Her Kind of Hero (21 page)

M
icah was ushered back into Dr. Lou Coltrain's office through the back door, before she started seeing her patients. He shook hands with her and took the seat she indicated in her office. She sat down behind her desk, blond and attractive and amused.

“Thanks for taking time to see me this morning,” he said. He noted her wry look and chuckled. “Is my head on backward?” he asked.

“You may wish it was,” she replied with twinkling dark eyes. “I think I know why you're here. At least two people have hinted to me that Callie Kirby's having what sounds like morning sickness.”

He sighed and smiled. “Yes.”

“And you're the culprit, unless I miss my guess. Are you here to discuss alternatives?” she asked, suddenly serious.

“I am not!” he said at once. “I want a baby as much as Callie will, when she knows about it.”

“When she knows? She doesn't suspect?” she asked, wide-eyed.

He grimaced. “Well, it's like this. Lopez and his thugs—you
know about them?” When she nodded, he sighed. “I was careless and they almost got her a second time in Nassau. She knocked her assailant out with a shovel, but she was really shaken up afterward. I gave her a sedative.” His high cheekbones colored and he averted his eyes. “She got amorous and I was already upset and on the edge, and I'd abstained for so damned long. And…well…”

“Then what?” she asked, reading between the lines with avid curiosity.

He shifted in the chair, still avoiding eye contact. “She doesn't remember anything. She thinks it was an erotic dream.”

Her intake of breath was audible. “In all my years of medicine…” she began.

“I haven't had that many, but it's news to me, too. The thing is, I'm sure she's pregnant, but she'll have a heart attack if you tell her she is. I have to break it to her. But first I have to find a way to convince her to marry me,” he added. “So that she won't spend the rest of our lives together believing that the baby forced me into marriage. It's not like that,” he said. He rubbed at a spot on his slacks so that he wouldn't have to meet Lou's intent stare. “She's everything. Everything in the world.”

Lou smiled. He wasn't saying the words, but she was hearing them. He loved Callie. So it was like that. The mercenary was caught in his own trap. And, amazingly, he didn't want to get out of it. He wanted the baby!

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“I want you to do a blood test and see if she really is pregnant. But if she is, I want you to make some excuse about the results being inconclusive, and you can give her a prescription for some vitamins and ask her to come back in two weeks.”

“She'll worry that it's something fatal,” Lou advised. “People do.”

“Tell her you think it's stress, from her recent ordeal,” he persisted. “Please,” he added, finding the word hard to say even now. “I just need a little time.”

“Just call me Dr. Cupid Coltrain,” she murmured. “I guess I'll get drummed out of the AMA, but how can I say no?”

“You're in the business of saving lives,” he reminded her. “This will save three of them.”

“I hear you're moving back here,” she said.

“I am. I'm going to raise thoroughbreds,” he added, smiling. “And act as a consultant for Eb Scott when he needs some expertise. That way, I'll not only settle down, I'll have enough of a taste of the old life to satisfy me if things get dull. I might even finish my residency and hit you and Coltrain up for a job.”

“Anytime,” she said, grinning. “I haven't had a day off in two years. I'd like to take my son to the zoo and not have to leave in the middle of the lions on an emergency call.”

He chuckled. “Okay. That's a dare.”

She stood up when he did and shook hands again. “You're not what I expected, Mr. Steele,” she said after a minute. “I had some half-baked idea that you'd never give up your line of work, that you'd want Callie to do something about the baby.”

“I do. I want her to have it,” he said with a smile. “And a few more besides, if we're lucky. Callie and I were only children. I'd like several, assorted.”

“So would we, but one's all we can handle at the moment. Of course, if you finish your residency and stand for your medical license, that could change,” she added, tongue-in-cheek.

He grinned. “I guess it's contagious.”

She nodded. “Very. Now get out of here. I won't tell Callie I've ever seen you in my life.”

“Thanks. I really mean it.”

“Anything for a future colleague,” she returned with a grin of her own.

 

Callie worried all morning about the doctor's appointment, but she relaxed when she was in Lou's office and they'd drawn blood and Lou had checked her over.

“It sounds to me like the aftereffects of a very traumatic experience,” Lou said with a straight face. “I'm prescribing a multiple vitamin and I want you to come back and see me in two weeks.”

“Will the tests take that long?” Callie asked.

“They might.” Lou sighed. “You're mostly tired, Callie. You should go to bed early and eat healthy. Get some sun, too. And try not to worry. It's nothing serious, I'm positive of that.”

Callie smiled her relief. “Thanks, Dr. Coltrain!” she said. “Thanks, so much!”

“I hear your stepbrother's moving back to town,” Lou said as she walked Callie to the door of the cubicle. “I guess you'll be seeing a lot of him now.”

Callie flushed. “It looks that way.” Her eyes lit up. “He's so different. I never could have imagined Micah settling for small-town life.”

“Men are surprising people,” Lou said. “You never know what they're capable of.”

“I suppose so. Well, I'll see you in two weeks.”

“Count on it,” Lou said, patting her on the shoulder. “Lots of rest. And take those vitamins,” she added, handing over the prescription.

 

Callie felt as if she were walking on air. No health problems, just the aftereffects of the kidnapping. That was good news indeed. And when Micah phoned and asked her to come out to the ranch with him and see the house, she was over the moon.

He picked her up after work at her apartment house. “I took Dad out there this morning,” he told her with a grin. “He's going to move in with me at the weekend.”

Callie's heart jumped. “This weekend?”

He nodded, glancing at her. “You could move in, too.”

Her heart jumped, but she knew he didn't mean that the way it sounded. “I like living in town,” she lied.

He smiled to himself. He knew what she was refusing. She wasn't about to live in sin with him in Jacobsville, Texas.

He reached for her hand and linked her fingers with his. “Did you go see the doctor?”

“Yes. She said it was stress. I guess it could be. At least, it's nothing extreme.”

“Thank God,” he said.

“Yes.”

He turned down onto a long winding graveled road. Minutes later, they pulled up in front of a big white Victorian house with a turret room and a new tin roof. “It's really old-fashioned and some of the furniture will have to be replaced,” he said, helping her out of the car. “But it's got potential. There's a nice rose garden that only needs a little work, and a great place out to
the side for a playground. You know, a swing set and all those nice plastic toys kids love so much.”

She stared at him. “You have kids?” she asked with an impish smile.

“Well, not yet,” he agreed. “But they're definitely in the picture. Don't you like kids?” he asked with apparent carelessness.

“I love them,” she said, watching him warily. “I didn't think you did.”

He smiled. “I'll love my own, Callie,” he said, his fingers contracting in hers. “Just as you'll love them.”

“I'll love your kids?” she blurted out.

He couldn't quite meet her eyes. He stared down toward the big barn a few hundred yards behind the house and he linked his fingers tighter with hers. “Have you ever thought,” he said huskily, “about making a baby with me?”

Her heart went right up into her throat. She flushed scarlet. But it wasn't embarrassment. It was pure, wild, joy.

He looked down at her then. Everything she thought, felt, was laid out there for him to see. He caught his breath at the depth of those emotions she didn't know he could see. It was more than he'd ever dared hope for.

“I want a baby, Callie,” he whispered huskily. He framed her red face in his hands and bent to kiss her eyelids closed. His fingers were unsteady as he held her where he wanted her, while his mouth pressed tender, breathless little kisses all over her soft skin. “I want one so much. You'd make…the most wonderful little mother,” he bit off, choked with emotion. “I could get up with you in the night, when the baby cried, and take turns walking the floor. We could join the PTA later. We could make
memories that would last us forever, Callie—you and me and a little boy or a little girl.”

She slid her arms tight under his and around him and held on for dear life, shaking with delighted surprise. He wasn't joking. He really meant it. Her eyes closed. She felt tears pouring down her cheeks.

He felt them against his thin silk shirt and he smiled as he reached in his pocket for a handkerchief. He drew her away from him and dabbed at the tears, bending to kiss away the traces. “We can build a big playground here,” he continued, as if he hadn't said anything earthshaking. “Both of us were only kids. I think two or three would be nice. And Dad would love being a grandfather. He can stay with us and the kids will make him young again.”

“I'd love that. I never dreamed you'd want to have a family or settle down. You said…”

He kissed the words back against her lips. “Freedom is only a word,” he told her solemnly. “It stopped meaning anything to me when I knew that Lopez had you.” The memory of that horror was suddenly on his face, undisguised. “I couldn't rest until I knew where you were. I planned an assault in a day that should have taken a week of preparation. And then I went in after you myself, because I couldn't trust anyone to do it but me.” His hands clenched on her shoulders. “When I saw you like that, saw what that animal had done to you…” He stopped and swallowed hard. “My God, if he'd killed you, I'd have cut him to pieces! And then,” he whispered, folding her close, shivering with the depth of his feelings, “I'd have picked you up in my arms and I'd have jumped off the balcony into the rocks with
you. Because I wouldn't want to live in a world…that didn't hold us both. I couldn't live without you. Not anymore.”

There was a faint mist in his black eyes. She could barely see it for the mist in her own. She choked on a sob as she looked up at him. “I love you,” she whispered brokenly. “You're my whole life. I never dared to hope that you might care for me, too!”

He folded her against him and held her close, rocking her, his cheek on her dark hair as he counted his blessings. They overwhelmed him. She loved him. His eyes closed. It seemed that love could forgive anything, even his years of unkindness. “I wish I could take back every single hurtful thing I've ever done or said to you.”

She smiled tearfully against his broad chest. “It's all right, Micah. Honest it is. Do you really want babies?” she asked dreamily, barely aware of anything he'd said.

“More than anything in the world!”

“I won't sleep with you unless you marry me,” she said firmly.

He chuckled. “I'll marry you as soon as we can get a license. But,” he added on a long sigh, drawing back, “I'm afraid it's too late for the sleeping together part.”

Her thin eyebrows arched up. “What?”

He traced around her soft lips. “Callie, that erotic dream you had…” He actually flushed. “Well, it wasn't a dream,” he added with a sheepish grin.

Her eyes widened endlessly. All those explicit things he'd done and said, that she'd done and said, that had seemed like something out of a fantasy. The fatigue, the spotting, the lack of a period, the…

“Oh my God, I'm pregnant!” she exclaimed in a high-pitched tone.

“Oh my God, yes, you are, you incredible woman!” he said with breathless delight. “I'm sorry, but I went to Lou Coltrain behind your back and begged her not to tell you until we came to an understanding. I was scared to death that you'd be off like a shot if you knew it too soon.” He shook his head at her surprise. “I've never wanted anything as much as I want this child—except you,” he added huskily. “I can't make it without you, Callie. I don't want to try.” He glanced around them at the house and the stable. “This is where we start. You and me, a new business, a new life—in more ways than one,” he added with a tender hand on her soft abdomen. “I know I'm something of a risk. But I'd never have made the offer to come here unless I'd been sure, very sure, that I could make it work. I want you more than I want the adventure and the freedom. I love you with all my heart. Is that enough?”