Daddy By Accident

“Jarrod.” Prudy looked up from the blood pressure cuff she was affixing to the patient’s too-thin arm and smiled. “We’ll take good care of her, Boyd. The best. She’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, sure she will.” A sudden lump pressed his throat and he had to swallow twice before he could make it dissolve. He’d heard that before. He’d even believed it. He knew better now. “Guess I’ll head on back then.”

Taking another step backward toward the curtain had him nearly colliding with an entering tech who sidestepped gingerly. “Sorry,” Boyd muttered, and earned himself a pained look.

“Sir, you’ll have to wait outside until after the doctor examines your wife,” the tech instructed impatiently.

“She’s not...” He stopped, realizing that the tech wasn’t listening. Frowning, he turned to go, only to be halted by the sound of Mrs. Patterson’s soft voice.

“No, wait. I don’t...want him to go.” Across the cubicle, Mrs. Patterson was now awake and watching him with bruised eyes. When he locked his gaze on hers, she tried to smile. “I haven’t thanked you.”

He cleared his throat. “No need. Mostly I just kept you company until the bus showed up.”

Stacy wet her lips and struggled to focus her mind on her rescuer’s words instead of the all-encompassing pain in her head. “Bus?”

“Sorry, I mean the ambulance.” His mouth quirked. It wasn’t quite a smile but held a certain promise she found endearing.

“I don’t...but of course, there would have to be...an ambulance. How silly of me...not to remember.”

The effort to speak set her head to spinning, and she hauled in air in an effort to clear her brain. Concentrate on his eyes, she told herself as his face wavered in and out of focus. Gray eyes in a deeply tanned face. Quicksilver eyes, framed by thick, blunt lashes the color of bronze. There was something haunting about those eyes. Something sad. Memories he didn’t want, perhaps, or lingering shadows of a terrible suffering. For an instant, she thought she was looking into the eyes of her tormented husband.

“Boyd?” she murmured, and heard his deep voice answering. The words were indistinct, yet she felt a sense of comfort.

Another face swam into her field of vision. A face with feminine features and a kind smile. A face topped by a halo of shining copper. A nurse, she finally decided.

“Is there anyone you want us to call for you, Mrs. Patterson ? Family? Friends?”

Stacy concentrated for a moment. “Some...someone should call my ex-in-laws in Seattle. Leonard Patterson, Sr., on Stanton Street.” Old and frail now, the Pattersons had never forgiven her for signing the papers to commit their only son.

Someone repeated the information, then asked if there was anyone else. A member of her own family perhaps? The baby’s father?

“Len...”

“Len was the baby’s father?” the voice repeated with a soothing calm.

“Yes.” Len had longed to become a father, but that was before a hopped-up kid bent on robbery had split his skull with a baseball bat. After that, he’d become a mean, angry man given to bouts of violence that had finally worn out her love and her loyalty.

“Anyone else? A neighbor, maybe? Or a co-worker?”

Stacy cleared her throat again of a sudden thickness and searched for the name that hovered just beyond her consciousness. A face wavered, round and patrician, with a frizz of curly white hair swooping over the apple cheeks. “Adeline... Marsh.”

“Is she a friend?”

“Principal at Lewis and Clark Elementary. I’ve been substituting. Morning kindergarten.” Stacy licked her lips, aware suddenly that somehow, her hand was in Boyd’s again. Had she reached for him? Or had he reached for her? Either way, she was grateful for the human contact and curled her fingers tighter around his.

“I’m...sorry about taking you away from your work,” she murmured, her voice oddly thin.

“It’ll still be there when I get back.” He bent lower, and his bare shoulders blocked out the overhead light.

“Will your boss be angry?”

“No boss. I work alone.”

She heard a low drone of whispered conversation and turned her head toward the sound. The resulting pain in her temple caused her to inhale sharply.

“Easy, honey.” he soothed, his voice low and scratchy.

Slowly she adjusted the angle of her head until she could see his eyes, now dark and intense and probing. Deep lines fanned the outer corners, suggesting a man who knew how to laugh, yet the strongly molded face had the look of a man more accustomed to discipline and control and restraint.

“Miz Patterson?” a third voice inquired softly. “I need to draw blood for the lab now.”

It wasn’t really a question, saving Stacy the trouble of replying. Boyd stepped back to allow room for a roly-poly woman in a blue smock. Stacy watched anxiously as the woman readied a syringe and hoped she wouldn’t disgrace herself by fainting. Just in case, she looked away before the needle entered her arm. She felt a prick, then pressure. The overhead light was beginning to sear her eyes, and her head was spinning again. She felt her lashes drooping and quickly forced her eyes wider. It was important to stay awake and alert. In control.

“Boyd?” Mindless of her aching head, she looked around anxiously.

“Right here, Stacy.” He took her hand again, and the cold that had begun to seep into her again abated. The self-confidence she’d built up over the past year was crumbling fast, leaving her feeling lost and scared and lonely.

Some independent woman you are, she thought, disgusted with her pitiful lack of fortitude. Here she was, an expectant mother who wanted desperately to be held in the arms of a man she’d just met.

She started to thank him again, only to find herself seized by a spasm of pain in the small of her back. She stopped breathing, her heart tripping. The pain spread, rippling toward her belly, nearly squeezing her in two.

“No!” she cried in sharp agony. “It’s too soon!”

“Get Dr. Jarrod, stat,” she heard the nurse order sharply. “Tell him the patient may be going into premature labor.”

Stacy clung to the strong hand wrapping hers, terror racing with the adrenalins in her veins.

“Try to relax, Stacy. Take deep breaths.” Boyd’s voice was steady and call, everything she wasn’t.

“Tell them to save the baby,” she pleaded. “Make them promise. If there’s a choice, my baby has to live.”

“Look, babies are surprisingly resilient, especially in utero,” he said in that curiously raspy voice.

“But what if she isn’t? What if—”

“Hey, none of that, okay?” Lifting a hand from hers, he brushed back a lock of her hair, his touch as gentle as a lover’s caress. “You’re going to be fine. Both of you.”

Stacy tightened her grip on his hand. “Is that a p-promise, or a guess?”

His hesitation was slight but noticeable. Because he didn’t want to lie? she wondered.

“Definitely a promise,” he declared an instant before the curtains parted to admit a tall, lanky man who, in spite of the blue scrubs, reminded her more of a working cowboy than a doctor.

“MacAuley?” he exclaimed on a double take. “What the hell?”

“Later,” Boyd said, stepping back. He’d done all he could do for the dark-haired angel with the beautiful eyes. Now it was up to the professionals. And luck. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to believe in either one.

Two

Boyd thumbed open his third can of beer, drank deeply, then wandered out of the kitchen onto the back porch. It was nearly seven, and the sun was hovering at the edge of the western horizon, turning the sky to flame, while the conifers that typified the Oregon skyline suggested black teeth eating the sunset inch by inch. Below the ridge that wedged downward at a sharp angle, the Columbia River resembled molten lava as the sun’s rays skimmed the surface.

Propping a bare foot on the railing, he leaned forward slightly, hoping to catch a breeze, but the air was deathly still. At the house to the left, Linda and Marshall Ladd were barbecuing burgers. At the end of the short street, Portland firefighter, Cliff Balisky, was roughhousing with his two boys, who from the sound of their triumphant shouts were whomping up on the old man.

Suddenly restless, he chugged down the rest of the beer in his hand and gave some thought to opening another. How long had it been since he’d been drunk enough to pass out? Drunk enough to buy himself a few hours of mindless oblivion? Four, five months maybe? Longer?

Before Karen and the baby had died, he’d never been much of a drinker, mostly because he didn’t like the reckless edge it put on his personality. Tonight, however, the need for numbness had overridden his customary caution.

He knew the reason for his black mood. The ambulance ride, the all-too-familiar bustle of the ER. A baby in danger. A wisp of a woman with big green eyes and a tumble of silk-soft hair who’d somehow slipped beneath his guard and touched a part of him he’d thought he’d lost.

The woman was fine, he assured himself firmly as he headed inside for another beer. Definitely in good hands and no doubt still sleeping peacefully, just as she’d been when he’d left her a couple of hours ago. Still, his conscience would likely give him fits unless he made sure, he decided as he reached for the wall phone by the kitchen window.

Though the hospital switchboard was known for its efficiency, it took the operator an interminable five minutes to track down Prudy, another minute before he heard her calm voice in his ear.

“I thought you might be calling,” she said after he’d identified himself.

“The hell you did.” Boyd glowered at his reflection in the window over the sink. He was already regretting the impulse to call.

“In answer to your question—”

“What question? All I did was say hello.”

“She’s resting comfortably.”

Boyd heard the teasing note in Prudy’s tired voice and felt his patience thinning. “Are you going to tell me what I want to know or am I going to be banging on your door at five a.m. for the next week?”

Prudy groaned. “You sure know how to bargain from strength, you rat.”

“A man’s got to do—”

“Okay, okay.” He heard laughter in her tone and felt the tension clawing his spine ease off a notch. “She’s concussed, which you already know, has a severe sprain of the left ankle and an impressive collection of bruises.”

Boyd cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. “And the baby?”

“So far so good, although Mrs. Patterson’s been spotting. Jarrod has her on a fetal monitor and an IV drip, mag sulfate. The fetal heartbeat is strong and steady.”

Boyd acknowledged that with a grunt. It was exactly what he would have done. “What’s Jarrod’s prognosis?”

“Guardedly optimistic.”

He lifted a hand to the back of his neck and methodically kneaded the tension-twisted museles. “Do me a favor and read me Jarrod’s notes, okay?”

“You know I can’t do that,” Prudy exclaimed softly through the wire.

“Why the hell not?”

“Come on, Boyd. You know the rules about a patient’s right to privacy as well as I do. You’re not a relative and you’re not on staff, so therefore—”

“Screw the rules. Tell me.”

“No.”

He felt his face growing hot. “Since when did you become so righteous, Ms. Holier-Than-Thou?” As soon as the words left his mouth he wanted to call them back.

The silence at the other end was more damning than a curse, and he drew a long breath in an attempt to level the sudden spike of anger that had had him speaking before he thought. Prudy was the last person he wanted to hurt. As friends go, she was the best. After the accident, she’d taken care of him like a persistent little mother hen, there for him when he’d needed someone. He’d been close to losing it then, closer than he wanted to recall. He’d battled back to a semblance of normality by burying his memories along with his ability to care too deeply for anything or anyone.

“I’m sorry, that was out of line,” he said when the silence grew longer than he could handle.

“She really got to you, didn’t she?” Prudy questioned quietly.

“Yeah, I guess she did.” More than he wanted to accept.

“Boyd—”

He heard the sympathy in Prudy’s voice and ruthlessly cut her off. He could handle the past as long as it remained buried. “Give her my best, okay?” He hung up before Prudy could say more.

Stacy woke to the echo of a scream. Her own, she realized with a pounding heart and drenched skin. She felt queasy and heavy, and her ankle throbbed. Disoriented, she turned toward a glimmer of light to her left, then wished she hadn’t as the dull pain in her head took on star-burst edges.

The room’s bare white walls were shadowed. The narrow bed came equipped with side rails and was slab hard The pillow beneath her aching head was only marginally softer. Still, she was thankful that she and the baby were alive and in good hands.

In the hospital, she recalled with relief. And for the moment, safe. The image of Len sprawled on the hood flashed into her mind again, and she shuddered. The baby was what mattered, all that mattered.

Babies are surprisingly resilient, especially in utero.

She drew a breath, thinking about the man who’d spoken those words earlier. Sweet, calming, positive words from a man with sawdust in his hair and calluses on his hands. A man accustomed to taking charge, she realized now. A quiet sort of guy with smoky eyes and a raspy voice. A powerful male with raw edges, a hard, arrogant mouth with surprisingly sensitive corners, and a don’t-tread-on-me air riding those burly carpenter’s shoulders. There wasn’t a reason in the world why she should feel as though she’d known him—and trusted him—for a very long time, but she did.

Sleepy now, she let her mind linger on the image of an off-center smile and kind eyes in a deeply tanned face. Fathomless, intelligent eyes with whispers of pain still lingering m devil-dark pupils, framed by laugh lines suggesting a sense of humor.

His mouth, too, had given a hint of that same humor, a faint upward tilt at the corners of those aggressively masculine lips. More pronounced was the threat of an intensely male sensuality, the kind that had her fantasizing about lazy rain-washed afternoons spent in a man’s arms in front of a warming, pine-scented fire And when he’d smiled—once—she’d felt oddly cherished, as though he’d brushed those hard lips over hers.

Drowsy now, she brought her fingers to her lips and felt them curve into a languid smile. Ships in the night, she thought. Destined for different ports. She doubted she would see him again, but for the rest of her life she would always have a special place in her heart for a very special, rough, tough-as-nails Good Samaritan. She was still thinking about him when she drifted off.

“Oatmeal is wonderful I truly, absolutely love oatmeal. Oatmeal is my friend.”

Stacy sighed and looped another circle in the lumpy stuff beneath her spoon. She was hungry, the baby was awake and hammering on her insides with tiny fists as though she, too, were eager for breakfast, and yet, Stacy couldn’t seem to work up the courage to swallow that first mouthful.

“It’s just that it tastes like used wallpaper paste,” she muttered to the empty glass that had held eight ounces of milk only a few minutes earlier. That, at least, she’d learned to stomach during the first few weeks after she’d found out about the baby. But oatmeal?

“Definitely a challenge.”

Using her free hand, she raised the head of the bed a few inches more by pressing the button on the railing, then ran her tongue over her lips. Okay, this is for the baby, she thought as she grimly scooped up a tiny spoonful. She had it halfway to her mouth before she realized she had an audience.

Her Good Samaritan was standing just inside the door, a ragged bouquet of pink blossoms in his hands and a crooked smile on his deeply tanned face. Gone was the day’s growth of beard that had given his face an outlaw appeal. His hair, now shiny clean and neatly brushed, was an intriguing mix of gold and platinum and silver blended into a unique color she could only call dusty blond.

Unlike yesterday, he was fully clothed in a chest-hugging T-shirt of faded blue, sporting the logo of a local lumberyard, and tight jeans worn thin from the stress of hard muscle rubbing against unyielding seams.

“This is just a guess, but I have a hunch you’re not crazy about PortGen’s breakfast special,” he said, widening his smile into a truly dazzling but all-too-brief grin bracketed by engaging creases.

When she realized she was drinking in the sight of him like a parched desert nomad in sight of a spring, she quickly lowered her gaze to the spoon and shuddered. “I can’t believe there are actually people who order this stuff on purpose.”

She heard him chuckle and glanced his way again. Their gazes met, and she found herself holding her breath. More alert now, she decided that his irises weren’t merely gray, but intensely so, the color of sooty topaz shot through with silver.

It had been forever since she’d felt such an instant attraction to a man, and she’d learned since not to trust any feeling that flashed so hot and fast. Still, she couldn’t prevent her heart from skipping and her lips from curving as she feigned indignation.

“I’m starving to death, and the man is laughing,” she groused to the ceiling.

“Sorry,” he said, coming closer, adding the fresh tang of soap to the hospital mix. “I forgot myself for a moment.”

Stacy felt her spirits reviving. After months of unremitting tension and fear, it felt good to smile again, even if it did hurt to move her facial muscles. “I’ll forgive you, but only because you saved my life yesterday.”

“Nah, wearing your seat belt saved your life.”

She didn’t waste breath arguing with a man whose jaw had taken on the texture of mountain granite. Instead, she directed an inquiring look at the fluffy blooms held in an awkward, one-handed grip against his flat belly.

“The hydrangeas are beautiful.”

His eyebrows drew together and she noticed a faint scar angling across the left one in a jagged line. “Is that what they are?”

She nodded, then realized she was still holding the spoon and carefully returned it to the breakfast tray before pushing the table toward the foot of the bed. “I feel better just looking at them.”

She smiled, drawing Boyd’s gaze for an instant to her lips. Most guys he knew were suckers for the kind of impudent dimples framing her mouth. Thank the saints he was immune, he thought a smug instant before he found himself wondering if her pale, full lips would taste sweet. Like the wild berries that soaked up sugar-producing summer sunshine along the country roads.

When he felt heat climbing his neck, he frowned down at the sissy-looking flowers. He’d bought flowers for a patient before, but he’d always had the florist downstairs deliver them, and without a card.

“Maybe the nurse has a vase,” she said, reaching for the call button.

“No need. This’ll do fine,” He stuffed the flowers into her water jug before she could argue the point. Then feeling awkward and more than a little foolish, he shoved his hands into his hip pockets and took a step backward. It was time he returned to work.

“I’m glad you came by,” she said before he had a chance to get the hell out of there. “I wanted to ask you about that little girl who was so helpful and sweet. Um, Heidi, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “What can I tell you? She’s a lonely little kid with too much imagination and not enough of the good stuff parents are supposed to provide.”

“I’d like to do something to express my appreciation to her as soon as...as...” She halted and drew a breath that seemed to drain more than invigorate. “What would she like, do you think?”

One of Stacy Patterson’s smiles for starters, he thought, and then frowned. Where the hell did that come from?

“Hell if I know,” he hedged.

“I was thinking of a CD, but I have no idea what kind of music she prefers.”

“She hates country, I know that.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s always making remarks about my lousy taste in radio stations.”

Her lips curved, and for an instant her eyes sparkled. He felt something loosen inside, and frowned. “I take it you listen to country,” she asked, touching one of the blossoms with a caressing fingertip,

“When I’m working, yeah.” He’d been thinking her eyes were green, but now he saw a hint of gold mingling in the depths. Sunshine pretty, he thought, and as warming as summer’s rays.

He wanted to gather her close and bask in the warmth of that sweet, soft smile until he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be a man on the outside of happiness, looking in, longing to feel strong and protective and loved by a woman he adored. But those days were gone. Lost.

“Uh, maybe I could find out for you,” he said lamely. “The kind of music she likes.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

“No sweat.” He pulled his hands from his pocket and glanced at his watch. “I’d best be heading out,” he said, shifting. “I promised I’d have this job done in time for the owners’ tenth anniversary, and time’s getting short.”

Was that disappointment he saw wisping across her gaze? Or relief to be rid of the blundering brute? He’d never been all that great at entertaining women. When he’d been a gawky kid working a couple of part-time jobs in order to save for college, he’d been too busy to learn the moves other guys had mastered by the time pimples gave way to whiskers.

In college, the women he’d met seemed all too willing to entertain him--once they found out he was headed for medical school and the big-bucks future. Now that he had an ordinary job with ordinary pay—well hell, he’d been boring even when he’d been a doctor. Even Karen had said as much more than once, but she’d put up with him for reasons he never fully understood.

After her death, he hadn’t cared much one way or another about his skill with the ladies. But now he wished he could crack jokes like his kid brother, Ben, or flirt without coming on too strong or too awkward like his friend, Luke Jarrod—anything to arouse another sparkling smile in those now-somber emerald eyes.

“Thanks again,” she murmured. “For the flowers.” Before she shifted her gaze to the puffy bouquet he thought he saw moisture pooling in her eyes.

“I’m sorry about your ex-husband.”

“So am I.”

“He was in the hospital, you said?”

“He was hurt doing what he loved—protecting others.” Stacy drew a suddenly shaky breath. “There were two of them robbing a convenience store near our house. They’d nearly beaten the clerk to death by the time Len had walked in to buy cigarettes. He’d drawn his gun, but the boys were so young—scarcely fourteen.”

Boyd bit off a curse that had her pale lips trembling into a rueful smile that she couldn’t sustain. “No one’s really sure exactly how it happened. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that one of the boys hit Len in the head with a baseball bat he must have found behind the counter.” She stopped to clear her throat. “By the time I got to the hospital, Len was in surgery. When he woke up, he was...changed.”

“Brain damage?”

She nodded. “All cops have a capacity for violence or they wouldn’t be cops. The good ones have a...an instinct for right and wrong that keeps that violence inside unless it’s needed to protect human life. After his injury, Len had these rages that just... took over. And when that happened, he enjoyed hurting people.”

“He hurt you?” His voice was too harsh, but there was nothing he could do about it, just as there was nothing he could do about the anger pouring through him at the thought of those huge wrestler’s hands bruising her smooth skin.

“Not at first. He was more like a lost child. But... later, after he’d recovered physically, he had episodes ”

She thought about the wild look of fear that had sometimes surfaced in his eyes when he’d thought he was being stalked by some nameless, faceless enemy. Some nights he’d sat up, waiting, his weapon cradled lovingly in his hands. Watching and waiting. She sighed, looked down at her hands.