Accidental Parents

by Jane Toombs

  Jade wished she had someone to reassure her that she wasn’t making a mistake by getting so attached to Nathan.

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Books by Jane Toombs

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright

  Jade wished she had someone to reassure her that she wasn’t making a mistake by getting so attached to Nathan.

  Too attached. The word love lurked just around the comer, she feared.

  She’d never been in love with a man, not really. Temporarily infatuated with maybe one or two, but never in love. How could it possibly come to that with Nathan?

  How did he feel about her? Oh, he wanted her in the same way she wanted him, but she really didn’t know if it went beyond that with him.

  She tried to put him out of her mind. He occupied far too much of her thoughts as it was....

  Dear Reader,

  This month, Silhouette Special Edition presents an exciting selection of stories about forever love, fanciful weddings—and the warm bonds of family.

  Longtime author Gina Wilkins returns to Special Edition with Her Very Own Family, which is part of her FAMILY FOUND: SONS & DAUGHTERS series. The Walker and D’Alessandro clans first captivated readers when they were introduced in the author’s original Special Edition series, FAMILY FOUND. In this new story, THAT SPECIAL WOMAN! Brynn Larkin’s life is about to change when she finds herself being wooed by a drop-dead gorgeous surgeon....

  The heroines in these next three books are destined for happiness—or are they? First, Susan Mallery concludes her enchanting series duet, BRIDES OF BRADLEY HOUSE, with a story about a hometown nanny who becomes infatuated with her very own Dream Groom. Then the rocky road to love continues with The Long Way Home by RITA Award-winning author Cheryl Reavis—a poignant tale about a street-smart gal who finds acceptance where she least expects it. And you won’t want to miss the passionate reunion romance in If I Only Had a... Husband by Andrea Edwards. This book launches the fun-filled new series, THE BRIDAL CIRCLE, about four long-term friends who discover there’s no place like home—to find romance!

  Rounding off the month, we have Accidental Parents by Jane Toombs—an emotional story about an orphan who draws his new parents together. And a no-strings-attached arrangement goes awry when a newlywed couple becomes truly smitten in Their Marriage Contract by Val Daniels.

  I hope you enjoy all our selections this month!

  Sincerely,

  Karen Taylor Richman

  Senior Editor

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  * * *

  JANE TOOMBS

  ACCIDENTAL PARENTS

  To Elmer, my favorite Nevadan

  Books by Jane Toombs

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Nobody’s Baby #1081

  Baby of Mine #1182

  Accidental Parents #1247

  Silhouette Shadows

  Return to Bloodstone House #5

  Dark Enchantment #12

  What Waits Below #16

  The Volan Curse #35

  The Woman in White #50

  The Abandoned Bride #56

  Previously published under the pseudonym Diana Stuart

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Out of a Dream #353

  The Moon Pool #671

  Silhouette Desire

  Prime Specimen #172

  Leader of the Pack #238

  The Shadow Between #257

  JANE TOOMBS

  was born in California, raised in the upper peninsula of Michigan and has moved from New York to Nevada as a result of falling in love with the state and a Nevadan. Jane has five children, two stepchildren and seven grandchildren. Her interests include gardening, reading and knitting.

  Chapter One

  The potholed road snaked along beside the river that had flooded over it during last winter’s storms, damaging the blacktop almost beyond repair. Road crews had filled in only the totally impassable areas, then gone on to deal with other washed-out roads in the county.

  Carefully negotiating this barely navigable one with her four-wheel-drive pickup, Jade Adams might have enjoyed the scent of spring sifting though her lowered windows if she hadn’t had to concentrate on avoiding the worst spots. No wonder traffic was so sparse.

  To her left the river flowed swiftly but so peacefully she could hardly believe the sight of huge boulders and woody debris it had cast up, littering the bank near the road. Beyond the river and also to her right rose the rock walls that had forced the water, over the years, to cut this canyon through them.

  The canyon road offered the quickest route between the drill site east of Tourmaline and her home in the Sierras near Lake Tahoe. As she’d expected, the crew had the rig under control and hadn’t needed her supervision. Because she was the owner of Northern Nevada Drilling, though, she always checked out new sites. This water well looked to be no problem.

  Anticipating the next pothole, Jade slowed for a blind curve. As she eased far enough around it to see what lay beyond, her breath caught. Muttering, “Holy moley,” she tromped on the brakes, staring at a white van, its front crumpled against a boulder on the riverbank.

  The driver’s door was open and Jade could see what looked to be a woman’s body hanging partway out. She drove the pickup across the road and pulled onto the bank. When she cut the engine, she saw a red Jeep skid to a stop behind the wrecked van. Jumping out, she hurried to the van, reaching it an instant behind a tall man carrying a black bag.

  He pulled a stethoscope from his jacket pocket, then reached inside the van and flicked off the key in the ignition before bending over the woman. Jade breathed a sigh of relief that someone more medically competent than she was going to take charge. She’d learned to handle most emergencies and often had administered first aid when she needed to at drill sites, but she was no doctor, as this man seemed to be.

  Satisfied he was tending to the woman, Jade quickly set off flares to warn oncoming traffic of the accident, then peered into the van to see if anyone else was inside. She found herself staring into the frightened brown eyes of a child strapped into the back seat.

  She rushed around to the passenger side, slid open the side door and climbed in. “Are you hurt?” she asked the little boy.

  He didn’t answer. Since she could see no sign of injury, she told herself he must be more scared than hurt, because most of the damage was to the front of the van. Deciding it was safe to move him, she unbuckled the seat belt and lifted him. He wound his arms around her neck and, as she carried him from the van, she marveled at how little he seemed to weigh.

  Gazing at him in the late-afternoon sunlight, she noted his face looked vaguely Asian. “Can you tell me your name?” she asked.

  His only response was to clutch her tighter.

  “Anybody else injured?” the man called to her.

  The boy tensed, then wriggled from her arms and began limping as fast as he could toward the river. Jade ran after him, calling, “No! Stop!”

  Heart thudding, she caug
ht him before he reached the water. She braced herself for a struggle, but he let her pick him up without even trying to twist away. “You could have drowned,” she scolded.

  He felt as rigid as a steel drill pipe in her arms. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said softly. “I want to help.”

  Thinking to shield him from the sight of the injured woman, who might be his mother, she carried the boy toward her truck. He craned his neck to look at the van. The open door concealed the woman, but the man Jade believed to be a doctor, now with a cell phone to his ear, was visible. The boy cringed against her, trembling.

  Could he possibly be afraid of the man? Come to think of it, he’d fled right after he heard the man ask if anyone else was hurt. Was his flight caused by the man’s voice? Before she thought better of it, Jade called, “Are you really a doctor?”

  The man took the phone from his ear and, as he punched in another number, said, “That’s what they told me after I passed my Illinois boards. My name’s Nathan Walker.” Then back went the phone to his ear.

  The boy buried his face in her neck, clinging tightly to her. Jade edged into the road to see the license plate on the front of the none-too-new red Jeep. Beneath the snowplow attachment—still on in May?—she noted the personal plate read: BoonDoc.

  “Very funny,” she muttered. It was a Nevada license plate while the van’s was California. If that meant anything.

  She watched Nathan Walker put the phone away, then ease the unconscious woman from the van onto the ground so that she lay flat. As he rose, he faced Jade.

  “Medicopter’s on its way from Reno,” he said, walking toward her. “Is the kid hurt?”

  “He limps,” she said.

  “Let’s take a look at him.”

  “He’s scared—I think of you. He won’t let go of me.”

  Nathan stared at her. “Afraid of me?”

  “My name’s Jade Adams,” she said, “and I believe you when you say you’re a doctor. But I don’t know you and so I can’t take anything else for granted. This child is even afraid to look at you. I haven’t a clue why.”

  “Neither do I. Tell you what—you keep holding him while I do a quick once-over.”

  Something about the way he spoke—or maybe it was the way he looked—made her decide to trust him. The boy definitely didn’t like Nathan touching him, but he didn’t struggle or cry.

  “Slightly swollen left ankle,” Nathan said when he finished his cursory exam. “Needs to be x-rayed. After the copter picks up...” He paused, glancing from the boy to the woman.

  Jade looked at her, too. The woman appeared to be Caucasian, for want of a better term. Not Asian, anyway. Still, she could be the boy’s mother.

  “The kid doesn’t need to be hospitalized,” Nathan went on. “No use putting him through any more strange-face, strange-place trauma. For the time being he’s better off with us, since he seems to have taken to you. Once she’s airlifted, we’ll take him to my clinic—it’s near Tourmaline.”

  “In the boondocks.”

  The left side of his mouth lifted slightly, acknowledging her words.

  She’d already noted that he was tall and well built, wearing his blond hair slightly long. Now she found his eyes were an interesting shade of blue, somewhere between delft and periwinkle. The tiny lines around them put him somewhere in his thirties. Square chin, in need of a shave, and a nose that fit well with his strong cheekbones. Good to look at.

  “Did you find any ID for the woman?” she asked, shifting her grip on the boy.

  Nathan shook his head. “The kid must be getting heavy. Why don’t you buckle him into your truck? It’s obvious he won’t want to travel in my Jeep, so you’ll have to follow me to the clinic. If the deputies don’t get here before we leave, they’ll know where we are and can talk to us there.”

  Naturally he’d called the cops, as well as the air ambulance. She always carried her cell phone and would have done the same if she’d been alone.

  Nathan watched Jade strap the boy into the passenger seat of her truck before turning back to see how the injured woman was doing. Kneeling beside her, he checked her vitals, not great, but no worse. He’d done all he could for her here; anything more was up to the docs at Washoe Med, once the copter landed there.

  Strange not to find any registration or insurance papers in the van—illegal as hell, too. Plus, he hadn’t uncovered a handbag of any kind, not even a wallet. Maybe the deputies would discover one when they gave the van a more thorough search.

  He stood and glanced toward Jade’s truck. She was leaning in the open door, and all he could see was her jean-covered lower legs, ending in heavy boots. The truck had Northern Nevada Drilling lettered on the door. She must work there.

  Striking woman—green eyes along with auburn hair, although she didn’t have the pale skin usually associated with red hair. Her skin was a warmer color, an enticing one—if he wanted to be enticed.

  She straightened and turned toward him. “Aren’t they ever going to get here?” she called.

  Impatient, he thought, as the distant clack of rotor blades answered her question.

  The paramedics had the woman strapped to a stretcher and in the copter in nothing flat. “If she comes to and asks about the boy,” Nathan said to them, “let her know he’s fine. I’ll tell the cops to contact you if they find any info about her.”

  Stepping back, he felt the rush of wind as the copter rose vertically. As it leveled off to head for Reno, he looked around. No sign yet of any deputies. He waved to Jade, climbed into his Jeep and pulled away. As she followed him in her truck, he nodded approvingly. She might be impatient, but at least she wasn’t a tailgater.

  As she drove, Jade tried to reassure the boy. “No one will hurt you—I’ll make sure they won’t. The man who looked at your ankle is a doctor. You don’t need to be afraid of him—he wants to help you. When we get to his clinic, he’s going to take an X-ray picture of your ankle, but that doesn’t hurt.”

  The boy eyed her warily but said nothing.

  It occurred to her that maybe he didn’t speak English. Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier? “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” she asked.

  Was that an infinitesimal nod? She decided to believe it was. “Good. I told you my name was Jade. Won’t you tell me your name?”

  “Tim.” He spoke so softly she had to strain to hear him.

  “Tim. That’s a fine name. An honorable name. I’ll bet you know how old you are.”

  Tim didn’t say anything.

  “You want me to tell you how old I am first? Okay, twenty-nine.” And uncomfortably close to thirty, something she didn’t care to dwell on.

  Tim still didn’t speak, but he held up his right hand, fingers spread.

  “Five? A good age. I started school when I was five. Do you go to school?”

  A tiny negative head shake.

  “If you’re worried about the lady in the van, they took her to a hospital in that helicopter,” Jade told him. “We hope she’ll get better there.” She hesitated and then asked, “Is she your mother?”

  Tim shook his head again.

  “Do you know her name?”

  No response of any kind.

  “Is she someone you know?” Jade persisted with a flick of alarm. Sometimes kids did get stolen by strangers.

  He nodded.

  So she wasn’t a stranger. The woman had looked maybe forty, but that didn’t tell Jade anything.

  As they exited the canyon, the red Jeep turned onto a narrow side road that was in somewhat better shape than the river road they’d just left. Almost immediately it pulled into a drive leading to a graveled parking lot and stopped. Jade eased her truck up beside the Jeep.

  Four big fir trees all but hid the side of the two-story frame building next to the lot. Still, as she got out, she could see the place was far from new—and could use a paint job.

  Nathan came up to stand beside her and, as if reading her mind, said, “The town
fathers are selling it to me dirt cheap.”

  In lieu of a comment, Jade raised her eyebrows, then went around to get Tim and lifted him into her arms. Nathan led her along a gravel path to the front where a sign attached to the building read: Tourmaline Rural Clinic. Underneath was Nathan’s name and his office hours. She noted he was listed as a family physician.

  After he’d unlocked the door and ushered her and the boy inside, she said, “I’ve discovered his name is Tim and he’s five. The injured woman’s not his mother, and either he doesn’t know her name or won’t tell me.”

  Nathan nodded. “Okay, Tim,” he said, “we’re going into a room down the hall and I’m going to take a picture of your left ankle—the one that’s sore and makes you limp. I’ll do my best not to hurt you.”

  The boy mumbled something that sounded like “Jade.”

  “Jade’s coming with us,” Nathan assured him. “She’s going to help me.”

  Once in the room, he told her to sit Tim on the examining table. “Go ahead and undress him entirely,” he said. “I want to make sure he doesn’t have any other injuries.”

  Accustomed to dressing and undressing her young nephew, not to mention her two nieces, Jade started to strip Tim. She hesitated, biting back a shocked gasp when she saw multiple scars and fading bruises over the boy’s thighs and buttocks, then went on. Glancing at Nathan, she noticed a muscle twitch in his jaw, but he didn’t comment.

  He gently urged the boy onto his back, covered him with a small sheet and began to check him over. “Some parts of your body may be sore,” he told Tim. “You let me know if any place I touch hurts you and I’ll stop right away. Okay?”

  Tim reached for Jade’s hand, holding tightly through the exam and the X ray of his left ankle. “Get him dressed except for his shoes and socks,” Nathan said as he disappeared through the door with the X-ray plates in his hand.