Paula Riggs - Daddy By Accident

“Hi, I’m Prudy Randolph. We met in the ER yesterday,” she said when she saw that Stacy was awake.

“We did indeed,” Stacy replied, waving her in. “I was hoping to get a chance to thank you for all your help.”

Nurse Randolph shrugged off her thanks with an infectious grin that had Stacy’s spirits lifting. “How’re you feeling?”

“Antsy. I hate hospitals.”

“On days like this, so do L”

Stacy laughed and found it felt good. “Feel free to bide out here with me. I promise I won’t tattle.”

“Sounds like an offer I can’t refuse.” Looking very much like a mischievous six-year-old playing a prank on her teacher, the elfin nurse pulled up the only chair and sat, “Lord, I’m bushed,” she said, and let out with a heartfelt sigh. “And it’s not even a full moon.”

“Sounds like you’ve been inundated with accident victims.”

“You have no idea.” Prudy blew a lock of hair from her forehead before grimacing. “Everything from the usual fender-benders to a parrot attack.”

Stacy blinked. “Parrot attack?”

“Hmm. On the owner. A case of adolescent rebellion mixed with rampaging hormones.”

“The owner was a teenager?”

Prudy laughed. “No, the parrot A male, naturally, and not at all happy to be kept away from the newest addition to the family bird population, which just happened to be a very attractive—and willing—female.”

“Naturally.”

Prudy swiped a hand through her Orphan Annie curls. “Sorry to unload on you. Sometimes I wish I’d followed my mother’s advice and become a supermarket checker.”

“At least the hours are better.”

“Not to mention the pay.”

Stacy laughed, then moaned at the sudden explosion of glittery light behind her eyes. Nurse Randolph’s expression became solicitous. “Head still hurting?”

“Let’s just say I’ve got a long way to go before I’m up to the ‘feeling lousy’ stage.”

Chocolate brown eyes studied hers with professional expertise. “Any idea when Dr. Jarrod plans to release you?”

“This morning he said three or four days—if Continued to improve, and if there are no more indications of labor.” She sighed. “Keep your fingers crossed for me.”

Prudy pretended to take offense. “Hey, you sound as though you don’t like our deluxe accommodations.”

“I can’t afford deluxe, or even economy class. I’m not even sure I can afford the cost of that box of tissues.”

The nurse looked startled and then embarrassed, “If there’s a problem. I could contact Social Services for you.”

Stacy felt a sudden heat scalding her cheeks. The thought of having to apply for public assistance made her uncomfortable. “Don’t mind me,” she said with a laugh to show she wasn’t really concerned. “I’m addicted to worrying. It’s my drug of choice.”

“Sounds like my mother,” Prudy said with a wry grimace. Settling back, she propped her feet against the bottom railing of the bed and yawned. “Sorry, it’s the rotating shifts, not the company.”

An ambulance was approaching below, its siren’s wail growing steadily louder. Down the hall, a baby cried and a woman crooned. According to the aid who’d served her breakfast, the birthing rooms were full. Five rooms, five moms in labor.

“Nice flowers,” Prudy said with a nod toward the hydrangeas. “I’ve got some just like that in my yard.” Her eyes narrowed, then turned quizzical. “At least I did when I left this morning.”

Stacy adjusted the head of the bed and tried to ignore the sudden craving for a pastrami sandwich and a kosher pickle. “My Good Samaritan brought them by earlier. You remember him? The man who came with me in the ambulance.”

Prudy stretched out her legs and frowned. “Oh yeah, I remember him, all right. Boyd MacAuley, the flower-poaching rat.”

Stacy frowned. “You know him?”

“He’s my neighbor, and I’m going to kill him for stealing my pampered darlings, that’s what I’m going to do.” She sighed, then offered Stacy a look. “Not that I wouldn’t have given him permission to pick them, mind you, but it would have been nice if he’d asked. Fat chance, though, since Boyd was never one for polite niceties.”

Stacy fought a fast battle with herself—and lost. Curiosity might kill a cat, but she’d always considered herself more bulldog than feline. Besides, she had to know. “I...suppose he doesn’t live alone.”

“No, he lives with a ghost.”

Stacy blinked. “Pardon?”

Prudy sat up and arched her back, as though working out a few kinks. “Boyd’s a widower. For more than three years now, but to all intents and purposes, Karen’s still in that house.”

“Karen is—was his wife?”

The nurse nodded. “She was a Waverly. Her family owns mills. The complex where Boyd and I live used to belong to her grandfather—along with half of Portland.”

“What happened to her?”

“An auto accident, what else?” Prudy shook her head, her brown eyes sad. “Karen was seven months pregnant Luke Jarrod tried to save the baby, a beautiful little girl who looked exactly like her daddy, but the pour little angel only lived a few minutes longer than her mother. After that, Boyd just shut down emotionally. For a long time I thought we might lose him, too.”

Stacy thought back to the conversation she and Boyd had shared that morning—and the change that had come over him when she’d started gushing about the baby. No wonder he’d turned to stone.

A wave of embarrassment ran through her, followed closely by empathy for a man who’d lost so much and yet had been so quick to comfort a stranger.

“He’s a nice man,” she murmured, her voice thick.

“You like him, don’t you?” Stacy heard sympathy in the other woman’s voice and looked up slowly.

“Very much,” she admitted, because there didn’t seem to be a point in denying it. “I think I would have liked him even if he hadn’t come racing to my rescue.”

“Stacy—”

“Don’t worry, I’m not mooning over the man,” she assured the other woman whose clouded eyes and worried expression seemed to signal genuine concern. “Whatever romantic illusions I might have had about white knights and happily-everafter endings faded a long time ago.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” A piercing sadness came and went in the other woman’s eyes an instant before she curved her lips into a smile and stood up.

“Much as I hate to, I’d better get back down to the zoo. By this time the animals should be good and restless.”

Ever conscious of the tenderness lurking in her skull, Stacy offered a restrained laugh and a look of commiseration that Prudy returned before slapping her palm gently against her forehead.

“For Pete’s sake, I almost forgot the reason I came up in the first place,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Yesterday, when I called the principal at the school where you’re subbing, she said to give you her best regards and to tell you not to be in a stew about getting straight back to work. Something about a permanent position she thought might be opening up next September? I guess it fell through, so you’re off the hook. I thought you’d like to know. There’s nothing worse than being strapped to a bed when you think your world may be falling apart because you’re on hiatus.”

Off the hook? More like, out in the streets, Stacy thought. She gulped down a wave of disappointment and wondered why she always felt like laughing when disaster struck. Hysteria, no doubt. To say the least, it was not good news that the permanent position at the school had not come through.

“When it rams, it pours,” she muttered, feeling suddenly battered on the inside, too.