The Doctor's Secret Son

by Janice Lynn

  “He was there,” she confessed.

  “He?” Eyes wide, Savannah dropped her gaze to Joss. “The guy from before?”

  Face on fire, Chrissie nodded.

  “You had sex with him again!”

  “Shh!” Chrissie winced and fought the urge to cover Joss’s ears. As irrational as it was, she didn’t want her son to hear this conversation. Not that he was aware of anything going on around him. He was out for the count.

  “You slept with Joss’s dad?” Savannah stage-whispered.

  Knowing she’d eventually tell Savannah everything, Chrissie nodded. She really needed to talk, to let out some of the strong emotions flowing through her. Maybe Savannah could make sense of them. Chrissie sure couldn’t.

  “I did and it was great. Better than I remembered.”

  Savannah smiled. “That’s wonderful.”

  Chrissie could see the matchmaking wheels spinning in her best friend’s head.

  “It was wonderful, but was is the key word. It was just a fling. Just like before.”

  Savannah frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “We agreed to have a no-strings-attached affair for the weekend and that’s what we had. End of story.”

  “No, not end of story, because you have strings.”

  “No, I don’t,” Chrissie denied. Yeah, she had feelings for Trace. How could she not, but those weren’t strings. They were...tiny threads of nothingness.

  “Hello, you are holding the biggest string there is.”

  She shook her head. “Joss isn’t a string between Trace and me.”

  “Trace? That’s his name?”

  Chrissie nodded. Hearing her best friend say Trace’s name for the first time felt good in an odd sort of way. As if it somehow made him more real. As if she hadn’t imagined this past weekend and the man who had rocked her world.

  Of course she hadn’t. Proof really did lie in her arms.

  “He doesn’t know about Joss.” Why she blurted that particular tidbit out Chrissie wasn’t sure. But she did blurt it out. She also had fire burning her face.

  Savannah’s thin brows veed. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  Wishing she could fan her face, she shrugged. “Probably for the same reasons you didn’t tell Charlie you were pregnant those first few months.”

  Chrissie’s comment had Savannah relenting a little, but only a little.

  “Chrissie, you need to tell him. He is Joss’s father. I know I didn’t tell Charlie to begin with, but I should have. The longer I waited, the more difficult admitting the truth became.”

  Savannah had found out she was pregnant on the very day Charlie had told her he had taken a job two hours away and was moving. Without her. It had taken a while for Savannah and Charlie to work out their differences, but now Chrissie’s friend had her happily-ever-after.

  Chrissie winced. “We were only supposed to be an affair. He doesn’t want to be burdened with a kid.”

  Her friend fixed her with a glare. “Is that how you feel about Joss?”

  “Of course not!” She tightened her hold around her sleeping son. “Joss is my whole world.”

  Savannah gave her another sharp look as if to say, Exactly.

  “Fine, I see your point, but you don’t understand. He works with Doctors Around the World and he’s leaving soon.”

  “Then you really should have told him while you were in Atlanta.”

  In between their sneaky kisses or perhaps by the stream? Or maybe right before she’d left Atlanta.

  See you later, Trace. And, oh, by the way, we have a three-year-old son you know nothing about.

  Wrong. She shouldn’t have told him anything. He was leaving. He didn’t want kids. She’d done him a favor.

  “Does this have to do with your father and what happened when you were young?”

  “No,” she denied. “Maybe.” She realized the tears she wasn’t going to shed had made their way down her cheeks. “Possibly. I don’t know, Savannah. I wanted to tell him, but he told me four years ago that he planned never to marry or have children. He still feels that way. Still, I thought about telling him of Joss but never could say the words. He wouldn’t really take Joss away from me. At least, I don’t believe he would. But my mom never would have left me with my dad if she’d thought he would kidnap me either.”

  Not that Chrissie had realized at first what her dad had done. He’d told her they were going on a special vacation together and she’d always craved her father’s attention, so she’d been a happy little girl. It was only days later, when he still hadn’t let her call her mother, would get angry that she wanted to, had slapped her when she’d started crying for her mother, that she’d started questioning their vacation that wasn’t much more than sleeping in different cars, cars she’d later learned he’d stolen along their way, and long hours on the road.

  “Most men aren’t like your father, Chrissie.” Savannah shuddered and kissed the top of Amelia’s head. “Thank God.”

  “Trace lives a very different life from most men, Savannah. He’s with DAW and goes into dangerous places. He is a good man, would feel obligated. Not knowing is better for him.”

  Only, if the roles were reversed, she’d want to know. She’d want to be a part of Joss’s life. Would Trace?

  “I don’t have his number or any way of getting in touch with him,” she said as much for her benefit as for Savannah’s.

  She didn’t have Trace’s number. There had been no need for number exchanges at the event. Not before and not this time. To have exchanged numbers would have implied a future they didn’t share.

  Only, she did have Alexis’s cell-phone number and she knew the beautiful Atlanta cardiologist had Trace’s number.

  “Chrissie, I can see how much you are struggling with this. Which tells me what I need to know. You have to tell him.”

  Feeling overwhelmed with emotion and fatigue, she shook her head. Too much had happened in Atlanta. She needed to think, to figure out exactly what she wanted to say to Trace, to be sure of whatever decisions she made because those decisions forever impacted her son.

  And Trace.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHRISSIE DIDN’T KNOW what she wanted.

  She didn’t want the traditional happily-ever-after. She didn’t fool herself that she’d ever have that and, honestly, she wasn’t in a rush to search for it. She was content to raise Joss and after he left to forge his own life, then she’d worry about her personal life, or lack thereof.

  Overall, she was pretty happy with her life as it was.

  At least, she had been.

  Before her weekend in Atlanta with Trace.

  Now, there was a restlessness that moved through her.

  A week had gone by.

  He’d probably already left Atlanta for some deprived part of the world where he was selflessly helping others.

  She couldn’t berate him for that.

  What he was doing was admirable, heroic even.

  He didn’t know he was missing the precious youth of his son.

  Because he didn’t know he had a son.

  Because she hadn’t told him. What kind of horribly selfish person was she?

  One who had been kidnapped by her father, an inner voice defended.

  Somehow the defense kept falling flat and never resolving Chrissie’s growing guilt.

  “Why are you crying, Mommy?”

  Chrissie blinked at Joss. She’d spread a blanket in their backyard to read a nursing magazine while he played in his sandbox with a shovel, pail, and myriad toy cars and trucks. Apparently, he’d noticed his mother’s tears.

  Which was more than she could say for herself.

  She hadn’t realized she was crying. Again. She’d cried way
too often over the past week.

  Over guilt, she told herself, not because she was missing Trace, not because of the ache in her chest at the thought of never seeing him again.

  “Are you sad?” he asked, wiping his gritty fingers across her cheek to clear her tears.

  “A little,” she answered him, bending to press a kiss to the top of his blond head. “Mommy was thinking about a friend.”

  Who wasn’t really a friend at all, but a lover.

  An amazing lover whom she missed.

  She missed Trace. Which made no sense. She’d known she wouldn’t see him beyond the event weekend. But she missed him.

  Not because of his out-of-this-world bedroom skills, but because of his quick smile and wit, the way his eyes lit up when they met hers, the intelligent conversations they’d shared.

  Okay, so she missed his bedroom skills, too.

  “We could go see your friend,” Joss offered with his three-year-old’s logic. “Then you wouldn’t be sad no more.”

  She smiled at him. “Any more, and you’re right.”

  If only she believed that, but seeing Trace again, if that was even a possibility, might destroy everything she knew and loved. Was she willing to risk it?

  Was it fair to Joss, to Trace, if she wasn’t?

  Wasn’t that the real cloud hanging over her the past week? The knowledge that whatever she decided would have such a terrible impact on the person she loved most in the world, on herself, on Trace?

  * * *

  Chrissie loved her job in the CVICU most days. She’d operated as the charge nurse on the unit for a couple of years and really liked the team of nurses and doctors she worked with. They were a good crew.

  Especially now that her bestie was back working on an as-needed basis. Like today.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she told Savannah. “I know you miss Amelia, but you made my life better by coming in.”

  Savannah grinned. “The timing was perfect as Charlie was off work today so he could be at home with Amelia. It’ll give them some good bonding time together. I’ll just have to sneak away a couple of times to pump milk, but other than that I’m happy to be back in the land of adulthood.”

  Staying home with Joss hadn’t been an option. Chrissie had worked like crazy during her pregnancy, saving and putting back as much as she could to cover the expenses of a baby. Fortunately, she’d always been frugal and had bought her little house not long after she’d graduated from nursing school. It was down the road from her mother and, although nothing fancy, she loved her two-bed, one-bath home in its quiet little neighborhood. All of which had made welcoming Joss into her life much easier. Her mother adored her grandson. Her mother had helped her tremendously as she’d made the transition from single woman to single mom, offering to babysit and a shoulder to cry on.

  She’d not needed the shoulder, but had welcomed her mother’s help with Joss while she’d been at work because she’d hated leaving him. Knowing he was with her mother had at least lightened that guilt. Maybe it was a guilt all working moms felt—the need to be at work and to do a good job there and the need to be with their child and to be a good mom.

  Regardless, she was grateful for her mother, and pleased that Savannah had been able to spend the first months of her daughter’s life with Amelia.

  “We’re pretty booked up. I’ve got a room and you’re assigned to two,” she told her friend, then let the nurse who’d stayed over to cover until Savannah could get there give her report.

  In the meanwhile, Chrissie went to check her patient. A young man in his twenties who’d had a valve replacement the day before.

  The boy was still on the ventilator and asleep when Chrissie went in to check him. His father sat in a chair next to the bed and opened his eyes when she entered the room.

  “Hi,” she greeted the tired-looking man.

  The man nodded acknowledgment, but turned his attention immediately to the pale young man lying in the bed with multiple tubes and wires attached to his body. “How is he?”

  Chrissie scanned over the telemetry. “Still holding his own.” She smiled at the man empathetically. “He should start stirring some soon.”

  “I hope so. I miss seeing this kid’s smile. He’s my whole world.”

  “I understand. I have a three-year-old son. He’s my whole world, too.”

  The man continued, obviously needing to talk. “He has to be okay.”

  “Dr. Flowers expects him to recover fully,” she reminded him.

  “I pray so.” The man raked his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “We’ve only connected a few years ago. Now, I can’t imagine my life without him.”

  “Oh?” Chrissie gazed at the man, who was leaning forward, staring at the rise and fall of the young man’s bandaged chest.

  He sighed, his gaze flickering to hers for a brief moment. “His mother and I weren’t married. She got ill a few years back and told him about me. After she passed, he looked me up.” Wincing, he shook off a memory. “I was a jerk to begin with. I didn’t believe he was mine.”

  At Chrissie’s grimace, the man elaborated.

  “How could I have known? His mother and I only dated for a short while and then I never saw her again. I never even thought about her until he showed up in my life almost twenty years later. If only she’d told me.”

  Chrissie’s chest tightened to where she could barely breathe. “What would you have done?”

  Startled at her question, the man met her gaze. “I’m not sure, but I do know my son would have known who I was, not just my name, and that in some shape, form, or fashion, I’d have been a father to him. She should have told me. For her not to have, and to have deprived me of knowing my kid, was selfish.” Red heightened his cheeks, contrasting with his otherwise pale face. “It’s probably wrong to be angry at the dead, but I struggle with it every day.”

  With her insides shaking, Chrissie finished checking her patient.

  When she left the room, she was sweating.

  Yet icy cold inside.

  If only she’d told me. For her not to have...was selfish.

  Was that a sentiment Trace would someday feel? That she’d been selfish to deprive him of Joss?

  It was how she’d feel if she were the one missing their son’s life.

  She glanced around the CVICU. For a morning that had started a bit chaotic due to being short-handed, now everything was, for the moment, calm and smooth, thanks to Savannah coming in and covering their short-staffed situation.

  With clammy hands, she pulled out her phone, then went into an empty patient room and pulled the sliding glass door closed.

  She had to call Alexis, then Trace. Now. She couldn’t wait another minute, couldn’t second-guess herself or let the past, or her baggage, interfere with doing what she knew she had to do.

  * * *

  Trace had gotten his next assignment with DAW. He’d start out in Africa again for at least six months. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be leaving for almost three weeks and that had him restless. He was ready to get back to work.

  He’d met Bud and Agnes for lunch at a downtown Atlanta restaurant to spend some time with them prior to leaving. A week had passed since the fund-raiser event and he’d not seen them since. Bud always took Agnes on a mini-vacation the week after the event and they’d just gotten home the day before.

  He enjoyed listening to the details of their cruise. Years ago, he’d met them on a regular basis for lunch and realized as he sat across from them how much he missed doing so.

  “Have you talked to Chrissie?”

  Agnes’s question caught him off guard.

  “We made no plans to stay in touch. You know that.”

  The older woman looked at her husband and shook her head. “Young people these days are
so blind to what’s right in front of them.”

  Bud smiled indulgently at his wife. “What’s that, honey?”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t see what I saw at the event, because I know better.”

  Bud patted her hand. “Agnes, if the boy says he doesn’t want to stay in touch with the girl then he doesn’t want to stay in touch with her.”

  “No, that’s not what that means, Bud. It means he’s not smart enough to go after her.”

  “Agnes, I leave in a couple of weeks,” he reminded her. “Even if I wanted to go after Chrissie, what would be the point?”

  An aha! look brightened her face. “Do you want to?”

  Good ol’ Agnes. She didn’t beat around the bush.

  “No, Agnes, I don’t want to pursue a woman.” Which might not be a hundred percent the truth because he had thought about Chrissie a lot over the past week.

  But he always came back to the same conclusion. She’d left without saying goodbye for a reason. Because she’d known, like him, that they had no future together.

  He couldn’t justify interfering in her life when he’d be on another continent. What were they supposed to do? Teleconference stay in touch? He wouldn’t do that to her.

  “See, I told you there was more between them than met the eye,” Agnes spoke up, nudging her husband, and sending Trace an I-told-you-so look.

  “Oh, there was plenty that met the eye,” Bud countered. “But whatever was between them was exactly like the boy said, between him and the girl.”

  Agnes just shook her head at her husband.

  His cell phone rang and Trace was grateful for the escape from the current conversation.

  “Sorry.” He pulled out the phone and answered.

  “Trace?” a familiar female voice asked. “This is Chrissie.”

  His heart pounded, but a repeated “Hello,” was all he said due to the curious stares he was receiving from the couple across the restaurant table.

  “Is this a bad time?” she asked, her voice almost sounding as if she hoped he said it was.

  “Could’ve been worse.”

  “Oh.” She paused a moment. “I...maybe I could call back at a more convenient time.”