Changed by His Son's Smile. Robin Gianna

Trent comes down, tell him I’m just going to splint it and put drains in for now, until the swelling goes down. When the nurse anesthetist gets here, tell her to grab the X-rays and come in.”

      He stopped to place his hand on the mother’s shoulder, speaking to her in the soothing, warm tones that always reassured patients and family and had been known to weaken Dani’s knees. From now on, though, when it came to Chase, she had to be sure her knees, and every other part of her, stayed strong.

      “Once you heal, it’s going to take a while to get your leg strong again. But I promise we’ll help you with exercises for that, and you’ll be playing soccer again in no time.” Chase smiled at the boy, now in a hospital bed with a trapeze apparatus connected to his leg with a counterweight, which had to feel really miserable in the hot, un-air-conditioned hospital ward.

      Lucky, really, that it wasn’t a whole lot worse, with bad internal injuries. Barring some hard-to-control infection, he’d eventually be running again. Damned drunk driver apparently hadn’t even seen the poor kids. Chase’s lips tightened.

      As Chase suspected, in addition to the compound fracture, the boy’s tibia had been broken too, and he’d put a cast on it before finally getting him set up in bed. It would be damned uncomfortable for the kid, but would keep the bones immobile so he could begin to heal.

      “Nice work, Dr. Sheridan,” he said to Dani as he looked closely at the boy’s forehead, which she’d nearly finished stitching. Dani looked up at him from her sitting position next to the bed, a light glow of perspiration on her beautiful face. Her blue, blue eyes smiled at him in a way that made him want to pick up where they’d left off the night before. If they’d been alone, he would have. Convincing her to marry him was a pleasure he looked forward to. Except he needed to stop thinking about all the ways he planned to accomplish that before everyone in the room knew where his thoughts had travelled.

      He could tell Dani already did. “I’ve always appreciated the superior techniques you implement for everything you do,” he said, giving her a wicked grin.

      Her smile faded and her fair skin turned deeply pink, and she quickly turned to finish working on the boy’s forehead. He nearly laughed, pleased at how easily he could still rattle her.

      The nasty gash was now a thin red line within the tiny stitches Dani was currently tying off. If anything, she’d gotten even better at it than when they’d been in Honduras. Even back then he’d been amazed at her talent for leaving only the smallest scar.

      “Tell him he looks very handsome and rugged, like a pirate,” she said, smiling at the boy. “His friends will be jealous.”

      Chase translated and the kid managed a small smile, but his mother laughed, the sound full of relief. She’d been fanning the child practically non-stop with a home-made fan, trying to keep him comfortable in the stifling heat of the room and to ward off pesky flies that always found their way into the hospital ward, regardless of everyone’s efforts to keep them out.

      They’d set Apollo’s sister up in the bed next to him, though she didn’t really need to stay in for observation. Their mother, though, would be bringing food in for her son and sleeping next to him on the floor to help care for him, so it made sense to keep the little girl here too, as the bed was available.

      “We’ll be putting a new cast on his whole leg some time after the swelling goes down, but for now we’ll be keeping him comfortable with some pain medicine,” he said to the mother. “I’ll be back later to check on him.”

      He tipped his neck from side to side to release the kinks that always tightened there after a long procedure. With everything they could do for the kids finished for now, he felt suddenly anxious to find Drew and tell him the truth. He gathered up Dani’s suture kit. “Ready to go, Doctor?”

      “Not really,” she mumbled under her breath as she stripped off her gloves.

      She looked up at him as she stood, her face full of the same uncertainty and anxiety that had been there earlier. Why was she so worried about telling their son that he was the boy’s father? If she didn’t look so sweet and vulnerable, he’d be insulted.

      Sure, he’d said he didn’t want kids, but that had been before he’d known it was already moot.

      She’d see how good it would be. He’d reassure her, romance her, be a good dad to Drew, and she’d realize that everything would be okay. His mood lifted, became downright buoyant, and he tugged at one of the crazy blonde curls that had escaped from her ponytail.

      Last night when he’d kissed her, she hadn’t been able to hide that she still wanted him the way he wanted her. She’d come round. Marry him. He’d find a good job for her in the States where he could work sometimes, too, and Drew would be safe.

      Yeah, it was a good plan. He knew he could make it happen.

      He tugged another curl.

      “You know, you’re like a second-grader sometimes,” she said, pulling her head away with a frown. “Next, you’ll be putting a frog down my shirt.”

      “No. A lizard.” He folded her soft hand into his. “Let’s find Drew.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “THIS LOOKS LIKE a good lizard spot.” Chase maneuvered the Land Rover off the dusty road and around some scrub towards a grouping of rocks.

      “I can’t believe you’re really planning on catching one,” Dani said, shaking her head. “I know you have quick reflexes, but I think even you are a little slower than a lizard. And if you do catch one, it’ll probably bite you.”