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Daddy By Choice
Paula Detmer Riggs
SECOND CHANCE…Dr. Luke Jarrod remembered Madelyn Foster as a seventeen-year-old beauty with whom he'd shared one night of stolen passion. Nine months too late, he returned to discover she'd had his child but had been forced to give their daughter away. Now, after twenty years, Madelyn was back in his life, pregnant again, and needing his help desperately. Luke knew this was his chance to make good on the one truly wonderful thing that had ever happened to him. This amazing woman deserved a knight in shining armor. Could the wary Luke be both a father to her baby–and a man worthy of her precious love?
At seventeen, she’d never seen a more perfect example of manliness,
Madelyn thought, thinking back to when she first met Luke. One look and she’d wanted him to be the first to make love to her. Now, watching him sleep, a shimmer of female appreciation still ran through her.
She wasn’t sure about anything when it came to Luke. She just knew he was important to her—and not just as her doctor.
His lashes fluttered as he opened his eyes, and he frowned.
“Maddy?” His voice was rusty and threaded with disbelief.
“Go to sleep, Luke,” she soothed.
“Baby?” he muttered.
“He’s fine.”
His mouth moved. “Sorry he’s not mine.”
“So am I,” she said on a suddenly shaky breath.
He smiled then. “Keep you safe, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Even from me.”
It was at that moment that she realized she still loved him.
Dear Reader,
This is a very special month here at Intimate Moments. We’re celebrating the publication of our 1000th novel, and what a book it is! Angel Meets the Badman is the latest from award-winning and bestselling Maggie Shayne, and it’s part of her ongoing miniseries, THE TEXAS BRAND. It’s a page-turner par excellence, so take it home, sit back and prepare to be enthralled.
Ruth Langan’s back, and Intimate Moments has got her. This month this historical romance star continues to win contemporary readers’ hearts with The Wildes of Wyoming—Hazard, the latest in her wonderful contemporary miniseries about the three Wilde brothers. Paula Detmer Riggs returns to MATERNITY ROW, the site of so many births—and so many happy endings—with Daddy by Choice. And look for the connected MATERNITY ROW short story, “Family by Fate,” in our new Mother’s Day collection, A Bouquet of Babies. Merline Lovelace brings readers another of the MEN OF THE BAR H in The Harder They Fall—and you’re definitely going to fall for hero Evan Henderson. Cinderella and the Spy is the latest from Sally Tyler Hayes, an author with a real knack for mixing romance and suspense in just the right proportions. And finally, there’s Safe in His Arms, a wonderful amnesia story from Christine Scott.
Enjoy them all, and we’ll see you again next month, when you can once again find some of the best and most exciting romance reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Daddy by Choice
Paula Detmer Riggs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Annette Broadrick
A great Texas lady and a treasured friend.
PAULA DETMER RIGGS
discovers material for her writing in her varied life experiences. During her first five years of marriage to a naval officer, she lived in nineteen different locations on the West Coast, gaining familiarity with places as diverse as San Diego and Seattle. While working at an historical site in San Diego she wrote, directed and narrated fashion shows and became fascinated with the early history of California.
She writes romances because “I think we all need an escape from the high-tech pressures that face us every day, and I believe in happy endings. Isn’t that why we keep trying, in spite of all the roadblocks and disappointments along the way?”
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Prologue
It was hotter than hell the day Luke Jarrod returned to West Texas. Overhead the merciless sun beat down on the cab of his truck, while inside the air conditioner blasted ice from the vents.
Slouched behind the wheel, his eyes gritty from too little sleep and his shoulders stiff from too many hours driving without a break, Luke was sweating like a bridegroom with a .12-gauge shotgun at his backbone. Which was real appropriate, considerin’ he was about to become a daddy at eighteen.
It scared him some to think of his Maddy girl having a baby, her being so tiny and all. And only seventeen. Too damn young to know better, so he should have.
It had been opening day of the Whiskey Bend Stampede at the county fairgrounds when he’d first laid eyes on her. A bunch of ROTC kids from Whiskey Bend High School had been bringing in the flag, just like every other rodeo in every other town he’d seen that season. Strung tight and desperate for prize money to keep himself in tacos and his cutting horse, Cochise, in oats, he’d been standing with the more seasoned competitors in the dusty ring with his hand over his heart, watching the chicks twirling batons when his buddy Buck Mehan had dug an elbow into his ribs.
“Son,” he said, “were I ten years younger I’d be all over that little yeller-haired darlin’ in the third row, the one swishing all that glorious hair like there was no tomorrow. Man could die happy did he belong to her.”
Luke had never wanted to belong to anyone. Belonging meant obligations and responsibilities, two things he’d avoided for as long as he could remember. But one look at those slinky tanned legs and tight little butt sashaying past him, her itty-bitty skirt swishing this way and that, and he’d fallen about as hard as a man can fall without cracking wide open.
Her name was Madelyn Sue Smith, and she’d been flat-out adorable, her crazy little cat’s face lit with excitement and her eyes full of spirit. It had been high noon, and the sun had coated her honey-colored hair with shimmering gold. He’d never seen hair like hers, bunches of tousled curls all the way to her shoulders. It had been prettier than a palomino’s coat, which was just about the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. When they’d been together, he’d spent hours running his hands through all that glorious stuff.
Lord help him, he hadn’t intended to let things get out of hand. But she’d been so sweet, and her smile had taken the edge off the sadness that had plagued him from the moment his mother had abandoned him when he was only nine, taking the baby sister he adored and leaving him to cope with his father’s bitter rages.
His body stirred at the memory of the stolen hours they’d spent together in a cheap motel room near the fairgrounds. That last night he’d bought her flowers—white carnations with petals almost as silky as her skin—and made sure the sheets had been clean. She’d been a virgin, and he’d tried to be gentle.
A thousand times he’d played back that scene, the teasing flick of her tongue against his, the purr of need in her throat. The adoration and trust in her eyes when she’d told him she loved him. A thousand times these past eight months he’d taken out that memory, hoarding each flash of those river green eyes, each dimpled smile, the soft little huff of wonder when she’d explored his body for the first time. When she’d finally worked up the courage to touch him, he’d damn near come right up off the bed.
For the first time since quittin’ school at sixteen to join the junior circuit, he’d been reluctant to move on. Especially when she’d cried and clung to him like there was no tomorrow.
I’ll write every day, she’d promised between frantic kisses. And she had at first, four letters for every one of his, telling him over and over how much she missed him—and how she couldn’t wait for him to come back when the season was over with the engagement ring he’d promised.
The more she wrote about them getting married, the tenser he’d become. Hell, he’d just gotten old enough to drink legal in a few enlightened states. The last thing he wanted was a noose around his neck. Thing was, though, he’d promised, and like his old man always said, a Jarrod never broke a promise.
Bent a few, though. And it wasn’t like he’d been real specific about when the season ended.
What with one thing and another, he’d started looking for reasons to put off goin’ back. Things like not havin’ enough money to support a wife. Or even the prospect of a steady job. Hell, he had no education to speak of. Nothing but a talent for stayin’ glued to the back of a raging tornado in horseflesh for the eight seconds it took to put money in his jeans.
Since his father had remarried and started another family, he didn’t even have a home to offer her—not a real one, anyway. So he kept puttin’ off that long drive back to Texas. As the months rolled by, there’d been other dusty towns and inevitably, other girls. Soon he’d been impatiently scrawling a few lines on a postcard. And finally he’d stopped writing altogether.
So had she—eventually—which was why he’d been so surprised to see the letter waiting for him at his daddy’s ranch outside Wickenburg. Damn thing had followed him halfway around the country—Canada, too—forwarded so many times the envelope had been raggedy and smudged.
All the way from Arizona he’d been picturing her with a big belly. The more he’d thought about it, the more awestruck he’d become. That sweet girl was havin’ his baby. His. It humbled him as much as it scared him.
Sweat beaded under the band of his dress Stetson hat as he made the left turn that would take him to her place. What was done was done, he told himself as he pulled into the driveway of the ugly brown house. He’d had his fun. Now it was time to pay the piper.
But as he climbed down from the truck and straightened his shoulders, he realized he was glad she was pregnant. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to start out a lifetime with his lady, but he’d make it work. If it took him a lifetime, he was determined to show her just how much he loved her. His Maddy girl.
Chapter 1
Twenty-two years later
“I don’t mean to frighten you unnecessarily, Maddy Sue, but I wouldn’t be doing my duty as your doctor if I didn’t lay out the worst-case senario.”
Sixty-seven-year-old Dr. Horace Austin Morrow had been Madelyn Smith Foster’s doctor from the moment she was born. Or, more precisely, from the moment of her conception, as he liked to tease with a twinkle in those still-bright blue eyes whenever she was being mulish.
Madelyn trusted him implicitly. She also loved him like the father she should have had. She liked to think he cared deeply for her, as well. Certainly he had stood by her when almost everyone else in her life had turned against her.
After Luke had broken her heart, she’d cried on Doc’s broad shoulder so many times she’d come to associate the smell of his starched lab coat with fathomless sorrow. When Doc had haltingly told her that the odds of her ever becoming pregnant were too minuscule to measure, she’d collapsed in those strong arms, sobbing until she was empty inside.
Five months ago, when he’d given her the astounding news that she’d beaten those odds and had actually conceived, she’d also cried in his arms. From joy this time. But now…
“You said I just had a small cyst, that it was nothing to be concerned about.” Her voice was a thread, pushed past the sudden constriction in her throat.
“Actually it’s more like a benign tumor. Folks generally call these things fibroids, but the correct medical term is myoma.”
Instinctively her hand went to her tummy where the fragile little soul she already adored was curled into a warm ball under her heart. “You mean I…I could lose this baby?”
“It’s possible, honey. These here myomas are like West Texas weather—real unpredictable. Sometimes the weatherman forecasts a big old tornado, and all we get is a piddling little blow. On the other hand it only makes sense to duck on down to the cellar when you see the warning signs.”
Madelyn bit her lip, her gaze fixed on the fuzzy black-and-white image of her child in the ultrasound photo. Along the curve of her uterus was a black smudge, more like a thickening than her idea of a tumor. Certainly it didn’t look menacing, at least not to her untrained eye. However, the dark shadow was bigger in this photo than the one taken a month earlier, which Doc claimed was a big old red flag.
“Would you mind going over the possible…complications again, please?” she asked when he remained silent, his homely face set in somber lines.
“I wouldn’t mind at all, honey.” The springs of Doc’s chair protested as he shifted his bulk a little closer to where she was perched rigidly on the edge of her chair. “These are only maybes, you understand,” he said, lifting his shaggy salt-and-pepper brows.
“Yes, I understand.” And if she didn’t, she soon would—even if she had to steal Wiley Roy’s precious laptop computer and search every database on the Net.
Doc held up the same gnarled hand that had held hers while she’d screamed in agony during her first delivery. One by one he ticked off potential problems. Each one was worse than the one before. Each one had the potential to precipitate early labor or worse. By the time he finished, she felt light-headed and her throat was dust dry.
“What do you suggest I do?” she managed to squeak out after swallowing several times.
“Get yourself to a specialist who handles these kinds of cases on a regular basis, one of those new high-risk docs that are all the rage these days. I’ve been doin’ some callin’ around just in case, and I’ve come up with five names.” He reached for a folder and flipped it open. “Two are at Baylor, one at UC San Diego, one at Mount Sinai and one up in Oregon at Portland General.”
Madelyn cast a wary glance at the collection of faxes and printouts he was shuffling through, refreshing his memory. “Is there one that’s better than the others?” she asked when he glanced up.
“They’re all excellent. Some I’ve heard tell of here and there, some I haven’t. I met Candace Marston once at an internists’ conference in Austin three or four years ago. She’s a few years younger than you, but sharp as a tack. The others are all men.”
“I don’t care about gender. I care about my baby, and I want the best, whoever he or she is.”
Doc studied her in thoughtful silence through his half glasses for a long tense moment before nodding. “In that case, this is the man you should see. The best of the best.” He lifted a sheet of paper with a brief bio typed at the top of a long list of published articles and honors.
Her breath dammed up in her chest when she read the name printed in bold letters at the top: LUCAS OLIVER JARROD, M.D.
“It can’t be,” she said, her voice flat.
“According to everyone I asked, Jarrod’s considered the premier expert on myomas, among other things. Way I heard it, he’s got women flying in from all over the world, just so’s he can watch over ’em.”
“I don’t care.” Her heart seemed as if it would pound clear through her chest, and her blood felt hot in her veins. Not once, in all the years since the social worker had taken her child away forever, had she stopped loving her daughter or wondering about her. Nor in all that time had she ever stopped hating Luke Jarrod or blaming him for her loss.
Yet, paradoxically, the man she’d married had the same lean build and pantherlike way of walking that had first attracted her to Luke.
“It took me years to stop hating him. I…it can’t be good for the baby to stir all that up again.”
“Then don’t let it be stirred.” Stern, suddenly, and intense, Doc’s eyes bored into her. “If you want to give that little one a chance, get yourself on the next plane to Oregon. Charm the man if that’s what it takes. Play the guilt card if he balks. Remind him of all he cost you if you have to, but convince him to take you on.”
Madelyn bit down on the urge to refuse point-blank. This baby meant everything to her. Everything. Yet, how could she bear to rake up the misery of the past all over again?
