Changed by His Son's Smile

Quickly, she glanced away and swallowed hard herself. Why couldn’t she just concentrate on the serious issues that lay between them, instead of wanting to grab him and sip that water from his lips herself?

Toughening up was clearly essential, and she braved another look at him, sternly reminding herself they’d been apart way longer than they’d been together. His demeanor seemed relaxed, but she could sense the undercurrent of tension in the set of his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw. Obviously, he felt as anxious about their upcoming revelation to Drew as she did.

Trent stood. “Think I’ll get in a catnap before the clinic opens.”

“Don’t worry about getting to the clinic at nine. I can’t take how cranky you get when you’re tired,” Chase said.

“Better than being cranky all the time, like you,” Trent said, slapping Chase on the back. “See you all later.”

The kitchen seemed to become suffocatingly small as Chase stepped so close to Dani that his shoulder brushed hers. His expression told her clearly that it was showtime, and her pulse rocketed.

Why did she feel so petrified? At least a thousand times since he’d been born, she’d thought about how or if or when she’d tell Drew about his daddy. He was still practically a baby after all. Like she’d said last night, he probably wouldn’t think anything of it.

But as she looked at her little boy, the words stuck in her throat. She turned to Chase, and he seemed to sense all the crazy emotions whirling through her. The intensity on his face relaxed, his deep brown eyes softened, and he slipped his arm around her shoulders.

“I promise you it will be okay,” he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “No. Way better than okay. So stop worrying.”

She nodded. No point in telling him she’d been worrying since before Drew had been born, and couldn’t just turn it off now. But deep inside she somehow knew that, even though he hadn’t wanted a child, Chase would never say and do the hurtful things her own father had.

Chase released her shoulders and pulled two stools on either side of Drew’s before propping himself on one and gesturing to Dani to sit on the other. She sank onto the stool and hoped her smile covered up how her stomach churned and her heart pounded.

She wiped the last of his breakfast from Drew’s hands and face and slid his bowl aside. “Drew, you know Mommy brought you to Africa so I could work with children here. But I brought you here for another reason, too.”

Okay, so that was a total lie, and the twist of Chase’s lips showed her he was still ticked about not knowing about Drew. But she was going with it anyway, darn it.

“And that reason is … because …” She gulped and struggled with the next words. “Dr. Chase here is, um …”

She was making a complete mess of this. Drew looked at her quizzically and she cleared her throat, trying to unstick the words that seemed lodged in there.

Chase made an impatient sound and leaned forward. “What your mom is trying to say is that I’m really happy to finally meet you and be with you because—”

The door to the kitchen swung wide and Spud strode in with hurricane force. “A truck plowed down two kids walking to school. One’s pretty beat up. I have them in pre-op now.”

Chase straightened and briefly looked conflicted before becoming all business. He stood, downed the last of his water and looked at Drew, then focused on Dani, his expression hardened with frustration. “We’ll talk later.”

Spud turned to her. “Ruth is on her way to take care of Andrew,” he said. “I’ll show you the facility and the clinic schedule after he’s settled in.”

“I want to help with the injured children as soon as she gets here,” Dani said. She wasn’t about to let the drama with Chase interfere with her reason for being here in the first place, and caring for sick and injured children was a big part of that reason.

Spud inclined his head and left. Chase paused a moment next to Drew and seemed to hesitate before crouching down next to him.

Dani’s heart pinched as she saw the usually decisive expression on Chase’s face replaced by a peculiar mix of uncertainty, determination and worry.

“Later today, how about you and your mom and I go look for those lizards?”

“‘K.” Drew beamed at Chase before grabbing his crayons to scribble on his Spiderman artwork.

Chase strode to the door, stopping to give Dani a look that brooked no argument. “Plan on a little trek this afternoon.”

CHAPTER THREE

WITH DREW HAPPILY playing under the watchful eye of a gentle local woman, Ruth, Dani hurried to the prep room Spud directed her to.

The room, only about fifteen feet by twenty or so, echoed with the whimpers of a child. The harsh, fluorescent light seemed to bounce off the white cinder-block walls, magnifying the horror of one child’s injuries.

Chase was leaning over the boy as he lay on a gurney, speaking soothingly in some language she’d never heard as he focused on the child’s leg. She’d almost forgotten how Chase simply radiated strength, calm, and utter competence when caring for his patients. The boy nodded and hiccupped as he took deep breaths, an expression of trust on his face despite the fear and pain etched there.

Dani looked at the boy’s leg and nearly showed her reaction to his injury, but caught herself just in time. Jaggedly broken, the child’s femur protruded through the flesh of his thigh. Gravel and twigs and who-knew-what were embedded in the swollen wound. His lower leg was badly scraped and lacerated and full of road debris too, and his forehead had a gash that obviously required suturing.

The other child, at first glance anyway, seemed to have suffered less severe injuries.

She looked to be about eight years old. Her wounds would need suturing, too, and before that a thorough cleaning. A woman, presumably her mother, sat with her, tenderly wiping her scrapes and cuts with damp cotton pads.

“What do you need me to do first?” Dani asked. She’d probably be stitching up the girl but, as bad as the boy’s injuries looked, Chase might need her help first.

“Get a peripheral IV going in the boy. His name’s Apollo. Give him morphine so I can irrigate and set the leg. Then you can wash out his sister’s cuts, scrub with soap and stitch her up. I have her mom putting a lidocaine-epinephrine cocktail on her to numb the skin.”

Dani noted how worried the mother looked, and had to applaud her for her calm and efficient ministrations. A cloth that looked like it might have been the boy’s shirt lay soaked with blood on the floor next to her, which, at a guess, she’d used to try to stop the bleeding. The mother’s clothes were covered in blood too, and Dani’s throat tightened in sympathy. The poor woman had sure been through one terrible morning.

“Where are the IVs kept? And the irrigation and suture kits?” If only she’d had just an hour to get acquainted with the layout of the place. Right now, she felt like the newbie she was, and hated her inadequacy when both patients needed help fast.

“IVs are in the top right cupboard. The key to the drug drawer is in my scrub pocket.”

She stepped over to Chase, and he straightened to give her access to his chest pocket. As she slipped her hand inside, feeling his hard pectoral through the fabric, their eyes met. The moment took her rushing back to Honduras, to all the times just like these, as though they had been yesterday instead of three years ago. To all the memories of working together as a team. To all the times he’d proved what an accomplished surgeon he was.

Heart fluttering a little, she slipped the key from his pocket, trying to focus on the present situation and not his hunkiness quotient. She turned and gathered the morphine and IV materials and came back to the whimpering boy, wanting to ease his pain quickly.

“Tell him he’ll feel a little pinch then I’m going to put a straw in his hand that’ll make his leg hurt less,” she said, concentrating on getting the IV going fast.

“Damn,” Chase said.

She looked up and saw him shaking his head.

“What?”

“I’d forgotten how good you are at that. One stick and, bam, the IV’s in. I don’t think he even felt it.”

His voice and expression were filled with admiration, which made her feel absurdly pleased. “Thanks.”

He leaned closer. “He’s lucky you’re here.”

“And he’s lucky to have you to put his leg back together.”

He smiled and she smiled back, her breath catching at how ridiculously handsome the man looked when his eyes were all fudgy brown and warm and his lips teasingly curved.

“The little girl’s going to get the world’s most meticulous stitcher-upper, too,” Chase said, still smiling as he tweezed out lingering pieces of gravel from Apollo’s wound. “I remember a button you sewed so tightly on my shirt I couldn’t get it through the little hole any more.”

“Well, I only did it for you because, considering you’re a surgeon, you’re really bad at sewing on buttons.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners as they met hers again, and her heart skipped a beat, darn it all. With the IV in place, the boy’s eyes drooped as the morphine took effect. Chase placed an X-ray plate under the boy’s calf, then rolled a machine across the room, positioning its C-arm over his shin, obviously suspecting, as she did, that it also might be broken.

“Is the X-ray tech coming soon?”

“No X-ray tech. Honduras was loaded with staff compared to this place. I’ll get this film developing before I work on the compound fracture.”

Wow. Hard to believe they had to take and develop the X-rays. “I’ll get started with the girl. Where’s irrigation?”

He nodded toward the wide, low sink. “Faucet. The secret to pollution is dilution. It’s the best we have.”

Her eyes widened. “Seriously? I stick her wounds under the faucet?”

“Attach the hose. We’ve found it provides more force than the turkey basters we use on less polluted wounds. It’s how I’m going to get him cleaned up now that he’s had pain meds. You’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. Be right back.” With a wink, he left with the X-ray cartridge in his hand.

Dani grabbed a pair of sterile gloves from a box attached to the wall and rolled a stool from under the counter to sit next to the gurney. She smiled at the wide-eyed girl and her mother.

If only she spoke their language, or even a little French. The girl looked scared but wasn’t shedding a single tear. Hopefully, when the local nurse arrived, she could interpret for Dani. Or Chase would. One of the many amazing things about the darned man was all the languages he could speak fluently or partially. He had a true gift for it, while Dani hated the fact that it had never come easily to her.

“I’m going to wash—laver—her cuts to get all the gravel and nasty stuff out of there.” Lord, was that the only French word she could come up with?

The mother seemed to understand, though, nodding gravely. Dani rolled the gurney to the low sink and couldn’t believe she had to stick the child’s various extremities practically inside it, scrubbing with good old antiseptic soap to clean out the debris. Thank goodness the numbing solution seemed to be working pretty well, as the scrubbing didn’t seem to hurt her patient too badly.

“You’re being very brave,” she told the little girl, who gave her a shy smile in return, though she probably didn’t understand the words.

The mother helped with the washing, and Dani thought about how her own perspective had changed since she’d had Drew. When she had been in med school, and then when she’d become a doctor, she’d thought she’d got it. But now she truly understood how terrifying it must be to have your child seriously injured or ill.

When Chase returned, Dani had finished prepping the girl and helped him get the boy’s wounds washed out. Not an easy task, because tiny bits of gravel seemed determined to stay embedded in his flesh. Thank heavens the morphine made the situation tolerable for the child.

“You want me to stitch this big lac on his head, or do you want to do it after I work on his leg?” Chase asked, then grinned. “Or maybe we should call in the plastic surgeon.”

“Funny. I’m as good as any plastic surgeon anyway. Tell his mom he’ll be as handsome as ever when I’m done.”

Chase chatted with the mother as they laid the boy back on the gurney, and the woman managed a smile, her lips trembling and tears filling her eyes for a moment.

“I haven’t seen anything like this since Honduras,” Dani said quietly to Chase as they got the patient comfortable and increased his morphine drip in preparation for setting the leg. “Been in a suburban practice where the bad stuff goes to the ER. The roughest stuff I dealt with was ear infections.”

“So you’re sorry you came?”

“No.” She shook her head and gave him a crooked smile. “Even though you’re here, I’d almost forgotten how much we’re needed in places like this.”

“Except you shouldn’t have brought Drew. Which we’ll be talking about.” His expression hardened.

Oh, right. Those deep, dark issues they had to deal with separate from what they were doing now.

Yes, Chase was a great surgeon and good man, but she had to remember why she’d left in the first place. Because he didn’t want a child. And she wasn’t about to let him bully her into doing things his way and only his way, without regard for how it would affect Drew.

Glad to be able to put some physical distance between them to go with the emotional distance that had suddenly appeared, she stepped away to stitch the girl’s cuts.

“I’m taking him into the OR to set the bone and put a transverse pin in the distal femur,” Chase said, wheeling the gurney to the swinging door that led to the operating room. “If Trent comes down, tell him I’m just going to splint it and put drains in for now, until the swelling goes down. When the nurse anesthetist gets here, tell her to grab the X-rays and come in.”

He stopped to place his hand on the mother’s shoulder, speaking to her in the soothing, warm tones that always reassured patients and family and had been known to weaken Dani’s knees. From now on, though, when it came to Chase, she had to be sure her knees, and every other part of her, stayed strong.

“Once you heal, it’s going to take a while to get your leg strong again. But I promise we’ll help you with exercises for that, and you’ll be playing soccer again in no time.” Chase smiled at the boy, now in a hospital bed with a trapeze apparatus connected to his leg with a counterweight, which had to feel really miserable in the hot, un-air-conditioned hospital ward.

Lucky, really, that it wasn’t a whole lot worse, with bad internal injuries. Barring some hard-to-control infection, he’d eventually be running again. Damned drunk driver apparently hadn’t even seen the poor kids. Chase’s lips tightened.

As Chase suspected, in addition to the compound fracture, the boy’s tibia had been broken too, and he’d put a cast on it before finally getting him set up in bed. It would be damned uncomfortable for the kid, but would keep the bones immobile so he could begin to heal.

“Nice work, Dr. Sheridan,” he said to Dani as he looked closely at the boy’s forehead, which she’d nearly finished stitching. Dani looked up at him from her sitting position next to the bed, a light glow of perspiration on her beautiful face. Her blue, blue eyes smiled at him in a way that made him want to pick up where they’d left off the night before. If they’d been alone, he would have. Convincing her to marry him was a pleasure he looked forward to. Except he needed to stop thinking about all the ways he planned to accomplish that before everyone in the room knew where his thoughts had travelled.

He could tell Dani already did. “I’ve always appreciated the superior techniques you implement for everything you do,” he said, giving her a wicked grin.

Her smile faded and her fair skin turned deeply pink, and she quickly turned to finish working on the boy’s forehead. He nearly laughed, pleased at how easily he could still rattle her.

The nasty gash was now a thin red line within the tiny stitches Dani was currently tying off. If anything, she’d gotten even better at it than when they’d been in Honduras. Even back then he’d been amazed at her talent for leaving only the smallest scar.

“Tell him he looks very handsome and rugged, like a pirate,” she said, smiling at the boy. “His friends will be jealous.”

Chase translated and the kid managed a small smile, but his mother laughed, the sound full of relief. She’d been fanning the child practically non-stop with a home-made fan, trying to keep him comfortable in the stifling heat of the room and to ward off pesky flies that always found their way into the hospital ward, regardless of everyone’s efforts to keep them out.

They’d set Apollo’s sister up in the bed next to him, though she didn’t really need to stay in for observation. Their mother, though, would be bringing food in for her son and sleeping next to him on the floor to help care for him, so it made sense to keep the little girl here too, as the bed was available.

“We’ll be putting a new cast on his whole leg some time after the swelling goes down, but for now we’ll be keeping him comfortable with some pain medicine,” he said to the mother. “I’ll be back later to check on him.”

He tipped his neck from side to side to release the kinks that always tightened there after a long procedure. With everything they could do for the kids finished for now, he felt suddenly anxious to find Drew and tell him the truth. He gathered up Dani’s suture kit. “Ready to go, Doctor?”

“Not really,” she mumbled under her breath as she stripped off her gloves.

She looked up at him as she stood, her face full of the same uncertainty and anxiety that had been there earlier. Why was she so worried about telling their son that he was the boy’s father? If she didn’t look so sweet and vulnerable, he’d be insulted.

Sure, he’d said he didn’t want kids, but that had been before he’d known it was already moot.

She’d see how good it would be. He’d reassure her, romance her, be a good dad to Drew, and she’d realize that everything would be okay. His mood lifted, became downright buoyant, and he tugged at one of the crazy blonde curls that had escaped from her ponytail.

Last night when he’d kissed her, she hadn’t been able to hide that she still wanted him the way he wanted her. She’d come round. Marry him. He’d find a good job for her in the States where he could work sometimes, too, and Drew would be safe.

Yeah, it was a good plan. He knew he could make it happen.

He tugged another curl.

“You know, you’re like a second-grader sometimes,” she said, pulling her head away with a frown. “Next, you’ll be putting a frog down my shirt.”

“No. A lizard.” He folded her soft hand into his. “Let’s find Drew.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“THIS LOOKS LIKE a good lizard spot.” Chase maneuvered the Land Rover off the dusty road and around some scrub towards a grouping of rocks.

“I can’t believe you’re really planning on catching one,” Dani said, shaking her head. “I know you have quick reflexes, but I think even you are a little slower than a lizard. And if you do catch one, it’ll probably bite you.”

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