His Texas Christmas Bride

“I’ve worked twelve-hour shifts for the past five days. Actually, it’s my first night off since I took the job.”

“Are they ganging up on the new guy?” She smiled and her dimples winked at him.

“No, they’ve been so shorthanded that the other doctors haven’t had much time off in a while.”

She was quiet for a moment and he could see the wheels turning in her mind. She glanced at her hands, which were in her lap, before looking back at him.

“Why didn’t you take the job at first?” she asked. “Because they did offer it to you, didn’t they? Please, tell me you didn’t decline because of what happened between us.”

A pretty shade of pink bloomed on her cheeks.

“Wait, don’t answer that,” she said. “It’s a dumb question. Of course you didn’t turn down a job because of me. It’s just that I tried to get in touch with you after I found out I was pregnant, but all the hospital would tell me was that you didn’t work there.”

He nodded. So she’d tried to find him. He wondered if she’d been discreet when she was doing her detective work. No one had told him that a woman claiming to be carrying his child had been there looking for him. Then again, how would an employer break that news to a new hire? And would she really have told a complete stranger why she was looking for him? Not likely.

“I couldn’t justify relocating on the first offer,” he said. “But I could work with their counteroffer. So, just in case you were still wondering, no, my turning it down had nothing to do with you or what happened between us.”

“I didn’t even know your last name,” she said.

Exactly. They hadn’t exchanged much personal information beyond first names. He’d thought that was the way she’d wanted it, and it had made their meeting sexy and exciting.

“So, I take it you’re keeping the baby.”

“Of course I am. I have a good job. This place isn’t a palace, but it’s big enough for a child and me.”

They sat in silence for a moment. The furnace ticked and then clicked on. A car honked somewhere outside.

“Look,” she finally said, “I won’t try to force you to be part of this child’s life. We will be perfectly fine on our own. I just thought you should know.”

“Would you be willing to take a paternity test?”

“Excuse me?”

“A paternity test. Would you take one?”

Her mouth opened and shut before she could utter a word.

It wasn’t an unreasonable request, but the way she glared at him made it seem as if he’d asked her to move to Mars. The look in her eyes cut him deeply.

But he couldn’t go there. Or rather, he couldn’t let her work her way into that soft spot where instinct and feelings lived and eclipsed common sense. Instinct and feelings had never served him well. That’s how they’d gotten themselves into this mess in the first place. He made a mental note not to call the pregnancy—or the baby—a mess. If she was reacting this way to a paternity test, she’d probably smack him if he called the situation a mess.

It was all so new that the pregnancy and baby didn’t seem as if they were one and the same. That his child might be growing inside Becca...

The thought hit him like a punch in the gut. He would not make a good father. He was married to his job. Children were too unpredictable. They were too fragile. He knew for a fact he did not do well with unpredictable and fragile. He’d learned the hard way. The ER was a different type of unpredictable. It was based in science and methodical procedure. He never knew what he’d get one night to the next in the ER, but no matter what was thrown at him, he could follow procedure and tame the chaos. He could fix people.

But being a father? Raising a child? God help him. Or more accurate, God help the poor child.

That’s as far as he could go right now.

He simply couldn’t wrap his mind around it. But there was no sense in getting shell-shocked until he had the facts in hand.

He knew he sounded like a first-class jerk, but the sad truth was he wouldn’t be able to wrap his mind around the pregnancy until he was certain the baby was his.

Yes, she was three months pregnant. Yes, he’d slept with her twelve weeks ago. But they’d been together one night. He didn’t know her or how many guys she’d slept with or when she’d slept with them. Even though he didn’t want to believe she’d try to saddle him with another man’s kid.

But he didn’t really know her. Because of this, he reminded himself, it wasn’t out of line to ask for proof that he was the father.

“We used a condom,” he said. “I just don’t see how this could’ve happened.”

She squinted at him and did a little head jut.

“Hello, you’re a doctor. You, of all people, should know that condoms aren’t one hundred percent fail-safe.”

He shrugged. “You’re right. They aren’t foolproof. But they do prevent pregnancy most of the time. I need a paternity test for my own peace of mind. It’s not you, it’s me. When you get the test and the results come back, you can tell me I’m a jackass and say I told you so as many times as you want.”

She scoffed and shook her head, obviously disgusted with him.

“Becca, don’t be mad, please.”

“I’m not mad at you. Because even though I don’t sleep around, Nick—before you, I’d never had a one-night stand, and after I got the news, I wished I never had—you couldn’t possibly know me well enough to know that. So I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for sleeping with a man who doesn’t know me well enough to know that.”

Chapter Three (#ulink_400fc7d4-8b56-57d3-8f33-c2ac2ade7232)

Just as Nick had maintained that he was within his right to ask Becca to take the paternity test, she was justified in feeling offended and irritated by his request.

However, the all-too-rational part of Becca’s brain knew without a doubt how the results would come back. It would prove that Nick was the father. So, why argue?

Why?

Insult and exasperation kicked up again. Do the words it’s the principle of the matter not mean anything to you?

Her heart had broken a little bit after Nick’s visit. Still tender, it tried to overrule that sickeningly reasonable voice in her brain.

She didn’t have to take the test if she didn’t want to. He wasn’t strong-arming her. She didn’t need to prove herself. But wouldn’t it look as if she had something to hide if she held out? The truth would set her free.

Or would it?

Handing Nick proof positive would not guarantee he’d be any happier about it than he was right now. But that was the chance she’d have to take. She’d meant it when she’d told him she wouldn’t try to force him into anything he didn’t want to do. And she wouldn’t.

In the end, vindication trumped justification. The next day she went to the lab in Dallas that Nick had recommended and let them draw blood for a noninvasive prenatal paternity test. They told her they’d have the results back in two business days.

After the longest two days of her life, Becca braced herself for the news. She wasn’t sure why she was anxious, since the results wouldn’t be a surprise. But last night she’d dreamed that the lab had gotten her results mixed up with another person’s, and she couldn’t seem to make Nick understand that it was a mistake. That the lab had messed up.

All her life Becca, who’d been a straight-A student up through college, had had recurring nightmares of failing tests. They’d only served as incentive to work harder. But this test was out of her control.

As she took the parking garage elevator into the lobby of the Macintyre Enterprises building, she took a deep breath and tried to get in touch with her rational mind, which still seemed to be fast asleep this morning.

Her foolish, emotional, battered heart was not only wide-awake and beating like a cymbal-banging monkey, it had been making her do crazy things like check her email every fifteen minutes since five-thirty this morning. If her rational mind cared to show up, it would convince her that, much like pressing an elevator button repeatedly when waiting for a slow car, refreshing her email browser every fifteen minutes before the workaday world had poured their first cup of coffee was fruitless.