From Doctor...to Daddy (4 page)

Erika has a child,
he reminded himself.

Maybe Corey was right and it was time for him to leave his bunker…to bury his regrets and the guilt that he'd failed to save his son. He remembered again the way he'd felt at the Hitching Post with Erika in his arms. Would she say yes if he asked her out again?

He might just have to take a chance and find out.

D
illon slowed on Thursday morning when he spotted Erika at the coffee bar not far from the main lobby. Usually he brewed a pot of coffee in his suite. This morning, however, he'd needed to go to his office, get to work…and forget.

He'd been awake most of the night, remembering the day his wife had left. She'd said, “Toby's gone and there's nothing holding us together anymore. I want a new life. I don't want to be married to a doctor.”

He could have told her he'd leave medicine. He could have told her he'd work in management at Traub Industries and build the portfolio he'd inherited. In the end, he'd known if she couldn't accept his need to
be
a doctor, their marriage had truly collapsed.

With the old memories still ricocheting in his head and Erika standing about ten feet away, he decided he might need a
double
espresso this morning.

When Erika turned from the cashier, a tall coffee in her hand, he noticed the navy suit she wore projecting professionalism and decorum. It was a different style than the one she'd worn yesterday, with larger lapels…more fitted at her waist. Her very slim waist. The white silk blouse had a V-neckline. It was quite sedate, but the sedateness itself was alluring. She'd pulled her hair back from her face and secured it in a tight chignon, but there again the severity of the style just showed off the beauty of her face and her dark eyes.

Dillon checked his watch. When his gaze met hers, he motioned to one of the small, black wrought-iron tables. “I'll get my coffee and join you.” He really didn't want to give her a chance to say no.

Indecision flickered across her face, but then she nodded and crossed to one of the tables, one a bit removed from the others in a shadowed corner. Did she not want anyone to see them together? Because of all that gossip Stacy had mentioned?

When he joined her, she was seated, staring into her coffee as if it held the schedule for her day. He didn't sit across from her, but rather beside her. She didn't move her chair away.

As she looked up at him, he asked, “So do you drink straight coffee or one of those exotic drinks?”

That's obviously not what she'd expected him to ask. “Do you really want to know?”

His arm was on the table and he leaned a little closer to her. “Yes, I want to know…in case I pick up coffee for the two of us some morning.”

“I think that's on
my
roster of duties.”

He shrugged. “Not necessarily. It's simply a courtesy. So what do you drink?”

“A double-shot latte. And you?”

“Straight espresso.”

“Now that that's settled, why did you really ask me to join you for coffee?” she asked him, choosing to be direct.

“Because I like you.”

Again, surprise showed on her face. “You always say the unexpected.”

“Maybe that's because you think men are predictable.”

Tilting her head, she studied him more assessingly. “So you're telling me you're not like most men.”

“I don't know. What do you expect from most men?”

“That's beside the point.” She lowered her gaze to her coffee again as if she didn't want to reveal any secrets.

Even sitting next to her like this, he could feel the attraction between them. He wouldn't let her put him in the same category as other men in her life. “That's
exactly
the point. You never told me why you ran away from me at the Hitching Post.”

“I didn't run away,” she protested, her chin lifting, her eyes flashing a bit, revealing passion he realized he'd like to tap.

He liked her flash. “You just evaded my question. Evading is pretty much the same as running away.” If he challenged her, he might get to the root of the problem.

Her grip tightened on her coffee. “All right. It was the way you talked about possibly spending time with your cousins' children. You were so detached…like you were saying the words but you didn't really mean them.”

She was perceptive…way
too
perceptive. After practicing the past few years, he thought he had his neutral
face down pat. But this wasn't the place to tell her why he tried to be detached. To tell her about Toby…and Megan. “How did you interpret the detachment?”

She weighed his question, apparently understanding he was giving nothing away. “It meant you don't want the responsibility of children because you believe they're a burden. You don't necessarily ‘like' kids.”

“I like kids,” he said quietly.

“And parenthood is a huge responsibility.”

He certainly didn't disagree with her on that. But he wanted to keep this conversation about
her.
“Do you believe most men don't want the responsibility of fatherhood?”

After a few heartbeats, she finally replied, “I know two in particular who didn't—my father and Emilia's father. I'm sure you've heard gossip.”

“Actually, I haven't. I had no idea you had a daughter. Why do you keep her a secret?”

“She's not a secret. Almost everyone in Thunder Canyon knows about her. But I try to separate my professional life from my personal life. I haven't always done that and I found it's better this way.”

“No pictures on your desk? No mention of her?”

Erika set her cup on the table and her hand fluttered toward him. “I don't need a picture of her to hold her in my heart twenty-four hours a day.”

“So essentially, you were just keeping her a secret from
me
.”

“Dillon, she's not a secret. I just—”

“You just didn't trust me enough to tell me about her. You didn't trust me enough to believe I'd understand what had happened.”

Her gaze didn't evade his. “It's not as if we know each other.”

Although he was physically attracted to Erika, there were so many other qualities he liked about her, too. Her blunt honesty was one of them. So he was just as bluntly honest. “Do you
want
to get to know me?”

It wasn't difficult for Dillon to see the turmoil Erika was in and he guessed one of the reasons why. “This isn't a boss-secretary situation, you know. You're a free agent. You're coordinating Frontier Days. You're just helping me out with my schedule and phone calls while I'm here.”

Her brown eyes conveyed her concern. “You can still turn in a report about me after you leave that can affect my future.”

Keeping his gaze on hers, he assured her, “I could write that report now and be done with it. It took me about an hour on our first day together to learn you're organized, you practically have a photographic memory and you're a perfectionist. What more could any employer want?”

“So you'd write a letter of recommendation now and file it away until you leave?”

“Yes. If doing that would mean you'll have dinner again with me tonight.”

“I can't.”

Dillon kept his expression neutral, denying how disappointed he felt. Maybe he was all wrong about the two of them connecting. Maybe he was the only one aware of the electricity in the air when they were sitting close together like this. But then he leaned back in his chair, leveled his gaze on her and knew he wasn't wrong. Still, this was her call. He wasn't going to pressure her.

“Okay,” he said, pushing his chair back. “That's settled then.”

But before he could pick up his cup of coffee, her
hand clasped his forearm. The electricity was there all right—sparking, buzzing, tingling.

“I have a commitment tonight,” she explained. “It's a potluck dinner with some of the women in my neighborhood. But…” She gave him an intriguing half smile.

“But?” he asked, denying the fact his heart rate had sped up.

“But you're welcome to come along.”

“Won't I be the only guy?”

“Is that too much of a challenge?” she teased.

He knew she wasn't teasing entirely. It didn't take a genius to realize this was probably some kind of test. She was throwing down a gauntlet. He'd spent much of his life picking up gauntlets. The future was always more exciting when he did.

“A potluck dinner sounds great. What can I bring?”

 

That evening Dillon's rented luxury sedan followed Erika's small Ford to an older section of Thunder Canyon, possibly an original section. The row houses—a mixture of brick, clapboard and stone—jutted in and out along tree-lined streets.

Erika pulled up in front of a narrow redbrick house that rose two stories. A windowsill box of colorful mums decorated the front window. The house next door, in gray brick instead of red, had a similar box at its front window.

As Erika stepped out of her car, Dillon joined her. She said, “I have to pop inside my place first to get my contribution to the supper, then we'll go over and gather up Emilia.”

“Your mom lives next door?”

“Yes. It's more than convenient. It's wonderful really.
For a while I lived there with her and she wanted me to stay. But I needed a place of my own. This one went up for sale right when I was thinking of buying a house. I knew it was fate. It took every penny of my savings for a down payment, but I wanted something I could invest in and have for a lifetime, maybe even leave to Emilia someday. It's not very big, but it's perfect for the two of us.”

She walked up the two front steps and unlocked the door.

Leaning against the wrought-iron railing, Dillon asked, “Mind if I come inside?”

“Not at all.”

When Dillon walked in, he wasn't sure what to expect. But right away he could see this little gem of a house was something special.

She saw him looking down at the gleaming wood floors and said, “They just needed to be refinished. I did it myself with a little help from our neighbor.”

“You do home improvement?” he asked with a smile.

“I watch the Home and Garden channel when I have a chance. I've learned a lot. I also go to the local hardware store and the clerks there fill me in on what I don't know.”

The living room was to the right, off the small foyer. A braided rug in blue and green and yellow was surrounded by a comfortable-looking sofa and an easy chair in the same colors. Green throw pillows fringed in yellow picked up the colors in the curtains. An entire wall was devoted to framed photos of Emilia. Dillon felt the familiar lance to his heart as he remembered the photographs of Toby that had decorated his and Megan's living room.

Shaking off the shadows, he noticed a red washbasket full of toys that sat in one corner accompanied by a milk crate that held books. Passing the stairway to the second floor, they headed through the dining room into the kitchen.

“If you haven't guessed, I like blue and yellow a lot,” she said with a wide smile.

Dillon glanced around the room at the yellow cupboards with blue accents, a round table with a high chair positioned at it and two shelves of cookbooks in a corner hutch. A circular, stained-glass window let in jewel-colored light even as the sun descended. The overall effect of the first floor was charming, and he could imagine Erika happily running after Emilia, bringing laughter into all of the rooms.

“What?” she asked him when she caught him staring at her.

“You're full of surprises. I never thought you'd dabble in paint or hardware.”

“I'm a single mom, Dillon. I do what I have to do.”

Yes, she was a single mom. He remembered being a dad. It sounded as if she'd always put her daughter first. He hadn't put his son first. Not until it was too late.

She unplugged the Crock-Pot on her counter. “We'll just put this in the backseat of the car. It will stay hot.”

Dillon crossed to the kitchen counter to help her. Standing beside her, looking down on her, smelling that wonderful scent from her hair, he wanted to kiss her more badly than he wanted to do anything else. She was looking up at him as if she might want it, too. But he wouldn't rush anything with Erika. In fact, he shouldn't even think about starting anything with Erika. She had a child. They lived in two different states.

She has a child,
he repeated to himself.

“I'll carry it,” he said, his voice a bit husky.

“It's beef stew,” she said. “Most of us try to stretch out paychecks so you'll see lots of casseroles, I'm afraid.”

“There's nothing wrong with that.”

She quirked up her brows. “Just how often do you eat casseroles?”

He finally had to admit, “Not often. But that's not because I don't like them. I just usually grab some takeout supper, or eat at a restaurant.”

“No cooking skills?” she joked.

“No time to use cooking skills. That probably sounds like an excuse, but when I get home at nine o'clock some nights, the last thing I want to do is cook.” With sudden insight, he said, “That's probably the same way you feel many nights, too, only you have a daughter to think about, so you don't have a choice.”

Her eyes lingered on his. He thought her gaze dropped to his lips, stayed there a few seconds.

She brought her gaze to his again, then blushed a little. “Not many men understand that.”

“Maybe the men you've known don't understand it, but I know men who do—Dax and D.J. particularly. Even
I
know that once children are in the picture, everything else should revolve around them.”

They came a little closer to each other, toe-to-toe. If he set down the stew, it would be easy to wrap his arms around her and bring her in for a kiss. But he knew this wasn't the place or time to start something.

Still, he had the feeling something had
already
started.

“Speaking of children…” Erika joked, turning away to make sure everything was in order before they left. “If you put that in my car, I'll get Emilia. Sometimes it
takes a little while to coax her into her coat. She can be stubborn.”