How was that for irony?
Why did sudden guilt threaten to swallow her whole? Because Alan was dead and she was about to displace his memory from Jalen’s life? Or was it because she was still young and alive and had felt a powerful sexual attraction to Jalen’s real father?
The pictures seemed to accuse her, so she did her best to avoid looking directly at any of them. She knew them by heart, anyway: Alan laughing and holding the massive fish he’d caught during their honeymoon in St. John’s, Alan playing catcher during a softball game with some of his buddies, Alan grinning over her swollen belly during her ultrasound the day they’d found out they were expecting a son.
Good thing they hadn’t had a crystal ball on that joyous day.
What would they have done if they’d known that Alan would die before he ever saw Jalen’s face? Or that Jalen could well die before his ninth birthday? Jalen.
How the hell was she supposed to tell him the truth about his biological father?
“Yes,” she said into the phone. Jittery with nerves, she cleared her throat and tried again. “I mean hello. It’s Lia.”
“Am I catching you at a bad time?”
Oh, man. There was something deliciously intimate about Thomas’s low voice in her ear, something illicit, and she had no business wondering where he was at this hour or who he might be with.
Stick to business, Lia.
“No. I’m just putting Jalen in bed. What’s up?”
“I, ah, just wanted to check in. So that was him answering the phone, huh?”
So that quick but momentous exchange hadn’t been lost on Thomas, either, had it? The thought unsettled her. Thrilled her. Funny how she’d spent all this time and effort finding Jalen’s father in the hopes that he could be a kidney donor and save the boy’s life, and yet had given little, if any, thought to the effect this revelation would have on both males.
Well. She was thinking about it now, that was for sure.
“That was him.”
“He, ah…” Thomas trailed off, clearly in a struggle with his thoughts, words or emotions or possibly all three. After a long pause, he tried again. “He’s got a sense of humor on him, doesn’t he?”
That made her smile. “You have no idea.”
Another silence. She waited, wondering where this conversation was going and when, if ever, the great Dr. Bradshaw had been this uncertain about anything in his life.
“So… His blood pressure’s okay?”
“I’ll check it again, before he goes to bed. He’s getting pretty sick of me hovering, though.”
“He’s a kid. You can’t blame him for that.”
“I know.”
“I stopped by the lab on the way home and gave a tissue sample. We should hear in a day or two.”
“Wow.” This time tomorrow, then, Jalen would have an official father and she would no longer be his only parent. Astonishing. Terrifying. Lia leaned against the counter, fighting against the sudden knot of anxiety in her belly. “That’s pretty fast.”
“Yeah,” he agreed on a long, shaky breath. “Pretty fast.”
More silence. Lia shifted back and forth on her feet, waiting for him to say whatever seemed to be on the tip of his tongue, needing something that she couldn’t quite identify—something from him.
What was it? Absolution? Understanding? Or worse, something that had nothing to do with Jalen at all and everything to do with the humming electricity she felt when she interacted with Thomas?
“Well,” he said finally, “I’ll let you go.”
Good. Great. Ending this disturbing conversation was the best thing to do. Yes. And while she was at it, she should work on remembering that she and Thomas would soon be something like business partners, nothing more. Two strangers united in the business of saving and raising the world’s greatest boy. End of story.
Which meant that the niggling disappointment she felt was ridiculous. The man had already gone above and beyond the call of duty by taking time out of his busy day to check on a kid who was, as yet, no official relation to him.
What more did she expect?
“Right. Well… Have a good night, then.”
“Lia.”
The new urgency in his voice took her aback. “Yes?”
“How are you doing?”
Huh? What kind of random question was that? Automatically, all her defenses went up. “I’m fine. I’m not the one who’s sick,” she reminded him, bristling at even the suggestion of weakness. Hadn’t she raised Jalen all by herself while working full time lo these many years? Did he think she was incapable? Was that it? “Why would you ask about me?”
“Because, Superwoman,” he said softly, and there was something surprising in his tone now, something almost like tenderness, “someone needs to look out for you while you’re looking out for Jalen.”
“In here, Jay,” Lia said two days later, steering Jalen through the outer door and into the reception area of Thomas’s deserted office suite. “We’ll have a seat right here.”
Jalen, whose thin shoulders were tight as harp strings, surveyed the room—the sleek glass tables, gray chairs and oversize and moody black-and-white landscape photos. She couldn’t blame him for being tense. Having spent way too much of his short life in medical settings, she didn’t expect him to be bouncing with joy over the thrill of visiting yet another doctor’s office, even if he wasn’t there as a patient.
She, on the other hand, was tense for altogether different reasons, and had been since she’d received Thomas’s terse phone call a little while ago.
“Come to my office,” he’d said. “I’ve got the paternity-test results.”
Though she knew they were coming and had, in fact, been waiting breathlessly for this very call, it suddenly seemed way too soon. “But—” she spluttered.
“Bring the boy,” Thomas said, and hung up.
Arrogant SOB, she thought now, settling onto one of the chairs and crossing her legs. Snapping his fingers. Expecting her to jump. Calling Jalen “the boy.” Who the hell did he think he was?
The answer came immediately:
Jalen’s only hope, that’s who.
“I still don’t get why we’re here.” Jalen, no doubt tired by the long walk from the parking garage, slumped into a chair and rifled through a stack of magazines, scrunching his nose at Newsweek, Essence, and Vanity Fair. “Why do I have to come if this isn’t my doctor— Ooh, Spider-Man. Cool. How long is this going to take?”
What could she say? Well, Jalen, we’ll be here long enough for me to explain that everything I’ve told you about your father up until now is a lie.
Luckily she was saved by Mrs. Brennan, who emerged from the inner depths of the suite, appeared on the other side of the glass window and slid it open.
“Well, well, well,” she said, placing a stack of files on her desk and thereby freeing up her hands so she could place them on her broad hips and hit Lia with a wry smile. “If it isn’t Miss Lia of the No Manners, come to visit us again. And who might this fine young man be? Oh.” The smile dimmed, leaving open astonishment as she studied Jalen with those keen blue eyes, which, as Lia had feared, saw everything around her with high-def clarity. “Oh.”
Jalen looked up from his comic book and waved. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Mrs. Brennan said faintly.
“Mrs. Brennan,” Lia said loudly, giving the woman a significant look over Jalen’s head and praying she wouldn’t prematurely let any cats out of their bags. “This is Jalen, my son.”
With difficulty, Mrs. Brennan peeled her slack-jawed gaze away from Jalen and turned her attention back to Lia, much to Lia’s consternation. There was way too much kindness in the woman’s smile now, too much understanding. It made Lia’s throat tighten and her heart contract, and the emotion was only intensified when Mrs. Brennan spoke again.
“Yes, lass.” Those bright eyes sparkled with tears now, which Mrs. Brennan briskly swiped away. “I see exactly whose son this is.”
Oh, God.
Lia blinked furiously, determined not to lose it any sooner than she needed to.
Jalen cocked his head, his bemused gaze flickering between the women.
Mrs. Brennan reached for a massive candy jar off to the side of her desk and lifted the lid with a flourish. “Tell me, young Mr. Jalen, can you help me put a dent in these chocolates here? I’ve got way too many of the peanut butter ones left. We’d better do something about that.”
Jalen was already on the move. “I try to help when I can.”
The two bent their heads low and murmured over the selection while Lia dabbled at her eyes with a tissue fished out of the pocket of her skirt. She was beginning to feel marginally better—more in control, at least—when Mrs. Brennan’s desk phone beeped and she leaned around Jalen to look at Lia with the same empathy that had just unraveled her.
“Dr. Bradshaw will see you now.”
“Great,” Lia said, even though the words made her heart stutter and stop dead. Thomas would see her now. And then what? What if he wasn’t Jalen’s father after all? What if he was? What would she do either way?
And then, somehow, she was on her feet, and her feet were moving, and she was passing first through the door next to the receptionist’s window and then through the inner door to Thomas’s office, which he held open for her.
He stared at her with the hard-jawed, icy-eyed gaze he’d used on poor Dr. Brown the other day, and it was all she could do to stand straight and proud and wait for him to utter the words that would change her life, one way or the other.
“Jalen’s my son.” Hesitating, he struggled with the words. “He’s…our son.”
“Okay.” Lia tried to say something else, floundered and lapsed into silence as she sank into a chair. She looked a little green around the gills, which was exactly how Thomas felt. “So that’s that, then. Wow.”
Wow. Yeah, that about summed it up.
Because he didn’t know what else to do, he walked back around his desk and resumed his spot in his leather chair, hoping the seat would provide him with a little clarity and help him think. It didn’t. All he knew was that, on the other side of that wall right there, was an eight-year-old boy who was his flesh and blood, and Thomas now needed to step up to the plate and become a father, armed only with the pathetic skills he’d learned from his own less-than-stellar daddy dearest, the Admiral.
Poor Jalen. The kid probably thought that renal failure was the scariest issue facing him right now. If he only knew.
Lia sat there, staring off in the distance, her eyes unfocused. Her sudden silence really ticked him off. She had set this snowball rolling down the mountain in the first place, culminating in an avalanche that obliterated the carefully structured life he’d worked for and earned up until now. His anger was irrational, he knew, but he couldn’t help it.
“Why so quiet, Lia? Or should I call you Baby Mama? Cat got your tongue?”
She leveled a glare on him that announced she was gunning for a fight, just like he was. Which suited him fine.
“I need a minute,” she told him. “We need to think this through.”
Oh, she was funny.
“Think this through? I thought you had all the answers already, Lia. Or did I miss something?” He paused, drawing it out just to be as obnoxious as possible. “Let’s recap, just to be sure. You illegally hacked into private sperm-donor records without being prosecuted, tracked me down and now have DNA proof that I’m the father of your son. So now I’m going to be screened for donor compatibility this afternoon. You didn’t think I was a big enough bastard to refuse to be tested, did you? And hopefully soon you’ll have a kidney for your son, which is everything you wanted and schemed for. Doesn’t that about cover it? So what’s the big deal? What’s to think through?”
Her cheeks were a bright and angry red, telling him she didn’t care for this version of the facts. “Well, for one thing, what I did wasn’t as Machiavellian as that—”
“Wasn’t it?”
“—and for another thing, I don’t know how to tell Jalen who you are. I was so worried about finding you that I didn’t think too much about what would happen when I did.”
“Shocking. Do you mean to tell me this brilliant plan of yours has a flaw?”
“Can we do this without the sarcasm?” she asked quietly.
“Probably not.”
Scooting to the edge of her chair, she rested her palms down on his desk, beseeching him. “You may not believe this, but I’m trying my hardest for my son.”
“Our son.”
“I don’t have all the answers. Half the time, I don’t think I have any of the answers. All I know is that I have to fight for him, because if I don’t, who will?”
I will, he started to say, but he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Nor was he ready to acknowledge that this crusading warrior was exactly the kind of mother he’d’ve chosen for his kid. If he’d ever been given the chance to decide for himself. But he hadn’t because she’d ripped that opportunity away from him, hadn’t she?
“What do you want me to say?” He wondered. “That what you did is all right?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Yes. I want you to understand. I want you to forgive me.”
“Oh. Is that all?”
“Do you want me to apologize? Is that it?”
He couldn’t say yes, but he couldn’t say no, either.
His ambivalence seemed to unhinge her a little. “Well, I’m sorry, O Great Surgeon,” she cried. “I’m sorry I’ve upset your thrilling career and your perfect carefree life with my sick son. But this was about saving Jalen! It wasn’t about you!”
“Well, it’s about me now.”
The deathly calm in his voice made her flinch. The blood leached out of her cheeks, leaving her pale and scared. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m going to be involved in my boy’s life.”
“You don’t have to. No one expects it.”
“I do have to, because I expect it.”
That stumped her for a minute, and then she treated him to the ghost of a dimpled smile, which was like the hint of a rainbow hiding behind a cloud. “So you have honor, then, Thomas?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Much to my surprise.”
They stared at each other, the desk serving as a no-man’s-land between them.
Lia spoke first, her voice shaky with nerves. “What does that mean, that you want to be involved in his life? Explain that to me.”
As if he knew. Still, he gave it a stab, listing some of the things his father had never done with him. “I want to tuck him in at night. I want to read him stories and play Monopoly with him. We need to go fishing and play hoops. I want to pay for his food and his clothes and his toys. I’ll be in on the decisions about his medical care.” Sudden emotion tightened his throat, choking off the words. “And if God gives me the chance, I want to teach him to shave and to drive and pay for his college.” He blinked, trying to hold back the hot tears that wanted to fall and unman him. The image of the Admiral’s disapproval over such a display of emotion helped him suck it up and hold it together. “That about sums it up. For now.”
Lia shook her head with visible alarm. “Are you trying to take my place? Is that it?”
“Of course not,” he said, but the reassuring words didn’t quite match the simmering anger inside him. It wasn’t Lia’s fault—he kept reminding himself of that—but she’d been there from the beginning, and Thomas hadn’t. She’d seen their son’s first smile, step and every other first in the boy’s life, and what had Thomas seen? What had he had? Nothing. And if he wasn’t a kidney match and they couldn’t find a kidney match, he might never have anything of Jalen except for bitter regret over what might have been. “But I do want a place in his life. A big place.”
“I see.” The desk might have been a battlefield between them, and their gazes met, his furious, hers sad but resolute. “So the bottom line is, you hate me for
bringing Jalen into your life and also hate me for having eight years with him when you’ve had none.”
Wonderful. She was beautiful, brilliant, tough and intuitive. Was there a more lethal combination? Maybe he should just surrender right now. Clearly, he didn’t have a snowball’s chance of holding his own against this woman or her son.
Did he hate her?
He thought about trying to sugarcoat his response, but what was the point?
“At this moment?” he said. “Yeah. I hate you.”
She took it like a woman, her lips twisting into a wry smile. “You do realize how illogical that is, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Any other hard feelings I should know about? Before we get this thing started?”
He hesitated, but, hey, they were being honest, right? Wasn’t honesty the best policy? “Yeah.” He held her gaze, letting her see more of him than he showed anyone else, which was terrifying and exhilarating. Funny, wasn’t it? Since he’d laid eyes on Lia two days ago, he’d felt more supercharged than he ever had in his life. “I’m not wild about the way you’ve wormed your way into my head.”
She stilled, her breath catching with a little hitch. “Me and Jalen, you mean.”
“No,” he said softly. “I mean you.”
She flushed prettily. He watched her, thinking that if they weren’t in the middle of a crisis here, he could spend a lot more time studying the reactions of that face, the sparkle of those brown eyes and the things that made her laugh, so he could do them and see those dimples and that smile much more often.
To his astonishment, she got up, smoothed her skirt and came around the desk toward him.
Frozen with anticipation, he had a tough time getting his voice to work. “What’re you doing?”
She stopped right there, right in front of him, ignoring all social etiquette and perching on the edge of his desk, close enough for him to smell the spicy warmth of her skin. He stared up at her, mesmerized and keeping his twitchy hands to himself only with supreme difficulty.
The Surgeon's Secret Baby Page 5