Daddy By Choice. Paula Detmer Riggs

relationship.”

      “You’re the mother of my only child, Madelyn. I would have married you if you’d said yes. I can never think of you as a stranger.”

      Something barbed twisted around her heart. “We don’t have a child, Luke. She belongs to someone else, thanks to you. To survive I had to accept that. Just as I had to accept responsibility for mistaking sexual attraction for love. I know the difference now.”

      His jaw tightened for the briefest of moments before he lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. His sigh was heavy as he lowered his hand. “Tell you what, you get yourself out of that fetching suit that’s got my staff green with envy and into that paper gown yonder while I go see if I can scare up some professional detachment.” He left before she had a chance to reply.

      After asking Esther to prepare Maddy for a thorough exam, Luke went into his office and shut the door. Though he had other patients waiting, he needed a minute for himself.

      He felt as though he was strangling, and his back was threatening to seize up again. Beneath his shirt and starched coat, his skin was slick with sweat, and his knees were as wobbly as a newborn colt’s.

      Heckfire, he was a freaking basket case here, he thought as he eased his aching body into the chair behind his cluttered desk, tossed his glasses on top of the latest Physician’s Drug Reference and slumped back against the cool leather upholstery.

      God only knew how much he wanted to help her, he thought, letting his head fall back. Anything he had that she needed, it was hers. If she wanted money, he’d beggar himself. If she needed a place to stay, he’d buy her a frigging mansion. Transportation? No sweat. A call to his friendly BMW dealer and the keys to a new Beemer would be in her hands within the hour.

      With a long-drawn-out groan that sounded depressingly like a whimper, he raked both hands through his hair, then balled them into fists on the arms of his chair. Damn, but this was pure misery. As rough as it was on him, however, it had to be about a million times worse for her.

      He’d known right off she had a healthy amount of grit. It had been there in the rigid angle of her head when she’d looked at him, and in the straight line of her back as she’d perched there on the edge of the table, a lady from the top of her shiny head to the toes of those city-lady shoes.

      Asking for help from a man she’d sworn to hate had cost her. A woman with her spirit and class, ready to humble herself.

      Because she loved the child she carried. Loved it as she’d loved their daughter.

      Damn, but he admired her. Flat out respected the hell out of her. It was clear as glass she wanted this baby about as much as he figured he wanted her to have it.

      Letting his shoulders slump, he dropped his hands and willed himself past the pain. Concentrate on what you know, he reminded himself. Diagnostic tests and procedures first, then a carefully considered, strictly monitored regimen of care. His mind clicked through the familiar routine, weighed pros and cons of radical new theories, considered options, then roughed out a plan.

      Preliminary decisions made, the hard angry knot beneath his breastbone loosened. When he figured he had enough control to keep his voice steady, he picked up the phone and punched out Boyd’s private number.

      “MacAuley, here, and you have two seconds to state your business before I’m outta here.”

      Luke grinned. Poor guy sounded so harried he almost hated to add to his stress level. “Jarrod here, and I can state it in one. Cancel the surgery.”

      “The hell you say!” The bellow in his ear had him flinching.

      “You heard me.”

      “Give me one decent reason.”

      He could give the guy a dozen. About how he still woke up in the middle of the night with his heart pounding and Maddy’s small white face shimmering in his head. About how he hated the selfish ass he’d been at eighteen. About how he’d sworn to become a better man. But all those decent reasons came down to one.

      “I promised a lady a miracle, and I intend to do my damnedest to give it to her,” he said quietly before hanging up.

      Chapter 3

      “Is this your first?” Esther asked as she set out instruments.

      Madelyn pressed her hand to the gaping front of the paper gown and wondered how a woman was supposed to maintain her poise with her bare feet dangling two feet above the floor. “No, my second. But there are complications, and it’s possible I’ll deliver too early.”

      “Don’t worry, Mrs. Foster. Dr. Jarrod will take good care of you.” The nurse covered the instruments before adding with a grin, “He might look like he just ambled out of a Louis L’Amour novel, and sometimes he can be a little abrupt when he’s worn-out, but he’s the best doctor I’ve ever known—and I’ve known plenty.”

      Madelyn returned Esther’s smile with one of her own. In her heightened state of nervous tension, her lips felt numb—and just a little shaky. “Thanks, I—”

      A sharp rap on the door had her jerking her head toward the sound. A split second later the door opened and Luke walked in. It was still there, that indefinable something that always made her think of wind racing across a barren mesa. Her lungs seemed suddenly starved for oxygen. Jet lag, she told herself firmly. Combined with stress.

      “Ready for me, ladies?” he asked, his gaze sliding past her to his nurse.

      “Ready, Doctor,” Esther replied as she snapped on the lamp attached to a long gooseneck.

      Suddenly nervous, Madelyn shivered, drawing another quick gaze from those intense blue eyes.

      “Cold?”

      “More like apprehensive.” She licked dry lips and tried to ignore the ugly stirrups that Esther had just clicked into an upright position.

      His expression was surprisingly sympathetic. “Took me a bad fall once and spent a little time hooked up in traction. Darn near made me crazy dangling there with my legs halfway to the ceiling.”

      He slipped his hand into the glove Esther held for him. “You ever been in the Pacific Northwest before?” he asked.

      “No.” Madelyn’s reply came out thin, and she cleared her throat. “It’s very…uh, lush. It seems like we flew over acres and acres of trees. And then, of course, there are all those rivers. Well, two here in the city, according to the guidebook I read on the plane. The Willamette and the Columbia. It was pretty hazy, so I didn’t really get a good look, though.” She realized she was babbling and clamped her mouth shut.

      “Darn cold, too, for someone born and reared in desert country.” He plunged his other hand into the matching glove, then flexed his long fingers. “Took me a couple of years before I stopped feeling like a Popsicle six months out of every year. Esther still knits me sweaters for Christmas. Soft as a baby’s bottom they are. And as pretty as they are soft. Had me three offers to buy the last one right off my back last year.”

      Esther did her best not to preen. “You keep on gorging yourself on that junk food and I’m gonna have to buy another skein for this year,” she muttered as she uncovered the instruments.

      Tensing, Madelyn fought the urge to scramble down from the table and hightail it all the way back to her hotel. A bubble of laughter caught in her throat as she pictured the unflappable always ladylike Mrs. Madelyn Smith Foster racing through an Oregon drizzle in her paper dress.

      “Lie back, please,” Luke said, his tone as impersonal as Doc’s when he was performing a similar exam.

      Paper rustled as she swung her legs to the table. His arm supported her as she lay down, his strength as intimidating as it was reassuring. “Comfortable?” he asked, sliding his arm free.

      Her skin tingled from the brief pressure of his hard muscles. She put it down to heightened nerves. “Fine, thank you.”