Found: A Mother for His Son Read Online Free

and interchangeable. If she embraced her reasons hard enough, she’d believe them. Wouldn’t she?
    He’s the reason you’re here.
    Damn it! Why couldn’t she fool herself even for a moment?
    Simple answer. She was here for Dermott, which scared her to death. So, she had two choices. Admit it, deal with it and, of course, not act on it. Or go and find another job somewhere else.
    “You should have thought it over better,” she admonished herself as she stood there, staring up at the building, wondering what would greet her on the other side of the door. Stupid thoughts! On the other side of that door were people who needed her. And a doctor who needed a nurse. If she could keep that in mind, she’d be good. “One step at a time, Jenna,” she whispered, finally pushing open the door.
    Jenna took her first step inside, plastering a perky smile to her face, ready to greet the patients as she walked through the waiting room for her first time, but after that one step her smile disappeared. The place was totally empty, the doorbell was jingling its merry tune to a completely hollow room. There wasn’t even a waiting-room television tuned to an annoying cartoon channel blaring away. It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem normal, especially when Dermott was the only doctor in town.
    “Hello,” she called out tentatively, wondering if she should head down the hall to the exam rooms, or go back to her car, leave town and see if that clinic she’d passed in Muledeer a couple of hours ago needed a nurse. “Anybody here?”
    There were noises above her, voices she thought, but she couldn’t make them out. “Hello,” she called, a little louder this time.
    Again, no response.
    “Dermott?” she called. “Dr. Callahan, are you here?” Her voice practically echoed, the place was so empty. “It’s Jenna. I’m here.”
    Suddenly, there was a pounding on the stairs behind her, and before she could turn around to see who it was, a little boy practically threw himself at her feet.
    “You must be the lady,” he said, assuming a tough-guy posture—arms folded across his chest, face in a deadly serious, deadly cute scowl.
    “And you must be Dr. Dermott Callahan,” Jenna replied, fighting back a smile.
    “Am not,” he insisted.
    “But that’s the name on the door.” To prove her point, she returned to the door, and showed the backwards outline of Dermott’s name there. “See? It says ‘Dr. Dermott Callahan, Family Practitioner’. So that means you must be Dr. Callahan.” Pretty little boy, if boys could be called pretty. Lots of curly blond hair. Blue eyes. Beautiful eyes exactly like…Dermott’s.
    Dermott had a son? Why hadn’t he mentioned it? “So, you are the doctor, aren’t you?” she continued.
    The little boy shook his head. “That’s the big guy, he’s the doctor. I just help out here when he needs me ’cos I’m too little to be a real doctor.”
    The child was just making her feel all warm and comfy inside, he was so adorable. “The big guy? Who’s that?”
    “He’s my…” He scrunched his face a moment, thinking. “He’s my big guy, and he’s upstairs, getting the apartment ready for you. It has spiders, and I’ll bet you hate spiders.”
    So Dermott was getting ready to stash her in a room with spiders. No romantic intentions there, which was a good thing. “So tell me, Dr. Dermott’s son, what’s your real name?”
    “Dermott Maxwell Callahan.” He nodded affirmatively, then added, “Junior.”
    “But you’re not a doctor, Dermott Maxwell Callahan, Junior?”
    He wrinkled his nose. “Call me Max. I’m going to be like Grandpa Frank when I grow up, and live on a ranch.”
    It was sounding like Dermott was part of a whole family system here. Ex-wife somewhere, child very much present, and parents or in-laws on a ranch. Tidy arrangement. One she almost envied. “I lived on a ranch for a little while when I was a girl. My grandfather’s still there. He raises horses.”