Although they hadn’t done a lot of talking four years ago, he had told her that he was a bachelor for life and had no plans to reproduce ever. Because of his words, and the trauma from her parents’ custody battle when she was seven, Chrissie had convinced herself that Joss belonged to her because she’d just been a weekend fling for Trace.

Guilt pinched at her conscience, but she shoved it aside.

Now was not the time to feel guilty. They’d shared a wild weekend of sex that had never been meant to be anything more. He hadn’t wanted it to be anything more.

Only she’d ended up pregnant.

Pregnant, and she hadn’t known how to get in touch with him.

She could have contacted Bud and Agnes, could have asked for Trace’s information. Perhaps they would have given it to her.

Only, she hadn’t.

She and Trace had parted ways with no plans to stay in touch or ever see each other again. He’d known the city where she lived because she’d told him. Just as he’d told her he lived in Atlanta. He hadn’t bothered to get in touch with her or continue their relationship in any way.

If he’d left the country, who knew if he’d even had a way of staying in touch? Then again, if he’d wanted to, he would have found a way. Chattanooga wasn’t that big and tracking down a nurse with her name couldn’t have been that difficult.

He hadn’t, and because of that she’d never felt the need to attempt to track him down. Well, twinges from time to time, but overall she knew she’d done the right thing for her son and had even given Trace what he’d said he wanted by keeping her secret.

How Joss had come into existence didn’t matter these days. What mattered was her precious little boy who was the center of her world, and that she’d do anything to protect him from the hell she’d gone through as a child. She would give him the best life possible, and that was that.

But then, she hadn’t thought she’d see Trace again. Not really.

She stared into his eyes, wondering at the emotions she saw flickering there.

She hadn’t known he was leaving the country, hadn’t known he was with Doctors Around the World. He’d never mentioned anything of the sort to her. Something like leaving the country for an extended period of time was a big deal.

“When did you leave for Doctors Around the World?”

His pupils dilated and for the briefest moment darkness replaced the interest in his eyes. “I see Agnes really was gossiping about me.”

He hadn’t answered her question. Interesting. Most of the guys she knew would have made sure everyone knew they were a doctor, that they’d signed up selflessly to help others, and they’d have played that angle to the max. Four years ago Trace hadn’t told her he was a doctor or that he was with DAW.

Fifteen minutes and she already knew things about him she hadn’t known then.

Was that why he’d told her he wasn’t interested in anything more than a weekend fling and never would be? Because he’d been about to leave?

“When?” she repeated, needing to know, although she wasn’t sure why it even mattered. That he hadn’t told her such pertinent details about his life just reinforced what she already knew. It hadn’t mattered that she hadn’t known the details of his life. She was not someone who mattered.

“The week after we met.” His lips twisted as if the words triggered unpleasant memories. “I’d purposely put off my leave date until after the event so I could help Bud and Agnes and to spend a little time with them before I took off. That’s why I didn’t sign on to work as a physician at the event, but just as extra help where needed.”

The week after... He’d left the country the week after they’d met.

“I haven’t been back in the United States since. Not until a week ago.”

Four years had passed and he’d not come home. For all of Joss’s life, Trace had been out of the country, serving others.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He reached out, brushed his fingertip over her cheek then down her jawline. “Not sure how much help I was that weekend. All I remember about those three days is you.”

Her insides perked up at his admission and it was all she could do not to ask “It is?” with a silly school girl expression plastered to her face. Instead, she bit her tongue.

He’d been out of the country for four years. How many times while she’d been pregnant had she thought about him living it up in Atlanta’s night life? Wining and dining some slim beauty queen while she grew rounder and rounder with his child? The glimpse of darkness in his eyes said that he hadn’t been wining or dining anyone, that he’d seen things he’d like to forget, that the past four years hadn’t been a bed of roses.

“Have you thought about me, Chrissie?”

She winced. Had he read her mind?

Still, she didn’t want to answer his question any more than he’d wanted to answer hers. She didn’t want to tell him that not a day went by that he didn’t cross her mind.

How could it when Joss was a constant reminder?

When she went home, it would be even worse now that she’d seen Trace again and realized just how much her son truly resembled his handsome father. The facial expressions. The eyes. Joss was Trace’s mini-me.

“Or did you forget me the minute you left Atlanta?”

His question made her sound as if she had flings all the time, as if what she’d done with him had been no big deal. Other than a college boyfriend she’d hung around with long enough for him to take her virginity and introduce her to a mediocre sex life, she’d had no other lovers. Only Trace.

There had been nothing mediocre about Trace.

But she wasn’t telling him that, either.

Because he’d been so good he must have had many lovers over the years.

Had probably had many since, despite his being out of the country. Chrissie couldn’t suppress her grimace.

“You know as well as I do that you aren’t exactly the kind of man a woman forgets,” she admitted as if it were no big deal. “Nor was that weekend the kind I’d just forget.”

“Good to know.” He smiled at her admission. “It was a phenomenal weekend, wasn’t it?”

She crossed her arms and kept her mouth shut. She’d answered enough questions.

“But not one you want to repeat?”

Yeah, she didn’t want to answer that either. Mainly because her body was like, “Yes, sign me up for an encore performance!” but her brain knew the best thing she could do was keep as much distance between her and Trace as possible.

He was the father to her son. A son he didn’t know about. She needed to stay far, far away before she slipped up and said something she shouldn’t. What if she said something and he pulled a stunt like the one her father had pulled?

She couldn’t bear the thought of Trace disappearing with her son. Not that he would likely even want anything to do with Joss, but, still, her own father had practically ignored her the first seven years of her life and that hadn’t stopped him.

Her gaze lifted to his and rather than saying, No, I don’t want a repeat, as a good, smart girl would do, she asked, “Why do you say that?”

His expression brightened. “Then you do want a repeat?”

Ugh. She’d walked right into that one.

She studied his toffee-colored gaze, his smooth tanned skin, the obvious sexual interest in his eyes. “You do?”

“What sane man wouldn’t want a repeat of what you and I had?”

There was that.

“Sex without strings?”

His gaze narrowed. “Not exactly how I’d have worded it.”

She didn’t let her gaze waver. “Which doesn’t make it any less true.”

His forehead furrowed and he did some studying of his own. She refused to look away, refused to shift her weight or show any sign of weakness.

Even if her insides quaked at the power this man had over her.

“Did you want strings, Chrissie?”

Heat rushed into her face. She was going to have to be careful of what she said. Which was why she needed to stay away. Nothing good could come from spending time with Trace.

“No, of course not.” She hadn’t. She’d known what they shared was just a man and a woman thrown together by circumstances and sexual attraction. “You told me you weren’t the marrying kind. I didn’t expect anything to come of our weekend together.” She sure hadn’t expected to become a mother. “No strings was fine.”

A tired look came over his face and he raked his fingers through his hair. “I was leaving the country in three days. I couldn’t have done strings if I’d wanted to.”

Something in his tone had her insides fluttering with a bundle of nervous energy.

“Did you want to?”

* * *

Good question, and one that Trace had asked himself a thousand times in the years that had passed since he’d last seen this woman. What would he have done differently had he not been committed?

“I didn’t allow myself to consider strings as a possibility.” Which was what he always came back to when his mind got to wondering. Not that he would ever have settled down, but he would have liked more time with Chrissie, to have been able to let the fire between them burn out naturally.

Her pretty face pinched and her gaze averted. “Which explains why you never asked for a phone number.”

Although he was sure she didn’t want them to, her words conveyed that she’d been hurt. That he’d hurt her stung.

“There was no point in my asking.”

“I see.” Her lower lip disappeared again.

“I don’t think you do.” He lifted her chin and stared into the greenest eyes he’d ever looked into. “I was leaving the country, had volunteered for a crazy assignment. Putting you or any woman through the stress of a relationship when I was over there, especially when nothing would ever have come from that relationship anyway—it wouldn’t have been fair.”

Her chin trembled beneath his fingertips and Trace wanted to kiss her so badly his insides ached. They were alone in the medical tent, but someone could walk in. Which didn’t overly concern him. He’d seen and done too much to let something as irrelevant as someone seeing him kiss Chrissie get to him. But Chrissie was still sending mixed signals.

One minute hot, the next cold.

When he kissed her next, he wanted her to want it as much as he did, not to be second-guessing herself.

He would kiss her again. Soon. She might not want to admit it, but she wanted the kiss as much as he did. Everything in her expression, her stance, her eyes, said so.

“Well, I guess you’re a damn saint, then, eh?”

There went the cold again. And the hurt.

“Far from it.”

Looking away, she shrugged. “Not to hear Agnes tell it.”

“Agnes is biased. She’s my godmother.”

Chrissie’s eyes widened. Obviously Agnes hadn’t told her that part.

“Her husband, Bud, and my father grew up in the same neighborhood and were best friends. Somehow, that friendship survived my father’s personality all these years.”

“Something wrong with your father’s personality?”

Ha, now there was a tricky question if ever there was one.

“Most people would say he’s near perfect.”

Her eyebrow arched. “But not you?”

Not a subject he wanted to discuss any more than he wanted to discuss Sudan or Yemen or Kerry. Maybe less so.

“So, about those Braves...”

He watched emotions play across her face, but she let any further questions she had go. How many times had he closed his eyes and recalled her face? How many times when the whole world seemed to have gone crazy had he closed his eyes and just remembered everything about her?

“Yeah, well, apparently you don’t recall, or maybe you never knew—” her chin tilted upward “—but I’m not a fan of baseball.”

Well, no one was perfect even if in his mind she was close.

“That’s un-American,” he teased.

She shrugged. “Overpaid bunch of men who never grew up as far as I’m concerned.”

His lips twitched. “I’ll have you know those guys work hard.”

She gave him an accusing look. “You sound as if you’re one of them. Former player or just a wannabe?”

He laughed and it felt good. Foreign, but good. He’d not had many reasons to laugh over the past four years. It hadn’t all been bad. Some parts had been wonderful. He’d been helping people who desperately needed help. But overall there hadn’t been nearly enough laughter.

For all the craziness, he’d felt as if he was doing something positive in the world, had felt alive and needed.

“Nope, never been much of a baseball player,” he admitted. “But I have a few friends on the team.”

“On the Atlanta Braves baseball team?” She sounded incredulous.

He nodded. His father handled more than one of the players’ finances, was a real-estate mogul, and prior to Trace leaving the country they’d moved in the same social circles. These days, all the parties and hoopla seemed pointless when there were people starving and being killed for their beliefs or place of birth.

Shaking off the memory, he focused on the petite blonde staring up at him and drank her in like a breath of fresh air.

Chrissie’s brows pinched. “Just who are you, anyway?”

Determined that he was going to keep the past four years at bay, not think about pending decisions that needed making about his future, Trace grinned. “That’s right. You forgot my name.”

For the first time, a smile toyed on her lips.

A guilty smile.

That she’d pretended not to remember him was as telling as her comment about his not asking for her phone number.

He stuck out his hand. “Hi. I’m Trace Stevens. I’m a volunteer in the medical tent. I’ll be working closely with you over the next couple of days.”

“Not that closely.”

It occurred to him that just because his life hadn’t moved forward, a lot could have changed in hers.

He’d just assumed she was single, available.

His gaze dropped to her left hand and specifically to her empty third finger.

“No wedding ring,” he mused out loud. “Boyfriend?”

“I’m not married.” Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth. “But I date from time to time.”

He let her answer digest, not liking the green sludge making its way through his veins. He had no claims on her. He never had. When he’d spotted her across the tent he hadn’t even considered that she might be involved with someone else. He’d just seen her and wanted her.

Four years had come and gone. It wasn’t as if he’d have expected anyone to have waited on him.

And to wait for what? A weekend fling every few years when he came home?

He had nothing to offer beyond that and never would.

CHAPTER THREE

CHRISSIE NEEDED TO get away from Trace. Quickly. Being around him made her insides mush.

“So,” she said as a way of moving the conversation away from anything personal. “What can I do to help get things set up?”

“Bud and Agnes are so organized they have most everything taken care of. The bins of donated supplies are over here and are labeled. We can set the area up along the lines of what we did four years ago.”

Chrissie’s face heated, which told her way too much about her state of mind.

“A triage area and a treatment area?” Had her voice been several octaves higher or was that just her imagination?

“Yes.” How dared he sound so calm? “We’ll set one treatment area up to be a bit more private, just in case.”

No. No. No. There went her naughty imagination again to places it shouldn’t go. To memories of a former private treatment area where her body had been quite ravished.

She couldn’t prevent her blush.

Hoping he didn’t notice, or that he’d think it the result of the Georgia heat, she nodded. “That works for me. How many volunteers do we have in the medical area this year?”

The more the better. She hoped they were so over-staffed that being alone was impossible.

“Around a dozen, I think.” He pulled out a list and began reading it. “We have a couple of doctors, a couple of nurses, a paramedic, a few nurse practitioners, and a few techs, and then some med and nursing students. It should run smoothly.”

“Trace Stevens, is that you?” a female voice with a light accent called out from the other side of the tent.

Trace and Chrissie both turned. A pretty brunette with long sleek hair pulled into a ponytail headed their direction. A huge smile was on her face and Chrissie wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d broken into a run to close the gap between her and Trace quicker.

“Alexis,” he greeted the woman, who wrapped her arms around him and gave him a big hug. “I just saw your name on the list.”

Chrissie was beginning to think she was going to have to peel the woman off to get her to let go of Trace, but eventually, and with obvious reluctance, she stepped back and brushed her hands down her white shorts and turquoise top.

“I heard you were back in town—” Alexis’s smile was so big and bright she could be a toothpaste ad “—and would be here this weekend, but thought it too good to be true.”

“You heard right.” Trace grinned easily at the beautiful woman.

No wonder. She was a Greek goddess, had a husky voice that held a light accent and was downright sexy, and she was looking at Trace with obvious interest in her dark eyes.

She was looking at him the way Chrissie had, no doubt, looked at him four years ago.

Thank goodness she wasn’t looking at him that way now. Okay, maybe a little.

I am not jealous, she told herself over and over. It does not matter that another woman is batting her lashes at him as if he is coated in chocolate and she’s just come off a strict diet.

It didn’t matter. He meant nothing to Chrissie. Just a stranger she’d had an amazing weekend with years ago.

A stranger who she’d made a child with.

She grimaced. Yeah, there was that. Which explained why she couldn’t bear to watch their interaction a moment longer. It had nothing to do with anything other than a natural instinct because of Joss.

“Um...I’ll go unpack bins while you two catch up,” she offered, not even sure if either of them remembered she was there as the woman caught him up on a few mutual acquaintances and their recent activities.

At Chrissie’s words, the woman gave a horrified look. “Did I interrupt? I’m sorry. I saw Trace and had to immediately say hello and then, as always with this man, I got carried away.” She winked at Chrissie as if they shared a secret. “He has that effect on women, so be careful.”

Chrissie didn’t need Alexis to point out the effect Trace had on women. She knew. She forced a smile, tight though it was, to her lips.

“I’ll take note.”

“Chrissie’s immune to whatever effect I have,” he told Alexis, although Chrissie had no idea why.

The woman’s perfectly shaped eyebrow arched.

Chrissie frowned, but didn’t respond to his comment.

Trace’s gaze darted back and forth between the gorgeous brunette and Chrissie. No doubt he saw the stark contrast. It was hard to miss.

“Chrissie, this is Dr. Alexis Gianakos,” Trace introduced the woman. “One of the best cardiologists I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.”

A doctor? Beautiful and smart it would seem.

“As you may have figured out from our conversation, she and I worked at the same hospital prior to when I joined DAW,” Trace continued. “She’s volunteering this weekend.”

Will you be working closely with her, too? Chrissie wanted to ask, but somehow managed to keep her tongue in place.

Ugh. She hated feeling jealous. Hated it.

But she was. Denial didn’t make reality any less true.

“Nice to meet you,” she greeted, holding out her hand and forcing the corners of her mouth upward.

The woman took her hand. Hers was smooth, strong, feminine. Well-manicured.

Chrissie couldn’t help but look down at her own as she pulled away from the woman’s. A bit rough, nails cropped short and unpainted, and no jewelry.

None on the horizon, either.

She’d dated, but found she quickly tired of the men who had come into her life. They either thought because she was a single mom that that meant she was easy for the taking or they didn’t understand that Joss came first and always would. None had lasted beyond a couple of dates.

Her best friend, Savannah, was always pushing her to date, especially now that Savannah was so over the moon, happily married to cardiologist Dr. Charlie Keele. Just because Savannah had found the right man for her it didn’t mean Chrissie had to do the same. Or that she even wanted to. She was quite happy with just her and Joss. Fabulously so.

“You’re also an old friend of Trace’s?” Alexis’s accent came out a bit thicker than previously.

“We aren’t old friends, just acquaintances who met here a few years ago.”

“Ah,” Alexis said as if gaining insight. This time it was her dark gaze going back and forth between Chrissie and Trace.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get started,” Chrissie said, feeling more and more awkward.

She walked away before either could say anything. She didn’t want to listen to the beautiful woman chat up Trace and she sure didn’t want to listen to whatever response he made to the woman’s obvious interest.

Had they been an item when Trace worked with her? The woman was so beautiful that no doubt they’d made an attractive couple.

He was free to do whatever he wanted. Whomever he wanted. But she didn’t want to know about it. Or see it.

What she’d really like to do was block it completely from her mind. Forever. She began organizing supplies and forcing a smile to stay on her face.

Attitude was everything and she was going to have a good attitude this weekend even if it killed her.

* * *

Chrissie was jealous.

She had no reason to be jealous, but the fact that she was made Trace happier than it should have.

Alexis was still chatting about the hospital and his former coworkers, but Trace’s attention followed Chrissie to where she began opening bins with a vengeance and a smile that didn’t fit. He’d already helped volunteers set up tables and chairs in their tent, so, other than however they opted to organize their supplies, there wasn’t a lot more to do. Many of their items would stay boxed up until needed.

“Who is she?”

Alexis’s question didn’t surprise him. Right or wrong, he hadn’t attempted to hide his interest in Chrissie.

“I met her here four years ago.”

“You stayed in touch?”

Still watching Chrissie work, he shook his head. “I’ve not seen or spoken to her since until today.”

Surprise registered on Alexis’s face. “That must have been some meeting four years ago.”

“Must have been,” was all he said, then, “I’m going to help her set up. You coming?”

* * *

Chrissie was one of those people who liked event-opening ceremonies. She liked knowing the history of whatever was taking place, of who the funds were going to help, of who they had already helped. Tonight’s was no exception.

Listening to Bud and Agnes talk about their daughter who’d died with cancer at such a young age, of the heartbreaking prevalence of childhood cancers, listening to how they had formed the Children’s Cancer Prevention Organization and how the charity had grown, and their hope it would expand further into more cities, filled her heart with warm emotion.

She simply could not imagine something happening to Joss or how she would react if it did. Like Bud and Agnes, she’d like to think she’d deal with her grief in a way that would make the world a better place for others.

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The Doctor's Secret Son

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