Buch lesen: «Bachelor Doc, Unexpected Dad»

CHAPTER ONE

“I DON’T KNOW what to do with him,” Matt McClain said, looking down at the little tow-headed boy in the firm grasp of his second cousin, or half-cousin, or whatever it was that related them distantly.

Sarah Clayton held the boy’s hand like she was holding on to a dog that was about to get away. Tight, and with a purpose. But not friendly. There was nothing friendly or nurturing in her. Nothing compassionate. Nothing to indicate she cared at all for the kid. “The same thing you think I’m supposed to do with him. Only I’m not going to do it. I took care of your sister those last two weeks, and I’ve had him with me ever since. But you’re here, and you’re more blood to him than I am so, he’s yours. Besides...”

She held out an envelope—one that had been sealed, opened then sealed again. “Janice left you this.”

He opened it, and looked down at the shaky handwriting—the handwriting of a dying woman. A lump formed in his throat and he turned his back to Sarah as he read it.

Dear Matt,

If you’re reading this, that means the cancer has finally beaten me. The doctors said I was too late for treatment, but that’s been my life. Too late for everything. It’s called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and I’m sure you know all about it since you’re a doctor.

Yes, I know you’re a doctor. Heard it from a man in the casino where I was working. He was drunk and saying all kinds of crazy things...things that didn’t make sense. His name was Carter, I think, and he said he was a doctor. I don’t know if that’s true, but he was going on about his buddy Matt, from Forgeburn, who saved his life. Great doctor, he called you. And I’m sure you are.

Matt stopped reading for a moment and took a breath. Carter Holmes had been his best buddy since med-school days. He’d sustained almost fatal injuries and, yes, he’d saved his life. “Do you know how long Janice was in Vegas?” he asked Sarah, without turning to face her.

“For a while, I think. She told me she moved around a lot. Changed her name so your old man wouldn’t find her. Said she was always looking over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t coming after her.”

Matt clenched his jaw, not wanting to read any more but knowing he had to.

I don’t blame you for not sending for me, Matty. We were both kids. Neither of us knew what to do. But I did wait until I couldn’t stay there anymore. You were gone, Dad left me behind, and even though I wasn’t even fifteen I knew I had to leave there, too.

I spent a lot of time going from place to place, never settling down. I was afraid to. Afraid I’d get too comfortable someplace and let my guard down. So I always moved on. Funny thing is, all those years I was running I guess Dad had died right after he left Forgeburn. At least that’s what Sarah said. Guess neither of us had to run away, did we?

Matt turned to Sarah. “He’s dead?”

She nodded. “They found him in one of the canyons. They think he’d passed on quite a while before one of the cowboys stumbled on him. He was living like he always did, they said. Hoarding trash and drinking his life away. Folks around here said it was the drink that took him. Didn’t really care to find out.”

Matt shut his eyes. So many wasted years he and Janice had had when they could have stayed together. But they’d become two kids out on their own, in a world they didn’t know. He’d found his salvation in the army. But Janice... Matt turned away from Sarah again, before she could see the tears brimming in his eyes.

I did one good thing, though, Matty. His name is Lucas. I don’t know who his father is, and there’s no sense looking. But he’s a good boy—the only thing I’ve done right. I want you to take care of him for me. Make sure he has better than what we did.

Do for him, Matty, what you couldn’t do for me.

That was where the letter ended. No last words, no signature. “Is this all?” he asked Sarah.

“It was all she could do to get that on paper. She went to sleep with the pen still in her hand and she didn’t...”

Matt nodded as he looked across the sandy expanse at his sister’s grave. A few mourners were still there—maybe five or six and he wondered who they were and why they had come. Forgeburn had never been a real home to them. All it had ever been was the place from which they wanted to escape. “Why did she come back here?” he asked.

“Because she wanted to contact you, but she wasn’t up to it. And I was the only relative, even though I live a good fifty miles from here.”

“So, Lucas,” Matt said, once he’d regained his composure and turned around again to face Sarah. “You’ve got kids. You know how to take care of them. I don’t. And I’m still on active duty. I have to report back in two months.” He’d been granted emergency family leave to come and make arrangements for Lucas, but those arrangements didn’t include keeping him. That thought had never crossed his mind as he’d assumed Lucas was already settled in with Sarah. But apparently not. “And I’m scheduled to go back to Iraq later this year. How, in all of that, does he fit in?”

“Look, Matt. I kept him until you got here, just to be nice, but this is where it ends. Janice named you as his legal guardian, the social worker from child services has seen to the legalities of it, which makes him your responsibility, not mine. So adopt him yourself, or find someone else who wants him—it’s your decision. And I don’t mean to be unreasonable about this, but my husband doesn’t want him. We’ve got enough to handle without adding another child to it. So...” She shrugged. “Take him. Or get rid of him. Either way, I’m out of it.”

Take him. Just like that. Take a nephew he hadn’t even known he had until he’d received word his sister had died. Matt wasn’t opposed to family responsibility. In a lot of ways, he liked the idea of honoring the obligation, even in a family like his. A mother who had left when he’d been five. A sister who had—well, ended up back where she’d started. A dad who apparently had died without notice.

But Lucas—he needed his chance. He hadn’t asked to be born into the McClain family. It’s just what he’d got. Still, kids didn’t belong in his life. He’d planned it like that. No kids, no obligations. Obligations—for a moment the image of Ellie flashed through his mind. If ever there’d been a time when he’d come close to taking on an obligation other than his career...

“Look, Sarah, give me a couple weeks to figure it out. Can you do that much?”

Sarah shook her head. “Sorry.”

Well, she wasn’t giving him many options. For a career military surgeon, always going in one direction or another, moving from place to place and in his case combat zone to combat zone, there was no room to care for a child. In fact, he didn’t even have a place to call home, and kids needed a home, and stability. They needed someone there all the time to raise them. They needed what he and Janice had never had.

“All I can say, Matt, is I know you’ve been doing good for yourself, despite the way your daddy treated you. I’m glad for you. But I can’t take Lucas. So, like I said, I’ve already contacted child services, they know the situation, and the paperwork’s started. So he’ll go to a group home until they can find a family who’ll take him in, unless you do. As for adoption...” She shrugged. “Can’t say what’ll happen there. He’s a cute kid. Doesn’t talk, though. Not a word.” She leaned in and whispered, “Don’t think he’s very smart.”

“Probably because he’s traumatized from everything that’s been happening to him,” Matt snapped. Then he looked down at Lucas, who was sucking his thumb. He had a ratty old blanket tucked under his arm, and he wore a pair of sneakers that were clearly several sizes too large. All Matt could think was he was so vulnerable. And scared. Matt knew what it was like to be vulnerable and scared. Knew exactly what the kid was feeling...like his whole world had just collapsed. Matt couldn’t blame Lucas for not wanting to talk. There had been many times in his own young life when he hadn’t wanted to talk either.

“Hope it doesn’t mess up your life too much, Matt,” Sarah said, then turned and walked away, leaving Matt standing alone in the cemetery, holding on to Lucas with one hand and a bag of clothes with the other. And with no idea what to do next.

“Do you eat hamburgers?” he asked Lucas, who looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. The kid needed more than a hamburger. Matt knew that. He needed words of reassurance. The promise of a home. A hug. Right now, though, he was equipped to buy him a hamburger. That’s all.

Did kids his age eat hamburgers? Matt’s medical training told him yes. But his parenting training—well, there was none of that to draw on. No kids in his life, no kids in his future. No home. No wife. He thought back to that morning when he’d left Ellie sleeping and walked away. Too bad he couldn’t go back and stay there. It had been nice. No worries. No past. No future. Just that moment in time. Unlike this moment in time, when his only goal was a hamburger, or anything else a two-year-old would eat.

* * *

“I need to do what?” Ellie Landers looked at the ultrasound, and didn’t see anything particularly distressing. She knew how to interpret what she was seeing. Her brief time in nursing had taught her that much. And what she saw right now looked perfectly normal.

“Rest more. Eat better. Reduce stress. Cut back on work. You know, the simple things.”

She did know, but she wasn’t sure why all this applied to her. Dr. Shaffer had just told her the baby was healthy. She was healthy, too. So why the precautions? “But there’s nothing wrong with me. You said so just a few minutes ago.” Now she was worried.

“Your blood pressure is on the high end of normal. You’re at risk for gestational diabetes partly because of your age and partly because your mother has diabetes. And you’re chronically tired.”

“Because I work eighteen hours a day.” Ellie liked Doc Shaffer. He’d been her mother’s obstetrician, now he was hers. Medically, he had a great reputation. Personally, he was just plain kind. He’d never asked her to explain the pregnancy. Not that there was much to explain about a two-night fling at a medical conference. All that, plus he had a great heart for his patients and treated them with respect and dignity no matter what the situation. As someone in the medical field, Ellie appreciated that. As a patient, she was glad to have it.

“Cut it back,” he said, leaning forward across his desk, looking over at her across the top of his glasses. “You’re thirty-four, Ellie. You live a busy life and drive yourself harder than anybody I’ve ever seen, except your mom. And I don’t want you having complications with this pregnancy.”

Thirty-four and owner of one of the fastest-growing medical illustration companies in the world. Something she’d built from the ground up. “But you think I could be at risk?”

“You could be, if you don’t slow down—which puts your baby at risk.”

Her baby. It was strange hearing that, because Ellie had never really thought of this life she was carrying as her baby. It was a baby, possibly someone else’s baby, depending on whether or not her fling wanted to be a daddy. But her baby? Hearing that gave her a maternal jolt she hadn’t expected. It wasn’t enough to make her change her mind to become a single mom, but it did make Ellie more aware of the baby she was carrying.

“Look, I’ll cut back on the hours. Eat better. But I’m not going to go home, kick my feet up and watch old movies for the next almost five months. I have to work. My company needs me, and I need it.”

“You’re just like your mother. Do you know that?” Doc Shaffer leaned back in his chair, typed something into his computer, then shook his head. “She was as driven as you are. And as stubborn.”

Ellie Landers wanted to smile at the comparison, but she couldn’t as she didn’t want to be like her mother and didn’t want to be compared to her either. “And look how successful she’s been. She owns one of the largest technology companies in Nevada.” And she’d raised a child as a single mom. Well, mostly in absentia. But she did get the credit for hiring the right people to take care of her. All this was something Ellie wasn’t prepared to do.

Children needed a real family, a parent or parents who didn’t hire someone to take their child to the playground, who didn’t pay for the most qualified caregivers but, instead, took responsibility for that care themselves. Family dinners, stories at bedtime. That’s what children needed—what Ellie had never had, and what she wasn’t able to give. Not with her job or her chosen lifestyle. That’s what Ellie had learned from her own upbringing and what she carried with her every day of her life. That kind of life wasn’t meant to be her kind of life.

Still, the dream of it—home, family. Husband. It was nice. But so ethereal it made Ellie sad. So that’s where she stopped because the rest of the dream was so vague. But the husband was not. Since Reno, she’d had a vision of him. Even more now that she was carrying his baby.

“Whatever the case, stop at Reception on your way out and schedule your next appointment. I’d like to see you back in six weeks as a precautionary measure. Also, I’ve written you a prescription for prenatal vitamins, and the name of a good physical therapist should your back spasms continue.”

“I don’t need a therapist for backache and I already take vitamins. I started the day I found out I was pregnant.”

“Which is good. But the ones I’m prescribing have more iron—you’re a little anemic, and they also have much more folic acid than anything you can get OTC, because you need folic acid. It’s for the healthy development of the brain, eyes, cells and nervous system.”

“I know,” Ellie said. “Remember, I worked in obstetrics?” She’d been a good nurse, but nursing hadn’t suited her the way she’d hoped it would. Maybe because it required nurturing in abundance, and she didn’t have a speck of it in her. She had been good at the procedural aspects, but had lacked the genuine human touch that was also needed. Ellie could see her shortcoming, and she’d honestly worked to correct it because she loved medicine, but there had always been something missing. She couldn’t define it, couldn’t describe it to her supervisor when she’d resigned from her job.

And now, ten years later, she still couldn’t define what that lack was other than she simply didn’t have a nurturer’s instinct. But she’d found her niche—medical illustration.

Ellie had always loved drawing and was pretty good at it. Had won a few childhood awards. Turned it into her minor course of study in college. So when she’d read that it was an expanding field with growth potential, she’d jumped at the chance to be part of it, anxious to combine her love of medicine with her love of drawing. Of course, more education had been required. Two additional years of study on top of the four she’d had in nursing school. In those two years, however, she’d gone from not only wanting to be an illustrator but wanting to build her own company. And it was also exciting. Even now, she had no regrets.

“Yes, I know you were a nurse—for about a minute—then you moved on. Remember that?”

“And those charts of fetal development you have hanging on the wall in your waiting room...” She smiled. She’d done them. And she’d illustrated numerous medical texts. Plus, they were doing medical videography now.

Doc Shaffer laughed. “Point taken. You’ve made a name for yourself, but that name must cut back on her hours, and get more rest. You work too hard, Ellie, and while I’m an advocate for women getting on with their lives when they’re pregnant, your life is a little over the top. In other words, baby needs some rest.”

Rest—that she would do. Even though she wasn’t going to keep this baby, she did want to give it every advantage she could coming into this world, and keeping herself healthy was the start of it. “So, is that all you want? Or would you like another pint of blood?”

Doc Shaffer chuckled. “You know what I want, and at the rate you’re going, that’s a big order.”

“Then I’ll do better,” she promised. And she would. While Ellie didn’t want the responsibility of raising a child, not with her fear of turning out to be the kind of mother hers was, she certainly didn’t want to put this baby at risk. She’d made her choice the day her dipstick had gone from blue to pink, and nothing had changed since then. She’d tell Dr. Matt McClain he was going to be a father and give him the option to raise their baby. Or she would opt for adoption, if he didn’t want to. It was all straightforward. Ellie owned a business and that was her life, all she wanted. Real babies, boyfriends and husbands were not needed.

So all Ellie had to do now was tell someone who’d expected a couple of casual days of fun at a medical convention that casual had turned into commitment. If that’s what he wanted. He’d seemed like a nice guy. A little distracted. But kind. And polite. Really good looking...traditionally tall, dark and handsome, and rugged. Dark eyes, wavy black hair, rugged. Built like she’d never seen another man built.

Just thinking about him now gave Ellie goose-bumps. The way he’d looked those couple of nights when she’d let go of her self-made business-first rules, let her hair down and lived in a fantasy that had never happened in her reality was still with her. He’d hung on in her mind long after Reno. From time to time she’d even caught herself distracted by a daydream of him. A leftover feeling she couldn’t explain and didn’t want to explore. Then the reality of those days had crept in, about six weeks later.

And now, well—all Ellie had to do was the figurative baby-in-a-basket-on-the-doorstep thing, and hope he’d take that basket in. It was his baby too and not only did he have the right to know, he had the right to be a daddy, if that’s what he wanted. Or be involved in the adoption process, if that’s what he wanted. Either way, she’d know what was going to happen soon. Ellie was glad he was out of the military now and back home, because from here she was headed straight to Forgeburn, Utah.

* * *

“It’s not a traditional medical practice,” Dr. Donald Granger explained. “But you know that since you’re from here. Most of it’s a cowboy practice now, and that’s about as tough as it gets. Then you’ve got some of the canyon resort areas with tourists who need medical care occasionally. And we do have some locals in a couple little spread-out towns. There’s a pretty fair patient base—enough to keep one doc busy.

“If you need help, the clinic in Whipple Creek will usually send someone out for a day or two, but you’ve got to keep in mind that you’re the only real medical help within a hundred miles in any direction. So what you’ll be getting is a practice that stretches out for more miles than any practical medical practice should have to, house calls that’ll take up half your day for something minor—and, yes, house calls are part of what the people here expect—and the cowboy trailers—good luck finding those.

“It’s a hard life, son. But a good one. People will appreciate you more because access to you isn’t easy for many of them. And there’s no one to rely on but you, which develops stamina. And courage. Lots of courage.”

“If it’s so good,” Matt asked, “why are you giving it up?” He had qualms about taking over a GP practice, even if only for a little while because being back home came with all kinds of bad memories, and he was afraid those might surface at the wrong times and prevent him from doing his best. Plus, he wasn’t a GP. That was another big drawback. In fact, the only good thing was that it would keep him busy, and he needed that. Lucas was a great kid, but spending every minute of every day together wasn’t good for either of them. They both needed some separation from time to time.

“I’ve been doing it for fifty years, as you know, since I took care of you when you were little. And these old bones aren’t rugged enough anymore. Also, I’ve got grandkids who don’t even know me. So it’s time for me to move on, to rest the weary bones and play with the grandkids.”

“You do realize I’m only going to be a temp here. Once the situation with Lucas gets straightened out, I have to report back to duty. They’ve given me two months, which is the time I’ve accrued for regular leave. So you’ll still have to keep looking for someone to buy you out.”

“Or close the practice for good if I can’t.” Dr. Granger held out his hands. They were knotted with arthritis. “These hands can’t do the job anymore, Matt, or I would carry on. I wouldn’t want to see this place go without a doctor, but most of the young docs coming out of medical school want something better than what I’ve got to offer, and the older docs who have had something better now want something simpler. Practicing in Forgeburn doesn’t just take love for the work, it takes love for the work here.”

That would never happen. Once child services had a good placement for Lucas, he’d be gone. Being here was only a matter of circumstances, and Matt wasn’t staying because he wanted to. He was staying for Lucas. “So, when do you want me to start?”

“Are you sure about this, Matt? Do you really want to do this?”

“No. But, I’m not staying here for me. The army has me and I’ll go back as soon as I can.”

“And that little one you’re looking after?”

“Lucas is a good kid, and I’m going to make sure I’ve found the best situation for him before I leave. If that means staying here for longer than I’d wanted, that’s what I’ll do because I don’t want him growing up the way I did. You know how it was with Janice and me, Doc—and no kid deserves that.”

“But you came through it, Matt, and look at you now.”

Yes, just look at him. The man who knew nothing about kids as temporary guardian of a child he couldn’t raise. Kids needed much more than anything he had to offer. In fact, as it stood, Matt had nothing to offer whatsoever. His life in the army didn’t mix with domesticity in any form. “But my sister didn’t, which is why I have to do what I’m doing. I owe it to her to do this for Lucas.” Even though he was sure Janice’s intention had been for him to keep the boy. But that wouldn’t work out.