your grandparents and cousins? Of all the stupid—”
Jessie crossed her arms, locked her left leg, and jutted out her left hip, taking on her defiant pose. “I told you I don’t want to go.”
“Well I’ve got news for you, young lady. My mind is made up and my decision is final. You are going to Lake George.” In eleven days. Because Lewis needed a break and sex and a few days to re-visit his old, relaxed, likable self, to clear his head and come up with a new approach to handling his daughter, calmly and rationally.
“He wants to get rid of me.” Jessie threw herself at the stranger who barely managed to get her arms up in time to catch her.
Not permanently. Just for a brief respite. “I—”
“He doesn’t want me,” she cried. “He never wanted me. My mom told me so. Now that she’s gone I have no one.”
Lewis’s chest tightened at the devastation in her voice. No, children were not part of his life plan. But since the paternity test had proved Jessie to be his biological daughter, even though she’d gotten her pretty face and unpleasant temperament from her mother, he was determined to do the best job he could raising her. A task that’d turned out to be much more difficult than he’d ever imagined.
“Jessie—” He reached for her, wanting to be the one to hold her and comfort her.
But Jessie held up her hand as she sucked in a few choppy breaths and cried out,
“He says I have to stay there. No matter what. And I can’t come home early.”
“Because I have to work,” Lewis lied. But it sounded better than, “Because I need some time away from you to regain my sanity.”
“You work all the time,” she accused, scowling at him over the stranger’s shoulder.
“And why should it matter if I do?” Lewis shot back. “It’s not like I can get you to go anywhere or do anything with me when I’m not working.”
“See how he talks to me?” Jessie said. “He hates me.”
“You’re laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think?” the woman asked, peeling Jessie’s arms off of her and stepping away, giving Lewis his first view of her name tag. Scarlet Miller, RN, BSN, MSN, CCRN. Head Nurse NICU.
“I’m totally serious,” Jessie said, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. “He told me so.” She glared at him. “In the taxi on the way here.”
Scarlet turned her assessing gaze on him. “Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “And all this time I’ve been telling Jessie you couldn’t possibly be as big a jerk as she was making you out to be. I stand corrected.”
Her keen blue eyes locked with his in challenge. Her face—an attractive mix of natural beauty and intelligence—in full view for the first time, Lewis lost track of the conversation for a few seconds, moving his focus to her chocolate brown hair and pleasingly trim figure. Her confident stance as she berated him. Her statement of “all this time” registered bringing him full circle to wonder why a professional adult female, who looked to be closer to his age than his daughter’s, would befriend a little girl.
“If he makes me go I’ll run away,” Jessie said to Scarlet as if Lewis wasn’t standing right there.
“No you won’t,” Scarlet said firmly.
Good. Another adult on his side.
“You did,” Jessie accused.
What kind of nut job shared that information with a confused little girl?
“Did you not listen when I told you what a dangerous and stupid move it was?” She took Jessie by the shoulders and turned her. “Look at me, Jess.”
Jess. So familiar. So caring.
The vulnerable expression on his daughter’s face as she obeyed, gave him his first opportunity to see beneath her tough-teen anger and defiance to the scared little girl she’d hidden away so effectively, from him, but not this stranger. Why?
“You have what I didn’t. You have me.” The woman dug into the pocket of her lab coat, pulled out a business card, and wrote something on the back. Then she held it out to Jessie. “On the front is my work number and on the back is my cell phone number. You can call me anytime for any reason. I didn’t offer earlier because I didn’t want to interfere between you and your dad.”
As it should be.
“You are not all alone, Jess. You have your father and you have me.” Scarlet glanced at him before continuing. “And if, while you’re on vacation, someone tries to make you do something you don’t want to do or in any way makes you feel uncomfortable and your dad won’t come up to bring you home, I promise I will.”
Oh no she would not. “My daughter will be driven to and from Lake George by her grandparents. And she doesn’t need your telephone numbers because if she needs to talk to someone anytime for any reason, she can talk to me.” Lewis grabbed for the card.
Jessie thrust it behind her back.
“This entire situation is getting out of hand, Jess,” Scarlet said. “You need to tell him.”
Lewis stopped and looked at her. “Tell me what?”
“What’s said between us stays between us,” Jessie yelled at Scarlet. “You promised.”
“That was before you got yourself picked up by the police and threatened to run away.”
“You mean you know—?” Lewis started only to be cut off when an urgent voice came through the overhead speakers. “Scarlet Miller to the emergency room. Stat. Scarlet Miller to the emergency room.”
“Saved by the hospital operator,” Scarlet said with a wink to Jessie. “Talk to your father,” she added before turning her back on him and walking away.
CHAPTER TWO
SCARLET JOGGED THE short distance to the large nurses’ station in the center of the busy emergency room. “I’m Scarlet Miller,” she said to the Scarlett she’d given the flowers to a few minutes earlier. Dr. Jackson and Jessie came to stand beside her.
“They need you in trauma room three,” a nurse replied. “Pregnant teen. Walked in alone already crowning. No identification. No prenatal care. Unsure of gestation but estimated to be around thirty-three weeks. Dr. Gibbons called for a NICU team.”
“And my staff must have been called into the high risk multiple birth scheduled for this afternoon.” Triplets, one in distress, being delivered by Cesarean section at twenty-nine weeks. Scarlet removed her lab coat and handed it to Jessie. “Looks like I’m it. Please call the NICU and speak with Ashley,” she directed the unit clerk. “Tell her I’m here and to alert Dr. Donaldson and Mac from Respiratory Therapy that I’ll have them paged if I need them. And ask her to send down an incubator.”
“What can I do to help?” Dr. Jackson asked.
“Would you please have someone turn on the warming
