Jill was bending over the dishwasher. Any other time it would have been a spectacular view, but not now. Not when everything he’d ever wanted was at risk.
“Jill—”
She straightened and her whole body tensed, but she didn’t turn or say a word.
“Ginny said she’d explain that she bullied me into changing into dry clothes.” Still nothing. He walked behind her and gently turned her toward him. “Say something. Even if it’s to tell me to go to hell. I really need to hear the sound of your voice.”
She burst into tears and buried her face in her hands. His heart squeezed painfully at her distress and he gathered her trembling body against his own.
“Don’t cry. Please don’t. I can’t stand it.”
“I’m s-sorry. It’s just—” After several moments she drew in a shuddering breath, then lifted her tear-streaked face. “No one I love has ever come back.”
“Oh, sweetheart—” A lump of emotion choked off his words. He’d put her through hell. It wasn’t his fault, but he still hated that she was upset because of him. “Damn it.”
“What?”
“I got a call in the middle of the night about my father. There was chest pain and I suspected he’d had a heart attack. I had to go.”
“Oh, Adam—of course you did.”
“I had to go and didn’t want to wake you. In the morning I planned to call from the airport and explain. But men plan and Mother Nature laughs. There was no cell reception. And in Dallas my sister was waiting at DFW. I had to get to the hospital.”
“Is your dad okay?”
“Yes, thank God. The attack was mild and there was no permanent muscle damage. It was more of a warning to slow down and take better care of himself. My brother Spencer is on top of that.”
“Isn’t he the heart doctor?”
Adam nodded. “He’s running point on the recovery including diet, exercise, medication and cardiac rehabilitation.”
“You should have stayed,” she protested.
“They threw me out.”
Her eyes went wide. “Why would they do that? I thought they were on a mission to get you back home.”
“That’s true,” he confirmed. “But I was home and acutely crabby.”
“You? Mr. Sunshine?”
He loosened his hold but didn’t let her go. “There were storms all the way from Montana to the Gulf and I couldn’t get through to you. I needed to talk to you, to hear your voice. When that wasn’t possible, I pretty much ticked off everyone with my bad attitude. Dad was out of the woods and I was told in no uncertain terms to go back where I belonged.”
“Here?” The shadows started to lift from her eyes even though tears still clung to her lashes. “Blackwater Lake?”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t look at her hard enough. “So I grabbed the next flight out and managed to get in before the storm closed the airport. Although cell reception was still impossible. So I drove through a blizzard. Almost made it, too, until I got stuck in the snow.”
“Near Carl Hayes’s place, Ginny said.”
“That’s right.” He let out a breath. “He gave me a ride.”
“So, like the hero in a Hollywood movie you fought your way through a snowstorm for C.J.’s party?” Her mouth curved up at the corners.
“Letting him down wasn’t an option.” He willed her to believe his next words. “Or you either. I love you, Jill.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “More than I can say. I love C.J., too. Being with you guys is the most important thing in my life.”
“I thought you didn’t want a commitment.”
“When I moved here that was the last thing on my mind and I said some stupid, macho things. I knew you’d been badly hurt and I have a bad track record. I didn’t want to promise anything and be another guy on the list of men who let you down. But going to Dallas made me realize something.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know it when I made the decision to move, but coming to Blackwater Lake was all about finding family. I didn’t understand that until meeting you and C.J.”
“Oh, Adam—” Her voice caught and she blinked furiously.
“I hope those are happy tears because more than anything in the world I want to make you happy.”
“I confess, when you were gone without a word I went to the bad place because it’s just where I’ve lived for so long. A habit.” She met his gaze and her own was clear and bright. “I trust you, Adam. I’ll never doubt you again.”
“Prove it. Marry me and I swear to you that I’ll be the best husband and father on the planet. I will never leave you.”
“I believe you.” She smiled. “Before I give you an answer, there’s something you should know.”
“Okay.”
“Your grandmother told me that I shouldn’t be picking out wedding patterns and monogramming towels. She said that Dallas was your home and you’d be returning to it soon.”
“Then apparently my bad attitude while away from you changed her mind.” He grinned. “She’s the one who told me to leave.”
“Really?”
“I couldn’t make that stuff up.” He met her gaze. “I’m waiting for an answer. Please don’t keep me in suspense.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” She rose on tiptoe and touched her lips to his. “More than anything I want to be your wife.”
Adam returned the kiss until her eyes crossed and her toes curled. He finally came up for air and said, “Blackwater Lake is where I live, but being in your arms is and always will be home to me.”
“Dr. Adam? Why are you kissin’ Mommy?” C.J. moved closer and looked up.
Adam went down on one knee and Jill nodded her approval to share the news. “Champ, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to marry your mom.”
“And live with us forever?” His eyes opened wider.
“Yes,” Adam said. “What do you think?”
“I think that’s the best birthday present ever, Dr. Adam.”
“Good. And maybe you should call me Adam?”
“Maybe I could call you Daddy?” The child looked at him, then his mother. “Would that be okay?”
“More than okay—” Jill’s voice caught when a speechless Adam pulled C.J. into his arms. She swallowed hard, then said, “I know it’s your birthday, kiddo, but I just got the best present ever. Not only are my single-mom days over, but the three of us together are the family I always wanted.”
* * * * *
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Chapter One
So this was what all the secrecy, giggling and whispers had been about.
His boys, four-year-old Greg and five-year-old Gary, sat—or more accurately perched—on either side of him like energized bookends, unable to remain still for more than several seconds at a time. Blond, blue-eyed and small boned, his sons looked like little carbon copies of each other.
They looked like Ella.
Micah shut the thought away. It had been two years, but his heart still wasn’t ready for that kind of comparison.
Maybe someday, just not yet.
“Do you like it, Daddy?” Gary, the more animated of the two, asked eagerly. The boy was fairly beaming as he put the question to him. His bright blue eyes took in every tiny movement.
Micah eyed at the mug on the coffee table. “I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” Micah told his son. “Actually, I wasn’t expecting anything at all today.”
It was Mother’s Day. Granted he’d been doing double duty for the past two years, being both mother and father to his two sons, but he hadn’t expected any sort of acknowledgment from the boys on Mother’s Day. On Father’s Day, yes, but definitely not on this holiday.
The mug had been wrapped in what seemed like an entire roll of wrapping paper. Gary had proclaimed proudly that he had done most of the wrapping.
“But I put the tape on,” Greg was quick to tell him.
Micah praised their teamwork.
The mug had World’s Greatest Mom written on it in pink-and-yellow ceramic flowers. Looking at it now, Micah could only grin and shake his head. Well, at least their hearts were in the right place.
“Um, I think you guys are a little confused about the concept,” he confided.
Gary’s face scrunched up in apparent confusion. “What’s a con-cept?”
“It’s an idea, a way of—”
Micah abruptly stopped himself. As a reliability engineer who worked in the top secret missile defense systems department of Donovan Defense, a large national company, he had a tendency to get rather involved in his explanations. Given his sons’ tender ages, he decided that a brief and simple explanation was the best way to go.
So he tried again. “It’s a way of understanding something. The point is, I’m very touched, guys, but you do understand that I’m not your mom, right? I’m your dad.” He looked from Gary to Greg to see if they had any lingering questions or doubts.
“We know that,” Gary told him as if he thought it was silly to ever confuse the two roles. “But sometimes you do mom things,” he reminded his father.
“Yeah, like make cookies when I’m sick,” Greg piped up.
Which was more often than he was happy about, Micah couldn’t help thinking. Greg, smaller for his age than even Gary, was his little survivor. Born prematurely, his younger son had had a number of complicating conditions that had him in and out of hospitals until he was almost two years old.
Because of all the different medications he’d been forced to take, the little boy’s immune system was somewhat compromised. As an unfortunate by-product of that, Greg was more prone to getting sick than his brother.
And every time he did get sick, Micah watched him carefully, afraid the boy would come down with another bout of pneumonia. The last time, a year and a half ago, Greg had almost died. The thought haunted him for months.
Clearing his throat, Micah squared his shoulders. His late mother, Diane, had taught him to accept all gifts gracefully.
“Well, then, thank you very much,” he told his sons with a wide smile that was instantly mirrored by each of the boys.
“Aunt Sheila helped us,” Gary told him, knowing that he couldn’t accept all of the credit for the gift.
“Yeah, she drove us to the store,” Greg chimed in. “But me and Gary picked it out. And we used our own money, too,” he added as a postscript.
“‘Gary and I,’” Micah automatically corrected Greg.
The little boy shook his head so hard, his straight blond hair appeared airborne for a moment, flying to and fro about his head.
“No, not you, Daddy, me,” Greg insisted. “Me and Gary.”
There was time enough to correct his grammar when he was a little older, Micah thought fondly.
Out loud he marveled, “Imagine that,” for his sons’ benefit. A touch of melancholy drifted over him. “You two are growing up way too fast,” he told them. “Before you know it, you’re going to be getting married and starting families of your own.”
“Married?” Greg echoed, frowning as deeply as if his father had just told him that he was having liver for dinner for the next year.
“To a girl?” Gary asked incredulously, very obviously horrified by the mere suggestion that he be forced to marry a female. Everyone knew girls were icky—except for Aunt Sheila, of course, but she didn’t count.
“That’s more or less what I had in mind, yes,” Micah told his sons, doing his very best not to laugh at their facial expressions.
Covering his face, Gary declared, “Yuck!” with a great deal of feeling.
“Yeah,” Greg cried, mimicking his brother, “double yuck!”
Micah slipped an arm around each little boy’s very slim shoulders and pulled them to him. He would miss this when the boys were older, miss these moments when his sons made him feel as if he was the center of their universe.
“Come back and tell me that in another, oh, ten, fifteen years,” he teased.
“Okay,” Gary promised very solemnly. “We will, Daddy.”
“Yeah, we will!” Greg echoed, not to be outdone.
Micah’s aunt, Sheila Barrett, stood in the living room doorway, observing the scene between her nephew and her grandnephews. Her mouth curved in a wide smile. While she lived not too far from Micah, it felt as if this was more her home than the place where she received her mail. She took care of the boys when her nephew was at work, which, unless one of his sons was sick, was most of the time.
“They picked that mug out themselves,” she told Micah, in case he thought that this was her idea. “They absolutely refused to look at anything else after they saw that mug. They thought it was perfect for you.”
“And of course you tried to talk them out of it,” Micah said, tongue in cheek. His amusement was there, in his eyes.
Sheila shrugged nonchalantly. “The way I see it, Micah, little men in the making should be as free to exercise their shopping gene as their little female counterparts.”
“Very democratic of you,” Micah commented, the corners of his mouth curving. Aunt Sheila had always had a bit of an unorthodox streak. He learned to think outside the box because of her. He sincerely doubted that he would be where he was today if not for her. “Well, just for that, I’m taking all of you out for lunch.”
“Aunt Sheila, too?” Greg asked, not wanting to exclude her.
“Aunt Sheila most especially,” Micah told his younger son. There was deep affection in his voice. “After all, Aunt Sheila is the real mom around here,” he emphasized pointedly.
Clearly confused, Greg turned to look at the woman who came by every morning to take him to preschool and his brother to kindergarten. Every afternoon she’d pick them both up and then stayed with them until their father came home. Some nights, Aunt Sheila stayed really, really late.
“Aunt Sheila has kids?” Greg asked his father, surprised.
Sheila smiled, answering for Micah. “I have your dad,” told the boy.
They had a special bond, she and her sister’s son. When the world came crashing in on him when his parents were killed in a car accident while on vacation, M
icah had been twelve years old. Injured in the accident, too, he’d been all alone at that San Jose hospital. She’d lost no time driving up the coast to get to him. She’d stayed by his side until he was well enough to leave and then she took him home with her. There was no looking back. She’d raised him as her own.
Greg was staring at her, wide-eyed, his small face stamped with disbelief. “Dad was a kid?”
“Your dad was a kid,” she assured him, biting her tongue so as not to laugh at the expression of wonder on the little boy’s face. “And a pretty wild one at that.”
“She’s making that part up,” Micah told his sons. “I was a perfect angel.”
“When you were asleep, you looked just like one,” Sheila agreed, then added, “Awake, not so much.”
“Can you tell us stories about when Daddy was a kid?” Gary asked eagerly.
Sheila’s smile was so wide, her eyes almost disappeared. “I sure can.”
“But she won’t,” Micah interjected with a note of finality. “She’s going to save those for when you’re older.”
Gary’s forehead crinkled beneath his blond bangs. “Why?”
“I’ll tell you that when you’re older, too,” Micah promised him. Changing the subject, he asked, “Now, who’s hungry for pizza?”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than a chorus of “We are!” rose up. It was hard to believe that two little boys could project so much volume when they wanted to.
Micah gazed at his aunt who’d made herself comfortable in the love seat opposite Micah and the boys. “I thought we’d go to that little Italian restaurant you like so much. Giuseppe’s.” The boys bounced up to their feet. His aunt rose to hers, as well. “Luckily for me, it’s kid-friendly.”
“As it happens,” his aunt said, placing a hand on each boy’s shoulder in order to usher them out the front door, “so am I.”
* * *
“You know there’s no one here to impress, right?” Kate Manetti Wainwright said to her friend, Tracy Ryan, as she stuck her head into the latter’s office.
It was Sunday and the law firm was closed. Or should have been. The sound of typing must have drawn Kate to Tracy’s small office, which meant an interruption.
The Doctor and the Single Mom Page 20