Diagnosis: Daddy (Doctors in Training 1)

“I know, it seems crazy,” he admitted. “But I just got the feeling that she’s repressing a lot.”

“Of course she is. How could she not be with all that’s happened to her lately?”

“Maybe she needs to be in counseling or something. I mean, I’m certainly no expert on kids and grief. I don’t have the slightest clue what I should be doing with her.”

“I’m no expert either, but I know that children need love and acceptance. You can give her that.”

“Can I?” His eyes looked tortured. “I don’t even know what I feel right now. I look at her and I think, this is my daughter. My little girl. And yet I don’t know her. I don’t know her favorite foods, or colors, or what she’s thinking when she looks back at me so seriously.”

“Those things will come with time, for both of you. She doesn’t know you either,” she reminded him. “But she seems willing to give you a chance.”

“She needs someone who can spend time with her. Who really has the time to get to know her. Someone who isn’t studying sixteen hours a day and worrying about studying the other eight hours.”

“That’s why I’m here. When you’re busy, I’ll take care of her. I’ll help you get to know her.”

His fingers tightened over hers. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you’re doing. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without you.”

She shrugged a little. “You’d have managed.”

But probably not without quitting medical school, she thought. Not without giving up his dream. How could she not do everything she could to prevent that? She loved him—as a dear friend, of course. She wanted him to have it all. Didn’t everyone want that for their closest friends? She was sure he felt the same way about her, even if there hadn’t been an occasion for him to prove it the way she was for him.

He searched her face. “This doesn’t scare you at all?”

Her laugh was shakier than she would have liked. “Come on, you know me better than that. I had a moment of panic in her bedroom. I came very close to bolting and telling you you’re on your own, pal. She just looked so darned vulnerable and tiny.”

For some reason, her confession actually seemed to help him relax a little. Maybe he’d just needed to know that his fears were reasonable. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“We can do this, Connor,” she said, pulling her hand away with a last bracing pat to his arm. “You’re going to be a good father to her, and I’ll figure out how to be a nanny until she’s all settled in. By the time I’m ready to start grad school, you and she will be very comfortable with each other, and she’ll have a ton of new friends at school and she’ll be old enough to leave with a part-time caretaker after school and on weekends. You aren’t the only single parent in medical school, I bet. Somehow or other, it will work out.”

She wasn’t sure why she’d felt the need to remind him—maybe both of them—that this arrangement was only temporary. He frowned for a moment, then moistened his lips and nodded. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Thanks for the pep talk.”

“Any time. Now, why don’t I make you some hot tea? It’ll help you relax while you get back to your studying.”

He leaned over to brush his lips across her cheek, much the same way he had with Alexis. “Thanks, Mia. That sounds great.”

Resisting an impulse to press her hand to the spot his lips had touched, she nodded and moved toward the kitchen without saying anything more.

Something woke Mia in the middle of the night. She opened her eyes and squinted into the darkness, trying to decide what it had been. Was she still adjusting to her new surroundings? Hearing the creaks of an unfamiliar house? Or had there been something else?

Hearing a sound again, she slid her feet out of the bed. She thought it had come from Alexis’s room.

Without bothering to don a robe over her brushed satin pajamas, she walked barefoot through her door and into the hallway. She pushed open the door to Alexis’s room quietly and peeked inside, trying to identify the sound that had awakened her. Was the child having a bad dream? That would certainly be understandable.

The sound came again, and she recognized it this time with a pang through her heart. Alexis was cryi

ng softly into her pillow.

“Oh, baby, it’s okay,” she said, hurrying across the room to gather the little girl into her arms. “Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.”

Alexis burrowed into Mia’s arms, tucking her head tightly beneath Mia’s chin. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“No, don’t be sorry. It’s okay to cry when you need to.”

Sniffling, Alexis murmured, “Aunt Tricia didn’t like it when I cried. She said it made her sad.”

“It’s okay to be sad sometimes,” Mia replied, instinctively rocking the child against her. “Especially when you’ve lost someone you loved. I cry when I’m sad, too.”

Her breath catching, Alexis pulled back just a little, her tear-streaked face just visible in the bluish night light. “You do?”