Luke went cold inside. "Madelyn…?"
"No, fortunately not, but I treated her just in case. I told her Wiley had picked up a bug from some bad fruit and that's why I wanted her to take a course of antibiotics." His voice went hard. "That SOB Foster deserves a public whipping."
The rage was a throbbing in Luke's head. "A public castration is more like it," Luke grated through a clenched jaw, earning a bark of laughter from the man on the other end.
"Rumor has it he's hinting that this baby Madelyn is carrying isn't his."
This time the word Luke used was as filthy as Foster's character. "If you don't stop him, I will."
"Don't worry, he's not the only one who can start rumors. Or phone in a tip to an ambitious newspaper reporter about certain prominent local citizens who frequent a well-known whorehouse south of the border, a reality that I intend to explain very carefully to Wiley Roy this weekend during the golf game I set up, just the two of us."
When Luke realized he was flexing his hand, the one with the patched-together knuckle, he pulled himself back. "I'll call you Monday to see what his answer is."
"Do that." Morrow cleared his throat again. "About the referral, call it unprofessional if you want—hell, it is unprofessional, no sense denyin' it, but I care about Maddy. My wife and I weren't blessed with children, and she's as close as I'll ever get. It's like she's been walking through life for a long time."
Luke closed his eyes and tried not imagine what Maddy's life had been like. But it had been there in her too-calm eyes and in that pulled-back hairdo. His gut poured out acid. "If you're trying to make me feel lower than a skunk's belly, Morrow, you're doin' a damn good job."
"You mistake me, son. I'm explaining, not blaming. See, it's like this. When I mentioned your name, something flashed on her face before she pulled it back. Something bright and sassy and … purely wonderful. For just that moment she was the firecracker she used to be."
Luke couldn't do more than close his eyes and hurt as Morrow went on. "Maybe she still loves you. Maybe you still love her—only you know that. Fact is, though, I think you've earned yourself another chance to win her back. What you do with it is up to you."
* * *
It was almost six-thirty by the time he'd returned all the phone calls Dorie had piled on his desk during an especially busy Monday. His office manager, Gladys Delaney, had just left, locking the front door behind her. The rain had started again, pelting the windows in a monotonous rhythm. An ambulance had just pulled into the bay outside the trauma unit, its siren shutting off abruptly, leaving a sudden void.
Tossing off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes and gave some thought to stretching out on his office couch for a quick nap before he had to head to the hospital for rounds. Deciding he was too tired to move, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Instantly she was there, in his mind, watching the ultrasound screen with a soft smile on her face. In spite of that fine-boned hauntingly lovely face that made him think of a painting he'd seen once, she was solid all the way to her soul. A woman a man could sink into when the loneliness cut too deep.
The things Morrow had said—and yeah, what he hadn't said—were still in his head, waiting to be sorted through. He wasn't sure what he felt about the old man's interference. He wasn't even sure what he intended to tell Maddy. He just knew he had a lot of serious thinking to do.
* * *
Luke was just finishing rounds on Friday when his beeper went off. "That's all for today, ladies and gentlemen," he said, handing the chart he'd been consulting to the senior obstetrics resident, Jamie Conover.
Nearly as tall as he was, with spiky black hair and a wicked sense of humor, the woman had more potential than discipline. Because Luke saw too much of himself in her, he'd ridden her hard from the moment she'd been accepted as a first year in his service.
"I'm sorry about the mix-up with the tests for Mrs. Yuan, sir," the long-legged corn-fed Missouri native said as she walked with him to the nearest wall phone. "I should have double-checked the names."
"Damn straight you should have, Conover. You got lucky this time. Next time an alert nurse might not catch your mistake."
Misery seemed to settle over her like a widow's veil. "Yes, sir. I mistook Yuan for Luan."
"Everyone gets one mistake with me. You've just had yours. One more and you're out."
"Yes, sir. I appreciate it."
Luke checked his beeper, then punched out the number. "Karen, it's Jarrod."
"Sorry to get you out of rounds, Doctor, but you said you wanted a second opinion on Mrs. Foster." It had been three or four years since Karen Winslow had worked under him, but her voice still carried a typical resident's eagerness for approval when she spoke with him.
"I appreciate your help, thanks."
"I know how protective you are of your patients, Luke, and I appreciate the vote of confidence—and I mean that most sincerely." She cleared her throat. "Oops, hold on, let me get my glasses."
Reining in his impatience, Luke pressed his aching back against the wall and watched two orderlies pushing a bed toward the elevator. He had another appointment with Maddy one week from today, and he was hoping to reassure her one more time.
"Okay, here we go." As Winslow detailed her findings, which were all but identical to his, Luke felt some of the knots in his belly unraveling. "…so unless something untoward happens, which is always possible of course, it's my opinion Mrs. Foster can look forward to a full-term pregnancy and a normal delivery."
* * *
Chapter 11
« ^ »
Try as he might, Luke couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when he'd actually agreed to play host for the twins' birthday party.
He'd forgotten all about it until Raine had called to tell him how excited her boys were at the idea of riding real horses, And by the way, he had remembered to reserve the picnic area at McMinn's Stables for Saturday afternoon, hadn't he? That had been last Monday. Fortunately Sally McMinn liked him, so he'd been able to arrange things on short notice—after he'd agreed to pay twice the going rate.
Now midway through the festivities he found himself in the saddle with Alex perched in front of him, walking Molly sedately around the exercise ring. Next to him Pax sat astride Sweet Sue with Matthew wriggling like an excited eel and talking a mile a minute. For a guy who'd grown up riding mules in the hills of Kentucky, the man sat a horse damn well. Better than most, Luke admitted to himself, if not to Pax.
Turning his head, Luke searched the picnic area until he spotted Maddy's bright yellow straw hat, the one with the artificial fruit around the band. While he'd been in the barn saddling the mares, Raine and Pax had strung streamers from the trees and blown up about a million balloons.
Maddy had brought Morgana and the boys along later, dressed in tiny denim cowboy vests she'd made herself. She looked breathtakingly young and pretty in a sleeveless cotton top the color of sunshine and perky white shorts that revealed a satisfying amount of smooth tanned thighs. Now that her center of gravity had shifted, her hips tended to sway a little when she walked, and her fanny filled out those shorts to blood-heating perfection. He'd been uptight and on edge ever since.
While the others were playing on the swings or in the sandbox in the playground, she and Morgana were busy picking daisies along the fence line. They looked so right together—the pretty lady and the happy little girl, one so fair, the other dark.
"She's an exceptional woman, Maddy," Pax said quietly. "Reminds me of a nurse I knew in 'Nam, a blueblood from Boston who went into nursing after her Marine-captain husband was killed. Took care of a bunch of orphan kids in her spare time."
Luke grunted something noncommittal. Pax grinned, but beneath the brim of the Aussie hat, his eyes were sympathetic. "It's hell, isn't it? Knowing you messed up and wanting to make things right so damn bad you wake up with a knot in your gut night after night?"
Luke tightened his grip on the reins. If Alex hadn't been perched in front of him, he would have sp
urred Molly into a dead run straight at the open gate.
"Anybody ever tell you to mind your own business, Paxton?" he grated, instead.
Luke might have figured the insensitive jerk would just laugh. "Just about everyone, Jarrod."
* * *
Morgana Paxton had exquisite bone structure, the shimmering black eyes of a Bedouin princess and the innocent smile of an angel. It had taken Madelyn about five seconds to fall in love with her.
"How come you talk funny, Aunt Maddy?" she asked, leaning against Madelyn's side. She smelled like bubble gum and happy little girl.
"Because I'm from Texas, sweetie, which is a place far away from Portland." Seated at one of the picnic tables scattered around the grassy area under a towering pin oak, Madelyn finished tying the last stem in the daisy crown she was making before placing it on the four-year-old's glossy black hair.
"Folks down where I live think y'all up here talk funny, too," she added, exaggerating her drawl to make the little girl giggle.
"Uncle Luke talks funny, too. Daddy says that's 'cause he's a cowboy and cowboys are s'posed to talk slow."
"Uncle Luke said girls can be cowboys and own ranches, too," Tory MacAuley proclaimed before plopping down next to Madelyn on the bench.
"Is that what you want to be when you grow up, a rancher?" Maddy asked, surprised that such a dignified little girl would be interested in eating dust and bucking hay.
"Maybe." Tory reached up to flip one of her thick brown braids over her shoulder. "When I turn seven, Uncle Luke's going to teach me how to ride Molly all by myself. Right, Daddy?" She turned to look at her father who was stretched out in the deepest part of the shade with his son fast asleep on his chest.
At the sound of his daughter's voice Boyd opened one eye and offered her a drowsy smile. "You bet, Peaches," he said before closing his eyes again.
"I'm going to be a ballerina," Morgana declared firmly. "My teacher said I was the best Tinkerbell ever. And next year I get to be a toy soldier in The Nutcracker." She glanced up and her face split into a huge grin. "Aunt Maddy made me a daisy crown, Uncle Luke. See?"
A shadow fell across the table as Luke reached out to touch one of the bright-eyed daisies with a blunt forefinger. Preoccupied with the girls, Madelyn hadn't seen him approach. After saying a polite hello when she'd arrived, he'd pointedly avoided her. It was that way at all the gatherings they both attended. If she was in one room, he was in another. If she sat down at a table, he got up. Even the mommies had noticed.
Prudy claimed he had no choice. As her doctor, he couldn't risk getting involved. In the office he was pleasant but all business, answering her questions in full, asking questions of his own about her physical condition but, never anything personal. It was exactly what she'd told him she wanted, a strictly professional relationship. There wasn't one good solid rational reason why she should feel hurt because he was avoiding her.
"I reckon that's just about the prettiest crown I ever saw, Miz Morgana," he drawled softly.
Instantly Tory's mouth turned down. Madelyn started to offer to make her one too, but Luke beat her to it. "I'll bet that if you were to pick some more of those daisies yonder, Aunt Maddy would make one for you, too, Peaches."
Tory's head came up, her brown eyes shining. "Would you?" she asked eagerly.
"I would love to, sweetheart," Madelyn declared. "But I'll need nice big daisies with strong stems."
"I'll show you which ones," Morgana offered, scrambling to her feet.
"Watch out for bees," Madelyn called after them as they took off running toward the pasture fence hand in hand. Giggling little-girl laughter floated back to them on the warm breeze, as bright as hope.
"I think you've just made aunt-of-the-year," he said, angling one hip over the end of the table and crossing his arms.
"They make it easy to love them," she said softly. He smelled of horses, sunshine and virile male.
"Does it still hurt to think about her, our baby?" His quiet question drew her gaze to his. It surprised her that he would ask. In the several weeks she'd been here he'd avoided all but the most clinical questions about their baby.
"Yes, it hurts, but not as much as it did once." She softened the admission with a smile that had him dropping his gaze. "Morgana's very like I imagined Jenny to be at four." She let out a slow careful breath. "Except for the eyes. I always saw her with blue eyes. Her … her daddy's eyes."
Luke glanced up. It cost him, but he kept his gaze steady on hers. "You called her Jenny?"
She nodded, her smile bittersweet. "Even before I felt her move, I would … talk to her, and it didn't seem right somehow to just call her baby. I knew it would be a girl." She gave a sad little laugh that had him biting down hard. "Don't ask me how, but I just knew, just like I know this one is a boy."
Jenny Jarrod. Luke rolled it over in his mind, letting the pain wash over him. "I like it," he said, his voice husky. "It has a dainty sound."
She picked up one of the daisies and touched a neatly rounded nail to the bright center. "She was only five pounds, two ounces, but she had the loudest cry in the nursery. And a temper, too." Madelyn turned to watch Morgana and Tory gathering flowers. "It's helped, seeing how happy Morgana is with the Paxtons. Even though Doc swore the couple that took her were wonderful loving people, I've always worried."
Luke swallowed hard. He hadn't cried since his mother had taken off, leaving him with a broken bitter man who'd forbidden him to ever mention her again. He realized now that a man could cry without tears if the hurt was great enough.
"Did you ever contact them?" he asked.
"No, I gave my word I wouldn't. Everyone told me it was for the best." She plucked a petal from the daisy and let it fall. "A clean break, a fresh start." She plucked another petal. "A few years ago I registered my name and the date and place of her birth in the national database. In case she wanted to find her birth mother." Madelyn looked up, her cheeks pink and her mouth vulnerable and soft. "You could do the same thing, you know. The database is for fathers, as well as mothers and children."
He struggled to draw breath past the grinding pressure in his chest. "I'm not sure I could face her."
"She's happy, Luke. We have to believe that."
He reached out a hand to brush a stray curl from her cheek. "I wish…" He saw the girls approaching then and dropped his hand.
"It wasn't your fault you didn't get the letter in time."
Her words stunned him. "Maddy—"
"We got the daisies, Aunt Maddy," Tory bubbled.
"Nice big ones like you said," Morgana added, dumping what had to be a bushel of daisies onto the table. As Maddy turned her attention to the girls, he knew what it was like to grieve.
* * *
Luke rode low in the saddle, bent over the mare's neck as the palomino's long legs ate the trail angling upward away from the corral. Perched on the bench next to Madelyn, Tory shaded her eyes and watched horse and rider disappear over a distant rise.
"How come Uncle Luke rode away so fast?" she asked, glancing up at her father, who was bending over the picnic table, diapering his cooing son.
Boyd flicked her a smile before fastening one of the tapes. "Maybe Molly needs exercise."
Madelyn looked up from the daisies she was knotting together. "Isn't it bad for his back to ride that hard?" she asked, her gaze on the dust still rising from the trail.
"Doubt he's thinking about that right now." Boyd lifted B.J. into his arms, deftly dodging the right hook the baby aimed at his jaw. "Last time I saw him ride like that he'd just heard that his mother had died."
Madelyn shifted uneasily on the hard bench. "You've known him for a long time, haven't you?"
"As much as he lets anyone know him, yeah."
"Is it ready yet, Aunt Maddy?" Tory asked, shifting from one foot to the other, her eyes bright.
"All ready, sweetheart." With a dramatic flourish, Madelyn fitted the daisy tiara over Tory's head, then stood back and cocked her head.
"Now we have two beautiful princesses on the ranch."
Tory beamed. "Am I really beautiful?"
"Well, actually, it's more like gorgeous. But if you don't believe me, ask your daddy."
"Beyond gorgeous," Boyd said, his expression besotted as he looked from one little girl to the other. "Both of you."
Morgana's smile bloomed as bright as Tory's. "C'mon, Tory, let's go show Chloe." Beaming, the two girls took off running. Madelyn and Boyd watched them in silence for a long moment.
"You're very lucky," she said quietly. "All of you."
"I'm not a religious man, but I count my blessings every day." His voice was husky, his eyes thoughtful when they shifted her way again. "When I lost my first wife and child, Luke literally kept me from blowing my brains out. He talked to me for hours and some time during the conversation he told me about you and your child—and he wasn't kind to himself in the telling."
B.J. made a little snuffling sound before poking his thumb into his mouth. Madelyn reached out to smooth his wispy curls, and he offered her a drowsy grin around that tiny thumb. "Does it ever go away, the terror that it'll happen again?"
"It fades. Marrying Stacy and having our children has helped." Boyd glanced down at the sturdy little boy snuggled against his shoulder, then at her belly. "Won't be long and you'll know that, too."
Yes, she would have the baby, but who would Luke have?
"I didn't come to Oregon intending to cause him pain, but I realize now that I did."
"If there's any hurting going on, he's doing it to himself." Boyd looked toward the ridge line. "When I was fighting the feelings I had for Stacy, he pushed me up against a wall in his office and told me I'd damn well better stop feeling sorry for myself and grab hold of the lady before someone else beat me to it." His smile was rueful. "That was when I found out he'd gone back for you, with the ink still drying on his bachelor's degree and a ring in his pocket."
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