Читать книгу The Surgeon's Secret Baby - Ann Christopher - Страница 9

Our son.

The two words hung in the air, hovering over his head like one of those giant anvils that Road Runner was always using to nail Wile E. Coyote in those old Looney Tunes cartoons.

And then they hit him, along with the stinging realization that this woman had no personal interest in him whatsoever.

“Our son?” he echoed, reeling.

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.”

She seemed to have expected this reaction, because she flinched but quickly recovered, plowing ahead with grim determination. “I know you don’t believe me, but he’s sick. And I need your help.”

Oh, okay. He got it. With a bitter laugh, he strode to the door and opened it, the better to speed this little liar on her way. “Nice try. I hate to tell you this, but your theatrics won’t get you to the front of my waiting list for new patients, okay? You need to wait your turn like everyone else. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

To his utter shock, she put her warm little hand on top of his where it rested on the knob, and stared up at him with such a wild mix of hope and desperation in her face that he had to turn away from it. “I’m not making this up. Look at me. I swear on Jalen’s life that I’m not making this up. Please hear me out.”

Jalen.

Weaker and more foolish than he needed to be where this one woman was concerned, he looked at her.

Mistake.

Tears sparkled in those big brown eyes, clinging to her black lashes and threatening to spill onto smooth brown cheeks that had to be the softest things in the world, not that he’d ever know. Worse was her unblinking earnestness, which was unexpected but unmistakable. Whatever else she might be, Lia Taylor didn’t appear to be off her meds, a wacko or a plain vanilla liar.

Or maybe that was just his lust talking.

Snatching his hand free—maybe he could think better when she wasn’t touching him—he stalked back to his desk, anxious to put some distance between him and her and between him and his growing sense of unease.

“Start talking,” he said. “Why don’t you start with explaining this miraculous event, since you and I have never laid eyes on each other before today, much less had sex.” He let his gaze scrape down her body, lingering on a few key points, trying to insult her the way she’d insulted his intelligence by expecting him to believe this fairy tale. “You didn’t think I’d forget having sex with you, did you, sweetheart? Because there’s no chance of that. Let me assure you.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart. This is hard enough without you being patronizing.” She shut the door again and took a few steps farther into the office. “And of course it wasn’t an immaculate conception—”

He leaned against his desk, crossing his arms and his legs. “Oh, I get it. This is the part of the conversation where you try to convince me that we had sex after some college frat party and I was too drunk to remember.”

“No, actually,” she said, her voice cooling several degrees and her tears long gone by now, “I’ve never been sexually attracted to drunk people.”

So she wasn’t going to pursue that line of argument, eh?

Smart choice. Especially since the chance of him forgetting a night with her, drunk or not, were the same as him playing starting center for the L.A. Lakers. Anyway, he’d been too busy studying to have many drunk nights in college, and too careful of his future to have unprotected sex with random women.

“Well, feel free to enlighten me.”

“My husband and I—” she began.

The H-word didn’t sit well with him, which was insane. “You’re married?”

“Widowed.” She had the nerve to raise one delicate brow with obvious annoyance. “Are you going to let me get a complete sentence out?”

He waved a hand for her to continue.

After a pause to make sure he wouldn’t interrupt again, she started over.

“My husband was older than me. We wanted kids. He couldn’t have them. So we went to a sperm bank.” She hesitated. His belly knotted, apparently realizing before the rest of him that a missile strike was headed straight for the space between his eyes. “The Hopewell General sperm bank.”

Thomas’s heart stopped cold.

Lia’s voice gentled, as though she knew that she was flipping his world up on its end. “I was artificially inseminated. I got pregnant. We were ecstatic.” Tears sparkled in her eyes again, and she struggled, her voice cracking. “Until he was killed in a car crash before Jalen was born.”

Ah, shit.

He waited, giving her time to collect herself, which was probably a mistake.

After a deep breath, she got it together enough to keep on kicking the ground out from under Thomas’s feet. “That was nine years ago. Now Jalen is sick and he needs your help, which is why I’m here. The end.”

It was the end, all right. The end of Thomas’s ability to stand upright with his knees nice and strong. Bracing his palms on his desk for support, he took his time lowering himself into his chair and wished he could handle this crisis as well as he handled the ones inside the operating room.

Think, man. THINK.

Didn’t Hopewell General have privacy policies in place to protect the anonymity of anonymous sperm donors?

Hell, yes.

He looked up to find her hovering over the desk, watching him intently, as though the world—their world—hung in the balance. Which, he supposed, it did.

“How do you know?” he wondered. “How do you know I’m the father?”

Her gaze wavered. “I … hacked into the hospital’s records.”

The words rattled around inside his head, making no sense. He tried to imagine what had to be involved in such a task—break-ins, firewalls, passwords, encryptions, decryptions and probably a whole bunch of other computer wizardry that he’d never heard of and could never understand.

“You … hacked into the records?”

“Yes,” she said, defiant now. “I’d do anything for my son.”

“You don’t just hack into—”

“You do if you’re an FBI analyst. And I hope you realize that I’ve just given you enough information to ruin my career and send me to jail for a long time. So I hope you’ll use it wisely.”

He was a bright guy, but it took his spinning thoughts way longer than it should have to coalesce into something coherent. “Hang on. You’re the hacker?”

Impatience leached into her voice. “Yes.”

“So what the hell were you doing with the chief of staff earlier, hanging out like you’re new BFFs?”

“They don’t want to put the hospital through the scandal of prosecuting me, so they’ve hired me to build a stronger security system.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

Her lips twisted a little, as though she, too, appreciated the irony.

They watched each other for a couple of beats, both wary.

“Do you believe me now?” she asked.

His answer took much longer than it should have. An automatic and emphatic Hell, no! should have been flying out of his mouth, but it seemed stuck in his throat. Crazy, right? He hadn’t signed up for a kid, had always taken steps to prevent producing a kid and wasn’t ready for a kid. Hell, maybe there really wasn’t a kid.

Maybe this complete stranger was looking for a baby daddy with resources to pay for the kid’s braces. Maybe she’d researched him and his family and knew the kind of money they had. Maybe she wanted to get rich quick on child support. Other women had certainly tried, unsuccessfully, to tap into his wallet over the years, so he wouldn’t be surprised. Plus, the hospital was up to its neck in scandals, and it wouldn’t do his personal reputation around here any good if he turned out to have a baby mama, not that he’d ever cared too much about people’s opinions of him, even his colleagues’.

And yet …

Hold up. There was no and yet, even if the idea of having a son tugged at some primal daddy thing inside him. He was too shrewd to be played for a fool.

“Why would I believe the word of an admitted hacker and felon who barges into my office to tell me I have a son but doesn’t have any proof? Or do you have proof? My bad.”

Flashing him a look withering enough to melt his spine, she reached into a skirt pocket, pulled out a smart phone, tapped a couple of buttons and handed it to him without a word.

Whereupon his limbs froze with sudden paralysis.

If he looked at that picture, there was a chance that his life would change forever. Except that, looking into Lia’s eyes, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d passed that point of no return a while back.

Taking the phone, he looked.

“Oh, my God.” His fingers tightened in a convulsive grip. “Oh, my God.”

The kid—Jalen; his son’s name was Jalen—was holding a disgruntled gray rabbit in his arms and smiling with delight into the camera. It would have been tempting to accuse Lia of somehow stealing a photo of Thomas when he was a child, but he’d never had a gray rabbit and certainly had never owned an Avatar: The Movie T-shirt.

The eeriness of it made his scalp tingle and the hair stand up on his arms.

He was looking into a younger version of his own face. The Mini-Me to his Dr. Evil. They could have been twins, separated by twenty-eight years.

They had the same chocolate skin with red undertones. The same point at the corner of their right ears. The same straight nose.

The boy’s eyes were keen and intelligent and …

Oh, man. Those were his eyes, looking back at him.

Hell, they even had the same right eyebrow, which was flatter than the left.

He stared, looking for differences, and there were some, but not enough. Jalen had his mother’s dimples and her high cheekbones, but he was, God help him, clearly Thomas’s son. And suddenly, he couldn’t look at the picture for one more second. Not one.

Too stunned to think, he handed the phone back to Lia, who gave him a moment by walking over to the window.

He stared down at his desk through the sudden blur of hot tears, and he couldn’t decide if he was mostly stunned, mostly angry or mostly …

Thrilled.

He was a father. Jalen was his son.

“I’ll want to meet him,” he told her. “After the DNA tests.”

He waited for some sort of refusal or outrage, but there was none.

“Okay,” she said.

Good. She was savvy enough to know that the legalities had to be observed in cases like this. He liked that.

“I want to be part of his life.”

This time, her agreement took a little longer in coming. She looked startled, as though she hadn’t thought quite so far ahead.

“Well,” she began.

“That’s not up for debate.” Later, when his thoughts weren’t buzzing like wasps in a jar, he’d have to give some thought to how he could go from not knowing he had a son to insisting on a place in his son’s life—all within the space of ten minutes. For now, all he knew was that boys needed fathers, and he planned to be a great one. Just because he’d missed the first several years of Jalen’s life didn’t mean he’d willingly miss any more. “Understand?”

A curt nod was his only answer.

Those details thus concluded, they stared at each other in shell-shocked silence.

Then some of his anger at being blindsided like this began to surface. It wasn’t about the child or the money. It was about this woman he’d never seen before having the power to walk into his life and rearrange it, as though she’d swiped her hand across the chessboard, ruining a game well in progress.

“You’ll want child support, I suppose.”

Much to his surprise, she looked shocked. “Child support?”

Wow. She was good with the innocence and outrage. He’d have to remember that. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Money?”

“My God,” she cried, “weren’t you listening? I don’t want your stupid money! I need your kidney!”

For the second time that day, the world dropped out from under him.

Healthy kids didn’t need kidneys. Neither did mildly sick kids.

When he finally got his voice to work, it was an embarrassing croak. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Jalen’s in kidney failure.”

The color bled out of Thomas’s face, leaving it a sickly gray in jarring contrast to the brown of his throat. After a second or two of indecision, he slipped into that medical zone and tried to take charge, the way that doctors do. That air of confidence used to reassure her back in the early days, but that was before she realized that, more often than not, doctors didn’t know a damn thing about getting Jalen better.

“Polycystic kidney disease?” he demanded.

Like it mattered at this point. “No. He had a terrible case of E. Coli about two years ago, and that ruined his kidneys. Put him into kidney failure.”

Undaunted, he plowed ahead. “Who’s your doc? We’ve got a great specialist on staff—”

Was he for real? Or was it just that he couldn’t comprehend a world where his larger-than-life medical connections and abilities didn’t win the day? Whatever his issue was, Jalen was running out of time and she was way out of patience.

“We don’t need a specialist. We have a specialist. Lots of them. And Jalen has been on dialysis for almost two years, and he’s not doing well. Do you get that, Dr. Bradshaw? If I want my son to live—and I do—then I need to find him a compatible kidney quick, fast, and in a hurry, because my kidneys aren’t a match, and neither are anyone’s in my family. All of whom, by the way, live on the West Coast and have already been tested. And you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t want my son to sit on the transplant list for another two years, waiting for a match to materialize out of nowhere.”

“But—”

Something inside her head snapped. Jalen was knocking pretty hard on death’s door, and this fool wasn’t coming up to speed fast enough. Hell, if she gave him another minute, maybe he’d start yammering about going back to square one and getting another opinion about whether Jalen had renal failure at all. Maybe he’d suggest a dose of amoxicillin to see if that got Jalen back on his feet.

Didn’t he understand how hard she’d fought to get this far? Didn’t he know that she was desperate and overwrought and had nowhere else to turn? What more did she have to do?

Losing it completely, she smacked her palms on top his desk and leaned down to get in his face. “Don’t but me! My son is sick! He’s going to die! Do you want me to beg? Is that it? Well, here it is. Help me. You’re my only hope. You’re my only hope! You’re my only—”

“Okay.” There was a flash of movement, and then, suddenly, he was on his feet, turning her to face him and grabbing her biceps to keep her from crumpling to the floor. The next thing she knew, he was in her face, instead of the other way around, soothing and reassuring. “Shhh, Lia,” he murmured. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do this by yourself anymore. It’s okay. I’ll help you. It’s okay.”

Hysteria had her around the throat, ready to suck her under, but she gasped in a shaky breath and tried to hold it off. Just for a little while longer, until she was certain she’d heard right and wasn’t getting her hopes up only so they could be smashed on the rocks.

“Y-you believe me?”

He stared at her and then, slowly, nodded.

“You’ll be tested to see if you’re a match?”

“If the DNA test first confirms that he’s my son, then yes.”

Could it be this easy? After all her struggles to get to this point?

She stared into his eyes, determined to root out any trickery.

There was none. Only his unwavering gaze, absolute and determined. And she knew, suddenly, that they had real hope now, she and Jalen. Better than that, they had a powerful ally. Thomas Bradshaw would help them in their fight against this terrible enemy, who had so many more resources than they did.

The relief was so sharp and overwhelming that her knees went squishy. A sob filled up her throat but not before she managed to whisper two words:

“Thank you.”

Gratitude made her lose her head. Before she knew what she was doing, she was wrapping him in her arms, hugging him hard and trying to show how thankful she was, even if she couldn’t say it. Naturally, he stiffened with shock, probably wondering if he should have his receptionist get security in there to kick Lia out after all.

Her cheeks burned hot with embarrassment as she got a grip. “Sorry,” she muttered, easing up and ready to back away and let the poor man go. But then a strange thing happened.

Thomas hugged her back, gathering her in arms that were hard and strong and bringing her up against a broad chest, which was a lovely resting spot for her weary head. A croon rumbled in his throat, reassuring her without words, and the delicious warm scent of his skin, fresh from a recent shower, she thought, fogged her brain.

That was when reality intruded.

It had been years since she’d been pressed close to any man like this, and she wasn’t immune to this particular man’s appeal, even in her frazzled state. They fit together too well, and it shouldn’t feel this good or this right to be chest to chest and thigh to thigh with someone she’d just met. Now was not the time for her dormant hormones to wake up and demand attention.

Coming to her senses, she pulled free and stepped back, catching a flash of turbulence, quickly managed and hidden, in his expression. They shifted awkwardly, fumbling with their limbs as though they’d each grown a new pair and didn’t know quite how to work them, and then stared in opposite directions.

Finally, Thomas cleared his throat.

“So,” he said, “there’s a lab about a mile from here.”

Her lungs loosened up, allowing her to breathe again. Medical tests and procedures were second nature to her, unlike dizzying hugs from sexy men. “Right. Should I take Jalen there for the paternity test?”

“Yeah. I’ll arrange it.”

“Great.” Now that they were back in familiar territory, she risked a glance at his eyes, which was as jarring as a ten-foot drop in an elevator. Those brown eyes were way too intense and, for all she knew, saw too much.

And yet, she couldn’t look away.

“Knock-knock, dearie.” The receptionist tapped on the door and, without waiting for an answer, opened it and poked her head inside, providing just the snap back to reality that Lia needed. “Don’t forget your staff meeting. We don’t want this young lady with no manners to make you late, now, do we?”

Much to Lia’s surprise, Thomas demonstrated the beginnings of a sense of humor and quirked a brow. “This young lady does need work with her manners, but she has a name, and we should probably use it. Lia Taylor, meet my receptionist, Mrs. Brennan.”

The women exchanged reserved smiles and a grudging handshake, during which Mrs. Brennan’s keen gaze skimmed over Lia from head to foot, probably noting everything from her choice in eye shadow to her suspected weight and shoe size. This examination culminated in Mrs. Brennan shooting a wry glance at Thomas.

“Well, she’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she, Doctor? And don’t pretend you haven’t noticed.” A scowl crept across his face, flattening his brows and thinning his lips, but Mrs. Brennan seemed oblivious to this nonverbal warning and kept right on chirping. “I think I’ll just have to keep my eye on this one, won’t I?”

“Ah, Mrs. Brennan.” Thomas’s voice now had a steely edge. “You remember that discussion we had earlier, don’t you?”

Mrs. Brennan waved a hand. “Oh, I’m not digging into your personal life. I’m simply noting, in passing, mind you, that there’s something striking about wee Lia. You agree, don’t you?” And without waiting for any answer, she waggled those fingers again and swept back up the hall.

Lia gaped after her. What the hell was the poor man supposed to say to that?

Thomas cleared his throat and quickly busied himself by straightening some files on his desk. “Sorry about that,” he muttered. “Mrs. Brennan takes some, ah, getting used to, and I’m not sure—”

“It’s okay.” Lia shrugged and ducked her head as she started to leave, determined to get out of there before she either burst into tears again, or worse, her burning cheeks ignited. “I need to get back to work, anyway. I’ll get out of your hair. Bye.”

“Lia,” he said sharply.

“Yes?”

“You didn’t tell me …”

He hesitated, looking grim. He was allowed, she supposed; she’d dumped five tons of bricks on him in the last several minutes. Another of those endless beats passed between them, and she almost thought she saw color creep up his jaw from his neck. Was the arrogant surgeon feeling as flustered as she was right now? And why did it matter to her one way or the other?

“How can I stay in touch with you?” he asked.