The Doctor's Secret Baby

“Being a doctor is a demanding profession.”

“I’m not talking about dinner and a show on Saturday night. Your aversion to responsibility, liability, obligation or dedication on a long-term basis is legendary. You’re as shallow as a cookie sheet.”

“That’s harsh.”

“But true. I knew that when we first went out. I was fine with it. I didn’t want anything permanent, either. It worked as well for me as it did for you. Maybe more.”

“So what was this conversation we had?”

“All I said was—wouldn’t you like to have children someday? You’re a pediatrician, and it’s not a stretch to assume that you might want to have one of your own.”

“Okay.” He vaguely remembered.

“Do you recall your response?”

“Not in detail.”

“I do.” Shadows made her eyes darken even more. “You did five minutes straight on what wasn’t going to happen. And I quote, ‘Nothing could compel me to ever tie myself down in any way. If you want to get on the commitment train, I’ll see you off at the station.’ You told me you never wanted strings. In a fairly firm and deep voice you added, ‘There’s no set of circumstances known to man that could make me change my mind.’”

Ouch. Yeah, he remembered now. The speech should be familiar since he’d given it so many times. “Okay.”

Frowning, she tipped her head, studying him as if he was an alien from another world. “I was trying to gently bring up the fact that I was pregnant. Your stay-single-or-perish soliloquy didn’t exactly make it feel safe to do that.”

“It’s not about comfort. It’s about what was right. Maybe I was a jerk—”

“Maybe?”

He ignored that. “Any time after that you could have called, dropped me a line, left a message on the answering machine. Something to the effect—‘Cal, I’m going to have a baby. Thought you should know. Catch you later.’”

It wouldn’t be the first time a woman tried to manipulate him by lobbing the pregnancy bomb. One that turned out to be a lie, the first of many before it had finally ended.

Emily looked small and tense in the big booth across from him. He couldn’t see her hands, they were in her lap. He remembered that when she was nervous, she twisted her fingers together. Peeking under the table to see if that had changed wasn’t happening.

“In your world—a man’s world—that would be the way. But not in mine. You made it clear how you felt and there was no way I was going to burden my baby with a father who didn’t want her.”

Sounded pretty cold when she said it like that. “You didn’t give me a chance to react with all the facts. If I’d known you were pregnant, we could have talked about it—”

“You talked. I listened and got the message. So shoot me for not wanting to hear any more.”

“Until now,” he reminded her, his gaze sliding to her breasts.

“Yeah.” She shifted her shoulders as if to relieve the tension and keep from shattering. “When I found the lump, it forced me to go to the bad place and think about what would become of Annie without me.” She met his gaze. “Her biological father—commitment-phobe and all—is the lesser of two evils.”

“Careful, flattery like that will turn my head.” The words oozed sarcasm because her low opinion of him rankled.

He was a stand-up guy; he saved lives every day. Some women actually called him a hero. Emily wasn’t one of them. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

“Look, Cal—” She settled her hands on the table, twisting her fingers together in that all-too-familiar way. “What you and I think of each other is irrelevant. Annie’s future and her welfare are the only things that matter.”

“Have you seen the specialist?” he asked, pushing away any reference to a child he still couldn’t believe was his.

“Not yet. My appointment is next week. With my primary care physician. A majority of sites on the Internet that I checked said that’s the place to start. I’m seeing Rebecca Hamilton. She delivered Annie.”

He hated to admit it, but that was the other reason he’d called. In spite of what she’d done—what she was trying to do—the thought of Emily being sick bothered him. But what if she was lying about the lump?

“What is it you want from me, Em?”

“I don’t want anything.”

He gripped his half full mug of cold coffee. “How do I know the baby is mine?”

“I’m more than willing to do a DNA test if that will put your mind to rest.”

He didn’t think there was a test in existence that would do that, not since seeing her again. “That would probably be a good idea. I’ll set it up.”

“Okay, then.” She nodded.

“Okay.”

If she was trying to pull a fast one, she wouldn’t agree so easily to the test. That silenced some but not all of his doubts because being made a fool of wasn’t high on his list of things to ever do again.

He’d been a teenager the last time a female had worked him over. She’d said she was pregnant and he’d believed her, married her. Months went by and she didn’t show, although she jumped his bones at every opportunity. When he found out there was no baby, he knew she’d been trying to get pregnant. Her lie was exposed but he also believed her when she said she’d done it for them, so they could be together. He’d also taken it seriously when he vowed to stay together for better or worse. And worse was what he got. After that she got more creative with manipulation while their marriage died a slow and painful death. When that chapter of his life was over, he’d erased the word commitment from his vocabulary.

Ever since, he’d been careful about protection during sex. Because it bordered on obsession, the thought of a child had never occurred to him. That still didn’t absolve Emily of fault here. She’d had a duty, an obligation, to tell him that she was going to have a baby. Too much time had passed for him to believe the child was his. She was just another woman trying to make him dance to her tune.

“So we’ll wait and see what the test says,” he told her.

“I have no doubt that it will confirm what I’m telling you. And I’m sorry I waited so long to do that. But I need to know she’ll have her father to take care of her. If the need arises. I’m not asking for myself, but for Annie.”

“So we have a plan.”

“We do.” She slid out of the booth. “Let me know when and where to take her for the test.”

He stood and looked down at her. “Okay.”

She nodded and turned away, walking between the row of booths and the swivel seats at the counter. His gaze dropped to the unconsciously sexy sway of her hips. Something tightened inside him, an ache he hadn’t even been aware was there.

“Em?”

She stopped and looked back at him. “What?”

And he said something that hadn’t consciously crossed his mind. “I want to see your daughter.”

Chapter Two

Emily paced the living room of her ground-floor apartment waiting for Cal. Could have knocked her over with a feather when he’d called for a meeting. As angry as he was, she hadn’t expected a father/daughter face-to-face until the DNA was done, so his asking to see Annie had really surprised her.

She heard an enraged wail coming from the hall and hurried to find Annie crawling—at least trying to—out of her bedroom. The little girl was in a sleeveless, white, full-skirted, lacy dress, which obviously felt like parent torture. Her knees kept getting caught up in the hem, which minimized forward progress and maximized frustration. Judging by the decibel level of the cry, her frilly frock was getting on the only nerve she had left.