P.S. You're a Daddy!. Dianne Drake

it wasn’t. But she was … curious. What, specifically, she wanted to know about him, she had no clue.

      She did want to stop hurting, though, and maybe that’s what this near obsession was about. Losing his cousin, her best friend, had turned into a pain she didn’t know how anybody could endure, and she was looking for anything to make it stop. Maybe that’s what finding Dr. Braxton Alexander was about, at least in part. Something to keep her occupied until something else made sense.

      “So, we go to Sugar Creek,” she said to the baby, looking at the already packed bags by her front door. They’d been packed for days, and she’d gone this far several times before. Then stopped. But today was different. She could feel it in her resolve, in her heart and, yes, in her belly. Today she would carry those bags to the car, climb in and head south. All the way to Tennessee.

      “But before we leave, I need to stop by the cemetery and tell Emily what we’re going to do,” she told the baby. “Emily,” she whispered, as tears started welling again. “I really don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m so scared …”

      “Welcome to Sugar Creek, Tennessee,” Deanna said on an ambivalent sigh. This was it. She’d done it. Well, part of it. She’d managed to get herself here. As far as the next part went, she had options and she wasn’t ready to decide which one to choose. So for now she was here to work. At least, that’s what she’d tell people. Reports to do, financial donor sources to track down, people to hire who would implement her programs. Her temporary lease here was for a month and she’d brought enough work with her to keep her busy for three, so the part about coming here to work wasn’t a lie. Nurse researcher with plenty to do.

      Now, stepping out of her car and raising her binoculars to look down the south face of the mountain at the lay of the little town, she noted how the quaint buildings stretched pleasantly up and down Sugar Creek Highway. There was an outcropping of foothills and more green trees than she’d ever seen in any one place in her life jutting out prominently in any direction she looked other than the main part of town itself.

      “It’s very pretty. And it’s got a grocery store, café, general merchandise store, and beauty shop. I think we’ll have a nice month here.” With or without tracking down Braxton Alexander.

      Even though she’d never lived in one, Deanna loved small towns, loved the whole countrified experience. As a nurse researcher, she’d devoted her entire career to finding ways to make healthcare better in areas where it wasn’t easily accessed. Places like Sugar Creek, which sat in a beautiful, secluded valley a hundred miles from anywhere. It wasn’t the beauty of such places that caught her attention when she took on new assignments but the seclusion, because her job was to bridge the medical gaps.

      “But this town is one of the lucky ones,” she said. “It has a doctor. Your daddy.” Your daddy … Odd how that was so easy to say. “Judging from what I read about him, he’s very good.” And she’d read everything she could find. A few articles he’d written about general surgery, some accounts of awards he’d received. Nothing about why he’d given up a lucrative New York City surgery to isolate himself here. As a GP, no less.

      Midday carried with it a cool June breeze, and a chill washed over Deanna as she lowered her binoculars and, once again, thought about what she was doing here. Chasing Braxton Alexander. This wasn’t just a small change of direction for her. It was a total life-changer. She was having this man’s baby—a baby she’d never planned on having—and sitting on a mountaintop hoping to catch a glimpse of him somewhere.

      How much more perverse did life get than that? She tilted her face to the sky and, for the first time in weeks, actually felt a little bit of relaxation slide down over her.

      “I’m pretty sure I’m glad we came here, but I suppose there’s a lot still to be determined.” She liked talking to the baby, particularly here. Possibly because she was so close to the daddy. Or maybe because she’d put physical distance between herself and everything that reminded her of Emily.

      “Now we’re going to have to figure out what we’re going to do next … for real.” She laid her hand on her belly. “So, here are our options. We can watch and keep quiet. Try finding a way to meet him. Or we can always play it by ear. See what happens. Hope for the best.”

      However it worked out, she had a whole month ahead of her to find the answer and act on it. Or not.

      “She’s making eyes at you, boss.” Joey Santiago led the chestnut mare into the stall then took off her lead before he stepped out and latched the door behind him. Brushing his hands together to shake off the dust, he said, “They all do it. Big brown eyes, so many expectations. You’ve let them have their way with you once too often, and now you pay for it every time you come in here.”

      “Not pay for it, Joey. Enjoy it.” Beau leaned over the Dutch door of the stall and gave the mare a couple of lumps of sugar, like he always did. It’s what he’d done as a child every time he’d spent a few days or a few months here with his grandfather, and he’d continued doing it after he’d moved in for good when he’d been a teenager.

      “And they love you for it.”

      “Horses don’t love,” Beau protested. “They merely get used to certain things.” The way he had, growing up. “Come to expect them. Recognize them when they’re being offered.”

      “You’re wrong there, Beau. They love, just like we do. You can see it in their eyes.”

      Joey had been here for as long as Beau could remember, doing odd jobs, gardening, taking care of the few horses his grandfather always kept, and taking care of Beau’s grandfather after his stroke. He was also part of the two-man team who had raised him when his dad had gone off on benders and wherever else it was the old man had gone to avoid life, responsibility and, most of all, fatherhood.

      “Some of us don’t love, though,” Beau countered, still cringing over his marriage fiasco nearly two years later.

      “You loved,” Joey countered. “Just not wisely. But with a horse you don’t have to worry about duplicitous intentions. A carrot and a few kind words will get you unconditional love for ever. And even if you don’t yet have a taste for falling in love again, that’s going to change. Just in your own time.”

      “Or in no time,” Beau quipped, preferring not to think about Nancy. Two years later, he still did, though. It was inevitable, he supposed, because of the way she’d changed his life. But all this love talk made him nervous. He wanted to climb up on one of these horses and ride so hard it knocked the memories right out of him.

      Joey, a stocky man with thick black hair, shook his head as he peeked over the half-door in the next stall at Nell, who was ready to give birth any time. “I watched you at the races last spring, in Kentucky. Watched you get so excited when Donder almost won the Derby. I saw love in your eyes for that horse, Beau. I know you’re not dead in your emotions like you think you are. Just holding it back.”

      “Emotionally dead is easier.”

      “Or safer. But that’s going to change. Mark my words, when the time’s right to move on, nothing’s going to hold you back.”

      “I’ve been ready to move on for two years.” And everything was holding him back.

      “And yet you haven’t,” Joey quipped. “Strange how that works, isn’t it?”

      Joey was right, of course. But Beau didn’t have to admit that out loud because, in ways he didn’t want to deal with, he was just fine being held back. It kept him away from the possibility that what he’d gone through once could happen again. Admitting you’d been so blind and, on top of that, so insanely stupid on so many levels … No, there would be no repeat acts for him, and the only way to guarantee that was to keep his distance. Big distance.

      “What’s strange is standing here talking to you about my love life when I’ve got fences to mend out on the back forty.” Barring emergencies, no more patients for the day and no house calls for the evening. With any luck he’d be so worn out by nightfall