From Midwife To Mummy

“I’ll give you the information you need to contact me,” Trent volunteered.

“Thank you,” the social worker responded. “And your lawyer has given us the information you have in relation to your brother’s alleged paternity.”

“And, having given you that information, I would like you to consider allowing me some visitation with the child,” Trent said.

“‘The child’ has a name. It’s Maggie. And why should I let you anywhere near her?” Lana asked.

“It’s your decision at this time, Lana, but we do have good reason to think that Mr. Montgomery’s brother was Maggie’s father,” said Ms. Nelson. “And if the DNA tests come back to show Mr. Montgomery as being her uncle, he will be able to ask for visitation while the court decides on custody.”

Lana looked at the man across from her. Cool blue eyes watched her from beneath thick dark lashes. She’d seen that calculating look before, only then it had been on the face of a toddler trying to figure out how to get another cookie after she had eaten her limit.

There was no denying the similarities this man shared with Maggie. And she feared that the DNA test would only confirm what her eyes were telling her now. Chloe had never said much about Maggie’s father, but she had said she’d written him a letter telling him she was pregnant when she hadn’t been able to get him to answer her calls. She had listed Maggie’s father as “unknown” on the birth certificate when she hadn’t heard anything from him, and she had refused to discuss him any further with Lana.

Lana rubbed at the tight knot she felt forming at the back of her neck. How could this day have gone so wrong? She was suddenly bone-tired. She knew she had to accept the fact that this fight wouldn’t be won here today.

“I’ll consider it,” Lana said. “But if I agree, I will be present at all times.”

“Thank you,” Trent said.

“About the DNA, Mr. Montgomery... I’m sure your lawyer has made you aware that the results when testing for an aunt or uncle of a child will not be definitive. It will give us more of a likely match than proof of a biological relationship.”

“Actually, it’s Dr. Montgomery, Ms. Nelson. But please call me Trent.”

For a moment Lana thought her brain would explode at this new piece of information. While she knew the court wouldn’t show any prejudice as far as financial circumstances were concerned, it would surely still consider if a child’s needs could be met. What if they felt that this Dr. Montgomery could provide better for Maggie?

“I’ll contact you both after we receive the DNA results and set up another appointment,” Ms. Nelson continued as she stood, letting Lana know that there wasn’t anything else to be said today.

Lana stepped out of the room and drew her keys out of her purse with trembling hands. She was glad she had sent Maggie home with Amanda instead of having them wait for her. She would have to use the time it would take her to get home to get herself together.

Thank goodness she had found Amanda, a medical student, while she had been looking for a roommate. With Amanda able to fill in as babysitter in exchange for rent, she had the extra help that a single parent needed.

She’d go home and get Maggie into bed, call Nathan to see what her options were, and then she would come up with a plan. Dr. Trent Montgomery might think that he had everything going his way, but they said possession was nine-tenths of the law and right now Maggie was hers.

Lana had only been fifteen when she had beaten the cancer that had been growing in her body. She’d lived through chemo and radiation treatment. She’d stumbled a bit when she had learned that the treatments that had saved her life had destroyed her dreams of having children, but she had managed to keep going even though she’d been hurting.

She was a fighter and she didn’t give up. And she was about to make a certain cowboy wish he had never left Texas.

CHAPTER TWO

LANA WALKED OUT of LDR Four and headed for the OB nurses’ lounge. The delivery had been complicated, due to the size of the baby boy, and the new mom had needed extra reassurance that everything was fine with both her and her baby. Now she would have to hurry back to the office as soon as she’d finished signing off on her orders.

She could hear the whispers and laughter of the nurses as she turned the corner of the nurses’ station. There had to be some new rumor spreading through the hospital, because she noted that everyone was gathered around Kat, the queen of hospital gossip. Usually she would have paused to hear what the newest bit of gossip was, but today she didn’t have time.

As soon as her paperwork was completed she changed out of her scrubs and headed back to her office. She didn’t want to leave her patients waiting any longer. Irate pregnant women could be downright scary, and her staff could only appease them with promises of her return for so long.

John Lincoln, one of the pediatricians employed by the hospital working the obstetric hall, waved from the nursery hallway as she passed. A few seconds later she heard her name called and turned to find John was following her, with another man dressed in the hospital’s light blue scrubs beside him.

Lana stopped and stared at the two men even as she shook her head in denial. There was no way this could be happening to her.

“Hey, Lana,” John said as he approached. “This is Dr. Trent Montgomery. He’s taken the locum tenen position we’ve had open since Dr. Lee left.”

“We’ve met,” Lana said as she turned toward Trent. “What are you doing here?”

“As John just told you, Ms. Sanders, I’ve accepted a temporary job with the pediatric department,” Trent said. “I’m looking forward to the two of us working together.”

Work with the person who was trying to take Maggie away from her? No way was that going to happen.

“But why? Why are you here?” Lana asked.

John looked at Lana, then back at Trent with a frown. “I take it you two know each other?” John asked.

“We’ve met.” Lana said as she moved to one side of the hall to let a nurse pushing a patient in a wheelchair pass.

She noticed the look the nurse gave this new doctor in town. Yeah, she hated to admit it, but he was something to look at. Even with his high-dollar suit and cowboy boots gone he looked good. The pastel color of the cotton scrubs should have dimmed some of that masculine power that he threw off, but instead it seemed to amplify the hardness of the body they covered.

There would be a swarm of women circling around him as if he was roadkill as soon as they got a good look at him. And she would just leave them to it. Because no matter how good he looked she didn’t want him anywhere near her and Maggie. Why was he doing this to her? Her life was stressful enough without him in her hospital, where she would be running into him all the time.

Crossing her arms, she leaned against the wall. There was no way she was going to let him know how rattled he made her. She didn’t care how sexy he looked standing there, she was going to let him know exactly how she felt about this ploy of his. Because that had to be what this was—just one more way to intimidate her into giving up Maggie.

But it wouldn’t work, she was tougher than that. She would not let him get to her. There was too much at stake here. She had too much to lose to let a hard-bodied, hard-headed man get the best of her. She’d play his game if that was what it took to beat him.

“I’ll catch up with you in the lounge,” Trent said to John.

Lana waited till John was out of hearing range before asking the question that was burning her tongue. “What do you think you’re doing here, Dr. Montgomery?” she asked. “Why aren’t you back in Houston?”

Lana watched him take in her knowledge of that piece of information. Yeah, she’d done a little online stalking and it had paid off.

She’d found out that he worked in one of the largest women and children’s hospitals in Houston as a pediatrician, for Pete’s sake. Why he worked as a doctor at all, when he came from a family loaded with oil money, she didn’t understand.

After seeing several pictures of him at different social affairs, all with a different beautiful woman on his arm, she had thought her heart would stop when she’d found an article that listed him as one of Houston’s most eligible bachelors and had seen what was listed as his estimated net worth.

After that she had read everything the internet had on him, looking for something—anything—to use against him. But she hadn’t found anything, and with every article her fear of losing Maggie had increased.

And apparently all the while she had been checking him out, he had been checking her out too. Because even if he had a good reason for leaving the hospital in Houston, the fact that he’d shown up at the hospital where she practiced out of all the hospitals in Miami meant he’d done his research. Or paid someone else to do it.

Wasn’t that what the rich did? Hired someone else to do all the dirty work for them? There were no coincidences with men like Trent Montgomery. No, he had an agenda in coming here, and she would find out what it was one way or the other.

“After my lawyer informed me that the courts would look favorably on me being within their district, I took leave from my job in Houston. Also, it made sense that it would be easier to work with you as far as visitation goes if I was living in the area. A temporary position opened up here, so I inquired and was offered the position.”

As if the pediatric department was going to turn down a qualified pediatrician who had graduated from Emory and done a residency in neonatology when they were so short on staff.

“Besides, Miami is a beautiful city,” he said as he moved closer, leaning in toward her as a group of staff members came down the hall. “Who wouldn’t want to live here?”

She knew better than to let his look of innocence fool her, and she certainly wasn’t going to let the fact that his body was now only inches away affect her.

“What did you tell the interviewers?” she continued, as she tried to ignore her speeding heartbeat. She hadn’t discussed her court appearance with anyone at work—had just told those who’d asked that there had been a small delay in the paperwork at the court.

“I told them I had an interest in the position due to some business I had here in Miami,” Trent said as he moved back a few inches. “I don’t see why the hospital should have any concern for our private affairs.”

Realizing she had been holding her breath, Lana let her lungs expand fully. The racing of her heart let her know she was allowing this man to get to her, and that wasn’t acceptable. She would have to stop letting him intimidate her.

“And I’m supposed to believe that you just happened to end up at the same hospital where I work?”

Trent shrugged a shoulder, then gave her a smile that set her teeth on edge. This was a man who not only knew he was charming, but also knew how to use it to his advantage.

“That’s what I thought,” Lana said as she moved once more to let one of the unit nurses pass.

The fact that it was the same brunette nurse who had walked by earlier didn’t surprise her. Word had clearly already gotten out that there was a new male doctor on the unit, and the fact that he was sexy as hell meant that he would be getting even more attention than usual.

Soon the fact that she knew the new doc would come to the attention of the staff. And that was something that she didn’t want to deal with right now.

* * *

Trent watched Lana as she stomped off, then stopped to pull a ringing phone from her pocket and answer it. He’d known she’d be angry when she found out he’d obtained a job at the hospital she worked at, and he couldn’t blame her. What had surprised him was his reaction to her anger. The woman was as feisty as a wild filly, and reluctantly he had to admit that he’d found it entertaining and even a little arousing to watch her spit and sputter as she reached her boiling point with him.

And that was the strangest thing. Normally the sight of a woman’s anger sent him running in the opposite direction. He’d seen enough of his mother’s tantrums with his father to know he didn’t want any part of that in his life. But this woman’s anger was different. It was hot and furious, but at the same time it was controlled and non-threatening.

And she was sure something to see when her green eyes started to spark lightning strikes at him.

The woman would have his head if she knew that while she’d been doing all that ranting and raving he’d been thinking about how cute she was, trying to intimidate him with her five and a half feet against his six-feet-two-inch self.

The insistent screech of the beeper attached to his scrub bottoms went off and he read a message from the ER, concerning a preterm imminent delivery coming in.

“Which way to the ER?” he asked Lana as she ended her call.

For a second she just stared at him. Then, shaking her head, she turned down another hallway. “Come on, I’ll show you,” she said, not looking back to see if he was following her.

“There’s a thirty-three-week antepartum coming in by ambulance,” he said when he caught up with her.

“She’s thirty-four weeks and six days. That was her husband on the phone,” she said.

He knew those six days could make a big difference in the outcome of the delivery.

“Your patient?” he asked as they boarded an empty elevator to the bottom floor.

“Her name is Taylor. Her husband Dean says that her water suddenly broke and contractions started immediately. She has a history of preterm delivery and was on bedrest.”

“How early were her other deliveries?”

“She’s only had one. Her son Phillip was born at thirty-six weeks.”

Trent waited for Lana to leave the elevator, then followed her through the double doors leading into the emergency room. Multiple glass-doored rooms opened up from what looked like the hub of the department, where nurses and doctors could be seen in front of monitors and answering phones.

“This way,” Lana said as she turned left. “The department is basically set up with the trauma rooms on this end and the less urgent patients on the other.”

She stopped in front of a large monitor set up at the end of the hallway then preceded into a room labeled Trauma Four.

As he entered the large room he noted the baby-warming unit set up in the corner, and the nurses around them opening up the delivery set on a stand near an empty stretcher.

He grabbed Lana’s arm and moved her back as a couple of emergency responders pushed a stretcher into the room, holding a pregnant woman panting and gripping the hands of the female responder.

As he gowned and gloved up he listened as the other responder gave his report to the room. “Spontaneous rupture of membranes twenty minutes ago with contractions starting immediately. Contractions now every two minutes. Vital signs with blood pressure elevated and heart-rate tachy at one-twenty.”

He watched as Lana, also gowned and gloved, helped move the patient to the trauma bed then immediately did a vaginal exam, all the time talking to her patient in a calm voice.

“Is there time to move her upstairs?” he asked. He knew everyone would feel better if they could do the delivery on the obstetric unit.

“Nope,” Lana said. “This one is coming right now.”

A young nurse he was sure he had been introduced to earlier as belonging to the NICU team laid a blanket over his arms and he moved over to where Lana stood.

A breath later and Lana was holding out a small baby for the sobbing mother to see, then reaching for clamps and scissors as she made fast work of freeing the baby from its cord.

Rubbing its back to stimulate a cry, she turned toward him. Pausing for a second, she gave him an assessing look, then with a hesitant nod she handed the baby girl to him.

He took over from where Lana had stopped, and rubbed the baby’s back as he did his assessment. A small cry started as he reached the warmer, and had turned into a howl by the time he laid her down.

The whole room broke out in cheers. He looked back to where Lana was comforting the new mom and saw big smiles on both their faces.

“Sounds like she has a good set of lungs to me,” he said.

He waited for the nurses to bundle her up, then brought the squalling baby to its mother and introduced himself.

“She’s a little early, so I’d like to take her up to the nursery to observe her a little closer, but I’ll get her back to you as soon as possible.”

“But she’s going to be okay?” the new mother asked.

“Her color looks good...she’s going to get a seven and an eight on her Apgar. She was a bit slow starting up, but she’s got the hang of it now, I’d say.”

“As soon as you’re ready I’ll take you up to her,” Lana told Taylor.

Trent laid the baby in the transport crib—she had calmed down some once she had been swaddled into a striped pink blanket—and followed the assigned nurse up to the nursery.

Considering everything that might have happened, he and Lana had managed to keep their personal issues out their jobs, thought Trent. He’d consider that a win for now.

He had no explanation for the way he responded to this woman. Since their first meeting thoughts of her had filled his mind, along with a deep pang of guilt at being the one who would to separate her from the little girl he could see she loved very much. But his agenda was set and nothing could change it now. He’d take care of his niece, just as his brother had asked him to, and he’d find a way to work with this midwife without everything around them exploding, while at the same time using the opportunity to find out everything he might be able to use in the custody battle.

He had to stop this adoption from going through. He wouldn’t let his father ruin his niece’s life the way he had ruined his brother’s and mother’s. He would protect her from his father no matter what it took, and once he had custody of his niece his brother’s will would make sure his old man never had the power to hurt anyone again.

* * *

Lana took her place at Ms. Nelson’s desk and waited for the social worker to finish her phone call. For once she had made it early for an appointment, and she planned on taking advantage of the time she had before Trent arrived.

Why the social worker felt it necessary for the two of them to meet together with her she didn’t understand. The man rubbed her the wrong way, and she had spent the last few days doing her best to avoid him at the hospital, but there had been no way to get out of this meeting.

She would have to keep control of her temper, no matter how hard it was to stay in control when Trent Montgomery was in the room. Making a good impression with the social worker was too important. And, while her lawyer had given her his opinion of Trent’s case for custody, she knew that a lot of the custody decision would be based on the social worker’s investigation.

“Sorry about that, Lana,” said Karen Nelson as she hung up the phone. “It’s been a busy day today. I know this might sound cold, with your situation, but I just wish every child had two adults like you and Mr. Montgomery wanting them.”

“That bad?” Lana asked.

She knew that there were a lot of children in foster homes who would never be adopted. She had seen it in her practice as a midwife, when one of her patients might give birth to a child she couldn’t take care of and the child would go into the system. Then the mother wouldn’t agree to give up her rights to the child, making it impossible for the child to be adopted, so they just continued to stay in the foster system year after year.

Thankfully Chloe had made it clear in her notarized letter, and later in her correspondence with the court, that she wanted Maggie to be adopted. If only more mothers like her could see that they wouldn’t be letting their children down but instead opening up a better option for them.

“Yeah,” the social worker said as she finger-combed the back of her hair, took a deep breath and then seemed to reset herself back into work mode as she started going through the files on her desk.

Not for the first time Lana wondered why someone would ever go into social work—especially in Children and Families. The pressure to ensure the safety of all the children they were responsible for must be mind-boggling.

“While we wait for Dr. Montgomery to arrive let’s talk about how you’re doing. I know this isn’t easy for you. Are you hanging in there okay?”

“I know you’re right about Maggie being a lucky little girl. I get that,” Lana said, “but how much harm will come to her if she’s taken away from the only home she’s ever known and placed with a stranger? She’s been through so much already.”

“I’m her uncle—not a stranger. And surely you can see the advantages of a child being raised among her biological family?” Trent said as he stared down at Lana.

“She’s not even two. She’s not really interested in your stock portfolio,” Lana said.

How had she let him sneak up on her like that?

“Dr. Montgomery—” the social worker started.

“Ma’am,” Trent said as he tipped his big cowboy hat before sitting down beside her. “Please, call me Trent.”

Lana watched as he gave the woman what she had overheard one of the nurses call his “killer” smile. He was such a suck-up.

“Trent, please take a seat.”

The social worker’s smile beamed back at Trent, causing Lana to knot her hands into fists in her lap when what she really wanted to do was wrap them around the man’s neck.

“I was just telling Lana that I know this is not easy for her. It must be hard for you too, having just lost your brother and now moving to Miami on such short notice. I was surprised when your lawyer notified me that you were relocating temporarily. I’m sure this has disrupted your life. You must have been very close to your brother to be willing to make these changes.”

Lana saw the smile on his face tighten. She didn’t have any doubt that there was a story there. Had there been trouble between the brothers? Was there something she could use?

“With my brother gone, I feel that it is my responsibility to make sure his daughter is taken care of,” Trent said, and then he turned in his chair toward Lana. “That’s what families are for. Wouldn’t you agree, Lana?”

Lana looked into Trent’s eyes. Somehow he had managed to turn the tables on her, making any protest she might come up with seem heartless and uncaring. Well, two could play that game.

“Yes, families are important. That’s why I’ve decided to agree to you spending some time with Maggie,” Lana said, and she watched Trent to see his reaction to this piece of news.

She’d thought her lawyer crazy when he’d advised her to consider the visitation, but after he had explained that it would be a way to show the courts that she was willing to allow Maggie to see her biological family after the adoption it had made sense. She was willing to do whatever was necessary to keep her little girl—even if it meant spending time with an irritating cowboy.

“That sounds great, Lana. I’m so glad that the two of you are working together so well,” Ms. Nelson said. “The reason I asked for this meeting was so that we could discuss where we go from here. I know the two of you are on different sides in this case, but I want you both to remember the most important thing to consider here is Maggie and her wellbeing.”

“Of course,” Lana said, and then looked over at Trent.

“Certainly, Ms. Nelson,” Trent said.

Lana watched the corners of Trent’s mouth twitch, as if trying to hold back a smile. Why did she suddenly feel she had fallen into a trap? A trap with a big, bad smiling wolf in it, waiting to devour her.

“Good,” said Ms. Nelson. “I take it you two will come to terms with the visitation arrangements, so unless there is anything else that comes up I won’t need to see either of you again till the DNA test results come back.”