Surprise, Doc! You're A Daddy!

At the wading pool, the little boy’s mother lifted him onto a towel to dry off. Dana climbed out and headed for Meg.

When she spotted Hugh, the little girl’s eyes widened. With an expression of pure bliss, she shouted, “Daddy!” and ran to him.

He barely got out of his chair in time to catch her. “Hi, honey.” Hugging her, Hugh paid no notice to the water dripping over his clothes.

“My Daddy!” Dana announced to everyone. “Mine!”

When he lifted her, she wrapped herself around him as if she’d known him all her life. “Are you having a good time, sweetie?”

“Us go home!” she cried.

“That’s right, we’re going home,” Hugh said. “Together.”

Meg’s chest squeezed at seeing her family reunited. “Last one to the parking lot’s a cross-eyed gopher!” she said, and grabbed her gear.

Chapter Five

Hugh felt as if he’d been holding this little girl in his arms every day for the past two years. The way she curled against him and the fresh scent of her hair felt utterly familiar.

His daughter. She’d always been with him, even if he hadn’t known it.

He’d missed so much of her life. And, without realizing it, he’d missed Meg.

Hugh had wondered at his lack of response to women in the past two years. He’d kept watching for some quality that was missing. An honesty that, he realized now, was an essential part of Meg’s appeal.

He loved the way she looked, too, even though she wasn’t conventionally beautiful. Walking ahead of him with a towel slung around her shoulders, she glowed with natural sensuality.

He wished he could remember making love to her. How she looked without that bikini….

When they reached Meg’s car, he strapped Dana into her child seat. This dented sedan made him uneasy, as if a painful memory were connected with it. He couldn’t summon any specifics and wasn’t sure he wanted to.

In his own car, Hugh followed Meg through town. He had an urge to shout at every vehicle that approached, “Slow down! Don’t hit them!”

He wanted to protect them. It was such a fundamental urge that it bypassed his intellect, which warned that they might not really be his.

The two-car caravan entered the trailer park between a scattering of tall palm trees. Mobile homes crammed the spaces, and a flock of children rode scooters in the narrow roadway.

As Hugh steered carefully between them, he vowed silently that his daughter wouldn’t grow up playing in the street. She should have her own yard and a sidewalk where she’d be safe.

Meg stopped at a small unit and, leaning out the car window, waved him to the visitor slots a short distance farther. After parking, Hugh walked back amid the blare of a radio through an open window and the chatter of a TV from another unit.

Meg waited till he reached her before shepherding Dana inside. Following, Hugh found himself wanting to crouch because of the low ceiling, although it wasn’t low enough to bean him.

He took in the sprinkling of toys on the floor, the mismatched furniture, the plastic flowers filling a vase on the coffee table. Disappointment darkened his mood. If he’d ever stayed in this place, his brain contained no record of it.

“Did we live here?” he asked.

Meg nodded. “I hoped you might remember.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. Excuse me a minute. I’ve got to help Dana change clothes.” She carried the toddler into a bedroom.

Perhaps he really wasn’t Joe, Hugh thought. Surely her husband would feel at home in the place where they’d lived.

He certainly wouldn’t have forgotten making love to Meg. Eating dinner with her, curling up in bed with her, taking a shower together in the morning. Not if he’d really done those things.

Without thinking, he trailed in Meg’s wake and peered into Dana’s room. Flowered curtains. An aging rocker. A poster of Minnie Mouse on the wall.

He’d pictured those things when Meg was in his office. This very room. So he had been here before!

The clues fit too, Hugh reflected, sorting through them mentally. Rick’s sailboat had sunk shortly before the watery rescue of Joe Avery. People at the Back Door Cafe recognized him, and Meg had a police report showing that her husband had vanished the same day Hugh turned up in Los Angeles.

Everything pointed to the likelihood that he had lived in this place and fathered a child. Still, that didn’t make it true. As a doctor, Hugh knew that mountains of circumstantial evidence didn’t amount to gold-standard proof. Even his own memories might be misleading.

Seeking more clues, he gazed at a couple of photos on the living room wall. There was one of him and Meg with baby Dana, but Hugh, or rather Joe, had his face slightly averted. Another picture showed Meg beside a thin young man with reddish-brown hair like her own.

“That’s my brother, Tim,” she said, joining him. Changed into a pair of white jeans and a blue-green camp shirt, she smelled of flowers and a trace of chlorine. “I dropped out of school to raise him after our mother died.”

“Couldn’t your father handle him?”

“Dad had a drinking problem. He wasn’t around,” she said. “He’s been dry for nearly ten years now.”

Hugh moved away from the pictures. “Where’s Dana?”

“Taking a nap,” she said. “Want some coffee?”

“Sure.” In the small kitchen, he turned a chair backward and straddled it.

“You always sat that way.” She pointed at the floor. “Look.”

On the linoleum, two worn patches lay directly beneath Hugh’s feet. It gave him an eerie feeling to realize that he, or someone, had sat in exactly this position many times.

“That is interesting,” he said.

He still didn’t recall living in the trailer. Or perhaps he couldn’t think straight with Meg sitting across from him, her camp shirt’s low V-neck revealing the swell of her breasts. To Hugh’s embarrassment, Meg noticed him staring. “Stir any memories?”

“Is that what you’re trying to stir?” he teased. “I’m only human, you know.”

She gave him a mischievous grin. “You’re a doctor. Anatomy isn’t supposed to affect you.”

“It depends on the circumstances. Shall I treat you as the mother of a patient, or as the mother of my child?”

“That depends on how you see me.” Her amber eyes dared him to respond.

“I don’t know how I see you,” Hugh admitted. “It’s hard to trust someone who suddenly appears in my life, no matter how much I want to.”

She sighed. “Thank goodness for DNA tests. What if they didn’t exist? I’d have to find another way to prove my case.”

“How would you do that?” he asked, intrigued.

Meg tossed her mane. “I suppose I could seduce you and hope it reminded you of what we had before. That raises some weird moral issues. I don’t even know if you’re legally my husband.”

“People don’t have to be married to make love,” he said.

“I did!” Her mouth tightened. “You were the first man I was ever with.”

“I’m sorry if I offended you.” Hugh reached across the table to cup her hand. He tried to ignore the shiver of desire that ran through him at the contact. “That was a special gift you gave me.”

As Meg turned away, he saw a sheen of moisture in her eyes. “I waited a long time for the right man. Who could have believed we’d end up in such a mess?”

“I’m curious about our relationship.” Despite a few immature entanglements earlier in life, Hugh had never felt truly close to a woman. Yet during his lost months, he’d evidently fallen in love with Meg and she with him. “How did you know I was the right man?”

“Joe—you—made me laugh,” she said.

“Me? I never make anybody laugh except when I trip over my own feet.”

“You made me laugh with the way you saw things, like everything was fresh and new and wonderful,” she said. “Also, I liked the way you moved.”

“I wasn’t aware of moving in any particular manner.” Although Hugh had been a diver in college and swam laps daily in the family pool, he considered himself a klutz on the dance floor.

“That’s because you can’t see yourself from the rear,” Meg teased.

He ducked his head. “I never thought about the way I walk.”

“You’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” she said. “That’s the third thing I like.”

“Those aren’t reasons to fall in love,” he protested.

“Why not?”

“They lack substance.”

“People don’t fall in love with their brains,” Meg said.

He supposed she was right. Through his hand curved over hers, Hugh was intensely aware of the softness and warmth of her skin. He noted the quivering freckles across her cheeks and the way the collar of the shirt fell open to bare a vulnerable patch of shoulder.

Sexual attraction wasn’t love, but it might be the first step. Besides, what he felt went far beyond the physical.

“I wish I remembered what it was like to be with you.” He gave her an apologetic grin. “I’m sure it was spectacular.”

“I remember what you were like,” she retorted, and had the grace to blush. “Now we’re both embarrassed.”

In the other room, Dana began babbling. Meg excused herself to check on her. When she returned, she stood by the counter. “She was talking in her sleep.”

The spell had broken between them, although Hugh felt a residual hum of excitement. He’d never met a woman to whom he responded so strongly. Even if he weren’t Joe, he was glad to have discovered Meg.

And Dana. “Have you thought about her future?” he asked. “Your—our—daughter’s?”

“What about her future?”

“Surely you don’t want her to grow up riding a scooter in the street.” He gestured toward the window, through which they could hear children’s shouts and the scrape of metal wheels on concrete. “And you want her to get a good education, don’t you?”

Meg gripped her mug. “Of course, I want her to graduate from high school.”

“Then she should go on to college,” Hugh said.

“There’s a community college not far away.” Meg remained standing. “She could commute and work at the restaurant on weekends.”

“I know she isn’t even in preschool yet,” he said. “But if she’s my daughter, Meg, I want more for her. Where I live, the environment is much more challenging….”

He stopped, seeing the determination written on her face. Apparently he’d struck a nerve.

“Mercy Canyon is our home,” Meg said. “We have friends here, people who love us. Who stood by us when we needed them.”

Hugh thought of Sam’s blustering kindness. “Friends are precious. I lost my closest buddy in that boating accident, and I’d give anything to have him back. I’m not suggesting that you give up your friends, Meg.”

“It sure sounded like it.”

“People move around a lot these days. You can keep in touch even if you don’t stay in Mercy Canyon.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to grow up the way I did.” Her expression tense, Meg collected the mugs and took them to the sink. “Tim and I couldn’t rely on our parents. Some nights we weren’t even sure we would have a roof over our heads. If we hadn’t had friends to rely on, I shudder to think what might have happened to us.”

“You’re not a child anymore,” Hugh pointed out gently. “And I would never let my daughter suffer like that.”

“She needs security. Money is only part of it,” Meg said. “She needs to know where she belongs, and so do I.”

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