Dr. Daddy Read Online Free PDF Page B

thoughts. “I think she’ll sleep for a while.”
    He nodded, but wasn’t completely convinced. “Coffee?” he asked.
    “Please.”
    He brought two generous mugs steaming with the strong brew to the table, then went back for sugar and cream. “Are you hungry?” he asked her. “I could fix you some scrambled eggs and bacon.”
    She shook her head. “Thanks, but that’s all right. I’ll have something at home later.”
    He nodded again, and suddenly had no idea what to say. So he sipped his coffee and stared at Zoey and wondered how she could look so beautiful after coming off the graveyard shift.
    “You were going to tell me about Juliana’s parents,” she said after a sip of her own coffee.
    That’s right, Jonas remembered. He knew there was another reason for her having remained at his house after completing the duty assigned her. Other than the simple fact that he wanted her there, of course.
    “But if you’d rather not,” she added.
    “No,” he quickly assured her. “It’s not that.”
    “Then what?”
    He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Forgive my frequent bouts of miscommunication. I just haven’t been getting much sleep since Juliana’s arrival.”
    “How long ago was that?” Zoey asked.
    “New Year’s Day,” he said, still marveling at the irony of the date. “My brother, Alex, and his wife were killed in a car accident in Portugal on Christmas Eve just a couple of weeks after Juliana was born. They left behind a will that donated everything they owned to charity and indicated that the care of their daughter should fall to me.”
    “Yet you hadn’t seen your brother since you were a child,” Zoey said, sipping her coffee again.
    She wasn’t nearly as unaffected by the story as she was letting on, Jonas thought. He could see in her eyes how deeply moved she was by Juliana’s situation.
    He shook his head. “No, but we somehow kept up with each other so that we at least knew where the other was and what he was doing. My mother and father split up shortly after my fifth birthday. Alex was about two when it happened, I guess. By my parents’ mutual agreement, I went to live with my father in upstate New York, and Alex accompanied my mother back to Europe, where her family lived. My father remarried when I was about ten, and I’ve always thought of my stepmother as my mother. I can just barely remember the woman who gave birth to me.”
    Zoey nodded. “I lost both my parents when I was three. I can’t remember much about them at all.”
    For some reason, Jonas wasn’t surprised. He had detected something in her demeanor that seemed to sympathize immediately with Juliana. “Who took care of you after their deaths?” he asked.
    “Two of my aunts raised me,” she said. “They were nice enough ladies, but they weren’t very realistic about the needs of a little girl growing up when I did. As a result, I was something of a...a difficult child.”
    Jonas couldn’t help smiling. “That doesn’t surprise me. You’re a difficult adult, too.”
    Zoey’s head snapped up and her eyes were ablaze when her gaze met his.
    He chuckled. “Why is it so easy to get a rise out of you?”
    She lifted her chin defensively. “Why do you get such a kick out of provoking me?”
    He couldn’t deny her assertion, but he didn’t want to fight with her right now. So he went back to the original topic, picking up where he left off.
    “All in all, my parents’ divorce was a surprisingly painless experience. Four people who split up and went their separate ways only to find happiness in other arenas. To this day, I can’t even form a mental picture of Alex as a two-year-old.”
    “Then why did he leave his daughter in your care?” Zoey asked.
    Jonas shrugged. “I’ve asked myself that question a hundred times since January. Our parents have both been dead for years. And from what the attorney said, Alex’s wife had estranged herself from her own family to the point of not seeing them at