided after a good long look at the set of his jaw. Certainly he was more physically powerful, which surprised her, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. Luke had always been very strong. Growing up on horseback had given him incredible power in his legs, especially his thighs and buttocks. Twenty-two years had added breadth to his shoulders and packed hard muscle onto his chest and arms.

The glossy black hair that had always smelled of wind and baby shampoo was now liberally threaded with silver. For such thick hair it had been surprisingly silky. Though shorter now, it still fell into a rebellious off-center part where a cowlick defied taming.

The too-handsome face she’d never quite managed to purge from her mind for all her years of trying was now all hard lines and stark angles. The mouth that had thrilled her every time he’d slanted her a lopsided shy-at-the-edges grin was controlled now and bracketed by deeply gouged creases. His eyes, Paul Newman blue and once full of the devil, were somber now, even guarded, with the war-weary look of a man who’d left innocence behind long ago.

Unfortunately, however, the aura of raw masculinity that had both exhilarated and frightened her was as potent as ever. More so, she realized with a hard thud in the vicinity of her still-queasy stomach. Buried somewhere in this quiet-spoken professional with a calm manner and a way of looking directly into her eyes was the first man she’d ever loved.

As a high-school guidance counselor, she’d seen parts of herself in every girl who’d sat across from her, bewildered and scared and hurt because she’d trusted her heart to the wrong boy. Ancient history, she reminded herself as he turned back another page with a large heavily veined hand and continued reading. Being here wasn’t personal, nor was it really a choice.

Instinctively she pressed her hand against her stomach, a gesture she’d repeated many times since Doc had given her the astonishing news. The reminiscent smile that started to bloom died as those amazing blue eyes shifted to capture hers, sending what felt like a white-hot shiver all the way to her womb. Only years of rigid self-control kept her from flinching.

“According to this, you were already nine weeks along when you consulted Morrow.” Though soft-spoken, his voice had a gritty quality that had her tensing all the way to the bone.

“Yes, that’s right.” She kept her voice calm and even, the exact tone she used when soothing angry parents or troubled adolescents. “My periods have always been erratic, and they got worse after that C-section. Doc had told me not to worry, so I didn’t, but when I started having other symptoms, I decided to have a thorough checkup.”

“Other symptoms?”

“A thickening in my waistline and tenderness in my breasts.” To her dismay she actually blushed. He glanced down quickly, his gaze running over the page again before he closed the folder.

“Why did you wait so long to consult me?”

“Doc wasn’t concerned until he sent me for this latest ultrasound.”

Luke’s mouth compressed, giving his face an even tougher texture. Behind the thin dark rims of his glasses, his blue eyes had taken on flecks of steel. “You’re an intelligent woman, Madelyn. It’s obvious you want this child. My question is, why did you trust yourself to the same doctor who in your last pregnancy misdiagnosed preeclampsia as indigestion?”

“It’s easy to diagnose after the fact,” she replied, her voice sharper than was fitting for a well-bred Southern lady. “But in those days Doc was the only doctor in the county, and he’d been run ragged by an outbreak of chicken pox.” She took a breath, hating the painful memories her words had stirred. “I was lucky to have him, especially since my daddy had no money and no insurance. Without Doc’s compassion and generosity I would have had to drive 150 miles to the charity hospital in El Paso for my checkups. And God only knows what would have happened when I hemorrhaged.”

His jaw went white. “Maddy—”

“No, let’s get this all out, Luke.” She sat straighter and kept her gaze on his. “You’re the last person I want to need in my life. I couldn’t sleep for two nights before I made the decision to ask for your help. Just being in the same room with you brings up memories I’ve worked hard to erase. But I want this baby more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I’ll do whatever it takes to give him or her the best possible chance.”

He studied her thoughtfully, then frowned. “Maddy—Madelyn—I can’t treat you without touching you.”

“I realize that.” She drew a breath. That had been the worst of it, coming to terms with the enforced intimacy that childbirth imposed on doctor and patient. “I also realize that in all aspects but one we’re strangers to each other, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to maintain a strictly professional relationship.”

“You’re the mother of my only child, Madelyn. I would have married you if you’d said yes. I can never think of you as a stranger.”

Something barbed twisted around her heart. “We don’t have a child, Luke. She belongs to someone else, thanks to you. To survive I had to accept that. Just as I had to accept responsibility for mistaking sexual attraction for love. I know the difference now.”

His jaw tightened for the briefest of moments before he lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. His sigh was heavy as he lowered his hand. “Tell you what, you get yourself out of that fetching suit that’s got my staff green with envy and into that paper gown yonder while I go see if I can scare up some professional detachment.” He left before she had a chance to reply.

After asking Esther to prepare Maddy for a thorough exam, Luke went into his office and shut the door. Though he had other patients waiting, he needed a minute for himself.

He felt as though he was strangling, and his back was threatening to seize up again. Beneath his shirt and starched coat, his skin was slick with sweat, and his knees were as wobbly as a newborn colt’s.

Heckfire, he was a freaking basket case here, he thought as he eased his aching body into the chair behind his cluttered desk, tossed his glasses on top of the latest Physician’s Drug Reference and slumped back against the cool leather upholstery.

God only knew how much he wanted to help her, he thought, letting his head fall back. Anything he had that she needed, it was hers. If she wanted money, he’d beggar himself. If she needed a place to stay, he’d buy her a frigging mansion. Transportation? No sweat. A call to his friendly BMW dealer and the keys to a new Beemer would be in her hands within the hour.

With a long-drawn-out groan that sounded depressingly like a whimper, he raked both hands through his hair, then balled them into fists on the arms of his chair. Damn, but this was pure misery. As rough as it was on him, however, it had to be about a million times worse for her.

He’d known right off she had a healthy amount of grit. It had been there in the rigid angle of her head when she’d looked at him, and in the straight line of her back as she’d perched there on the edge of the table, a lady from the top of her shiny head to the toes of those city-lady shoes.

Asking for help from a man she’d sworn to hate had cost her. A woman with her spirit and class, ready to humble herself.

Because she loved the child she carried. Loved it as she’d loved their daughter.

Damn, but he admired her. Flat out respected the hell out of her. It was clear as glass she wanted this baby about as much as he figured he wanted her to have it.

Letting his shoulders slump, he dropped his hands and willed himself past the pain. Concentrate on what you know, he reminded himself. Diagnostic tests and procedures first, then a carefully considered, strictly monitored regimen of care. His mind clicked through the familiar routine, weighed pros and cons of radical new theories, considered options, then roughed out a plan.

Preliminary decisions made, the hard angry knot beneath his breastbone loosened. When he figured he had enough control to keep his voice steady, he picked up the phone and punched out Boyd’s private number.

“MacAuley, here, and you have two seconds to state your business before I’m outta here.”

Luke grinned. Poor guy sounded so harried he almost hated to add to his stress level. “Jarrod here, and I can state it in one. Cancel the surgery.”

“The hell you say!” The bellow in his ear had him flinching.

“You heard me.”

“Give me one decent reason.”

He could give the guy a dozen. About how he still woke up in the middle of the night with his heart pounding and Maddy’s small white face shimmering in his head. About how he hated the selfish ass he’d been at eighteen. About how he’d sworn to become a better man. But all those decent reasons came down to one.

“I promised a lady a miracle, and I intend to do my damnedest to give it to her,” he said quietly before hanging up.

Chapter 3

“Is this your first?” Esther asked as she set out instruments.

Madelyn pressed her hand to the gaping front of the paper gown and wondered how a woman was supposed to maintain her poise with her bare feet dangling two feet above the floor. “No, my second. But there are complications, and it’s possible I’ll deliver too early.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Foster. Dr. Jarrod will take good care of you.” The nurse covered the instruments before adding with a grin, “He might look like he just ambled out of a Louis L’Amour novel, and sometimes he can be a little abrupt when he’s worn-out, but he’s the best doctor I’ve ever known—and I’ve known plenty.”

Madelyn returned Esther’s smile with one of her own. In her heightened state of nervous tension, her lips felt numb—and just a little shaky. “Thanks, I—”

A sharp rap on the door had her jerking her head toward the sound. A split second later the door opened and Luke walked in. It was still there, that indefinable something that always made her think of wind racing across a barren mesa. Her lungs seemed suddenly starved for oxygen. Jet lag, she told herself firmly. Combined with stress.

“Ready for me, ladies?” he asked, his gaze sliding past her to his nurse.

“Ready, Doctor,” Esther replied as she snapped on the lamp attached to a long gooseneck.

Suddenly nervous, Madelyn shivered, drawing another quick gaze from those intense blue eyes.

“Cold?”

“More like apprehensive.” She licked dry lips and tried to ignore the ugly stirrups that Esther had just clicked into an upright position.

His expression was surprisingly sympathetic. “Took me a bad fall once and spent a little time hooked up in traction. Darn near made me crazy dangling there with my legs halfway to the ceiling.”

He slipped his hand into the glove Esther held for him. “You ever been in the Pacific Northwest before?” he asked.

“No.” Madelyn’s reply came out thin, and she cleared her throat. “It’s very…uh, lush. It seems like we flew over acres and acres of trees. And then, of course, there are all those rivers. Well, two here in the city, according to the guidebook I read on the plane. The Willamette and the Columbia. It was pretty hazy, so I didn’t really get a good look, though.” She realized she was babbling and clamped her mouth shut.

“Darn cold, too, for someone born and reared in desert country.” He plunged his other hand into the matching glove, then flexed his long fingers. “Took me a couple of years before I stopped feeling like a Popsicle six months out of every year. Esther still knits me sweaters for Christmas. Soft as a baby’s bottom they are. And as pretty as they are soft. Had me three offers to buy the last one right off my back last year.”

Esther did her best not to preen. “You keep on gorging yourself on that junk food and I’m gonna have to buy another skein for this year,” she muttered as she uncovered the instruments.

Tensing, Madelyn fought the urge to scramble down from the table and hightail it all the way back to her hotel. A bubble of laughter caught in her throat as she pictured the unflappable always ladylike Mrs. Madelyn Smith Foster racing through an Oregon drizzle in her paper dress.

“Lie back, please,” Luke said, his tone as impersonal as Doc’s when he was performing a similar exam.

Paper rustled as she swung her legs to the table. His arm supported her as she lay down, his strength as intimidating as it was reassuring. “Comfortable?” he asked, sliding his arm free.

Her skin tingled from the brief pressure of his hard muscles. She put it down to heightened nerves. “Fine, thank you.”

Her tummy made a nice little mound, and she concentrated on studying that sweet bulge. Beneath the gown, she was naked. As naked as the first time they’d made love.

“I can’t do this,” she said, her voice catching. “I thought I could but—”

“Maddy, it’s all right,” he said, his voice soothing. “We can reschedule, give you some time.”

Esther was right, Madelyn thought. Even garbed in the starched white coat, with a stethoscope casually looped around his neck and his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, he was every inch a man of the Old West. Like a working cowboy, he had skin permanently darkened from years of working cattle and mending fences under the hot sun, his temples scored by squint lines and an implacable strength etched into the weathered lines of his face.

When he’d competed, he’d worn a white straw Stetson, pulled low and tight against the whiplash snap of his head when the bronc twisted and whirled and bucked. One of the good guys, she’d thought then. A hero.

“Do you still ride?” she asked before she realized how silly that must sound. But she didn’t care, not when panic was licking at her again.

“Not much anymore, although I still stable a couple of horses on a little place near Hillsboro. Two pretty ladies, both palominos.” He hooked one foot around a stool on wheels and pulled it closer. “A couple of interns from the hospital exercise them for me a couple times a week,” he said as he lowered himself with a surprising stiffness onto the padded black seat. She smelled him then, wind, sky, sun and a hint of soap.

“Molly—she’s the mom—is part Arab and real high-strung. Last time I paid her a visit, she got it into her head I didn’t love her anymore and took a chunk outta my shoulder.” He shook his head, his gaze flicking to the nurse, who looked surprisingly relaxed. “How many stitches did I have?”

“Fourteen, and you hollered bloody murder the whole time.”

“Well, heckfire, woman. You were using a railroad spike, instead of a needle. And jammin’ it in real good, too.”

Esther rolled her eyes before meshing her gaze with Madelyn’s. Humor gleamed in the dark depths, and her expression dripped feminine disdain. “Pathetic the way a grown man turns to jelly the instant he feels the slightest prick of pain, isn’t it?”

Madelyn felt a surge of gratitude toward the empathetic nurse. And Luke, too, she realized. Never in a million years would she have credited him with the kind of sensitivity he’d just displayed. For the first time since she’d locked her rental car and walked through the door of Luke’s office she felt herself relaxing.

“It’s genetically linked,” she replied, falling in with what was obviously a familiar routine. “Like the utter inability to ask directions or find anything remotely smaller than a ’57 Chevy in a bureau drawer.”

Luke snorted, but his eyes held a lazy amusement, and the fine web of lines fanning the corners deepened. “Hey, I’m the boss around here, remember? Which means I get to make the rules. And rule number one is no male bashing allowed.”

“It’s not bashing if it’s the truth,” Esther said, sharing a smug look with Madelyn. “Right, Mrs. Foster?”

Madelyn nodded solemnly. “Absolutely.”

Luke emitted a drawn-out sigh. “I can tell when I’m outnumbered.” He offered Madelyn a crooked smile. “So, you want to get this exam thing over with, or should I have Dorie reschedule you for tomorrow?”

Madelyn blinked. “Do you have office hours on Saturday?”

“Not usually, but we’ve been known to make an exception in special cases.” He glanced Esther’s way. “What time is Walter Junior’s game tomorrow?”

“It’s been changed to Sunday at two.”

He frowned. “Should I have known that?”

“Dorie put it on your calendar,” Esther said with a smile. “Tomorrow I can come in any time before noon.”

Madelyn was enormously touched. Maybe big cities weren’t as impersonal as folks back home claimed. “You’d do that for me?”

Luke’s expression was suddenly dead serious. “Especially for you, Maddy.”

“Because you think you owe me?”

“Because I know I owe you,” he corrected, his voice thick.

Then it was there in her head, the excruciating pain that went on and on, the race to the hospital, screaming his name as the contractions ripped through her. She swallowed hard, turned her face away.

“Esther, can you give us a minute?” he asked quietly.

“Of course.” The nurse offered Madelyn another reassuring smile before she left, closing the door behind her with a soft click that seemed unnaturally loud to Madelyn’s ears.

“This was a mistake,” she said through a constricted throat when they were alone. “It seemed perfectly logical when Doc and I were discussing it, but now…” She drew in a breath before sitting up. “Obviously there are a few unresolved issues from that particular period of my life that escaped my attention.”

He ran his thumb over the thin scar riding the edge of his jaw. A tussle with a barbed-wire fence when he’d been five, he’d told her once when she’d traced it with her fingertip. “Guess I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, most of them deserved, but I can’t ever remember being called an ‘unresolved issue’ before.”

His dry tone charmed her into a shaky laugh. “Sorry, that’s the guidance counselor in me talking.”

He nodded. “Professional jargon. Makes it easier to handle the scary stuff.”

His insightfulness surprised her. “Exactly.”

“If it would help to take a swing at me, go ahead.”

“I don’t want to hit you, Luke,” she said with a large measure of surprise. “Although I admit there was a time when I wanted to empty my daddy’s shotgun in…well, places best not discussed in polite company.”

That hard mouth softened into a rueful grin. “I can understand that, and I surely do appreciate your restraint.” Grin fading, he scooted the stool closer. “I’ll do everything I can to make this easier for you, Madelyn, but you have to give me some guidance here. Which, considerin’ that’s your profession and all, should be a dead-bang cinch.”

“That’s just the trouble,” she said, her voice strident. “I don’t know how to handle this. Ever since I found out about the baby, I’ve been an emotional basket case.”

He nodded, serious as a judge. “Those baby-nurturing hormones can be a real pain sometimes.”

She gurgled a laugh, then bit her lip, fighting an overwhelming urge to cry. “It’s so…frustrating,” she muttered as a tear drizzled down her cheek. “See what I mean?” she added, dashing it away.

Smiling, he captured her hand in his. “I want to help you. I think I can, but first I have to know exactly what kind of problems we have ahead of us.”

“There is no us, Luke. There never was.”

“I was speaking medically, not personally.” He hesitated, then said gently, “I’m not asking you to forgive me. Or even to like me, though that would make things easier. But I am asking you to trust me professionally.”

She felt a wave of relief. A professional relationship was exactly what she wanted. All she wanted.

“I hope you warm up that…that thing,” she said, her gaze going to the shining speculum on the tray. “Otherwise, I swear I will shoot you.”

His eyes crinkled. “I’ll remember that,” he said before releasing her hand and scooting to the door to call Esther in again.

Forty minutes later Madelyn was dressed and waiting in Luke’s oak-paneled office while he finished with another patient.

Seated stiffly in one of two chairs by the desk, her hands folded in what was left of her lap and her mouth dry, she glanced around, distracting herself by absorbing the sights and smells of Luke’s private domain.

Like the rest of the office, it was furnished in Southwestern pastels. The chairs for visitors were well padded and covered in soothing shades of green and beige. His own chair was upholstered in brown leather that looked butter soft and showed definite signs of wear.

A Navajo blanket of excellent quality covered part of one wall, and a signed lithograph of the desert at dawn hung behind the desk. As far as she could see the only visible sign of his rodeoing days was a small bronze statue of a wild-eyed stallion trying to unseat its rider, used as a paperweight on the desk.

Both her charts were there, as well, sitting squarely in the middle of the blotter. Though she knew it was inappropriate, she was sorely tempted to take a quick peek at the notes Luke had jotted down in his left-handed scrawl. Only the knowledge that she would feel horrendously embarrassed if he caught her kept her hands in her lap.

Though by necessity intimate, the examination itself had been virtually painless. As he’d worked, he and Esther had ragged each other about a dispute over a called third strike during her son’s last Little League game.

By the time they’d finished insulting each other, the exam had been finished and Luke was helping Madelyn to sit up. Before she could launch into the anxious questions tumbling in her mind, he’d stripped off his gloves and been on his way out.

“We’ll talk in my office,” he’d told her with a noncommittal smile before disappearing.

So here she was, fully dressed again in her new maternity power suit, so uptight she was surprised she didn’t creak when she moved. Certainly she couldn’t sit still, she realized as she got up from the chair and went over to inspect the snapshots and children’s artwork pinned to a large bulletin board opposite the desk. Most of the drawings were addressed to “Uncle Luke,” the letters printed laboriously in crayon or pencil. Several, however, had obviously been done by an older child and showed a definite flair.

One in particular caught her eye. It was of a cowboy astride a yellow horse, his gloved hands crossed over the pommel, his hat pushed to the back of his head, the way Luke used to wear his when he was feeling playful. At eighteen, he’d been breathtakingly earthy, the epitome of untamed masculinity to a naive girl raised on cowboy lore.

“That was a Christmas present from my goddaughter.”

Startled, she whirled around. “She’s very talented.”

“I think so.” After closing the door, he crossed the room to stand next to her. She’d forgotten how tall he seemed when they stood side by side, how he filled up the room with restless energy even when he was standing still. She felt that same energy seeping into her now.

“That’s her there,” he said, indicating a glossy photo of a young girl perched in front of Luke on the saddle of a breathtakingly gorgeous palomino. About five or six, she had dark braids, big brown eyes and looked impossibly dainty snuggled against his broad chest.

“Her name’s Tory MacAuley,” he said, his voice a little gruff. “Her mom’s a kindergarten teacher and her dad’s a neurosurgeon at Port Gen.”

Madelyn forced herself to smile. “How old is she?”

“Five and three-quarters. A real proper lady already. Reminds me a little of you, actually.” His grin transformed his face, erasing years and strain. “She informed me a few weeks ago that all the boys in morning kindergarten were pigs.”

Madelyn laughed softly. “She’ll change her mind soon enough.”

“That’s a fact, though I wouldn’t care to be in her daddy’s shoes when it happens.” A look she couldn’t decipher crossed his face for an instant before he glanced toward the desk. “How about we have that talk I promised you?”

“Yes, fine.” Madelyn hurried to the chair she’d just left. Outside an ambulance wailed as it sped along the hospital access road, and rain pelted the twin windows. Luke snapped on the brass lamp, then waited until she’d seated herself before settling with surprising stiffness into his own chair.

“The baby’s a good size for twenty-three weeks with a good strong heartbeat. The two ultrasound photos Dr. Morrow included show a definite increase in the size of the fibroid, which is a concern. But your blood pressure is fine and from what I’ve seen, you’re in excellent health. Just to be on the safe side, though, I’d like to have Esther draw some blood and we’ll set up an appointment to do another ultrasound. After that, I’ll have a better idea—”

The door flew open, startling them both. “Sorry to interrupt, Doctor,” the redheaded receptionist exclaimed as she rushed in. “We just got a call from the ER. Marlene Gregory was hit by a car as she was crossing Powell Street, and the baby’s in trouble. The trauma surgeon said he’d meet you in the OR stat.”

Luke was already on his feet by the time the receptionist ran out of air. “I’m sorry, Maddy, I have to go.”

“Of course,” she said, rising. “I’ll wait.”

He hesitated, then came around the desk. “Look, I don’t know how long I’ll be. Where are you staying? I’ll call you when I’m done, and we can set a time to meet.”

“I’m at the Mallory Hotel downtown. But I don’t mind waiting. Really.”

“Go back there, order yourself a blood-rare steak with all the trimmings for lunch and then take a nice long nap.”

“But—”

“Doctor’s orders, Mrs. Foster.” He gave her a quick—and impersonal—smile before hurrying out.

Chapter 4

Built in the early twenties on a hill overlooking Portland’s central district, the Mallory Hotel retained all the elegance of an earlier more gracious era. In the lobby glittering crystal dripped from a magnificent chandelier while classical music soothed tempers and set the mood.

Madelyn’s room was on the fourth floor. Discreet signs directed Luke to the right and down a long dogleg. Thick green carpet splashed with pink and purple roses muffled the sounds of his boots as he checked the shiny brass numbers affixed to the old-fashioned doors. Her room was the second from the end and looked out toward the business district wedged between two mighty rivers.

The Willamette and the Columbia.

He chuckled to himself as he recalled her nervous travelogue in his office. That first night in Texas she’d chattered a mile a minute all the way to the motel, her breath coming out in cute little bursts. And when she hadn’t been chattering like a magpie, she’d been gnawing on that curvy little bottom lip. A classic response to anxiety. Him, he tended to dive a little deeper into that private place inside no one had ever seen. He knew the stony silence made him seem grumpy and maybe a bit remote, but anything was safer than having his insecurities hanging out naked for the whole damn world to kick.

His gut tightened as he lifted a hand and knocked. While he waited, he worked at blocking out the screaming ache in his spine. Just as he lifted his hand to knock again, the door swung open. It took him a moment to connect the rumpled sleepy-eyed angel in the purple robe with the sophisticated woman he’d left almost six hours ago in his office.

“Luke! I thought you were going to call.” Her voice had the throaty quality of someone who’d been asleep only seconds before.

“I thought about it,” he admitted, trying his damnedest not to notice the tendrils of pale hair that had slipped free of the classy twist to frame her face, but even a man with promises to keep could only stretch professional detachment so far. “But then I, uh, thought about how long it’d been since breakfast and I figured we could talk over dinner.”

She blinked, then frowned. Damned if she wasn’t adorable, standing there with bare feet and her mouth pursed in the closest thing to a kissin’ invitation he’d ever hoped to see on a pretty woman. Hell had to be a lot like this, he decided. Condemned to want the one thing you can never have, no matter how many years of penance you’ve paid.

“What time is it?” she asked, peering up at him distractedly.

“Goin’ on six.”

Her eyes flew wide. “Gracious, I slept four hours.”

“As your doctor, I have to say I’m mighty pleased to hear it. But as a man who’s got an empty space the size of Crater Lake in his belly, I’m wondering how long it’ll take you to decide on dinner.”

Those sexy green eyes darted a quick look at his midsection. He nearly sucked in his gut, before he caught himself. He was in some fairly major trouble here, he realized. Wantin’ to show off for the lady like the conceited fool he’d been at eighteen. Block it out, Jarrod, he told himself firmly. The lady was his patient. Only his patient.

“Oh, right, dinner, then conversation,” she said, stepping back. “Please come in while I get myself together.” She turned away, leaving him to close the door.

“How’s Mrs. Gregory?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. No longer sleepy, her eyes were dark with what looked like genuine concern. He liked that about her, he decided, the fact that she could step outside her own anxiety to care about a woman she’d never met. He liked it a lot.

“She’s holding her own,” he told her with a smile. “The next twenty-four hours are crucial.”

“But she has a chance?”

“She has a chance.”

Relief bled into her eyes, but there were still shadows. Bad memories, he thought, the kind he’d never been able to shuck for all his trying. “And…and the baby?”

“A little boy, four pounds, six ounces. He has a chance, too.” He hoped she didn’t ask him how good a chance.

“Was the daddy…where was the little boy’s daddy?”

“Last word I got he was on his way home from a business trip to L.A.” He lifted a hand to scrub some of the tiredness from his face. The past two days were starting to catch up with him. “Turns out the elderly man who hit her had a heart attack. His chances ran out on Powell Street.”

A fleeting expression of sorrow crossed her face. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” He shifted his weight to his good leg. The numbness hadn’t returned, but the ache left behind refused to ease. “I, uh, figured we could eat in the dining room downstairs, if that’s all right.”

“Fine.”

She started to turn away, then swung around with a taunting swish of silk to look at him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. “I don’t remember giving you my room number.”

“You didn’t. I got it from the desk clerk.”

“They do that in Oregon? Just give out a room number to anyone who asks?”

“Not in the Mallory they don’t, so don’t be worrying yourself.”

“But you just said they gave it to you.”

“I told the desk clerk I was checking on a patient.”

Skepticism filled her eyes. “And she believed you? Just like that?”

“Actually I delivered a baby here once. On the third floor. A tourist from Japan who’d been too polite to call for help until it was almost too late. I was just leaving the restaurant when the desk clerk got the call and started yelling. Same one’s on duty tonight and she remembered me.”

Her expression cleared. “Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself in my case.”

“Just remember not to worry about calling for help, even if you’re not sure you need it. Us doctor types would rather handle things in a well-equipped hospital than a hotel room. Makes us real nervous when it’s a room-service waiter passing the instruments.”

She choked a laugh. “I’ll make a note.”

Since she hadn’t invited him to sit down, he checked around for something sturdy enough to lean against while he waited.

“How long has it been since you slept?” she asked, studying his face.

He shrugged. “Baby docs learn to sleep in snatches.”

“In that case why don’t you grab a quick nap while I shower?”

Luke glanced at the bed, still made but a little rumpled from her nap. The idea of shutting down for a few minutes was nearly irresistible. “Better not. I’ve been known to crash hard when I’m this tired, and I still have rounds to make tonight.”

“At least sit down and rest. I won’t be long,” she said before disappearing into the bathroom with another maddening swirl of silk against sleek calves. An instant later he heard the rush of water through the pipes in the connecting wall.

Feeling as though he was strangling, Luke managed to lower his aching bones to the mattress, found the remote and turned on the TV. After surfing until he found a Mariners game, he eased to his side, bunched the pillow she used under his head and set his mental alarm for fifteen minutes. Between one breath and another his mind simply shut down.

Through the closed door Madelyn heard the indistinct sounds of a baseball game on TV as she unzipped the small brocade bag containing her jewelry. She had one pearl drop affixed to her lobe and was searching for its companion when she heard the muffled ringing of the phone by the bed.

Muttering a curse, she hurried from the bathroom in her stocking feet. Luke was asleep, sprawled on his belly with his scarred boots hanging over the edge of the bed and his head turned toward the TV. His long arms were wrapped around the pillow, his cheek half-buried in the soft foam. His corners of his mouth were still tense, however. And his black brows were drawn together in a frown, as though something in the fathomless void of sleep was troubling him.

She managed to snatch up the phone on the third ring. He didn’t move. Turning away, she whispered an impatient hello into the receiver.

“Madelyn? Is that you?” Her ex-husband’s voice carried the strident edge of irritation that had become far too familiar.

“Wiley, how’d you get this number?”

“From your mama. She also told me you were consulting a specialist, but then, you always did overreact.”

She glanced over her shoulder, her stomach knotting. Only Doc and her best friend Emily Weldon knew the name of the man she’d come to see. The last thing she needed right now was another scandal. “What do you want, Wiley?”

“Simply to complete the dissolution of a marriage that’s become intolerable for both of us.”

Madelyn closed her eyes and used her free hand to rub at the pinprick of pain in her right temple that invariably exploded into a full-blown headache whenever Wiley started in on her. “Intolerable,” she repeated in a low tone. “Yes, I suppose it is now.”

It hadn’t been so intolerable when he’d come to her every Saturday night for an hour of regimented sex that had left her feeling more and more lonely and unsatisfied, however. Or when she’d nursed him through a battle with lung cancer, holding the basin as he retched after surgery and emptying bedpans because he was too modest to ask the nurse. No, good old Wiley hadn’t found her intolerable then. Shaking with hurt and a healthy dollop of disgust at the loyalty she’d shown a man who so clearly had none for her, she stiffened her spine and took a bracing breath.

“All right, Wiley. I’ll get an attorney. We’ll work out a settlement.”

“No need. Judge Berdette and I have already worked out the details.”

“I’ll just bet you have.”

“The judge was my father’s best friend before Daddy passed on to his heavenly reward, as you well know, and as such has always looked out for the best interests of the Foster family.”

When had the stability she’d valued so much in Wiley Roy turned to a really ugly stuffiness? she wondered.

“Perhaps you’d better explain the details of this settlement.”

“I suppose I must.” His voice was perilously close to a whine. “I’ll deed my share of the house over to you as well as your car and a third of our joint stock portfolio in return for your absolving me of any and all paternal obligations, now or in the future. In addition, you agree not to give the child the surname of Foster. My preference would be that you revert to your maiden name, as well, but that’s your own choice. I would, of course, want those points spelled out in writing, duly witnessed and notarized. In addition, I never want to see the child or have him think of me as his father. You will not put my name on his birth certificate or on the form when you enroll him in school.”

Madelyn’s knees were turning to jelly, and the pulsing in her head took on jagged edges. If she’d been alone, she would have sunk to the mattress and conducted the rest of this slimy discussion from a fetal position. As it was, she hated the thought that Luke might surface at any moment. A quick look over her shoulder reassured her that he was blessedly oblivious.

Turning back and ducking her head, she curved her hand around the mouthpiece. “Wiley, think about that a minute,” she whispered urgently. “I can understand if you’re angry, even though we both know I never lied to you. Take it out on me if you have to, but for God’s sake don’t punish your own flesh and blood.”

“I told you I never wanted a child, Madelyn.”

“But he’s going to grow up in the same town. He’ll hear gossip. Kids can be so terribly cruel, and even if they aren’t, sooner or later he’ll realize you don’t want him.”

“You should have thought of that before refusing to terminate this pregnancy.”

Madelyn realized it was futile to argue. Besides, the pain in her head was truly vicious now. Icy fingers gouging chunks from her skull. It was an effort to form coherent sentences.

“Your terms are acceptable,” she managed to enunciate before removing the phone from her ear. Jagged zigzags of phosphorescent light shot across her field of vision as she attempted to return the phone to the cradle, causing her to miscalculate. The phone fell from her fumbling fingers, hitting the table with a noisy clatter.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she whispered, bracing a shaking hand on the slick tabletop. Her knees were water. Nausea roiled in her belly, and her throat burned. She swallowed against the urgent need to physically purge herself of the ugly feelings inside her. Gagging, she clasped her hand over her mouth.

“Easy, darlin’, I’ve got you.”

Before she’d even known he was awake, Luke had scooped her into his arms, carrying her with long swift strides into the bathroom where she was noisily miserably sick.

Luke pressed two fingers against the carotid artery in Maddy’s neck as she lay on the bed, his gaze on the second hand of his watch. Her pulse had settled nicely since she’d dozed off, and the flow of blood was reassuringly strong. Slowly he withdrew his hand, his gaze focused intently on her face. Though her skin was still pale, her breathing had evened into a normal rhythm.

Silently he brushed the back of his hand against the satiny curve of her cheek, his brow still knitted. Though still too cool, her skin was no longer clammy.

“Luke?” she murmured, nuzzling his hand. Curly golden eyelashes fluttered as she struggled to focus.

“I’m here, Maddy.” He removed the folded washcloth from her forehead, replacing it with one he’d just dipped in ice water and wrung nearly dry.

Even as she sighed in relief, eyes the color of a Mexican sea and glazed with pain blinked up at him. The helpless vulnerability shimmering in the depths squeezed his heart. “My baby?”

“Sleepin’ most likely. Those little critters are real tough.”

Her brow puckered as she stared at him, her eyes huge with fear and pain and her pale mouth trembling. “I’m…so scared of losing him.”

“Go back to sleep and let me take care of both of you.” He smoothed back her hair with a hand that wasn’t at all steady. “Things will look brighter when you wake up.”

“I hate this…needing you.”

“I know.”

“Part of me still hates you.”

“I know that, too.”

“They wouldn’t even let me nurse her, our baby. They said they didn’t want her to bond with someone who wasn’t going to be her mama. I begged and begged…” She blinked. “You would have made them give her to me, wouldn’t you, Luke?”

A hole opened in his gut. “Yes, I would have made them.”

“I still hear her crying sometimes. Crying for her mama.” She sighed, her eyelashes drifting closed. “Did I ever tell you?” she mumbled in a voice barely above a sigh.

“Tell me what, Maddy?” he asked gently.

For a moment he thought she hadn’t heard him. And then her pale lips curved into a soft smile. “Our baby, she looked just like you.”

Luke sat on the edge of the mattress for a long time, silently stroking her hair while his heart seeped blood, his mind filled with an image of Maddy cradling a tiny black-haired baby in her arms. He’d thought nothing could make him hurt worse than that day on her porch when she’d told him he would never see the child he’d fathered so carelessly.

He’d been dead wrong.

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