Книга - Father On The Brink

Father On The Brink
Elizabeth Bevarly


FROM HERE TO PATERNITY A BLIZZARD, A BABY… AND A BRIDE? Being snowbound with a beautiful stranger was a bachelor's dream. Being snowbound with a beautiful stranger in labor was this bachelor's worst nightmare! Yet Cooper Dugan managed to deliver Katie Brennan's son. Settling down was the last thing on Katie's mind - mother and child were on the run. But she needed a favor.All Cooper had to do was pose as a proud papa and happy hubby. All Katie had to do was remember that it was just a charade… .FROM HERE TO PATERNITY: These three men weren't expecting to become parents - and fatherhood isn't the only thing the stork delivered! FROM HERE TO PATERNITY









Table of Contents


Cover Page (#u91c48144-6c62-564a-80af-1a4cbf08643e)

Excerpt (#u68bd137b-78a1-5926-a2b0-3cb91177706a)

Dear Reader (#u5b4d4634-67d2-5f10-acf3-f78b137b0021)

Title Page (#ueb617f94-b555-59a4-bb07-1210c5f9bb7c)

About the Author (#udde80720-705e-51cb-9682-11f4340d6025)

Dedication (#u8fd0d7b9-b3b5-54ca-b61a-876ac2c0bd33)

One (#ub20a4115-1830-5e50-a2c1-899fb16dd6b8)

Two (#u89f77ee5-b047-5176-bd23-f0992e7d4e9e)

Three (#u72f2a104-0983-5d0c-8b61-34914b5b9268)

Four (#u15cfec87-d6f0-53ae-afcf-8a03364bb7da)

Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)




An Idea Exploded In Katie’s Brain…An Idea She Tried To Squash.


Really, she did. Because the idea was unthinkable. Reprehensible. Immoral. What she had in mind was no way to repay all the kindness and patience Cooper had shown to her and her son. He might very well have saved both their lives last night.



She looked again at the line where the birth certificate application asked for the name of Andrew’s father.



As if they had a mind of their own, Katie’s fingers gripped more tightly the pen in her hand, and she watched with an almost detached fascination as they wrote out, in big, block letters…

C-O-O-P-E-R D-U-G-A-N.


Dear Reader,



Welcome to Silhouette Desire, where you can discover the answers to all your romantic questions. Such as…

Q. What would you think if you discovered the man you love has a secret identity—as a movie star?

A. That’s what happens to the heroine of August’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Don’t Fence Me In by award-winning writer Kathleen Korbel.

Q. What would you do if you were pregnant, in labor and snowbound with a sexy—but panicked—stranger?

A. Discover the answer in Father on the Brink, the conclusion to Elizabeth Bevarly’s FROM HERE TO PATERNITY series.

Q. Suppose you had to have a marriage of convenience?

A. Maybe you’d behave like the heroine in Barbara McMahon’s Bride of a Thousand Days.

Q. How could you talk a man into fathering your child…no strings attached?

A. Learn how in Susan Crosby’s Baby Fever!

Q. Would you ever marry a stranger?

A. You might, if he was the hero of Sara Orwig’s The Bride’s Choice.

Q. What does it take to lasso a sexy cowboy?

A. Find out in Shawna Delacorte’s Cowboy Dreaming.

Silhouette Desire…where all your questions are answered and your romantic dreams can come true.

Until next month, happy reading!






Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to: Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3




Father On The Brink

Elizabeth Bevarly

















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




ELIZABETH BEVARLY


is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. “I really love to travel,” says this self-avowed beach bum. “To me, it’s the best education a person can give to herself.” Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older model forty-two footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates, people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with maternity, as well—she and her husband recently welcomed their firstborn baby, a son.


For Teresa Hill/Sally Tyler Hayes

and

Barbara Samuel/Ruth Wind



Thanks for being there when I needed you.



And with thanks to my

New Jersey and Pennsylvania connections:



Gin. April and Hannah

and

Judy and Sharyn.



Much obliged, you guys.




One (#ulink_2d9b1857-5f27-5b49-a501-36b2592173a9)


It was a blizzard of unprecedented proportions, even by northeastern standards. Cooper Dugan tried his damnedest to squint through the splashes of white that pelted his windshield, pressed his foot against the clutch and down-shifted into first. The cold March wind whipped easily through the plastic doors and windows of the four-wheel drive Jeep, chilling even more thoroughly his already frozen nose, seeping through his leather gloves to numb his fingers to the bone.

He fumbled for the thermos of coffee he’d been clutching between his knees for most of the ride and unscrewed the lid, then sipped carefully from the lip without bothering with the plastic cup. The liquid was hotter than he’d expected it to be, and he burned his tongue, dribbling a good portion of the dark brown brew down his chin and throat, under his wool muffler and into the neck of the sweatshirt he wore beneath his leather college baseball jacket. Uttering a vicious and colorful oath, he scrubbed a hand over the bottom half of his face and growled low.

“Hell of a way to spend a Saturday night,” he muttered to no one in particular.

He was supposed to have been off this weekend, he reminded himself mercilessly. He was supposed to have been out on a date, at this very minute, with that new nurse in cardiology—the big brunette with the heart-shaped fanny, and breasts that just begged a man to cushion his head upon them and rest for a while. He was supposed to be enjoying himself a little bit after having worked eighteen days straight without a break. Instead, he was playing Good Samaritan to the City of Brotherly Love, responding to a cry for help from the mayor, who wasn’t even paying Cooper for his time.

Hey, it wasn’t his fault the weather guys had overlooked and underestimated what had become the biggest and most crippling snowfall in Pennsylvania’s history, was it? It wasn’t his fault they’d all said, “No, don’t worry, it’s going to go way north of us.” It wasn’t his fault the snowplows hadn’t even had a chance to make it out of the city garage. And it wasn’t his fault—or his problem, for that matter—that a bunch of local citizens were having trouble getting the medical attention they required on a day-to-day basis.

Hey, he didn’t even live in Philadelphia. He was a Jersey boy, born and bred, the Pennsauken apartment he lived in now virtually a stone’s throw away from the house where he’d spent his childhood.

So what the hell was he doing out here freezing his butt off, battling a temperamental Jeep to keep it on the road, eating stale Twinkies, and spilling coffee down his shirt?

“No rest for the wicked, I guess,” he complained to himself. “Or for paramedics, either.”

He jotted down a mental note to himself: Hey, Coop, next time something like this happens, and the city across the Delaware River gets buried under snow, and some publicofficial makes a public appeal to any citizen possessing a four-wheel drive vehicle and even the most rudimentary first-aid skills…the next time something like this happens, be in Barbados, okay?

“Cooper, honey, you still out there?”

The crackly voice buzzed over the radio he’d tossed onto the passenger seat earlier that evening, and, reluctant to take his eyes off of the road—what little he could see of it— Cooper groped around for a minute before finally finding it.

“Yeah, Patsy, I’m still with you,” he replied after squeezing the Talk button.

“Where you at?”

Cooper chuckled and tried to see some kind of vague landmark through the snow. Finally, he lifted the radio to his mouth again and said, “I have no idea.”

“Well, give me a rough estimate.”

Cooper sighed, slowed the Jeep to a crawl and noted a row of orangey-looking town houses edging the tree-lined street. “I think I’m in Chestnut Hill,” he told Patsy. “Looks like Chestnut Hill anyway, and that’s the way I was headed. Sorta. There are trees. Where else in downtown Philly am I going to see trees?”

He heard the dispatcher expel a sound of relief. “Sounds like Chestnut Hill to me. Okay, that’s great, Cooper. I’ve got another run for you.” A pause, then, “I can’t read Don’s handwriting very well, but it looks like you’ve got a kidney patient—a sixty-seven-year-old male—who couldn’t make dialysis this afternoon. You better get over there right quick.”

“Quick,” he mumbled to himself. “Yeah, right.”

He knew the dispatcher, like everyone else scrambling to work through this situation, had been pressed into duty when she had other things to do—like keeping herself and her family warm and safe. But Cooper’s patience was shrinking as his tension and need for sleep increased.

Already today, he’d ferried a four-year-old with a broken ankle to the hospital, cringing at the little guy’s pain-filled howling all the way. He’d resuscitated a major coronary after the eighty-year-old woman had tried to keep ahead of the snow in shoveling her driveway. He’d run a batch of prescriptions from a local pharmacy to four very needy people in utterly opposite corners of town. He’d even rushed a golden retriever to a veterinarian.

Organization at the dispatch source, it seemed, was the biggest casualty of the blizzard so far.

He pressed the Talk button again. “Patsy,” he began as patiently as he could. “‘Right quick’ isn’t an option at the moment. At this point, with the snow coming down like it is, I’ll be lucky if I can get to the old guy by daybreak tomorrow.”

“Just get there,” she snapped back, obviously stretched as thin as Cooper was. She rattled off an address that he hoped like hell he would remember, because there was no way he was taking his hand off the steering wheel long enough to write anything down.

It took him nearly half an hour to reach the street that wound up being only a block from what had been his location when Patsy had assigned him the duty. After his sixth pass up the block in question, Cooper finally found the town house he was looking for. At least, he thought it was the one he was looking for. He parked in the middle of the street, unconcerned that anyone was going to hit or strip the vehicle. After all, only idiots like him were out on a night like this, right?

Automatically, he reached behind the passenger seat for the well-stocked first-aid kit he always carried with him. Then he pushed the Jeep door open, pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head, tucked his body in as well as he could against the wind and snow, and jogged toward the house.

* * *

Katherine Winslow had been packing for a very long trip to Anywhere-But-Here when her water had broken. She’d gasped when she’d felt the warm rush of fluid slide down her legs and soak the pants of her maternity overalls, then had stared down at the clear liquid pooling around her feet with much dismay. It had been a troubling development, to say the least, coming as it did three weeks before her due date, in the middle of the worst blizzard in Pennsylvania history, and right on the heels of her discovery that her husband wasn’t who he claimed to be—including her husband.

There was nothing like having a man’s wife show up at your front door to tell you that you weren’t. The man’s wife, that is.

Now as Katherine lay curled up in a ball in the middle of the king-size bed she’d been sharing with a stranger for months, clutching her abdomen as spasms of pain rocked her, she had no idea what to do.

William would know, she thought. If he’d been home, instead of traveling on business—or, at least, on what he had told her was business—William would know exactly what to do. He’d be taking good care of her. Just as he’d been taking good care of her since the day she’d met him. Just like a husband was supposed to do for his wife.

Except that William wasn’t her husband, Katherine reminded herself, squeezing her eyes shut as another cramp rippled over her belly. He’d somehow neglected to mention that he was already married when he’d walked her down the aisle at Reverend Ryan’s Chapel O’Love in Las Vegas nearly a year ago.

One thing he was, though, was the father of her baby. A baby who, if Katherine had her way, would never, ever, meet up with the man who’d sired him. Unfortunately, it looked like William had other ideas.

But right now, that was the least of her problems. She’d been in labor for hours and was completely unprepared for whatever lay ahead. William had discouraged her from taking prenatal classes, telling her she’d have the best doctors and nurses attending her when her time came, and they’d be the ones who needed to know what to do, not her. And although she had done some reading, right now she could remember nothing of what the books had instructed her to do.

She should probably call someone, she thought, glancing toward the telephone that sat on the nightstand near her head. But what few friends she had in Philadelphia had been William’s before they’d been hers. So word of his son’s imminent birth would get back to him, wherever he was, and then the man who wasn’t her husband would come rushing to be by her side. Which was the last place she wanted to find him. Another pain sliced through her midsection, and she cried out, wondering what could possibly make this situation worse than it already was.

As if playing a very bad joke, the lights flickered above her, then went out completely.

Katherine rolled to her other side and wished she would wake up from what was becoming a truly terrible nightmare. Even in darkness, the beauty that surrounded her seemed to scoff at her. William had furnished their Chestnut Hill town house with the finest antiques and Oriental carpets money could buy. She had always been so grateful that her child would be born into wealth, that the tiny baby growing inside her would never have to know the hardship and poverty she had known growing up.

But there were many kinds of poverty, she now understood. And William suffered from the basest kind Emotional poverty. Moral poverty. Poverty of the soul.

He wasn’t her husband, she reminded herself again. Which was good, now that she thought about it. Because that would give her a little more leverage when he came to take her son away from her.

She cried out as a new kind of pain shook her, and for the first time, she became afraid—really afraid. Afraid that something was going to go wrong with the baby, afraid of being alone for the rest of her life, afraid that no matter how hard she tried, she’d already ruined things irreparably.

She splayed her hands open over her belly, the closest thing she could manage to an embrace of her unborn son. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as tears stung her eyes. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so, so sorry.”



Cooper pounded the door with his closed fist for the third time, cursing Patsy with every other breath for giving him the wrong address. He punched the doorbell over and over and over, listening in helpless frustration. He was lifting his hand for one final knock when the radio in his pocket buzzed and crackled, and Patsy’s voice came over the line.

“Cooper?”

He withdrew the two-way with a snarl and lifted it to his lips. “Yeah?”

“Um, sorry, hon, but I think I sent you on a wild goose chase.”

He let every four-letter word he knew—and some more that he made up on the spot—parade across the front of his brain before he responded quietly, “What?”

“Uh, yeah. That dialysis note was from this afternoon. The guy’s been in and is safely back home now. I’m sorry. You don’t need to be where you are.”

Cooper was about to agree with her, was about to tell Patsy that where he actually needed to be was lying in the arms of a willing woman who cradled a big snifter of very expensive, very warm, brandy beneath his lips, when he heard an almost unearthly feminine scream erupt on the other side of the door he’d been about to pound off its hinges.

Immediately, he dropped his hand to the knob and twisted hard. But it wouldn’t budge. Another scream raged at him from inside, and without thinking, Cooper lifted his metal first-aid kit and brought it crashing down on the knob. Over and over again, he repeated the action, until he’d bashed what had been an elegant collection of brass curlicues and engravings into a twisted metal mess. Finally, the entire fixture failed, and he shoved his shoulder against the door, hard.

Inside, the house was dark. Only the reflection of a street lamp on the other side of the street colliding with the quickly falling snow prevented the foyer from being completely black. He heard someone gasping for breath somewhere beyond his vision, and assumed it to be the woman who had screamed. Cautiously, he took a few steps forward.

“Hello?” he called out. “Who’s there? Are you all right?”

His only reply was a stifled, disembodied groan.

“Hel-looo?” he tried again. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared. I’m a paramedic. I can help you.”

At first, he thought the woman had stopped breathing, so silent did the room become. His heartbeat quickened, rushing blood to warm the parts of his body he’d begun to fear had frozen. He pushed the hood of his sweatshirt back off his head, then raked his fingers through his snow-dampened, overly long, pale blond hair. He held his own breath, waiting for something, some indication that he wasn’t too late to remedy whatever had gone wrong in this house.

Finally, a tiny, feminine voice called from the other side of the room, “H-h-help me?”

Cooper took a few more strides in the direction from which the question had come. “Yeah, I can help you. Just tell me where you are.”

“H-help. Please.”

He opened his first-aid kit and pulled out a flashlight, switching it on to throw a wide ray of white light all around the room. The hazy halo finally settled on a woman in the corner. A woman whose dark hair was soaking wet with perspiration in spite of the chill in the house, and whose huge, gray eyes were terrified. A woman who was clutching a belly distended in the very late stages of pregnancy.

“Oh, no,” Cooper muttered. “No, no, no. Not this. Anything but this.”

The woman lifted her hand to him. “Help,” she whispered, her voice sounding thin and weak and exhausted. “Please…my baby. Help my baby.”

He threw his head back to stare into the darkness above him. Great. This was just great. Of all the damned, stupid, crazy luck, he had to wind up with a home birth. Because there was no way he was going to try to get this lady to the hospital. The only thing worse than a home delivery was a back seat of a Jeep in a blizzard delivery.

He sighed his resignation to the situation, set his flashlight and first-aid kit on a nearby coffee table and looked at the woman in the corner again.

“Are you here all alone?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Husband’s…out of town.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face, a singularly troubled gesture. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get you to the hospital in time. Looks like we’re going to have to deliver that baby right here. Is that okay with you?”

She nodded weakly, but said nothing.

Cooper felt the chill winter wind sweep past him from behind and went back to close the front door. He spied a fireplace upon his return, noting gratefully that it was already laid for a fire and needed only the flick of a match to provide some much needed warmth. There was a box of matches on the mantel, settled amid a half dozen framed photographs of the woman who was crumpled into a ball in the corner of the room. He ignored the pictures, scratched a couple of matches on the side of the box and tossed them into the kindling. Within moments, the flames began to flicker upward into the wood, bathing the room in a faint yellow glow, warming his face and hands.

He turned back to the woman. “Okay. That’ll get us started. We’ll have to deliver the baby down here, since I assume there’s no heat anywhere else in the house. We’re going to need some clean sheets, some water…I think I have everything else we’ll need in my kit. So, where do you keep all that stuff, and where can I wash up?”

Katherine stared back at the huge apparition that had come out of nowhere, feeling anything but relieved. In the weak ray of the flashlight, with the scant flicker of flames in the fireplace illuminating him with an odd play of light and shadow, the only impression she had of him was that he was big, broad and blond. His voice, nch and masculine and anything but comforting, told her he was none too thrilled to be acting as midwife. But he’d said he was a paramedic. That meant he had to know something about childbirth, right? Certainly more than she knew herself.

The pain in her midsection seemed to have abated some after pelting her repeatedly with one severe spasm after another, and she took advantage of the opportunity to inhale a few deep, calming breaths. When she trusted her voice to remain steady, she gave the man the information he’d requested, then pointed toward the kitchen and told him he could wash up in there. Immediately, he disappeared into the direction she’d indicated, and Katherine slumped back against the wall. She had changed into a nightgown after her water had broken, but the fluid continued to leak from her in a steady flow. Now the white cotton fabric was cold and damp She wanted to be near the fire.

She was struggling to stand when the man returned and saw her intentions, so he helped her to her feet and led her to the sofa. Again she was struck by his size and solidity. She told herself if she were smart, she’d be afraid of him. But Katherine had never been any too intelligent where men were concerned, as evidenced by her current predicament. And for some reason, in spite of his size and demeanor and the fact that he was a complete stranger, this man didn’t frighten her at all.

“Where did you come from?” she managed to ask him as he settled her on the sofa. “How did you know I was here?” She couldn’t quite stop herself from asking further, “Did…did William send you?”

The man had turned his back to her and was busying himself with what looked like a very substantial first-aid kit. “Who’s William?” he asked, though his mind didn’t seem to be on the question.

“My…my husband. Did he…are you here because of him?”

The man shook his head, but still seemed to be preoccupied with making the proper preparations for bringing her son into the world. “Nope,” he said. “It’s just sheer, dumb luck that linked us up, lady. Sheer, dumb luck.”

She was about to ask him to elaborate on that, but a faint pain rippled up inside her again, and she squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her teeth together in an effort to ease the ache a bit.

“How long has the power been out?” the man asked her when he spun back around to look at her.

She dropped her hand to her belly, rubbing at another, less intense, contraction. “I don’t know. It was still daylight when my water broke—about four, four-thirty maybe. What time is it now?”

The man turned his wristwatch toward the dim glow of the flashlight. “Just past nine. You’ve been in labor for five hours?”

Katherine thought for a moment. The pains hadn’t really started until some time after her water broke, but for the life of her, she couldn’t quite remember now how long. “I don’t know,” she said again.

The man dropped to his haunches before her, bringing his face level with hers. She was able to tell a little bit more about him when he was up close this way, the growing light from the fire illuminating one side of his face, but not much more. At least one good cheekbone, she noted. And at least one vivid green eye. And a pair of lips, one half of which anyway, that were full and beautiful and still managed to be very, very masculine.

He started to extend his hand toward hers, then seemed to think better of it, and wove his fingers together on one knee. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

She opened her mouth to tell him the truth, then realized the truth was in fact a lie. She wasn’t Katherine Winslow. There was no Katherine Winslow. William had made her that with his farce of a wedding. Without him, she had no idea who she would be now. So she told the man, “I’m Katie Brennan.” It was what she had been called in her other life, a million years ago. And it seemed to suit her now.

“Katie Brennan,” the man repeated.

He smiled, and for the first time in what seemed a very long time, Katie felt a warming sense of relief seep into her. This time when he reached out for her, he carried through, taking her hand in his.

“Nice to meet you, Katie,” he said. “I’m Cooper. Cooper Dugan. And, like I said, I’m a paramedic. But I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never delivered a baby before. I mean, I know what to do—pretty much—but I’ve never actually…” His voice trailed off when he seemed to detect her growing sense of misgiving. “Is this your first?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, her sudden conviction about feeling safe faltering a little with his announcement.

He nodded back. “Then I guess we have something in common.”

She was about to say something else when the pains flared up again, bursting out of nowhere with even more intensity than before. Katie cried out, crushing with what she was sure was bruising strength the hand that Cooper Dugan had offered her in comfort.

It was going to be a long night.

She didn’t realize she had spoken her thought aloud until Cooper nodded in agreement and said, “Yeah, it sure is.”

She watched as he reached behind himself for his jacket, plucked a two-way radio from one pocket, and spoke into it. “Patsy,” he said with a sigh, “this is Coop. Better take me off the dispatch list. I’m going to be, um, indisposed for a little while.”




Two (#ulink_f2e48f2e-a442-5757-94c8-4fb8c7274cab)


Eventually, night became morning. And by the time it did, the blizzard had tapered off into an almost magical-looking snowfall, the power in Katie’s house had come back on, and Cooper had helped to deliver a bouncing baby boy.

The knowledge of that startled him still.

In spite of the restoration of electricity, a fire continued to crackle happily in the fireplace, and the lights were dimmed low. He sat in his ancient blue jeans and Kmart special T-shirt on the floor of Katie’s big, expensive town house, amid more opulence and luxury than he’d imagined was possible. And he ignored it all to stare instead at a sleeping mother and child for whom he felt, at least partially, responsible.

He thought about the tradition that other cultures embraced, about how when a person saved another person’s life, he became responsible for whomever he’d rescued. He supposed the same must hold true when a person brought another person into the world to begin with. That was the only reason Cooper could conceive why he felt such a strong tie to the little guy tucked safely and snugly in his mother’s arms.

He studied the baby’s mother, too. For some reason, Cooper also felt responsible for Katie Brennan now. She lay on the floor with her upper back and head supported by a pile of pillows, naked amid a tangle of sheets. Purple crescents smudged her eyes, and her dark hair was shoved back from her forehead m a heap of wet snarls. He knew nothing about her other than her name and address. Yet he couldn’t quite chase away the sensation that he was bound to her irrevocably.

His gaze dropped to the ring encircling the fourth finger of her left hand. Studded with diamonds, it was the kind of wedding band a man gave to a woman he intended to keep forever. Certainly, it was a far cry from anything Cooper could ever hope to afford for a woman himself, regardless of how much he might love her. Katie Brennan was obviously a woman accustomed to a way of life vastly different from his own.

Not that it mattered, he told himself. The woman was married, after all, and tied to her husband with a bond far more significant and lasting than the one represented by the ring on her finger. She had a child. Her husband’s child. And nothing on earth could shatter a bond like that.

Cooper cupped a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed hard. Long night hadn’t begun to describe what he and Katie had just been through. And if he was this tired, he could only imagine how she must feel after a grueling session like that. She’d screamed, and he’d hollered, and they’d both sworn like drunken sailors. She’d pushed and shoved and heaved and cried. He’d cajoled and threatened and bribed and heartened. And sometime just before the sun began to stain the sky with pink and yellow, Andrew Cooper Brennan had been born.

It had been Katie’s idea—no, her demand—that her son carry Cooper’s first name for his middle one. Andrew, she said, had been her father’s name. And when Cooper had asked how her husband was going to feel about his son carrying a stranger’s name, Katie had smiled sadly through her exhaustion and told Cooper he was less of a stranger to her than her husband was. Before he’d had a chance to get her to clarify that, she’d drifted into a sound slumber, and he’d decided she must have been touched with a bit of postpartum delirium and hadn’t known what she was talking about.

Not for the first time since she’d fallen asleep, his gaze wandered up to the mantel, to the scattered collection of photographs. Katie with her arms circling a collie’s neck, both of them grinning from ear to ear. Katie smiling shyly from beneath the broad brim of a straw hat, a tranquil, turquoise sea behind her. Katie with her head bent to and partially obscured by a bouquet of yellow roses. Katie with a good-looking man Cooper assumed was her husband, the two of them standing beside a sleek black Jaguar, laughing as if they’d just played the biggest joke in the world on someone.

And another photograph that seemed oddly out of place, yet more suited to Katie than any of the others. It was a picture of her as a young teenager, standing on the steps of what looked like a sagging farmhouse, a man and woman situated like fence posts behind her, each one with a hand on her shoulder. The only one in the picture who was smiling was Katie. But even hers was a sad, almost wistful expression.

Cooper’s gaze fell to her sleeping so near him, and again he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was somehow responsible for her now. For her and her baby both. The realization was still flooding over him when Katie opened her eyes and smiled.

“Good morning,” she said softly, obviously no better rested for her sleep than she had been when she’d closed her eyes two hours ago.

Cooper smiled back. His voice was scarcely a whisper as he replied, “Good morning to you, too.”

She looked down at the baby in her arms, who awoke and whimpered a bit before snuggling into her breast. He rooted around, and Katie chuckled, trying to get him properly positioned. Only after a number of trials and errors did the baby finally affix himself onto her nipple and begin a greedy suckle.

“I’m going to have to find someone who knows more about this breastfeeding business than I do,” she said when she met Cooper’s gaze again. “I don’t think either Andrew or I have a clue how to go about it.”

For the first time, Cooper noted that her speech carried just the hint of a southern accent of some kind. Obviously, she wasn’t from the tristate area originally.

He shrugged off her concern. “There will be someone at the hospital who can help you out. Or they can at least give you a referral.”

Her smile faltered. “Hospital?”

He raised his arms over his head and arched his back into a stretch. “Sure,” he said absently when he’d completed it. “Now that the snow’s letting up, the plows ought to be able to get through. And seeing as how so many wealthy taxpayers live right here in Chestnut Hill, your neighborhood will probably be one of the first to get plowed.” He hoped none of the edge he felt when he uttered the last of his comments found its way into his voice.

“But—” She hesitated, leaving her objection unuttered.

“But what?” he asked. “Aren’t you anxious to get to the hospital to make sure everything’s okay with you and the baby?”

She shook her head. “I know everything’s okay.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Cooper nodded, but found it more than a little strange that she would be so reluctant to get to a medical facility. “Yeah, well, it might not be a bad idea to have the two of you checked out anyway. Just to be sure. I called the hospital a little while ago, and they’re sending an ambulance ASAP. Of course, with all that snow out there, ASAP isn’t going to be as fast as it usually would.”

If possible, her face became even paler than it already was. “You did what?”

“I called the hospital. An ambulance should be here in a couple of hours to collect you and little Andrew. It’s standard procedure. What’s the problem?”

Katie shook her head and wondered what she was going to do now. The problem was that going to the hospital necessitated registering Andrew’s birth and lots of questions about his father. She knew she was legally obligated to inform the state of a new arrival. Even if in doing so, she was providing an already well-armed monster with just the right weapon to take her baby away from her forever. Once William’s name was on Andrew’s birth certificate, his stable of overpaid, amoral attorneys would have everything they needed—in writing—to ensure that Katie never saw her son again.

“I can’t go to the hospital,” she said.

Cooper arched his brows in surprise. “Why not?”

“I just…I can’t, Cooper. You have to call them back and tell them you made a mistake.”

He gaped at her. “A mistake? Excuse me? What do you want me to do, call and say, ‘Hi, this is Coop again. You know that baby I told you I delivered? Well, I was wrong. It was actually a pepperoni pizza that I delivered. Sorry about the mix-up.’”

She made a face at him. “No, of course not. But it’s very important that Andrew and I not go to the hospital.”

“Why?”

“We just can’t,” she snapped.

“Well, that’s too bad,” he snapped back. “Because you’re both going to the hospital. And I intend to escort you every step of the way, just to make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle.”

Katie opened her mouth to object again, then decided it would be fruitless to do so. She’d learned at some point during the night—when she kept insisting that she had changed her mind, and that she had decided she was not going to have this baby, no matter how much Cooper begged or threatened, and that was final—that the man simply wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She glanced down at Andrew, who pulled hungrily at her breast. He was fat and pink and squirmy, and it hit Katie with the force of an aircraft carrier that she was entirely responsible for him. It was up to her to make sure no harm ever came to her son. It was up to her to be certain that he had the very best of everything she could offer him. It was up to her to see that he was safe and happy and free to live a good life. It was up to her to ensure that William Winslow never got his hands on his son.

Therefore, she had to be certain that she and Andrew were as physically fit as possible before they went into hiding.

Her gaze locked with Cooper’s again. “All right. We’ll go to the hospital.”

He expelled a dubious sound of relief. “Well, thank you very much.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

It occurred to Katie then that she was sitting in the middle of her living room completely naked with a man she scarcely knew. A man who had helped to bring her son into the world. A man who still carried smudges of her blood and her son’s afterbirth on his T-shirt and jeans. The full realization and understanding of the intimacy she had shared with this stranger struck her, and she tugged the bed sheet up around her shoulders a little more.

Cooper’s gaze flickered away from hers when she completed the action, and she thought she saw him blush. She smiled. It comforted her that, in spite of what they had gone through together, he could still respect her modesty.

“So…” he began, his voice quiet and a little bemused, “where’s the dog?”

She frowned. “What dog?”

He gestured toward the photographs on the mantel. “The collie. Where is he?”

“She,” Katie corrected him. “She belongs to an old friend of mine back in Las Vegas. I haven’t seen either of them for nearly a year.”

“You’re from Las Vegas?” he asked, turning to look at her again. “That’s funny. I could swear you have more of a southern accent.”

She chuckled, then fumbled for a moment as she switched Andrew from her left breast to her right. When the baby was once more suckling happily, she looked up to find that Cooper had again looked away. Her smile grew broader.

“Still?” she asked. “I was hoping I’d managed to wipe it out completely.”

“So you are from the south?”

She nodded. “Originally. Western Kentucky. I have a cousin who used to live in Vegas, though, so I went out there after I graduated from high school—that would have been about eight years ago—to make my fortune as a singer. Instead, I wound up working as a waitress. Until I met my…until I met William.”

Cooper nodded but said nothing more.

“How about you?” she asked him.

“What about me?”

“Are you married? Got any kids?”

He laughed anxiously. “No way.”

“Not the marrying kind, huh?”

“No.”

The one-word answer, offered so quickly and certainly, told Katie just about everything she needed to know.

“Not the fathering kind, either,” he added hastily, as if it were very important that he clarify his position on that, as well.

She nodded her understanding and told him, “Well, if you find yourself on your deathbed regretting that decision, you can rest easy knowing you’re responsible for at least one child in the world I really don’t know what Andrew and I would have done if you hadn’t shown up last night. I’ll have to send a thank-you note to whoever got their wires crossed and sent you here by mistake.”

He rubbed his eyes wearily as he told her, “No thanks necessary. I’m sure it was destiny.”

Katie watched him covertly as he stretched again. If he was single, she thought, it certainly wasn’t because no woman found any potential in him. During the night, she’d had neither the time, nor the inclination, to give much thought to her companion. But now, in the quiet light of the dawn, as her son—her son!—drifted off to sleep again in her arms, she took a moment to consider the man who had come to her out of the darkness and snow the night before.

He was, quite simply, beautiful. Beautifully formed, beautifully arranged, beautifully packaged. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a man more attractive than Cooper Dugan. Nor had she ever met one so self-possessed. She had, understandably, been a bit anxious and panicky during the night. But Cooper had always managed to somehow keep her steady. She would never forget the sturdy, easy timbre of his voice as he’d coached her through Andrew’s birth. Nor would she forget the strong hands that had so gently settled her baby on her belly the moment he’d emerged from inside her.

She shifted a little, wincing at the pain that shot through her with the motion. Not for the first time, Katie found herself wishing Cooper Dugan was the man who had fathered her son. Or, at least, a man like him. What could she possibly have been thinking to fall under William’s spell? she wondered now. How could she have been so stupid?

She opened her mouth to say something to Cooperthough what she had meant for that something to be, she couldn’t remember—when an almost debilitating fatigue overcame her. One minute, she was tired and weak, the next, she couldn’t lift her hand to push her hair off of her forehead. “I need to sleep now,” she managed to say before her eyelids fluttered down.

Though she wasn’t absolutely certain, just before unconsciousness claimed her, she thought she heard him reply, “I understand.”

And she found herself thinking, Oh, Cooper, if only you could…

Cooper watched Katie sleep for a few minutes, then glanced down at his clothes, soiled here and there with the remnants of Andrew’s birth. Being a paramedic, the sight of blood and gore generally moved him not at all. Yet somehow, the recognition that this particular blood had once belonged to Katie did funny things to his insides. Usually, the blood Cooper washed off at the end of a run was the result of some violent act or tragic accident. Gunshot wounds, stabbings and vehicular or mechanical mishaps were the stuff of his everyday routine. And all too often, the victim he tried to save wound up dying instead.

But not this time. This time, instead of hearing a last gasp, Cooper had heard a first breath. This time, instead of feeling a body go limp and spiritless, the body he’d held in his arms had squirmed and fidgeted with vitality. This time, Cooper had experienced a profound joy at witnessing life instead of a helpless anger at witnessing another senseless, stupid death.

This time, for the first time, he had felt an odd, unnameable warmth surround his heart, had felt a tension unknot inside him that he’d never even realized he was carrying around. And for the life of him, he could understand none of it.

Pushing the strange workings of his mind away, Cooper returned to the kitchen, noting more thoroughly this time the sleek white design and numerous frivolous small appliances. The Brennans even had a huge, copper cappuccino maker that looked as if it had never been used. And he thought vaguely to himself that some people just had too much damned money. He headed for the sink, reached a hand behind himself to grab a fistful of his T-shirt, and pulled it over his head.

Contemplating the smudges of blood, he tossed the shirt into the trash can, then turned on the water to fill the sink. After dressing again in his relatively clean sweatshirt, he prowled around in search of Katie’s bedroom. Surely, somewhere in the house, there was one of those inevitable bags packed in preparation for her trip to the hospital. People expecting their first kid always overdid things, packing months in advance for the hospital stay, and way too much stuff at that.

To his surprise, however, when he finally located the master bedroom, he found a huge suitcase on the floor, and scattered about it were far more articles of clothing and toiletries than were necessary for a brief hospital stay. Those items also seemed to have been heaved to the floor without care, as if Katie had been doing the packing when Andrew had decided to be born.

Cooper shrugged off the uneasy suspicion that wandered into his mind. Katie had told him her baby was coming three weeks before her due date, so she obviously hadn’t anticipated his birth this morning. She couldn’t have had a hospital stay in mind when she’d been packing yesterday. So why would she…?

He halted the question before his mind could form it. Her packing yesterday had no doubt been the result of something perfectly normal. Maybe she’d planned on joining her husband, wherever he was. Maybe she’d been going to visit a relative. Maybe she’d been stowing things in the suitcase to store them under the bed.

Maybe it was none of his business.

Definitely it was none of his business, Cooper corrected himself. Whatever Katie had going on in her life was completely immaterial to him. Last night, he’d been in the right place at the right time—as far as she was concerned anyway—and he’d been able to help her out in a very precarious situation. But once the ambulance arrived to ferry her and her son off to the hospital, it would put an end to any tie that might bind him to her. They were the proverbial ships in the night. The cliché of two strangers thrown together in a crisis. After this morning, Cooper would never see Katie Brennan again.

And why, in God’s name, did that realization bother him so damned much?

Without even thinking about what he was doing, Cooper collected Katie’s scattered belongings and arranged them as neatly as he could on the bed. Then he grabbed a few items that she would need for the hospital—functional, cotton, mommy-type underwear, a functional, cotton, mommy-type nightgown, functional, cotton, mommy-type socks and a few articles of clothing that would be big and loose enough to accommodate her still swollen abdomen. A perfunctory search of the closet netted him a modest-size Louis Vuitton overnight bag, and he filled it with Katie’s things.

He tried not to think about the intimacy involved with what he was doing for her at the moment, just as he had tried all night not to think about the intimacy of experiencing with her the birth of her son. Inevitably, however, that intimacy never left the forefront of his brain for a moment.

He was a big boy, he reminded himself. He had seen women naked before, had shared things with some of them that went way beyond intimate. Katie Brennan was a virtual stranger. How could strangers be intimate?

“Jeez, Coop,” he muttered to himself as he zipped the bag shut. “When did you become such a freakin’ philosopher?”

He pushed away all the nagging, annoying questions that had been plaguing him since he’d entered the big town house, but couldn’t chase them off completely. Demanding answers, they lingered in the corners of his mind, and he realized he’d probably never quite be able to dispel his memories of the one night he’d shared with Katie Brennan and her son.

Which was probably just as well, he decided further as he bolted from the bedroom. Because it was no doubt as close as he was ever going to come to being instrumental in the birth—or the life—of a child.




Three (#ulink_b0b7e024-265c-5455-8e04-f25595dddf2d)


Katie awoke to the sound of voices and realized she must have dozed off on the gurney as the orderly wheeled her to her room. When she opened her eyes, she saw Cooper Dugan, laughing in response to something a woman wearing raspberry-colored hospital scrubs was saying. Katie smiled, too, for a minute forgetting exactly who she was or what had happened to her. For one very brief, very magical moment, all she was aware of was her own existence in the same room with Cooper. And for that very brief, very magical moment, that was all that mattered in the world.

Then the baby in her arms snuggled closer to her, and she remembered that there was in fact something in the world infinitely more important than a laughing, handsome man. She bent her head to nuzzle her son’s soft, downy black hair, and her smile deepened. She placed a kiss on the crown of his head and hugged him tight. The nurse and orderly helped her into her bed, and in the bright white light of the fluorescent bulb buzzing above her, she marveled again at Andrew—the new man in her life.

Men had come and gone in Katie’s past, some leaving her with more than she’d had to begin with, some leaving her with nothing at all. But Andrew would be with her forever. And already, she could sense that the changes he wrought in her were, without question, changes for the better. Where before she had been wandering through life with absolutely no destination in mind, the birth of her son had endowed her with a sense of purpose, and a drive to make sure the two of them would never be torn apart.

It was almost terrifying, really, the genesis and immediacy of these new emotions inside her—this fear of harm coming to her child, this love that overwhelmed everything that had come before. She knew utterly and irretrievably that she would die before she would allow anyone—anyone—to hurt her son or take him from her. But instead of being frightened by such a certainty, she was oddly calmed by it. Motherhood was something that had always awed Katie in the past, when she’d observed other women participating in it. And now, finally, she understood why.

“Katie?”

Cooper’s voice came to her softly from the other side of the room, and she lifted her head to find him slowly approaching. When he stopped beside her bed, he extended a hand to brush her hair back from her forehead. He completed the gesture with such familiarity, she doubted he even realized what he was doing. Then he dropped his hand to Andrew’s head, cupping it softly over the baby’s scalp before stroking his finger over one of the infant’s pudgy cheeks.

“How are you two doing?” he asked quietly. “That wild ride in the ambulance didn’t jar you too much, did it?”

She shook her head and whispered, “No,” the singleword reply all she could manage for the moment.

“The nurse here…” He gestured over his shoulder toward the dark-haired woman in the hospital scrubs. “…she said she needs to check you and Andrew out. Think you’re up to that?”

“Sure.”

He straightened some, then hesitated for a moment, as if he didn’t like what he was going to say next. “Um, listen, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to run out on you for a little while. There are still some snowbound people who need help, and I’m in a position to offer it.”

“That’s okay, Cooper,” she said softly “Hey, you did the important thing. You gave me my son.”

He grinned at her, a crooked, very endearing grin that set Katie’s heart to flip-flopping madly. “Yeah, well…I think you had more to do with that than I did.”

“Maybe Maybe not.”

He covered her hand with his and squeezed hard for a minute before releasing it. “I’ll come back tonight to see how you and the little guy are doing.”

She nodded.

“Can I bring you anything? Make any calls for you?”

She knew he was referring to her husband, whom she had earlier assured him was always impossible to locate when he was traveling on business. She handled the question now as she had then, and simply repeated, “Thanks, but I can take care of that myself.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Then I’ll just bring you a strawberry milkshake, how’s that?”

This time Katie was the one to grin. All night long, she had screamed out a number of insistent, often colorful, demands for a strawberry milkshake to help her through her labor. And as far as she was concerned, the idea still had merit.

“A strawberry milkshake sounds wonderful,” she told him.

“You got it.” He brushed an index finger tenderly over her cheek, an action so soft and quick, Katie almost thought she imagined it. Then he was gone, and she watched as the door swung closed silently behind him, and wondered why she was going to miss him so much once he was gone from her life.

“This won’t take long.”

The nurse’s voice brought Katie’s attention around. Reluctantly, she surrendered Andrew, and watched closely as the other woman swaddled her son in a flannel blanket and settled him in a clear, plastic bassinet.

Then she turned back to Katie and said, “We’re going to have to take Andrew to the nursery for a little while for—”

“No.”

The quietly uttered objection stopped the nurse short. “What?”

“You can’t take Andrew anywhere. He’s staying here with me.”

“But—”

“He’s staying here with me.”

There must have been more fortitude in her voice than she thought she had been able to manage, because the nurse nodded once and said, “Okay. I’ll have the neonatologist come examine Andrew here.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, let’s see about your blood pressure.”

Obediently, Katie extended her arm, then remained silent for the rest of her exam. The neonatologist came to look over and measure Andrew, deeming him fit and hearty and perfectly capable of facing up to life. When it was all over, the nurse presented Katie with a sheaf of papers in a rainbow of pastel colors. Most of them simply required her signature. But one of them—the one she had known was coming but dreaded nonetheless—required information for Andrew’s birth certificate.

Automatically, she filled in the blanks that requested the pertinent information about herself, but she hesitated when she came to the line that asked, Father’s name. She wondered helplessly how she could avoid identifying William as Andrew’s father, wondered, too, what would happen if she just left the line blank or filled it in with the word unknown. Would William still have a strong case for taking Andrew away from her if she failed to identify him as the baby’s father? Would the act of identifying no one at all— thereby making herself sound promiscuous enough that she didn’t even know who had fathered her child—make it easier for William still?

Katie was still pondering her dilemma when, as if prompted by providence, the nurse in the raspberry-colored scrubs said the magic words for her.

“That husband of yours is quite a guy.”

Katie’s head snapped up, and she stared at the other woman. “What?”

The nurse stared back. “That guy who came in with you,” she said with an indulgent smile. “You know…your husband. I mean, I only got to talk to him for a minute, but he seems like a great guy. He’s been so attentive since you arrived, fussing over you like a mother hen, ordering everyone in the hospital around like a general. He obviously loves you and the baby very much.”

“But Cooper’s not…he and I aren’t married.”

The nurse nodded knowingly. “Well, maybe the birth of his son will bring him around. Men usually start to settle down when they have a child to think about. I’ll bet the two of you tie the knot before long.”

“But…”

Katie wasn’t able to complete her objection, because an idea exploded in her brain when she understood the other woman’s misconception. It was an idea she really had no business entertaining. An idea she tried to squash the second it fired to life. Really, she did. Because the idea she had was unthinkable. Reprehensible. Immoral. What she had in mind was no way to repay all the kindness and patience Cooper had shown to her and her son. He may very well have saved both their lives last night. There was no way she could allow these people think the two of them were romantically linked.

There was no way she could inscribe his name on the line where the birth certificate application asked for the name of Andrew’s father.

But as if they had a mind of their own, Katie’s fingers gripped more tightly the pen in her hand, and she watched with an almost detached fascination as they wrote out, in big, block letters, COOPER DUGAN. The next lines, however, stopped her short. Father’s Social Security number. Father’s age. Father’s place of birth.

Okay, she could probably guesstimate Cooper’s age to be late thirties. And, considering his accent and the manner in which he spoke, she thought it might be reasonable to assume he had been born in the area—the area being either Pennsylvania, New Jersey or Delaware, which at least narrowed the search to three states. Probably. But Social Security number? That was a tough one.

“Um,” she began when she realized the nurse was waiting for her to finish completing the documents, “I can’t seem to remember…uh…Cooper’s Social Security number right now. Is it okay if I finish filling this out when he comes back?”

The nurse shrugged. “Sure. No problem. Just as long as we have it before you check out.”

“Okay. I promise.”

The nurse turned to leave, calling over her shoulder as she went, “Ring if you need anything.”

“I will. Thanks.”

The moment the door swung closed behind the nurse, Katie’s mind lurched into action. She had to get out of here, she thought frantically. As soon as she could do so without raising too much suspicion. Never mind that she was still exhausted from the birthing experience. Never mind that she was still in pain. Never mind that she had just done something heinous to a perfectly nice man, making him legally responsible for a child that wasn’t his.

Never mind that the act of fleeing would ensure that she never saw Cooper Dugan again. At least in disappearing, he’d know she had no intention of forcing him to acknowledge that fake responsibility.

None of that mattered. Only Andrew mattered. Whatever she had to do to keep him safe, to keep him with her, Katie would do it. She could not—would not—lose her son. She could give up anything else. But not him. Never him.

Someday, somehow, she hoped Cooper would understand what had driven her to do what she’d done. Someday, somehow, she hoped she and Andrew would be in a position to explain. But until that day dawned, Katie had no choice but to disappear. It was the only way she could ever be certain that William wouldn’t find her and take her son away.

Disappearing with Andrew, however risky, however chancy, however frightening, was the only alternative she had. It was for the best, she tried to assure herself further. All she needed was a little time to figure out what she was going to do. Everything, eventually, would work out just fine. Unfortunately, she knew assurance would be a long time in coming.



“Oh, Mr. Dugan!”

Cooper spun around quickly at the summons, sending the balloons he clutched in one hand bouncing into a frenzy of colliding color, and causing him to release completely the huge, stuffed bear he’d held in the other. Only through some fast dancing and shuffling did he manage to save the bouquet of red roses he also had tucked under one arm, and the strawberry milkshake he balanced along with the balloons.

He didn’t react in such a way because he thought someone was calling out to him—no one ever referred to him as Mr. Dugan—but because that tiny little part of Cooper that would remain a frightened child forever feared his father had risen from the grave, and was barreling down the hospital corridor toward him, brandishing his belt with the big, gold buckle gleaming.

Naturally, Cooper remembered almost immediately that his father was nowhere around. Nearly fifteen years had passed since Mike Dugan’s death, even more time than that since Cooper had last run out on the sonofabitch, shocked by the blood on his own knuckles after he’d broken the old man’s nose. No, it was the nurse Cooper had met earlier who approached him now, the one who had been seeing to Katie. With a shuddering sigh, he swallowed his terror whole, and forced himself to breathe as normally as he could.

“Yeah?” he said when the nurse was beside him. He congratulated himself for the steady timbre of his voice.

“Mr. Dugan, I need your Social Security number.”

Still a bit shaken, Cooper recited the numbers from memory without questioning the woman’s request.

“Date of birth?” she asked.

Again, he surrendered the information automatically.

“Place of birth?”

“Gloucester City, New Jersey,” he told her.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that he was offering snippets of his personal life to someone whose name he didn’t even know, and revealing them for no reason he could fathom. He also noted belatedly that the nurse was writing the information down.

“What’s going on?” he asked her as he bent to retrieve the wayward teddy bear. He straightened, and as he rearranged his loot, asked further, “Why do you need all that information?”

The nurse, still scribbling away, replied without looking up. “We need it for your son’s birth certificate.”

Certain he’d misunderstood, he sputtered, “You…you need it for what?”

Finally, the nurse looked up from her clipboard, her expression bland. “Your son’s birth certificate,” she repeated. “Your…um…your girlfriend left without completing the form.”

Cooper shook his head hard, trying to wake himself from what could only be a bizarre dream. “My son…?” he repeated quietly, the words feeling more than a little strange on his tongue. “My girlfriend .. ?” he added in the same tone of voice. Then the rest of the nurse’s statement hit him. “She left? Katie’s gone? Where? What the hell is going on here? She just had a baby. How could she leave?”

The nurse stared at him as if he were something she’d normally vacuum up from the carpet. She pulled her clipboard toward her, and crossed her arms over it and her chest. Then she cocked one dark eyebrow at him, and he knew he wasn’t going to like one bit whatever she was going to tell him.

“Ms. Brennan checked herself out of the hospital this morning. If you had been here to meet her like you were supposed to, you would have realized that.”

Cooper had intended to be there earlier this morning. Not because he’d thought Katie was going to be leaving, but because he’d wanted to check on her and Andrew and make sure they were okay. Actually, he’d planned to return the night before, but he’d wound up making runs until nearly midnight. By then, hospital visiting hours were over. So he’d waited until this morning to come by. Hey, he’d needed the sleep anyway. And judging by the strange reality to which he’d awakened, he obviously still hadn’t gotten enough.

“Let’s start all over here, okay?” he asked hopefully.

The nurse opened her mouth to say something, but he lifted a hand, palm out, to stop her.

“Yesterday,” he said, “right around lunchtime, I arrived at this hospital in an ambulance with a woman who had just delivered a baby. Am I right about that?”

The nurse nodded. “Of course. You—”

He held up his hand again, and the nurse bit off whatever she had been about to say. “And the woman’s name was…?” he asked, letting the question trail off so that the nurse would answer it for him.

She pulled her clipboard away from her chest and glanced at it only slightly before telling him, “Katie Brennan.”

He released a sigh of relief. “That’s right. Katie Brennan. And her son’s name?”

The nurse studied the clipboard again. “Andrew Cooper Brennan Dugan.”

Cooper nodded his head as she revealed the first three names, then quickly switched to shaking it at her recitation of the last. “No, that’s not right. It’s Andrew Cooper Brennan. Period. No Dugan. His name ends at Brennan. Right?”

The nurse turned her clipboard so that Cooper could view it. “No, she said she wanted to have both her last name and yours as part of the baby’s legal name. So it’s Andrew Cooper Brennan Dugan. Says so right here on the birth certificate application. Ms. Brennan did get that much filled out, anyway.”

“Let me see that.” The request was just a formality, as Cooper had already snatched the clipboard from the nurse’s hand.

“Hey!” she objected.

But he ignored her. For there, enhanced with Katie’s delicate, scrawling signature, were the documents in question, filled out exactly as the nurse had told him they were. Katie had named Cooper as Andrew’s father on the birth certificate application. In black and white and triplicate. For all the world to see. She had made her son his son, too. In the eyes of the law and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, anyway.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered. “Why would she do something like this?”

“Check out early?” the nurse asked, obviously misunderstanding the question. “Because she has no insurance, that’s why. I mean, your policy will cover the nursery charges, of course, because the baby is your dependent. But since you haven’t married the baby’s mother,” she added, placing emphasis on the last part of her statement clearly to indicate her disapproval of Cooper’s moral misconduct, “the bills for her portion of the hospital stay will have to be out-of-pocket. So she checked out early to save you both some money.”

“No, I mean—”

“Naturally, she didn’t want to leave without the baby, so she checked him out, too,” the nurse continued, ignoring Cooper’s interjection. “Since you didn’t show up to meet her this morning, she took a cab home. And frankly, Mr. Dugan,” she added, “I thought better of you than to do something like that.”

“But…” Cooper’s voice trailed off again, before he completed his statement. His head was buzzing with confusion, and all he could do was stare at the hospital chart in his hands.

“Your girlfriend was all ready to go when I went in this morning,” the nurse continued. “Her doctor wanted her to stay longer, but since there were no complications with the delivery, and since she and the baby were perfectly healthy, and since it’s not at all unusual to be released so quickly, nobody had a problem with letting her go.”

“But…but…but what about me?” Cooper finally asked, his mind still reeling as it tried to process so much misinformation. “I might have had a problem with it.”

The nurse snatched back her clipboard. “Then you should have been here this morning when your girlfriend was ready to leave.”

“But—”

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go file these forms.”

“But—”

“Go home to be with your new son, Mr. Dugan,” the nurse told him as she sifted through the collection of forms. “And not that it’s any of my business, but you might want to think about marrying that woman. Make yourself a proper family. Do the right thing.”

With that, Cooper found himself alone, without the nurse in the raspberry-colored scrubs who had become the booming voice of moral integrity. And even though he had done nothing wrong where Katie and her son were concerned, even though Katie was the one who had overstepped the boundaries of reason and propriety, Cooper felt guilty and duly taken to task. Why? He couldn’t begin to imagine. But for some reason, he suddenly felt as if he were the one who needed to set things to right.

For some reason, he suddenly felt like he really should do the right thing and marry Katie, thus making his son legitimate. Thus making the three of them, as the nurse had said, “a proper family.” Even though Katie was still a virtual stranger. Even though Andrew was in no way his son.

The only problem was, Cooper had no idea where the other members of his newly formed family could be.




Four (#ulink_4b1eae0f-e6ff-59d7-9c48-2971cdeff66b)


Normally, Cooper couldn’t get out of the supermarket fast enough Normally, he stood in the check-out line shifting his weight restlessly from one foot to the other, and shaking his head in amazement at the headlines that screamed out from the tabloid racks about alien Elvises, mutant gerbil children and man-eating dieffenbachias. Normally, all he wanted was to escape the legions of slow-moving blue-haired ladies, screeching, whiny toddlers and single guys like himself who knew of no other aisle outside the frozen food section.

But he hadn’t been feeling normal for some time now, and today he didn’t mind lingering behind the woman ahead of him in line. And not because of her cascade of blond hair or the slim, tanned legs extending from her tight cut-offs, either, although he had noted those things about her right off. What held Cooper’s attention now was the woman’s baby.

He had no idea how to gauge the age of the infant strapped into the carrier that had been settled in the seat part of the grocery cart ahead of him. Nor did he have a clue as to the baby’s gender. It could be a two-week-old boy or a seven-month-old girl for all he knew about babies. Hell, before today, the only time he’d been this close to one had been the night he’d delivered—

But he wouldn’t think about that. He wouldn’t think about Katie and Andrew Brennan and the fact that the two of them still haunted his dreams nearly two months after he’d last seen them. He wouldn’t think about how he’d gone back to Katie’s house in Chestnut Hill—at least, what he’d thought was Katie’s house in Chestnut Hill—only to find it inhabited by an elderly couple who’d called the place home since 1958, and who had never heard of any family in the neighborhood named Brennan.

He wouldn’t think about the fact that there were no Brennans in the Philadelphia phone book that had a Chestnut Hill address. Nor would he wonder yet again why Katie had given the hospital a phony Las Vegas address as her own. God knows he wouldn’t recall yet again his concern about being named Andrew’s father on the baby’s birth certificate. And he wouldn’t think about the fact that he had absolutely no hope of ever finding Katie or Andrew again to demand answers for all the questions that would trouble him for some time to come.

Instead, Cooper focused again on the baby in the grocery cart, who stared back at him with a steady, unblinking gaze, eyes huge and brown and mesmerizing. Then the baby smiled, a wide, toothless grin that crinkled its eyes at the corners and wrinkled its little nose, and it stuck its tongue out at Cooper and uttered a heartfelt, and very wet, “Spthibble.”

The baby’s unabashed commentary made Cooper laugh. He hadn’t even realized he’d reacted in such a way until the leggy blonde turned around and began to laugh, too.

“He likes you,” she said. “He doesn’t usually smile that way at strangers.”

Cooper glanced up long enough to acknowledge her comment, then looked back down at the baby. “It’s a boy, huh?”

The woman nodded. “As of the last time I changed his diaper, anyway.”

Cooper smiled. “How old?”

“He’ll be five months next week.”

“Cute kid.”

“Yeah, I think so, too.”

“Is he a lot of trouble?”

The woman chuckled. “Oh, yeah. The whole time I was pregnant, all of our friends with kids kept saying, ‘You can’t imagine how much your life will change once you have that baby.’ And my husband and I kept saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, we know. We’re ready for it.’” Her chuckle turned to laughter. “We had no idea. You really can’t imagine what a huge life change it is until you have one of your own.”

This time Cooper was the one to nod.

“But he’s worth it,” the woman said as she stroked her son’s cheek. Her voice oozed affection, and her eyes shone with happiness. “He’s just so wonderful. You can’t imagine that part, either, until you have one of your own.”

“Yeah, maybe…”

His voice trailed off, leaving unfinished whatever he’d intended to say. The cashier barked out a total to the woman in front of him, and he watched as she wrote her check, picked up her purse and began to roll her cart away. Seemingly as an afterthought, she turned around to Cooper again.

“Thinking of having one of your own?” she asked with a smile.

He shook his head resolutely. “Nope. Just curious.”

She laughed again. “Better watch yourself. That’s what I used to say.” And with that, she turned around again and exited the supermarket.

Cooper watched her go, finding some solace in the fact that a person could have a child and still be interesting, attractive and happy, not to mention maintain a sense of humor. For some reason, he’d thought all that would dry up once a person became a parent. Wasn’t that how it usually worked? You had a kid, you bought a house in the ’burbs, and you started worrying about aphids and driving a minivan. You picked up weight and lost your hair, and you started saying things like, “Turn that music down” or “When I was your age” or “Finish your broccoli—children are starving in Europe.”

Yet there went a woman who, if she hadn’t been married, he probably would have asked out. She didn’t seem like a mom. She seemed like…fun. She was even kind of sexy. Go figure. Who knew?

It was a thought that came back to taunt him that evening when he answered the knock at his front door and opened it to find Katie Brennan standing on the other side.

Just like that.

For a moment, he could only stare at her, half convinced she was nothing more than a mirage, a simple refraction of light resulting from the bloodred sun that hung low in the sky behind her. Immediately, however, he realized she was not. Because if she was a mirage, he would be seeing her as he had the last time, and this Katie was entirely different from the one he had met two months ago.

For one thing, she was much thinner—too thin, really. And her hair was a bit longer, though it lacked the luster and softness that had been present before. Her face was paler now than it had been even in childbirth, the skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones and a narrow nose. And dark circles stained the undersides of her eyes, making them appear even larger and a stormier gray than they had before.

She looked more exhausted than she had the last time he’d seen her. More fragile. More frantic. And Cooper could scarcely believe his good fortune that she had come back to him.

For one long moment, he could only stand stock-still staring at her. Then a baby’s soft cooing punctured the silence, and Cooper dropped his gaze to the infant she clutched in her arms. Where Katie seemed to have deteriorated into almost nothing, Andrew was fat and pink and thriving. It was as if the baby had taken his vitality from Katie, as if she had literally given of herself to keep him hale. He gazed up at Cooper with a bland expression in his blue-gray eyes, then turned his attention back to his mother. Cooper didn’t know much about babies, but he could have sworn Andrew looked worried about his mom.

“Help me.”

They were the first words Katie had spoken to Cooper so long ago, on a cold, snowy night when her child’s welfare had so clearly superseded her own. Now it was springtime, a bright, balmy evening full of promise, and she repeated the words again with exactly the same intonation. She was asking for help for herself, but she was obviously demanding it for her son.





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