An army physician on a mission needs a mother for his child—and plain Jane Kendry Harrison is just what the doctor ordered, in the first book in debut author Caro Carson’s miniseries, The Doctors MacDowell!

Dashing soldier Jamie MacDowell needs a mother for his infant son, stat! And while the handsome M.D. has no shortage of candidates, he lets his baby boy help with the selection. Little Sam falls for quiet Kendry Harrison—a surprising choice, maybe. But Jamie quickly realizes that the orderly’s sweet veneer hides a multitude of attractions—and if he’s not careful, he could wind up wrecking their carefully set-up “arrangement.”

Kendry knows her marriage to Jamie is strictly business, but that doesn’t stop her from dreaming of a more permanent place in the healer’s heart. If only he’d stop resisting the passion simmering between them. Then maybe he’d realize they were made for each other…and meant to be married in every sense of the word....

“Marry me.”

For one second, Kendry was shocked. The next, she was hurt. Jamie didn’t know what he was playing with. He couldn’t know how hard she was working toward that nursing degree. Still, to joke about marrying someone was odd. “You had me going there for a minute. I thought you were serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious. Marry me.”

“Marriage? We’re barely friends.”

“We’re definitely friends.”

“But—” She groped for the right thing to say. What she was hearing was so far from what she could possibly have expected. “You don’t marry someone because you’re friends.”

“You are more than just a friend to me, Kendry.”

Doctor,

Soldier, Daddy

Caro Carson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate and US Army officer, CARO CARSON has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. After reading romances no matter where in the world the army sent her, Caro began a career in the pharmaceutical industry. Little did she know the years she spent discussing science with physicians would provide excellent story material for her new career as a romance author. Now, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in the great state of Florida, a location which has saved the coaster-loving, theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

MILLS & BOON

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Dedication

With love for Richard, who knew I would write this book long before I did.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my critique partners for keeping me on track despite distractions and obstacles.

Thank you to my partners and friends, T. Elliott Brown, Catherine Kean and Nancy Robards Thompson.

Contents

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

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter One

River Mack Ranch, Texas

“You’re letting a baby choose your wife?”

Jamie MacDowell chose not to answer that question. Instead, he contemplated the campfire as he let his brother’s outraged tone roll off his back. Braden, his oldest brother, cared. That was the real emotion behind the outrage. Jamie had gotten much better at recognizing emotions in the past two years.

“Hire a nanny for the baby. You don’t have to marry anyone.” His other brother, Quinn, sounded less outraged—but more condescending.

The sounds of the Texas twilight settling over their parents’ land filled the silence as Jamie stretched his legs out. He flicked a glance around the fire. It figured: he’d taken the identical pose as his brothers. Braden, Quinn and now Jamie sat with jean-clad legs stretched out fully, each man with his right cowboy boot crossed over his left. It was funny, really, the subconscious mannerisms families shared.

Two years ago, Jamie would have probably uncrossed his ankles, just to be different. But that was before Afghanistan. Before more than a year spent sewing up soldiers in an army hospital.

Before he’d brought his son, Sam, to the United States.

“A nanny can do the job perfectly well,” Quinn continued. “You don’t need a wife to take care of a baby.”

“To take care of my son,” Jamie corrected him. It was going to take his brothers some time to get used to the news that he was a father. He hadn’t communicated much while he was deployed. Returning to Texas with a nine-month-old had shocked them all. “Not ‘a baby.’ My son.”

“Right. He can be well cared for by a good nanny.”

Jamie uncrossed his ankles. Neither of his brothers were parents. They didn’t understand the impact, the complete sea change, of having a child. When he held Sam, Jamie knew that he was holding the most important thing in the world. It was a powerful emotion, one that ultimately made his life utterly simple. What his son needed, Jamie would provide.

His son needed a mother.

Not a nanny.

“I’m working in the E.R.,” Jamie said. “You know the hours. What nanny is going to be available nights, days, whole twenty-four-hour periods without notice?”

“Get a live-in nanny.” Naturally, Quinn had an immediate answer. He was a cardiologist. That particular species of doctor tended to be very math-oriented. Their world was physics. Pressure, diameter, beats per minute. Black and white.

In contrast, as an emergency physician, Jamie often had to wing it. Thinking on the fly, he came up with theories, tested and discarded them, until he’d diagnosed and stabilized whatever emergency had brought the patient to the hospital.

In Afghanistan, there’d been only one kind of emergency: injury. Some injuries were catastrophic, caused by explosives that destroyed so much of the body, Jamie raced the clock to stop the bleeding and keep the heart beating. Some were minor, a finger sliced open when a rifle was cleaned carelessly. All of them—all of them—required stitches. Sewing. Surgery. Jamie had performed more surgery as an emergency physician in the United States Army than many surgeons did in civilian life.

“What if I get deployed again?” Jamie asked both brothers. “Will the nanny guarantee her services for the length of my deployment? Will she write to me about Sam? Send me photos?”

Braden abruptly sat up from his lounging position. “I thought you were back to reserve duty, the one-weekend-a-month thing until your commitment was up. Did you sign a new contract?”

Jamie wanted to smile at the predictability of Braden’s response. Like Quinn and himself, Braden was also an M.D., but he ran the research side of a massive corporation. He thought in terms of contracts and legalities, of facts on paper. Like Quinn, Braden saw everything as black and white.

The way their father had seen the world.

Jamie stopped lounging, too. With a firm thunk, he set his half-finished bottle of beer on the dry Texas ground by his chair. He wasn’t like his father. Sam would have a better man to raise him.

“I’m in the reserves for another six months. I could be recalled to active duty tonight.”

Now Quinn sat up abruptly. Jamie felt their tension as both men looked at him intently.

“It’s okay,” Jamie said quietly. “It’s highly unlikely the army will send me back in the next six months.”

Braden dropped his gaze to the crackling fire. “It’s not that we aren’t proud of you.”

“I know. I’m proud to have served, too. There are times I’ve considered volunteering to go back. There’s so much work left to be done there.” Work that he’d seen one brave woman undertake. Work to promote literacy in the population. Work to provide health care to the poorest of the poor. Work to end the slavelike conditions in which so many Afghani girls were raised.

Work that had ultimately killed that one brave woman, leaving Jamie to raise Sam alone.

“A nanny’s not good enough. I want a wife. If something should happen to me, Sam will still have a legal guardian. An American legal guardian.”

“He’s your son, Jamie. Do you think we’d let the state put him in an orphanage?”

“No.” Jamie was touched. Braden had said your son. He, at least, was getting used to the idea of Sam being a MacDowell, not just a baby brought home from a war-torn country. “But Mom’s getting a little old to start over again with an infant, and look at you. Both of you. A couple of bachelor doctors with insane working hours. Sam needs a full-time parent.”

“Then hire a lawyer and make the nanny his legal guardian.” Quinn was still seeing in black and white, apparently, but Jamie had already come up with that theory and ruled it out.

“It’s easier to get married. A wife’s custody is rarely questioned.”

There had been no way to legally marry Sam’s mother, not on the American base, nor in any Afghani court or mosque. In the end, after her death, that had meant no locals would claim Sam as their own, either. Jamie had been able to get Sam out of the country by mixing State Department regulations and medical necessity, but if the paperwork ever got scrutinized...

If. He wouldn’t worry about that now. And if If happened, Sam belonging to an American husband and wife would be beneficial, compared to Sam being the child of a bachelor soldier.

Yes, Sam needed a mother. An American mother. Simple.

“I’m fine with a marriage based on practicality,” he told his brothers. “I never planned on getting married for any other reason.”

“You’re sure about that?” Quinn asked.

Jamie sat back in his camp chair and picked up his beer. He brushed the sandy dirt off the bottom of the bottle. When he’d been in Afghanistan, he’d told himself the dry soil wasn’t so different from Texas. He’d even been able to squint at the landscape and imagine himself home, if home had a lot of barbed wire and sandbag bomb shelters.

“I’m sure,” Jamie said. “Doctors make lousy husbands—look at Dad. He had no time for Mom. No time for any of us. Without Mom, we wouldn’t have had a parent at all. My kid needs a mother.”

Braden studied the label on his own beer bottle for a moment. “You’re not being fair to Dad. We had those fishing trips.”

“Yeah, once a year we’d saddle up the horses and pack up the tents and come out here to spend, what? Four days? With a guy we barely knew.”

“Still, he tried.”

“Yeah, he would have made a fine uncle. Not my idea of a father. My son is going to have a real parent, someone there for him every day, not just for a camping trip now and then. If something happens to me, he’s going to have another parent to finish raising him. I’ll be damned if I’ll leave him alone in this world. I’m getting married, and that’s it.”

“Slow down, Jamie. What happens if you find this perfect mother, but then you fall in love with another woman, someone you want for something besides mothering? Are you going to divorce the mother of your child to marry the woman you’re crazy about? An affair won’t cut it. I don’t care what this ‘perfect mother’ agrees to, she’s not going to be a Mrs. MacDowell and willingly turn a blind eye to her husband having an affair.”

“I’m not going to cheat on my wife, even if we aren’t in that kind of a marriage.”

“You need to think this through. I’ve been in love, Jamie.” Braden rarely talked about it, but he’d been engaged once. “It can hit you like a lightning strike.”

Jamie stood up and pulled the keys to his truck out of his pocket. “It already did, Braden, it already did.”

“But, then—”

“She died. Her name was Amina. She was brilliant. Beautiful. An Afghani woman who translated for me on medical missions. She died during the birth and she left me a son.”

Jamie dumped the rest of his beer onto a struggling scrub plant, then chucked the bottle into the bed of his pickup truck. “Lightning won’t strike twice.”

The shocked silence wasn’t what Jamie had intended to cause. He clapped Quinn on the shoulder and used the side of his boot to push his still-full beer cooler toward his brother’s camp chair. “You finish these for me this weekend. Mom’s been watching Sam long enough. I’m gonna run.”

Jamie had been away from his son for nearly two hours, and that was too long.

Braden followed him to the pickup. “Jamie. You never told us about the mother of the baby. Sam is really your child, then? Your biological child?”

Damn it. Even his own brothers hadn’t believed Sam was his son. How would he convince the State Department? He needed to be married and have Sam legally adopted by his wife, in case they started asking.

“I’m not in the mood for a big-brother lecture, Braden.” He loved his oldest brother. Braden had filled more of a father role for him than their father had, but when it came to his own life, Jamie knew what he was doing. He’d come to the ranch today to let his brothers know what his plans were as a courtesy, not so they could tell him he was wrong to want to secure a second parent for Sam as quickly as possible.

“I’m not lecturing,” Braden said in a voice made for lecturing. “When do we meet this not-really-a-wife of yours?”

“I don’t know who she is yet.” Jamie opened the truck door and stepped up on the running board. “No woman I already know fits the bill.”

“No woman will. I can’t imagine who is going to want your son and not want you.”

Ah, the blind loyalty of family. Braden was certain women would fall all over his little brother. He didn’t know that most women gave up pursuing Jamie nowadays. His mourning for Amina showed somehow, he was sure.

His son was the only thing that brought a smile to his face now. As he thought of Sam, Jamie felt himself start to grin. “This isn’t about me finding a wife. This is about Sam finding a mother. That’s why I’m letting him choose her.”

Jamie closed the truck door. As he drove away from the old homestead, a new feeling settled over him. A certainty that he was on the right course. Contentment, almost. He’d loved Amina, and now he loved their son. Building his life around his son’s needs was the right thing to do.

He wondered whom Sam would fall in love with. He wondered whom his son would choose for him to marry.

Chapter Two

Kendry Harrison was a general dogsbody. It wasn’t the loveliest term, but it accurately summed up her career at West Central Hospital. She’d like to think that she was at least a gopher, but that would imply she worked for someone important who needed her to run errands. No such luck. She was just a general dogsbody, plugged into whatever entry-level job needed doing. Today, she was working in the pediatric ward.

Kendry loved the pediatric ward, even if it broke her heart half the time. Kids were kids, though, and even when they sported IV tubing and wore hospital gowns, they tended to be adorable. Kendry loved their earnestness when they described their little lives. She loved their willingness to play as hard as they possibly could, even when they found themselves forced to use their wrong hand or unable to climb out of a wheelchair.

Unlike the adult patients, the kids were still eager to grab life with both hands—unless they were in pain. Although an infant named Myrna was due to be discharged today, Kendry wondered if the little girl was in pain. Hour after hour, Myrna had been growing quieter and quieter. Kendry’s shift was over in only minutes, but she couldn’t leave Myrna without trying, one more time, to get the nurse to pay attention to the change in the baby’s behavior.

She pushed the button to call the nurses’ station. Again.

“What is it this time, Kendry?” The voice over the speaker was clearly irritated.

“I’d like a nurse to check on Myrna Quinones for me, please.” If she kept her voice cool and factual, the way the doctors and nurses spoke, then she would be taken more seriously. Unfortunately, her nose was stuffy, and she barely grabbed a tissue in time for a sneeze.

“We’ve checked on her every hour. She’s fine. She’ll be going home when her mother gets off work today.” And then, with the most sarcastic version of sugary sweetness the nurse could muster, her tinny voice came over the speaker. “And you’re officially off work now, so go on home, darlin’. Take something for that cold, or you’ll get all the children sick.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Kendry said through clenched teeth. “It’s just allergies.”

She was the only adult in the pediatric ward’s playroom, making it impossible for her to leave, but she resisted the urge to point that out to the nurse. Instead, she released the intercom’s talk button and went to the sink to wash her hands for the fiftieth time of the day.

Every young patient who was able spent a good part of his or her waking hours in the ward’s colorful playroom. There were hard plastic chairs and tables that could be sprayed down with bleach, plenty of floor space for children to play while they tugged along their wheeled poles with their hanging IV bags. A few of the children were not patients, but were the children of staff members. As long as the child wasn’t contagious, staff members could pay a small fee to have their child spend the day in the playroom when their regular childcare fell through—a benefit that made West Central Texas Hospital one of Austin’s top-rated employers.

For doctors, the policy was even more lenient. If it meant doctors would show up for every shift, the hospital was happy to provide childcare. These kids Kendry got to know well. One of them, a little charmer named Sammy, was demanding her attention now, as he often did.

Kendry scooped him off the floor and settled him on her hip. “That’s right, Sammy. It doesn’t matter if I’m off the clock, I’m not going home and leaving Myrna here in this condition, now am I?”

Sammy didn’t get a chance to coo or babble an answer to her, because the person scheduled to replace Kendry had arrived and was listening in.

“Which one’s Myrna?” she asked.

Kendry thought her replacement was kidding. For a second. One look at the woman’s face—Paula, she remembered—revealed that she wasn’t.

“Myrna is the little girl whose hand I’m holding. She was technically discharged because we were short beds, but her mother has to work, so admin said she could stay here.” The little girl’s belongings were packed in a plastic bag and her IV lines had been removed upon discharge, but her crib had been wheeled into the playroom until her mother could come to pick her up. Her room had already been filled by another patient.

“What time is her mother supposed to arrive?”

“Not for another hour. I don’t want to leave Myrna like this.”

Paula frowned at the baby in the stainless-steel hospital crib. “Like what? Calm and peaceful? Lord help me, I hope they all get like that and stay like that.”

Kendry couldn’t force herself to chuckle along with Paula’s joke, although she knew that was what was expected of her. “Myrna’s been here all week. Don’t you realize this isn’t her normal disposition?”

Paula shot Kendry a look. “Well, excuse me, Miss Know-It-All. There’s a lot of kids in here, and they change every day.”

Dang it. Now Kendry had taken the attention off the little girl and unwittingly put it on herself. Paula, unlike Kendry, was a certified medical assistant, a CMA. There was always a CMA on duty overnight. Paula was higher up on the hospital ladder, and Kendry had offended her.

“You’re so right. The ward has been at full occupancy all week.” Kendry could swallow her pride with the best of them when it came to helping a child. Heck, when it came to nearly every aspect of her life. “Myrna Quinones is acting like she’s fighting an infection, maybe. Something is making her listless.”

Paula pressed the call button for the nurses’ station, announcing herself as she did so. “Hey, it’s Paula here. Have you gotten a temperature on this Quinones child?”

The tinny response sounded exasperated. “Of course we have. Her vitals have been normal every single time we’ve checked them. Tell that orderly to go home. There’s no budget for overtime around here. She should have clocked out five minutes ago.”

Paula wasn’t here five minutes ago, so I couldn’t have clocked out.

Kendry spoke to Sammy, who sat on her hip as he chewed his fingers. “Let’s go for a walk, little guy. We’ll clock me out, then come back to say bye-bye to Myrna.”

The lively little boy on her hip cheerfully called, “Da-da!”

Sammy’s dad was here. Kendry knew what Da-da’s voice would sound like. She braced herself for that educated, masculine timbre, that voice with just a hint of native Texas drawl.

“Hey, little buddy. How was your day?”

It didn’t matter how many times she heard it, it still made her melt a little. Sammy kicked Kendry vigorously in happy response as she turned around to find Sammy’s father, all six-feet-something of him, standing close enough to take his son out of her arms.

“Hi, Dr. MacDowell. Sammy’s doing well today. He drank every ounce of formula. He seems to have an easier time taking his bottle when I have him sitting almost straight up. It makes me wonder if—”

“Good evening, Dr. MacDowell.” Paula’s voice had a different tone to it now. All peaches and cream.

Kendry stifled her frustration. She wanted to discuss Sam’s ability to eat, but Paula wanted to...to...

Flirt. There wasn’t a woman in the hospital who didn’t know Dr. MacDowell was single. Never had been married, apparently. He’d returned from military service in Afghanistan with Sammy, so the rumor mill said, and had turned in his camouflage for a civilian career in order to spend more time with his son. Because no mother was in the picture, some people speculated that the baby was an orphan whom Dr. MacDowell had adopted. This only made women sigh with even more approval.

Sammy grabbed the tubing of Dr. MacDowell’s stethoscope and tried to get it—and his fist—in his mouth. The doctor calmly pried the baby’s fingers open, removed the stethoscope from around his neck and tucked it into the pocket of his white lab coat, all in one smooth move. Then he dropped a kiss on top of Sammy’s head.

He was Sammy’s father, all right. Who cared if the baby’s hair was a darker black than his father’s deep brown? Who cared if the child seemed petite compared to his strapping American father? This baby was loved. Kendry wished all the children that came through West Central were so lucky.

“You can go home now, Kendry,” Paula said.

“What were you saying about Sam’s bottles?” Dr. MacDowell asked.

“I’m wondering if—”

“I’ve got his daily sheet right here, with all his feedings listed,” Paula interrupted. “Kendry, you need to go clock out. There’s no overtime in the budget, and you don’t want to tick off the supervisor.”

Kendry wished her Irish heritage didn’t make it so easy for her pale skin to blush. She hated being put in her place, but even more, she hated being so firmly reminded she was an hourly-wage orderly in front of Dr. MacDowell.

“I’ll walk with you, Miss Harrison,” Dr. MacDowell said. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

Miss Harrison. He addressed everyone in the hospital by their proper names and titles. Still, she couldn’t help but appreciate the respect he showed her. He wanted to hear what she had to say. He always did. He was the kind of doctor who would patiently listen to family members who anxiously brought someone to the E.R. He would listen...

Her gaze returned to Myrna, who was lying as she’d been for the past hour. She hadn’t responded to Paula or Dr. MacDowell’s appearance by her crib.

Dr. MacDowell would listen.

“Could you look at this patient for me? Her name is Myrna Quinones, she’s nine months old, and she’s due to be discharged today. She had surgery three days ago, and I’m wondering if she might have an infection or something. She’s grown increasingly listless today, and I haven’t been able to interest her in taking more than a couple of ounces from her bottle, but she’s been off IV fluids since this morning. Maybe she’s dehydrated?”

“Kendry, please.” Paula sounded shocked. “You don’t bother physicians with cases that aren’t theirs. Dr. MacDowell, I assure you, the nurses on the floor have been checking on Myrna every hour. I’ve requested an update myself, and she isn’t running a fever or showing any signs of infection.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cook.”

Kendry bit her lower lip. Dr. MacDowell had said thank you in that dismissive tone doctors seemed to master, the one that said when I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Kendry saw Paula call for the floor nurse with a press of a button. Once the nurses realized a doctor was checking the patient, they’d show up. Doctors were at the opposite end of the food chain from orderlies.

“Could you hold Sammy for me, please?” Dr. MacDowell asked.

Kendry held out her arms for the little boy, who dove right into them. Dr. MacDowell took his stethoscope out of his pocket and slung it around his neck. As he walked the few steps to the hand sanitizer station, he asked Kendry questions briskly, impersonally. Normal fluid intake? Number of wet diapers today? Normal activity level?

Then he was bending over the crib, opening Myrna’s hospital gown, listening to her chest, running strong hands over the baby’s limbs, feeling for pulse points. Thank you, Kendry wanted to say. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The baby seemed fine, if unnaturally calm. The doctor didn’t seem to be finding anything out of the ordinary. Kendry started to feel absurd.

“Is it possible to have an infection without running a fever?” she asked.

“No,” Paula answered.

“Yes,” Dr. MacDowell said. “Which procedure did this child have?”

Kendry waited a beat for Paula to answer, but Paula obviously didn’t know and gestured toward Kendry with one hand.

“It was a kidney repair of some kind. I believe they opened a blocked tube, but whether it was going into the kidney or leading out, I’m not sure.”

Dr. MacDowell opened the baby’s diaper and palpated her pelvis and bladder. “Did you recently change her diaper?”

“It’s been hours. I keep checking, but it’s dry.”

“Her bladder’s distended. Mrs. Cook, I want this patient transported to the E.R. Get Dr. Gregory on the phone for me.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

Dr. MacDowell gently flipped the baby over and removed her incision bandages. Some unhealthy pus oozed from the tiny incision site. Kendry had never been so sorry to be proved so right.

Dr. MacDowell did not look happy. At all.

“I’m sorry,” Kendry said. “I’m an orderly. I’m not allowed to remove a patient’s bandage.”

“No, but the nurses are,” he said, and she didn’t think she was imagining the quiet anger in his voice. “They should have, given your report.”

For the first time in her memory, Kendry was suddenly glad she wasn’t a nurse. No doubt Paula felt the same as she handed the phone to Dr. MacDowell. “Dr. Gregory on the line for you.”

Kendry busied herself by packing up Sam’s diaper bag with one hand as she held him on her hip with the other. Then she quieted another fussy baby, feeling soothed herself as she listened to Dr. MacDowell updating Dr. Gregory on the patient he was sending his way. One of her fellow orderlies arrived to wheel Myrna downstairs to the E.R.

Paula hissed in Kendry’s ear as the crib was being rolled away. “Get off the clock before you get in trouble for going over.”

“Here, hold Sammy then.”

But Sammy wouldn’t go to Paula. He clung to Kendry’s neck as fiercely as any nine-month-old could, which was pretty darned hard.

Paula tried, anyway, pitching her voice to a falsetto coo. “Come on, Sam, let Miss Paula hold you.” She started prying Sammy’s small fingers off Kendry’s neck, which only served to make the child more desperate to cling to the adult of his choice.

Dr. MacDowell hung up the house phone and came over to intercede. “Hey, buddy, come see Daddy.”

Sam was in full-pitch tantrum mode now. He wanted to cling to Kendry’s neck, and by God, that’s what he was gonna do.

“He usually comes to me,” Dr. MacDowell said, frowning.

Kendry patted the baby’s back and fought her urge to back away from Paula and Dr. MacDowell. She interjected a deliberate note of cheerfulness into her voice. “That’s okay—it’s okay. Shh, Sammy.” She gave Paula’s arm a pat to get her to stop clawing at the child’s fingers, then started bouncing Sammy gently. “Just let him catch his breath. He’ll be fine. He needs a second to decide what to do next.”

Paula dropped her hand.

Dr. MacDowell spread his large hand over his son’s back and stayed that way. “Okay, buddy,” he said to Sammy. “Okay.”

“I think he picked up on the tension. He knew I was worried about Myrna. Thank you again for taking a look at her.”

“That was a good catch on your part. You were going to tell me something about Sam’s bottles?”

From the corner of her eye, Kendry saw Paula turn away and start the closing routine for the playroom, although it would be a couple of hours before she’d bring the last children back to their regular beds for the night.

“It takes Sam a lot longer to finish a bottle than the other kids.”

“It does?” His hand stilled on Sammy’s back.

Kendry nodded. “I don’t think he’s just a slow eater. I think he has a hard time swallowing. I tried feeding him almost sitting up today, and he got that bottle down so much faster. You might want to try it yourself and see if that works for you.”

“I will. Thanks.” The man was really frowning now. Kendry could tell he was mentally recalling feeding sessions with his son, reviewing them for anomalies.

Such a doctor.

“I had no idea he was slower than the other kids,” he said, sounding less like a doctor, more like an apologetic, perhaps a little bit defensive, father.

“I guess if you’d never fed another baby, you wouldn’t.” Kendry smiled at him, not wanting him to feel badly about himself. Sammy helped her out by choosing that moment to decide to turn his face toward his father. The steady, adult conversation had given Sam the chance to calm down enough to realize that he did, indeed, want Daddy.

“Da-da,” he said, and twisted his whole little body away from Kendry to grab his father’s lapel.

Dr. MacDowell easily took the child’s weight from Kendry. “Hey, son. Let’s go home. Can you say ‘bye-bye’ to Miss Harrison?”

But as Dr. MacDowell shifted a step back from Kendry, Sammy reached his hand out for her. “Me,” he said. His little fist opened and closed, stretched out toward her. “Me.”

“Bye-bye, Sammy. I’ll see you again real soon.” Kendry wished she could drop a kiss on his soft hair, but she wasn’t supposed to kiss the children. It was against hospital policy, for health-related reasons. Besides, she’d end up with her face way too close to the doctor’s face. She imagined the sensation of brushing cheeks with him—

That was best saved for another time.

No, that was best saved for never. It would never be a good time to imagine the feel of Dr. MacDowell’s skin.

It would be warm.

Stop it.

Kendry settled for a smile, then bent to pick up her bag. When she straightened, Dr. MacDowell hadn’t left, but looked like he was waiting on her. For a second, for one insane second, Kendry thought that the handsome man with that adorable child was waiting to spend more time with her.

“Can I walk you to your car?” he asked.

Kendry wanted to melt on the spot. He was such a gentleman. Too bad she didn’t have a car for him to walk her to.

No, she was Kendry Ann Harrison, minimum-wage-earning hourly employee, the girl who rode the city bus because she’d once been too stupid to go to college when she’d had the chance. She didn’t belong with the guy who’d devoted a decade of his life to learning all the medical know-how that allowed him to save people’s lives.

“Thanks, but I have to go clock out. Have a good night.”

She slung her tote bag over her shoulder and headed out of the room with what she hoped was a cheerful, unembarrassed, jaunty attitude.

“Me,” Sammy said, drawing out the syllable in a high-pitched voice of distress.

Kendry almost stopped. She knew that when Sammy wanted something, he said “me” instead of “mine.” But since she was Kendry, and his father was Dr. MacDowell...well, she wasn’t his mother, and he wasn’t her baby.

Still, she turned to blow her favorite baby a kiss over her shoulder.

* * *

The juggling routine never varied.

Jamie thought he ought to be getting better at it by now, but he still felt like a caricature of a single parent, the kind on TV commercials who dropped briefcases and seemed incapable of balancing babies and bottles. If only there were a solution at the end of thirty seconds of failure, like on TV. If only Jamie could press a door-opening button on the key to a certain car, or spot some golden arches that would magically make his day easier.

The juggling only got worse in real life. This evening, it was raining, but Jamie couldn’t pull his car into the garage, which was still full of boxes from his deployment. He dashed with Sam from the driveway to the side door, but the door refused to open. The days of uncharacteristic rain had made the wood swell, so Jamie ended up kicking open the door while Sam cried and the rain pelted them both.

“I know, Sam, I know. We’ll get you out of these wet clothes ASAP. They get cold real quick when they’re wet, don’t they?” Jamie kept his monologue running as he tried to keep the arm that was holding Sam inside the house while reaching out into the rain with his other arm to retrieve both his briefcase and the fallen diaper bag. “I can fix the clothes thing, son. Give me a second to shove this door closed, and I can fix that one problem. Thank God.”

Sam didn’t seem convinced, judging by the misery on his face and the volume of his cries.

Jamie applied some force to get the door to shut. In the still of the house, he could hear the rain dripping from the bottom of the diaper bag. The denim was soaked. One more thing he’d need to fix before his next shift at the hospital. Unpack the diaper bag, throw it in the dryer, repack it before work.

Damn. He let his head drop back to rest on the wall, let the denim drop onto the wood floor, which was wet, anyway.

His daily life wasn’t difficult, really, just a constant to-do list of tasks. So why did he feel so overwhelmed by it all sometimes?

Maybe his brother was right. Maybe having a nanny waiting for him now would be the solution. A grandmotherly woman, ready to put the diaper bag in the dryer for him. A gray-haired lady who would have had the lights on in the house while she waited for him to come home. One of the nanny services he’d consulted had specified light cooking as an option in their contract. There could be supper waiting for him now, made by a sweet old lady.

Even when he was dripping wet and tired, Jamie didn’t like the image. He didn’t want a grandmotherly person in his house, someone to accommodate, someone to adjust to.

He wanted a partner, a peer, someone who would love Sam like her own, day after day, year after year, with no salary and no vacations. A mother for Sam, not for himself. Was it too much to ask?

Sam wailed.

“Right. It’s just you and me, kid. Dry clothes, coming right up.”

Chapter Three

Jamie struggled with his guilt while his son struggled with his bottle.

When all the little things went wrong, one after another, when Jamie’s workday had been long and his baby refused to be comforted, memories of Amina brought him no comfort. On days like those—on days like today—instead of missing Amina, instead of wishing she were here to share the safe life of suburban America, Jamie would feel angry.

Amina could have shared this life. Amina could have seen their son growing day by day, but she’d chosen a different route, a path in life that had led to her death. She’d left Jamie alone to pick up the pieces, to protect her baby, to keep her memory alive for their son. And sometimes, damn it all to hell, Jamie was pissed off at the choices she’d made.

Being pissed off at a dead woman was unacceptable. The guilt was heavy on him now. It felt familiar.

He and Sam were dry, at least, both wearing white T-shirts and sitting together in the leather recliner. Jamie hadn’t been able to find a rocking chair that fit his size comfortably, and the recliner did the trick when it came to relaxing with the baby until Sam—or both of them—fell asleep.

Tonight, though, as Sam worked his way through swallowing and spitting up the contents of his bedtime bottle, relaxation seemed a long way off. Sometimes Jamie thought he’d never relax again—not for the next eighteen years, anyway. Not while he was the sole adult responsible for making sure Sam had all he needed for a good life.

Usually, these quiet moments with his son made everything fall into place. The troubles of his workday receded, unable to keep his attention when he held this baby and felt all the wonderment of a new life.

Usually, but not tonight.

As Sam grunted and sucked his way through the bottle, Jamie studied his son’s face. Sam looked like Amina. His arrestingly dark eyes were undoubtedly his mother’s. Jamie smoothed a hand over the soft, black hair on Sam’s head—also Amina’s. He let Sam curl his hand around Jamie’s index finger. Those fingers didn’t look like Jamie’s. Nor his toes. Did they look like Amina’s?

Jamie no longer remembered details like that, the shape of her thumb or pinky finger. He was forgetting. If he forgot Amina, there would be nobody to tell Sam about his mother. Amina had been the last of her family, the sole survivor when the rest had been wiped out by the war. For resisting the Taliban, her family name had been erased to the last distant cousin. Amina had only been spared by a matter of days, she’d told him, sent to school in London before the slaughter in her village had taken place.

Jamie wondered how the MacDowells would have reacted if the local sheriff suddenly had the power to walk onto their ranch and start shooting. His family probably would have been as defiant as Amina’s family had been. Perhaps that was one reason he and Amina had hit it off so quickly. They were kindred spirits. She could have been a MacDowell.

She should have been a MacDowell.

Instead, even while she was pregnant with Jamie’s child, she’d chosen to stay in a country where prenatal care was nonexistent. Hell, indoor plumbing was still a sign of personal wealth. Against Jamie’s medical advice and personal plea, she’d obstinately traveled with a documentary film crew. In a remote village, she’d gone into premature labor while on her crusade to persuade Afghanis to let their daughters attend school. She’d died not from a Taliban bullet like the rest of her family, but from a lack of medical care, like too many women in her country.

Tonight, Jamie was angry at a woman who’d lost her entire family years before she, herself, had died.

More guilt.

Sam worked greedily at his bottle.

No, Amina’s family weren’t all dead. Sam was here, and Jamie would do everything to ensure one member of that brave family had a life that didn’t end in tragedy.

Jamie bent his head as he lifted Sam’s tiny hand and planted a kiss on the perfectly formed fingers. If they weren’t his fingers and they weren’t Amina’s fingers, whose were they? A bit of DNA passed on from a great-grandparent? Or did those fingers, perhaps, come from another man, a man who had come into Amina’s life before Jamie?

More guilt for even thinking such a thought.

Jamie had too much time to think about things in the safety of his quiet ranch house. Afghanistan had been intense—life outside the wire more so. Emotions ran high, bonds were formed quickly, and Amina, his unit’s translator and general ambassador to the local population, had literally slipped into his bed after they’d worked together for only two short weeks.

At the time, he hadn’t been surprised. They’d had chemistry and a connection from their first meeting. For the first two weeks, they’d spent nearly every moment together, seeking out the smallest villages and encampments, offering medical care to the local population. Amina’s intelligence and her determination to better her fellow countrymen had made an impact on Jamie, if not on the villagers.

He hadn’t been surprised that Amina was sexually experienced, either, because she’d lived in London longer than she’d lived with her family in Afghanistan. Her appearance was Afghani, but her personality was Western. He’d fallen for her and she for him. When, in the dark hours before dawn, she’d silently come into the hut he used as both clinic and bedroom, he’d had no doubts as she’d slipped into his bed.

Now, however, thousands of miles away and a year and a half later, he wondered. Had she already been pregnant? Had she wanted Jamie to believe he was the father, so that her son would have an American protector?

Sam gurgled down a few swallows of formula and patted Jamie’s hand with his own. Jamie clutched the baby closer to his chest.

If Amina had wanted an American soldier to protect her coming baby, she’d gotten one. Jamie would never let Sam go, whether they shared DNA or not. The feel of this child in his hands was essential to his life. It had been from the moment a local midwife who’d trekked miles on foot stood outside the barbed wire and handed him a dehydrated newborn and the news that Amina was dead. Dead and already buried, in accordance with their laws.

And so Jamie had sworn on a legal document that Sam was his biological child. He’d gotten the required signatures of others in his military unit, fellow soldiers and civilian contractors who could vouch that they’d seen Jamie working with Amina the eight months before the birth of the child, an appropriate period of time that could make it possible for Jamie to be the father. If any of those witnesses had wondered how an infant born at only eight months of gestation had appeared to be full-term, they’d kept that to themselves as they’d scrambled to help Jamie find formula and bottles—a futile search.

IVs had kept Sam alive those first critical days. Jamie had still had a week left on his tour of duty, but he’d literally wheeled Sam’s stretcher onto the next medical flight to Germany. No one had questioned him. Jamie had gambled that forgiveness would be easier to gain than permission, and that gamble had paid off.

So far.

But in the quiet of nights like tonight, as Jamie looked at the son who looked nothing like him, fear crept into his chest. What if the State Department got around to that paperwork and a diligent clerk decided to order medical tests to prove the baby biologically belonged to the soldier?

The blood-type test would be ordered first. If the blood types were incompatible, then the soldier could not be the father of the child. If the blood types were compatible, it only proved that it was possible for the soldier to be the father, but the paternity was still in question.

Jamie knew his blood type. He knew Sam’s. It was possible that he was Sam’s father. But it was not a fact, not without further DNA testing, and if the State Department chose to order those tests...

He willed the fear away. Jamie sat Sam up to pat his back, hoping that air bubbles would come up but formula would stay down. It was a struggle at every feeding. The nurse at the hospital playroom had said that Sammy had more problems with the bottle than other babies in her care. That nurse seemed particularly bright, the one with the ponytail and glasses.

No—the young woman was not a nurse. She was an orderly. Jamie had noticed her before, when she’d worked in the emergency room. The orderly was certainly working in the right field; she had a natural talent for noticing patients’ needs. She’d been working in the pediatric playroom more and more often, something Jamie had been glad to see. Sammy was in good hands when that particular woman was on duty.

“Come on, Sammy, give me a burp to make any college frat boy proud.”

Instead, Sammy vomited a substantial amount of formula over the blanket that Jamie had laid over his lap. The formula wasn’t curdled, not even partially digested. What went down came right back up, every feeding.

Sammy had been born with a birth defect, a hole in the wall of his heart. It would be repaired soon, and Sam would grow up never knowing it had been there. That particular birth defect shouldn’t cause feeding issues. Jamie had assumed all this spitting up was normal, but now the orderly—Miss Harrison was her name—had said Sam needed to sit up to drink his bottle.

As he soothed Sam by rubbing his back, Jamie’s medical training kicked in automatically. Consider the options. Eliminate them one by one.

What conditions caused a baby to need to be fed upright? Cleft palate? Jamie tapped his index finger to Sam’s perfect, bow-shaped lips. Obviously, Sammy didn’t have a cleft palate.

Jamie tried to feed Sam a few more ounces of formula, this time sitting him far more upright. It did make a difference. He could feel Sam’s body relaxing as the ounces went down with less struggle. Was this how most babies fed, then? Settling in, relaxing, not fighting to get each swallow?

This time, when Jamie burped Sam, he slipped his finger in his son’s mouth and felt the palate. The roof of the baby’s mouth was there, intact. Of course, this had been checked early in Sam’s life, part of the routine exam American doctors gave all newborns. Jamie had flashed his penlight down his son’s throat more than once. The roof of his son’s mouth was fine, intact on visual inspection. This time, Jamie pressed a little harder, moved a little more slowly, working his way toward the throat, millimeter by millimeter.

Sam objected, but Jamie concentrated as he would with any patient. He kept palpating despite Sam’s whines and wiggles—and then he felt the roof of the mouth give. The palate wasn’t formed correctly toward the back of the throat. It looked normal because the membrane covering the roof of the mouth had grown over it, but there was a definite cleft, hidden.

Miss Harrison had noticed a symptom that Sam’s pediatricians and Jamie himself had missed. Sam had a cleft palate. A very slight, easily overlooked, but definitely malformed palate. One that hindered his swallowing.

Guilt.

If any parent should have figured that out, he should have. He was an M.D., but this was his first child, the first baby he’d ever given a bottle to, and it hadn’t occurred to him that the amount of formula that came back up was greater than normal.

Like the doctor he was, his brain kept working despite the guilt. After the diagnosis, treatment options needed to be reviewed. As medical problems went, this one was simple. Sammy would have to go under the knife one more time, but it was fixable.

“Me,” Sammy whined, reaching toward the empty bottle. “Me!”

“This is what you want, little buddy?”

Jeez, his kid was probably hungry, ready to eat more, now that he could get it down and keep it down, thanks to Miss Harrison figuring out the best position.

“Me.”

“Got it. Coming right up.” Jamie carried Sam into the kitchen, tossing the balled-up dirty blanket into the laundry room as he went, then started the process of opening the can of formula.

Jamie owed Miss Harrison more than a simple thank-you. He could write her a commendation, although the possibility for a raise or a promotion was slim when the hospital was under a strict budget.

“Me.” Sammy grabbed for the freshly filled bottle.

Jamie chuckled to himself. “Yes, this is yours. Trust me, I don’t want it.”

At least his son did well communicating. He was advanced for his age when it came to expressing his needs verbally, as he was doing now. “Me” was an effective way for the baby to say he wanted something. He’d used it earlier today, when Jamie had come to pick him up at the hospital day-care center. Sam had wanted—

Jamie stopped in the middle of the living room.

Sam had wanted Miss Harrison.

Chapter Four

Jamie MacDowell, emergency room physician and war veteran, very nearly chickened out.

Last night’s revelation that Sam was attached to Miss Harrison warranted further investigation at his first opportunity, but when Jamie spotted her sitting alone in the hospital cafeteria, he felt like a boy in sixth grade, ready to turn tail and run rather than sit next to a girl.

The cashier charged the lunch to Jamie’s account. Instead of looking toward Miss Harrison’s table, Jamie made eye contact with the cartoonish scarecrow that was taped to the cash register for the fall. In four weeks, Jamie would be reporting to his reserve unit for two days of military training.

For the next six months, he’d report once a month, train for two days and come back home. Unless, of course, the medical unit was activated and deployed to Afghanistan, or any other corner of the world where they were needed. Jamie would go, and Sam would be left behind.

Sam needed a mother.

With a brief nod at the cashier and a fresh sense of determination, Jamie picked up the plastic cafeteria tray in one hand and turned toward Miss Harrison’s corner of the cafeteria. Sam’s favorite caregiver sat, alone, at one of the smaller tables. She was concentrating on her meal, so Jamie studied her face as he approached. He’d thought of her as plain, but she wasn’t homely. If they shared a house, it wouldn’t be a punishment to look at her across a dinner table. She had even features. Her mouth was compressed into a bit of a frown right now, but her lips were pink and not too full, not too thin.

Not that it matters. Mothers were always beautiful to their children, and this woman might make a good mother. He was here to find out.

“Is this seat taken?”

She looked up at him and froze for a moment, her spoon halfway to her mouth, before she glanced toward the entrance to the physician-only dining room.

“I’m not required to eat in the physicians’ lounge.” He smiled at her and stood there like an idiot, holding his tray. Middle school had never been this uncomfortable. “May I join you?”

She nodded, so he sat.

“Thanks,” he said. “I thought you’d like to know how your dialysis patient was doing today.”

“You mean Myrna?”

Jamie silently awarded her a point in her favor. She knew each child in her care by name. The patients were more to her than their pathologies.

“Was the incision site infected only near the surface, or had it spread outward from her kidney?” she asked.

“It appears to be localized at the incision site. Her kidneys are clear.” Jamie was glad she understood the pathology, however, because his son had his share of medical issues. The kids whose parents were the best informed tended to be the kids who did well. Another point in her favor. “It was caught early, thanks to you.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Dr. MacDowell.”

“Call me Jamie.”

For a split second, she looked at him like he’d just suggested they go somewhere and get naked. Dropping titles could indicate that kind of intimacy in a hospital setting, he knew. The next second, she turned her head and sneezed. Loudly.

Her nose seemed to be perpetually runny, although it was a nice enough nose, besides being red most of the time. She turned away from the table and blew her nose rather unbecomingly. With purpose. Force. Her bangs fell over her face, got tangled with the napkin she was using to mop up.

Jamie pushed aside his mashed potatoes and congealed gravy.

“Excuse me,” she said, when she was done with a second napkin.

“No problem.” Physical attraction to her would make their co-parenting awkward, anyway.

She was having soup and crackers. Lots of crackers. She had a tower of those little oyster cracker packets on her tray. He tried to see through them to the photo ID that hung on the lanyard around her neck, hoping to catch a glimpse of her first name. It seemed awkward to have to ask a woman her first name when she already knew his child as well as he did. Better than he did, in some ways. Her name tag stayed wrong way out.

“Have you worked here long, Miss Harrison?”

She turned away and sneezed again. At least it flipped her name tag around.

Kendry. Kendry Harrison. Jamie waited for a feeling of great portent to settle over him. Waited for a thunderbolt to strike, for a feeling of destiny, for something.

“Amina. Amina Sadat.” She’d laughed, and in a voice that blended foreign tones with British enunciation, she’d said, “At least, that’s the Westernized version of my name.” She’d then recited a sentence-long string of syllables, her true Afghani name, one he would later learn included her father, her grandfather and nearly her whole family tree. Every syllable had sounded like exotic music...

Jamie cleared his throat. “Kendry? That’s an unusual name. What country is it from?”

She dabbed at her nose with her crumpled napkin, an apologetic motion. “I think my parents made it up. They’re kind of free-spirited like that.”

Free-spirited parents? Not the kind of people he expected, somehow, to produce the plain, serious person in front of him.

“But to answer your first question, I’ve been working here for nearly six months.”

Another point for her. She wasn’t distracted easily. Which reminded him that he needed to keep his head in the game. He was here to gauge their compatibility. “Do you enjoy working in the hospital?”

“Yes, I do.” Her eyebrows drew together, frowning at him as she met his gaze. Her eyes were sort of a nondescript greenish hazel. “Why do you ask?”

“I couldn’t imagine working in any other environment, but not everyone feels the same.”

“How does it compare to working in a hospital in the Middle East? Is it true that you were in the military?”

He hadn’t intended to talk about himself, but fifteen minutes later, when Kendry stood and said her lunch break was over, Jamie realized she’d learned more about his life history than he had about hers.

“Can we do lunch again tomorrow?” he asked.

Her water glass rattled on her tray as she jerked to a sudden standstill. “Was there something else you needed to talk to me about? Something about Sam, maybe?”

He hoped his smile was casual. “Sam is my favorite topic. Let’s meet tomorrow and discuss Sam.”

She hesitated, looking oddly vulnerable in her plain green scrubs, holding her tray tightly with two hands. “Is there any trouble? Anything I should be aware of?” she asked.

“Trouble?” He hadn’t meant to worry her.

“Am I doing something that could...that could mean I might be...” She took a deep breath and stoically asked, “Dr. MacDowell, am I in danger of losing my job?”

The way she asked it—the fact that she would ask such a thing at all—set some kind of alarm off inside him. Why would she jump to a conclusion like that?

Damn, he was going to have to hire a private investigator. It would have been the first thing his brother Quinn would have done, long before any kind of getting-to-know-you lunch. Jamie was a fool to begin by simply spending time with the woman his son preferred.

Kendry was waiting for his answer, her whole posture stiff and solemn.

“You’re not in any trouble that I know of,” he said. “Are you on probation for any misconduct?”

“I’d never do anything to jeopardize this opportunity. Not intentionally. But Paula told me I overstepped my bounds by asking you to check on Myrna Quinones yesterday.”

Jamie leaned back in his plastic chair and studied her. Judging by the way her brows were drawn and her eyes watched him intently, she was either terribly concerned or terribly offended. The emotion brought a spark to her eyes, and he noticed now they were much more than a plain hazel. They were sharp, intelligent, expressive.

“I’m glad you did. You made a difference in Myrna’s outcome. Any child would be fortunate to have someone like you watching out for him.”

“Oh. Well, thank you.” She stood there for another moment, tray in hand, and Jamie wondered if she felt as awkward as he had. “I’ve got to go. If I don’t clock in on time, I really could be in trouble.”

“See you tomorrow, then,” he said, and he watched her walk away. She blended easily into the crowd of scrub-wearing personnel.

Yet, Sammy had singled her out.

Jamie glanced at the paper pumpkin decorations dangling from the cafeteria ceiling. Four weeks. He had four weeks to get to know Sammy’s favorite caregiver. And maybe, just maybe, he had four weeks to persuade her to marry him.

* * *

What on earth had that been all about?

Kendry dumped her tray on the cafeteria conveyor belt and made a beeline for the elevators. She had to get to the hospital’s basement and clock in within the next three minutes.

Her thoughts raced as she practically speed-walked down the corridor. Dr. MacDowell had eaten lunch with her. Sammy’s daddy, the one who made her heart race when they accidentally touched while passing Sammy between them at pickup time. Physicians rarely ate in the main cafeteria, for starters, but for the hospital’s most handsome and eligible doctor to single her out, to choose to sit at her table, was truly odd.

Kendry waved the bar code on her ID tag in front of the time clock’s scanner with seconds to spare. According to the list tacked to the employee bulletin board, she was needed in the pediatric ward’s playroom this afternoon. Dr. MacDowell had eaten lunch with her, so Sammy would be in the playroom. There was a silver lining to today’s bizarre lunch.

She rode the elevator to the pediatric floor of the hospital, feeling her spirits rise at the prospect of spending the afternoon with Sammy and the other children.

Dr. MacDowell had wanted to update her on Myrna’s condition. That was all. She wasn’t in trouble. She hadn’t broken any rules or done anything wrong.

Thank goodness. For a few heart-stopping moments, she’d been afraid Paula had been right, and she’d caused a problem by asking a doctor to check on a patient who wasn’t officially his. She only had weeks to go until her insurance coverage as a hospital employee would begin, and heaven knew she needed that insurance. She wasn’t ill, except for her annoying allergies, but she’d learned the hard way that living without insurance was risky, indeed.

She’d dropped her car insurance to pay her rent for one month, one lousy month after her previous job had crashed and her roommates had moved out without paying their share. It was perfectly legal in the state of Texas to not carry car insurance. The problem was, shortly after her job crashed, her car had crashed, too. Into a Mercedes-Benz. The judge had ruled her to be at fault, and until she paid for the cost of replacing that Mercedes, her money was not her own. It belonged to the state of Texas, practically every dime of it, thanks to the high monthly payment the judge had set.

The prospect of losing her hospital job was awful on every level, but the idea that she’d be fired just as she was about to have insurance was unbearable. She never wanted to be without insurance—auto, home, medical, dental, any insurance—again. The year she’d planned to take off before college had become the year that a lack of insurance had derailed her entire life.

By the time she walked into the playroom, her heart was pounding. Her thoughts were as much to blame as the speed-walking.

Relax. You’re not losing your job. Dr. MacDowell is a polite man who knew you’d be curious about Myrna’s health, so he filled you in and sat with you for twenty minutes. No big deal.

So why did he want to meet her for lunch tomorrow?

“Hi, guys,” Kendry called to a trio of preschoolers as she entered the playroom. Paula sat at the tiny table, monitoring their serious coloring. Since the Myrna Quinones incident, Paula treated Kendry with more courtesy.

It was Sammy, however, who was really happy to see her. He pulled himself to a stand using the bars of his playpen, babbling his baby noises and bouncing in excitement.

“And hello to you, too, my special guy.” Kendry scooped him up and gave him a squeeze, just as she caught sight of their reflection in the playroom’s window.

“What’s up with your dad?” she whispered. She’d never been what her grandfather called “a looker,” but the stress of the last few years—the stress she couldn’t blame on anyone but herself—had taken its toll.

She rested her cheek on top of Sammy’s head. Even in the window’s reflection, Sammy’s black hair was glossy. Her own hair was a little dull. Her diet was pretty limited while she watched every penny, but she didn’t think she was missing that many nutrients, not enough to make her hair less healthy, surely? She’d run out of shampoo and had been making do with bar soap to wash her hair. That probably made it dull, but still clean.

The dark circles under her eyes hadn’t gone away in months. Even if she got enough sleep, she had terrible allergies, so the dark circles were here to stay. The bottom line was, she didn’t look like the kind of woman a man went out of his way to spend time with.

Whatever lay behind Dr. MacDowell’s sudden interest in her was a mystery.

None of it mattered, anyway. Her hair wasn’t shiny, but it was clean. Her scrubs were faded, but clean. The important thing was, she was working in a hospital, where she’d always wanted to be. She wasn’t a nurse yet, but she had a plan, and the first step had been to become a bona fide employee of the best hospital in Texas. She enjoyed being with the children so much, she might even specialize in pediatric nursing some day.

Sammy grabbed her glasses and succeeded in pulling them off. He chortled in glee. Sammy spent time with her because he liked her.

His father’s motives were a mystery.

* * *

Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

How many times had Jamie wished for boredom on the job? While he was deployed, he’d fantasize about what his civilian life would be like. He’d work in an emergency room and treat patients whose medical needs were not truly emergencies, not like the carnage that he’d patched up after firefights. There would be a lot of children with runny noses and slight temperatures, a lot of adults with sprained ankles, and an affluent, overweight businessman getting the wake-up call he needed with a mild first heart attack. For an E.R. doctor, it would be monotony. While in Afghanistan, Jamie had craved monotony.

Now he was getting it. For two weeks, he hadn’t had a single challenging case. He told himself that was good.

The E.R. at West Central Hospital had a small locker room for physicians. Off the main E.R. was a kitchenette for the staff, and off the kitchenette was a tiny space euphemistically called the physicians’ lounge. It contained a plethora of lab coats, a few metal lockers that no one bothered to put locks on, and a cot that transformed itself from uninviting to nirvana when he had been on his feet for twenty-four hours straight.

At least Sam was happy today. Kendry had been on duty in the playroom, so Jamie could set his worried-parent hat aside for today’s shift. She was still far and away Sam’s favorite on the list of possible women. In fact, Sam didn’t seem to have any particular affinity for any other nurse or medical assistant he came in contact with.

Jamie had made a point of speaking to each woman, anyway. He’d bought one nurse a cup of coffee, shared a slice of cold pizza with another woman while he worked the midnight shift. Quinn had made a point of introducing him to a nurse from the ICU. They were all the same, though, either flirtatious or flustered. The first he had no interest in, the second he had no patience for. He was starting to believe that Kendry Harrison was the only woman in the hospital who could carry on an intelligent conversation without batting her eyelashes.

Jamie half closed the door to the locker room, looking behind it for the dry-cleaning bag that held his white lab coats. Some women entered the kitchenette, and their voices carried into the tiny locker room. “He’s a total hottie, even if he seems angry most of the time.”

“Hot angry. Hawt. Where’d he come from?”

“He’s from Dallas, I heard.”

“I heard Austin.”

“Whatever. He’s a Texas boy, coming back after getting out of the army, or some say he’s not out yet.”

“The army? OMG, imagine him in camouflage and boots. Totally off the hotness scale.”

Jamie jerked with surprise. They were talking about him. Had to be. Crap—now he was stuck in here. If he walked out, he’d embarrass the hell out of those women. He crossed his arms and leaned against the lockers. Looked like he was going to stand here and stare at the wall while they made their coffee. He had no choice but to listen to them talk about his hawt-ness.

“You didn’t see his butt, Terry. He’s always in his lab coat.”

“I did so see his butt. In the parking lot. No lab coat, just a stethoscope around his neck as he got in his truck.”

“Nothing but a stethoscope on? The man drives in the nude?”

Jamie rolled his eyes at the ceiling as the women giggled like girls. Still, it would have been gratifying to have one of his brothers hear him being drooled over. Jamie was the youngest. He was the baby of the three, four years younger than Quinn, six years younger than Braden.

That had been a huge age gap when he’d been in fifth grade while his brothers played high school football. The moms on the football stadium benches had cooed over Jamie, but his brothers had worn helmets and shoulder pads and attracted cheerleaders like flies. Jamie might have been in elementary school, but even then, he’d watched the cheerleaders in their very short skirts with their very long legs. They’d patted him on the head and watched his brothers.

It was an interesting switch, to be the big man on campus instead of the little brother. Apparently, at this hospital, he was the football star.

“Jamie MacDowell. Scottish sounding. Imagine him in a kilt.”

“You’re torturing us. It’s no use. He’s not interested in anybody. Dr. Brown even wore a miniskirt the other day, so it looked like she had nothing on under her lab coat. She looked like a freaking stripper.”

“He didn’t go for it?”

“Nope. She was pissed. It was one of my more entertaining shifts, I’ll tell you that.”

“Maybe he goes for men.”

“I’d bet money he’s not gay.”

And you’d win. Now, could you ladies—and he mentally snorted in derision at that last word—now could you ladies take your coffees and go?

Jamie’s cell vibrated silently. He checked the text. Time to get back to work. These women were going to hate him if he walked out of the room now, but the fifth-floor nurse needed alternate pain med orders for a patient he’d admitted.

“The only woman he ever talks to is some homely girl. I’ve seen him eat lunch with her in the cafeteria. He doesn’t even go in the physicians’ lounge. He sits at her table, wherever she is.”

“Who? Do we know her?”

“She’s nobody. An orderly or something.”

They were talking about Kendry, of course. He should have anticipated that sitting with an orderly in the cafeteria would feed the grapevine. This particular grapevine didn’t need to be fed further. He already didn’t care for the tone of their gossip. Kendry might not be a nurse, but she still contributed to the well-being of this hospital’s patients.

“What’s this nobody got that Dr. MacDowell likes?”

She’s kind. She respects children.

“I can’t imagine. She’s pitiful-looking. I swear, she wears the same scrubs every day.”

“Oh—that girl. I think she decided to make herself over for the new doc. Did you notice she cut her bangs?”

Jamie glared at the door. He’d count to twenty, then he’d leave this little jail cell whether those women were still here or not. He was feeling decidedly less considerate of their feelings.

“Ohmigod, yes. She had to have cut those bangs herself. With children’s safety scissors.”

“All right, guys, enough. You’re being mean to the poor thing,” one of the gossiping harpies cut in to defend the absent Kendry—about damned time. Jamie could tell they’d been revving up to pick her to shreds.

“She probably can’t afford a decent haircut,” the woman defending Kendry said. “She’s can’t be making more than minimum wage.”

“If I made minimum wage, I’d still work a couple hours extra, cut a coupon from the Sunday paper and at least get my hair done at one of those walk-in places. I think she just doesn’t care.”

“If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t have cut her bangs at all, would she?”

“Well, of course she cares about Dr. MacDowell. You can’t be female and not notice him. Could you imagine them together, though? It’d be like a Greek god and a street urchin in bed.”

“You’re so mean!”

The nurse made it sound like a compliment.

“Maybe she turns him on, and we can’t see why.”

Listening to this crap was getting plain painful. True, Kendry didn’t turn him on. But she didn’t look like a street urchin, for God’s sake. She wasn’t homely. Who gave a damn about her haircut?

“Men have stooped lower. Look at some of the prostitutes we get in the E.R.—I can’t believe men pay money to sleep with them. I’d say our soldier-doctor is on a mission to take that orderly on a pity date. Maybe an army buddy dared him to—”

“Yes. Maybe that’s why he always looks so angry at the world. He got dared into giving that girl a mercy f—”

The nurses shrieked, literally shrieked, hysterically.

They were comparing Kendry, baby Sam’s Kendry, to a prostitute. Jamie used the toe of his cowboy boot to give the door a nudge. It opened slowly as he remained where he was, leaning against the lockers, arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh, crap,” said the nurse who saw him first. The other two audibly sucked in their breaths.

“Wanna know why I look so angry all the time, ladies?” Jamie asked in a deliberate, deadly serious drawl.

“Dr. MacDowell, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you—”

“I’m angry that three nurses are taking a break at the same time. That leaves patients lying out there, unattended.”

“Yes, sir. We’re done now.”

Jamie wasn’t done with them, however. “I’ll tell you what else makes me angry. I’m angry that you’d take time away from patients in order to do nothing except trash a fellow employee at this hospital.”

No one said a word to that.

“Her name is Kendry, and she’s brilliant with sick kids. Next time you admit a child to the pediatric ward from the E.R., you watch real close if she’s the orderly who comes to take them to their room. Watch and learn something about patient care, because she’s one of the best we have at West Central. But right now, there are people out there who came to this E.R. for help, so put down your damned coffees and go.”

“Sorry.”

“Bye.”

Jamie didn’t move for a moment longer. He was angry, yes. Angry as hell, but also something else, some knot in his chest that made him want to punish something.

Himself.

That was it, damn it, he was mad at himself. For exactly what, he didn’t know, but it had something to do with Kendry, with the woman his son loved.

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