Free Dr. Daddy by Elizabeth Bevarly

been friends since they were teenagers, having met in an urban shelter adolescents on the run eventually wandered into for a hot meal. Her month-long stint on the streets of Philadelphia after running away from home was a part of her life about which Zoey preferred to forget. And except for her friendship with Cooper, she let most of her experiences from that time remain well buried in the past. She’d run to escape what she had thought at fourteen was a miserable life-style. And she’d learned pretty quickly what truly constituted misery.
    “Well, how about breakfast when we get off?” Cooper added. “My treat. I might be twenty bucks richer by then.”
    Zoey shook her head. “No way. I will not be treated to waffles with your ill-gotten gains. Besides, I have plans for the day. At least, I think I do.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Baby-sitting.”
    He curled down his lips in mock disgust. “Ugh. How can you stand it? You’re surrounded by screeching infants all day long. I’d think you’d want some time to yourself on occasion.”
    “I have plenty of time to myself,” she told him, squelching the little voice that wanted to say she spent too much time alone. “And I love being around babies.”
    “I notice you don’t seem to have any of your own.”
    Instinctively, her back went up at the comment. “And you know why, too.”
    He nodded, making a face at her. “I know why you say you don’t. ‘Because the world’s a terrible place’,” he recited in a bland voice. “Too horrible for you to bring another child into it to suffer. Blah, blah, blah.” He leaned farther over the counter and tugged playfully on her braid. “Better be careful, Zoey. One of these days, you might even start to believe that.”
    “I do believe that.”
    He eyed her skeptically. “And your lack of children would have nothing to do with the fact that you’re just too terrified to let a man get close enough to father one or two for you, right? It has nothing to do with what happened to Eddie.”
    She felt her cheeks flame and stood to face him, eye to eye. However, unlike most men, he was in no way intimidated by her overbearing posture. Cooper, after all, was the one who had pulled her out of the blackest period of her life. He was the only human being in the world who had known her during a time of despair, a time of weakness, and he wasn’t afraid of her in any way, shape or form. And that, she supposed, was one of the many reasons why she liked him so much.
    “You have no idea what you’re going on about, Cooper,” she said. “It has nothing to do with fear. Nothing to do with what happened to...Eddie.” God, she thought as she stumbled over the final word of her assurance. How long had it been since she’d spoken his name?
    Cooper relaxed his posture, and his voice was softer when he replied. “Hey, Zoey, you forget who you’re talking to. I know better than anyone why you don’t want to set yourself up for a fall. And after what happened to you, that’s perfectly understandable. But—”
    “What happened to me,” she interrupted him, “is a part of my past. It has nothing to do with who I am now.”
    He nodded, but she could see that he was in no way agreeing with her. “Right. Whatever you say, kid. Whatever you say.”
    “Look, shouldn’t you be heading over to CCU to find out if your guy made it or not?” she asked pointedly. “I have a lot of stuff here that needs my complete and undivided attention.”
    “Message received,” he told her with a brief salute.
    As he spun around to leave, Zoey remembered something she wanted to ask him. “Hey, Coop,” she called out after him.
    “Yes?” he replied, spinning back around.
    “You kill a lot of time in the east wing, don’t you?”
    He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Sure. When there are no runs I need to make. All the best-looking nurses work in the east wing,” he added with a wink.
    She ignored the compliment and said instead,