The Army Doc's Baby Secret

Because there was no doubt that Seth was his son.

And she’d been a couple of months into her medical hearts-and-minds tour of duty when his black ops mission had gone wrong. Which meant the boy had to be around four and a half. Tia would have known she was pregnant. She had to have known.

Surely?

He didn’t even need to look across at her to know she was sitting, ramrod straight, in the passenger seat of her car. So typically Tia, at her most defensive. He had no idea what was going on inside her head but he was too angry to ask. A blistering, sizzling fury that tore through him and made it impossible to even speak.

And so here he was, driving her to his house in Westlake because he’d left her with no alternative. Not after he’d seen Seth. He had barked orders at her, rapid and harsh, telling her that he had to be back in Westlake for his duty at the lifeboat station but that he wasn’t about to walk away without having a conversation about what he’d just discovered.

When he’d ordered her to come with him—hitting low with the accusation that she owed him that much—he’d nevertheless been surprised when Tia had appeared to capitulate without a word of argument, handing him her car keys before ducking momentarily back inside to ask her father to look after her son—his own son—for the evening.

He’d asked her what the keys were for and she’d simply jerked her head towards his bike.

‘Well, I can hardly ride on the back of that with you,’ she’d muttered awkwardly.

‘Because?’ he’d demanded irritably, knowing it was irrational to take it as a personal criticism, but unable to do anything else.

And she’d levelled a calm gaze at him, her voice quiet but firm.

‘Because we’re not kids any more, Zeke. That bike represents my years as a rebel, and a thrill-seeker. Now I’m... I have other responsibilities.’

But it was the words she didn’t say that had scraped at him the hardest. That, and the fact that the idea of her body pressed so tightly to his for an hour and a half had been simply unimaginable. Although perhaps it would have given him enough distractions to keep his mind off the all too frequent nightmares that he still endured. The screams, the smell, the sights.

How could he have gone from what had happened between them in her office less than half an hour earlier, from such intense desire then, to such burning anger now? And yet, a part of him couldn’t seem to regret how intimate they’d been in that lifeboat station.

So what did that say about him?

Yet for the last ninety minutes, they had sat in a tense, unhappy, charged silence. The same images and questions spinning around in his head, more and more insistent as each minute ticked by. His only comfort was that the closer they came to Westlake—to where she had once lived—the more pent-up she was obviously becoming.

Good. He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. He wanted her uneasy, off-balance. He suspected it was the only way he was going to get answers to questions she might otherwise deflect all too easily.

But was he imagining it to think that she might possibly have returned to Delburn Bay because she’d felt she owed it to him to tell him about his son?

No.

Tia had had years to find him. To tell him. But she hadn’t, so he couldn’t afford to let sentiment creep in, or to go soft on her. She had betrayed him. Kept him out of his own child’s life for years.

Except that you pushed her away.

Zeke struggled to silence the traitorous voice.

And you wouldn’t have been much of a role model for the first few years, would you?

And so he merely kept driving until eventually he was nearing Westlake. First passing the terraced row of tiny fishermen cottages where he had endured years of squalor with the cruel, vindictive, bad-tempered hulk of a man who had spent as much time working hard to avoid getting a job as he had actually going out to do whatever menial job he’d been forced to take.

Then down to the promenade with the larger, more impressive detached houses, which boasted glorious sea views, where Tia had lived with her own kind and protective doctor father. Finally, to the lifeboat station where he was due on call in a matter of hours, and where they had first met when he’d been seventeen and she’d been fifteen. He might have held himself back from going anywhere near her that first year, but she had nonetheless burned too wonderfully brightly for anyone to pretend they didn’t notice her.

Becoming a volunteer lifeguard had been Zeke’s saving grace as a kid. A stop-gap until he turned eighteen and could join the military, since his old man wouldn’t agree to sign papers allowing his kid to join up any earlier. After all, the more Zeke had earned, the less his so-called father had decided he had to work.

Even now Zeke could remember the urgency, the desperation, he’d felt, waiting to turn eighteen and swearing to himself that he would never, ever return to this part of the country, let alone Westlake.

And then he’d met Tia. Sweet and innocent, but with the kind of steely core and heart of courage that men years older than her hadn’t possessed. Especially when it came to being out on a rough sea. The attraction had been instantaneous but he had refused to allow himself to succumb. His respect for the crew—and for Tia’s father—had been too great.

When his eighteenth birthday had come, he’d joined up just as he’d always planned. But it was the lure of Tia that had had him returning eighteen months later during a month of leave, a trade in hand and well on his way to his first military promotion.

By the time he’d left they had eloped, marrying in secret, before Tia had embarked on her first year of university, following her father’s footsteps in studying for a medical degree.

Now Zeke was deliberately driving her past their very history and it was all too easy to map out. Designed to unsettle her before they even got to his home. The problem was that it was also unsettling him, too.