Jacqueline Diamond - Surprise, Doc! You're A Daddy!

Now this woman contended she had known someone exactly like him. Maybe she’d stumbled across the information on the Internet and decided to try to squeeze out some money.

Yet she didn’t strike Hugh as the manipulative type. Perhaps someone else had put her up to it.

Meg swallowed hard and picked up her daughter. “You can’t have forgotten Dana. You delivered her yourself.”

“I haven’t delivered babies since my internship.” Hugh kept his tone level.

“The paramedics said you were as good as a doctor, and I couldn’t figure it out because you didn’t even have a high school education. You worked at a cafe, like me.” Now that she’d started talking, the words spilled out. “Then you vanished with my car. You left us at a gas station. Doesn’t this ring a bell?”

“Mrs. Avery, you’re clearly distressed,” Hugh said gently. “But I’ve never seen you before.”

“The longer I talk to you, the more sure I am that you’re my husband!”

“Your husband?”

She shifted her daughter against her shoulder. “It’s so hard…you have to remember, Joe. Wait! I can prove it.”

She set the little girl on a chair and fumbled in her purse. From the doorway, Andrew peered in and frowned. “What’s going on?”

“He’s my husband!” Meg said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for him.”

“You believe my brother is your husband?” Andrew lifted a skeptical eyebrow.

Hugh felt awkward for the woman. She spoke so sincerely and so urgently. And the little girl did resemble him, especially those unusual green eyes.

“Look!” Meg Avery thrust a photograph into his hand.

It was a candid shot of her and a man, both beaming at the camera. The man was the spitting image of Hugh.

“He does resemble me.” He passed the picture to Andrew.

His brother glanced at it. “Photographs can be altered. Besides, you can’t tell me you married a man without knowing who he was.”

“I did know, or I thought I did,” Meg said. “Joe was from Tennessee. Right after he got to California, he fell off a pier in Oceanside and nearly drowned, and he lost his memory. He had ID but…” She stopped in confusion.

“What?” Hugh asked.

“Well…” She spoke hesitantly. “After he vanished, I remembered little things. Like that the picture on his driver’s license was a poor resemblance. And it had his height wrong, too.”

Andrew regarded the woman scornfully. “Let me see if I get this right. You think my brother—a respected pediatrician—stole someone’s ID, married you and then fled? Oh, sure. It happens all the time.”

“Wait a minute,” Hugh said. “Neither of us knows what I did while I had amnesia. I was missing for quite a while.”

“When?” Meg asked.

“I turned up two years ago.”

“That’s when Joe left me!” she said. “I can show you the police report.”

Her story wasn’t as far-fetched as it might seem, Hugh had to admit. He’d disappeared at sea in the accident that killed his friend Rick. Could he have washed up and been mistaken for another accident victim?

On the other hand, if someone had invented this tale, he or she had cleverly woven in the well-publicized details. And chosen a child the right age to fit the timing.

“You’re saying that this is my daughter?” Now Hugh understood why the little girl had called him Daddy. If she’d been deliberately lied to as part of a scheme, it had been a cruel thing to do.

“She is yours,” Meg said. “Can’t you see she’s got your eyes?”

“How do we even know she belongs to you?” Andrew said. “You could have borrowed her to pull a scam.”

Hugh wanted to kick his brother. Whatever Andrew’s opinion of the woman, he shouldn’t speak so harshly in front of the little girl. “The whole question can be resolved by a DNA test,” he said quietly.

This was the point at which he expected Meg to feign outrage. With her unruly hair and flashing amber eyes, she could make a great show of being offended.

Of course, she’d never really had a chance of conning him. A doctor wouldn’t buy a story like hers without proof, but this woman and whoever had encouraged her might be too unsophisticated to realize that.

She visibly fought to subdue the anger smoldering in her gaze. “All right. What do you need? A blood sample?”

Her agreement startled Hugh. Maybe she honestly believed him to be her missing husband.

“That would suffice.” He turned to Andrew. “Would you draw blood for us?”

“You’re joking, right?” said his brother. “You’re not going to dignify this nonsense by submitting to a test!”

Hugh supposed it was insulting to have to go to such lengths to defend himself. He might have withdrawn his offer, except for the tears trembling on the little girl’s lashes.

The grown-ups’ arguing clearly had upset her. He’d always been empathetic toward children, and this girl’s wistfulness touched him deeply.

“What harm can it do? And it will resolve the matter completely.” To Meg, he said, “It’ll take about a week to get the results.”

“I can wait.” While Andrew went to find syringes, Hugh rolled up his sleeve and swabbed his arm with alcohol. He did the same for Dana, while explaining gently that it would hurt a little but was for a good cause.

She believed him instantly. As he leaned close, he inhaled her scent, a blend of baby powder and freshness. The aroma brought a scene vividly to mind.

It was a small room, patchily decorated with flowered curtains and a Minnie Mouse poster. A woman with bushy red hair sat in a rocking chair, nursing a baby.

Maybe it was a scene from a movie, except that it had been summoned to mind by a scent, and movies didn’t have scents. As for Meg’s hair, his mind might be filling in details from the present, Hugh told himself.

“What?” the woman asked. “Are you remembering something?”

Her face was close to his, the eyes wide, the lips parted. Hugh got a sudden urge to kiss the freckles on her nose. He pulled back.

“No. I haven’t eaten lunch yet. I get distracted when I don’t eat.”

“I know,” she said. “You always carried mints for between meals.”

There was a roll of mints in his coat pocket right now. Hugh wondered if she had seen the bulge and guessed at its cause. If so, she was very sharp.

Andrew returned with the equipment. Expressionlessly, he drew blood while Meg hovered over her daughter. The little girl winced but didn’t cry out. After he finished, Meg handed Hugh a scrap of paper with a phone number. “Please call me when the results come in.”

“Our lawyer will call you,” Andrew said.

“She’s either his daughter or she isn’t!” the woman answered. “If she is, that proves he’s my husband. I don’t see why anyone needs a lawyer.”

“If by some bizarre chance you did manage to snare my brother while he wasn’t in his right mind, it isn’t legal,” Andrew said. “You admitted he was using a false ID. You’re married to someone who doesn’t exist.”

“I—” She stared at him in distress. “I never thought of that.”

Her mouth trembled as if she might cry. Before any tears could fall, she gathered her daughter and left.

Once her footsteps had faded away, Andrew said, “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”

“I can’t dismiss it out of hand.” Hugh’s skin tingled with the memory of the woman’s nearness. He couldn’t explain why he felt such a powerful response to a stranger, and yet it was hard to imagine that the two of them had anything in common.

Except, possibly, for one very sweet little girl.

“We should get the results by next Wednesday,” Andrew said. “Until then, put her out of your mind.”