Free Dr. Daddy by Elizabeth Bevarly Page A

“Meaning you spend a lot of time gossiping, right?”
    “Well, now, I wouldn’t exactly call it gossiping,” he defended himself. “I prefer to think of it as networking.”
    Zoey nodded blandly. “Right. Networking. At any rate, do you...” She paused for a moment, wondering how best to discreetly ferret out information about herself without having it sound as if she was, well, ferreting out information about herself. Finally, she stammered, “Do you...do you ever hear any...you know...talk...about me?”
    Cooper arched his brows, though whether in surprise or to stall for time, Zoey wasn’t sure.
    “Talk?” he echoed. “About you?”
    “Talk,” she repeated dryly. “About me.”
    “Oh...” he hedged. “Gee, it’s hard to say. We men talk about so many things, you know. Swimsuit calendars, hockey, liquor, stewardesses, guns....”
    “Me?” Zoey asked again. “Do you ever talk about me?”
    He eyed her warily. “Why do you ask?”
    “I have it on very good authority that I’m known among the men of Seton General as a real, um, as a real threat to the family jewels.”
    “Oh, that, ” he said with a careless wave of his hand.
    She gaped at him. “What do you mean, ‘Oh, that? ’ Is it true? Is that what all you guys think about me?”
    “Don’t worry about it, Zoey. You should consider it a compliment. Nobody likes Jeff Pearson anyway.”
    “But—”
    “We men have nothing but respect for you, kid. You’re practically one of us.”
    Practically one of them? she thought. Good heavens, who’d want to be one of them?
    “Then it is true,” she said dismally.
    “Hey, there are worse things you could be considered,” he remarked. “There’s no shame in being a tough broad.” And with that heartening reassurance, Cooper saluted her again and made his way toward the elevators.
    A tough broad, Zoey marveled as she watched him leave. Her male co-workers thought of her as a tough broad? Is that what Jonas thought her to be, too? Well, so what if he did? she thought further. She was a tough broad. Wasn’t she? Hadn’t she been going out of her way for years to convince people that she was someone they’d be better off not messing with? Why was she surprised to discover she scared men? At least, this way, they’d leave her alone. Wasn’t that what she wanted?
    It used to be, she realized. Until a couple of days ago. Until she’d wandered blindly into Jonas Tate’s house to find him struggling to raise a baby girl, and had witnessed a side of him that was scared and uncertain and vulnerable. Until she’d realized that maybe men weren’t quite the ogres she’d always thought them to be. At least...one of them didn’t seem to be.
    She glanced down at her watch again to find that it was not quite 2:00 a.m. She wondered if Jonas was asleep or awake, wondered if Juliana was blissfully lost in slumber or crying out in distress. And for some reason, she knew she belonged in that big house with them. For some reason, she suddenly felt responsible for them both.
    Until the two of them were on more solid footing, anyway, she amended. The least she could do was make sure Juliana was comfortable and happy. Zoey felt she owed it to the little girl to make sure she never felt as out of place in Jonas’s life as she herself had felt for so long in her aunts’ lives. And, she realized reluctantly, Jules was a baby Zoey could actually help. A baby she wouldn’t have to sit by and watch suffer because there was nothing she could do.
    Two o’clock, she repeated to herself as she reached once more for the patient file she had abandoned. She imagined Jonas in his purple silk pajama bottoms balancing Juliana in one arm while he tried to heat formula with his free hand. They really did need her, she told herself. And just because he had asked her to leave his house the other night didn’t mean she couldn’t return this morning.
    She could handle Jonas Tate and the confusing feelings he aroused in her,