His Motherless Little Twins. Dianne Drake

but I can’t leave here yet. We’re too busy. Too many people still coming in and you know Daddy has to stay here and take care of them.”

      “Then can we stay here and help?” the girls cried in unison. “Please, Daddy, can we stay?”

      He looked at the woman, who shrugged. “I’m going to sit with Gabby, and Debbie’s coming in shortly to look after the girls. So it’s fine with me if they stay for a while,” she said. “Maybe you can take a break with them later on?”

      “How can I say no to taking a break with my two best girls?” Eric said. He took hold of the brims of both their rain hats and shoved them up. “But first I want you to say hello to Dinah Corday. She’s the nurse who helped me in surgery today. The surgery I did on Dr. Evans’s baby.”

      Totally unaware of her presence there, in this cozy family scene, until they spun to face her, they both ran immediately to Dinah and grabbed her like she was their long-lost friend. “Hello,” she said tentatively.

      “Hello,” they said in unison. “Do you want to eat some of Daddy’s cookies?” one of the girls continued.

      “That’s Pippa,” Eric said. “Without the rain gear, you’ll be able to tell her from Paige because Pippa has brown eyes like me, and Paige has hazel eyes like her mother. Other than that, they’re identical.”

      “And I’m taller,” the one Dinah believed was Paige said. “By half an inch.”

      “Only when you’re standing on your tiptoes,” Pippa argued.

      “Do not,” Paige protested.

      “Do, too,” Pippa countered.

      “And so goes the Ramsey family,” Eric said, laughing. “Oh, and, Dinah. I’d like you to meet my sister, Janice Laughlin. The girls and I live with her, and she watches them when I’m working.”

      Eric lived with his sister? Suddenly the heat of embarrassment began its creep from her neck, up her throat, to her cheeks. “Hello,” she said, almost choking over the single word.

      “But Daddy’s going to get us a great big house of our own soon, where we can have a dog and…” Paige started.

      “A cat,” Pippa finished.

      Dinah chanced a glance at Eric, whose expression was an odd one, caught between pain and amusement. He wanted to laugh, or cry. She couldn’t tell which. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Look, it’s nice to meet all of you…Janice, Paige, Pippa. But I’ve really got to go and find my sister.”

      “Can we go see the baby?” Pippa cried. “Please?”

      “Pretty please?” Paige joined in.

      “Not right now,” Eric said, trying to take a firm hand. “He’s not feeling very well. But maybe in a few days.”

      But Eric wasn’t very good at that firm hand, and it showed. Even to a casual observer such as herself, Dinah saw that he was just plain gooey when it came to his little girls. They had him wrapped around their little fingers, and he enjoyed every bit of it. He would be a very indulgent father, Dinah decided. And a very good one. Something also told her that Eric wasn’t a man cheating on his wife. He was a man getting over something painful, for which she felt very bad. So bad, in fact, that she turned away without saying another word, and practically ran into the room where Angela was sitting, waiting for Gabby to return from seeing her baby. “Tell me about Eric,” she whispered to Angela.

      “What do you want to know?”

      “Is he married?”

      CHAPTER THREE

      “WHY, I do believe you’re flustered, Dinah.” A smile crept to Angela’s face as Dinah paced back and forth in the tiny hospital waiting room. “He is handsome, though, isn’t he? Nice man. Smart. Good doctor, too.”

      “But is he married?”

      “Oh, my…I guess you wouldn’t know, would you?”

      “Know what?”

      “That he’s a widower. I don’t know the circumstances, except that it happened a long time ago, before he moved to White Elk.”

      Horror heaped on humiliation. She’d kissed him then accused him of something terrible. “He wears a wedding ring.”

      Her sister raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “I guess it’s hard for him to let go. Is there something you want to tell me, Dinah?”

      She shook her head, too upset to speak. From the moment he’d run into her on the road until now, nothing had been right between them except, perhaps, the way they’d worked together. Admittedly, that had been brilliant. A perfect medical union. Rare, especially for two strangers.

      The kiss had been perfect, too. More perfect than she’d known a kiss could be. But she couldn’t tell her sister because that kiss had been a huge mistake. Had meant nothing. After all, she’d been kissed before, and no kiss in her life had ever meant a thing. So, why should this one?

      “Well, for what it’s worth,” Angela said, breaking into Dinah’s thoughts, “I’ve hardly ever seen him come up to Pine Ridge, so once you’re settled in there, and working, you probably won’t run into him again. If that’s what you want. At least, until I have my baby and you have to come to the hospital and visit me. And maybe you can work that out so you won’t be here when he is.” She laughed, and a wide grin spread over her face. “Unless you want to be where he is.”

      “I’m not interested,” Dinah insisted.

      “I didn’t say you were.”

      “But that’s what you were thinking.”

      “What I was thinking was that you’re a little too…” She faked a frown, pretended to think. “What’s the word I’m looking for? Is it…preoccupied? You’re a little too preoccupied by the man. Or obsessed.”

      “Am not!” Dinah argued as yet another good, firm, and very telling blush spread over her cheeks on account of Eric.

      “Whatever you say.”

      “I say I’m not preoccupied. And I’m not obsessed, either.”

      “Whatever you say.”

      “I said I’m not!” Dinah protested again, yet the heat kept rising in her, along with the timbre of her voice. OK, so she’d never been a very good liar. As a child, that little trait had been the bane of her existence, like when she’d tried to explain away the missing candy from the bowl on her grandmother’s coffee table, or when she’d been late to school. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Even though, avoidance was a good plan. If she avoided Eric, there would be no more hostilities, no more humiliation. No more kisses. The problem was, she wanted to see him. Bad problem. Bad, bad problem. Because she didn’t know why. Which caused the heat in her cheeks to positively flame.

      What the hell had that been about? Eric kicked the trash can next to his desk, knocking it over, spilling out the paper contents. It had been about a kiss, that’s what. And now he felt as guilty as hell. Sure, he was a red-blooded man. He hadn’t been without certain desires all this time. But desiring and acting on those desires were two different things, and he wasn’t ready to act on them. Had never come close to acting on them, and suddenly, that was the only thing on his mind.

      Five years was a long time—a lifetime of feeling married yet not having his wife here. But that’s what his life had turned into. And he didn’t regret it, because he truly wasn’t ready to change things. The girls needed their mother’s memory kept alive, and he was the only one who could do that. They were so young, and all they knew were the things he told them, so how could it be time to move past that point?

      Swallowing hard, Eric looked at Patricia’s picture on his desk. God, he