Daddy By Choice. Paula Detmer Riggs

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      Preliminary decisions made, the hard angry knot beneath his breastbone loosened. When he figured he had enough control to keep his voice steady, he picked up the phone and punched out Boyd’s private number.

      “MacAuley, here, and you have two seconds to state your business before I’m outta here.”

      Luke grinned. Poor guy sounded so harried he almost hated to add to his stress level. “Jarrod here, and I can state it in one. Cancel the surgery.”

      “The hell you say!” The bellow in his ear had him flinching.

      “You heard me.”

      “Give me one decent reason.”

      He could give the guy a dozen. About how he still woke up in the middle of the night with his heart pounding and Maddy’s small white face shimmering in his head. About how he hated the selfish ass he’d been at eighteen. About how he’d sworn to become a better man. But all those decent reasons came down to one.

      “I promised a lady a miracle, and I intend to do my damnedest to give it to her,” he said quietly before hanging up.

      Chapter 3

      “Is this your first?” Esther asked as she set out instruments.

      Madelyn pressed her hand to the gaping front of the paper gown and wondered how a woman was supposed to maintain her poise with her bare feet dangling two feet above the floor. “No, my second. But there are complications, and it’s possible I’ll deliver too early.”

      “Don’t worry, Mrs. Foster. Dr. Jarrod will take good care of you.” The nurse covered the instruments before adding with a grin, “He might look like he just ambled out of a Louis L’Amour novel, and sometimes he can be a little abrupt when he’s worn-out, but he’s the best doctor I’ve ever known—and I’ve known plenty.”

      Madelyn returned Esther’s smile with one of her own. In her heightened state of nervous tension, her lips felt numb—and just a little shaky. “Thanks, I—”

      A sharp rap on the door had her jerking her head toward the sound. A split second later the door opened and Luke walked in. It was still there, that indefinable something that always made her think of wind racing across a barren mesa. Her lungs seemed suddenly starved for oxygen. Jet lag, she told herself firmly. Combined with stress.

      “Ready for me, ladies?” he asked, his gaze sliding past her to his nurse.

      “Ready, Doctor,” Esther replied as she snapped on the lamp attached to a long gooseneck.

      Suddenly nervous, Madelyn shivered, drawing another quick gaze from those intense blue eyes.

      “Cold?”

      “More like apprehensive.” She licked dry lips and tried to ignore the ugly stirrups that Esther had just clicked into an upright position.

      His expression was surprisingly sympathetic. “Took me a bad fall once and spent a little time hooked up in traction. Darn near made me crazy dangling there with my legs halfway to the ceiling.”

      He slipped his hand into the glove Esther held for him. “You ever been in the Pacific Northwest before?” he asked.

      “No.” Madelyn’s reply came out thin, and she cleared her throat. “It’s very…uh, lush. It seems like we flew over acres and acres of trees. And then, of course, there are all those rivers. Well, two here in the city, according to the guidebook I read on the plane. The Willamette and the Columbia. It was pretty hazy, so I didn’t really get a good look, though.” She realized she was babbling and clamped her mouth shut.

      “Darn cold, too, for someone born and reared in desert country.” He plunged his other hand into the matching glove, then flexed his long fingers. “Took me a couple of years before I stopped feeling like a Popsicle six months out of every year. Esther still knits me sweaters for Christmas. Soft as a baby’s bottom they are. And as pretty as they are soft. Had me three offers to buy the last one right off my back last year.”

      Esther did her best not to preen. “You keep on gorging yourself on that junk food and I’m gonna have to buy another skein for this year,” she muttered as she uncovered the instruments.

      Tensing, Madelyn fought the urge to scramble down from the table and hightail it all the way back to her hotel. A bubble of laughter caught in her throat as she pictured the unflappable always ladylike Mrs. Madelyn Smith Foster racing through an Oregon drizzle in her paper dress.

      “Lie back, please,” Luke said, his tone as impersonal as Doc’s when he was performing a similar exam.

      Paper rustled as she swung her legs to the table. His arm supported her as she lay down, his strength as intimidating as it was reassuring. “Comfortable?” he asked, sliding his arm free.

      Her skin tingled from the brief pressure of his hard muscles. She put it down to heightened nerves. “Fine, thank you.”

      Her tummy made a nice little mound, and she concentrated on studying that sweet bulge. Beneath the gown, she was naked. As naked as the first time they’d made love.

      “I can’t do this,” she said, her voice catching. “I thought I could but—”

      “Maddy, it’s all right,” he said, his voice soothing. “We can reschedule, give you some time.”

      Esther was right, Madelyn thought. Even garbed in the starched white coat, with a stethoscope casually looped around his neck and his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, he was every inch a man of the Old West. Like a working cowboy, he had skin permanently darkened from years of working cattle and mending fences under the hot sun, his temples scored by squint lines and an implacable strength etched into the weathered lines of his face.

      When he’d competed, he’d worn a white straw Stetson, pulled low and tight against the whiplash snap of his head when the bronc twisted and whirled and bucked. One of the good guys, she’d thought then. A hero.

      “Do you still ride?” she asked before she realized how silly that must sound. But she didn’t care, not when panic was licking at her again.

      “Not much anymore, although I still stable a couple of horses on a little place near Hillsboro. Two pretty ladies, both palominos.” He hooked one foot around a stool on wheels and pulled it closer. “A couple of interns from the hospital exercise them for me a couple times a week,” he said as he lowered himself with a surprising stiffness onto the padded black seat. She smelled him then, wind, sky, sun and a hint of soap.

      “Molly—she’s the mom—is part Arab and real high-strung. Last time I paid her a visit, she got it into her head I didn’t love her anymore and took a chunk outta my shoulder.” He shook his head, his gaze flicking to the nurse, who looked surprisingly relaxed. “How many stitches did I have?”

      “Fourteen, and you hollered bloody murder the whole time.”

      “Well, heckfire, woman. You were using a railroad spike, instead of a needle. And jammin’ it in real good, too.”

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