Page 11 of Silver Fox's Secret Baby

"Uh, just a short personal visit. I didn't realize you were started on rounds already."

Her eyes flicked up to my face briefly before she began poring over the tablet again. "I have twenty patients to get acquainted with. It's my first real day here."

I myself had only four patients, but not many got all the way to my office. I had a specialty and I was department chair. I had people who worked for me to do my rounds. I had forgotten how big the workload of an attending physician could be in a hospital this size.

"Yeah, sorry. I guess I just forgot." I stayed in step with her as we walked up the hallway, assumingly to her next patient.

"What do you need?" she asked again, but this time she didn't look up. I was bursting with positive emotion and I didn't want to vomit it all on her. Nor did I want to get carried away with myself, because I really wanted to kiss her and pull her into one of these rooms to have the best makeup sex ever.

Instead, I steadied myself and asked, "Can we speak privately for a second?" And when she stopped, I was surprised.

"Anything you need to say to me, you can say right here." She wasn't impolite or harsh. She was being professional, and I respected that. She always had the ability to turn off the personal side of our relationship and compartmentalize better than I did. That was why we lasted so long and it worked so well. We had to hide it before, but she didn't know we didn’t have to hide it now.

I took a deep breath and blew it out with as many nerves as I could dump. "I'd really like to take you to dinner, just the two of us."

Her hair had been pulled up into a ponytail, but the curls still reached toward her ears. Her face was plain, devoid of makeup, and her signature scent wasn't wafting around the air like normal. She probably had a scent-sensitive patient. I missed that lilac and lavender scent. But she was captivating and beautiful.

"No. I don't think it will work out." The polite way she smiled could have cut like a knife, but I wasn't one to give up easily. Of course, she knew that about me.

A smile stretched my lips as I remembered the first real date we went on. We'd already been having sneaky sex in the on-callroom and after hours in my parked car, but when we decided to make a go of it, I took her to a little Italian place with privacy curtains.

"Remember our first date?" I asked her, reaching for her hand. She let me remove it from her tablet and hold it as I recounted the details. "You resisted me, but I convinced you to go along with me. You thought it would screw up the dynamic we had going by making things real, but we really hit it off.

"We drank way too much and had to Uber to my place, and I made you come five times that night." I winked at her and watched her face warm to a bright pink. "I think that was the best night of my life, second only to this moment now. Please, say you'll relive that with me?"

Lily seemed nervous, biting her lip, trying to tug her hand from my grasp. But I saw the hint of curiosity and desire in her eyes. She blinked several times, and I could tell she was thinking about it. "You know how beautiful I think you are? And I just want a chance to apologize and at least attempt to make things right. Say you'll come. Just one dinner. If it's too much, I'll back off and give you space."

She audibly whimpered and glanced up the hallway, but her shoulders dropped and her head bobbled. "Fine, one dinner, but I really have to go. I have work to do."

"Great." I again resisted the urge to grab her face in my hands and kiss her. "Friday night, and I'll get you details on where and what time. I'll need your number."

She scowled, but she reached into the breast pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a card. "Here. Now go. I have patients."

I practically skipped all the way back to the elevators. It didn't matter that she looked nervous. She had agreed to dinner and I had her back. Now I just had to do my best groveling and maybe we'd get somewhere. A man could hope…

9

LILY

Noah curled up on my lap. His wheezing cough concerned me, but it wasn't croupy or rattling. Unfortunately, it was the mild, annoying type of cough that could come from something as simple as a common cold or as deadly as his CDH recurring. He'd been born with a hernia of his diaphragm, which was life threatening, and he'd already had surgery to repair it, though the doctors told me it was common to recur until he was an adult.

Every time I bathed him my, heart ached that he'd been born into this world, suffering before he even had a chance to know what good health and vitality meant. It affected everything about him—his ability to eat well, to breathe deeply, to function normally. He was a tad behind on cognitive things, but his physical body kept him from doing everything a four-year-old boy should do.

"You feeling okay, buddy?" I asked him, and he curled into me deeper. He didn't have a fever, but he hadn't eaten dinner, complaining of a tummy ache.

"He's fine, Lily." Mom scooped him off my lap and he clung to her. I was so happy he had such a good relationship with hisNana. It felt safe having Mom and Dad around to help me care for him.

"I can stay home if you want. It's just dinner. I don't really want to go, anyway." I stood and reached for Noah, but Mom turned and shook her head, preventing me from taking him back. She walked across the room and laid him in his toddler bed and covered him up.

"I'll read him a story and he'll be sleeping soon. It isn't like we are ignorant, Lily. We raised you and Kate, and I know how to treat a cold. If I need you, I know your number, and you're right across town." She selected a book off Noah's little bookshelf and used her toe to push a few blocks toward the toy box. His floor was littered with them.

"Yeah, but he has a cough…" I bit my lower lip. "I want to be here."

"You need to be where you're going." Her eyebrows rose at me, and I scowled. I'd told her who I was supposed to be dining with, and she was apprehensive at first. Later, she told me it was a good thing, that Ethan and I needed to talk about the future. I doubted very much that tonight would be the night I came clean about Noah, but I couldn't rule it out.

"Read me story, Nana." Noah reached for her, and I was overruled. Even he wanted her instead of me. My shoulders slumped.

I had agreed to this dinner with Ethan feeling pressured to do so, but he was so happy. How could I say no to him? His eagerness was infectious. I wanted so desperately to find peace in my heart with the past and my future at Mountain View that I was willing to sit through this dinner to hear him out. I knew deep down, though, that the shock of having a child would gut him. He would want nothing to do with me then, so the hope would be short-lived.

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