Dr. Daddy. Elizabeth Bevarly

      “What are you doing here?” they chorused as one.

      “I live here,” Jonas replied.

      “Lily Forrest sent me,” Zoey said at the same time. Then, before he could say more, she demanded, “What on earth are you doing to that poor baby?”

      In spite of the fact that her career consisted of being surrounded by moody infants, Zoey couldn’t bear to hear a baby crying in anguish. Instinctively, she reached for the child in Jonas Tate’s arms, tamping down all the questions that swirled in her head at his appearance. She noted only that he surrendered the baby willingly, and she pushed past him into the house, nudging the door shut with her foot before the cold morning air could chill the infant. She rocked the baby carefully, murmuring soothing, meaningless sounds. The tiny thing stopped crying almost instantly, focusing intently on Zoey’s face, blinking her teary, red-rimmed eyes.

      “There’s my good girl,” Zoey said quietly, knowing immediately that the child was female. She placed a soft kiss on the baby’s forehead, inhaling the sweet aroma of powder and soap, and she smiled. “Here,” she added to Jonas, jerking the patient file out from under her arm and thrusting it toward him without looking at him. “Dr. Forrest asked me to drop this off on my way home. She said you’d need it today.”

      When he didn’t take the file from her right away, Zoey glanced up. Now she had no choice but to take note of him, and she didn’t like what she saw. Well, she liked what she saw, she amended reluctantly, taking in the expansive chest covered with dark hair and corded muscle, the broad, steely shoulders and the pajamas dipping low on trim hips beneath a flat abdomen. She just wished the attributes she was appreciating belonged to someone other than Jonas Tate. When her gaze traveled up to meet his, he had arched a dark brow in question, and she realized he knew full well how closely she’d been inspecting his wares. She felt herself blush.

      Unwilling to trust her voice just then, she shook the file in her hand to bring his attention to it. When he still did not take it from her, she cleared her throat discreetly and said, “Dr. Forrest seemed to think it was important.”

      Jonas took the folder from her hands and tossed it onto the sofa without looking at it. Instead, his attention seemed to be focused completely on Zoey and the baby, who still stared solemnly up at her. And because she felt infinitely more capable of dealing with a baby than a nearly naked man, Zoey dropped her gaze back to the infant in her arms.

      “What’s your name, sweetheart?” she asked in a soft, breathless voice, rubbing her bent knuckle gently against the baby’s cheek. “Hmm? What’s your name?”

      The baby gurgled and smiled, making Zoey laugh in response.

      “Juliana,” a deep, husky voice said beside her. “Tate. Her name is Juliana Tate.”

      Zoey feared that if she looked up, she would find Jonas standing much too close to her, and then she would no doubt do something really foolish. Like reach out to touch him, which was what she definitely wanted to do. So she kept her gaze trained tightly on the baby and spoke to her instead. “Well, that’s an awfully big name for such a little baby, isn’t it, Juliana? Yes, that’s an awfully big name for you to grow into.”

      Juliana cooed and smiled again.

      “How did you do that?” Jonas asked.

      Zoey glanced away from the baby and up at Jonas and, sure enough, regretted the action completely. Up close this way, she could see that his shoulders were deliciously freckled, and could make out every smooth plane of muscle from his neck to his waist. She swallowed with some difficulty before asking, “Do what?”

      “You made her stop crying,” he indicated. “Just by holding her, you made her stop. And now she’s actually smiling at you. She’s never smiled at me.”

      “I...I don’t know,” Zoey said honestly. “You can’t ‘make’ babies do anything. They choose whether to smile or to cry or to stop, and usually they have very good reasons for doing all three.”

      His lips thinned into a tight line, and he settled his hands on his hips, an expression and pose Zoey had seen often enough to know what it meant. It meant she’d made him mad.

      “So you’re saying I made Juliana cry,” he said in a deceptively calm voice.

      “Not necessarily,” she replied quickly. “You’re her father, after all. Why would that make her cry?”

      Although the realization almost made Zoey want to cry. She’d had no idea Dr. Tate was married with children. She didn’t think anyone at the hospital knew. Too many nurses and other doctors were lusting after him, something that wouldn’t be quite so prevalent if the women in question knew he was already attached. Until now, Zoey would have sworn she was one of the minority who couldn’t care less if the man had a dozen women stowed away. But faced now with the unequivocal evidence of his tie to at least one, she felt a funny little hole open up in her heart.

      “I’m not Juliana’s father,” he said. “I’m her uncle.” He sighed wearily and scrubbed his hands over his face as if feeling utterly defeated. “And frankly, you’re right,” he continued softly as he dropped his hands back to his sides, “I make her cry. For some reason, the kid hates me. And I have no idea what I’m supposed to do about it.”

      Zoey studied Jonas for a long time before responding. He looked like a man who was at the end of his rope, a man who was two steps away from throwing himself off the Ben Franklin Bridge. His eyes were shadowed and exhausted looking, his mouth bracketed by white lines of strain. When he reached up to run a big hand anxiously through his hair, he closed his eyes and sighed deeply again, and she could see that he felt completely hopeless.

      “Where are her parents?” Zoey asked quietly, softening at this vulnerable side of Jonas Tate she’d never seen before.

      “Dead,” he replied bluntly.

      Her heart turned over that the child in her arms had suffered such an enormous loss at such an early age. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

      Jonas shrugged off her condolences. “I didn’t really know them. Her father was my brother, but I hadn’t seen or spoken to Alex for more than thirty years.”

      Which would mean the two men were separated when they were children, Zoey thought, unable to deny her curiosity about how such a separation might have occurred. She wasn’t about to pry into the man’s personal history by asking him about it, but Jonas must have picked up on her thoughts, because he sighed again.

      “It’s a long story, Zoey,” he said softly, his gaze falling to the baby in her arms. “Why don’t you take off your coat while I put on a pot of coffee?”

      * * *

      Actually Jonas did more than put on a pot of coffee. At Zoey’s insistence, he readied himself for work while she kept an eye on Juliana. For the first time in months, he took his time in the shower, managed to shave himself without a single nick and not only matched up his clothes—opting for a gray dress shirt, plum patterned tie and charcoal trousers—but ironed them, as well. By the time he exited his bedroom, he was in a better mood than any he could remember for the past two months. And oddly enough, he owed it all to Zoey’s appearance at his front door that morning.

      He bumped into her—literally—as she was coming out of Juliana’s room. He grabbed her shoulders to steady her, and she pressed her palms flat against his chest to regain her balance. For a moment, neither moved from the position, but their gazes remained locked, as if each was awaiting the other’s move. Finally they sprang apart at the same time, mumbling excuses and apologies. Jonas swept his arm forward, indicating Zoey should precede him down the stairs, and she pulled the nursery door closed silently behind her before doing so.

      Only when they were well away from Juliana’s room, safely ensconced in his kitchen with the baby monitor turned on, did Jonas trust himself to speak. Yet he still kept his voice down, certain the slightest disturbance would have the baby screaming again.

      “She