Dr. Daddy (11 page)

Better yet, just what had last night meant to
her?
Zoey wondered further. To be honest, she still wasn’t sure. Had she actually told Jonas about Eddie? Or had that just been a distant, distressing dream? How could she have revealed the most painful experience of her life to someone she had, until recently, considered an enemy? What had Jonas done to make her open up so easily, so quickly?

She tried not to think about her son these days, tried to classify the entire episode as something that had happened to a young girl she scarcely knew. Sometimes that worked. There were periods when she could go days, even weeks, without a single thought for Eddie. But ever since she had taken it upon herself to help Jonas and Juliana, thoughts of the child she had lost so long ago were creeping more and more insistently to the forefront of her brain.

And Zoey didn’t like that at all. It had taken her so long to erase the specter of Eddie from her life and move forward. At least, she had thought she had erased him. She had thought she was moving forward. Now she was beginning to wonder.

Jonas stirred beside her, and she was helpless not to reach out to him. She touched her index finger gingerly to his mouth, tracing the strong line of his lips with much affection. Then she dropped her hand to his chin, drew it along his rough jaw and down along his neck. Yet he did not rouse again.

He was so handsome, she thought. He would father beautiful children. Why, the two of them together could—

She halted the thought as abruptly as it had developed and jerked her hand away. As quietly as she could, she pushed herself away from him, taking care not to awaken him as she climbed out of bed.

The two of them together might have already made a child, she realized fearfully as she gathered her scattered clothing. They’d taken no precautions last night, had done nothing to prevent such an occurrence. A shudder of horror wound through her when she considered the possibility. She couldn’t be pregnant, she told herself as tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t have another child. There was no way she would survive something like that again.

She hurried from the bedroom and scurried across the hall to dress in Juliana’s room. The baby awoke at the noise of Zoey’s clumsy movements and, relieved, Zoey scooped her up to take her downstairs for her morning bottle. With any luck at all, Jonas would sleep late and, after feeding Juliana, she could, indeed, creep out of his house without the awkwardness of a morning-after goodbye. She’d figure out the rest of it later.

As quickly as she could, she changed Juliana’s diaper and crept down the stairs, praying silently that the baby’s fretful whining for food wouldn’t wake up Jonas. So far, so good, she thought as she took a seat at the kitchen table and offered the warmed bottle to Juliana. No sign of the man in question.

Until Juliana drained the bottle dry. Just as Zoey lifted her to her shoulder for a final burp, Jonas stumbled into the kitchen wearing a smile and rumpled pajama bottoms, his robe gaping open to reveal that intriguing expanse of chest she had so reveled in exploring the night before. His hair was wonderfully mussed from the way she had repeatedly wound her fingers through it, and his eyes were lit with laughter and affection.

Affection, she marveled. Was that really what he was feeling?

“Good morning,” he greeted her softly.

Zoey opened her mouth to reply, but no words emerged. So she only smiled, hoping the gesture looked more genuine than it felt.

“I didn’t even hear Juliana,” he said as he shuffled toward her. “Thanks for getting up with her.”

“That’s okay,” Zoey finally managed. “She didn’t make much noise. And you were sleeping pretty soundly.”

He smiled that toe-curling smile again, and something warm and watery splashed through her midsection. “Gee, I can’t imagine why,” he murmured lasciviously.

Zoey closed her eyes to the picture of sexy coziness he presented lest she do something really stupid—like put the baby back down in her crib for a long snooze so that she herself could fall face first into Jonas’s bed for a quick tumble. Fortunately, Juliana burped—long and loud—and Zoey found an excuse to laugh off the tension bubbling up inside her.

“One thing about Jules,” she said when her chuckles subsided. “She really knows how to let go when the time comes.”

She continued to pat the baby’s back gently as she met Jonas’s gaze. He looked unhappy suddenly, and she was pretty sure she knew why.

“Meaning what?” he asked quietly.

Zoey maneuvered Juliana into her arms and stood. “Meaning it’s time for me to leave,” she said as she approached him.

She extended the satisfied infant toward him, and he automatically lifted his arms to receive her. He was getting better about that, she noted. Gone was the hesitation and reluctance he used to show at the prospect of holding Juliana. He felt more natural with her now, had gained a good deal of confidence where dealing with the baby was concerned. There was really no reason for Zoey to keep coming around, she thought. From here on out, Jonas and the baby were going to be fine together. Nevertheless, a deal was a deal. She still owed him another week. And another week she would give him.

But no more than that.

“You’re coming back, right?” Jonas asked, as if reading her thoughts.

“Of course I’ll be back. On Monday. To take care of Jules. How’s the search for a nanny going, by the way? Do you have any prospects?”

Jonas frowned at her. “I was hoping you meant you were just going home to change your clothes,” he said, ignoring her questions. “That you’d be back in a couple of hours. I kind of thought we’d spend the day together—the three of us. After last night—”

“Yeah, last night,” Zoey interrupted him. “I hope you aren’t going to play more into it than there actually was.”

His frown became a glare. “And what
actually
was there?”

She glanced down at her hands, feigning great interest in her recent manicure. “Don’t get me wrong, Jonas. It was wonderful. But...”

“But what?”

Finally, she gathered the nerve to meet his gaze. His eyes were stormy and troubled, no longer affectionate.

“But it wasn’t...it wasn’t...”

“It wasn’t what?” he demanded, his voice growing more insistent.

She sighed, rubbing a hand over her forehead in exasperation. “It wasn’t something that’s going to be repeated,” she finally said.

“Why not?”

“Because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

“Why not?”

Something inside Zoey snapped at the sound of propriety in his voice, and she lost her patience. “Because it was a mistake, that’s why,” she blurted out.

“It sure as hell didn’t feel like a mistake last night.
You
didn’t seem to think it was a mistake last night.”

“I wasn’t thinking last night, period,” she said softly. “If I had been, I never would have wound up in your bed. And I certainly never would have told you about—” She bit her lip to keep herself from saying Eddie’s name out loud again.

“About your son,” Jonas finished the statement for her.

Until he mentioned it, Zoey had been hoping that she did, indeed, dream her revelation of the night before. But clearly Jonas had knowledge of Eddie. And that alone was enough to make her want to steer clear of him forever. The last thing she needed was another reminder of her painful past.

“That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice softening somewhat. “You shared something with me last night that was a lot more significant than sex and a lot more difficult for you to offer than your body. You told me about your son, something you’ve told no one else. And now you’re scared that you’re connected to me in some way you don’t want to be connected.”

“That’s not it at all,” she denied, dropping her gaze to her hands once again.

Jonas shifted Juliana to his shoulder and watched Zoey make every effort to keep from falling to pieces before his very eyes. She was lousy at trying to hide her feelings, he thought. He wondered how he could have been fooled by her for so long. Had there really been a time when he’d thought she was hard as nails and tough as leather? Had he actually been convinced that there wasn’t a soft spot to be found inside her? That she was incapable of feeling even the remotest kind of warmth?

What an idiot he’d been. Any fool could see that Zoey Holland was a walking mass of emotion held together by little more than an invisible thread of fear. That tough exterior she’d tried to keep hardened had only served to illustrate exactly how fragile she was.

“You don’t have to run from me, Zoey,” he said softly. “Just because I know something about you that’s painful for you to remember, that doesn’t mean you have to avoid me.”

She shook her head and continued to avoid his gaze. “You don’t understand,” she said.

“What? What don’t I understand?”

“This has nothing to do with...with Eddie,” she insisted, her stumble over her son’s name telling Jonas just about everything he needed to know. “Last night, we didn’t...”

He couldn’t prevent the smile that curled his lips. “Didn’t what? I thought we pretty much covered the gamut of sexual encounters last night. I did have to draw the line at dressing up like the cowboy and the schoolmarm. But only because by the time you asked me to do it, I didn’t have the strength to manage it.” His smile broadened. “That and the fact that I really want to invest in a good lariat first. Maybe next time.”

“I was only kidding about that,” Zoey said with a soft smile.

“Were you?”

She nodded. “For the most part.”

His voice softened as he said, “Then I still don’t understand what it is you say I don’t understand.”

She sighed and tried again. “Last night, we didn’t...use anything. Any contraceptives.”

Jonas’s eyes widened in shock at the realization. Good God, they hadn’t taken precautions, had they? The thought of doing so hadn’t even occurred to him. He was accustomed to going out with women who’d already taken it upon themselves to prevent the possibility of pregnancy. But seeing as how Zoey had been out of commission for so long—and seeing as how what happened last night had come as a pretty big surprise to both of them—there was no reason for her to have taken such an initiative, was there? She could get pregnant, he thought. Hell, she could already
be
pregnant. With his child. The concept numbed him from head to toe.

“Not a pretty thought, is it?” she asked.

As much as he hated to admit it, she had gauged his reaction accurately. The idea of taking responsibility for another baby when he hadn’t yet managed to come to terms with the one in his arms was more than a little troubling. Still, once he gave the possibility more consideration, he decided maybe it wasn’t such a horrible thing to imagine, after all.

“Don’t worry,” Zoey went on when he didn’t respond. “I’m pretty sure the timing is all wrong for something like that to happen. And anyway, even if it did, it wouldn’t be any of your concern.”

That remark brought him up short. “Excuse me?” he asked petulantly. “Wouldn’t be any of my concern? I think you might be a trifle mistaken about that.”

She covered her face with her hands so that he had no idea what her reaction to his assertion might be. She only shook her head and said quietly, “Look, Jonas, I’m not going to argue with you about something that might not even be a reality.” She dropped her hands back down to her sides and met his gaze levelly. “For now, just suffice it to say that last night was a mistake. And not just because we didn’t take any precautions. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place. And it won’t happen again.”

For a long moment he said nothing, just continued to rock Juliana gently against his shoulder. Finally, he asked, “Are you so certain about that?”

She nodded vehemently. “Absolutely certain.”

“You don’t want to be around me any more than you have to, is that it?”

“Jonas...” She left unsaid whatever it was she intended to tell him, and somehow he had the feeling that it was just as well. He probably didn’t want to know what else she had to say.

“So I guess the three of us spending the day together is out of the question,” he muttered wearily.

She crossed her arms over her chest as if she were trying to keep them from straying elsewhere. Her expression was bland, however, and could have been indicative of any number of things. “I’m afraid so,” she told him. She strode quickly past him and through the kitchen door, calling a quick, “See you Monday,” over her shoulder as she went.

The kitchen was annoyingly quiet after she left. Juliana nodded off blissfully on his shoulder and, without thinking, Jonas lifted a hand to splay it open across her back. As he marveled again at how small and fragile she seemed to be, the baby snuggled closer to him and sighed with much contentment. She was his brother’s daughter, he reminded himself. Why then, lately, did she feel like his own?

And why, dammit, was he starting to feel as if Zoey would be the perfect mother for her?

He’d never entertained a single thought about having a child of his own. Hell, he’d never even wanted children. With one single tragedy, Jonas had become a father to Juliana. And with one simple gaffe, he may have opened up the possibility of having another child brought into his life.

A father, he thought. Until that moment, he hadn’t much felt like one. But as Juliana nuzzled even more comfortably against him, Jonas felt a warmth and satisfaction seep through him. It was unlike anything he’d ever known. No, not a father, he decided, a daddy. He wanted to be a daddy. They were so much more fun than fathers.

He rubbed his chin over the downy hair on Juliana’s head and smiled. There was just the question now of finding a mommy to join him. Fortunately for him, Jonas knew exactly where to look.

“Jules,” he said softly to the infant dozing on his shoulder. “We have a lot of work to do if we’re going to bring Zoey around to our way of thinking. Lucky for us, I have a plan. But I’m going to need your help to execute it.”

“H
ow did you guys know when you were in love with your husbands?”

Olivia and Sylvie glanced up at each other, exchanged wary looks, then turned to Zoey again.

“Say what?” Sylvie asked.

“Excuse me?” Olivia said at the same time.

Zoey’s gaze traveled from one woman to the other, then down to Juliana, whom she cradled in her arms. The baby stared back at her intently, her lower lip thrust to the side. Zoey smiled before looking at her companions again. The three friends had met for lunch at Olivia’s house, and each had brought her baby along.

No, Jules is
not
my baby, Zoey reminded herself. Her baby was dead and buried. Jules belonged to Jonas. Zoey wouldn’t be having another child, ever again. There was no way she could handle the emotional demands and upheaval that went along with motherhood. Losing Eddie had numbed her to life for years, had wrecked her marriage and damn near eradicated her soul. She knew she couldn’t open herself up to the possibility of something like that happening again. It would kill her to lose another family. She simply couldn’t take such a risk.

Nevertheless, she continued to wonder if making love with Jonas three nights before had generated a life within her. It was still too early for her to know for sure, but in a matter of days she would have her answer. She told herself she wasn’t pregnant, and knew that was for the best. But a part of her simply couldn’t be satisfied with that. A part of her wished with all her heart that the two of them had, indeed, created a baby. And that longing inside her was what she feared most. Even more than the possibility that she had fallen in love with Jonas.

Loving Jonas was something she could deal with. Probably. Eventually. In one way or another. The desire to have a child, however, was something else entirely. Something she just wasn’t sure she could face.

“I, umm,” she began again, “I was just wondering how you two knew for sure when you fell in love with your husbands.”

“Why?” the two sisters chorused.

Zoey shrugged. “Just curious is all.”

Olivia and Sylvie exchanged suspicious looks again, then eyed their companion with much speculation.

“Is there something you want to tell us, Zoey?” Sylvie finally asked.

“Yeah, we haven’t seen too much of you since you took over Jeannette’s shift at the hospital,” Olivia agreed. “Just what have you been doing with your time these past couple of weeks, anyway? Besides baby-sitting for Jonas Tate’s niece?”

“Which in itself has been weird enough,” Sylvie remarked. “All this time you’ve been going on about what a pain in the posterior Dr. Fate is, yet you’ve gone out of your way to lend him a hand where the baby is concerned.”

“And I told you why, too,” Zoey reminded them. “Because Jules is a kindred spirit. I don’t want her to wind up as some scared kid on the streets like I did because I felt out of place at home. I want her and Jonas to feel comfortable together, that’s all.”

“You know, at first, that did seem like a likely enough explanation for your actions,” Olivia said with a sage nod, “but now that this has been going on for more than a week, I can’t help but wonder if your intentions might have changed just a tad.”

“My intentions?” Zoey echoed, feeling her back go up defensively. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Olivia said breezily. “Except that maybe you started this little project with Juliana’s needs at heart, but that at some point along the way, your intentions, and your interests, went off in a different direction.”

Zoey narrowed her eyes warily. “Oh, really? And just what the hell is
that
supposed to mean?”

Olivia looked over at her sister. “You did finally meet Dr. Tate, didn’t you, Sylvie?”

“Yeah, you introduced him to me at the hospital that day Gennie and I stopped by, remember?”

Olivia nodded. “That’s right. And what did you think of him?”

Sylvie smiled, wiggling her blond eyebrows suggestively. “I thought he was pretty dreamy. A real slab, if you know what I mean.”

Zoey bit her lip to keep from describing for her friends in vivid, erotic detail exactly what a slab Jonas was when exposed to the elements. Instead, she remained silent and wondered about her sanity in bringing up the subject of love in the first place.

“That’s what I think, too,” Olivia agreed. “How about you, Zoey? Word around the hospital has it that you and he aren’t quite the antagonists you used to be. Cooper Dugan, for example, has even gone so far as to call the two of you friends.”

“Cooper has no idea what he’s talking about,” Zoey told them. “As usual.”

“Really?” Olivia asked. “Then that story about you spending two nights at Jonas’s house is completely false?”

Zoey felt the blood rush to her face and dropped her gaze once again to the baby in her lap lest her friends see how badly she was blushing. Dammit, why had she mentioned to Cooper that her baby-sitting activities for Jonas had included a couple of nights’ sleepover? Never mind that
those
two nights had been perfectly innocent—well, at least to an extent. She should have known the paramedic wouldn’t be able to keep the news to himself.

“You didn’t!” Sylvie exclaimed. “Zoey, how could you do something like that? How could you spend the night with that man—
two
nights with that man—a virtual stranger, and not give your two best friends all the gory details afterward?”

“Because there weren’t any gory details,” Zoey told them. No, she thought further to herself. The details had been more of a torrid nature. But there was no reason Sylvie and Livy had to know that, right? “And Jonas was hardly a stranger,” she added. “I’d been working with him for months.”

“And hating him for months,” Sylvie reminded her. “At least, that’s what you always
said.
”

“Because it was true,” Zoey told her.

“
Was
true,” Olivia repeated. “We must take note of the use of the past tense here. I think it might be significant. Especially since the past in question involved hate, and I distinctly remember this conversation starting out with the subject of love.” She turned to look at her sister. “Sylvie, I do believe this is going to be interesting.”

Sylvie nodded in return. “Livy, I do believe you’re right.”

In unison, the two sisters turned silently to Zoey for clarification.

“Okay, okay,” she relented. “I did spend the night with him. More than once. But those two nights Cooper told you about weren’t what you think.” There, she thought, that was suitably evasive enough without being untrue, wasn’t it?

“You didn’t sleep with him?” Sylvie asked pointedly.

Zoey felt herself blushing again and tried to stall. She and Jonas hadn’t actually done much sleeping that one night, had they? she tried to tell herself. So denying Sylvie’s charge wouldn’t exactly be a lie, would it? Still, her friend’s implication was unmistakable. Then again, it was really none of Sylvie’s business.

“Oh, come on, Zoey,” Sylvie cajoled. “Fair’s fair. Livy told us about doing the wild thing with Daniel that one night. And I told you guys all about it when I slept with Chase that first time.”

“I only told you two about Daniel because you guys bullied it out of me,” Olivia reminded her sister. “And you only told us about sleeping with Chase that first time because you got pregnant as a result. You had no choice but to tell us about it. I think we would have suspected something of the kind after you started ballooning out like a blowfish.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t have known Chase’s identity if I hadn’t told you,” Sylvie said petulantly.

“Oh, and when did you tell us his identity, hmm?” her sister asked. “Not until you were about four centimeters dilated, if memory serves.”

“That’s beside the point, Livy. We have as much right to know about Zoey as she—”

“All right, yes, I slept with him,” Zoey interrupted. Only after the words had left her mouth did she realize what she had done. Too late, she slapped a hand over her lips, as if in doing so she could take back her momentous confession. Unfortunately, when she saw two stunned faces staring back at her, she realized there was no way she was going to escape this one.

“You didn’t,” Olivia said with a satisfied smile.

“You did?” Sylvie asked at the same time.

Zoey nodded. “I did. Friday night. But that was the only time. I honestly didn’t plan on it happening. It just sort of...happened. I don’t know how. I really can’t explain it. I just...”

“Hey, you don’t have to tell me,” Olivia said. “That’s pretty much how it was with Daniel that first time. But everything worked out great, didn’t it? We’ve got a perfectly good happily-ever-after going.”

“Me, too,” Sylvie volunteered.

“Yeah, but your first time with Chase was no accident,” her sister reminded her. “The only reason he showed up was because he was contractually obligated.”

“That wasn’t the
only
reason,” Sylvie said with an indignant sniff. “And besides, he and I have a perfectly good happily-ever-after going, too.”

Zoey studied each of the women carefully. “But you two got married to the men in question,” she said, as if marriage and happily-ever-afters were mutually exclusive conditions. After all, they were, weren’t they? Her marriage hadn’t exactly ended up happily. Quite the contrary.

“Of course we married the men in question,” Olivia said. “That’s what you do when you fall in love.”

“Not necessarily,” Zoey objected. “Not always.”

“Well, no, not if you’re stupid,” Sylvie conceded. “Not if you want to let something incredibly wonderful slip away.”

Zoey opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again, mostly because she couldn’t think of an effective protest to utter. What Sylvie said made sense, she thought. When two people fell in love, they did naturally want to spend the rest of their lives together. Therefore, what she felt for Jonas must not be love. Because she had no desire to be with him forever.

What the two of them had now, although hazy by definition, wasn’t a forever-after kind of thing. Friday night, she had experienced with Jonas a pleasure unlike anything she could have imagined. And of course, there was Jules, for whom she cared a very great deal. Zoey did enjoy being with Jonas and Juliana on a day-to-day basis. Her life had grown richer over the past two weeks because of their presence in it. But surely that wasn’t enough to constitute love, was it?

“So how did you know when you were in love with your husbands?” she asked her friends again.

Olivia thought for a moment before replying. “I think the exact moment was when he took me to that horrible biker bar and threatened to have his way with me on the pool table,” she finally said.

Sylvie nodded as if she understood perfectly. “With Chase, I think it was when he forced me to eat brussels sprouts.”

Zoey shook her head at the two women. “Some help you are.”

Olivia and Sylvie patted her on the back simultaneously.

“Any time we can be of service, Zoey,” Olivia said.

“You just let us know,” Sylvie concluded.

* * *

Zoey was emptying the dishwasher of clean baby bottles on Tuesday when Jonas came home from work early. He was accompanied by a woman Zoey had never seen before, a woman who was older than he by a good twenty years and who reminded Zoey a lot of her Aunt Celeste in the early days. Both women had ample torsos, lovely white hair tinged with pink, the sheen of support hose covering their legs and an obvious affinity for solid, no-nonsense shoes. He introduced the woman as Mrs. Standard, a name Zoey somehow found extremely appropriate for her, and said she was to be Juliana’s new nanny.

Just like that.

Zoey stood dumbfounded for a moment, looking at the two of them in silence, then forced herself to smile. “You found someone,” she managed to say. “That’s wonderful.” She made herself move forward to shake the other woman’s hand, her frozen smile beginning to feel frigid. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m a friend of Dr. Tate’s, Zoey Holland. Jonas, can I speak to you for a minute?” she added without missing a beat.

“Sure, Zoey,” he replied, not moving from Mrs. Standard’s side.

“Alone?” Zoey clarified, hoping the nod of reassurance she offered to the other woman at least
looked
genuine.

“Oh. Sure. Mrs. Standard?”

“I’ll just wait in the living room,” the older woman said with a smile that was, in fact, quite warm and friendly. Her voice was lightly accented with a Southern flavor, and Zoey could tell she was just dripping with pleasantness and decency. Damn her.

“Thanks,” Jonas said with a smile that was equally sunny.

God, all this smiling was going to make her sick to her stomach, Zoey thought. Nevertheless, all the smiles told her a lot. Mrs. Standard’s told her that the other woman was happy to have the job of nanny and felt perfectly capable of performing it. Jonas’s told her he trusted the other woman implicitly with his niece’s care, illustrated beyond question that he found Mrs. Standard to be a person of unimpeachable character. It told Zoey he had no doubt that he had found the perfect care giver for the little baby she had considered her responsibility for the past week and a half.

And it told her she wouldn’t be needed around here anymore.

In spite of the fact that Mrs. Standard was well out of earshot, Zoey kept her voice low as she asked, “Are you sure she’s right for the job?”

Jonas looked puzzled. “Of course she’s right for the job. Look at her. She’s perfect. She raised five kids of her own and has twelve grandchildren.”

“And they don’t keep her busy enough?”

“She and her husband moved up here from Tennessee, which is where the rest of her family still lives.’

Zoey nodded knowingly. “Oh, so in other words, she could be moving back there anytime, abandoning Juliana without a backward glance, thereby wreaking potentially irrevocable damage on her developmental growth.”

He narrowed his eyes somewhat at her charge, but shook his head slowly. “No, that won’t happen. Her husband is from South Jersey originally, and they’re retiring to his family home in Cherry Hill.”

She nodded again, more vigorously this time. “Oh, so in other words, they have plenty of money, and she doesn’t need to work and will quit as soon as the novelty wears off or she realizes how demanding a full-time job is, without a care for what her callous change of mind could do to Jules’s fragile self-esteem.”