DADDY BY CHOICE

by Paula Detmer Riggs

  "Perhaps you'd better explain the details of this settlement."

  "I suppose I must." His voice was perilously close to a whine. "I'll deed my share of the house over to you as well as your car and a third of our joint stock portfolio in return for your absolving me of any and all paternal obligations, now or in the future. In addition, you agree not to give the child the surname of Foster. My preference would be that you revert to your maiden name, as well, but that's your own choice. I would, of course, want those points spelled out in writing, duly witnessed and notarized. In addition, I never want to see the child or have him think of me as his father. You will not put my name on his birth certificate or on the form when you enroll him in school."

  Madelyn's knees were turning to jelly, and the pulsing in her head took on jagged edges. If she'd been alone, she would have sunk to the mattress and conducted the rest of this slimy discussion from a fetal position. As it was, she hated the thought that Luke might surface at any moment. A quick look over her shoulder reassured her that he was blessedly oblivious.

  Turning back and ducking her head, she curved her hand around the mouthpiece. "Wiley, think about that a minute," she whispered urgently. "I can understand if you're angry, even though we both know I never lied to you. Take it out on me if you have to, but for God's sake don't punish your own flesh and blood."

  "I told you I never wanted a child, Madelyn."

  "But he's going to grow up in the same town. He'll hear gossip. Kids can be so terribly cruel, and even if they aren't, sooner or later he'll realize you don't want him."

  "You should have thought of that before refusing to terminate this pregnancy."

  Madelyn realized it was futile to argue. Besides, the pain in her head was truly vicious now. Icy fingers gouging chunks from her skull. It was an effort to form coherent sentences.

  "Your terms are acceptable," she managed to enunciate before removing the phone from her ear. Jagged zigzags of phosphorescent light shot across her field of vision as she attempted to return the phone to the cradle, causing her to miscalculate. The phone fell from her fumbling fingers, hitting the table with a noisy clatter.

  "Oh God, oh God, oh God," she whispered, bracing a shaking hand on the slick tabletop. Her knees were water. Nausea roiled in her belly, and her throat burned. She swallowed against the urgent need to physically purge herself of the ugly feelings inside her. Gagging, she clasped her hand over her mouth.

  "Easy, darlin', I've got you."

  Before she'd even known he was awake, Luke had scooped her into his arms, carrying her with long swift strides into the bathroom where she was noisily miserably sick.

  * * *

  Luke pressed two fingers against the carotid artery in Maddy's neck as she lay on the bed, his gaze on the second hand of his watch. Her pulse had settled nicely since she'd dozed off, and the flow of blood was reassuringly strong. Slowly he withdrew his hand, his gaze focused intently on her face. Though her skin was still pale, her breathing had evened into a normal rhythm.

  Silently he brushed the back of his hand against the satiny curve of her cheek, his brow still knitted. Though still too cool, her skin was no longer clammy.

  "Luke?" she murmured, nuzzling his hand. Curly golden eyelashes fluttered as she struggled to focus.

  "I'm here, Maddy." He removed the folded washcloth from her forehead, replacing it with one he'd just dipped in ice water and wrung nearly dry.

  Even as she sighed in relief, eyes the color of a Mexican sea and glazed with pain blinked up at him. The helpless vulnerability shimmering in the depths squeezed his heart. "My baby?"

  "Sleepin' most likely. Those little critters are real tough."

  Her brow puckered as she stared at him, her eyes huge with fear and pain and her pale mouth trembling. "I'm … so scared of losing him."

  "Go back to sleep and let me take care of both of you." He smoothed back her hair with a hand that wasn't at all steady. "Things will look brighter when you wake up."

  "I hate this … needing you."

  "I know."

  "Part of me still hates you."

  "I know that, too."

  "They wouldn't even let me nurse her, our baby. They said they didn't want her to bond with someone who wasn't going to be her mama. I begged and begged…" She blinked. "You would have made them give her to me, wouldn't you, Luke?"

  A hole opened in his gut. "Yes, I would have made them."

  "I still hear her crying sometimes. Crying for her mama." She sighed, her eyelashes drifting closed. "Did I ever tell you?" she mumbled in a voice barely above a sigh.

  "Tell me what, Maddy?" he asked gently.

  For a moment he thought she hadn't heard him. And then her pale lips curved into a soft smile. "Our baby, she looked just like you."

  Luke sat on the edge of the mattress for a long time, silently stroking her hair while his heart seeped blood, his mind filled with an image of Maddy cradling a tiny black-haired baby in her arms. He'd thought nothing could make him hurt worse than that day on her porch when she'd told him he would never see the child he'd fathered so carelessly.

  He'd been dead wrong.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  Maddy stirred restlessly, then surfaced from a twilight sleep with a nagging sense of anxiety. The room had grown darker, she realized as she opened her eyes. The TV was on in the room next to hers—she could hear it faintly—and on the street below, a horn blared, the sound muffled by both distance and the old hotel's thick brick walls. She had no concept of time, just that the worst was over and she'd survived.

  Lifting her hand, she touched the cloth on her head. To her surprise it was still cold. Slowly she turned her head, expecting to see Luke sprawled in the chair, his feet propped on the edge of the bed, his eyes heavy lidded and lazy as he watched over her.

  She was already rehearsing the words that would send him down to dinner without her when her breath dammed up in her throat. There was a woman sitting where Luke had been, a tiny woman with bright copper curls and an even brighter orange sleeveless shirt who was watching her with big brown eyes. Madelyn guessed her age to be late thirties, early forties. Her contemporary certainly.

  Seeing that Madelyn was awake, she smiled and held up a hand. Madelyn noticed that she wore a wedding ring. She'd removed her own on the day Wiley had rejected their child. "Don't panic, I'm a nurse. Luke had to leave to make rounds, and he asked me to hang out here until he got back."

  Madelyn cleared the sleep from her throat. "I'm Madelyn Foster," she said before finding a smile of her own.

  "Yes, I know. I'm Prudy Randolph. I work with Luke at Portland General. He's also a good friend." She unfolded her legs in order to lean forward. "How's the head?"

  "Better, thanks. Sleep almost always does the trick. The hard part is getting to sleep."

  Ms. Randolph offered a look of sympathy. "Think you can manage some water?"

  Madelyn was so thirsty she decided to risk unsettling her stomach. "Yes, please."

  "I just got some ice from the machine for the compress," the woman said as she sprang to her feet and headed for the bathroom.

  While the water ran and the pipes rattled, Madelyn carefully moved the compress from her head to the nightstand. After a few testing breaths she sat up. She felt woozy, but much better.

  "Luke tells me you're from Texas," Ms. Randolph said when she returned, a glass of water in one hand and a bucket filled with what sounded like ice and water.

  "Yes, ma'am," Madelyn replied, taking the glass between both her hands as she added a polite thank-you.

  "Please, call me Prudy. I have this overpowering urge to run to the mirror to check for crow's feet and sagging eyelids whenever anyone calls me ma'am."

  "I know the feeling." Madelyn took another sip of the cold water, then held the glass against her forehead for a long soothing moment before glancing Prudy's way again. The instinct honed over the years told her this was a woman who could be truste
d.

  "Feeling any discomfort in your belly? Cramping? Unusual pressure?" she asked when Madelyn's gaze met hers.

  "No, thank goodness."

  "More?" Prudy asked when Madelyn set the empty glass next to the phone.

  "No, thank you. I think I've tested my stomach enough for the moment."

  "With my second I had morning sickness for five endless fun-filled months. Luke put me in the hospital twice on force fluids before I could become seriously dehydrated."

  "How many children do you have?"

  "Two redheaded daughters, or as my husband, Case, calls them, the two terrible terrors of Maternity Row."

  Madelyn blinked. "Maternity Row?"

  Laughing, Prudy pulled up her tanned legs, encircled them with her arms and leaned her chin on her knees. She was barefoot, Maddy noticed, and her toes were painted a fluorescent orange to match her shirt. Her shorts were fuchsia splashed with green triangles. It was a combination that should have looked garish. On Prudy, however, it seemed utterly right somehow.

  "Maternity Row is our pet name for this little section of the old city overlooking the Columbia. Its real name is Mill Works Ridge, but Case took to calling it Maternity Row because almost everyone who moves in is either pregnant or about to be." She paused. "Well, except for Harriet Finkle, who's going on seventy now, but since she retired from her job at North-west Financial, she's almost always off on one of her 'life adventures,' so she doesn't really count."

  Madelyn laughed. "Sounds like a very special place."

  "Oh, it is that. Very … healing somehow." Prudy's eyes twinkled. "If I weren't such a practical soul, I'd call it magical." She twisted in the chair, draping her legs over the padded arms. Energy crackled from her small frame. The word dynamo popped into Madelyn's mind and stayed.

  "One night a month the guys get together to play poker and the moms take the kids to a kiddy movie or rent videos and pig out on junk food. Last month we took the little ones to a petting zoo at the mall, which actually turned out not to be a good idea, because one of the Paxton twins got nipped in the bum by a baby goat who'd taken exception to having his ears tied in a knot." Her grin flashed again. "Raine Paxton swears her boys can run rings around my girls in the terror department any day of the week. We've decided to blame L.J. since he's delivered most of the Maternity Row babies. But we forgive him because he's everyone's favorite uncle."

  Glancing down, Madelyn smoothed the coverlet with fingers that were still a little icy. "I saw the artwork in his office addressed to Uncle Luke," she said softly.

  "He calls that his gallery wall and is always pointing out new additions whenever I go in for a checkup."

  "Is he married?" The question was out before she realized it had been on her mind.

  "No. Never has been, either." Prudy sighed. "If ever there was a man in need of a family of his own, it's L.J."

  It had been there for him, Madelyn wanted to shout. A wife who would have adored him, a darling baby daughter with shiny black hair like his. "Perhaps he has other priorities," she said a little too stiffly.

  A speculative gleam popped into Prudy's eyes, making Madelyn wonder if her voice had betrayed her thoughts. She prepared herself for the barrage of prying questions so common among women in Whiskey Bend, but to her surprise—and relief—Prudy's expression grew rueful.

  "The other ladies of the Mommy Brigade and I have tried for years to fix him up with a nice lady, but he's one slippery dude. Oh, he's perfectly charming in that 'yep' and 'nope' way he has, but as far as any of us know, he never takes a woman out more than three times. He—" She was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. "That must be the cowboy now."

  Beneath the flowered coverlet Madelyn's stomach was jumping again. Little jittery pulses that had nothing to do with the lingering remnants of her migraine and everything to do with the way this man had always affected her.

  "How's my patient?" he asked in a tired voice as Prudy stepped back to allow him to enter.

  "Better than she was when you turned her over to me of course."

  "Modest as always," he drawled as he stepped inside. In one hand he carried a plastic sack from a nearby drugstore, in the other a physician's black bag. He seemed to limp slightly as he walked.

  "See for yourself if you don't believe me," Prudy said blithely as she closed the door behind him.

  Madelyn summoned a polite smile as his gaze shifted her way. He looked rugged and worn and as tough as an old saddle. His hair was windblown and curling over his collar in a provocative mix of raven and silver, and his face was seamed with weariness. He was still dressed in the pale blue shirt and jeans one washing away from raggedy. His boots were only slightly less worn.

  "You're not curled in a tight little ball and your color's better, so I reckon you're over the hump," he drawled after studying her for a long moment.

  "Thanks to you and Prudy."

  "Trust me, I enjoyed the peace and quiet," Prudy said before shoving her feet into green flip-flops.

  Luke set his bag and sack on the table before giving Prudy a quick hug. "I owe you one, toots."

  "Nothing I like better than having a gorgeous hunk a' burning love beholding to me," she said, giving Madelyn a sisterly grin. "I hope we meet again, Madelyn, but if not, the best of luck with that little one you're growing."

  Madelyn returned her smile gratefully. "Thanks so very much. I appreciate your being here. It helped."

  "My pleasure."

  Luke looped an arm around Prudy's shoulders and ambled her to the door. Madelyn had an acutely vivid sensual memory of that steely arm draped across her own shoulders and felt an odd slippery feeling inside.

  With a final wave for Madelyn, Prudy departed.

  Madelyn cleared her throat. "I'm sorry about this, Luke."

  "No need to be sorry for somethin' that's not your fault." Jaw tight, he returned to the bed and lowered himself into the chair.

  "Have you eaten?" she asked, alarmed at the pallor beneath the tan.

  "Yeah, I figured you wouldn't be in the mood for dinner anytime soon, so I grabbed a bite at the hospital."

  Something about the tone of his voice had her narrowing her eyes. "In the cafeteria?"

  "Not exactly."

  "How, exactly?"

  He leaned back and stretched out his legs. "I hit the vending machine in the staff lounge."

  "Luke, you need more than junk food!"

  He blinked at her through eyes that were dull with fatigue. "Are you playin' doctor, Miz Foster?"

  She flushed, appalled that she'd been fussing at him like a wife. "Even a high-school guidance counselor can see you're staggering from exhaustion," she said. "And you're changing the subject."

  "Yeah, but I appreciate your concern." He surprised her by easing forward to take her hand in his. His fingers were warm and strong, the pads slightly roughened by a wrangler's calluses.

  "I owe you a talk," he said, his voice husky. "If you feel up to it, we can do it now."

  Her heart leaped and her free hand crept to her belly. "Just tell me if you can help me keep this baby." Her voice had gone thin with anxiety. "I'm not sure I can concentrate on anything more complicated than that right now."

  He glanced down, turned their hands until hers was resting atop his. She felt his weariness and, paradoxically, a steely strength. His expression was somber as he lifted his head and steadied his gaze on hers. "I can't promise you a perfect baby, because that's out of my control, but what I can control, I will. You'll need constant monitoring, and you'll need to do exactly what I tell you. But between the two of us I think we can give this little one a fighting chance." He took a breath, then curled his fingers around hers tightly, as though she was his lifeline, instead of the other way around. "Do you believe me?" he asked, his gaze watchful and just a little wary.

  "Yes, I…" She had to take a breath. She had to believe him. She had no choice. Otherwise, she would fret herself into a blind panic—or worse. "I believe you."

 
A look she couldn't decipher crossed his face. And then to her utter shock, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it before returning it gently to the bed. "Now that that's settled how about I order you up some soup from room service?"

  Her mind had to struggle to ignore the traitorous warmth that had spread through her the instant his mouth had brushed her skin, so it took a moment for her to catch up. Something about soup—and room service.

  "Only if you order a real dinner for yourself," she replied quickly, pouncing on the distraction.

  "Back to that food thing?"

  She thought of the orders he'd given her in his office earlier and smiled. "Steak with all the trimmings. And a big spinach salad. You need iron and potassium."

  His mouth slanted. "Yes, ma'am," he said as he reached for the phone. While Madelyn leaned back and closed her eyes, he ordered enough food to feed a small army for a week.

  "I hate warm milk," she murmured, rousing herself to interrupt.

  "Make that hot cocoa," he told room service before hanging up.

  "Are you going to be this autocratic throughout my entire pregnancy?" she asked as he climbed slowly to his feet.

  "Nah, this is piddling little stuff. I'm saving the major bossiness until later." He braced his hands on his lean hips and rolled his head, obviously trying to loosen taut muscles in his neck and shoulder. "Lady said twenty to thirty minutes. Time enough to grab a quick shower."

  "I've already had a bath," she reminded him.

  "Not you. Me."

  Just like that, those jittery little pulses were back. "What do you mean?"

  He stifled another yawn before giving her a crooked bone-melting grin. "I don't remember much about my mama 'cause she took off when I was nine, but I do remember the unholy fuss she used to make when my daddy came to the dinner table smellin' a little ripe."

  Madelyn clutched the edge of the coverlet with fingers that had suddenly gone numb. "I'm sure you can wait until you get home," she hastened to assure him.

  "Suppose it could, if I was goin' home. But since I'm not and I have rounds first thing tomorrow morning, I'd best sluice off the grime while I have the chance."