Caro Carson - Doctor, Soldier, Daddy

An army physician on a mission needs a mother for his child—and plain Jane Kendry Harrison is just what the doctor ordered, in the first book in debut author Caro Carson’s miniseries, The Doctors MacDowell!

Dashing soldier Jamie MacDowell needs a mother for his infant son, stat! And while the handsome M.D. has no shortage of candidates, he lets his baby boy help with the selection. Little Sam falls for quiet Kendry Harrison—a surprising choice, maybe. But Jamie quickly realizes that the orderly’s sweet veneer hides a multitude of attractions—and if he’s not careful, he could wind up wrecking their carefully set-up “arrangement.”

Kendry knows her marriage to Jamie is strictly business, but that doesn’t stop her from dreaming of a more permanent place in the healer’s heart. If only he’d stop resisting the passion simmering between them. Then maybe he’d realize they were made for each other…and meant to be married in every sense of the word....

For one second, Kendry was shocked. The next, she was hurt. Jamie didn’t know what he was playing with. He couldn’t know how hard she was working toward that nursing degree. Still, to joke about marrying someone was odd. “You had me going there for a minute. I thought you were serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious. Marry me.”

“Marriage? We’re barely friends.”

“We’re definitely friends.”

“But—” She groped for the right thing to say. What she was hearing was so far from what she could possibly have expected. “You don’t marry someone because you’re friends.”

“You are more than just a friend to me, Kendry.”

Doctor,

Soldier, Daddy

Caro Carson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate and US Army officer, CARO CARSONhas always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. After reading romances no matter where in the world the army sent her, Caro began a career in the pharmaceutical industry. Little did she know the years she spent discussing science with physicians would provide excellent story material for her new career as a romance author. Now, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in the great state of Florida, a location which has saved the coaster-loving, theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

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Dedication

With love for Richard, who knew I would write this book long before I did.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my critique partners for keeping me on track despite distractions and obstacles.

Thank you to my partners and friends, T. Elliott Brown, Catherine Kean and Nancy Robards Thompson.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter One

River Mack Ranch, Texas

“You’re letting a baby choose your wife?”

Jamie MacDowell chose not to answer that question. Instead, he contemplated the campfire as he let his brother’s outraged tone roll off his back. Braden, his oldest brother, cared. That was the real emotion behind the outrage. Jamie had gotten much better at recognizing emotions in the past two years.

“Hire a nanny for the baby. You don’t have to marry anyone.” His other brother, Quinn, sounded less outraged—but more condescending.

The sounds of the Texas twilight settling over their parents’ land filled the silence as Jamie stretched his legs out. He flicked a glance around the fire. It figured: he’d taken the identical pose as his brothers. Braden, Quinn and now Jamie sat with jean-clad legs stretched out fully, each man with his right cowboy boot crossed over his left. It was funny, really, the subconscious mannerisms families shared.

Two years ago, Jamie would have probably uncrossed his ankles, just to be different. But that was before Afghanistan. Before more than a year spent sewing up soldiers in an army hospital.

Before he’d brought his son, Sam, to the United States.

“A nanny can do the job perfectly well,” Quinn continued. “You don’t need a wife to take care of a baby.”

“To take care of my son,” Jamie corrected him. It was going to take his brothers some time to get used to the news that he was a father. He hadn’t communicated much while he was deployed. Returning to Texas with a nine-month-old had shocked them all. “Not ‘a baby.’ My son.”

“Right. He can be well cared for by a good nanny.”

Jamie uncrossed his ankles. Neither of his brothers were parents. They didn’t understand the impact, the complete sea change, of having a child. When he held Sam, Jamie knew that he was holding the most important thing in the world. It was a powerful emotion, one that ultimately made his life utterly simple. What his son needed, Jamie would provide.

His son needed a mother.

Not a nanny.

“I’m working in the E.R.,” Jamie said. “You know the hours. What nanny is going to be available nights, days, whole twenty-four-hour periods without notice?”

“Get a live-in nanny.” Naturally, Quinn had an immediate answer. He was a cardiologist. That particular species of doctor tended to be very math-oriented. Their world was physics. Pressure, diameter, beats per minute. Black and white.

In contrast, as an emergency physician, Jamie often had to wing it. Thinking on the fly, he came up with theories, tested and discarded them, until he’d diagnosed and stabilized whatever emergency had brought the patient to the hospital.

In Afghanistan, there’d been only one kind of emergency: injury. Some injuries were catastrophic, caused by explosives that destroyed so much of the body, Jamie raced the clock to stop the bleeding and keep the heart beating. Some were minor, a finger sliced open when a rifle was cleaned carelessly. All of them—all of them—required stitches. Sewing. Surgery. Jamie had performed more surgery as an emergency physician in the United States Army than many surgeons did in civilian life.

“What if I get deployed again?” Jamie asked both brothers. “Will the nanny guarantee her services for the length of my deployment? Will she write to me about Sam? Send me photos?”

Braden abruptly sat up from his lounging position. “I thought you were back to reserve duty, the one-weekend-a-month thing until your commitment was up. Did you sign a new contract?”

Jamie wanted to smile at the predictability of Braden’s response. Like Quinn and himself, Braden was also an M.D., but he ran the research side of a massive corporation. He thought in terms of contracts and legalities, of facts on paper. Like Quinn, Braden saw everything as black and white.

The way their father had seen the world.