The Doctor's Secret Son

“Did you want to?”

* * *

Good question, and one that Trace had asked himself a thousand times in the years that had passed since he’d last seen this woman. What would he have done differently had he not been committed?

“I didn’t allow myself to consider strings as a possibility.” Which was what he always came back to when his mind got to wondering. Not that he would ever have settled down, but he would have liked more time with Chrissie, to have been able to let the fire between them burn out naturally.

Her pretty face pinched and her gaze averted. “Which explains why you never asked for a phone number.”

Although he was sure she didn’t want them to, her words conveyed that she’d been hurt. That he’d hurt her stung.

“There was no point in my asking.”

“I see.” Her lower lip disappeared again.

“I don’t think you do.” He lifted her chin and stared into the greenest eyes he’d ever looked into. “I was leaving the country, had volunteered for a crazy assignment. Putting you or any woman through the stress of a relationship when I was over there, especially when nothing would ever have come from that relationship anyway—it wouldn’t have been fair.”

Her chin trembled beneath his fingertips and Trace wanted to kiss her so badly his insides ached. They were alone in the medical tent, but someone could walk in. Which didn’t overly concern him. He’d seen and done too much to let something as irrelevant as someone seeing him kiss Chrissie get to him. But Chrissie was still sending mixed signals.

One minute hot, the next cold.

When he kissed her next, he wanted her to want it as much as he did, not to be second-guessing herself.

He would kiss her again. Soon. She might not want to admit it, but she wanted the kiss as much as he did. Everything in her expression, her stance, her eyes, said so.

“Well, I guess you’re a damn saint, then, eh?”

There went the cold again. And the hurt.

“Far from it.”

Looking away, she shrugged. “Not to hear Agnes tell it.”

“Agnes is biased. She’s my godmother.”

Chrissie’s eyes widened. Obviously Agnes hadn’t told her that part.

“Her husband, Bud, and my father grew up in the same neighborhood and were best friends. Somehow, that friendship survived my father’s personality all these years.”

“Something wrong with your father’s personality?”

Ha, now there was a tricky question if ever there was one.

“Most people would say he’s near perfect.”

Her eyebrow arched. “But not you?”

Not a subject he wanted to discuss any more than he wanted to discuss Sudan or Yemen or Kerry. Maybe less so.

“So, about those Braves...”

He watched emotions play across her face, but she let any further questions she had go. How many times had he closed his eyes and recalled her face? How many times when the whole world seemed to have gone crazy had he closed his eyes and just remembered everything about her?

“Yeah, well, apparently you don’t recall, or maybe you never knew—” her chin tilted upward “—but I’m not a fan of baseball.”

Well, no one was perfect even if in his mind she was close.

“That’s un-American,” he teased.