I can tell from the flash of recognition on her face that she has finally clocked who I am. I’m surprised it took this long—but then again, she was pretty distracted when I first got here.
“Holy shit!” she exclaims, her voice echoing off the sterile walls of the hospital room around us. “It’s—you’re—”
“Oh, so the mask didn’t do that much to hide who I was, then?” I shoot back.
Running into a woman I’ve slept with at work is bad enough—but running into a woman at work who I slept with nine months ago, who has just given birth to a little girl with the exact color of dark hair I have? Yeah, this is code fucking red, and I need to do everything I can to figure out just how bad this is.
“You—what are you doing here?” she asks, her eyes darting around as though someone might burst in at any moment to reveal themselves as the real doctor. I almost laugh.
“I’m your doctor,” I remind her.
“Yeah, but you were—”
“You have no idea who I am,” I tell her. “Remember? That’s the whole point of the party. Everyone gets to leave behind who they really are for a while. And usually, it stays that way. But…”
But you’ve just had a baby, and I have every reason to think that thing belongs to me.
“Well, uh, I guess it’s just a coincidence,” she replies weakly, but I’m not buying a word that comes out of her mouth.
I narrow my eyes at her. “Yeah. Lucky coincidence,” I fire back. “Otherwise I’d never have known you were having my baby.”
She snorts loudly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Careful,” I warn her. “I don’t take well to lying. And besides, you just had a baby. You want to be mindful of the language you use around her.”
Something about my tone seems to stop her in her tracks, and she shifts in the bed.
“You’re crazy,” she tells me. “I—this baby has nothing to do with you. You think that just because we had sex a few months ago, you’re the father?”
“No, that’s not why I think that,” I reply, keeping my voice as steady and calm as I can, given the circumstances. “I think that because we had sex nine months ago, and then you turn up at the hospital with nothing but a female friend for company.”
“How do you know—” She halts herself before she can reveal to much, and pushes a hand through her damp, sweaty hair. Even like this, her auburn hair a mess, her body spent, she looks gorgeous.
I can still remember laying eyes on her at that party, and knowing in that instant that I was going to do anything in my power to make her mine. I was attending from out of town, returning to pick up on an old tradition I followed in my medical school days. When I went back to my family’s home city a few hundred miles away, I gave it no more thought than that.
And it might have stayed that way, were it not for the fact that she’s staring back at me right now with this defiant expression on her face, practically begging me to keep arguing with her.
“You really think you can fool me?” I growl, dropping my voice pointedly. “Because, trust me, I’m not the kind of guy you want to lie to…”
“It’s none of your business,” she tells me. “I’m just here to have my baby and go. I don’t need any more of your help. I don’t—”
I shift toward her slightly, and she tenses, falling silent in a split second. It’s clear she doesn’t entirely know how to deal with me. But if she thinks I’m going to let her walk out of this room without giving me a straight answer on the truth behind that little girl, then she has another thing coming.
“So, if it’s not me,” I begin slowly, “then who is it?”
“What do you mean…?”
“The father,” I reply. “Who’s the father? If you’re so sure it’s not me, then you must have a whole laundry list of other potentials, right?”
She glares up at me for a moment. “You think I’m just going around sleeping with everyone?” she protests. “I—it’s not like that. I just know it’s not you.”
“So there must have been another man around that time,” I continue, without breaking my stride for a moment. “Who is he? Tell me his name. We’ll need to put it down on the birth certificate, anyway. Let’s just get this cleared up, right here and now.”
Her eyes slide away from me again, toward the door. I know she’s longing for Gina to bustle back in with her baby, but I know it’s not going to happen. On her way out, I told Gina to give me a few extra minutes with this girl, so I could talk to her, and I intend to make the very most of every second I have.
“I’ll speak to Gina about it,” she replies, her voice dropping slightly. “It’s not—it’s not a big deal. Plenty of people have babies without the fathers being in their lives, I don’t owe an explanation to you or—”
“Cut the shit,” I growl. She’s not offering up an alternative for how this might have happened, which leaves only one sensible option—I am the father.
And she’s doing everything she can to shield herself from the reality of that fact.
“Can we talk about this some other time?” she pleads, changing tack. “I just gave birth…”
“So it’s the perfect time to get it all out in the open,” I reply. “Tell me now. And then we can leave this all behind.”
She draws in a deep, shuddering breath. She’s still doing everything she can not to look at me. It’s almost ironic, given how the two of us met, to see her like this—see her so scared, doing everything she can to avoid my gaze. When we ran into each other at that party, we were both hidden behind masks, pretending to be people we weren’t. And now, she’s doing the same, just without the mask—dodging my questions, ducking anything that she can’t handle or control.
“Please,” she whispers, looking up at me. “Don’t make me answer that question.”
So that’s it then. I let out a long, shaky breath. As though things aren’t crazy enough as it is. As though I’m not far from home, far from everything I know, only my brother for company. And now, in the midst of all that, I’ve had a child dropped into my life.
And I’m sure my enemies will take in this new information with decided glee. Anything they can use against me, my father, my family, they will. And whether that little girl who has just come into the world has any idea of it—the blood that’s pumping in her veins is going to make her a target for some of the most dangerous people in the state.
I need to hear it from Katie. Because otherwise, I’m pulling her daughter into something she might not even be a part of, and I’m not willing to let that happen. If I am going to have a daughter, then I’m not going to guess at it—no, I’m going to listen to her mother speak the words out loud, and put to bed any doubts I might still have in my mind.
“You have another minute before Gina comes back,” I tell her, my voice leaving no room for argument. “And you can either say it in front of her, or at least make it so only I have to know.”
She stares back at me for a long moment, not saying a word. I can tell she would do anything in her power to get out of this right now, if she could. She wants to pretend this isn’t really happening—hell, with how drugged-up she is on pain medication, I’m surprised she can so much as have a coherent conversation with me.
Finally, she nods.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, you’re her father.”
She gazes at the ground before her. The edge of the sheet has risen slightly, and I can once again see the tattoo that tipped me off to the person I now know her to be. That peacock has crossed my mind more times than I care to count in the last few months, imagining the two of us together, going back to the night we met.
But if I’d known that it would lead to this…I don’t know if I would have gone through with it.
Daughter. I have a daughter. Which makes me a father.
Which makes Katie my…my what? I don’t know her at all. Sure, I might have come across her name on the chart, but that’s hardly the same thing as actually knowing someone—especially when they’ve just had your baby. What kind of mother will she be? The kind who doesn’t want me in her life, if this is anything to go by…
But before I can so much as contend with this, I hear voices in the hallway, and Gina opens the door, still cradling the girl in her arms. She has a beaming smile on her face, and a girl at her side who looks to be around the same age as Katie.
“Cara!” Katie gasps.
“Oh my God, you did it!” Cara replies, rushing into the room and leaning down to give her friend a hug. Katie just about manages to raise her arms to hug her back—lucky for her, the aftermath of birth and the aftermath of being confronted with your baby’s father with no warning are pretty similar, so Cara doesn’t seem to notice anything.
As Gina places Polly back into Katie’s arms, I stare down at the little girl—the girl who I now know to be my daughter. She’s striking—in the last couple of months since I’ve been here, I have delivered plenty of babies, but there’s something about this one that seems different. A brightness to her eyes, a knowingness as she looks at me, as though she already understands who I am.
Or maybe I’m just imagining that, because I want to think that my own daughter would know who I am.
I turn away swiftly as Cara begins to chatter to Katie, knowing I can’t be in here any longer. I need time to make sense of what has just happened, and I’m not going to be able to do it standing so close to the source of that revelation.
Before I can make it to the door, Gina catches my arm, frowning. “Are you alright?”
I look back at her. Gina is one of the old stalwarts here, has worked in this place probably as long as I’ve been alive, and that means she has a sharp eye for when things aren’t as they should be. But there’s no way I am handing the biggest gossipmonger at the hospital something this juicy. It would be around the city by the time the sun came up.
No, I need to get a coffee, get to my office, and figure out what the hell I’m going to do about this. Because there is no way I can just let go of what I’ve found out—and no way I’m going to back down and pretend that I won’t do anything it takes to be part of that little girl’s life.
Even if it means putting my entire undercover escape at risk.
