The Surgeon's Baby Surprise

Yet that wasn’t even what had her heart performing its real show-stopping drum solo, as it had every single visit she’d made to Silvertrees since that night with Max, almost one year ago to the day. The double doors clanged at the end of the corridor, causing her to whirl around, her heart in her throat, just as it had been every other hospital visit in the last four months since he’d returned from Gaza. But it was always just patients or hospital staff she didn’t know or barely recognised. Evie had no reason to think she would ever just bump into Max here. The transplant unit was in a dedicated wing set slightly apart from the main hospital. And yet every time she feared—and hoped—that the next person to walk through the doors would be him.

She could have chosen a different hospital, the one closer to where she now called home, but Evie’s referral to the state-of-the-art facility at Silvertrees was like gold dust and she’d have been a fool to turn it down for fear of bumping into a man who, for all intents and purposes, had been nothing more than a one—okay, five—night stand.

At least, that was the argument she told herself, and the one she was sticking with. After the two catastrophic attempts she’d made to contact him when he’d still been in Gaza, to tell him about the baby they had created together, she wasn’t about to admit out loud that some traitorous part of her secretly dreamed that Fate might intervene. That, in the silence of the night, a tiny, muffled voice challenged her to venture into the main hospital and find him.

Not that she had any idea what she would say to him. How she would even attempt to begin to explain the choices that she’d made. In her heart she knew everything she’d done had been for their baby—a miracle, given the deterioration in Evie’s kidney condition at the time of the pregnancy—but it didn’t make her feel good about herself.

And still.

She’d hardly been in a state to think clearly when she’d accepted the hush money. In a daze from her premature baby and her kidney failure, rushing between NICU and her dialysis sessions. So when Max’s parents—the people who should have their son’s best interests at heart—had told her that neither they, nor their son, would want anything to do with the baby, a fiercely protective new-mother instinct of her own had kicked in. She’d worked with enough troubled teens to know how damaging it could be when a child was unloved, unwanted. And she had her own painful experience of being left by her father, too.

Both she and Imogen deserved better than that. They deserved to be cherished, not made to feel like a burden. And so Evie had allowed herself to be persuaded it was in her precious baby’s best interests not to tell Max Van Berg he was a father.

But what if she’d been wrong? What if Max would have wanted to know about his daughter? Her head whirled with doubts, drowning out the sound of the double doors slamming open once again.

‘Evie?’

Goosebumps swept across her skin. She didn’t turn around; she couldn’t. The voice was painfully familiar and intensely masculine. It evoked a host of memories that Evie had spent a year trying unsuccessfully to bury. A prong of doubt speared her insides. Had she been wrong to believe he didn’t care? Because in that perfect moment Max actually sounded happy—albeit a little shocked—to see her.

She swallowed ineffectually, her mouth too parched, and her heart wasn’t so much beating in her chest as assaulting her chest wall. Whatever she’d imagined, she wasn’t mentally prepared for this but there was nothing else for it.

Steeling herself against the kick from the moment she laid eyes on Max again, Evie lifted her head boldly and completed a slow one-eighty.

She hadn’t steeled herself enough.

‘Max.’ She gritted her teeth, striving to sound calm. In control.

‘What are you doing here, Evie?’

There was still no trace of chilliness in his tone. Was that a good thing, or a bad one? It suggested he knew nothing about Imogen, so maybe there was still hope. But then again, it also meant he’d been happy with their fling and certainly hadn’t been thinking about her these last twelve months so the bombshell of a daughter wouldn’t be well received.

So she stayed silent and contented herself with drinking in the man she recalled so very intimately.

Time apart had done little to diminish the sheer physical presence he exuded and she was grateful for the few feet of space between them, acting as something of a safety buffer, both mentally and physically. But space couldn’t erase everything. The way Max looked and the authority he exuded. The feel of his skin beneath her hands and her body. The way he smelled—no overpowering aftershave for Max, but instead a faint, intoxicating masculine scent underpinned with a hint of lime basil shower gel she remembered only too well.

‘Are you working here again?’ he pushed.

‘No.’

Silence hung between them.

‘Evangeline, why are you here?’

She had to say something. She was standing in the middle of a dedicated transplant unit—she had to explain her visit somehow. So she settled for a half-truth.

‘My sister-in-law has some tests before her appointment with Mrs Goodwin,’ Evie started carefully, studying his face for any kind of reaction.

‘Arabella Goodwin?’ He frowned. ‘The nephrologist?’

‘That’s right,’ she confirmed slowly.

‘Is it serious?’

Evie searched his face; she needed to be careful here. Really be sure of herself before she said anything.

Admittedly, he seemed genuinely interested, but that meant nothing. This was the side of Max she knew, his sincere concern for his patients and their families. But it didn’t mean he wanted a family of his own. It just meant he was dedicated to his career.

Just as his parents had cruelly reminded her.

Just as they’d made her see that, for Max at least, their short-lived fling had been just that. It certainly hadn’t been the start of something. He hadn’t asked her to wait for him whilst he was away in Gaza. He hadn’t even told her that his parents were the renowned surgeons she had read about, attended guest speaker talks to see, studied, throughout her medical studies.

In short, they had shared five nights and four days of intense, unparalleled intimacy, yet told each other so very little about their lives beyond the bedroom.

What if she told him everything now only for him—out of some ill-considered knee-jerk sense of obligation—to involve himself in their lives, only to resent his daughter’s existence every time it even threatened to impact on his career?

Wasn’t that the nightmare scenario his parents had painted for her? Right before they’d offered her enough money to secure her daughter’s financial future in the event that her kidney transplant failed and she wasn’t around to look after her precious daughter herself?

But it wasn’t just what they’d said, it had been their calm, assured delivery. As if they were acting in her interests as much as in their son’s. As if they really believed that her taking the money and staying away was the best solution for everyone. That was what had convinced her to take their word for it.

The savage protectiveness Evie felt for her new daughter still caught her unawares sometimes. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect her beautiful daughter from anything which—or anyone who—could potentially hurt her.

If the Van Bergs had been cruel or vindictive, she probably wouldn’t have believed them, wouldn’t have taken the money. But she’d been frightened. And vulnerable. Between her bleak prognosis and her premature baby, she hadn’t been able to face a battle on a third front. And if his parents were right and Max didn’t want to know, how could she face yet more anguish? She couldn’t risk it. So now, she needed to buy herself time to think. She’d never expected to see Max again.

But was that completely true? Hadn’t she always hoped, deep down, when she was stronger, and if the transplant was successful, that she might be able to track him down again? Hadn’t she told herself that, if all went well, she would push past her own fears of rejection and loss to finally tell him about his daughter? For Imogen’s sake, because her precious daughter deserved so much more.

But now was not that moment.

‘Annie’s going through final checks for a kidney transplant. Blood pressure and all that,’ Evie trotted out.

She sounded more blasé than she’d have liked, but it was better than having to tell him Annie was actually a kidney donor and that she herself was the recipient. And it was better than breaking down and telling him how frightened she was.

She should have known better than to think she could fool someone as astute as Max. Disbelieving eyes raked over her and she tried to suppress the wave of heat at his intense assessment, all too conscious of the toll her illness and the pregnancy had taken on her over the last year. Dark pits circled her eyes, her frame was unattractively thinner, and her skin flat and pallid—no matter how much she tried to lift it with clever make-up.

She squirmed under his sharp gaze.

‘God, Evie, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’ The reserved tone was gone again, replaced by an open candour she thought was more Max-like. ‘Didn’t you say you were close to your brother and his wife? No wonder you look so pale—you must be so worried about her.’

Her stomach flip-flopped. He’d actually remembered some of the few things she’d told him. Was that really something he’d have bothered to take notice of if it had only been about the sex? Her mind swirled with conflicting thoughts.

She jumped as she closed the gap between them, his hands closing firmly around her shoulders, drawing her in so that she had no choice but to look him in the eye.

‘Evie, if you need anything, you know you can come to me, don’t you?’

Residual sexual attraction still fizzled between them.

Chemistry. It’s just chemistry, Evie repeated to herself, clinging to the mantra like some kind of virtual life raft. But her grip was slipping and a flare of hope flickered into life deep in her chest. At this stage of her renal failure, a man who could make her feel attractive, wanted, who could make her forget her constantly exhausted body and her regular rounds of dialysis, was a rare male indeed.

Only Max could have snuck under her skin in five minutes flat.

She so desperately wanted to let him kiss her, take her, reassure her that she was still a sexy, desirable woman. It would be welcome relief after the year she’d had.

But this wasn’t about her, this was about Imogen, too, and Evie couldn’t risk her daughter being drawn into some game as a pawn. Hadn’t her own biological father used herself and her brother to hurt their mother? First by walking out on them when Evie had been a baby, with no contact for years, and then by trying to play them off against each other when their mother had finally found happiness with a new man. A kind man who Evie considered to be her true father rather than simply her stepfather. A man who had saved her from going down the kind of route that too many of her troubled teens now found themselves stuck on.

Even now, eighteen months on from the fatal car crash on the winding, twisting Pyrenees’ roads on what had been her parents’ second honeymoon to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, she still missed them.

It was the kind of close, loving relationship she’d always imagined for herself. The kind of relationship Max had never offered—could never offer—her.

She looked up into his dark eyes and shuddered.

Despite all her self-recriminations, the need to give herself up to Max, to take him up on his offer of support and to give in to her body’s welcome burst of energy and unexpected ache for him, was all too thrilling.

‘Here, put this on.’

It was only as Max was wrapping his coat around her shoulders that Evie realised he’d thought she’d shivered with the cold. She couldn’t help casting a glance up and down the corridor, spotting a couple of nurses at the far end. Too far away to hear their words but watching their exchange with interest.

‘Max, please,’ she whispered. ‘We’re being observed.’

He followed her gaze to their curious audience and, muttering a low curse under his breath, turned her around and propelled them down the corridor.

‘In here,’ he ground out as he bundled her into an unoccupied room off the corridor. And so help her, she let him.

* * *

‘What’s going on, Evie?’

It took everything in Max to push her away from him when all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and remind himself of her taste, her touch, her scent.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

She was lying.

He’d spent the last year unable to get this singularly gentle, funny, sinfully sexy woman out of his head. So much for telling himself, before giving into temptation with her that night, that it would be a one-time fling. He’d always been a firm believer in avoiding dating workplace colleagues, something he’d had no problem adhering to before Evangeline Parker had come along. He wasn’t exactly short of willing dates with women who had nothing to do with the hospital, or even the medical profession at all, yet no one had ever got under his skin as Evie had.

She was the first person to ever make him think about anything other than his career as a surgeon. To ever make him wonder if there was more out there for him than just reaching the very pinnacle of his speciality. It had only been that phone call from his parents, on the last evening of his time with Evie, that had unwittingly brought him back to earth.

They were skilled surgeons but cold, selfish parents, and his childhood had been bleak and lonely, a time he rarely cared to look back on. Talking to them that night had reminded him why he would not put any wife, any family, through the only home life he had known. It was a choice. Be a pioneering surgeon, or be a good family man. Never both.

And he could imagine that a family was what Evie would want. What she would deserve.

So he’d thrown himself into his eight-month tour in Gaza, appreciating the challenging working conditions, the difference he was making—and the fact that it was providing a welcome distraction from memories of that one wanton, wild, yet exquisitely feminine woman. However many amazing, lifesaving surgeries he’d performed, he’d always gone back to his tent at night wishing he could share the day’s events with Evie. Wishing he were sliding into his emperor-sized bed with her rather than dropping onto his tiny cot, alone.

Yet now she was standing here in front of him, and he wanted her as much as he ever had, telling himself that the only reason he hadn’t walked away from her was because she clearly needed someone to talk to. A flimsy excuse, since she clearly wasn’t jumping at the chance of opening up to him. Just as they’d revelled in the sex but both been so careful to avoid much personal conversation those five hot-as-hell nights together.

‘I think you do know,’ he contradicted quietly. ‘This is about more than just your sister-in-law and her kidney transplant, isn’t it?’

Evie bit her lip, refusing to meet his eye.

‘What do you mean?’

She didn’t want to talk. But she probably needed to.

‘You’re concerned for her, frightened for her? That’s understandable. But I’m guessing this is more about you feeling as though you need to be the strong one because you’re the doctor, and people are looking to you for the answers.’

She chanced a glance at him but didn’t answer, so he pushed on.

‘It’s very different being on the other side of the fence when you’re used to being the one making the decisions, but I’m guessing you can’t talk to Annie, or your brother, about your fears. So I’m offering for you to talk to me instead.’

‘Why would you do that?’

She sounded bewildered. Was he really that unapproachable?

‘Because I once told you I respect you as one professional to another.’

‘I see.’

Was that a flash of disappointment? She shook her head, the moment gone.

‘I can’t.’

If he simply walked away then he’d feel like a cad. But if he pushed her then he risked misleading her into thinking that he was open to something more between them.

‘Can’t, or won’t?’

She opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again.

‘Can’t. I want to, Max, more than you know. But I can’t.’

There was no reason for his chest to constrict at her words. Yet it did. He gritted his teeth. As long as he could persuade her that there was nothing more between them—that he wasn’t remembering how incredible it had been to undress her, lay her on the bed and kiss her until she came undone at his every touch—then she might talk to him. And she definitely needed to talk to somebody.

‘Fine, let’s discuss the elephant in the room.’

She swallowed hard.

‘So, we had a one-night stand—’

‘Five nights,’ she interrupted, flushing bright red.

He felt a kick of pleasure. So it mattered to her?

‘Okay, five nights,’ he conceded, allowing himself a lopsided grin and watching her carefully. ‘Five nights of, frankly, mind-blowing sex.’

She flushed again, crossing her arms over her chest as if to reinforce an invisible barrier between them. But it was too late—he’d seen the way her pupils dilated in pleasure at his words. She might not want to talk to him, but she was certainly still attracted to him.

Her breathing was slightly more rapid, shallower than before, the movement snagging his eye to the satin-soft skin his fingers recalled even now. Her lips parted oh-so-slightly as her tongue flicked out to leave a sheen glistening on her lips. An action that he’d experienced in other ways over those five nights. An age-old response had his body growing taut.

He needed to walk away.

He couldn’t.

He closed the gap between them until he could feel her breath on his skin, smell that mandarin shampoo of hers in his nostrils.

‘It doesn’t have to be over,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘Neither of us have the time or inclination for wasting time playing at relationships. But we’re both consenting adults, why not enjoy the sex?’

‘Just sex?’ she whispered again.

He couldn’t help it. Before he could stop himself, he reached his hand out and slid his fingers under her chin to tilt her head up. Her eyes finally met his and the sensation was like an electric shock through his body.

‘Just sex,’ he ground out, as much to remind himself as to convince her.

For a moment he thought she was going to turn him down, but suddenly she raised her hand to catch his and held it against her cheek. Closing her eyes, she rested her chin in his palm as though drawing strength.

‘Evie.’ His other hand laced through her silky hair to draw her to him; he inhaled her gentle scent, so painfully familiar. The feel of her hands gripping his shoulders then running down his upper arms, the way her breasts brushed against his chest, heating him even through the material that separated them both.

And then his mouth was on hers and Max couldn’t be sure which one of them had closed the gap first. He didn’t really care. With one hand still threaded through her hair, he trailed the other hand down her cheek, her neck, her chest, feeling her arch her back to push her breast into his palm.

He heard his low growl of anticipation as the hard nipple grazed his palm through the layers of thin cotton, dropping his hand so that he could flick his thumb across it. He dropped down to perch on the corner of the table as she moved over him and his thigh wedged between her legs, which pressed against him so that he could feel the heat at their apex. He dropped his other hand down her back to cup her wonderfully rounded backside, smaller than he recalled. And then she kissed him intensely and it was just the two of them as everything else fell away.

‘God, I want you,’ he groaned.

‘How much?’ she whispered.

‘You must know the answer to that,’ he rasped out, her uncertainty surprising him. The woman he’d known last year hadn’t needed validation or reassurance, she’d been sexily confident in her own skin. Still, if she wanted him to show her then he was more than willing to oblige.

But before he could act, Evie had tugged his shirt out, the buttons opening easily beneath those nimble fingers of hers. Dipping her head, she nipped and kissed his body that was leaner and tighter than ever. It ought to be—he’d been hitting his home gym hard ever since his return from Gaza, the only way he could burn off excess energy since he hadn’t wanted to sleep with any other woman since Evie.

As she made her way back up to his lips Max pulled her back into him, his hands sliding under the fitted blouse that followed the curves of her pert breasts, revelling in the way her breath caught in her throat.

Suddenly he froze. Her once slender form felt thin. Too thin. He could actually count her ribs. He drew back shaking his head; nothing was as clear or sharp as usual. Was he missing something?

‘Evie, stop...’

And then Max felt her slump slightly, as though the sudden flame of energy she’d had had just been stamped out without warning.

He was a first-class jerk. Evie was worried about her sister-in-law and he was only interested in rekindling the connection between them.

‘I’m sorry, that should never have happened.’

Evie shook her head, and as she pulled away from him he clenched his fists by his sides just so that he didn’t pull her back.

‘No, it was my fault, Max.’ She sounded distraught. ‘I shouldn’t have come back here.’

For the first time, Max wondered if he’d made a mistake. It wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed to. He could read charts, he could read patients, he could read histories. He’d never been bothered to learn to read relationship signals before.

Dammit. Had he got it all wrong?

‘Evie, is there something else going on here?’

‘Leave it, Max. Please.’ She stepped back so abruptly that she almost fell, but it was the pleading in her eyes that stayed his arms from catching her.

Max watched some inner battle war across her features, then, apparently unable to trust herself to say another word, she straightened up and forced her legs to move. He knew it wasn’t the moment to stop her. He had some investigating to do before he charged in there.

He forced himself to stay still as she stumbled out of the room, the slamming door reverberating with raw finality.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS TIME for answers.

Max pulled up outside the unfamiliar house and turned the purring engine off with satisfaction. His sleek, expensive supercar—one of his very few real indulgences to himself—was incongruous against the older family cars and the backdrop of the suburban street. He checked the address he’d hastily scribbled down on the back of a hospital memo.

It was definitely the right place. But the nondescript, nineteen-fifties semi-detached house on a prepossessing street, almost ninety minutes from Silvertrees, was the last place he would have expected to find Evie—it all seemed so far removed from the contemporary flat that he was aware had come as part of her package working at the Youth Care Residential Centre.

But then, what did he know about the real Evie Parker?

And for that matter, what was he even doing here?

Instinct.

Because decades as a surgeon had taught him to follow his gut. And right now, as far as Evie was concerned, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something fundamental he was missing. Sliding out of the car, he crossed the street, his long stride easily covering the ranging pathway from the pavement to the porch. He knocked loudly on the timber door, hearing the bustle on the other side almost immediately, before it was hauled open.

‘Max.’

‘Evangeline.’ He gave a curt nod in the face of her utter shock, wishing he didn’t immediately notice how beautiful she was.