From Midwife To Mummy

“That’s fine,” Trent said. “I feel sure me and Lana will be able to come to an agreement.”

“I’m sure we will,” Lana said. An agreement? She’d have to remind him that she would be the person in control of their meetings.

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Nelson,” Trent said, blessing the social worker with another one of his smiles as they rose to leave.

Lana walked beside Trent as they left the office building. He’d been quiet as they had ridden down on an overcrowded elevator. It had been uncomfortable, being squeezed next to him. It seemed that no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t get away from the man.

They could play nice together in front of the social worker, but that was as far as she could go with it. Just standing next to him was enough to fire up her defenses. This man was a threat to her and she knew she had to stay alert.

Of course there was that saying about keeping your enemies closer than your friends. Was that what Trent was doing by coming to work where he knew he’d be able to observe her? Not that there was any dirt he could dig up on her. She had never lived much of an exciting life. She had even started to think lately that she was getting to be just plain old boring.

Maybe after Maggie’s adoption had taken place she’d take up a hobby, or get back in the dating pool. Maybe.

Thoughts of Joe and the way their relationship had ended left her shaking her head. Even though the man had professed that he loved her, it hadn’t been enough. Not enough to make him want a future with a woman who couldn’t give him children.

Her dream of a forever marriage—a marriage filled with love and support like her parents’—had been destroyed the day they’d broken up and she’d had to accept that she would probably never be able to find a man who would accept her as she was, damaged and broken.

No, she wasn’t going anywhere near heartache any time soon. She had created her own little family with Maggie and that was enough. Now she just had to find a way to keep her family intact and get this cowboy back to Texas. And, as much as it was going to kill her, it was going to mean spending some time with him.

“Look, we need to talk about this visitation. There will have to be some rules. Are you hungry?” Lana asked.

“Yeah, I skipped lunch so that I could get off on time,” Trent said.

“There’s a little Cuban deli I usually stop by when I’m down here,” Lana said. “The food’s good and the people are friendly.”

Lana watched as Trent’s lips twitched, as if he was unable to decide how to take her invitation, and then they parted. Something about his bright smile caused her warning bells to go off. Danger, danger, they said, but it was too late. For the second time that day she felt as if she was the fly that was getting caught up in Trent’s web.

Maybe from now on they should discuss these visitations over the phone.

“Sounds good,” Trent said. “Do we walk or drive?”

“Walk,” Lana said.

She found herself about to smile back at him before she caught herself. She couldn’t let herself be influenced by this man’s charms. They would discuss the necessary arrangements and maybe she’d also try to pry a little information out of him. This was about Maggie—not the stupid way his smile made her legs wobble as she started walking up the street.

She had found Café MaRita on one of her visits to the Children and Families Department office, and she was glad to see the two sisters who owned the deli were working when she arrived at the walk-up window.

“Hey, Rita,” Lana said, then waved to Mary in the back, where she was putting together the spicy sandwiches they were known for. “Can I get two Cubanos, an iced tea and...?” Lana turned to Trent questioning.

“A coffee, please,” Trent said. “A cafecito?”

The small Cuban woman smiled at his pronunciation of the word for a coffee topped with sugary foam.

“I like this one,” Rita said, and she winked at Trent. “He’s dark and hot. Like my coffee. If you decide to get rid of him let me know.”

“Oh, no,” Lana said as she felt heat spread up her face, “it’s not like that—”

“I’ll make it a point to look you up when she’s finished with me,” Trent said, interrupting Lana.

Did the man have to flirt with every woman he met? Taking the sandwiches, she found an empty picnic table set out in the front of the deli and started dividing the food while she waited for Trent.

Watching him as he talked to the older Cuban woman while she prepared their drinks, Lana was impressed at how at ease he seemed with people. He had the ability to charm everyone he met—well, everyone except for her. The only thing she would find charming about him would be his backside headed out of town.

* * *

Trent watched Lana as she bit into her sandwich. He could see she was concentrating on something, and he didn’t think it was just the sandwich she was eating—though she did seem to be enjoying it. It was nice to see a woman eat her food without any posturing about diets and calories.

He watched as the pink tip of her tongue slipped out and caught some of the juice running down the side of her mouth. From nowhere a burst of desire filled him, and he felt a jolt of arousal as it spread down his groin. Another swipe of her tongue along the crease of her mouth had his pants becoming uncomfortably tight.

He shifted in his seat, causing Lana to suddenly look up from her meal, and he knew the second their eyes connected that he wasn’t hiding the hunger that had hit him. The surprise came when her eyes changed and she lifted her eyebrows, silently questioning him. If this was any other woman he might have thought she was purposely playing with him, but that just didn’t seem like Lana’s style.

“Sorry, I haven’t found a way to eat these without making a mess,” Lana said.

“That’s okay. I’m actually enjoying watching you.” Trent said, then watched spots of color flush her cheeks.

“Tell me why you decided to go into medicine instead of staying in the family business,” Lana said, changing the subject.

His gut tightened as he thought of the decision he had made to follow his dreams. Would his brother still be here if he hadn’t left him behind with his father? He had let Michael down when he’d walked away from his father’s expectations for him. In saving himself from becoming the heir apparent to the Montgomery empire he had left his brother to deal with their father’s unreasonable demands and bouts of temper.

No one had ever been good enough for their father. No one had been able to stand up to the old man’s expectations. Not him, not their mother, and certainly not his brother. He had urged his brother to follow after him and get away from his father’s influence, but Michael hadn’t been strong enough. He’d even tried to talk his brother into the two of them joining together and using their share of the company stocks to oust their father from his position as head of the company, but Michael had refused.

Instead, Michael had continually tried to earn their father’s approval, and when that hadn’t happened he had turned to the same thing their mother had used to escape their father: alcohol. And when that hadn’t been enough he had turned to drugs, until finally the two had killed him.

“You could say I did follow in one of my family’s footsteps. My Uncle Jim was a surgeon. He had a lot of influence on my decision,” Trent answered. She didn’t need to know the turmoil his decision had caused to his family.

“Any regrets?” Lana asked.

“What?” Trent asked, startled by the question.

Did she know about the division in his family? Had she somehow learned about the threats and bribes his father constantly sent him, trying to get him to come back to the family-run business?

“I don’t know much about the oil business, but I do know about all the demands and sacrifices a medical career requires. It just seems you could have had a pretty good thing going for you, working in your own company,” Lana said.

“I find being a pediatrician very satisfying and challenging. And I can make far more of a difference as a pediatrician than as a businessman, don’t you think?” Trent said.

He stood and started gathering up items from the table to throw out. For now, the less this woman knew about his business, the better.

“You said you wanted to discuss the visitations?” Trent said.

“Yes, I do. I hope you understand that just because I’m letting you spend time with Maggie it doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about keeping her?”

“I think you’ve made that plain,” Trent said.

The only way she could have made her intentions any plainer would have been for her to tattoo them on her body. He had no doubt this woman was going to fight him all the way.

“Okay, then. I’m willing to allow visitations as long as it’s understood that I’m in charge of everything that concerns her. I’ll always be present and I’ll have the final word on when and where.”

* * *

After the short walk back, Trent watched as Lana’s car pulled out of the parking garage. Nothing he had learned so far, today or at the hospital, indicated that she was anything other than a young woman working as a midwife and raising a child she loved as her own. He couldn’t help but like her, and he hated that she was being pulled into this mess with his father, but he didn’t see any way out of it. And it was better that she had to deal with him instead of the old man. At least he fought fair. He couldn’t say that about his father.

They had arranged a time for him to visit Maggie during their walk back to their cars and Lana had been more than fair with him. Everything he had heard around the hospital about Lana had been positive. He even felt a little guilty that he had taken a job here to see what he could dig up on her. From what he had seen so far there wasn’t anything in her character that made him think he needed to be worried about his niece not being cared for, or that there was anything he could use against her in the court case.

But he knew how appearances could be deceptive. Hadn’t his mom had everyone fooled until it was too late? No one had ever known about the fights between his parents. or the times when his mother had never even got out of the bed in the mornings, leaving two little boys to care for themselves.

He knew first-hand that no one ever really knew what went on behind the closed doors of a home. No matter how much Lana Sanders looked like the perfect mother, he would be sticking to the woman like glue until he had custody of his niece and knew without a doubt that she was safe.

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