The Doc's Instant Family, page 1
“There is something you can do to prevent them from moving Bailey Ann to that foster home in Sheridan,” Genevieve said.
He waited, but she didn’t continue. She just stared down into the sink, as if she was worried that it was a suggestion that he wasn’t going to like.
“What is it?” he asked. “I’ve already pushed her release date from the hospital. And I’ve signed a contract with the hospital, so I can’t just quit—”
“I’m not suggesting you quit,” she assured him. “Or that you lie about her medical condition...”
“Then what are you suggesting?” he asked. “What can I do to keep Bailey Ann with me?”
She drew in a deep breath as if she needed to brace herself just to tell him her proposal...
Dear Reader,
You are cordially invited to a wedding—or maybe two—in Willow Creek, Wyoming. Maybe there’ll be one at Ranch Haven, home of the legendary Sadie March Haven. She was already a legend for often retold stories of her fighting off wolves and breaking a car window to rescue a certain feisty Chihuahua. Now the multi-hyphenate (mother/grandmother/great-grandmother) is a legend for all the matchmaking she’s been doing. But she worries her latest match between her grandson Dr. Colton Cassidy and lawyer Genevieve Porter has worked a little too fast and that people are going to get hurt. But with as much pain as the family has endured, they’ve also had joy and love. So it’s no wonder that even though it isn’t Valentine’s Day in Willow Creek, Sadie has instigated a Valentine’s Day in August to have the town decorated with hearts and flowers for another wedding she has planned...
I hope you’ve been enjoying all of Sadie’s shenanigans as much as I’ve enjoyed writing about them. Sadie is one of my favorite characters. I’m not sure if she reminds me of someone or if she’s who I will become in thirty years. She’s definitely meddled with me as much as she has her family, stealing so many of the scenes I’ve written and my heart, and hopefully yours, too!
Happy Reading!
Lisa Childs
The Doc’s Instant Family
Lisa Childs
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling, award-winning author Lisa Childs has written more than eighty-five novels. Published in twenty countries, she’s also appeared on the Publishers Weekly, Barnes & Noble and Nielsen Top 100 bestseller lists. Lisa writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense, paranormal and women’s fiction. She’s a wife, mom, bonus mom, avid reader and less avid runner. Readers can reach her through Facebook or her website, lisachilds.com.
Books by Lisa Childs
Harlequin Heartwarming
Bachelor Cowboys
A Rancher’s Promise
The Cowboy’s Unlikely Match
The Bronc Rider’s Twin Surprise
The Cowboy’s Ranch Rescue
The Firefighter’s Family Secret
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
Hotshot Heroes
Hotshot Hero Under Fire
Hotshot Hero on the Edge
Hotshot Heroes Under Threat
Hotshot Hero in Disguise
Hotshot Hero for the Holidays
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
With great appreciation for my editor, Adrienne MacIntosh, for her great insight and support and her incredible spreadsheets that keep me on track with all my deadlines! Adrienne, you’ve made my busy schedule stress-free and fun. I can’t wait to write many, many more books with you!
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 TWENTY-FOUR
EXCERPT FROM REUNITED WITH THE RANCHER BY ANNA GRACE
CHAPTER ONE
COLLIN CASSIDY DROPPED heavily into the chair behind his desk, more from shock than exhaustion. He felt like he’d been sucker punched. A fist hadn’t delivered the blow, though. The voice emanating from his cell phone speaker had. This wasn’t the first hit he’d taken over the past couple of weeks, but it definitely struck him the hardest.
“Dr. Cassidy, did you hear me? Are you there?”
“Um... I...” Maybe he hadn’t heard the social worker correctly. “Can you repeat that?”
“I found a foster family that will take Bailey Ann. Unfortunately they’re in Sheridan.”
That was more than an hour from Willow Creek, Wyoming—more than an hour from Collin.
“But that might be a good thing,” Mrs. Finch continued. “It’ll be close to the children’s hospital where she had her heart transplant, and she’ll be able to go back to seeing her doctors there.”
And not him.
“Are you sure the foster family can handle her health care?” he asked. “If she doesn’t get her meds...” Her little body could reject the heart that she’d waited so long to receive, the heart she’d nearly rejected once when another family hadn’t been able to handle her care plan. That was why the seven-year-old was in the hospital now.
That was one of the reasons he didn’t want her to go. The other...
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about fostering or adopting Bailey Ann myself,” he admitted.
A sigh drifted out of his cell speaker. “You’ve just recently moved to the area,” she said. “And you’ve just started your job at the hospital. Are you sure now is a good time for you to be considering adoption or even fostering? Especially a child who has special needs like Bailey Ann?”
“That’s why I want to do it,” he said. Because she was so very special.
“So you have a home with space for Bailey Ann? Child care arranged for her while you’re working what must be very long hours? Child care qualified to handle a child with her medical issues? You could do this with your schedule?” Mrs. Finch asked. “Because this other family is ready now to take her. They’re a little older, so they’ve only agreed to a short-term placement.”
He was losing her, just like he’d lost so many other people and places who mattered to him. “She’s still regaining her strength after that last foster family didn’t give her the antirejection meds correctly. She needs to be monitored for a week or maybe two yet at the hospital.”
“I will make sure this family gets the proper training over the next two weeks,” the social worker assured him.
A couple of weeks.
Was that enough time for him to prove himself capable and worthy of caring for her?
“We all want what’s best for Bailey Ann,” she said with that gentle tone that women had used when they’d broken up with him in the past. That whole “it’s not you, it’s me” thing when they were both well aware that it was really him, that because of his hectic schedule, he wasn’t as available or attentive as they needed him to be. He wasn’t enough for them.
He wasn’t enough for Bailey Ann either. He wasn’t ready. Just as he hadn’t been ready to help his own parents. He hadn’t been able to take care of them, to save them. His mom hadn’t survived. His dad had, but because of other doctors and surgeons and someone else who had unknowingly made the ultimate sacrifice.
That was how Collin felt about Bailey Ann, how hard he’d fallen for her. He was willing to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to be enough for her. Before he could say anything else to the social worker, to make his intentions clear, Mrs. Finch ended the call, as if the matter was settled.
Would she even give him a chance?
Knuckles tapped against wood, drawing his attention to the man standing in the doorway to his office. Looking at Colton was like looking into a mirror; they had the same dark eyes and dark hair, the same facial features and tall build. Colton, a firefighter, was a little more muscular than Collin, not that he would ever admit it to his twin.
And they weren’t the only ones in the family who shared a striking resemblance. In addition to their older brother Marsh, they’d recently discovered they had cousins who looked almost as much like them as he and Colton looked like each other.
Colton’s brow was furrowed beneath the brim of his black cowboy hat. He wasn’t wearing his firefighter gear or his paramedic uniform. So, not at the hospital for work. At that moment, their expressions were probably alike: troubled.
They’d had a lot of troubles in the past few weeks, and it wasn’t surprising that his brother was less upbeat than usual. The family ranch house had burned down, but they’d been about to sell it anyway. And fortunately nobody had been hurt in the fire. But what they’d learned after it...
All the family secrets their father had kept from them: a grandmother and cousins they’d never known about. Even their last name. It wasn’t Cassidy; it was Haven.
Collin was reeling, too, but he’d decided to focus on Bailey A nn, on making sure she was not alone. Like he usually felt.
“Hey, everything okay?” Colton asked him. “You look like you lost your best friend. And I know that’s not possible since I’m right here.”
They were identical twins, but they were really nothing alike. If they weren’t brothers, they might not even be friends. Colton was easygoing and charming while Collin was intense and focused, so focused that he’d never really taken time to make friends. So Colton probably was his best friend.
“I just got bad news about Bailey Ann,” he admitted.
Colton pressed his hand to his chest as if he felt the ache that Collin was feeling. “Oh, no, is her body rejecting her new heart again?”
A pang struck Collin, too. “No. She’s actually improving a lot.” She’d be ready to leave the hospital as soon as Mrs. Finch trained this other family in how to look after her.
He sighed. “I just got off the phone with her social worker. She found a placement for her.”
Colton stepped farther into Collin’s office and peered at his face, his dark eyes questioning. “That’s a good thing, right?” he asked.
With his emotion choking him, Collin could only shake his head.
“Are you worried they can’t handle her medical care, like her last foster family?”
He sucked in a breath and nodded. “But that’s only part of it.”
Colton’s mouth curved into a slight grin, and he nodded, too. “You’ve fallen for her. You want her.”
He nodded again, then released a shaky sigh. “But what can I really offer her?”
“Love,” Colton said. “You love her. That’s all that little girl wants. Someone who loves her and who will always be there for her.”
Tears stung Collin’s eyes, and he had to close them. “But I’m not ready. I would need a house and child care help for when I’m working, and I don’t have enough time...” He hadn’t had enough time to save his mom or help his dad. He’d had to get through school first and undergrad and med school and his residencies and fellowships. Everything took too long.
“We have somebody in our lives now who knows how to get things done,” Colton said with a grin. “Sadie.”
A grin tugged at Collin’s mouth, too. Their indomitable grandmother that they hadn’t even known they had. “She is a force of nature.”
But because of that, Collin had actually been trying to avoid her. The old woman was intent on matchmaking, and he had no plans to get swept up in her schemes like his cousins and now even his twin had.
He cleared his throat and asked, “Are you here to see Livvy?” That was probably why Colton had showed up at the hospital in his casual clothes, looking more like a cowboy than the firefighter and paramedic he was.
Colton’s whole face lit up with love at the mention of the ER doctor for whom he’d fallen so hard. But then his grin slipped away and he shook his head. “I actually came to see you.”
“About what?” Collin asked.
Colton stood there for a moment, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. Then he shook his head. “Never mind. It can wait. You need to focus on Bailey Ann so you can prove to the social worker that you’re the right family for her.”
Collin wasn’t even sure where to start. Sadie? She really was good at getting things done, like setting up his twin and her friend’s granddaughter so they couldn’t help falling in love. Not that that was a bad thing, though, since Colton was happier than he’d ever been. But even with his happiness, something was weighing on him.
“I know something’s been bothering you,” Collin said. He’d been trying to get his twin to tell him what it was for the past couple of weeks. “So spill it.”
Colton shook his head again. “Don’t worry about it. It can wait. Bailey Ann can’t. You need to focus on her. Get Grandma to help you.”
Collin’s stomach knotted at the risk of reaching out to Sadie Haven. “She’s going to use it as an opportunity to set me up with whoever she has picked out for me. I don’t have time for that when I have to focus on Bailey Ann.”
Colton chuckled. “You think she has some kind of master plan for all of us? Like she’s arranged a marriage for each of us?”
“Don’t you?” Collin asked. “She had Katie for Jake. Emily for Ben. She brought Melanie back to Dusty after he lost her. And then Taye for Baker.”
“Yeah, because she knows all of them really well. She raised them.” Their cousins hadn’t had easy childhoods either. They were young when their dad died, younger than Collin and his brothers had been when they lost their mom. “She didn’t think Dad had even survived after he ran away all those years ago, and she had no idea we existed until a few weeks ago.”
Collin continued as if his twin hadn’t interrupted. “And she found Livvy for you.”
Colton laughed and shook his head. “No, she didn’t. We found each other right here at the hospital.”
Collin snorted. “Yeah, so you think. But how’d you wind up working out of this hospital?”
“I got transferred to Willow Creek Fire Department from Moss Valley.”
“And you know very well that Sadie was behind that transfer,” Collin reminded him. “Just like we figured out she was behind Marsh getting the position of interim sheriff of Willow Creek when the sheriff suddenly decided to retire. Why do you think she wanted you to work here?”
“So that we would all be closer to Ranch Haven. She wanted to get to know us, to spend more time with us,” Colton said.
Collin nodded. “To spend more time with us and to get us involved with whoever she’s picked out for us.”
Colton shook his head again but slower, more tentatively, and he murmured, “No...”
“That’s why I’ve been staying away from her,” Collin admitted. Marriage wasn’t for him. He’d already lost too many people in his life, and he had no intention of ever risking his heart. And even if he thought it was safe to fall in love, with all his student loans to pay off yet, he was in no position to get married. These were all reasons that he should let Bailey Ann go to that foster home, but letting go of her was one more loss he wasn’t sure he could handle. He had started treating her during his internal medicine residency. Despite all of her health struggles and all of the people who’d abandoned her because of them—her biological parents and numerous foster families—she was still so affectionate and optimistic. She was an inspiration for him.
He would have to do everything he could to get custody of her, even swallow his concerns and ask his grandmother for help. He’d simply be firm about not being able to give his heart away. He couldn’t handle another heartbreak.
And it would break anyway if Bailey Ann was sent away. So right now, he had nothing left to lose.
* * *
GENEVIEVE PORTER HAD lost everything that had ever mattered to her—some things and people before she’d even realized they had mattered. She’d made so many mistakes in her life that had cost her dearly. The biggest mistake was in not realizing how short life could be for some.
Too short.
The second biggest mistake was in trusting people she shouldn’t have. One was her ex-husband. The other...
“I’m sorry,” Sue Masters said as she settled heavily into a chair across from Genevieve’s desk. The gray-haired woman worked as a nurse in the Emergency Department at Willow Creek Memorial. “I thought that you wanted to make sure that your nephews were all right. That they were safe.”
“Yes, but I just wanted you to let me know what you heard around town or if they had to go to the hospital,” Genevieve said, with a pang of regret. “I didn’t expect you to call Child Protective Services on the Havens.”
After one of the boys had been injured in an accident, Sue had called CPS to investigate the children’s safety with their current guardians. The case had, fortunately, been closed quickly, with the Havens being cleared.
Tears shimmered in Sue’s usually frosty blue eyes. “I know. I made a terrible mistake.”
“The mistake was mine,” Genevieve said. Along with so many others she’d made over the years. “I should have been clearer about my intentions.” The problem was that she wasn’t even sure what her intentions were.
