The Doctor's Baby. Cindy Kirk

skidded to a stop on the shiny linoleum, keeping a firm grip on his temper. Hospital gossip drove him crazy but he’d long ago learned the best way to handle it. “Tell them the new mommy and I have been having a torrid affair and I’m madly in love with her. Oh, and you can tell them that the baby is mine, too.”

      As he’d expected, Travis chuckled. “I’ll let ‘em know it’s a false alarm.” He clapped David on the back. “Enjoy the party and give that pretty sister of yours a kiss for me.”

      “If you want to kiss her,” David shot back, “you’re going to have to do that yourself.”

      But as David left the lounge, he found his mind not on his sister or his nephew’s party. It was on the woman upstairs in room 202. And on the baby in the nursery. The boy with the dark wavy hair … just like his own.

       Chapter Two

      In an attempt to avoid elevator small talk, David took the stairs to the second floor. Once he reached the nurses’ station, he chatted with the staff while flipping through July’s thin chart. There wasn’t much information. She’d listed her marital status as single, her job as a freelance photographer and her address as Chicago, Illinois. There was no next of kin listed so if she was involved with someone, the relationship couldn’t be that significant.

      He wondered what had happened to her job at the Sun Times and what had brought her to Jackson. While this was a beautiful part of the country and he’d always been proud to call it home, it wasn’t a “passing through” kind of place.

      Well, he’d find out soon enough. David squared his shoulders and with clipboard in hand, turned and headed down the hall with purposeful strides. Only when he reached her room did he hesitate. Travis was following her now so there was really no reason for him to be here. Except he’d delivered her baby and they were old friends … of sorts.

      Feeling as awkward as a fifteen-year-old, David rapped lightly on the partially closed door then pushed it open.

      July sat in the bed with a tray of food before her, dressed in a simple hospital gown. She wasn’t show-stopping pretty, not like Celeste, but there was something compelling about her. Though she couldn’t be more than five foot three, with her big green eyes, shoulder-length auburn hair and a creamy complexion, she’d stand out in any crowd.

      If she was surprised to see him, it didn’t show. She placed the dish of orange gelatin on the tray and stared at the red stitching on his lab coat. “I thought your name was spelled W-A-L-L.”

      Relief washed over him. She remembered his name … even if she was off on the spelling. In the delivery room he hadn’t been sure she’d recognized him. And he hadn’t known how to ask.

      “Because it’s pronounced the same, lots of people get the spelling wrong.” He ambled to the bed, hoping the tension that held him in a stranglehold didn’t show. “What’s this I hear? The nurses tell me you haven’t even been here twenty-four hours and you’re already asking when you can leave.”

      “My insurance policy has a high deductible.” She lifted her chin. “I’m a cost-conscious consumer.”

      David rocked back on his heels and cursed his insensitivity. The comment had been meant to tease, to break the ice, not make her feel bad. “If you need financial assistance, we have a wonderful social service department. I can have someone stop—”

      “You misunderstand,” she interrupted. “I have savings. I just want to keep as much of it as possible.”

      “Of course. Excellent. Well, if you change your mind, let me know.” David found himself stumbling over the words. Normally he could talk to anyone about anything. But here he stood, tongue-tied and awkward. Feeling this unsure didn’t make any sense. Neither did her coolness. After all, they’d parted on good terms.

      “Barring anything unforeseen, you should be able to go home tomorrow,” he said finally when the silence grew intolerable. “One of our home health nurses will check on you twenty-four hours after you leave the hospital. It’s an extra service we offer.”

      July’s emerald eyes took on a distant look. “I’ll need to buy a car seat and then come back for Adam—”

      “When you leave here you need to take it easy,” he said in a firm voice, as if she were one of his patients. “The baby will be staying with us for a while longer so there’s no rush on the car seat.”

      “The nurses told me he was doing fine.” Fear skittered across her face and her eyes filled with tears. “Has something happened to him?”

      “He’s a little jaundiced. Not unexpected in a preemie,” David said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. Though he didn’t have a lot to do with obstetrics, the hormone surge experienced after delivery was well-documented. He should have chosen his words more carefully.

      “When my water broke, I knew it was too early.” Her voice cracked and she collapsed back against the pillows, looking much younger than her twenty-six years. “I couldn’t stop it. Everything went so fast …”

      “There wasn’t anything you could have done differently.” He resisted the urge to pat her on the shoulder. “Your body was ready to deliver when you walked through the door.”

      “I don’t know how that happened,” July continued, almost to herself. “The doctor swore I’d go late.”

      “What was your due date?” David asked in as casual a tone as he could muster.

      “April 15.”

      The tension that had been gripping his shoulders slid to his chest. He’d been calculating dates in his mind from the moment he’d recognized her name on the medical record and had seen her swollen belly. If she was due the middle of April she’d had to have gotten pregnant around the time they’d been together in Chicago. Though he thought he was doing a good job at keeping his emotions from his face, he knew he’d failed when her gaze narrowed.

      “Don’t worry.” She waved a hand. “He’s not your baby.”

      “How can you be sure he’s not mine?” The second the question shot from his lips David wondered if he’d lost his mind. She’d just handed him a free pass and he was arguing? But a man didn’t walk away from his responsibilities. “The dates match.”

      “We used a condom,” she reminded him. “Every time.”

      “Are you telling me you had unprotected sex with someone else around that time?”

      “Look.” She shoved the tray table out of the way and leaned forward. “The Sir Galahad act is unnecessary. Adam is not your son.”

      She sounded sincere. What she said made sense. But he remembered that night as if it were yesterday. There had been nothing practiced in her responses, which told him she hadn’t been with a man in a while. Yet now she expected him to believe she’d spent the night with him then promptly went out and had sex with another guy? It was possible, but something in his gut told him she was lying.

      He didn’t like doubting her. She’d impressed him from the onset as being one of those people who told it as she saw it. He’d liked that about her.

      David opened his mouth to ask one of half a dozen questions poised on the tip of his tongue, but shut it without speaking. The set of her jaw told him he wasn’t going to get anything more from her. At least not by going the direct route.

      He rocked back on his heels. “Are you really going to call him Adam?”

      “What’s wrong with it?”

      David hid a smile at the challenge in her tone. Feisty. That was another of the qualities that had drawn him to her in that hotel bar. “When I was a boy our next door neighbors had two bulldogs. One named Adam. The other, Eve.”

      “Well, I have a good friend named Adam and he’s definitely