The Doctor's Texas Baby

He was a father now.

* * *

This was pointless.

Why was she even bothering to fill out an eight-page employment application at Haven’s local nursing home and hospice? Carolina already knew she wasn’t going to get the job. Probably not even an interview. She barely dared hope, and yet she had to try.

Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry about Matty while she searched in vain for employment in the medical field. She and Katie were becoming good friends, and Katie had offered to watch Matty at the boys ranch office while Carolina went job hunting, as futile as it no doubt would be.

When had she become a cup-half-empty type of person?

Probably when her cup drained to its dregs and she hadn’t seen a drop of liquid to fill it again.

No amount of previous background or additional skill sets could overcome the thorn in her side—or her knee, to be more accurate. She’d already been turned down by every other medical facility in the area, for the same reason she’d lost her job at the hospital in Colorado.

The need to be able to catch a fainting patient or respond to a slip and fall never even used to be a consideration for Carolina, much less a problem. She’d always kept herself in good shape with a gym membership that she actually used.

But then she’d made the mistake of going on a weekend ski trip with her roommate, Geena Walker. In hindsight, why she’d thought she ought to learn how to ski was beyond her comprehension. To be honest, she hadn’t even really been all that interested in the sport. At the time it had seemed like a good idea, a fun way to take a short vacation and spend a weekend trying something new. She was living in Colorado, after all. Snow meant skiing, right?

She’d taken an hour’s worth of quick instructional lessons, even though it was humiliating to be in a class of half-pint children who effortlessly picked up the necessary skills ten times faster than she did.

Afterward, she’d successfully skied the bunny slope a couple of times and thought she was ready to tackle a beginner’s run.

It was easy, Geena had assured her. Simple as pie, she’d said. All Carolina had to do was ski from one side of the hill to the other in a diagonal fashion, slowly zigzagging her way down the mountainside.

Her first clue should have been when she slipped and nearly fell getting off the lift at the top of the mountain. But she’d chalked that up to being off balance and hit the slope.

Literally.

Neither Geena nor her ski instructor had mentioned what Carolina was supposed to do when her skis became crossed in the front and she went flipping head over heels for who knew how many yards down the snow-packed ski run.

All she remembered was not being able to breathe and feeling as if she were drowning in the snow, blinded by the icy white powder that had stolen inside her supposedly leak-proof goggles.

The next thing she knew, an entire crew of very young men sporting bright red jackets with white crosses embroidered on them surrounded her, insisting that they put her on a backboard and place a brace around her neck. She’d tried to tell them that she was a nurse and it wasn’t necessary to overkill the situation, but they apparently wanted to practice their rescuing skills on her.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was the humiliating turn down the hillside with all six of her escorts, while the regular skiers—the coordinated ones who didn’t make themselves into human avalanches—watched on with interest.

As it happened, her back and neck were fine. Her left knee, however, not so much.

Then had come the surgery, rehabilitation and getting summarily dismissed from her job because of her inability to lift fifty pounds. And those doctor’s orders weren’t going anywhere any time soon.

Nope. They were permanent.

Which meant she was in permanent trouble.

Bringing her thoughts back to the present, she sighed under her breath and scribbled her references on the employment application. Even if she already knew what the answer would be, she had to try.

Now that she had Wyatt breathing down her neck to spend time with Matty, it was more important than ever that she provide her son with a stable home, not only for his sake but to prove to Wyatt that she was able to make it on her own as a single mother.

That she didn’t need his help.

Though she had started with every medical facility in the area, she didn’t have time to be picky about where she worked. Even though she owned her great-uncle’s cabin free and clear, she and Matty still needed to eat, and she had to pay to keep the lights on and put gas in the car.

Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t really qualified for any other kind of work besides nursing. All of her education and expertise were the medical field. Retail or fast food might be an option in a pinch, but they didn’t pay enough for her and Matty to subsist on in the long run. She needed a living wage, not a teenager’s part-time after-school job. She supposed she could try to switch gears and become a medical receptionist, but her typing skills were atrocious and she’d never quite understood the medical filing system in the business classes she’d had to take in college.

Carolina closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. She’d been praying a lot more often recently, asking the Lord for guidance, not only in her career, but in her life. And now, more than anything, she needed direction on what she should do about her relationship—or lack of one—with Wyatt Harrow.

She was just about out of options.

Please, dear Lord, don’t make me have to beg.

Carolina was handing in her application at the front desk when, to her surprise, she spotted Wyatt out of the corner of her eye. She would have recognized his long, confident gait anywhere, not to mention his handsome profile.

Though he’d come in through the main glass doors of the nursing home, he clearly hadn’t seen her. He was walking down a hallway with his head down and his hands crammed into the front pockets of his jeans.

Even at a distance, and even though she couldn’t see the expression on his face, Carolina could tell he was troubled from his posture alone. She’d seen that look before, when his gran had been having so much trouble.

It was none of her business. She should leave now, before he turned around and recognized her. That would be the sensible thing to do. The smart thing.

But her days of doing the sensible thing were long behind her.

Instead, curiosity got the better of her and she followed him down the hallway, taking care to stay a few steps behind him and ready to duck into a doorway if he looked back.

Happily, he didn’t. He took a right, then an immediate left, and then he disappeared into a room on the right side of the hallway.

Carolina paused. What Wyatt was doing had nothing to do with her, but—

She had to look.

She just had to.

She continued down the hall straight past where Wyatt had gone, quickening her pace as she glanced into the room. She felt silly, like a teenage girl stalking her first crush around the halls in high school.

When she saw Wyatt sitting in a chair next to an old woman’s bedside, her heart swelled and then melted like warm chocolate.

Of course.

Wyatt was visiting his gran. No wonder he’d looked so burdened. Eva Harrow had clearly gone downhill from when Carolina had last seen her.

Carolina was more than a little bit familiar with Wyatt’s grandmother, having been the old woman’s home nurse for several months three years ago, just before Carolina had left Haven.

That was how she’d gotten to know Wyatt and when she had fallen in love with him. He clearly cared so much for his grandmother—such an attractive trait in a man.

Eva had accidentally plunged down a set of porch steps and had broken her hip. At that time in her life, it had become clear that her dementia was slowly overtaking her. Wyatt had needed Carolina’s round-the-clock help to keep Eva safe, but at that time he wouldn’t even consider putting her in a nursing home where she could get the kind of medical assistance she needed on a more permanent basis.

Eva was also—indirectly—the reason Matty had been conceived. One evening a few months into Carolina’s work for the Harrows, Wyatt’s gran had taken a sudden turn for the worse and spiked a high fever. She had ended up in the ICU with pneumonia and little chance of recovering. In his grief, Wyatt had turned to Carolina for comfort.

Carolina breathed deeply as memories flooded over her. Eva had managed to fight off a bad infection, although it was touch and go there for a while. She was one of the strongest people Carolina had ever had the privilege of knowing, but the woman had been ninety-six at the time of her injury and there was only so much recovery she could make, especially considering how quickly her dementia was changing her world for the worse.

But Wyatt hadn’t been ready to let her go then—or even now, apparently. Her heart welled as she watched him interact with her. He was holding Eva’s hand and speaking in a loud, animated tone of voice. Carolina was fairly certain from Eva’s blank-eyed, slack-featured expression that she did not recognize Wyatt at all.

Still, she appeared to be listening to him intently and wasn’t pulling away from his touch, so it was at least the semblance of a good day for her.

“Did I tell you about the donkey Johnny and I rescued? You remember I told you about Johnny, right? He’s the teenager I’m mentoring. Anyway, the whole thing with the donkey was so funny. We pulled him out of the mud bog he was stuck in, and I kid you not, Gran, that animal grinned from ear to ear when we freed him. A donkey smiling. Can you imagine? And you should have heard him braying a thank-you.”

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