My One and Only (Ardent Springs Book 3) (2 page)

Her husky laugh shot straight to his groin. “I bet you do. Too bad we don’t have sleepovers anymore so I can see for myself.”

Cooper would let her see a lot more than his underwear if she’d only take him seriously for once. Disheartened but not defeated, he said, “You’re never too old for a sleepover.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied before spinning away to become the doctor in charge once again.

Chapter 2

Heaven help her but the man was hot. If Cooper Ridgeway had been harmless back in high school, at this moment, he was anything but. Not that he hadn’t always been a flirt—he’d simply never turned his talents in her direction. And even if he had, she’d have laughed him off, same as she’d done just now.

A few extra muscles didn’t change who he was. As much time as she’d spent in the Ridgeway household, they might as have well have been brother and sister. Not that she felt very sisterly toward him today, but that was nothing more than hormones. As a doctor, Haleigh knew better than anyone that women were preprogrammed to respond to the kind of physique that Cooper clearly worked hard to maintain.

Very hard. He could have stepped right out of a mechanic-of-the-month calendar.

And she’d been going solo in the bedroom for more than six months, which meant her libido was on high alert. If he were anyone else, she might take him up on that sleepover offer, but they shared too much history for her to use Cooper to scratch an itch. He deserved a nice girl-next-door who would give him a comfy home and a pack of dimpled, green-eyed babies.

In fact, she couldn’t help but wonder why he was still single. Surely there was a girl in Ardent Springs who knew a solid catch when she saw one.

“How are we doing?” Haleigh asked Jessi, who was staring at her infant with a combination of shock and awe.

“I can’t believe she’s finally here,” the young girl said. “She’s so beautiful.”

Black hair streaked with bright red highlights hung over the right side of Jessi’s face, while the left side had been buzz cut, giving her an edgy, punk rock look. Smudged black makeup outlined bright blue eyes that didn’t carry near enough age or experience to deal with the responsibility in her arms.

“What’s her name?” Cooper asked, stepping close enough to look down on the little cherub sleeping against her mother’s chest.

“Emma,” Jessi said softly. “Emma Rose Rogers.”

“A pretty name for a pretty little thing.” Cooper ran one finger gently over the baby’s head, and a pulse beat rocked Haleigh’s womb.

What the hell was that?
In more than four years of delivering babies, she’d never felt the slightest urge to have one. In fact, thirteen years ago, she’d taken extreme measures to avoid being in Jessi’s current situation.

But one glimpse of Cooper Ridgeway going all soft over a newborn and her maternal clock wakes from dormancy?

No freaking way.

Clearing her throat, she attempted to move this scene along. “Jessi, I need to know who to contact to let them know you and the baby are here.”

The new mother’s smile faded. “There’s no one to call.”

“What about your parents?” Haleigh asked. “I’m sure they want to meet their new granddaughter.”

Jessi shook her head as she pulled the sleeping baby tighter against her chest. “No.”

What did she mean
no
? The girl hadn’t fallen out of the sky. And she surely hadn’t gotten
herself
pregnant.

“What about the baby’s father? Don’t you want to call him?”

“Bobby doesn’t want anything to do with me and Emma,” she said with a tight jaw. “He says he has plans and he isn’t giving them up for a kid. When I refused to get an abortion, he got pissed and took off.” Tucking the blanket around her daughter, she added, “Doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t need him.”

This scenario sounded way too familiar, except back in the day, Haleigh had been the one with the plans. Having a baby would have ruined everything. She couldn’t have gone to college with a baby in tow. And she sure as heck couldn’t tell her staunchly Catholic mother that not only had her daughter had sex before marriage, she’d been stupid enough to get pregnant.

Haleigh gave herself a mental shake. Jessi’s story wasn’t remotely the same as hers.

“Real men don’t walk away from responsibility,” Cooper stated, repeating the words he’d once spoken to Haleigh. “Tell me where to find him and I’ll teach the little pecker a lesson.”

He’d made a similar threat thirteen years ago, but then he hadn’t been much of a threat to the class jock, and Haleigh hadn’t wanted to see him get hurt on her behalf. Today, she had no doubt Cooper could beat the stuffing out of anyone stupid enough to take him on. She almost wished she knew where to find David Stapleton now.

“Let’s stay rational here,” she said, speaking as much to herself as to Cooper. “Are you sure there isn’t anyone we can call? Where are you staying here in town?”

“I didn’t make it far enough to find a place to stay before I went into labor,” Jessi said. “That’s why Cooper found me where he did. It was pouring rain when the pains hit, so I ducked into the first dry place I could find. I thought they’d go away, and then once it stopped raining, I’d move on.”

“Move on to where?” Did the girl realize that you didn’t tuck a baby into your purse and wander off to parts unknown?

Jessi shrugged. “A motel, I guess. I had a couple weeks to go. I thought I had more time to figure this stuff out before she got here.”

“Figure what stuff out?” Haleigh asked. “Jessi, what are you doing in Ardent Springs if you don’t know anyone here?”

The teen toyed with the end of the sheet. With her eyes locked on the foot of the bed, she said, “I’m here to find my father.”

“Great,” Cooper said. “Give us his number and we’ll call him.”

The stubborn chin jutted out again. “I can’t. I haven’t found him yet.”

The mystery of Jessi Rogers grew more complicated by the second.

“I’m confused.” Haleigh propped a hip on the foot of the bed. “What do you mean you haven’t found him yet? Do you have an address?”

“All I have is a name. Well,” Jessi hedged, “initials. Mama said he went by J.T. and that he was from Ardent Springs, Tennessee.”

Cooper leaned a hand on the bed rail. “You mean you’ve never met your father?”

Bright red locks swung as Jessi shook her head. “I always thought Calvin was my dad. He was married to Mama when I was a little girl, and it wasn’t until I got pregnant that she told me the truth. She didn’t remember much about my real father, except for the J.T. part, where he was from, and that he was older and had a family already before getting Mama pregnant.”

“How old was your mother when she had you?” Haleigh asked.

“Eighteen.”

Great. To an eighteen-year-old, twenty-five was ancient. This mystery father could be anywhere from forty to seventy by now. Whoever he was, they weren’t going to locate him before Jessi and the baby were released, and Haleigh was not about to let this girl leave the hospital without having a safe, stable place to stay.

Haleigh contemplated solutions. There were no shelters for miles, and a newborn couldn’t be exposed to the germs present in a group home anyway. Haleigh caught a glimpse of Cooper in her peripheral vision and an idea formed. He’d put himself in the hero role once this evening. It was time to see how heroic he was willing to be.

“Cooper, I need to see you in the hall,” she said, motioning for him to follow.

“Where are you going?” Jessi asked.

“This will only take a minute,” Haleigh answered, pulling the door closed after Cooper stepped into the hall. When she turned to once again find him looming above her, she took a step back. “We can’t let that girl leave this hospital without someplace to go.”

“Agreed,” Cooper said, carrying none of the flirtatious nature of a few minutes ago. “I doubt she has enough money to afford more than a night or two at a motel.”

“She can’t take a newborn to a motel.”

“Then where else can she go?” he asked.

Here went nothing. Haleigh took a steadying breath and said, “You need to take Jessi and the baby home with you.”

He could not have heard her right. “Are you crazy?”

Haleigh didn’t flinch at the outburst. “You found her. You helped her give birth. And you’re apparently the only person she knows in this town.”

“Well,” Cooper said, floundering. “She knows you, too.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You know I can’t take her home with me.”

“And I can’t take her home with me.”

“Why not?”

“How about because I’m a grown man and that’s a young girl? And that doesn’t even touch the fact that she comes with a newborn baby.”

“You’re being unreasonable,” Haleigh said, sounding as if she were suggesting he take home a plant instead of two vulnerable females. “There’s no other option. We can’t let her leave this hospital without making sure she has a safe place to go.”

Cooper whipped the ball cap off his head to jam a hand through his thick curls. He couldn’t argue that Jessi needed someplace to land, but he’d stepped up enough for one night. Other than the fact that she was a kid, he didn’t have space for the high-maintenance pair. Spending time with Carrie Farmer and her four-month-old had taught Cooper how much crap the little buggers required. Crap he didn’t have room for.

And then inspiration struck. Someone he knew well had plenty of room.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said, slamming the hat back on his head. Without waiting for a response, Cooper charged off toward the elevator.

Haleigh yelled after him. “Where are you going?”

“I thought of another option,” he yelled back, and then stepped into an open elevator before she could demand more details.

Less than a minute later, the elevator opened to the neurology unit, and by a stroke of luck, Cooper found his target at the nurses’ station.

“Abby, I need your help,” Cooper said, giving his twin sister a pleading look.

“What are you doing here, Cooper? Did something happen to Mama?” Abby was out of her chair and rounding the desk before he could answer.

“Mama’s fine,” Cooper hurried to clarify. “I said
I
need your help.”

Abby’s black ponytail swung as she tilted her head, concern replaced with curiosity. “What did you do now?”

“A good deed. And it’s coming around to bite me in the ass, as usual.”

“Betty, I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” his sister told a fellow nurse as she motioned Cooper back to the bank of elevators. “Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”

On their way to the cafeteria, Cooper brought Abby up to speed on the Jessi situation. As they stepped off, he stated the obvious. “You have to agree that I can’t take the pair home.”

“That
would
be weird,” she said. “But what do you want me to do?”

While attending nursing school at Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Abby had met a soldier six years her senior stationed at Fort Campbell and fallen hard for the army infantryman. Kyle Williams had been a nice enough guy, though a little too hard-core for Cooper’s tastes. Still, he made Abby happy, so the family accepted him.

Seven months ago, while serving in Afghanistan, Kyle had taken an extra duty shift, and with it a roadside bomb. Abby was devastated by his death and immediately withdrew from life. She worked her shifts at the hospital and volunteered with veterans’ organizations, but the rest of her world seemed to have stopped the day she’d gotten the news.

No one expected her to finish grieving at some designated time, but that didn’t mean people weren’t worried about her. Last week their mother had suggested that Abby needed something else to focus on. A project to get her out of the past and moving forward again. Jessi and the baby could be that project.

“Let her stay with you.”

His sister froze in place. “What?”

“You agree that I can’t take them home, but I can’t drop them at the edge of town and drive off either. You have that big four-bedroom house—there’s plenty of room for both Jessi and the baby.”

“Oh no.” Abby shook her head as she marched toward the coffee machines. “You are not putting some strange girl in my house. She could rob me blind. Or worse, leave the baby and take off for good.”

“She wouldn’t do that.” Cooper may not know the teenager well, but the protective way she’d held the bundle to her chest told him she’d never leave her little girl. “She’s on some mission to find her birth father and thinks he might live here in town. Based on what she told us, I highly doubt he’s still here, if he ever was, which means she’ll be moving on in no time. Probably won’t stay for more than a week.”

Abby remained silent as she poured three helpings of hazelnut creamer into her cup.

“Please, Abby. You know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I could think of any other way.”

Tossing her stirrer in the trash, she continued to hold her tongue. Abby always did need an extra minute to process things, and he could practically see the wheels turning in her head. He just hoped they were turning in his direction.

“You
do
remember that I have one boarder already, right?”

He sure did. And that boarder was not going to be happy about his solution.

“You still have two other bedrooms,” he reminded her. “Help me out here.”

“I’ll need to meet her before I agree.”

Relief washed through him, and Cooper thanked his lucky stars that the sucker gene ran in the family.

“She’s still down in the ER. You can come meet her right now.”

With a glance at her watch, Abby sighed. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this.”