Dr. Daddy (6 page)

“Do I really need to learn how to do this?” Jonas asked. “Juliana is going to have a nanny, after all. Someday,” he added with a hopeful sigh. “Eventually. When I find someone suitable. Isn’t giving her a bath something a nanny will see to?”

“Usually,” Zoey conceded. “But you are, in effect, Juliana’s father now. And you should be familiar with the basics—feeding, diapering, bathing. The feeding, we’ve already started working on. The diapering you seem to have down pretty well—”

“That’s another duty I won’t mind relinquishing to a nanny,” he said with a grimace.

“—so that just leaves bathing,” Zoey concluded. “Besides, unless you’re planning on having a live-in nanny...?” Her voice rose in question.

He shook his head.

“Then that’s another reason you’ll need to learn how to bathe her—emergency cleanups. In case you haven’t noticed, babies tend to get pretty messy pretty quick. Has Juliana had any of those
Exorcist
vomiting episodes yet?”

Jonas’s eyes widened in shock. “
Exorcist
vom...” His voice trailed off as he considered her question. “Babies do that?”

“Some do. Not all of them. And don’t worry,” she added with a playful grin, “they don’t start spinning their heads around afterward. But you’re going to need to be prepared just in case.”

He nodded, still clearly shaken by the possibility.

All through their conversation, Juliana had sat patiently in the tub, gazing from one to the other as if she were following their dialogue perfectly. When Zoey finally turned her attention to the infant, Juliana smiled at her, then slapped her hands more furiously in the water to send a series of sprays up onto the two adults.

“Wouldn’t this be easier downstairs on the kitchen counter?” Jonas asked, shifting his weight from one knee to the other.

“Probably,” Zoey told him. “But you need to get used to doing it here. As she gets bigger, baths are going to get a lot messier.”

He glanced down at the big wet stain darkening the front of his blue chambray work shirt and frowned. “Messier than this?”

She laughed. “Just be glad Jules isn’t a boy. At least you don’t have to worry about dodging an upward stream of baby pee-pee.”

He laughed with her. “Pee-pee. Now there’s a word I can’t recall ever using in my adult life. It’s incredible how much your vocabulary changes when you have a baby. I mean, here I am, a grown man, using words like
pee-pee
and
poo-poo.
And
onesie.
Now who the hell came up with that? Why can’t they just call baby underwear
baby underwear?
”

“You’re just getting started,” Zoey told him. “Wait until Jules starts talking. You won’t believe some of the things you’ll hear and repeat back to her.”

Evidently impatient to have her bath, Juliana splashed them again, a substantial arc of water that landed soundly in Zoey’s face.

“All right, all right,” she told the baby. “We’ll get on with it.”

Zoey walked Jonas through all the steps of bathing an infant, the procedure taking three times longer than it would have if she had performed it alone. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but marvel at how careful and gentle Jonas was with Juliana. He should have been an artist instead of a cardiologist, she thought. He just had such wonderful hands.

“Now what?” he asked after Juliana’s final rinse.

“Now you dry her off.”

“With what?”

She shook her head at him. “Oh, gee, I don’t know. A towel, maybe?” She reached for the hooded towel she had placed close at hand with the other numerous items necessary for keeping a baby clean. “Here, hand her to me.”

Jonas did as she requested, settling the baby gingerly into her outstretched arms. As Zoey dried Juliana off, he went about collecting the assortment of baby paraphernalia, mumbling something about how amazing it was that someone one-tenth his size used ten times his toiletries.

“Yeah, well,
you
don’t have to worry about cradle cap and diaper rash, do you?” Zoey muttered in response.

He looked at her aghast. “I should hope not.”

“I love the way babies smell,” she said suddenly as she scrubbed the towel gently over Juliana’s downy hair. As if to illustrate, she held the baby close, bent over her head and inhaled deeply. “So sweet and soft and clean. They almost smell new, don’t they? So full of potential. Just think about it, Jonas. Jules is only three months old now. Where will she be in thirty years? In sixty?”

“I can’t think that far ahead. I scarcely know where she and I will be next week.”

Zoey drew the baby’s hand from beneath the towel and curled five tiny fingers over one of her own. “She has long fingers. Maybe she’ll be a pianist. Or a masseuse. Or a pastry chef.”

“Maybe she’ll be a nurse,” he said with a smile.

She glanced up at him and smiled back. “Maybe she’ll be a doctor.”

“Maybe she will.”

“A doctor who gives nurses a lot of grief, just like her old man.”

Jonas frowned. “Now just wait one minute. I told you—”

“What do you say, Jules?” Zoey interrupted him, pretending not to hear the objection. “You want to be a part of the wonderful world of modern medicine?”

Juliana cooed and sighed and didn’t say for sure.

“A pianist,” Zoey finally decided. She went back to drying the baby off and avoided Jonas’s gaze. “She’s too smart to get involved with moody doctors.”

Jonas watched Zoey tend to Juliana and contemplated the wild influx of emotions the sight stirred in him. How could a woman he’d always considered big, forceful and belligerent make him feel so calm and pleasant inside? Zoey Holland was truly an enigma. With him and others at the hospital, she was a raging bull. With Juliana, she was a cream puff. Although he knew she worked in the hospital nursery, he’d never considered that she might have a tender, nurturing side. Yet here she was, cuddling a baby with all her heart, clearly content in the softer aspects of her character.

So why couldn’t she show some of that softness to him? he wondered. And, dammit, why did he ache so badly to have it?

“Lesson number two,” she said as she stood, oblivious to the turmoil tearing him up inside, “dressing the baby.”

“Oh, no,” he told her. He, too, stood, but he backed away with his hands held high to ward off Zoey and the baby. “This is where those onesie things come in. Juliana absolutely hates to have anything put over her head. She’ll scream at me. And I hate it when she screams at me.”

“She won’t scream at you.”

“Yes, she will.”

Zoey held the baby out toward him in a silent indication that he should take her. “Then that’s all the more reason for you to practice, isn’t it?”

In fact, Juliana did scream when Jonas tugged the cotton undershirt over her head. Until Zoey showed him how to hold the neck wide so that it didn’t obscure the baby’s vision. She also let him in on a few of her diapering-made-easier secrets, gleaned from years of working in the hospital nursery. And finally, as she darkened the room and sat down to rock the baby, she offered him a few tips on how to get Juliana to sleep a little more peacefully at night. And then, as he watched in awe, she began to sing to the baby in a soft, comforting voice he never would have guessed could come out of Zoey Holland.

Jonas stood rapt in the nursery doorway as he watched her easy, comfortable motions with the baby. He knew her confidence came from years of working with newborns, but there was more to it than that. She was a natural at nurturing, he thought. A definite people person—at least where babies were concerned. Why, then, was she so antagonistic around grown-ups?

And then the answer came to him out of nowhere. Zoey was comfortable around babies because babies didn’t pose a threat to anyone. Because they couldn’t hurt her. He didn’t know why the thought should occur to him that way, but suddenly Jonas was as certain of it as he was his own name. All of Zoey’s swaggering machismo, the black belt in karate, the incorrigible reputation at the hospital.... All at once, everything made sense. She wasn’t tough because she was so fearless. She was tough because she was so frightened.

Frightened of what, he couldn’t imagine. But Zoey was scared of something.

The realization made him feel funny inside. Before, it had been so easy to stay angry with Zoey all the time. And staying angry with her had been imperative, because it kept his mind off of more disturbing things—like wanting to get to know her better. A woman was the last thing he needed or wanted in his life, especially some pushy broad who would turn his life upside down. It was bad enough that Juliana had disrupted things so thoroughly and completely scattered his brains. A woman like Zoey could easily deliver the final, fatal blow.

He wouldn’t succumb, he assured himself. He would not, ever again, allow himself to be preoccupied by idle, erotic thoughts about Zoey. She was here to help him out with Juliana. Period. He’d just have to remember that the next time he started wondering what she was, or wasn’t, wearing under those hospital scrubs of hers.

But as he listened to the quiet timbre of her voice as she sang to the baby in her arms, as he noted the way the dim glow from the Noah’s ark night-light danced in her hair like fire, as he inhaled the spicy scent of her mingling with the aroma of baby shampoo...

Jonas squeezed his eyes shut and mentally plugged his ears and nose. Man, he must be going crazy, he thought. For a minute there, he could have sworn he saw tears forming in Zoey’s eyes.

A preoccupation with her, he could handle, he thought. But hell, he was becoming obsessed. And an obsession, he decided, was going to be much more difficult to handle. Especially when Zoey would be invading his house for two weeks.

Two weeks had never felt so much like a lifetime.

I
t was no use, Jonas decided sometime later as he lay wide-awake in his bed. For the first time in months, he had the opportunity to indulge in guilt-free, untroubled sleep for as many hours as he needed—and seeing as how he had been exhausted for those months, he needed it badly—and all he could do was lie there wondering about Zoey. More specifically, wondering about how Zoey looked when she was sleeping. Even more specifically, about what Zoey wore while she slept. Or if she wore anything at all.

He groaned and rolled fitfully to his stomach, burying his face in the pillow he’d scrunched beneath his head. So much for not being preoccupied with idle, erotic thoughts about Zoey.

Sleep, dammit, he ordered himself. But his brain would not process the command. Instead, it replayed for him the sight of her bending over Juliana’s crib to tuck in the infant a short while ago. No one could do justice to a pair of jeans the way Zoey Holland did, he’d decided then. His fingers curled into fists as he recalled the way he’d itched to cup his hands over her derriere.

“Stop it,” he instructed himself out loud. “This will get you nowhere except more exhausted.”

He lifted his head and squinted at the glowing green digits on his alarm clock. It was nearly midnight. He’d been lying in bed for more than an hour and was nowhere closer to sleep now than he had been that afternoon. What the hell was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he sleep?

Maybe a glass of brandy, he decided. A nightcap had always helped him unwind before.

He rose from the bed, slipped his paisley robe on over his pajama bottoms, then padded barefoot down the stairs to the den. Without bothering to turn on the light, he made his way to the bar and splashed a small portion of cognac into a snifter. Outside, a light snow had begun to fall, and he stood at the floor-to-ceiling window for a moment to watch. Slowly, gradually, as he observed the softly cascading bits of white make their way to the ground, he felt the tension leaving his body. Snow made everything seem quieter somehow, he thought. It buffed all the raw edges from life.

He abruptly turned away from the peaceful scene when a lamp snapped on behind him. Zoey had come into the room without seeing him and strode toward the television to turn it on. He had wondered what she wore to sleep in, he recalled as he watched her unobserved. He’d seesawed over whether it was something in clingy black lace or chaste white cotton. Now he had his answer. Neither. Zoey slept in flannel. Red plaid flannel. Red plaid flannel pajamas whose sleeves fell to her fingertips and whose pants flowed to her ankles over thick, woolen socks.

Jonas was mystified by why her nighttime attire should so surprise him. It was perfect—practical, comfortable, no-nonsense. Just like Zoey. And instead of being disappointed by his erroneous assumption about her sleepwear, he was somehow reassured by it. Hey, what could he say? She looked good in red.

“Good evening,” he greeted her softly.

She whirled around so fast, he was afraid she might go spinning right out of the room. Her hand splayed open over her heart, and she gasped audibly. When she saw that it was him, however, she relaxed some. But only for a moment. Then the wariness that always seemed to overcome her in his presence returned, and he felt like he always did when confronted by her—confused.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said before she had a chance to accuse him of anything. “I thought maybe a little cognac might help me to relax.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I just remembered that Keanu Reeves is on ‘Letterman’ tonight. I thought maybe I still had time to catch him.”

“Keanu Reeves?” Jonas asked, taking a few idle steps toward her. “Isn’t he a little young for you?”

She lifted one shoulder in what he supposed was meant to be a careless gesture, but somehow careless was the last thing Zoey appeared to be at the moment. For every step he took forward, she took one of her own in retreat.

“What’s wrong with an older woman going for a younger man?” she asked him as she came to a halt near the door. He couldn’t help but notice that she was perfectly poised for flight. “No one ever comes down on a man who’s with a woman considerably younger than he is.”

“No, not usually,” Jonas agreed, continuing with his approach until he stood nearly toe-to-toe with her. “Not unless the reason he’s with a younger woman is because he’s afraid of women his own age.”

Zoey arched her left brow at him in a way he was beginning to find very alluring. “Are you suggesting I’m afraid of men my own age?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Word around the east wing has it that you’re afraid of men of any age.”

She stiffened, then strode past him in a wide arc to turn the television off again. “You shouldn’t listen to idle chatter, Dr. Tate,” she said as she spun around to make her exit again. “Somehow, I thought you were above gossiping.”

“Zoey, wait,” he said, placing his drink on an end table before intercepting her. He caught up with her in time to block her retreat by positioning himself in front of the door. “I’m sorry. That comment was uncalled for.”

Her green eyes flashed fire at him. “I’ll say it was. Jeez, I’m trying to help you out here, and you still can’t keep yourself from picking on me.”

“I’m not picking on you.”

“Oh, yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are, too.”

“I am not.”

Once again, they stood toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye, hands fisted belligerently on their hips as their argument escalated. Fighting with Zoey was the last thing Jonas wanted to be doing on a quiet, snow-crested night. One of his wildest fantasies of late had virtually come true—he had Zoey in his house in the middle of the night, her hair hung loose about her shoulders, and she was wearing what she would normally wear only in bed. Granted, in his fantasies he had envisioned her dressed in something decidedly less concealing than flannel jammies. But two out of three wasn’t bad.

So, without thinking further, Jonas did what his instincts had been commanding him to do since the first day he’d laid eyes on her. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Almost immediately, he realized what a terrible mistake he had made. Almost, because for one brief, wonderful moment, he felt Zoey’s warm mouth open beneath his, felt the soft swell of her breasts pressing into his chest as her body relaxed against him, felt her fingers curl possessively into the lapel of his robe.

Then he felt her knee come up faster than he ever could have anticipated, with just enough force to make him reconsider his action.

So he did. Quickly. And he decided right away that he probably should stop kissing her. That he probably shouldn’t have kissed her in the first place. Not like that. Not without some kind of warning.

“Jeez, why did you do that?” he gasped as he jerked away from her. Only a herculean effort—that and his determination that she would
not
see him in such a state—prevented him from doubling over to protect himself from what might be a second, more damaging, blow.

“You’re lucky you’re still standing,” Zoey told him, her own breathing decidedly ragged. She lifted the back of her hand to her lips, as if trying to wipe away the sensation of his mouth covering hers. “I could have made sure that you’d never sing baritone again.”

“But why did you do it?” he repeated. He threw his shoulders back, regaining his manly composure, then took a step forward.

“Don’t,” she cautioned him, raising her hands in front of herself in what was an obviously defensive pose. “Don’t come near me.”

“Why, Zoey?” he demanded again. He ignored her warning and took two more steps toward her. “What’s with you and the knee treatment? Why did you do it?”

She hesitated for a moment, watching Jonas as if she were carefully studying him. “Why...why did you?” she finally asked, her voice suddenly sounding as haunted and fearful as her eyes looked. “Why did you...kiss me?”

That was what made Jonas stop dead in his tracks—the look in her eyes. She was scared, he acknowledged. Really, truly scared. Of
him.
The realization hit him square in the gut, as if that’s where she had landed her knee instead. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall a single time in his life when he had caused a woman to be scared of him. Certainly not by kissing her, he thought. Hell, the way he’d kissed Zoey hadn’t even been one of his better efforts.

“Zoey, there’s no reason to be frightened,” he told her in the most reassuring voice he could muster.

“I’m not frightened.”

“The hell you’re not.”

“I’m not frightened,” she repeated adamantly.

“Okay, you’re not frightened,” he conceded in a dubious voice. “Then why did you just try to turn me into a eunuch?”

She relaxed a little—but only a little, he noted—and sighed. “I’m sorry. You caught me off guard. Now you answer my question. Why did you kiss me?”

He opened his mouth to toss off some casual remark, but all that emerged was the truth. “Because I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first day I met you.”

Well, that certainly seemed to do the trick. Immediately, Zoey’s posture changed. She relaxed her body completely, dropped her hands to her sides, inclined her head forward and said, “What?”

Jonas frowned. “You heard me. I said I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first day I met you.”

She gaped at him incredulously. “The first day you met me, you chewed my butt off for clocking in three minutes late because Dr. Michaelson had waylaid me in pediatrics.”

“It was a defense mechanism,” Jonas said. “I wanted to kiss you, so I chewed your butt off instead.”

“Oh, that really makes sense. It’s all so clear to me now.”

“Don’t be so sarcastic.”

“Then don’t tell me things that aren’t true.”

“I am telling you the truth.” He bunched two fistfuls of hair in his hands and sighed in exasperation. “Dammit, Zoey, the reason I couldn’t sleep tonight was because I kept thinking about you. About you sleeping in my spare room. About—” He stopped abruptly, deciding it probably wasn’t in his best interest to reveal that he had been wondering what she looked like naked.

Zoey shook her head slowly and tried to pretend she wasn’t hearing what she was hearing. Mostly because what Jonas was saying about her mirrored her own thoughts about him. The reason she had forgotten about Keanu Reeves on ‘Letterman’ was because she had been too preoccupied by visions of Jonas Tate dancing in her head. Much to her horror, she had been drifting off to sleep wondering what it would be like to be nuzzled up to him in his bed instead of trying to warm up her own sheets alone. That was when she had decided she needed a little diversion before hitting the hay. And Keanu Reeves had always been a surefire distraction for her before.

Before she had been thrust into such close quarters with Jonas, anyway. Now even Keanu had taken a back seat.

“Don’t say things like that,” she told him, her voice sounding quiet and uncertain, even to her own ears.

Much to her dismay, Jonas took two more steps toward her, closing the distance between them. Slowly, as if to give her plenty of time to stop him if she wanted to, he lifted a hand to her face and brushed her cheek softly with the backs of his fingers. Zoey closed her eyes, telling herself she should push him away as she had that morning. But his touch was so gentle, so tentative, so utterly arousing, that all she could do was stand there and enjoy it.

“Don’t,” she said again, even as she tilted her head toward his caress.

“I want to kiss you, Zoey,” she heard Jonas say from what seemed like a million miles away. “If you don’t want me to, tell me now, and I won’t.”

Her brain screamed at her to tell him to stop, to assure him that she wanted no part of him. But her heart squelched the command entirely. Her heart bade her welcome his embrace with everything she had. So instead of shouting at him to leave her alone, all she could do was stand there and let him come closer.

With her eyes closed, the brush of his fingers against her face felt like the glide of satin over her skin. She couldn’t believe how gentle he was. Couldn’t recall a single time in her life when she’d met with such docility from a man. Granted, she hadn’t allowed very many men to get this close to her. Or any men for that matter, she amended reluctantly. Not since her husband had checked out on her so many years ago.

The thought evaporated as Jonas began to stroke his fingertips over her lips. When Zoey opened her eyes, she found that his face was only inches away from her own. She waited for the kiss he had promised her. But he only continued to gaze at her, as if studying her reaction to his touch.

“Who was he?” he finally said, his voice low and level.

She narrowed her eyes in confusion. “Who was who?”

Now he cupped her cheek gently in his palm, threading his fingers into the hair above her ear. An odd electricity shot through her, leaving a trail of tingling heat in its wake. Involuntarily, she flinched and jerked away.

Jonas didn’t follow her withdrawal, instead standing motionless with his hand still lifted into the air. His fingers curled into a fist, however, as he asked, “Who was the son of a bitch who made you so wary? Who was the man who hurt you so badly that you shun even the most innocent touch?”

When Zoey shook her head in mute refusal to answer, he turned to retrieve his drink from the end table, then sipped it in thoughtful silence as he continued to stare at her. When still she refused to reply, he cradled the snifter in his palm and swirled the dark amber liquor slowly, watching it as if the swiftly moving contents of the glass were the most fascinating thing he’d ever observed. But she could tell he was nowhere near as nonchalant as he was letting on.

After a moment, he said, “You told Juliana the other day that you know what it’s like to be a burden. To be foisted off on someone who doesn’t want you. You said you know what it’s like to be resented. Does your reluctance to be civil to the entire male population all go back to that?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then what? Why won’t you even let me touch you?”

Zoey sighed wearily, lifting a hand to her forehead to scoop back a fistful of her bangs. He wouldn’t rest until he had her figured out, she thought. Which meant he wouldn’t be retiring anytime soon tonight. Jonas Tate was the last person on earth she wanted knowing about her past. But she supposed having been kneed in the groin—even though she’d gone easy on him there, and even though he’d asked for it—entitled him to some kind of explanation. Nevertheless, she wasn’t sure how much she should tell him about herself.