A Baby For Lord Roderick. Emily Dalton

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СКАЧАТЬ started when Allie found out her fallopian tubes were nothing more than stringy cords of scar tissue and she’d never be able to have a child of her own. They hadn’t started when she found out her husband of half a dozen years had been sleeping with Rhonda Middleburger, the waitress at Bill and Nada’s Diner, nor did they begin when she and Doug divorced nine months ago. They’d started just when she thought she’d come to grips with the realities of her life.

      It had been New Year’s Eve. In the first moments of the new year she’d made an important resolution. She was going to quit feeling sorry for herself. So what if all she’d ever dreamed of beyond obtaining her medical license was to be a mother, to fill her house with kids and noise and the type of wonderful family chaos she’d enjoyed in the home she’d grown up in? She, Althea, was destined for something different. No children, no noise, and, apparently, no husband, either. But that was okay. She’d have a wonderful, full life anyway.

      “But first maybe I need to see a shrink about these dreams,” Allie grumbled to herself as she reached for the remote to turn off the TV. “It was weird enough when they were nice dreams, but—”

      Allie was startled by the sound of the doorbell ringing, then a fist hammering on the front door. She dropped the remote and hurried down the hall toward the front of the house, straightening her oversized, sleep-creased flannel shirt so that the buttons at least marched in a straight line between her breasts. She ran a hand through her short blond hair, but knew she must still look a mess. Whoever was on the other side of that door probably wouldn’t care, though, or even notice how she looked. As a doctor in a small town she’d been summoned from bed many times to take care of an emergency, but most people called first and told her they were coming.

      “Allie, you in there? Open up!”

      It was Doug’s voice. His tone wasn’t cajoling or tender, so he must be knocking on her door in his official capacity as Sheriff instead of for the usual reason he bothered her in the middle of the night.

      “I’m coming!” she called, flipping on the lights as she jogged through the living room, then made short work of the dead bolt lock that secured her front door. When she’d purchased the security item at Harv’s Hardware, Harv had just looked at her, wondering, she supposed, what she thought she needed with a dead bolt in a town where no one bothered to lock their doors. She marvelled now at the irony of willingly opening her door to the man she’d meant to keep out by installing the dead bolt in the first place.

      “Doug, what’s wrong?” The words were spoken as she opened the door, before she was able to look past her ex-husband’s tall, uniformed figure to an even taller man standing just behind him.

      Now she was speechless. It had been years since she’d last seen Liam McAllister in person. Twenty years. He’d been thirteen years old and she’d been eleven. He’d spent a week that summer with his grandmother and Allie had spied on him for hours at a time from the tip-top branches of the big cottonwood tree on the edge of Mary McAllister’s property.

      Since then Allie had heard of Liam, read about him and seen his pictures as part of numerous media stories. The public’s fascination with the former playboy aristocrat turned devoted husband seemed insatiable, and reporters had relentlessly stalked him through the sad and happy dramas of his life till he must have felt like screaming…or finding a secluded island to escape to.

      But why on earth to Annabella? To see Mary, she supposed. But what was he doing on her front porch in the middle of the night instead of Mary’s, and why did he have such a stricken expression in his eyes?

      “Allie, we’ve got a sick child here. Maybe dying.” Doug slipped past her frozen form and into the living room. Liam followed, along with a small, thin girl who clutched the back of his shirt. She appeared frightened and pale, but hardly at death’s door.

      Confused, Allie bent down and peered into the child’s pinched face. “Don’t you feel well, honey?”

      “It’s not Bea,” Liam said shortly. “It’s the baby.”

      Allie straightened up. She’d registered the name “Bea.” She’d read that Liam had a five-year-old daughter named Beatrice, nicknamed Busy Bea, but she’d never seen a picture of her because Liam refused to allow her to be photographed. She’d read about and sympathized with his tragic losses a year ago, but since his premature son had died along with his wife that terrible day, Allie wasn’t sure what baby Liam was talking about.

      She gave a helpless little shrug. “What baby?”

      Allie had been so shocked to see Liam, she hadn’t noticed that he was clutching what looked like a balled-up sweater in his arms. Now he tipped his bundle toward her and turned back the sweater to reveal a baby, sallow and still, its umbilical stump raw from an obviously recent birth. Allie’s breath caught in her throat, rattled there for a stunned, horrified moment, then gushed out with her next words.

      “Bring him back here to my office.”

      Chapter Two

      All business now, Allie jogged ahead of them to the back of the house where the three rooms that constituted her home office were located adjacent to the den, where she’d just been sleeping in front of the television and dreaming of a baby. The dream coinciding with a real baby’s arrival at her office would seem weird…if she didn’t dream about babies most of the time. She flipped on the bright overhead lights, making everyone wince and blink, then immediately moved to a large stainless steel sink and turned on the hot water tap.

      “Whose baby is it?” she asked over her shoulder as she soaped up her hands and rinsed them in scalding water.

      “We don’t know,” Liam answered. His brows drew together as he closely observed her movements. “I found him in a rubbish bin.”

      “The Dumpster behind Johnsons’ Gas ’n Go,” Doug clarified.

      Allie’s whole body revolted at the idea of someone putting a newborn baby in a Dumpster to die a cold, miserable death. She was again stunned into momentary silence and immobility. Liam’s frown stirred her to action, though, and she quickly grabbed a wad of paper towels and dried her hands. “When?”

      “Fifteen minutes ago,” Liam said, then abruptly, “What’s taking you so long? Shouldn’t you be doing something?”

      “I am doing something,” Allie replied calmly, attributing his uncivil tone to worry and fear. “You don’t want him to get an infection on top of everything else, do you? Put him on the table.”

      Allie noticed a muscle ticking in Liam’s jaw as he laid the baby on the examining table. Then, without being told, he spread his hand on the baby’s midsection to keep him from accidentally rolling off—unlikely with a newborn, but still you couldn’t be too careful—leaving Allie free to rummage through her supply drawer.

      She ripped open a sterile plastic bag containing an infant-sized oxygen mask, attached the tubing to the free-standing tank by the table, adjusted the flow and placed the mask over the baby’s nose and mouth.

      “Hold this over his face, while I adjust the strap.”

      Liam obeyed instantly, one hand holding the mask in place while the other hand remained securely on the baby’s stomach.

      Allie found it rather unnerving ordering Liam around, and she didn’t suppose he was at all used to it. But she had learned to be as bossy as necessary СКАЧАТЬ