What had he done with his food? It wasn’t sitting on any of the counters. He opened the refrigerator. Not there. Not in the freezer, either. He pulled back the pantry door and spotted it.
Instead of warming his meal as he’d intended, he’d been so distracted by Leah that he’d put it in the pantry.
Great, Sebastian. Really sharp. He sighed irritably and placed it in the microwave.
He’d guess Leah’s nerdiness had been obvious when she was younger. These days, only a shadow of it remained. He’d seen it in the candid, old-fashioned way she spoke. The way she tipped her chin up, just a little, when thinking. The way she moved her hands.
She might be a professor at heart, but she resembled a pin-up girl on the outside.
He’d been frozen in place by her striking eyes. Her hair looked like she’d ridden in a convertible with the top down, then combed her fingers through it—a style so casual that it contrasted with her very tidy clothing. There hadn’t been a single wrinkle in her shirt or skirt, and both had been modest . . . so much so they were almost fussy. Yet, strangely, he found her clothes just as sexy as her hair.
After they’d left Donna McKelvey’s office, they’d stopped at a different area of the hospital so that Leah could fill out record request forms and receive a waiver to forward to her mother.
When she’d informed him that she planned to contact an attorney in Misty River about pursuing a court order, his body had bristled. No way could he stand to the side and watch an attorney gouge Leah’s bank account. Especially because he didn’t feel he’d repaid his debt to her in full.
He’d said that his attorney friend Jenna owed him a favor. The technically true part of that was that he had an attorney named Jenna. He’d told Leah that Jenna would reach out to her soon and asked Leah to include him when she returned to the hospital. As good as Jenna was, he was the only one of the three of them who had experience with hospital administrators.
The microwave finished, and he peeled back the container’s packaging. Italian meatballs and marinara sauce over zucchini noodles. He carried the steaming food to his living room and filled his big screen with a replay of the Manchester United versus Liverpool soccer match from last season. Leaning back, he crossed his feet on the coffee table.
His apartment looked and felt like the sort of place that would go for top dollar on Airbnb. He’d hired a friend of a friend of a friend to design it for him, and she’d done a good job. The modern pieces of furniture worked fine. The building was new. He had a sixth-floor view of downtown and could walk to the hospital from here.
Even so, he didn’t like the apartment much. Nothing about it was personal.
He only felt at home in two places. Ben’s family’s house and his own house in Misty River.
Ben.
He frowned while chewing, the light of the TV screen glowing on his face. He’d texted Ben days ago to let him know he was helping Leah with issues of hospital bureaucracy. He’d texted Ben again today to say that the hospital meeting had gone well and that at least one follow-up meeting would be needed to secure the information she wanted.
Ben had answered with a brief thanks both times. Since the farmers market, Sebastian had seen Ben once, when they’d gone to a Braves game. There’d been a slight unspoken strain between them. Ben, who usually talked about Leah a lot, hadn’t mentioned her that day. Neither had Sebastian. They’d both had to work a little too hard to make things between them seem normal.
Sebastian would travel to Misty River a week from today for Ben’s parents’ fortieth anniversary dinner. He’d get their friendship back on track then. If he wasn’t going to date Leah, and he wasn’t, then the trade-off had to be a good relationship with Ben.
Watch soccer, idiot.
Sebastian liked things done a certain way. He didn’t get embarrassed, and he wasn’t afraid to anger people when necessary. He was persistent. Stubborn.
Ben liked to ask him dryly if there was anything on earth Sebastian didn’t have an opinion about. The answer was no. He had strong feelings toward everything.
Ice cream flavor? Cookies and cream.
Sport? Soccer.
Indoor temperature? Seventy-two in the summer, sixty-eight in the winter.
Practicing medicine? Nothing but excellence would do.
Problem was, he could feel all his persistence and stubbornness and strong feelings funneling in one direction.
Toward Leah Montgomery.
His ability to focus, usually an asset, was becoming a flaw.
His phone’s pager system went off. Squinting, he checked his secure messages.
A baby with blockage in all four pulmonary veins had just been delivered, and he was needed immediately.
CHAPTER FIVE
Excuse me?” Mom squawked over the phone four days later. She’d finally called Leah from Guinea to inquire after the second DNA test.
“I’m not your biological daughter,” Leah repeated calmly. It was late on a Tuesday night. Dylan was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and Leah had paused Return of the Jedi to answer her phone. Beyond the walls of her house, the heavy darkness of the mountains reigned.
“Yes you are, Leah. You’re my biological daughter.”
“No, it turns out that I’m not. Which doesn’t have to change anything between us.”
Mom continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “They placed you in my arms in the hospital.”
“Yes, but you were unconscious for my delivery, so you didn’t see the face of your baby. There’s no telling what happened between the time you delivered your daughter and the moment they brought me to you. The only thing that’s certain, at this point, is that I’m not the baby girl you gave birth to.”
She’d been researching switched-at-birth cases. It was both mind-boggling and fascinating to read about people who’d been stowaways in families not their own. In every case, the children who were switched were of the same gender. They were born at the same place on the same day, often within minutes of each other. Sometimes their mothers shared the same first name.
When a person went public with their switched-at-birth story, attention covered them like a rain shower. Because of that, it seemed to Leah that those who discovered they’d been switched at birth later in life—well after they’d made their way in the world and established families of their own—weathered the storm best.
Which confirmed her initial decision not to tell Dylan, or anyone other than her mother and Sebastian, what she’d uncovered. Leah didn’t aspire to be a whistle-blower. Didn’t want money from the hospital via a court settlement. Didn’t plan to crusade for hospital reforms. She simply wanted to know who her biological parents were and—if possible—to understand how this had occurred.
As she’d read article after article, she’d wondered just how many people who’d discovered they’d been switched at birth had chosen the path she’d chosen and decided to remain silent. A fair number, possibly.
“That’s crazy,” Mom stated. “Those results are wrong.”
“Choosing denial?” Leah asked mildly.
“YourHeritage probably didn’t even bother to run the second sample you sent. I bet they just gave you the same answers as last time.”
Hopefully, Mom would remain in a state of denial. If so, she wouldn’t mount a search for her missing child. Which would make things easier for Leah.