Father For Her Newborn Baby

It tickled her to think of big ol’ Cole Montgomery liking herbal tea and holding babies. Even though he gazed at Flora as if she were an alien from Planet X. After she got the tea she was grateful the cabinets had glass doors, so at least she knew where to find the cups.

Behind her, he chuckled softly. “I think she’s hungry—she keeps trying to suckle my neck.”

“Oh!” Maybe she should stop everything and nurse that child since that seemed to be her message.

“You have a bottle or something?”

“I’m nursing. Why don’t you give her to me?”

He gently handed Flora back to Lizzie, and their gazes caught and held briefly. He seemed to have questions in his, and she didn’t want to begin guessing what he wondered. Most likely something along the lines of—what in the hell are you doing here?

Good question. Would he believe her answer—making a better life for my daughter?

Flora had settled down and showed all the signs of finally being ready to nurse. “If you don’t mind watching the kettle, I’ll take her back to the living room. I’m already in love with your dad’s favorite chair.”

He blinked his reassurance. “I’ll bring the tea when it’s ready.”

Five minutes later, with Flora finally nursing contentedly, Lizzie had thrown her sweater over her chest for privacy, and Cole brought two teacups to the living room, lit only by the light of the moon.

“Mind if I join you?” he whispered.

She smiled up at him as he put her cup on the table nearest her free hand. She’d honestly expected him to use a mug, but he sat across from her and sipped his tea as if it was second nature. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him because her main thought was, Thank goodness Flora quit crying and is nursing. Now maybe she could breathe. At least she knew how to do something good for her baby. Yet, hadn’t Cole calmed the child down? Maybe he had a kid of his own?

“How do you know how to quiet babies so well?”

“I didn’t know I did.” His surprised-bordering-on-shocked expression said it all. Pure luck, the kind Flora wished she had more of. “I just saw you struggling and you looked like you needed some help.” And wasn’t that an understatement?

Her first sip of hot tea soothed her strained throat. It never ceased to amaze her how her entire body tensed when Flora was unhappy. She was surprised her milk let down so easily under the circumstances. “I thought maybe you had your own kids or something.”

He let go a big puff of air, a sound meant to show the absurdity of the comment. “No-o-o. No kids. No wife. Just me and cardiology. See, I understand the physiology of the heart perfectly—the emotional side of things, don’t have a clue.”

She lightly laughed. “I hear you on that one.” Cole had revealed a lot in that last sentence. Maybe they had something in common.

“So is that why you’re not married either?”

Sitting in the dark helped shadow her first reaction—pain. A year ago she would have bet her life on her and Dave getting married, but, after his wicked change in character when she’d told him she was pregnant, she was glad she wasn’t married to him. In fact, her life, or losing it, might have actually been part of the bet. The guy had gone ballistic with the news. He’d flipped out and grabbed her, shaking her violently, then shoved her against a wall, banging her head several times on the surface. You think you can trap me with a kid? Think again. She’d never seen him so crazed; the memory of his wild-eyed stare still sent shivers through her muscles.

She’d never felt more helpless in her life either and vowed that would never happen again. Fortunately, he’d stopped at roughing her up, hadn’t hit her or anything, just manhandled her to frighten her for messing with his plans. He’d given her one last shake and left. So much for true love. And so much for never feeling helpless again. It seemed since Flora had been born, helpless had become her middle name.

She reminded herself she’d come to Wyoming to change things. She wasn’t helpless. She had a job. “Her dad and I couldn’t work things out. He took off. I stayed pregnant.”

“How’d you manage to finish med school with a newborn?”

“Called in a lot of favors.” It wasn’t that she wanted to be abrupt, but, really, they didn’t have all night for her to explain that one. Maybe the guy deserved a bit more than her glib answer, though. “When you’re raised in foster care you learn to be resourceful. I’d helped a lot of students through the toughest modules, did one-on-one study sessions with a girl who probably would have failed the boards otherwise. You know, that kind of thing. They owed me.”

“Wait a second, back up.” He leaned forward. “You were raised in foster care?”

“After my grandmother died, yes.” So she wasn’t exactly being forthcoming. It wasn’t that she wanted to be secretive; she was just saving him the sob story. Did Cole really need to hear all of it?

“And what happened to your mother?”

“She went back to being a meth head after I was born.”

He shook his head and, since her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she could make out his sympathetic expression, brows pushed together, lips tight. Yeah, she’d had a hard life, he got it, no need to pound home the point. “And you rose above all of that and made it into medical school. That’s amazing.”

She pushed her head back onto the soft cushion of the high-backed chair, suddenly needing that extra comfort. Put that way, yeah, maybe she was amazing. “The only thing I had control of in my childhood was my school grades. I guess you could say it paid off. If you don’t count the fact that I wasn’t chosen for a single residency program I applied for.” She didn’t want to sound sorry for herself, but the discouraged sigh had already left her lips.

“Didn’t anyone counsel you on casting your net wide? From what I was told you only applied to the five most prestigious hospitals in the nation. No offense, but what were you thinking?”

“That I should reach for the stars.” She needed to shut him down, be blunt, because she’d gone over her blunder a million times already and it always came back to the same conclusion—there was nothing she could do about that now. And that was why she’d come to Wyoming, to make up for it. To start over. To give her baby a good start in life.

Her little scientific experiment had worked. She’d formed her hypothesis, tested it, and analyzing her data—sitting in silence, the dim light from the hallway making his shadow large and looming, mouth firmly shut—he wouldn’t and didn’t know what to do with the truth. Yep, she’d been right.

“So how are we going to work this out?” Cole’s deep voice cut through her thoughts, his rugged yet handsome face dappled in moonlight and shadows.

“You mean my working for you? Or my living here with a colicky baby?”

He nodded, his laser gaze, noticeable even in the dim light, nearly making her squirm. “Part A.”

Under the sweater, she shifted Flora to the other breast and waited until she latched on. “Well, while you were at the hospital I had a long talk with Gretchen. She seems to have an unfulfilled grandmotherly gene. She said she’d be happy to take care of Flora when I work.”

“Maybe you should just work part-time at first.”

She wanted to yell, Don’t you get it? I’m broke. I need the money! But she swallowed another sip of tea instead. “But you hired me to work full-time. I want to keep my side of the bargain.”

He went quiet again and studied his expensive brand-name shoes. The man oozed wealth. And good looks. “I’m glad to pay you the amount Trevor agreed on, but maybe at first you can come in half days or something.”

“You do realize that women only get six weeks’ maternity leave in the US and return to work all the time, right? I’m that single mother in med school who never missed an overnight shift, and my only support system was other med students. I graduated the same day as everyone else with my baby swaddled in a sling across my chest. People do what they’ve got to do, you know? Gretchen said she’s happy to help. Let me do what you hired me for, okay?”

Take that!

“That’s commendable. I’ll give you that.” He remained thoughtful, probably analyzing her plea, seeing right through her, figuring out how desperate she was. “I suspect Dad will be in the hospital at least a week, and then be sent to rehab after that. Once he comes home, though, Gretchen will have her hands full caring for him.”

“You’ve got a point, but by then I can find other child-care arrangements.” Keep positive even against the odds. You’ve got to.

He thought for a moment or two. “Reasonable enough.” Whew! He put down his teacup and slapped his big palms on his thighs. “Well, I’ll leave you and Flora to your feeding. It’s been a long day.”

She nodded. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

Before he left the room, she studied his huge silhouette in the doorway, broad shoulders, long torso, big in every way, a man’s man. Fine-looking man. Yet he’d been gentle with Flora. Was it totally wrong to find your new employer sexy? Yet she couldn’t deny she did.

“May I ask you a question?” It had been bothering her since she’d noticed the identical scars on his forehead when she’d first met him, and to be honest she needed something to get her mind off how attracted she was to him.

He turned. The epitome of patience… and gentleman cowboy… sexy.

“Did you have a broken neck?”

The hallway light cut across his profile. He scrunched up his face, obviously surprised by her comment. “Another astute observation, Dr. Silva. I take it my halo-brace scars tipped you off?”

She nodded, trying not to look smug, though definitely feeling it.

“When I was fifteen I was riding a bucking bronco, got bucked off and fractured C1-C2. I was fortunate not to have a spinal-cord injury, as you can obviously tell.” He held out his arms, palms up, looking over his own body.

“No need for fusion?”

“Three months wearing that brace did the trick. It also changed my life goal of becoming a rodeo star.” He smiled and deep vertical grooves cut through his cheeks. Yeah, that was sexy, too.

But his confession made her laugh outright. “A rodeo star?”

“You’re looking at Cattleman Bluff’s former junior rodeo bucking-bronco champion.” He said the mouthful with an amused twinkle in his eyes, as if the title might have carried some clout around here at one time.

But rodeo stars were as foreign as extraterrestrials to a girl from Boston. “I’d say I was impressed, if I had a clue what that meant.” If this was her idea of flirting, she wasn’t doing a very good job.

His closed-lip smile widened slowly, finally revealing a fine line of teeth, and the effect, combined with the lingering glint in his eyes, sent a shiver through her. Oh, man, this could be bad. Dr. Montgomery is gorgeous.

She swallowed. “I’m sure you were a regular star around these parts.” She tried out her version of cowboy talk, her accent no doubt falling far short of the mark. These pahts. Come to think of it, she could imagine him in dungarees and a torso-hugging cowboy shirt. And what she’d give to see the man wearing a cowboy hat.

“Easy come, easy go,” he said.

“Sounds pretty ouchy to me.”

“That, too. I guess you can say I’m a doctor today because of that accident.”

“Weird how life goes sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He gave her statement some thought. “Well, I hope you both get a good night’s sleep.”

“Thank you.” She imagined sympathy in his eyes, and, though she didn’t want his pity, she appreciated his caring on some level. These days she didn’t have anyone in her corner, with the exception of Dr. Rivers, and he was far away.

“I also want you to know that, if it hadn’t been for you, my father might have been a hell of a lot worse off. You haven’t even begun to work in the clinic, and you’ve already impressed me.”

He’d paid her a compliment, and this from a man who didn’t seem to do heartfelt. It made her beam. “Thanks. I hardly know your dad, but I like him. He’s got a lot of spunk.”

“Yeah. He’s probably too stubborn to die, but the thought of dealing with his aphasia, well, let’s just say, we’ll all be miserable. I’m hoping his symptoms will resolve quickly.”

“Me, too.”

“Well, like I said, thanks to your fast thinking. Good night.” With that he turned and headed in the opposite direction from her bedroom wing. She watched him for a while, thinking that for a big man he moved with grace, and she definitely liked his style.

Flora had fallen asleep. Lizzie rose gently, hoping not to wake her, and started toward her room. It had been a crazy first-day meeting at the Montgomery ranch. How was she supposed to know there was a wedding going on? And a stroke? Sure was one hell of a way to break the ice with the family, though.

Cole seemed more city slicker than rancher, but thanks to his taking the time to talk with her she’d gotten a glimpse of his inner cowboy, which had probably shaped the man he’d become. The thing that really mixed her up, though, was she really, really liked what she’d seen.

CHAPTER FOUR

COLE WAS TOO keyed-up to sleep. Worries about his father had peaked a few hours back when he’d been assured by the attending physician that Tiberius Montgomery was stable. He’d sat by his father’s hospital bedside and watched him sleep for an hour or so after that, then decided, as the doctor had said, that it would be okay to go home. He thought about going to his own apartment in Laramie to sleep and be nearby, but decided to head back out to the ranch because of Elisabete.

The last thing he’d expected was to step in on a tired and frazzled woman walking the floors of the living room doing her best to calm a wailing baby. Her nearly black hair had been set free from the earlier braid, and thick tendrils had covered her shoulders. The contrast with her creamy skin had been unnerving. Then in the kitchen he’d noticed the tiny sexy mole above her upper lip, and had nearly fallen off his chair, which wouldn’t have been a good thing considering he’d been holding her baby.

She had the potential to be an incredibly beautiful woman, yet did little to enhance it, and still had managed to make him sit up and take notice. When was the last time that had happened? Maybe that was the special factor about naturally attractive women: sometimes they didn’t know it, and that made them all the more appealing. Or maybe it was just her youth.

Not a good thing for their situation, and, he had to be honest, with her fresh out of medical school, he’d be doing a lot of teaching at the clinic.

He sat on his bed, scrubbed a hand over his face, tired to the core, yet restless just the same, and accepted the fact that peace of mind wasn’t in his immediate future. He had a father to rehab, a new-to-him medical clinic to run, a diamond-in-the-rough doctor to train, not to mention an innocent baby who deserved a good start in life to look after. And why should he feel even partly responsible for that, too? Because any decent man understood innocence deserved protection.

He shook his head, then lay back on his pillow. And to think all he’d expected to do when he came home was run his brother’s medical clinic and keep up with his father’s accounting books. Simple, right? He laughed wryly to himself. Since when had life ever played out the way he’d expected?

Good thing he intended to spend the entire day Sunday working the ranch with a couple of Jack’s cowhands, then in the afternoon he’d go to the hospital to check in on his father. It would give Lizzie and Gretchen time to bond with the baby, and hard work had always been the best way Cole knew to run away when his personal life got out of control.

Hell, that was how he’d decided to take a fellowship and train for transcatheter heart-valve replacement. He’d chosen to learn the minimally invasive mitral-valve replacement procedure when hardly anyone in the country had heard of it, rather than deal with his mother’s death. He hadn’t spent more than two days consoling his father after the funeral. He just hadn’t been able to take the emotional strain seeing his dad fall apart like that. And leaving early as he’d done, as always, he’d left another burden on Trevor’s shoulders.

He rolled over. Sleep, where are you hiding?

Lizzie took extra care after nursing Flora Monday morning. She fought back tears when she diapered and dressed the precious baby in one of the few terry-cloth onesies she owned. “Everything’s going to be fine today, Flora bear. I promise. Gretchen is a sweet lady who’ll take good care of you.”

The baby watched Lizzie as she talked, as if trying to understand. Such intelligent blue eyes. She knew her mother’s voice, too, and the thought made the brimming tears spill over Lizzie’s lids. How was she going to survive today?

I’ve got to work. “Everything I do is for us.” She kissed her daughter’s chubby cheek and inhaled her special baby scent, savoring it. Not wanting to let go.

She’d had to leave Flora with so many different people when she’d first been born in order to keep up with medical-school classes and clinics. Then the toughest job in her life: the addiction center. It’d about ripped out her heart to leave her, too, but she’d had to graduate if she wanted to pass the boards and get a job. And she needed an income to pay the rent. At least now, in Wyoming, she’d only have one sweet grandmotherly type watching Flora every day, and she’d see her baby every night and all day on the weekends.

Quality time was what mattered, she repeated over and over to help dry her tears. Squeezing her baby close, she forced a smile, pulled back and put on her brave face, not wanting to leave Flora seeing her cry. “Are you going to be a good girl for Gretchen?”

A gurgle and coo answered her question.

“I love you so much!”

Lizzie kissed Flora goodbye in Gretchen’s arms. Cole could have sworn he saw her eyes well up, yet like a trooper she pulled herself together and didn’t utter a word about missing her baby on the drive in to work. Though frequent sighs and constantly fidgeting hands in her lap gave her away.

His back was stiff from hard labor yesterday, walking the range, sinking posts, but it was the kind of ache that did a man good. But the pain wasn’t distraction enough to keep him from noticing how Lizzie had pulled her hair back in that braid again and wore silver hoop earrings large enough for shooting practice. Even though she’d chosen a long-sleeved white tailored shirt with dark slacks, sending a clear unisex message, he couldn’t help but notice what seemed to be all woman beneath the wrapper. Yeah, this couldn’t be good.

“How’s your dad doing?” She broke into his spiraling sexual thoughts.

“Pretty well. He’s recovering his strength quickly, which, as you know, is always a good thing with CVAs. Fingers crossed his speech will turn around, too. Another day or two of observation, and they may even skip sending him to rehab if he continues on this trajectory. The doctor said a home occupational-health worker and speech-recovery therapist may be all he needs.”

“That’s fantastic. Wow, we dodged the bullet there, didn’t we?”

He liked how she’d already thrown herself into the center of his family using we as if she were one of them. “Yes, we did. Keep sending good thoughts for his speech. You know how recovery can change day to day in the hospital.”

“Yes, and I certainly will.”

It got quiet then, as if the early morning drive had been their routine for years. She sighed and glanced out the window; he snuck a peak at her intently watching the scenery. He’d forgotten how amazing the Wyoming landscape was, how the sparkling blue sky over this big box-shaped state accentuated the brown and golden shades of strata on the low-lying hills, and made the prairie grass look like one huge shaggy carpet.

“How’re we gonna work this today?” she asked, checking back in, one foot suddenly tapping a quick rhythm on the floor of the car. He didn’t peg her as someone to get nervous about a new job, though she did seem to run on adrenaline and nerves.

“The patients?”

“Yeah, are you willing to let me work on my own unless I need your help?”

“I’d like to supervise, if you don’t mind.”

She started to protest.

“At first,” he said to appease her, but mostly to shut her up because he didn’t feel like debating the topic. He was the senior doctor and she might as well get used to it. “Then we can evaluate the situation and go from there.”

“I guess that’s reasonable.”

“You didn’t think I’d just cut you loose, did you?”

She tossed him a teasing smile. “A girl can hope.”

“Charlotte, the RN, is going to triage the appointments. Give the more complicated patients to me, and maternal/child to you. Oh, and I’ll take all of the cardiology patients. Obviously.”

“How sexist is that?”

“It’s not sexist if it’s practical. I know squat about maternal child health, and I figure, since you recently had a baby, not to mention the fact that you’ve just graduated from medical school and most likely studied the topic more recently than I have, you’re more suited to the job.” Not to mention that you’re a woman. Okay, so it did sound sexist. It was beside the point.

She shook her head, but moved on, apparently deciding not to argue. Good choice. “I’d like to do as many procedures as possible.”

“Fine with me. I’m spoiled by having a team of nurses do my dirty work.”

“See, you are sexist and since when do cardiologists ever get dirty?”

“Who’s being sexist now? There are plenty of male nurses.”

She smiled, clearly liking the verbal sparring. “Point taken. But I don’t think of cardiology as a profession that gets dirty.”

“You’ve heard of angioplasty, right?”

“You do those?”

“I do, and I take it a step further, I replace mitral valves, too.”

“But that’s open-heart surgery.”

“Not the way we do it these days. I use the same route as angiograms. TAVR or TAVI—have you heard of that?”

She turned her head toward him, disbelief in her eyes. “You do transcatheter aortic-valve replacements?”

“Also known as trans-catheter aortic-valve implantations. Yes—” he sounded smug and couldn’t help it “—that would be me.”

“Oh, my gosh.” Except it sounded like ohmahgosh. “You’re, like, a star in medicine!” Except it sounded like stah.

“You’ve heard of me?”

“You’re, like, the god of cardiology. I can’t believe I didn’t add that up.” She tapped her hands on her knees. “Wow. I’m working with a genius!”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Oh, I would. You launched a whole new minimally invasive approach to mitral-valve replacement. No major incisions, the heart doesn’t have to be stopped or put on bypass, there’s quicker recovery time. We learned all about that in my fourth-year cardiology module. This is freaking amazing.”

“Hold on, it’s not like I created it. All I did was hear about a great new product, and ask to be trained by the medical-device company. Granted, I was one of the first in the country to do that. Okay, the first.” He tried his best not to look too proud. “You know the old saying with medicine: watch-one-do-one-teach-one. Now I travel the country doing in-services training for other doctors. Spreading the word. Kind of like a TAVR evangelist.” He enjoyed her gushing, but went the humble route anyway. “I’m just a teacher.”

“The procedure sure has changed a lot of lives for the better. It probably doesn’t cost nearly as much as the old way of doing things either.”

“Well, the surgery isn’t for everyone, but, yeah, it has helped a lot of people.”

He pulled into the parking lot, which put an end to the conversation. When they got out of the car, he thought he noticed a fresh blush on her face, and she looked at him differently than when they’d left the ranch. Okay, so now he knew she was the kind of woman who was impressed with what a man could do, not only his appearance, which was a definite plus for him. Yet there was that link to a man’s abilities again, rather than the person. Yeah, but that was all beside the point, because nothing was going to happen between them.