Hot-Shot Doc, Secret Dad (Cowboys, Doctors...Daddies)

by Lynne Marshall

  This kiss had been a throwback in time.

  He pulled back to see Julie’s eyes still closed, her features soft and dreamy under the dim porch light, and, again, it took him right back to that first moment when they’d kissed that summer night, while slow dancing to a heartfelt ballad.

  “Goodnight,” he said, his voice sounding husky.

  She opened her eyes, as if lingering in their shared memory. “Goodnight.”

  “I’ll see you Monday.” He’d cleared his throat and sounded normal again.

  “I’ll be there.”

  He took a few steps down the path then stopped and turned, knowing he shouldn’t but not wanting to censor himself. “For the record, I still remember kissing you that very first time.” Kissing her just now had brought it all back. He used his index finger to point to his temple. “Got it stored right here.”

  She shook her head, bearing a disbelieving smile, but he could tell she liked what he’d said. Hell, he even wondered how much she remembered about their first kiss.

  He forced a benevolent grin, rather than let on how much he’d enjoyed kissing her, and turned to walk the rest of the way to his car, thinking how he hadn’t been completely honest just then. Yeah, he remembered that first kiss all right, but he couldn’t let Julie Sterling mess with his head again. She was right, it was crazy for them to see each other socially, even under the guise of colleagues and friends, and he’d tell her as much on Monday.

  Begrudgingly, he headed for his car, battling it out between his head and that soft off-limits spot he’d buried a few years back deep in his heart. Truth was, the real place he remembered their first kiss was right here. He patted his chest.

  Trevor immediately groaned as he got back into the car. Julie’s return with his surprise son, and what in God’s name he should do about that, was about as complicated as anything could get.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TREVOR’S KISS HAD sent Julie reeling. It had taken all of her willpower to not let on how he’d shaken her to the soles of her boots as she’d stood on the porch, but she’d managed to make it into the house. There, she remained in the dark perfectly still for a few moments to work through her confusion. She flipped on the inside lights, and she heard him drive away.

  The man wanted to see her socially, as colleagues, as friends. Sure. First off, what was that supposed to mean? And second, well, she wasn’t falling for it. His decision was clearly based on guilt and some sort of honorable notion he’d had drilled into his Montgomery skull his entire life. Exactly what she’d always worried about. This socializing business wasn’t because of her; it was for James’s sake.

  She wouldn’t deny him the right to get to know his son when the time was right, but she’d leave herself out of the equation. If he thought they were a ready-made family, he’d better think again.

  Julie walked across the living room, turned on another light, then went on into the kitchen and flipped the switch. She poured herself a glass of tap water and stood at the sink staring through the window at the pine trees out back.

  It had been hard enough moving into her parents’ house. She’d given most of their furniture to the local thrift store, keeping a few pieces she’d always loved. Like the solid-oak buffet in the dining room, and her father’s cherrywood desk, oh, and that painting her mother had claimed would be worth something one day. That wasn’t why she’d kept it, no—she kept the Western prairie scene because she’d always loved the colors and the way it made her feel, like complete solitude. And she swore she felt the warm summer breeze on her cheeks whenever she looked at the oil on canvas. In her mother’s honor, she’d left it hanging, featured above the natural stone fireplace.

  When she’d told her mother she was pregnant, you would have thought the world had ended. Her mother had broken into tears, sobbing even, muttering how Julie’s future was over, how all their plans for her were ruined. As usual, Mom hadn’t stayed defeated for long; no, she’d bounced back with fury. End the pregnancy, she’d said. Stay at college like we planned. We can put all of this behind you and move on. When Julie had fought back, refusing to do what had seemed convenient to her mother, but much, much worse to her, her mother had turned steely. What are you going to do? Tell the Montgomerys you want to ruin their son’s life, too? Don’t think for one minute they won’t accuse you of taking advantage of that boy for his family’s fortune. They’ll accuse you of horrible things. You’ll regret you ever told them.

  Julie bit back the pain that never failed to overwhelm her when she let herself go down that particular memory lane. Thank goodness her aunt Janet out in California had taken a different view. She’d talked her sister off the ledge and convinced Andrew and Cynthia to send their daughter to her for the duration of the pregnancy. They’d agreed to see what happened after that, but it was obvious they’d hoped she’d give up the baby for adoption, then pick up and carry on with college in Colorado as if nothing had happened.

  Wrong!

  More disappointment had followed for her parents when Julie had given birth and fallen in love at first sight with her son. Who was she kidding? She’d been in love with the baby the entire pregnancy, and especially after that first sonogram. Aunt Janet had fallen in love with James, too. Her parents had sent money from time to time, but it had been her aunt who supported Julie while she got used to being a mother and all throughout the pregnancy. Even though theoretically she was an orphan now, as long as her aunt was alive she’d never feel that way.

  She’d delivered James in May and gone back to school part time that September. It had broken her heart to leave him in daycare so young, but the program she’d enrolled in had offered free child care, and how could she refuse that? The next semester she’d doubled her units, and, being so impressed with the care she’d gotten during her pregnancy, and especially during labor, then following up in pediatrics, she’d decided to give up her prior major and go into nursing.

  She’d found a part-time job in a bookstore and had gotten some scholarships for students with babies, but, hands down, her aunt had been the financial anchor in her personal storm. Knowing she had a place to live and food on the table had given Julie the freedom to explore being a first-time mother with all the joy and frustrations. She and her aunt had remained very close over the years; she’d even agreed to be James’s godmother. She had been the first person Julie had called the night she’d found out James had been arrested for shoplifting, and thankfully they’d had each other when word had come about her parents dying in the car crash. Julie didn’t know how she would have managed with the estate otherwise. Or with the pain over the strain in their relationship that had remained ever since they’d suggested she end her pregnancy.

  When the family trust had left a solid amount of retirement money to Julie, she’d insisted her aunt take half as repayment for all she’d done for her and her son.

  Julie sat and slumped at the kitchen table, hanging her head over the glass of water. Life had seemed so simple when she’d lived here before. Now, it was anything but.

  She let go and cried for the memory of her parents, forgiving them for their decisions that might have been brutal. All we want is the best for you, had been their mantra. Those words had wound up driving a wedge between them and Julie had never trusted them again. Now she found herself thinking the same thing about her son. What was best for James? Meeting his father? Possibly driving a wedge between her and her son in the process?

  She forced herself to stand and went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Once the house was locked tight for the night, she crawled between the sheets and stared at the ceiling. Her mind wouldn’t let up.

  Kissing Trevor, spending the evening with him, watching how he ate, the little quirks he had when he talked, how he glanced off to the right when he thought before he spoke, or how one brow always shot up when he questioned something, had brought that distant and faded summer crush back in living color. She could practically touch, taste and feel that late August night.
>
  But she was a grown woman now. She’d suffered through her tough times, and had prevailed over her challenging times. She’d succeeded when her parents had doubted her every decision. She’d become a registered nurse, a nurse practitioner and a midwife, but her biggest achievement was, hands down, her son.

  Her son who needed a man in his life, and whose father lived only a hundred miles away from the military school.

  Yeah, there was no way she’d get any sleep tonight.

  *

  Monday morning at the clinic, after slipping into her office and managing to avoid Trevor in the employee lounge, she’d jumped right into her appointments. After seeing two patients with the flu and one with a solid case of bronchitis, she stepped into the next examination room to tend to Alex Bronson.

  He was a well-developed male, looking beyond his thirty-five years of age. From his history, she saw he was a cowhand and knew that his work was tough and demanding, the kind of all-weather work that aged a guy sooner than men in suits. Next she glanced at his chief complaint.

  “Good morning. What brings you here today?” She already knew the answer, but wanted his take on the situation.

  “I’ve had a canker sore and a sore throat for a couple of weeks,” Alex said.

  Julie did a head and neck assessment, finding a few enlarged nodes on the right side of his neck and beneath his jawline, and when she asked him to say “ah” to have a look at this throat, she noticed something that concerned her. Leukoplakia. “How long have you had that sore in your mouth?”

  “Oh, that? That’s just that canker sore I mentioned. Been there a little before I got my cold.”

  “You’ve had a cold? How long?”

  “Well, not the usual kind, but I’ve been feeling poorly and, like I said, my throat’s a little sore for about a month now.”

  “You smoke?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Chew tobacco?” She already knew the answer from the state of his teeth.

  “A little, yeah.”

  She also knew that many cowhands worked long hours doing backbreaking jobs and often chewed tobacco to keep going. Could she blame them? Unfortunately, the canker sore that Alex thought nothing about was concerning to Julie. Especially since he didn’t show any signs of a true cold, but his lymph nodes were enlarged and the sore bulged in an unnatural way beneath the surface of his oral mucosa. But what concerned her the most was the velvety white plaque that spotted the back of his throat. She worried about oral cancer, yet didn’t want to freak out the otherwise healthy-looking man.

  “To be on the safe side, I’m going to give you some antibiotics, but I also want you to follow up with the ear, nose and throat doctor in Laramie.”

  Alex raised his brows. “Why? It’s just a cold.”

  “A cold runs its course in seven to ten days. The sore-throat part should have been over by now, and to be honest I’m concerned about a couple of small spots in your mouth. Since you’re a tobacco chewer, we can’t be too cautious.”

  She opened the supply cabinet and found what she needed. “May I do an oral brush of the sore?”

  “What’s that do?”

  “This will collect some surface cells and the lab can make a slide to check for any abnormal cells. Say ‘ah,’ please.”

  After Julie finished and processed her specimen, she washed her hands and her fingers flew over her laptop computer keyboard as she wrote her e-referral. She knew from experience that if you didn’t hand a patient an appointment with a specialist before they left the office, the odds of them following through went down significantly. She pressed send, then looked up with a smile.

  “While I’m waiting to hear back from ENT I’d like you to have some lab work drawn.” She whizzed through the studies she wanted Alex to have, clicking them off on the computer screen, then buzzed for Charlotte.

  While Alex put his shirt back on, Lotte knocked on the door before opening.

  “Hi,” Julie said. “Can you to take Mr. Bronson to the lab and draw some blood, then get a chest X-ray?”

  “Sure thing,” Charlotte said, with her usual can-do attitude, no questions asked.

  “Oh, would you please deliver this to the pathology pick-up tray?” She handed off the slide she’d prepped from the oral brushing, which was safe inside a cardboard slide container with the patient’s ID on it.

  As the nurse led the patient down the hall, Julie got her first glimpse of Trevor for the day as he lingered just outside his office reading some mail. Oh, man, he wasn’t playing fair. He’d obviously skipped shaving all weekend and had a serious start on a sexy beard, dark as his eyes. He wore a navy-colored vest over a micro-checked brown-and-blue soft cotton shirt, and had rolled the sleeves to his forearms, revealing the dusting of sepia-colored hair on his arms and a huge silver watch on his wrist. She loved that look on a guy, and when was the last time she’d seen a man in a vest that didn’t involve a three-piece suit? His jeans fit perfectly, accentuating his long legs, and, for a change, today he wore brown suede and leather shoes.

  Her thoughts flitted back to their kiss, and a tiny jitter bomb went off inside her stomach. She couldn’t very well stand there gawking, feeding her vision with this gorgeous man. She scrambled back into her exam room and made a second slide with the discarded oral brush, then nearly jogged down to the lab to find the special stains she’d need to color the cells. For an early snapshot of what might be going on in Alex Bronson’s mouth, she found toluidine blue stain and placed a few drops on the slide, swirling it around to cover the entire specimen, then shook off the excess. Next she delicately dropped a thin coverslip over the material to be viewed under the microscope and headed back down the hall to Trevor’s office.

  She tapped lightly on his door, even though it was open. He sat behind his desk, flipping through more mail, separating it into piles. He glanced up and smiled.

  “Hey, good morning. You’ve been busy today,” he said, obviously happy to see her.

  “You weren’t kidding about everyone coming in for appointments when the weather warmed up.”

  He smiled wide, his gaze pinned to her face. If she could only know what was going on in his mind. But that wasn’t why she was there.

  “Hey, I was wondering if you’d take a look at a slide with me. I just saw Alex Bronson and I’m worried about the state of his mouth.”

  Trevor scooted his chair toward the microscope he kept set up at a small side desk and waved her over. “Let’s take a look. You send a specimen for the big lab?”

  “Sure did, and made an e-referral for an ENT appointment ASAP. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  Trevor went quiet studying the slide in a consistent left-to-right manner, then stopped in one area, increasing the magnification, and focused in. “This doesn’t look good.” He pulled back, giving Julie room to step in and take a look for herself.

  Several abnormally shaped nuclei had stained dark. It would be up to the pathologist to name the cells, but, to both Julie and Trevor, their fears for cancer just got worse.

  “Damn,” she muttered.

  “I’ve been warning Alex about chewing tobacco for years. Done several community education lectures on it, too. The bad news just doesn’t sink into their thick cowboy skulls.”

  Julie nodded in understanding. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what turns out, but in the meantime I need to check my computer to make sure he’s got an appointment lined up. Maybe I’ll call to get him in before the end of the week. I want to make sure he has an appointment in his hand before he leaves the office today.”

  “It’s worth a try. Good work, Julie.”

  She turned and noticed the sincere set to his eyes, the admiration and something else she was not prepared to name, and blinked her thanks. Then she walked off, wishing she hadn’t gotten a nose full of his sexy-as-hell cologne while looking at that slide with him.

  *

  After a power-packed morning, Trevor got a call from his patient Francine J
ardine. She’d gone into labor, and, it being her third baby, didn’t stand a chance of getting to the hospital in Laramie in time. He hung up and dialed Rita. “Cancel my afternoon appointments. I’ve got a home delivery to take care of.”

  In seconds he was out the door with his doctor’s delivery bag and headed for his car, and forty-five minutes later, after he’d arrived at Francine’s home and had done an initial examination, he made a second call.

  “Julie, I’m going to need your help at the Jardine residence. It’s an urgent situation. Mom’s fully dilated, and the baby’s in a transverse position. Not a chance in hell she’d hold out until we got her to the hospital. We’re going to need to turn this baby.”

  “I’ll be right there. Oh, where does she live?”

  “Charlotte will give you directions. I’ve got to go.”

  Trevor solemnly walked back to his patient, realizing he might be performing an in-home cesarean section before the end of the day if he and Julie couldn’t turn the baby.

  Fifteen minutes and six contractions later, Julie arrived with more supplies and some medicine to help Francine relax. She’d also brought the portable oxygen canister. Good move.

  Julie gave Francine two liters of oxygen via nasal prongs if for nothing more than to help clear the worried mother’s head.

  Trevor sipped some water and spoke quietly to Julie. “Have you ever had to do this before?”

  “I’ve had a couple of instances where the baby wouldn’t turn and we slowed down the labor to get the patient to the hospital for a cesarean. But I’ve also been successful in internally turning the baby on occasion.”

  “Well, there’s two of us, and I’m hoping we can manage to get that head in the vertex position, but I’ve got these big old rancher hands, which are fine for delivering calves, but… So, listen, even though she’s fully dilated, I think your hands could get in there better and move the head downward.”

  Julie nodded, and, though tension set her eyes, Trevor knew Julie was the best backup he could hope for at a time like this.