Hot-Shot Doc, Secret Dad: A Single Dad Romance

He made the wise decision of not attempting to touch her or even get too close. Though he leaned in and sincerity flowed from his gaze. “Completely. I messed up that night. There was nothing honorable about what I did. I took advantage of—”

“Wait a second, I may have been tipsy—well, we both were—but I still knew what I was doing. I had a choice in the matter. Made a bad one, but nevertheless.”

Now he was the one studying his boots. “That’s not the way it should be, the first time, you know?” He looked back up and nailed her. “A lady deserves some romance and wooing that first time. And I never even had the decency to apologize.”

Oh, my gosh, he was going all chivalrous on her. Too late, buddy. She’d waited and waited for his call, which had never come. He’d had his chance to be honorable, but had never bothered. Even so, she decided to take the practical route.

“Now that I’m thirty-one, I can say with certainty that life isn’t always the way it should be. That’s just how it is sometimes.” Without thinking, she reached for his forearm and squeezed. “We were both slightly inebriated, as I recall, and I’ll let you in on a little secret—I went to that party hoping to see you. I couldn’t believe it when you were interested in me, too. So—”

How naive could she have been? Any male would be interested in a willing woman at that age. Yeah, she’d learned that lesson the hard way.

“That still doesn’t make it right,” he said. “It’s not like losing your virginity can happen more than once.”

True, but how often did a girl get bells and whistles and romance with her first time? At least that had seemed to be the consensus among her friends back then, and, crazy as it sounded, it had helped ease her broken heart.

“It’s weighed on my mind and I just wanted to set things straight since you’re going to be working for me.” He glanced down at her hand, still grasping his forearm, and her ringless finger. “I messed up that night, didn’t have a clue you weren’t like the girls at college. I took advantage of you, plain and simple. Please forgive me.”

The remorseful expression, coupled with those dark, pleading eyes, painted a gentlemanly and heartfelt apology. It warmed Julie’s cynical heart by a few degrees, and brought out the forgiver in her. She let up on the tight clutch on his arm.

Truth was she’d packed away that chapter of her life years ago. What were the odds of getting knocked up your first time? Lucky her, right? Once the thrill of being with the guy of her dreams had worn off, he’d never called again, and the couple of missed periods had finally clicked in—better late than never, right? Julie had forgotten about that party and Trevor, who had already been long gone—she didn’t forget about him that quickly—and she’d faced the tough reality that she’d soon be a single mother at the ripe old age of eighteen.

But today was about a job, not about losing her virginity and getting pregnant. “Apology accepted.”

To be honest, many things weighed on her mind, too, about that night and the aftermath.

She’d already been enrolled at the University of Denver, and had settled into her dorm, gone through orientation, started her classes. After a couple of months and her normally irregular periods had just upped and quit, she hadn’t been able to deny her suspicions any longer and had taken a home test. Even though they’d used a condom, she’d gotten pregnant.

Julie had called her mother. The woman who’d had big plans for her education. Julie had been the model student her entire life—actually had had no choice, with her mother being a grade-school teacher and her father the principal of Cattleman Bluff High School.

Her mother’s voice had dropped at the truth. She’d flipped out, told Julie to have an abortion, so focused on her future, forgetting about Julie’s feelings and thoughts on the matter. “Your life will be over because of that baby.” She’d spit out the word baby, making Julie wonder if she’d ruined her own mother’s life.

“They’ll think you’re only after their money, those Montgomerys,” her father had said spitefully when he’d gotten on the phone. “They’ll publically humiliate you, and us.”

She’d shamed her parents and that had seemed to be all that mattered. Amazingly, with them, she and her baby had been left out of the mix.

Logically, because she’d been trained to think that way, Julie had transferred those implanted thoughts and doubts onto Trevor, the guy just beginning med school. With every ounce of guilt she’d felt heaped on her by her parents—as Julie’s mother had gotten her father involved in the call, with both pressuring her into ending the pregnancy—Julie had bundled up her feelings and kept her mouth shut.

Trevor hadn’t ever called her again. He hadn’t given a damn about her. It had hurt like hell and she’d been alone in a new city, with no friends and parents telling her to get rid of it. As if a baby could be called an “it”.

Hurt, anger and a large dose of immaturity had rounded out her decision. The good part was, against her parents’ advice, she’d kept her baby.

The tricky part was, she’d chosen never to tell Trevor about her being pregnant because she hadn’t wanted to be told to give up her baby by anyone else. She wouldn’t have regardless, no matter how much her parents had pressured her. But they’d gotten through to her on the rest—she hadn’t wanted to interfere with Trevor’s dream of becoming a doctor by telling him he was going to be a daddy. He’d already proved he didn’t care about her, hadn’t once tried to get in touch with her since they’d been together that night. She’d feared he’d deny he’d been with her, put all the blame on her, as her parents had. It would have ruined her one perfect night with the guy she’d dreamed about all summer.

Julie glanced at the man sitting next to her, smiling benevolently, and tried her best not to betray her thoughts.

Would he have accused her of only being after his family’s money, as her father had suggested? Being so young, she’d believed her parent’s predictions. And she’d been hurt, so hurt when she’d been forced to realize she didn’t mean anything to Trevor.

She’d been too young, immature, emotionally wounded and way too mixed up to work out all the particulars. How could she be expected to act rationally? But she’d stub-bornly chosen to keep Trevor in the dark. She’d show him. At least that was how it had started out. Then the reality of being a single mom and supporting herself had kicked in, and she’d been bound and determined to prove her parents wrong. She could do it all. She would do it all. Trevor had practically been forgotten by then. Now all these years later, she’d have to face her decision and somehow justify it.

Here she was accepting an apology from a man who’d taken her virginity but didn’t have any idea he was a father. That huge, and quite possibly unforgivable, reality twisted and tied into a knot the entire size of her stomach, making it hard to breathe.

“So you have my word that I’ll only behave respectfully and professionally toward you from here on out.” Could the guy sound any stiffer? Could she feel any worse?

Remember to breathe. “I appreciate that.” She figured she’d better ensure one thing before moving forward with what she suddenly needed—had no choice, in her mind—to do. “And I definitely have the job, right? And not just because of that?”

He gave a relieved smile. “I expect you to be here at eight tomorrow morning. Our first patient is scheduled for eight-thirty.”

She nodded, the rapid beating of her heart pounding up her neck and into her ears. She couldn’t keep the lie going, not if she’d have to face this man every day at work. It would eat away at her conscience. Might even interfere with her job performance. She couldn’t allow that to happen. For a millisecond she wished she’d never come back home, but James needed a chance at a better life. And she was hell-bent on giving it to him.

When she realized she’d been staring at her folded hands far too long, her gaze flitted upward to find Trevor’s perplexed expression. Oh, yeah, he was onto the fact something else was brewing.

She owed him the truth. Hadn’t he just taken a huge risk, bringing up their past, setting the record straight that he’d regretted their one time together?

Didn’t he deserve to know there were consequences? How on earth would he react?

Her pulse switched to a fluttery rhythm, vibrating all over her chest. This was the moment of truth, and she couldn’t let it pass.

“Trevor. Uh, about that night.” She looked straight ahead, unable to engage his eyes for now. Could he sense the dread in her voice?

James is the most wonderful gift in your life. There’s no room for shame over your son. Just tell him already!

“I mentioned I have a son, James. He’s twelve. Twelve years, nine months, to be exact.” Would he do the math instantaneously? She twisted an imaginary ring on her left hand, knowing she had to look Trevor in the eyes when she told him. Dreading it.

With every last nerve she could gather, she forced her gaze to his, praying he’d understand and not accuse her of lying. If he did, she’d have to quit the job before she ever started. “Well, since we’re laying everything out on the table today, I want you to know that …” She had to swallow first, because her throat seemed to have closed down.

His stare drilled into hers and her chest felt as if it would implode. She took a sip of air and just blurted it out.

“You’re the father.”

CHAPTER TWO

TREVOR’S BREATH WHOOSHED out of him as if he’d just been kicked in the solar plexus. Well, metaphorically, hadn’t he been? Julie Sterling—a one-night stand from the last night of a particularly great summer vacation—had just gifted him with the news. He was a father of a twelve-year-old boy and had never known it.

“What are you telling me?” He blinked, fighting off disbelief and a surge of anger.

Julie sat there, chin high, staring at him, looking far too young to be thirty-one.

In fact, right now she looked more like that pretty little gal with the wild curly brown hair and huge hazel eyes he’d played fast and reckless with that one night, all those years ago. She still had freckles across the bridge of her nose, and the thickest eyelashes he’d ever seen, and two minutes ago he’d been thinking how great it might be to get to know her again, how beautiful she’d become, how she still set off a reaction he’d forgotten about these past few years. Then she’d lowered the boom and hit him with the craziest news of his life. He had a son?

“I’m telling you the truth. I owe it to you,” she said. “I got pregnant that night.”

He needed to stand. Needed to inhale. Needed to pound his fist into the wall. Was she a whack job, setting him up? His legs seemed undependable at the moment, so he leaned against his desk and dug his hands into his jeans pockets, because he didn’t know what else to do with them. He finally remembered to close his mouth. “You’re sure that I’m the one who got you pregnant?”

Yeah, he was being ridiculously slow on the uptake, on purpose, and maybe a little insulting, too, might even qualify as a jerk, but he’d proved that long ago when he’d never called her after they’d been together. He needed time to process this flabbergasting and life-altering information.

He was a father? What if he didn’t want to be? Damn it, why hadn’t she given him a choice in the matter?

She nodded, unwavering in her speculative stare, her hands knotted in her lap. “As you mentioned earlier, I was a virgin. I didn’t run off and start sleeping around after that either. The OB doc tracked the pregnancy to nearly that exact day.”

Trevor’s hand flew to the top of his head, needing to check for a nonexistent cowboy hat. All these years he’d been a father? “Look, I’m sorry for how that may have come off. I’m just really thrown right now.” Getting kicked off a bucking bull couldn’t have felt worse.

“Understandably.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She slowly shook her head. “I didn’t want to ruin your first year in med school. Didn’t want you to feel obligated to me.” She glanced at the floor. “Didn’t want you to tell me to—”

“Look, I honestly don’t know what I would have done then. It would’ve been nice to have some say in the matter, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have told you to get rid of it. Er … him.” He grimaced. “James, is it?” His head spun with the knowledge of his son. A kid he’d never had an ounce of input in walked the earth not knowing he had a father. Did James know that he was his father?

“James Monty Sterling.”

“Monty? You know that’s my dad’s nickname, right?”

Still staring at the floor, she nodded.

So that was the one connection she’d kept to his family, and it was only a nickname. He ground his teeth to keep from spitting out the words flying through his head. Anger circled around like a hawk zeroing in on its prey. That urge to bash something with his fist returned, so he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “That wasn’t right of you.”

Her startled look hit him square in the jaw. “It might not have been right, but it’s what I did. I can’t apologize for it, but if you don’t want to hire me, I get it.”

Could he face her every day, forced to wonder how different the boy’s life would have been if he’d been in it? Would the kid have needed to go to military school if he’d had a father in his life? Why had she held out on him, and could he forgive her? Right now, he wasn’t sure what any of the answers were, but he knew he couldn’t fire her. To spite her, he’d only harm the kid. Instinct told him that wasn’t right.

She’d come back to her hometown to deal with her parents’ estate, and to put her, uh, their son in military school. All these years, she’d never hit him up for money or support on any level, even knowing his family was well off. There had to be something noble in that, except it was a boneheaded thing to do in the first place. She said she hadn’t wanted to ruin his first year in medical school, yet she’d changed the course of her entire life by taking sole responsibility for the act they’d done together.

Taking that into account, some of the rage swirling through his mind simmered down.

Nope, it didn’t seem fair to never know he was a father, but she’d called the shots, and unbeknownst to him he’d stood by in ignorance.

He could only imagine the nerve it took to drop that bomb, and how she’d had to swallow some major pride to apply for a job in his clinic in the first place. Had he been set up?

Something about her pouring out her heart to him after all these years, while having borne the burden of being a single parent for a kid who was half as much his as hers, made him zip through what was left of the shocked, angry and accusatory part. Before he realized what he was doing, he dropped to one knee to take her white-knuckle hands in his.

Her guts at finally telling him overrode his stunned reaction.

He studied her face. What the hell was he supposed to say?

“As you can imagine, I need some time to let this news sink in. I’ve never married and don’t have any kids, so the thought of being a father to a nearly thirteen-year-old son is mind-blowing.”

“I understand.”

She let him hold her hands, but still didn’t look at him.

“Your job’s safe.” Hell, he couldn’t very well kick the mother of his child out on the street, could he? Nor did he want to. He’d been anything but honorable way back then, turned out so had she, but that was all history and it couldn’t be changed. Right now was a chance to make up for it, and there was a kid in need of military school at stake. “But honestly, I’m going to need time to figure out what to do about the fatherhood part.”

“Of course.” Finally she engaged his eyes, looking amazingly earnest and so damn appealing, the expression grabbed his heart and squeezed it. Why did he still feel connected to her? Well, criminy, he was totally bonded to her by a kid, just didn’t know it until now! “I’m fine with keeping this strictly between us for now. I love my son and that will never change, and I don’t expect you to suddenly change your life. I’m just going for full disclosure here. New job and all.”

He patted her hand, thinking how soft and fragile it was, how right it felt cupped in his palm. “Give me some time to work this through, okay?”

“Okay, but first you’ve got to understand I’m not asking for anything but this job, Trevor.”

He nodded. “I believe you.”

“So let’s just keep this under wraps and move forward with my employment for now—is that okay?”

“If only it were that easy, Julie, but okay.” He stood, shaking his head like it might help put sense into the latest news. It didn’t. “At some point I’m going to want to meet him. Tell him.”

“If that time comes, we’ve got to do it together. Promise me that.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

She stood. “I won’t force it. Just so you know.”

He nodded again.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then?” A definite tentative tone to her question.

“Sure.” Still stunned, he didn’t have a clue what to do next, and his mind, in its currently baffled state, wasn’t exactly coming up with anything else to say either.

Julie headed for the door, her bulky winter coat over her arm, the conservative navy business suit she’d worn fitting her narrow waist and rounded hips perfectly. He glanced at her shapely calves, remembering how he’d liked her legs in short shorts that summer. Man, had that gotten him into trouble … and all these years he’d never even known just how much.

He scratched his head, curiosity causing him to ask. “Do you have a picture of James?”

She stopped and turned. “Of course. You want to see him?” A cautious yet agreeable glint in her eyes led to a flicker of that girl from all those summers ago.

“Please.” All kinds of new feelings buzzed around inside his body; his mind jumped from possibility to implausibility and back. He was a father?

She dug into her purse and produced a red leather wallet, opened it and immediately found a standard school photo and proudly showed it to him. “He’s tall for his age.”

He took it. If he’d doubted for one second that he’d actually been the father, he couldn’t very well do it now. And shame on him for even holding out a tiny hope it wasn’t true. The kid staring at him from the picture was a gangly version of himself at twelve or thirteen, but with Julie’s lighter brown, curly hair and freckles over the bridge of his nose. He suppressed his reaction, but was pretty sure she’d already picked up on it. That DNA couldn’t be denied.

“Thanks.”

“You want to keep it? I’ve got plenty more.”

Did he want to take the first step …? Hell, he’d done that thirteen years ago. “Sure. Thanks.” How could he refuse?

Julie gave a demure yet hopeful smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then.”

He tore his gaze from the photo and exhaled, then watched her walk down the hall to the exit. “I’ll be here.” Then he put the boy’s picture in his desk drawer and closed it.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

Rather than head straight to the house and face his father, since the sun had poked out that afternoon, Trevor decided to take a ride on Zebulon to help work through the residual anger directed at his newest employee. He also needed to check the area that his smartphone mapping app said was down. Until grazing-management technology was able to produce virtual fences and cattle headgear, he’d continue to do things the old-fashioned way—by hand. And today he’d use this possible boundary breach as an excuse to avoid facing his father. Besides, he needed more time to run the latest news through his brain—for about the hundredth time since Julie had told him he was a father.

He’d come home after graduating from college to help out on the ranch before heading off to medical school. He’d learned to work hard and play hard back then—he’d even finished his undergraduate work in three years instead of the usual four—and every weekend that summer, after helping out on the ranch, he’d hit whichever party in town that had promised the most ladies. Because he’d deserved it. At least, that was what he used to tell himself.

Sitting atop Zebulon, his buckskin Appaloosa, Trevor felt the frigid air cut through his lungs. He inhaled deeper, hoping the burn might shock some sense into him. Yet so far, he couldn’t get Julie and James Sterling, his ready-made family, out of his mind.

Back then, the year he’d met her, word had traveled fast in their tiny town, and it had always been easy to find out about the weekend hangouts. It hadn’t taken much to make a party. An old abandoned barn or a campfire ring, some bales of hay to sit on, car radios for music. The gatherings, as they used to call the weekly events, had always been well attended.

At twenty-one, he hadn’t been a teenager anymore, but he’d gotten used to partying on weekends at the university, so he’d gone. Got treated like near royalty as a college grad, too. And that was the first time he’d noticed Julie. He’d asked one of his buddies who she was and he’d told him she was seventeen and had just graduated from high school. They’d spent most of that summer checking out each other, but something had kept Trevor from approaching her. He hadn’t had any plans that included getting involved with a girl, not back home anyway, and maybe he’d instinctively known she might be trouble. Trouble? With that sweet face and sinful body?

Oh, yeah, trouble—big trouble. And damned if he hadn’t walked right into it.

“Will you dance with me?” she’d asked that night, looking all innocent and pretty as summer itself in a little flowery sundress. It had been the last weekend before he was set to leave for Boston University School of Medicine. He’d held out all summer, but something about the way the campfire had outlined her wild hair, making it look golden with shooting solar flares for curls, had made him accept the beer she’d handed him, and the offer to dance. He even remembered thinking, This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, and yet he hadn’t been able to help himself and had done it anyway. And it had been a slow dance.

He’d had a couple of beers already; even so he’d known he shouldn’t talk to or dance with this girl, but he hadn’t been able to resist. Not when she’d been right there, smiling so pretty.

Zebulon stopped without reason, and Trevor snapped out of his memories, realizing they were already at the fence line, and sure enough a couple of posts were down. He texted Jack, the ranch foreman, giving him the location, and waited for his reply.

And he remembered Julie’s bright, though guarded, eyes from earlier, how they’d still enticed him. How they’d brought back memories of that last summer home before med school, and his taking advantage of the young woman’s willingness that night. How they’d reminded him of innocence, both his and hers. She was right—she could have ruined the life he’d planned if she’d told him about the pregnancy back then. But she hadn’t. That had taken some guts.

In order to get through her orientation at the clinic, he’d have to turn into the Tin Man. Even now her playful hair and matured features grabbed him in a place he’d rather forget. Yeah, the Tin Man approach was the only ticket regarding her working for him. Good thing his nasty breakup with Kimberley—how she’d dropped him like a bad virus when he’d chosen family medicine over a more prestigious specialty the fourth year of med school—had already taught him how to turn his heart to metal.

His cell phone blipped, bringing him back to the range. Jack had got the message.

Normally, Trevor would have thought to bring his fence-repair kit with him, but today he’d been so distracted by Julie’s news, it had taken all his brainpower just to saddle up and mount his horse. He glanced upward to a cloudless sky, then downrange, seeing hundreds of head of cattle roaming on snow-spotted land.