Free Newborn Needs a Dad by Dianne Drake Page A

helped her out. “Did you know Neil’s brother very well?” she asked the gray-haired security guard, who had a firm hold on her as they walked up the cabin’s wooden steps.
    “Who, Gavin? We all knew him. Grew up right here in White Elk, practiced here until he and Neil…” He paused. Frowned. Didn’t finish his sentence.
    So Gabby asked, even though the way her heart was thudding told her the answer before Ed Lester could. “His name was Gavin? Gavin Thierry?” Even though she knew, she wanted to make sure.
    The man nodded solemnly. “Damn shame what happened to him. He was a good doctor. Probably as good as his brother.”
    Gabby fought back a hard lump in her throat as she entered the cabin, and went straight to the rocking chair next to the fireplace. A fire would have been nice, but she lacked the physical energy to lay one. Lacked the emotional energy to do anything other than sit there and rock, and hope the numbing squeak of the rockers would keep everything else out of her mind. Because, right now, she truly didn’t want to think.
    But eventually confused thoughts started popping and, try as she may, she couldn’t push them away. What had Ed Lester meant when he’d said Gavin had practiced here until he and Neil…? He and Neil what? Of all the times for the small-town gossip to quit on her! Especially when it concerned her, indirectly.
    Which brought her to another weighty thought. Should she tell Neil about her involvement with his brother? She was, after all, carrying Gavin’s son, Neil’s nephew. “I don’t know what to do, Bryce,” she said on a heavy, discouraged sigh. “I was prepared to tell your father about you, but now that he’s gone, I’m not sure what to do beyond that. Especially since…” Since what? Since she really liked Neil. Since she might be developing feelings for Neil, crazy as that seemed in two short days. “Like it would even go somewhere if I weren’t pregnant,” she muttered.
    But she did wonder about her feelings. Naturally, she attributed them to her upsurge of hormones, and to a lesser extent the fact that she was alone and Neil was so…welcoming. So steady.
    Leaning her head back against the rocker and shutting her eyes, the only thing Gabby envisioned was Neil, and in her images he was proving himself to be everything she’d ever wanted in a man. And that wasn’t the hormones talking. Or the misfit wanderings of a delusional mind. “But I’m not going to fall in love, Bryce. We’re fine, the two of us. No outsiders necessary. Right?”
    What was she supposed to do, though, when that outsider was a blood relative to her baby? That was the question causing her hands to shake.
    Slumping down into the rocker even more, Gabby sighed heavily again. Right about now she surely could have used some of her father’s sage advice. There was never a time she could remember that he hadn’t known what to do and say, and what had always amazed her about him had been how he’d utter just a few simple words that would make things crystal clear. She did miss him, and even now, after all these months without him, tears pooled in her eyes when thoughts of him flooded back. Daddy’s girl—not because he was her only parent but because she wanted to be daddy’s girl. His absence didn’t change that, and the ache of missing him was an ache that was softened only by knowing that, in the coming years, there would be so many wonderful stories to tell Bryce about his grandfather.
    Why couldn’t life have been just a little less complicated right now?
    “You know I haven’t done this before,” she said to Bryce, brushing away the tears with the back of her hand. “So you’re going to have to bear with me until I get it right.” And whether or not to tell Neil about his brother’s baby was something she had to get right.
    Gabby sat and rocked for the next hour, wrapped up in a cozy blanket and also wrapped in her memories of the past and her hopes for the future.