Baby, Oh Baby! (3 page)

Jake stepped sideways, blocking the door. "I'll come with you."

The doctor's eyebrows rose. "I thought I'd explained. We have a strict temperature-control policy."

"And I have a strict no-bullshit policy."

Dr. Warner's chin inched up. "You're upset, Mr. Chastaine. Why don't you come back tomorrow after you've had a chance to calm down?"

"You mean after you've had a chance to change labels

and computer records and get your story straight, don't you?,,

The tip of the doctor's long nose grew red. A flash of anxiety shadowed his eyes, just before he drew himself up to his full stature and assumed an air of dismissive authority. "I don't have time to stand here and argue with you, Mr. Chastaine. I have patients waiting. If you care to come back tomorrow, I'll be happy to answer all your questions."

"I don't want your answers. I want the truth." Jake pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Maybe the D.A.'s office will have better luck at getting it out of you than I'm having."

The doctor froze. The redness on his nose spread across his face, ruddying the hollows under his cheekbones. "Who—who are you calling?"

Jake jabbed at the phone buttons. "A friend at the D.A.'s office. He'll probably send a squad car to take you in for questioning while he gets a search warrant. That way you won't have a chance to tamper with any evidence." Jake put the phone to his ear.

The doctor stared at him, the veins in his neck standing out like blue cords. He finally hissed out a long, defeated sigh. "Wait. Let's—let's go in my office and talk."

Jake stared at him stubbornly. "Whatever you've got to say can be said right here."

Dr. Warner reluctantly nodded. The threat of a ride in a police car had punctured his arrogant attitude like a nail in a balloon. "All right."

Jake folded the phone, but kept it in his hand. The doctor lowered himself into one of the two chairs in front of Mrs. Holden's desk. Jake warily sat down beside him and watched him run a hand from his receding hairline to his long chin. "Well?" Jake demanded.

Dr. Warner heaved -a sigh. "I assume you're aware that Dr. Borden is no longer here."

"The receptionist said he retired."

Dr. Warner nodded. "It wasn't a voluntary retirement. We discovered that he'd made some, er, serious errors {         in judgment."

"What kind of errors?"

Dr. Warner folded, then unfolded his bony fingers in his lap. "He, um, 'borrowed' sperm from a fertility treatment

 patient when the sperm bank donor pool was low. From what we could ascertain, he evidently couldn't find a match that met the requirements of an insemination patient. The husband of one of his infertility patients met the requirements exactly, so he used the man's semen."

"Without telling either patient?"

Dr. Warner nodded. "When it, came to light last year, Dr. Borden surrendered his medical license and retired to Florida. The insemination patient failed to become pregnant, so we thought there was no harm done." The

F doctor looked at Jake, his eyes worried. "We thought it was best to keep the whole thing quiet. If it got out, it could ruin the entire clinic. Until now, we thought it had only happened in the one case."

"So you're telling me...." Jake stared at the doctor. The man's story had the ugly ring of truth. "You're saying Dr. Borden inseminated a woman I've :never met with my sperm?"

Dr. Warner's thin lips pressed together so tightly they seemed to disappear. His long fingers formed a prayerful steeple in his lap. "That's what the records seem to indicate."

That's what they indicated, all right, but it still hit like a Mack truck, hearing it confirmed aloud. His upper lip_ beaded with sweat. "The records also indicate that the woman became pregnant."

Dr. Warner reluctantly nodded.

"So I have a child out there somewhere?"

"Well, now, we don't know that a live birth resulted." Dr. Warner squirmed uneasily. "There are no follow-up records."

But I might have a child," Jake persisted.

Dr. Warner fiddled with the bottom of his blue-and gray tie, deliberately avoiding Jake's gaze. "Look—I suggest that you just go home and forget about this. If you pursue this matter, you 11 disrupt a lot of people's lives."

Jake stared at the man incredulously. You want me to just go home and forget that I have a child?"

"Well, now, it's not really yours." The doctor tapped his fingertips together. "I mean, it's not your responsibility. It was a mistake—a mistake made by one bad apple of a doctor, a doctor who's no longer practicing medicine." His eyes were pleading. "Look—you're borrowing trouble. For yourself, for the insemination patient, for her family. And then there's the clinic to think .. about. This place helps hundreds of infertile couples every year. If word of this gets out, it'll ruin the place."

“To hell with the clinic. You just told me I might have a child!"

"Please, Mr. Chastain—could you keep your voice down?" The doctor leaned forward, his knuckles pale against the wooden arms of the chair. His throat jerked as he swallowed. "Look—dozens of things could have gone wrong during the pregnancy. Why, twenty percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage in the first six weeks alone." Dr. Warner folded, then unfolded his hands. His voice took on a beseeching tone. "You know, Mr. Chastaine, sometimes a person's better off without all the facts. There's a good chance a live birth never occurred. Why don't you just leave it at that? Everyone will be better off if you just leave well enough alone."

"You sorry son of a bitch," Jake muttered. He rose to his feet, and without another word, strode out of the cubicle, through the file room, across the waiting room, and out the smoked glass entrance.

A wave of dry heat snaked up from the asphalt parking lot as he stalked toward his white Volvo. An even hotter blast of air assaulted him as he yanked open the door, climbed in, and punched the metal button on the glove box. Sweat rolled down his brow as he snatched out a state map of Oklahoma and unfolded it on the passenger seat beside him.

The car felt like a black leather sauna, but it wasn't nearly as hot as the questions that burned inside him. Jake leaned over the map, determined to answer the one question that would lead to all the other answers.

Where the hell was Lucky, Oklahoma?

Chapter Two

Annie Hollister carefully worked the wide-toothed metal comb through the dense white fur on the alpaca's flank. The animal turned and nudged the front pocket of Annie's jeans, pressing her against the split-rail fence of the corral.

Annie grinned and scratched the animal's velvety ears. "I'm almost done, Snowball. Hold still for one more moment, then you'll get that sugar cube you're after."

A warm blast of moist air tickled the back of Annie's neck. Startled, she turned to find another alpaca, this one larger and smoke-colored, straining his long neck over the fence to nibble the end of her shoulder-length auburn hair. Laughing, Annie gently extracted the strand from the beast's mouth.

"Whoa, there, Smoky Joe. My hair is not on the menu!" As if in response, the animal nudged the comb in her hand. Annie shot him a reproachful look. "I know you like getting groomed, but you've got to wait your turn. Hold your horses and I'll comb you next."

"Don't know as I've got enough hair left to comb," sounded a deep, familiar drawl from the other side of the fence.

Annie looked up to see the burly form of her ranch foreman, Ben Akins, come around the barn, rubbing his sparse gray hair. Her mouth curved in a smile. "I was talking to Smoky Joe, not you."

"Ohhh." Ben's mischievous grin belied his innocent tone. "Well, as much as those critters seem to like gettin' groomed, maybe I oughta give it a try.,'

"Maybe you should. But it's not just grooming, you know. It's fur harvesting."

Ben's smile widened to reveal a gap between his two front teeth. He shifted his worn brown Stetson to his other hand and ran weathered fingers over his balding pate. "In that case, I reckon I'm a couple of decades too late."

Annie laughed. Ben had been the foreman of her grandparents' ranch for as long as she could remember, and she'd always loved his good-natured teasing. The big-bellied cowboy and his petite wife, Helen, were two of her favorite people in the whole world. When they'd agreed to stay on and help run the Smiling H after Annie inherited it two years ago, they'd made it possible for Annie to follow her fondest dream.

She'd always longed to live on the sprawling ranch. She'd visited the spread in northeastern Oklahoma every  summer during her . childhood, and it was her idea of paradise. She loved working with animals, loved the outdoors, loved the concept of setting her own hours and being her own boss, but she'd never learned anything about the actual business of cattle ranching.

The business she'd learned inside and out was advertising, and she'd grown sick to death of it. She was tired of trying to please impossible clients, tired of coddling temperamental photographers and prima donna models, tired of living in an impersonal crowd of strangers. Most of all, she was tired of using all her waking hours to help some huge, faceless conglomerate sell more kitty litter and underarm deodorant.

She'd wanted to live in a place where she could see the open sky and smell the scent of rain on the wind an hour before it arrived. She'd wanted a job that filled her heart as well as her Day-Timer and her bank account. She'd wanted to do something meaningful, something with lasting merit, something she would look back on with pride and affection when she was old and gray.

She'd wanted, with all her heart and soul, to have a baby.

Unfortunately, no candidates for fatherhood had loomed on the horizon. Her short-lived attempt at marriage had ended nine years earlier. At thirty-one, her biological clock was ticking like a time bomb, but her job as an account executive with a New York ad agency required too many hours and too much travel to make single motherhood a viable option.

Then, her grandparents had died and left her the ranch, and Annie had decided to change her entire life.

Snowball again nosed at Annie's jeans. Annie pulled the comb through the white alpaca's coat one last time, then dug into the front pocket of her faded Levis. "Okay, girl. Here's your treat." The beast eagerly lapped up the sugar cube, tickling the flat of Annie's palm with soft, wet lips.

Ben shook his head. "Those critters are gonna be as spoiled as that old hound dog your grandpa used to keep."

"No, they won't. I don't let them sleep on my bed."

"Not yet. The way you're pamperin' them, though, it's just a matter of time."

Annie smiled and glanced at her watch. "Speaking of time, aren't you and Helen supposed to be on your way to Tulsa?,

Ben placed a booted foot on the bottom rung of the fence rail. "Yep. I came by to tell you we're 'bout to head out. Helen's supposed to be at the hospital for a pre-surgery checkup at four. Elaine's gonna to meet us there. " Elaine was Helen and Ben's grown daughter, who lived in Tulsa with her husband and school-aged children. Ben's potbelly heaved as he sighed. "I'll sure be glad when we get this knee replacement thing behind us."

"Helen will be, too. We talked about it when I dropped by your place this morning to pick up Hot Dog." Annie had agreed to take care of Ben and Helen's friendly miniature dachshund while the couple was gone. "Helen said she can't wait to throw away her cane. She's looking forward to racing you to the fishing hole again."

"I better start trainin', then, so she won't put me to shame." Ben smiled, but it failed to chase the worry from his eyes. He turned his worn hat in his hand. "I sure hate her havin' to go through the surgery and physical therapy an' all, though. If there was any way I could do it for her, I would."

"I know you would," Annie said softly, her heart flooding with emotion. "Helen knows it, too."

Helen was Ben's whole world, and he was just as dear to Helen. The couple had the kind of marriage Annie had always wanted for herself :close, supportive, tender and wane.

As a girl, Annie used to wish her parents' marriage had been more like Ben and Helen's. Annie's mom and dad had been too busy climbing corporate ropes and social ladders to pay much attention to each other or to her. When they did spend time together, they invariably ended up criticizing and belittling each other.

Annie had always been glad to escape her ,parents' bickering for the peacefulness of her grandparents' ranch. The Smiling H was her idea of heaven on earth. As a child, she'd spent her days fishing and swimming in the tree-lined pond with Ben and Helen's children, trailing after Grandpa and Ben as they tended the white- faced cattle, and shucking fresh corn for dinner on the front porch with Gran. She loved waking up to the sound of birds twittering in the tree outside the bedroom window, loved the smell of hay and clover, loved the cool, deep shade of the pine forest that edged the acres of pastureland.

Most of all, she loved the sense of peace and harmony the ranch always offered. No one here cursed or yelled or muttered hateful words under their breath. Grownups looked at each other with kind, warm eyes, and they looked at her the same way. Here on the ranch, everyone worked long and hard, but they still found time to laugh. Most importantly, they all found time for a sad-eyed little girl who'd always felt that her parents' unhappiness was somehow her fault.

Ben shifted his hat again. "Sure you can manage things here alone?"

"I'll be fine," Annie replied. "Besides, I'm not alone. I've got Madeline."

"A fourteen-month-old baby is not exactly a big help." Ben's weathered face creased into a wry grin. "Where is the little rascal, anyway?"

"Napping." The thought of Madeline made her smile. Annie had never known she could love anyone or anything as fiercely as she loved her child. She glanced toward the sprawling rock-and-cedar ranch house, her i eyes reflexively stopping at the window of the baby's bedroom. Madeline had fallen asleep on the thick rug in the center of her room after Annie had curled up with her on it to read story books and sing lullabies.