Excerpt of The Doctor's Secret Child by Kate Welsh

"It's Mother," a disembodied voice from the answering machine resounded inside Trey Westerly's aching head as he walked into his apartment. "Did you hear me, Wesley? Where is that doorman?"

Probably hiding, Trey thought with a grimace and dropped his briefcase on a nearby chair. Everyone called him either "Trey" or "Doctor" if they wanted an answer. Everyone but his mother when she was in a managing mood. He groaned inwardly. He really wasn't in the mood to deal with a mission that included him, as this one obviously did.

Like the dutiful son he tried so hard to be, Trey sighed and lifted the receiver. "I assume you'd like to come up?" he asked. While waiting for an answer, he tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder to loosen his tie.

"Of course I want to come up. I missed you by minutes at the hospital. Consequently I had to take a cab here right after taking one there."

He ground his teeth. He'd just put in a sixteen-hour day. How inconsiderate of him to leave the office at nine o'clock at night when his mother might return early from a trip and show up unannounced to see him. Trey stabbed out the code to buzz her inside the lobby, then hung up the phone. He loved his mother. He really did. But sometimes he wished he were an orphan.

She could be a bit much at the end of a long day. If he counted the time spent in the four surgeries he'd performed that day, he'd been on his feet fourteen of those sixteen hours. He'd eaten his lunch reading X-rays. Because it was his housekeeper's night out, he'd eaten his dinner in an elevator on his way to saving the life of a gangbanger — a teen who'd probably be back on his table within a year or two. Sometimes he wondered why he did what he did.

Then he remembered the four-year-old with the internal injuries whose life he'd saved at five that morning. He remembered the tears of joy her grateful parents had shed when he'd told them she'd be fine. He remembered the smile the little girl had given him just before he'd left the hospital for the day. That was why he'd become a trauma surgeon.

Because they needed him. Even the gangbangers. His mother's impatient knock dragged Trey back to the present. His head felt just a little better as he opened the door. He smiled as she barreled past him into the foyer. He was confident that his mother always meant well even if she resembled a five-foot-two-inch steam-roller at times.

"Hello, Mother," he said. "To what do I owe this unprecedented late-night visit?" Trey followed and bent to kiss her on the cheek.

His question was met with silence. Which was even more unprecedented than a late-night visit. Trey stepped back and read uncertainty and deep turmoil in her eyes. Her faded blond hair was pinned up, but several strands had come loose from their moorings. Worse, her dress wasn't precisely pressed. He hadn't seen her this undone since he'd been a boy. This must be serious. "Mother? You look exhausted. And upset. What is it?"

Her hand fluttered to her creased brow. "I drove straight here from West Chester, then I got a cab to the hospital, then another here when you weren't there, as I said." She took a deep shuddering breath. "Perhaps if we sat for a moment."

"Of course." He gestured toward the long white sofa that dominated the living room. It faced the glass doors to the rooftop terrace that overlooked Central Park. She preceded him into the living room area and put her handbag on the glass table in front of her.

Trey settled in one of the comfortable club chairs across from her and watched with growing concern as she reached again for her silver-gray bag. After pulling it onto her lap, she worried at the catch. When she said nothing, he prodded, "So you were visiting Aunt Elaine?"

"No. Not Elaine. It was Helen Jeffers I went to see. West Chester, Pennsylvania. I was supposed to stay till the end of the week, but when I saw it, I had to come back to tell you. But of course I couldn't just tell you. Not over the phone. That just wouldn't have been right. Or kind. And besides that, you needed to actually see it. See him. You understand?"

Trey blinked. "No. Not at all." He wasn't sure if his mother was being too cryptic or if his headache had scrambled a perfectly reasonable message. "See who, Mother?"

"Oh. I suppose you don't see at all." Finally she stopped fumbling with the catch and straightened her shoulders. Suddenly decisive, she opened the purse and handed him a folded piece of newsprint. "When I think I might not have seen it at all… It's a miracle. Just a miracle. I went to visit Helen when I haven't gone to her home for nearly eight years. There was no reason for me to visit her there after you moved back home to New York, now was there? Helen adores Broadway, you see?"

Trey could only stare at her. He longed to say something light like, Who are you and what have you done with my perfectly reasonable mother? but Marilyn Guilford wasn't known for her easy wit, especially when she was this tense.

"Don't just sit there, Wesley. Look at it!" she scolded.

Once again Trey winced at the sound of his given name. His father was called Wes. His grandfather had snatched up Lee as a moniker years earlier. At about age twelve, with all the common derivatives already taken, he'd begun to insist on being called Trey. Thank God it took because it stopped a lot of persecution when he entered high school. What he'd never understood was if the previous owners of the name had hated it as much as he did, why pass on the misery to their progeny?

"It's Trey, Mother. Please." He squeezed the bridge of his nose, preparing to suffer further by focusing on the article. He read the headline. And instantly wondered why he should be expected to care about the family of the man who destroyed what was left of his marriage over seven years ago. Then he noticed the youngest member of the family sharing an oversize pair of scissors with the oldest member.

He blinked, sure his eyes were playing tricks.

And his heart stuttered in his chest.

His world tilted on its axis.

Was this some sort of elaborate April Fools' joke? He glanced back up at his mother. No. She wasn't that good an actress, nor did a practical joke of this magnitude fit her personality. He looked back down at the clipping and read the caption aloud just to ground himself in the world as he knew it — or as it had been until a second before. "Youngest Hopewell helps cut ribbon." And then he went on reading into the body of the article, seeking a reasonable explanation but finding the only one there could be. "Jamie Hopewell, adopted son of Caroline Hopewell and the youngest member of Bucks County's newest winemaking family, helped cut the ribbon on Bella Villa, their new banquet facility opening Saturday…." He trailed off as the truth behind the lies roared through his stunned mind.

Natalie had lied.

News of his ex-wife Natalie's marriage to James Hopewell had reached him through his mother's friend, Helen Jeffers, as had news of Natalie's death along with the death of her second husband a year later. That must have been six years ago.

So since then Caroline Hopewell must have adopted the boy. The boy who was a dead ringer for himself at that age.

The boy who had to be his son. "Natalie lied," he said aloud this time. She hadn't been pregnant with Hopewell's child when they'd divorced but with his. He had a seven- year-old son he'd never known existed.

The question was, what was he going to do about it? What did he want to do?

It took Trey an hour to get rid of his mother and all her advice and twenty-four hours to make his decision. He weighed his options and obligations. His wants and the boy's needs. As much as he wished he could, he found he couldn't just forget about Jamie. As soon as he'd made a decision to try to become a part of his son's life, the course of several lives had changed. His and his son's and the life of the woman the boy apparently called Mother. Then Trey faced the difficult truth. No matter what he did, someone would be hurt.

Hoping to minimize any injuries, he decided to tread carefully. He'd see what he could find out firsthand, observe what he could, then proceed from there. It took two more days to arrange time off and for a detective to get him some very basic information on the situation and for his mother to make a reservation for him under her name at Cliff Walk Bed-and-Breakfast. Then, having carefully taken care of the arrangements, he drove down to Hopetown to learn about the life his son lived.

As he tooled along through the Pennsylvania countryside, Trey began to take note of his surroundings. The trees had begun to thicken with new growth. The canal and river flowed swiftly next to the winding road to Hopetown. And the town that took its name from Caroline Hopewell's seventeenth-century ancestor was abuzz with the promise of a brisk tourist season.

After leaving the town behind, he came upon Hopewell Manor. It was an elegant brick-and-stone colonial house with several brick outbuildings. The compound lay on a wide tract between the main road through Hopetown and the river. A sign marked the drive as private and proclaimed the estate's name. He slowed and read, "Hopewell Manor 1689. Josiah Hopewell built a crude log cabin on this tract in the fall of 1689 and began construction of the original section of the present manor house in March of 1690. Additions were made in 1756 and 1810." Another sign read, "Home of Josiah Hopewell, founder of Hopetown, PA. Born in 1659 in London. Died here in 1709."

"And Mother thinks our family has a long lineage in this country," he muttered, shaking his head. Trey turned his eyes back to the road, surmising that the winery and bed- and-breakfast must be on another piece of land. Anxious to have the coming meeting over, he continued his ride along the meandering road for about a mile and a half.

A wooden sign posted off to the left next to a steep drive proclaimed Hopewell Vineyard and Winery. Cliff Walk Bed- and-Breakfast. Bella Villa Banquet Halls. The date below revealed that the vineyard had been in business for six years. The cracked granite drive led to the cliff above.

His nerves crackled as he drove on, shifting through all his gears to accommodate the arduous climb to the top of the cliff. He'd no sooner crested the top of the hill when a small boy, ears plugged into a portable CD player, tripped by the side of the drive. He watched with disbelief as the child picked himself up and without looking left or right ran in front of Trey's car in his rush to catch up to a man who was striding ahead of him.

Trey slammed on his brakes and, shaken, watched in shock as the boy ran on, calling to the man, who finally turned and waited for the reckless, bouncing child. Then, rather than correct the child for running in front of a car, as Trey was sure his squealing brakes must have announced, the man put his hands on the boy's shoulders and held him in place by pressing downward. "Settle down," he heard the man admonish the boy. "You don't want to go running among the vines and chance breaking one, do you?"