Diagnosis: Daddy. GINA WILKINS

name is Art Haskell, Mr. Hayes. I’m an attorney and I have something rather significant to discuss with you. Would you be available to meet with me sometime this evening?”

      Mia had just settled onto her couch to watch a television program when her doorbell rang at nine o’clock Saturday evening. Setting aside the remote, she automatically brushed a hand over her casual top and jeans as she moved to answer the summons. She wasn’t expecting anyone this late, so she checked the peep hole before she opened the door.

      A bit surprised to find Connor on her doorstep, she let him in. “Well, hi,” she said. “This is an unexpected visit. Why didn’t you call? Have you had anything to eat?”

      When he didn’t respond to her questions, she closed the door and looked at him more closely. What she saw in his face made her stomach clench. “Connor? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

      His expression grim, his eyes looking shock-glazed, he swallowed visibly before answering. “I, um, I just came from a meeting with an attorney. I—”

      Taking a deep breath, he shoved a hand through his hair before blurting, “I’m going to have to quit medical school.”

      Chapter Two

      Mia stared blankly at Connor, deciding she must have heard him wrong. Surely he hadn’t said he was quitting medical school. Not after all he’d gone through to get to this point. “What on earth are you talking about?”

      “It’s sort of a long story.”

      “I’ve got time.” Taking hold of his arm, she drew him to the couch. “Let me get you something to drink. Soda? Coffee?”

      He shook his head, his expression still heartrending. “No.”

      Sinking onto the couch beside him, she took his hands in hers. His fingers lay limply in her grasp and his skin felt cold. “Connor, you’re scaring me. What’s happened?”

      His eyes met hers. “I got a call from an attorney this afternoon. He’d been trying to reach me for a couple hours, but I was with the study group. He asked if I could meet with him this evening at his office downtown.”

      “On a Saturday evening?” She swallowed, thinking that sounded awfully serious. “What was the meeting about?”

      He cleared his throat, as though searching for the right words. “I—There was this girl.”

      She frowned.

      “A girl from college,” he clarified. “We hooked up during my senior year. I was almost twenty-two, a few months from graduating. I’d been working pretty hard to earn my degree. Brandy was a—well, sort of a flake. Unpredictable. Impulsive. A little crazy, in a passionate, free-spirited sort of way. I guess she was what I needed at the time because I was obsessed with her for a few months. And then she got bored and she took off. After a few weeks of sulking, I realized I was sort of relieved. I’d had fun, but she certainly wasn’t someone I wanted to spend my whole life tangled up with, you know?”

      Brandy certainly didn’t sound like someone Mia would expect Connor to be involved with. But she supposed everyone made a few mistakes when it came to youthful romantic relationships. She had certainly made a couple, herself. She nodded. “Go on.”

      He moistened his lips. “I got involved with Gretchen a few months later as sort of a rebound from Brandy. Gretchen was everything Brandy wasn’t. She was focused and normal and completely predictable. I thought we were perfectly matched. She was a dental assistant and she seemed to be content to be that and a coach’s wife. She didn’t encourage me to pursue a medical degree and I guess I used her as an excuse not to do so. I think the whole idea scared me at the time, even though it was something I’d always fantasized about. You know how it goes. I was twenty-two, been in school since I was five, thought I was ready to get on with my life…I won’t say Gretchen and I were deliriously happy, but we got along well enough during the three years we were married. Until she ran off with the dentist, of course,” he finished with a grimace.

      Mia had met him not long after that humiliation, when he was still stinging from his wife’s betrayal. She’d never met Gretchen, but from the few things he had told her, she doubted that she would have liked her very much, even though Connor had been very careful not to say anything too derogatory about his ex.

      “Sounds like Gretchen had a little more in common with Brandy than you’d realized,” she murmured.

      He winced and pushed a hand through his already-messy sandy hair. “Maybe I just have a knack for picking the wrong women.”

      “You still haven’t told me why you think you have to quit medical school. Or what the lawyer told you that upset you so badly.”

      The way his jaw tightened let her know that he was deliberately taking his time about that. Whatever it was, she could tell it was major.

      “What I didn’t know when Brandy left was that she was pregnant,” he said after drawing a deep breath. “With my child. Apparently, she didn’t want me to know because she didn’t want that bond between us.”

      “You have a child?” Mia asked, her eyes going wide.

      He nodded, looking dazed again. “A little girl. She’s six years old. Her name is Alexis.”

      “Oh, my God.”

      He gave a short laugh that held no humor. “Yeah. That was pretty much my reaction.”

      “And you never knew anything about this?”

      “Nothing. I haven’t heard a word from Brandy since she took off, leaving me a note saying it had been fun, but she was ready for some new adventures.”

      “And now she wants you to be a father to her child?” Becoming incensed on his behalf, Mia let go of his hands to clench her own into fists. “What does she want? Money?”

      He shook his head. “No. It’s not that.”

      “Then what?”

      “Brandy didn’t raise Alexis. She gave the baby to her mother in Springfield, Missouri, to raise, and then she took off again. A year ago, she was killed in some sort of accident in New Zealand.”

      “She’s—”

      “She’s dead,” he reiterated bluntly. “And as of two days ago, so is her mother. A massive heart attack. Which is why the lawyer contacted me.”

      Connor watched Mia’s face as the realization dawned on her. “They want you to take the little girl?”

      Still finding it hard to believe himself, he nodded. “Alexis has only one surviving maternal family member. An aunt, Brandy’s older sister. The aunt doesn’t want to raise the child. She thought I should be notified before she turned Alexis over as a ward of the state.”

      “Oh.” Relaxing the fists she’d clenched, Mia twisted her fingers in her lap. “So they knew about you.”

      “Brandy gave them my name. In case anything ever happened to her, she said, or in case her daughter ever wanted to know who her father was.”

      “Do you think there’s any chance she lied? That you aren’t the father?”

      “There will be paternity tests, of course, but Brandy was not a liar. She was almost ruthlessly honest about everything. Apparently, I’m even named as the father on the birth certificate.”

      “So you believe Alexis is your daughter.”

      She seemed to be trying to convince herself. He nodded, anyway. “If Brandy said she is, then I don’t seem to have any other choice. The lawyer—his name was Haskell. Art Haskell, I think. Anyway, he said it’s up to me what I want to do now, but I need to make a decision quickly. Brandy’s sister is giving me until Monday to decide whether to accept custody or to relinquish my parental rights so Alexis can be adopted by someone else.”

      “But