Catherine Mann
To my awesome editor Stacy Boyd!
Alaina Rutger was living her childhood dream—a family of her own. Her charismatic husband was driving her home from the hospital with their infant son strapped into a car seat. She had the perfect life.
If only she could remember the man who’d put the four-carat diamond wedding ring on her finger.
A man who called himself Porter Rutger. Husband. Father of her child. And a man who’d been wiped from her memory along with the past five years of her life.
She tore her eyes away from his broad shoulders and coal-dark hair as she sat in back with their baby. Her baby. Alaina tucked the monogrammed red blanket over the infant as he slept, one foot in a booty, the other in a cast that had begun the repair on his clubfoot.
Another person she didn’t remember. Another heartbreak in her upside-down world. A week ago, she’d woken in the hospital with no memory of the man sitting by her bedside or of the blue bundle in the bassinet.
Waking up from a coma had felt a lot like coming to after the worst hangover ever, her head throbbing so badly she could barely move. But a quick look around showed her a hospital room rather than a bedroom.
And a hot man sleeping in the chair, his dark hair rumpled. His black pants and white button-down wrinkled.
Her own Doctor McDreamy?
“Hello,” she’d croaked out, her throat raw for a sip of water.
McDreamy bolted awake quickly. “Alaina?” He blinked, scrubbed his hand across his eyes in disbelief, then shot to his feet. “Oh, God, you’re awake. I need to get the nurse.”
“Water,” she rasped out. “Please, a drink.”
He thumbed the nurses’ call button. “I don’t know what the doctors will want. Maybe ice chips. Your IV has been feeding you. Soon, though, I promise, whatever you want, soon.”
The nurses? Doctors? He wasn’t Doc McDreamy? Then... “Who are you?”
He looked up from the control panel of buttons slowly,