The Heart Surgeon's Secret Son

CHAPTER ONE

NURSE Kimberly Brookes stared out her hotel window and, despite the room’s warmth, shivered at the wintry blur of white obscuring Boston’s skyline.

Or maybe the thought of having to spend the next week with Dr. Daniel Travis had triggered the goose bumps prickling her skin.

Either way, she felt chilled to the bone.

Within the hour she would come face-to-face with the one man she measured all others by. No one even came close to touching her heart the way Daniel did.

Was that why the thought of seeing him made her blood race and her hands shake?

As one of Cardico’s key marketing sales executives, she needed to learn everything about the innovative pacemaker Daniel had helped to develop. Each sales executive would spend a week with Daniel, shadowing him, so they would have a full understanding of the life-saving device.

She’d delayed as long as she could. Now she prepared to face a man she’d once loved, a man she’d planned to never see again.

Who was she kidding?

There was no way to prepare for Dr. Daniel Travis. He’d done miraculous things to hearts long before he’d earned his medical degree, and she’d never been impervious to his allure.

Perhaps deep down she’d always known her path would cross Daniel’s again.

She needed to get over her silly schoolgirl fantasies, and seeing him provided the only way to do that.

Hopefully, she’d see him and realize her youthful hormones had tricked her mind. No man could be as charismatic as she remembered Daniel.

Then again, wasn’t she reminded daily just how charismatic he’d been? Just how blue those penetrating eyes had been?

Need squeezed her heart, and she glanced at her watch. Ryan would be awake. She picked up her cell phone and hit autodial to call her son’s cell phone.

“Hey, Mom,” he answered on the second ring. “I’m up and ready for school, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Just hearing his deepening voice caused her to smile. He hadn’t expected the morning call. She’d called last night after she’d arrived at her hotel. She’d wanted to make sure he’d settled in at his best friend Tyler’s house for the week. Kimberly and Tyler’s mother, Beth, had gotten to be good friends over the years, and the boys often stayed over at each other’s homes.

“I never thought otherwise,” she admitted. Ryan was a good kid, an honor student and a star athlete. Like his father, he excelled at almost everything he attempted. When he did run across a new challenge, he stuck it out until he mastered yet another skill.

She’d always encouraged him to try new things, to be well rounded and to chase his dreams. It’s what a loving mother did. Hadn’t she experienced firsthand the lengths a mother would go to to protect her child?

Ryan was her whole world. They’d gone through life’s journey alone for so long, just the two of them. And, despite everything, they’d done all right.

Better than all right.

Her eyes watered and she swiped at them. She was being ridiculously sentimental and knew the cause.

“I just called to say I missed you,” she said into the phone, trying to hide her emotional state, “and hope you have a good day at school.”

“Aw, Mom,” he said, but she could hear the pleased teasing in his voice. They’d always been close, and thus far Ryan hadn’t shunned her affectionate nature. “I told you that you should have brought me.”

“Missing school for a week was not an option,” she reminded him, knowing academics played the least role of why she’d refused to consider Ryan coming with her to Boston.

“Yeah, yeah, but think how educational the trip would have been for me to visit Paul Revere’s house and the site of the Boston Tea Party and the—”

“Nice try,” she interrupted. “Maybe next time.”

A time when she wouldn’t be spending every moment in Daniel Travis’s company.

Someone spoke to Ryan in the background.

“Hey, Tyler’s mom is ready to leave for school,” Ryan said. “We have a student council meeting before class starts and have to be there early. Got to run. Love you, and see you on Saturday afternoon.”

“I’ll call tonight.”

“I’ve got basketball,” he reminded her, sounding distracted, and she knew he was headed out the door with his cell phone stuck between his shoulder and his ear. His book bag no doubt hung off his free shoulder and his b

lond hair would still be damp around the edges. Many a time she’d seen him similarly head out of the house while on the phone with one girl or another.

Oh, yeah, she was reminded daily just how charismatic Daniel Travis had been.

“Call me after the game,” she told him. “Love you. Bye.”

“Love you. Bye,” Ryan repeated their special farewell.

The phone line went dead and the instant connection to her son faded, leaving her lost and panicky at the tremendous events that would occur before the day ended.

She clutched her phone tightly in her palm. A week away from Ryan felt like forever. They’d never been apart more than two nights. Yet she couldn’t have brought him with her as she’d done on previous business trips.

No way would she risk him and Daniel seeing each other.

Sure, she’d dreamed of them meeting for fifteen years, but reality wasn’t dreams.

Reality was being a single mom so the man you’d given your heart to could have his dreams.

Sighing, she pushed away from the window, checked her sleep-deprived appearance in the mirror one last time, and left the hotel room.

Time to go face her past so she could move on with her future.

Dr. Daniel Travis glanced at his Boston Memorial Hospital schedule and sighed at the thought of yet another marketing person shadowing his every move.

He shouldn’t complain. Thousands of lives around the country and eventually around the world would be improved because of the specialized three-lead pacemaker for congestive heart failure patients.

But even better, Cardico had agreed to fund his next research project once the pacemaker had been successfully launched. A project that, if triumphant, would fulfill his dreams.

From the time his dad had died from complications of heart surgery, Daniel had wanted to be a cardiologist. Specifically he’d wanted to come up with a better way to perform a coronary artery bypass graft, or CABG. A Staphylococcus infection had set into his father’s leg after the donor vein had been removed and the infection had spread throughout his weakened body.

Daniel knew there had to be better ways than grafting one’s own veins, which required a second surgical site. Cow and pig valves had been used for years for heart valve replacements. Why couldn’t animal veins be used as donor grafts? Daniel believed they could, and he planned to test that theory.

He would find a way to keep people from dying so needlessly.

Not once had he ever strayed from his goal of preventing what had happened to his father from occurring again.