His Texas Christmas Bride. Nancy Robards Thompson

conversation. What was the point? That’s why he didn’t care for cocktail and dinner parties, and it was a big part of the reason he was divorced now.

      That and his tendency to be a workaholic. Delilah had complained a lot about him never being home. He’d told her that was life with an ER doctor. Eventually, she’d left him for his best friend, who also happened to own the lawn service that did their yard.

      He wasn’t sure which was sadder...the fact that their breakup had been such a cliché—the only thing that could’ve been worse was if she’d left him for the pool boy—or the overwhelming sense of relief he’d felt after he’d signed the divorce papers.

      After that, he’d buried himself in work. Emergency medicine suited him so well. It was fast-paced and involved a revolving door of patients. He could keep it all about work and not get too personal. He’d make sure they were stable and hand them off to their primary care doctor.

      It was clean and simple. No need for small talk or building relationships beyond the situation that had brought them into his emergency room.

      “I’ve worked twelve-hour shifts for the past five days. Actually, it’s my first night off since I took the job.”

      “Are they ganging up on the new guy?” She smiled and her dimples winked at him.

      “No, they’ve been so shorthanded that the other doctors haven’t had much time off in a while.”

      She was quiet for a moment and he could see the wheels turning in her mind. She glanced at her hands, which were in her lap, before looking back at him.

      “Why didn’t you take the job at first?” she asked. “Because they did offer it to you, didn’t they? Please, tell me you didn’t decline because of what happened between us.”

      A pretty shade of pink bloomed on her cheeks.

      “Wait, don’t answer that,” she said. “It’s a dumb question. Of course you didn’t turn down a job because of me. It’s just that I tried to get in touch with you after I found out I was pregnant, but all the hospital would tell me was that you didn’t work there.”

      He nodded. So she’d tried to find him. He wondered if she’d been discreet when she was doing her detective work. No one had told him that a woman claiming to be carrying his child had been there looking for him. Then again, how would an employer break that news to a new hire? And would she really have told a complete stranger why she was looking for him? Not likely.

      “I couldn’t justify relocating on the first offer,” he said. “But I could work with their counteroffer. So, just in case you were still wondering, no, my turning it down had nothing to do with you or what happened between us.”

      “I didn’t even know your last name,” she said.

      Exactly. They hadn’t exchanged much personal information beyond first names. He’d thought that was the way she’d wanted it, and it had made their meeting sexy and exciting.

      “So, I take it you’re keeping the baby.”

      “Of course I am. I have a good job. This place isn’t a palace, but it’s big enough for a child and me.”

      They sat in silence for a moment. The furnace ticked and then clicked on. A car honked somewhere outside.

      “Look,” she finally said, “I won’t try to force you to be part of this child’s life. We will be perfectly fine on our own. I just thought you should know.”

      “Would you be willing to take a paternity test?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “A paternity test. Would you take one?”

      Her mouth opened and shut before she could utter a word.

      It wasn’t an unreasonable request, but the way she glared at him made it seem as if he’d asked her to move to Mars. The look in her eyes cut him deeply.

      But he couldn’t go there. Or rather, he couldn’t let her work her way into that soft spot where instinct and feelings lived and eclipsed common sense. Instinct and feelings had never served him well. That’s how they’d gotten themselves into this mess in the first place. He made a mental note not to call the pregnancy—or the baby—a mess. If she was reacting this way to a paternity test, she’d probably smack him if he called the situation a mess.

      It was all so new that the pregnancy and baby didn’t seem as if they were one and the same. That his child might be growing inside Becca...

      The thought hit him like a punch in the gut. He would not make a good father. He was married to his job. Children were too unpredictable. They were too fragile. He knew for a fact he did not do well with unpredictable and fragile. He’d learned the hard way. The ER was a different type of unpredictable. It was based in science and methodical procedure. He never knew what he’d get one night to the next in the ER, but no matter what was thrown at him, he could follow procedure and tame the chaos. He could fix people.

      But being a father? Raising a child? God help him. Or more accurate, God help the poor child.

      That’s as far as he could go right now.

      He simply couldn’t wrap his mind around it. But there was no sense in getting shell-shocked until he had the facts in hand.

      He knew he sounded like a first-class jerk, but the sad truth was he wouldn’t be able to wrap his mind around the pregnancy until he was certain the baby was his.

      Yes, she was three months pregnant. Yes, he’d slept with her twelve weeks ago. But they’d been together one night. He didn’t know her or how many guys she’d slept with or when she’d slept with them. Even though he didn’t want to believe she’d try to saddle him with another man’s kid.

      But he didn’t really know her. Because of this, he reminded himself, it wasn’t out of line to ask for proof that he was the father.

      “We used a condom,” he said. “I just don’t see how this could’ve happened.”

      She squinted at him and did a little head jut.

      “Hello, you’re a doctor. You, of all people, should know that condoms aren’t one hundred percent fail-safe.”

      He shrugged. “You’re right. They aren’t foolproof. But they do prevent pregnancy most of the time. I need a paternity test for my own peace of mind. It’s not you, it’s me. When you get the test and the results come back, you can tell me I’m a jackass and say I told you so as many times as you want.”

      She scoffed and shook her head, obviously disgusted with him.

      “Becca, don’t be mad, please.”

      “I’m not mad at you. Because even though I don’t sleep around, Nick—before you, I’d never had a one-night stand, and after I got the news, I wished I never had—you couldn’t possibly know me well enough to know that. So I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for sleeping with a man who doesn’t know me well enough to know that.”