Kitabı oku: «Healing The Md's Heart: Healing the MD's Heart»

Available in April 2010 from Mills & Boon^® Special Moments^™

Fortune’s Woman

by RaeAnne Thayne &

A Fortune Wedding

by Kristin Hardy

Reining in the Rancher

by Karen Templeton &

His Brother’s Secret

by Debra Salonen

Healing the MD’s Heart

by Nicole Foster &

Welcome Home, Daddy

by Carrie Weaver

The Bravo Bachelor

by Christine Rimmer

The Nanny Solution

by Teresa Hill

An Ideal Father

by Elaine Grant

Not Without Her Family

by Beth Andrews

HEALING THE MD’S HEART

“It’s late,” she said. “I should – ”

She nodded towards the door of the second bedroom. She ran her tongue over her lower lip, then caught it between her teeth, the sensuous motion fixating his gaze there.

“You should,” he agreed softly. He leaned to her, gently cupping her face, and brushed a kiss against her cheek, lingering long enough for it to become a caress of breath and lips on her skin. He wanted more, to love her until they were both boneless and breathless.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not giving up on me.”

WELCOME HOME, DADDY

Drew stood and reached for her as if he wanted to pull her into a hug.

A part of Annie longed to accept the comfort he offered. But she couldn’t. The stakes were too high.

Raising her hand, she said, “Don’t. I just wanted you to understand.”

“I had no idea.” His voice was husky. “But you’re wrong about one thing. I wouldn’t have missed it. I could have taken compassionate leave to be there for both of you. You never gave me the chance.”

Annie almost flinched at the loss in his voice. She couldn’t continue to beat herself up wishing she’d done things differently. “So here we are, back where we started.”

Healing the MD’s Heart

by

Nicole Foster
Welcome Home, Daddy

by

Carrie Weaver

MILLS & BOON^®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Healing the MD’s Heart

by

Nicole Foster

Nicole Foster is the pseudonym for the writing team of Danette Fertig-Thompson and Annette Chartier-Warren. Both journalists, they met while working on the same newspaper and started writing historical romance together after discovering a shared love of the old West and happy endings. Their seventeen-year friendship has endured writer’s block, numerous caffeine-and-chocolate deadlines and the joyous chaos of marriage and raising five children between them. They love to hear from readers. Send a SAE with return postage for a bookmark to PMB 228, 8816 Manchester Rd, Brentwood, Mo 63144, USA.

Chapter One

Nearly a thousand miles from home, Duran Forrester wanted to believe, after all the regretted decisions, frustrations and slams into brick walls over the last months, that this wasn’t the biggest mistake of his life.

Then he reminded himself it didn’t matter. Even if it was, there was no undoing it because he was fast running out of options. More importantly, he was running out of time.

He glanced in the rearview mirror at his son. Noah, his dark hair ruffled and cheeks flushed, sweat beading on his brow, slumped sideways on the seat asleep, clutching his scruffy stuffed panda in a one-armed hug. Ten minutes…ten minutes and they’d be in Luna Hermosa and he’d have Noah at a hospital.

It’s only an ear infection. Some antibiotics and painkillers and he’ll be okay. He’ll be fine. He has to be.

He repeated it to himself as if it were a mantra that could shield him from the fear that struck at him with its cold, sharp edge of panic. And like all the other times, he wondered if this would be when he’d be told it wasn’t okay, that his son would never be fine.

Noah shouldn’t be here, that much now was obvious. Duran had a long debate with himself over whether or not to bring his son along in the first place. Noah had had enough disappointments in his life and Duran didn’t want this trip to be one more. But once he’d found out Duran’s destination, Noah had been so excited and after three days of his seven-year-old’s persistent wheedling, begging and insisting, Duran finally gave in. Despite his misgivings, he’d convinced himself that the trip, if nothing else, would give him precious time with Noah, a few weeks uninterrupted by work and everything life had recently thrown at them.

They’d been less than an hour from their destination when things started to go wrong. Noah’s temperature spiked, he’d started complaining about his ears hurting and Duran’s reason fought his impulse to slam his foot on the accelerator and say to hell with speed limits.

He gripped the steering wheel hard enough to imprint the shape of his hands there, finding it a poor release for the turmoil of worry, frustration, uncertainty and anger that hit him in surges despite his best efforts to keep it shoved to a dark corner of his mind. Mostly everything—his and Noah’s current predicament, the surprises of the past weeks that more often than not had been unwelcome—he could only blame on himself and his recently acquired determination to find out who’d he’d been before Eliza and Luke Forrester had made him their son.

He’d known, since he was younger than Noah, that he’d been adopted, but never had the least desire to find his birth parents until now. His adoptive parents were loving and generous people, devoted to each other and to him, who’d made him feel that it didn’t matter why he’d been given away, only that they were blessed in choosing him and that with them was where he belonged.

The why still didn’t matter; now and urgently, the who did. Looking at Noah again, he wished, for his son’s sake, he had another choice. And he prayed, hard and long, this didn’t turn out as badly as when he’d contacted the woman who considered him her biggest mistake. His birth mother.

I didn’t want you then. There’s nothing I can do for you now. It was a long time ago. My family doesn’t know about you and I plan to keep it that way.

No amount of pleas or appeals changed her mind.

But she had given him something—two names and another chance to keep his hope alive.

The first he couldn’t allow himself to think about right now.

It was my kind of luck, all bad. It wasn’t anything but too much whiskey and one long night with that cowboy, and then he disappeared and I ended up with the two of you.

Two. And just that fast he found out he was a twin. Ry Kincaid hadn’t wanted to be found and even less wanted to be called his brother. But neither of them could deny who they were and after an uneasy meeting, had left it unresolved while Duran made it his business to track down the second name on his list.

Jed Garrett. Rancho Piñtada, Luna Hermosa, New Mexico.

His father—and the man he wanted to meet most…and least.

The little girl grinned and Lia Kerrigan smiled back, returning an exuberant hug, accepting a kiss made slightly sticky by Nina’s refusal to give up her sucker. Lia only wished these infrequent office visits didn’t amount to the majority of time she got to spend with her youngest sister. Then again, for a woman with seven siblings, it was amazing how little time she’d spent with any of them. Her oldest brother she’d never even met, and the others were more like strangers with whom she happened to share a parent.

Old pain, made worse by the knowledge that as much as she cared for Nina, inevitably they would end up with the same distant relationship. Circumstance and the more than thirty years’ difference in age would see to that.

Lia immediately pushed the maudlin thought away, putting it down to too many working hours at the hospital and her office and her dad showing up with Nina ten minutes before the much anticipated end of her eleven-hour day. It was typical of him and yet it never failed to irritate her. Walter Kerrigan was a successful orthopedic surgeon who should have understood better than anyone the demands on his daughter’s time. But since the day Nina, his fifth child, was born, he’d insisted on making the drive from Santa Fe anytime he decided Nina needed to see a pediatrician, disregarding Lia’s repeated requests for at least an advance phone call.

“Madelyn wants to know if you’re planning to come to the housewarming,” her father asked when Nina, locating the stack of books Lia kept in her examining room, was happily engrossed in studying her favorite. “She says she’s left you several messages, but you haven’t gotten back to her.”

Lia stopped herself from sighing. Walter’s fourth wife was twenty-nine to his sixty-two. In fact, Madelyn was six years younger than Lia herself, but the only thing they had in common was that they were both female. Lia couldn’t think of a worse way to spend a Saturday night than a party at her dad’s new house. It was impossible not to love Nina, but she couldn’t say the same for Nina’s mother. “I’ve been busy,” she gave the usual excuse. “And I may be on call this weekend.”

“You always say that,” Walter said, his dismissive tone clearly saying he didn’t believe her. “It wouldn’t hurt if you would come to visit us once in a while, if nothing else to see Nina. You complain enough about not being able to spend time with her. Bring that fireman of yours—I can’t remember his name—the one you’ve been seeing.”

“Tonio Peña, and that’s been over for more than a year now.”

“Has it?” Walter assessed his daughter with the slight concentrated frown that he gave a particularly difficult-to-treat injury. “I suppose he went the way of the others. Relationships seem to be a self-fulfilling prophecy with you. You expect them to turn out badly and so they do.”

“You taught me well,” Lia retorted, defensiveness sharpening her voice more than she’d intended. Maybe there was some truth in what he said, but her father, who acquired and discarded wives and girlfriends as easily as if he were trading in a car for a better model, could hardly claim to be an expert on successful relationships.

“The difference between us is it doesn’t hurt me when it falls apart,” Walter said. “Unlike you, I gave up my illusions that anything lasts forever a long time ago. There are advantages to being married, but they aren’t so great that I feel the need to sentence myself to a lifetime of misery if it doesn’t work.”

That apparently was one philosophy he and her mother shared, Lia reflected, after her father and Nina had left. Shaking off her unprofitable introspection—it certainly hadn’t gotten her anywhere in the past—she finished the notations on Nina’s chart and was seriously contemplating a long bath and a cold drink when her pager beeped. Bath and drink became unlikely when she recognized the number as the emergency room extension.

“Doctor Nunez wanted to know if you could help with a sick case, a little boy,” the nurse said when Lia called in. “We’re busy this evening, and Doctor Nunez thought you could handle it more quickly.”

Translation: Hector doesn’t like kids. The thought of inflicting a harried Hector Nunez on a sick child was more than enough to hurry her to the emergency room.

Her first thought entering the curtained cubicle was the man sitting on the edge of the examining table, a protective arm around the boy curled up against his chest, was going to be difficult. His expression clearly said he was prepared to treat anyone who approached his son as an adversary until proven otherwise. Yet glancing over the boy’s chart, she thought he’d probably earned the right.

The paperwork raised questions, though, about what Duran Forrester, who listed his profession as filmmaker and gave an address in Los Angeles, was doing a thousand miles from home, in Luna Hermosa of all places, with a sick child.

“Mr. Forrester?” She gave him a quick appraisal, getting a fast impression of unruly dark brown hair that tended to slant over one eye and a runner’s body, long, hard and lean under the black shirt and jeans. The silver stud earring he wore and his sensual good looks probably had people mistaking him for someone who spent his time in front of the camera rather than behind it. His eyes, trained on her now, gave her the feeling he was sizing her up and that she so far hadn’t measured up to his standards. She wasn’t exactly at her best after nearly twelve long hours, her khaki slacks and white shirt showing the day’s wear, makeup faded and her dark auburn hair doing its best to escape her ponytail. But there was nothing she could do to fix that now, and so she pulled her professionalism around her, put on a polite smile and settled for ignoring it.

“I’m Lia Kerrigan, I’m the staff pediatrician.” As she came around to the bedside opposite Duran Forrester, the boy half glanced at her, his eyes dull with fever. “You must be Noah. Or maybe this is Noah?” She tweaked the ear of the stuffed panda the boy clutched tightly.

A spark briefly flared in the boy’s eyes. “That’s Percy.”

“Percy’s a nice name for a puppy,” Lia said conversationally as she started her exam, working around the bear and Duran Forrester, aware he was closely watching her every move.

“He’s not a puppy,” Noah protested. “He’s a panda.”

“Really?” Lia took a quick temperature reading while she gave the bear due consideration. “Are you sure?”

Noah held up his friend for inspection. “See?”

“Mmm…well, you could be right. But since I’ve never actually seen a real panda before, I’m not sure.”

“I saw two, once. In a zoo. They were awesome.” Noah leaned back against his dad’s shoulder. “My ears hurt.”

“I know, honey,” Lia said softly, gently stroking a few wayward locks of hair from his forehead. Noah so much resembled his dad, a younger version of the man with the same messy dark hair and deep river-green eyes, that she could easily imagine Duran Forrester as a child. Illness, though, had paled Noah and painted violet shadows under his eyes. “I’m going to see what I can do to fix that.”

Giving Noah what she hoped was a reassuring smile, she moved around the bed nearer to Duran. “Normally, I’d send him home with an antibiotic. But you two are a long way from home and Noah’s circumstances require special care—” She let the sentence trail off, not sure how much she should say with Noah listening. “I think it would be better if he stayed the night. I’m sure you understand there could be complications and I could do a better job of monitoring him from here.”

He didn’t answer right away, but gave her that assessing look, clearly weighing her advice against his own judgment. Lia thought it was even odds whether he’d agree to her suggestion. Finally, he gave a curt nod. “All right. If you think it’s best.”

“I don’t wanna stay here,” Noah said. “I wanna go home.”

“Not tonight, buddy,” Duran told him, putting his arm around Noah again and drawing him closer. “It’s just one night. And I’ll stay with you, I promise.”

“Sure he will, and Percy, too,” Lia added. “You’re lucky he’s not a puppy, though. We don’t let puppies in here. But pandas are different. They get to be special guests.”

Diverting Noah’s attention from having to spend night in a hospital room, Lia made a big show of giving Percy his own ID bracelet, checking his heartbeat and finding him a surgical cap to keep his ears warm, earning her Noah’s approval and most surprising, a smile from Duran Forrester. It wasn’t much, a quick sideways slant of his mouth, but it warmed some of the cold places inside and left in their place a warm, satisfied glow.

She personally saw to settling Noah in a room, and after getting him to eat a little chicken noodle soup and drink some apple juice, she tucked him into bed. Drowsy from the mild painkillers she’d given him, his eyes drooped closed almost immediately, and Lia, straightening, looked directly into Duran’s frown.

“I need to make a call,” he said, fixing his attention on Noah. “I’ve missed an appointment I had here and I should let him know where I am.” He patted his shirt pocket, came up empty, and his scowl deepened. “Damn, I left the number in the car.”

Lia considered telling him she’d stay with Noah while he retrieved the number and made his call, but figured, as protective he was of his son, he wouldn’t agree. “Where were you headed? This is a small enough town, I might be able to help you.”

“Rancho Piñtada. I was supposed to meet with a Rafe Garrett at five.”

Whatever she expected, it wasn’t that. “Are you a rancher as well as a filmmaker?” she asked lightly, curious, but not wanting to probe.

“No. My business is personal.” He didn’t volunteer anything else and she heeded the clear message to back off.

“I know Rafe and Jule. I’m their pediatrician, too.” She grabbed up a brochure from beside the bed and scrawled down the number. “Rafe should be at home by now, especially if you were supposed to meet with him.” Hesitating, she reconsidered her unspoken offer and then said, “I’ll sit with Noah while you make your call, if you like. I don’t mind. Technically I’m off duty and there’s nowhere else I need to be. And he shouldn’t wake up in the few minutes it’ll take to make your call.”

Again, she got silence and that look and then finally, he unbent a little. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “I’ll make it quick.”

He pushed his way out of the room, leaving Lia to drop into the chair beside Noah’s bed. She watched him as he slept, wondering at Duran Forrester, who he was and why he was here, what personal business he could have with Rafe. It was none of her business, but she couldn’t help but be curious, partly because Rafe’s family was famous for their dramas, but mostly because of the air of secrecy Duran insisted on keeping close around himself and his son. She recalled the paperwork and the deliberate empty space under mother’s name, as if Noah’s mother had never existed. Questions, and more questions, and she wasn’t likely ever to get any answers.

Duran didn’t leave her much time to speculate. He came back less than ten minutes later, his expression blanked, as if he’d gotten news that had blindsided him. Mindful of his emotional privacy, she pretended not to notice. “Were you able to reach Rafe?”

Nodding, he moved to stand by Noah, staring down at his son. Very gently, he brushed his fingertips over the sleeping boy’s cheek. The love in his face was clear and strong, and yet there was grieving in it, too. Lia had to stop herself from reaching out to him, the desire to comfort was that powerful even though she knew any reassurance she could offer would be hollow and unwelcome, coming from a stranger.

For some reason—though she knew it what was she should do—she couldn’t simply detach herself from the situation, walk away, go home and leave Duran Forrester to face the long night ahead, with only his fears for Noah as company. It wasn’t her job to stay; she’d already done far more for the two of them than usual. Yet she had the impression, without having any real basis for knowing, that Duran was alone in more than just the sense of being a stranger in town and that kept her in the room, giving herself excuses to stay.

“I know Noah wasn’t very hungry earlier,” she ventured, a poor outlet for her feelings but the best she could do, “but you didn’t get any dinner at all. How about I bring us both something? I don’t know about you, but lunch was a long time ago for me.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“No, but you’re alone in a strange town with a sick little boy and you’re going to be spending the night in a very uncomfortable chair. The least I can do is treat you to some of our gourmet hospital cuisine. Besides, like I said, I’m hungry, too.” Not giving him an opportunity to refuse, she got up and moved quickly to the door. “I’ll be back.”

Calling the cafeteria from the nurses’ desk, she asked for the meals to be delivered to Noah’s room. Then she checked in with the night staff and her service, telling them she was off duty but intended to stay for a while to monitor Noah. By the time she was done, the food had arrived and she slipped back inside the room. Duran had dimmed the lights and was sitting in the chair facing the bed, his forehead propped on his fist, weariness evident in the slump of his body.

“It’s not the best,” she said, indicating the trays when he glanced up, “but at least it’s dinner.”

He pushed himself up in the chair, nodded in reply and they ate in silence for a few minutes, the air in the room thick with things they left unsaid. Finally, he pushed the tray aside and, speaking quietly so as to not disturb Noah, asked, “Is everyone in town as nice as you?”

She laughed, inexplicably self-conscious at his compliment. “I don’t think I can answer that without sounding as if I’m bragging or dissing someone else. There are a lot of good people here. It’s why I’ve stayed for so long. I like being in a smaller town. I’m sure it’s considerably different from L.A., though,” she added, risking a comment on his personal life, even if it was of the most innocuous kind.

“Night and day,” he agreed, seeming not to mind. “But I’ve only lived there since college. I grew up not far from here, just outside Rio Rancho. This is not that different.” Leaning back, he tilted his head against the wall, briefly closing his eyes. “I’m thinking about moving back, at least to New Mexico—work permitting, that is. I’ve arranged things so I’m between projects and I can have some time to decide. But, ultimately, L.A. isn’t the best place to raise a child.”

“I can only imagine living in a place like L.A. Even so, you seem to have done a good job with Noah. I know it’s not easy raising a child on your own.”

“Personal experience?”

“Hardly,” she said, the laugh this time sounding more like a harsh exclamation. “But I am a pediatrician. I see lots of different kinds of families.”

He raised his head to look at her, with that intense, disconcerting way of his that gave her the sensation he was dissecting her soul. “I always wanted the same kind of family I had growing up for Noah. I really did have the two great parents, the faithful dog and the New Mexico version of a white picket fence.”

“But?”

“But my ex-wife didn’t see it that way. She walked out before Noah turned one, got a quick divorce, gave me full custody and I haven’t seen her since. So Noah’s had to get by with just me.”

“He doesn’t appear to have suffered for it,” Lia said softly. “And things could change.”

“Not for me,” he said in a tone that put a full stop to any ideas he would ever contemplate another serious relationship. “I won’t risk putting Noah through that, loving someone and then losing them. He’s been through enough already. He was too young when his mother left to realize she didn’t want him. He sometimes asked why he doesn’t have a mother and I still don’t know what to tell him.”

She could understand and yet there was sadness in the finality of his words, his certainty that love would never touch his life again with enough strength to make him want to take another chance. But then again, didn’t she, better than anyone, know that the odds were he was right, that it was as likely to turn out badly as well? Any parent who loved his child as much as he did would consider the risks not worth it—unlike her own parents, to whom children were apparently incidental to disposable relationships.

A light knock on the door interrupted them and Lia, thinking it was the night nurse, got up to answer it. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with Cort Morente, a friend, but one of the last people she would have guessed she’d be seeing here and tonight.

“Cort—how did you know…?” She stared at him, completely confused. Duran had said he was in Luna Hermosa to meet with Rafe and now Rafe’s younger brother showed up here, out of the blue. “Is something wrong with one of the kids?” she asked, although she couldn’t imagine why Cort wouldn’t have just called her if there was a problem with one of his four children, even if it had been an emergency.

“No, they’re all fine. I wasn’t looking for you.” Cort looked behind her to where Duran had gotten to his feet and Lia instinctively stepped aside. The two men faced each other, Duran tense, already on the defensive, and Cort cautious, as if weighing his options before making a move. When he finally did, it easily qualified as something she’d never expected him to say.

“I came to see my brother.”

Duran’s first reaction was the completely irrelevant thought that maybe meeting unknown relations got easier after the first one. If so, by the time he’d gotten through all the relatives he seemed to have acquired, it should be simple, no struggling with mixed feelings or debating whether he was doing the right thing for Noah and himself.

Rafe Garrett had at least warned him, when Duran had called to postpone their meeting, that he and Ry Kincaid weren’t Duran’s only brothers. Five of Jed Garrett’s sons were living in Luna Hermosa and for some reason Rafe didn’t make clear, none of them wanted him to meet Jed first. He supposed this one had been elected to come here and determine what exactly it was that Duran wanted. From the steady, calculating gaze he got, Duran guessed Cort Morente’s business depended on him being a quick and accurate judge of character and that Cort was deciding the truth of his claim to being Jed’s son and what his motives were for showing up in Luna Hermosa.

Duran glanced back at Noah. His son slept on soundly, oblivious to the drama around him. Leaving Noah’s bedside wasn’t Duran’s first choice, but Noah would likely be asleep for hours yet and he didn’t want this first meeting with his Luna Hermosa relations constrained by the need for quiet and the concern Noah might wake up and overhear.

Lia must have sensed his hesitation because she took a step closer to the bed and told him, “I’ll stay with him.”

The rush of gratitude at her understanding seemed too intense, out of place for her simple gesture. But for an odd moment, Duran felt they were allies.

“If you wouldn’t mind—” he flicked a hand toward the door “—I think you could help explain. You understand…”

Without a pause, she nodded and after checking Noah once more, followed him and Cort outside the room.

Duran turned to Cort, not sure where to start.

Cort spoke up first. “This is not how we intended this meeting to happen. But when Rafe called and told us about your son, we wanted to see if there was anything we could do.” He made the offer and it sounded sincere. But there was a certain reservation in his manner—not quite suspicion, but a withholding of trust, an unwillingness to take Duran’s claim of kinship at face value.

He couldn’t blame the man; he hadn’t brought any proof of his blood tie to Jed Garrett. He had none for himself, except the word of the stranger who had given birth to him. But he had to convince Cort Morente to make good on that offer because he couldn’t afford to fail the way he had with his birth mother.

“Don’t take this wrong, but I’m finding it hard right now to get my head around going from being an only child to having six brothers,” Duran said slowly. “To be honest, though, it’s more than I could have hoped for under the circumstances, especially if you meant it when you said you wanted to help.”

“Mr. Forrester—” Lia began. “Duran,” she amended when he looked at her. “If it makes it any easier—” She stopped, and he could see in her eyes she wanted to intervene, maybe spare him having to say it, but knew it was his to tell.

“I’m not trying to make it harder,” Cort said, “but I can’t say I’m not curious about those circumstances. Jed doesn’t know you and your brother exist or, believe me, the rest of us would have heard about it by now. I have to wonder why you decided to track him down after all this time.”

“I never knew he existed, either. My—” he couldn’t call the woman his mother “—she didn’t put his name on my birth certificate. I had to find her first to get it.”

“Are you sure Jed’s your father then?”

“She is. She gave me his name and the name of his ranch and the town it was in. It’s all she gave me,” he added, unable to keep the anger that still lingered from his meeting with the woman out of his voice, “except to tell me about Ry—Ry Kincaid, my twin. I didn’t know about him until a few weeks ago. We were split up after we were born.” Drawing in a long breath, he tried to let it out slowly, to ease some of the tension crawling up his back and neck, stiffening his muscles. “I never cared about whether or not I had any other relatives, it didn’t matter.”

Cort assessed him and Duran understood that Cort, too, was protecting someone—his brothers, his family, maybe even Jed Garrett. “And it matters now,” Cort said flatly, a statement of fact rather than a question.

“More than anything. I’ve been trying to track down as many blood relatives as I can. I’m running out of time.” He steeled himself to say what he hadn’t dared acknowledge in his head, yet battled daily in his nightmares. “My son is dying.”

Chapter Two

He’d succeeded in shaking Cort’s composure and it brought a surge of what almost felt like triumph because he knew, without having any basis for his certainty except gut instinct, that this time, he wouldn’t be turned away.

“I’m sorry,” Cort said, a husky note in his voice replacing his earlier coolness. “I’ve got four kids and I can’t imagine…” He scrubbed a hand over his face and when he looked back this time the sympathy in his eyes was clear. “There has to be something we can do to help or you wouldn’t be here.”

“There is. Noah needs a bone marrow transplant, but they haven’t been able to find a match.”

“Noah has a rare immune-system illness,” Lia explained for him. “There’s been a lot of success in treating it with bone marrow transplants. But without it—” She looked at Duran, an apology in her eyes. “Without it, the prognosis isn’t good. Noah probably won’t survive past his late teens. The sooner he gets a transplant, the better his chances, and the odds of finding a match among blood relations are much higher.”

“Which is why I went searching for my birth parents when neither I, my ex-wife nor any of her family turned out to be a match,” Duran added. “I was hoping one of my birth parents would be a match, or if not, that maybe I had other relatives that would be. That’s why I said discovering I had five brothers here is a better outcome than I could have wished for.”

Cort nodded. “Then neither your twin nor your birth mother was a match, either.”

“Ry wasn’t. The only thing the tests proved was that we were brothers. And she refused to be tested.” Anger flared up in him again and he pushed it down. There was nothing he could do to change the past or her mind and it wouldn’t aid his appeal now. “She said she didn’t want her family to know how badly she’d screwed up over thirty years ago. According to her, admitting to having sex once when she was twenty-two with a stranger she’d met in a bar would ruin her life.”

“Jed won’t give a damn. His family already knows the worst of his sins and a one-night stand hardly ranks.” Cort hesitated and Duran readied himself for another disappointment. “He’s sick though, dying. He couldn’t be a donor even if he wanted to be. But I’m sure I can speak for my brothers and say we’d all be willing to be tested as soon as you can arrange it.” He turned to Lia. “Is there anything you can do to expedite things?”

“I’ll do whatever I can,” she assured him. “I can’t get anything done over the weekend, but I’ll see what I can do about setting things up for early next week.”

Duran found himself holding his breath, waiting to be told it was a mistake; that it wasn’t going to happen the way he wanted. When that didn’t come the sense of relief hit him hard, as if all the air had left the room and rushed back, and with it, a little of his faith in the future.

He searched for words to convey his feelings, but the thankfulness he felt was so tangled up with other, less defined and more uneasy emotions connected with finding brothers, a twin, discovering parts of himself he never knew—emotions that he hadn’t given himself time to process—that it left him floundering for what to say to the stranger who could end up saving his son’s life.

But Cort spared him from having to say anything by moving the conversation to practicalities. “I’m guessing you’re staying the night here with Noah. But when he gets out of the hospital, you and he can stay with one of us.” He forestalled any protest Duran would have made by holding up a hand. “A hotel’s no place for a sick kid. The ranch would be best. There’s plenty of room at the big house and Rafe and Josh are only a few minutes away. But that means telling Jed, and soon.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing. “I don’t see any way around it.”

“I get the feeling he’s not going to be happy to find out he has two more sons,” Duran said. If that was the case, he was glad that Jed Garrett had sons who, if not happy to learn of his existence, were at least willing to accept him as a brother and do what they could for Noah.

“No, it’ll probably be just the opposite,” Cort said grimly. Apparently he saw Duran was starting to get frustrated with the veiled hints about Jed’s character and offered a rueful smile. “Sorry, I’m not deliberately trying to keep you in the dark. But it’s going to take some time to explain and I’d rather not do it here.”

“Later then, or not,” he said. “My concern right now is Noah.”

“I understand. Why don’t you give me or Rafe a call tomorrow, when you figure out what’s going on with Noah and one of us can run by and help you two get settled somewhere else?”

“About that—” Duran began. He felt uncomfortable accepting hospitality from strangers, even if he was related to them.

It was Lia who resolved the matter for him. “Say yes. Otherwise I’ll have to call security because Cort never takes no for an answer and that’s the only other way we’ll get rid of him.”

“Thanks for the character reference,” Cort retorted.

“Thanks for the warning,” Duran muttered and both Cort and Lia laughed, drawing a reluctant smile from him. “Fine, leave me a number and I’ll let you know when Noah’s released.”

Cort handed over a cell and home number and as it seemed to finish anything else they could say for now, an awkward silence intruded.

With a shift of his shoulders that telegraphed their shared uncertainty about where they should take this next, Cort finally spoke. “I should be going. You need to get back to your son and I need to get home to my family. I’ll talk to you, both of you—” he glanced at Lia “—soon.”

Duran waited until he’d gone and then by tacit agreement, he and Lia went back inside the room to check on Noah. He stood to one side while she bent over his sleeping son, not liking her frown when she finished taking his temperature again.

“It hasn’t come down much,” she said in answer to his pointed look. “We’ll monitor it for the next several hours, and if it doesn’t improve, then I’m going to start him on intravenous antibiotics. He may have had those before, if he’s had other infections.”

His eyes on Noah, Duran nodded. More hospital time, more treatments that would only buy a temporary respite, not the permanent answer Noah needed. “I should never have brought him along.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference. The infection’s been going on for a couple of days, at least, probably since before you left L.A., and it would have been worse for him if he’d been sick while you were gone. At least here you and Noah are together and you’ve got—” she looked lost for an appropriate word, settling on “—family you can rely on to help.”

“I’m not quite ready to consider them family and whether or not I can rely on them remains to be seen.”

“You can—rely on them, I mean. I’ve known four of them for years, and they’re all good guys.”

He noticed she deliberately avoided referring to them as his brothers, perhaps because of his comment wary of acknowledging a blood link between him and the others. “You don’t seem surprised to find out Garrett’s got two more sons.”

“Not really,” she said. “Jed’s five sons here were by four different women, and the oldest one he didn’t even acknowledge until a few months ago. I’d have been more surprised if it had turned out the five of them were the only children he fathered.”

Duran shook his head, not yet ready to learn any more about what was obviously a convoluted family tree. “Noah wants to meet them all. When I explained to him why I was coming here, that I had found out I had more family than just his grandparents, that’s all he could talk about.” He lightly stroked his hand over his son’s tousled hair. “He’s lonely, with just him and me, and because he’s been sick for so long. My ex-wife’s family decided that he and I didn’t exist after Amber left me. So the idea of having more family is exciting—to him. But he doesn’t have to think about the consequences.”

“That one of them might not be a match?”

“That they might not care about knowing him, or that it’s all temporary. We stay here for a while and then he never sees them again.”

Suddenly, Duran felt tired, drained by the emotional roller-coaster ride he’d been on for what seemed like years now. He heard himself, a damning echo in his head, admitting Noah was dying and all the fear, grief and worry he’d been shouldering alone for so many months welled up in him, tearing at his control.

Turning away from the sympathy in Lia’s eyes, he leaned his hands on the back of a chair, head bowed, struggling to regain his composure. There was a pause, a whisper of sound and then a gentle hand touched his shoulder.

“You’re doing everything you can,” she said softly.

“It hasn’t been enough so far, what if it isn’t enough now?”

“Then you keep trying. Because even if it isn’t enough, that’s all you can do.”

If it wasn’t enough, it would break him. There would be no compromises with his emotions, no comfort in telling himself he’d done his best. “I can’t let that happen,” he said, but instead of coming out as clear, hard resolve, it sounded desperate, already cracked with sorrow.

“Duran—” Lia reached around and laid her hand against his jaw, turning him to face her. Whatever she saw in his expression prompted her to abandon what she intended to say and before he understood, he was in her arms, she was holding him or he was holding her, and it didn’t matter because it had been so long since he shared the burden, that giving even a little of it up, for however short a time, was like being able to breathe again.

The moment stretched into many, into time he couldn’t measure, before the comfort she offered and he grasped at became too much to accept and he very carefully pulled out of her embrace. Still within touching distance, they stood looking at each other and for the first time, he saw her as a woman and not the doctor who’d stepped in to help a stranger in need. She was barely to his shoulder, on the thin side of slender, and there was a delicacy about her, as if she were finely made and vulnerable to the rigors of life. Her dark red hair was gilded with copper and gold in the dim light, her eyes an unusual shade of light brown. He might have, at first glance, dismissed her as merely decorative, with little substance, except he had felt the strength in her hands, seen the intelligence and empathy in her eyes, been touched by her warmth even when he thought himself immune.

She accepted his study for a minute or two and then dropped her eyes and took an uncertain step back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t be.” Duran resisted the urge to reach out to her, to reassure her that she’d misinterpreted his moving away from her; he’d been alone for so long it had become habit to throw up his defenses when he was most vulnerable. “I appreciate everything you’ve done so far. You’ve gone way out of your way to help us.”

“Yes, well, that is my job,” she said briskly. She avoided eye contact with him and busied herself taking Noah’s temperature again. “I’ll have the nurse check him again in a couple of hours. If there’s no change, then we’ll start the IV. But we’ll keep our fingers crossed he won’t need it this time. I’ll be back first thing in the morning, unless there’s a problem before then.”

For some reason, her determined return to professional detachment irritated him. It felt jarringly out of place, though by all rights, it shouldn’t have. “Does this mean I have to start calling you Dr. Kerrigan again?”

“You haven’t called me anything,” she said. A slight smile touched her mouth, bringing back a whisper of the warmth. “At least out loud.”

“Okay, Lia,” he said deliberately. “Then we’ll see you in the morning.”

This time the smile blossomed. “Count on it.”

Lia left the hospital, her body tired, but thoughts and emotions too unsettled to let her rest. It was late, nearly ten, but the notion of going home and confessing her sins to her elderly cat didn’t appeal. Instead, she decided to stop by Morente’s and see if Nova could spare half an hour for a glass of wine.

She and Nova Vargas—six months now Mrs. Alex Tréjos—had been friends for a decade, ever since Lia had come to Luna Hermosa as a young intern and decided to make it home. Nova had been waitressing at the local diner—they’d met the first time Lia, new in town, came in search of a serious caffeine transfusion—and almost from the first they’d started a ritual, Lia sticking around after the diner closed, the two of them having coffee or a drink, sharing grievances and confidences. Since last year, when Nova had taken over managing the upscale Morente’s and then in February, had married the local middle-school principal, they’d had less time together. But they both resolved to keep their weekly ritual, even if it meant an hour in Nova’s office, sharing a margarita and whatever chocolate dessert was left over from the kitchen.

“Hey, girl, I didn’t expect to see you here tonight,” Nova greeted her with a hug before stepping back to give Lia a critical once-over. “I thought you were going to go home and actually relax for once.”

“I was, but something came up.”

“I hope he was tall, dark and gorgeous.”

“He is, but he comes packaged with a short, dark and cute one,” Lia said, smiling when Nova’s mouth pulled up in an expression of serious disbelief. “I promise to tell all, if you’ve got time for a glass of wine.”

“I can make time for this,” Nova said and gestured Lia to follow her to the back office.

A few minutes later, settled on the office couch with a glass of wine and a generous serving of wickedly rich chocolate soufflé, Lia told her about Duran and his reason for coming to town to find Jed. She knew Nova wouldn’t gossip. She was Cort’s former lover and had married his best friend, and the three of them had stayed close. Besides, news got around fast enough in Luna Hermosa without Nova’s help. Lia gave it less than a week before everyone would be talking about it.

Nova, like her, shrugged off the revelation of Jed fathering two more sons. “Everyone knows Jed Garrett likes women and lots of them. So what’s this Duran Forrester like?”

“Tall, dark and gorgeous,” Lia said lightly. She felt herself coloring and reached for another bite of soufflé to cover it, hoping Nova wouldn’t notice. Bad enough she’d practically thrown herself into his arms back in Noah’s room. She didn’t need Nova deciding there was more going on than just her normal concern for the father of a seriously sick child.

“And?” Nova prompted.

“And he’s a single father who loves his son and would make a deal with the devil to save his life.”

“Ah.” Taking a sip of her wine, Nova studied her for a moment. “You seem to have gone above and beyond to help him out.”

“It’s my job.” Lia repeated the same excuse she’d given Duran.

“And you’re doing it very thoroughly.”

“It’s not like that at all.”

“Sure it isn’t.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, we spent most of our time together in a hospital room with his sick child. What could possibly have happened?”

“I don’t know, you tell me,” Nova said and Lia wanted to answer, nothing, absolutely nothing, except it felt like a lie. “I can imagine it’d be pretty easy to get attached to a sick little boy and a devoted single dad who came to a town full of strangers looking for someone to help save his son’s life. And if he’s as hot as you say he is—”

“I didn’t say that,” Lia protested.

“You didn’t have to. Just be careful, okay? I know you want to help, but I also know how you are when it comes to getting too involved.”

Her friend probably did, but Lia didn’t want to be reminded of it right now. “And how am I?” she asked, knowing Nova would tell her if even if she didn’t.

“I love you, but you have this way of sabotaging every relationship you’re in because you’re afraid it might work,” Nova said.

“Oh, please, that’s not true. And a few hours with a stranger hardly qualifies as a relationship.”

“Look what happened with Tonio,” Nova continued. “He started to get serious and you decided you were too busy to spend time with him. You kept pushing him away until he finally got fed up and left you. He and Rita Pérez are dating,” she added, mentioning the name of one of Morente’s waitresses. “In case you’re interested.”

It was hard, coming up with a defense, when Lia suspected—no, she knew—that Nova was probably right. “I’m not,” she grumbled. “And you aren’t exactly a model for a successful relationship, you know.”

Nova laughed. “Until Alex, I never wanted one. My dad walking out on Mama and me cured me of wanting to tie myself to anyone for too long.”

“You and Cort were together for years,” Lia pointed out.

“Cort and I were lovers but we were never together. We were always just friends. Good friends,” she added at Lia’s skeptical look. “I liked being with him and he’s one helluva lover. But, trust me, neither of us ever had the least intention of making it permanent.”

“And now you’re married,” Lia said, emphasizing the word. “That can be pretty permanent.”

“Can be? There speaks the cynic. I intend for it to be, honey.”

“You can’t know that,” Lia said. She thought about everyone she’d ever loved and how, in one way or another, they’d all left her. Sometimes it had been a deliberate decision on their part; sometimes the fault could be assigned elsewhere, but the end result had been the same. “Things change, people go away.”

Her dark eyes speaking her understanding, Nova said quietly, “Not always.”

Maybe it worked for other people, but not for her. Lia had had hard lessons in loving and losing, ones she didn’t intend to repeat. “Don’t worry,” she told Nova. “I don’t plan on letting myself get involved beyond doing what I can for his son. That is my job.”

“No, honey, that’s the problem,” Nova said. She tipped her wineglass toward Lia. “You don’t ever plan on getting involved but you do. And then it’s too late.”

Not this time. It’s not too late because nothing has started. And I won’t let it.

She kept that thought with her long after she left the restaurant and took it home and to bed with her, using it as a shield against any doubts that crept in, any whispered warnings that she’d already started something she couldn’t stop or turn back from, that it already was too late.

Chapter Three

The next morning, Lia edged open the door a few inches and looked into the still darkened hospital room, uncertain of her reception despite it being almost seven-thirty. Both still sleeping, neither son nor father knew she was there. She stood in the doorway for a moment simply watching them.

That Duran was sleeping at all surprised her. She couldn’t imagine he was anything approaching comfortable. Awkwardly sitting at his son’s side, he was bent halfway across the bed, one arm crooked under his head for a makeshift pillow, the other stretched out over the blanket to cradle Noah’s small hand in his palm.

His position suggested he couldn’t bear to be even a chair’s length from his son and an odd feeling, both warmth and chill, twisted in her chest. She could imagine the fear and uncertainty Duran lived with constantly; his desperation in trying to hold on to the little person who meant everything to him. It wasn’t with the same intensity, but she, also, understood only too well the fear of losing someone you loved. For Duran—alone save for Noah—that fear at times had to be overwhelming.

Figuring Duran’s night had been too short, she hesitated stepping any further inside, torn between not wanting to disturb him and needing to check on Noah. Concern for Noah won out. Quietly as possible, she moved close to the bed and gently brushed her fingers to Noah’s cheek, pleased to find his skin cool and dry. The light touch made him wriggle and scrunch up his face as he blinked awake.

“Dr. Kerrigan?”

“That’s right,” Lia said barely above a whisper, giving him a reassuring smile. “I just came to check on you and Percy.” She patted the panda’s furry head. “Percy looks pretty good. How do you feel?”

“Okay, I guess.” Noah thought for a moment, then added, “Hungry.”

Lia laughed softly. “I think I can fix that. But I need to check your ears and take your temperature first. Then we’ll see about getting you and your dad some breakfast.”

“Why is Dad still sleeping?” Noah asked, frowning as he looked at his father. “He never sleeps late.” Before Lia could intervene, he pushed at Duran’s arm. “Dad—Dad, Dr. Kerrigan is here.”

Duran stirred and sat up, looking at once disoriented and impossibly sexy. His dark, sleep-mussed hair fell over his brow. He yawned, stretched and with no more than a quick glance Lia’s way, turned full attention to his son.

“Hey, good morning,” he said, smiling as he smoothed Noah’s hair back from his forehead. “You look like you’re feeling a lot better.”

“I woke up before you.”

“I see that. Guess I was being lazy today.”

Noah giggled at that and Lia couldn’t help but smile. She scarcely knew him, but what she had learned of Duran Forrester made for an attractive package: fiercely loving, responsible father, effortlessly sexy guy, a man not easily deterred once he’d chosen a course of action. And—and she needed to stop where this was going because it was so far off course from where her focus should be.

As though he sensed her eyes on him, Duran looked up, giving her half a smile. “Sorry, I didn’t fall asleep until nearly six. You were right about the uncomfortable chair.”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just needed to check on Noah.”

Duran stood up, walking stiffly at first, taking a few paces around the room as Lia bent over Noah, satisfying herself that the antibiotics and fever reducers had done their job. Noah’s temperature was normal again and although it would be a few days before the infection cleared, his ears didn’t seem as painful for him as the night before.

Finishing, she briefly squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Okay, I think we’ll let you and Percy out of here in a little bit—after breakfast,” she added at his hopeful look. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll see what I can rustle up.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Duran started.

“I promised,” Lia said, winking at Noah as she headed for the door.

She returned fifteen minutes later, backing into the room, balancing the heavy tray.

“Whatever that is it smells great,” Duran said, relieving her of her load.

“Nothing too fancy, I’m afraid, but at least the coffee’s decent. And it’s a definite improvement over the oatmeal they’d be bringing you, Noah. Unless you like your oatmeal kinda gray and sticky?” Noah made a face and Lia laughed. “I didn’t think so. How about some eggs and bagels instead?”

“I think you’ve just saved my life.” Duran, accepting a mug of coffee, breathed an appreciative sigh over the hot brew as Noah dug into his breakfast. “I can go without just about anything—”

“—except decent coffee,” Lia chimed in and they finished the sentence in unison.

“An addict after my own heart, I see.”

“With the hours I keep, believe me, it’s survival.”

Duran smiled, for the first time giving her a full, open gesture of appreciation, unrestrained by reluctance or circumstance. A subtle, insidious heat curled through her, and she cursed it, irritated at herself for being so susceptible to a simple smile that didn’t mean anything except his gratitude for a cup of coffee and her sparing his son overcooked oatmeal.

“Thank you again,” he said, “for everything. You’ve made this whole ordeal a lot easier. Right, guy?” He glanced at Noah.

Noah, in the process of stuffing a chunk of bagel in his mouth, nodded. “I hate hospitals,” he mumbled around the bread. “But you made it not so bad.”

Whatever she could have said stuck in her throat and left her swallowing hard in blank silence. Looking at the trusting smile on Noah’s pale face and the dark hollows shadowing his father’s soulful eyes, she realized father and son had touched her in a way that would leave her marked, this time unable to maintain the detachment necessary to her job—to help them, then move on and forget.

It made no sense. She’d had many patients with serious, even terminal illnesses, but she’d always been able to distance herself enough to remain emotionally protected. She couldn’t very well get deeply involved with the children she’d devoted her life to helping, to care too much, or she wouldn’t be able to function as a professional. She’d learned that lesson well enough over the years. Until Duran Forrester and his little boy showed up, she’d stuck by it religiously.

Why were they different? Why did she feel this connection to them, this urgent need to do anything, everything to help? She had no answers.

“You’re not having any?” Duran asked, jerking her out of her thoughts.

“What? Oh, no, thanks. I’m fine.” She made herself focus on the business at hand. “There are a few things we should talk about, though. I did some checking and the earliest we can start the testing is Tuesday.” Hesitating over whether or not she should bring up what was probably a touchy subject, she gave in to her need for answers and asked, “Were you planning on calling Cort this morning?”

“Calling him, yes.” Duran pushed his coffee mug onto the tray and got to his feet. “Accepting his offer of housing—that I’m rethinking. I appreciate it, but I’m not comfortable with accepting it.”

“Last night—”

“Last night I promised to call him. I didn’t say I’d move in with any of them.”

“They’re family.”

“No, they’re strangers whom I happen to be related to. And I need some place quiet and stable—” He glanced at Noah. “I can better control that in a hotel.”

“I could argue that,” Lia persisted. Maybe she didn’t have a right to interfere, but she knew Duran’s brothers and their families, and she couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t accept Noah as one of their own. In her opinion, that was better medicine right now than any other treatment she could prescribe. “A hotel is impersonal and there aren’t any guarantees you’re going to get the peace and quiet you want. Apart from that, weren’t you the one who said—”

“I want to meet your family!” Noah broke in. “You said I had cousins.”

Lia gestured to Noah, who’d made her point for her. “They aren’t going to get the chance to know him if they never get to meet him.”

His hardened expression clearly said Duran didn’t like where the conversation was headed. For Noah’s sake, though, Lia refused to back down. It might do Duran some good, as well, she reasoned. He’d been shouldering the weight of his son’s illness alone. Support from any quarter had to be better for him than the isolation he’d imposed on himself. She assured herself she was doing the right thing because of Noah, ignoring the little nagging voice at the back of her head that she was far overstepping her boundaries, that she was involving herself in Duran’s life far more than she should.

“I didn’t come here for a family reunion,” Duran said tightly.

“Didn’t you? I thought that was the point.”

“Why are you pushing this? Why is it so important to you?”

She could have answered that in ways that were personal, knowing in part she was letting her feelings about her own family and the distance she’d always felt between them influence her urging Duran to connect with his brothers. “It’s important to you and to Noah,” she answered instead and that was true, too. “Isn’t it why you’re here?”

Noah, oblivious to the tension, asked, “Are cousins like brothers and sisters?”

“Kind of,” Duran answered, his attention on Lia momentarily diverted. “But cousins don’t usually live in the same house as you, like brothers and sisters would.”

“They can be especially good friends, though, because they’re friends and they’re family,” Lia tried to explain, which was difficult, because for her it was only theory.

“I want to meet them,” Noah insisted again, his mouth pulled in a stubborn line as he looked at his father. “You said I could.”

“I know I did. But—” Duran pushed a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why?” Noah demanded.

Duran’s frown accused Lia of pursuing a subject he’d wanted to avoid for as long as possible. “For a lot of reasons.” He stopped, seemed to consider for a minute, then finally came to a decision. “I promised you’d meet them and you will. But it might not be right away and I don’t know if staying in the same house with them is a good idea right now.” This last was aimed at Lia and she flushed, knowing she probably deserved the reprimand but was unwilling to back down.

Before she could come back with a defense, the door pushed open and they were confronted with the morning nurse, followed by Cort.

Duran’s eyes snapped to her, but Lia shook her head in denial she’d had anything to do with Cort’s appearance.

“It’s not her fault,” Cort answered Duran’s unspoken question. “I invited myself.”

“Thinks he doesn’t have to follow the rules like everyone else,” the nurse grumbled. Toting a breakfast tray that was about as wide as she was, the nurse took one look at the stack of empty dishes on the table beside Noah and scowled at Lia. “I see someone’s already done my job.”

Lia hustled to explain. “I got here early and—”

“Oh, save it. I’ll take the oatmeal home for Cruiser. Don’t know what that dog sees in mushy oatmeal, but he gets plenty of it.” She flung an accusatory look at Lia. “I suppose you’ve taken the boy’s vitals, too?”

“I did, earlier, but I’m going to release him soon, so if you wouldn’t mind checking them again, I’ll have a quick word with Mr. Forrester and Cort outside.”