Hot Single Docs: The Playboy's Redemption

He wasn’t even a parent.

* * *

It was Tuesday night and a vicious UTI later before anything resembling normal thought process occurred and a midwife helped her into a chair and along with her mother wheeled her down to the NICU, where, of course, any new mum would want to be if her baby was.

‘We take mums down at night all the time,’ the midwife explained, when Izzy said the next day would be fine. ‘It’s no problem.’

Except, privately, frankly, Izzy would have preferred to sleep.

Izzy knew she was a likely candidate for postnatal depression.

As a doctor she was well versed in the subject and the midwives had also gently warned her and given her leaflets to read. Gus too had talked to her—about her difficult labour, the fact she had been separated from her daughter and her difficult past. He’d told her he was there if she needed to talk and he had been open and upfront and told her not to hesitate to reach out sooner rather than later, as had Jess.

She sat in a wheelchair at the entrance to NICU, at the very spot where she had first flirted with Diego, where the first thawing of her heart had taken place, and it seemed a lifetime ago, not a few short weeks.

And, just as she had felt that day, Izzy was tempted to ask the midwife to turn the chair around, more nervous at meeting her baby than she could ever let on. Diego was on a stint of night duty and she was nervous of him seeing her in her new role too, because his knowing eyes wouldn’t miss anything. What if she couldn’t summon whatever feelings and emotions it was that new mums summoned?

‘I bet you can’t wait!’ Izzy’s mum said as the midwife pressed the intercom and informed the voice on the end of their arrival. Then the doors buzzed and she was let in. Diego came straight over and gave her a very nice smile and they made some introductions. ‘Perhaps you could show Izzy’s mother the coffee room.’ Diego was firm on this as he would be with any of his mothers. If Izzy had stepped in and said she’d prefer her mum to come, then of course it would have happened, but Izzy stayed quiet, very glad of a chance to meet her daughter alone.

‘I already know where the coffee room is,’ Gwen said, ‘and I’ve already seen the baby.’

‘Izzy hasn’t.’ Diego was straight down the line. ‘We can’t re-create the delivery room but we try—she needs time alone to greet her baby.’

Which told her.

‘You know the rules.’ He treated Izzy professionally and she was very glad of it. They went through the hand-washing ritual and he spoke to her as they did so.

‘Brianna is looking after her tonight,’ Diego said. ‘Do you know her?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘She’s great—she was there at the delivery. I’ll take you over.’

Nicola, Toby’s mother, was there and gave Izzy a sympathetic smile as she was wheeled past, which Izzy returned too late, because she was already there at her baby’s cot.

Brianna greeted her, but Izzy was hardly

listening. Instead she stared into the cot

and there she was—her baby. And months of fear and wondering all hushed for a moment as she saw her, her little red scrunched-up face and huge dark blue eyes that stared right into Izzy’s.

Over the last three days Diego had bought her plenty of photos, told her how well she was doing and how beautiful she was, but seeing her in the flesh she was better than beautiful, she was hers.

‘We’re just giving her a little oxygen,’ Brianna explained as Diego was called away. ‘Which we will be for a couple more weeks, I’d expect...’ She opened the porthole and Izzy needed no invitation. She held her daughter’s hand, marvelling that such a tiny hand instinctively curled around her index finger, and Izzy knew there and then that she was in love.

‘She looks better than I thought...’ Izzy couldn’t actually believe just how well she looked. Her mum had been crying when she’d returned the first day from visiting her granddaughter and Richard, the consultant paediatrician, had told her that her baby had got off to a rocky start.

‘She struggled for the first forty-eight hours, which we were expecting,’ Brianna said calmly, ‘but she picked up well.’

Diego had said the same, but she’d been worried he’d just been reassuring her, but now she was here, now she could see her, all Izzy could feel was relief and this overwhelming surge charging through her veins that she figured felt a lot like love.

‘Now, would you like to hold her?’ Brianna said to Izzy’s surprise. ‘She’s due for a feed, but she needs it soon, so would you like to give her a cuddle first?’

She very much would.

Brianna brought over a large chair and Izzy sat, exhausted, then got a new surge of energy.

‘Open up your pyjama top,’ Brianna said

‘It’s popping open all the time...’ Izzy said, staring down at her newly massive breasts that strained the buttons.

‘Your skin will keep her warm and it’s good for both of you.’

She hadn’t expected so much so soon. Her dreams had been filled with tiny floppy babies like ugly skinned rabbits, yet her baby was prettier and healthier than her photos had shown. Brianna was calm and confident and then there she was, wearing just a nappy and hat and resting on her chest, a blanket being wrapped around them both, skin on skin, and Izzy at that moment knew...

She knew, as far as anyone could possibly know, that the doom and gloom and the shadow of PND was not going to darken her door.

She could feel her baby on her skin and it was almost, Izzy was sure, as if all the darkness just fell away from her now, as pure love flooded in.

A white, pure love that was tangible, that was real. All the fears, the doubts, the dark, dark dread faded, because she had never been sure, really, truly sure that love could win, that love would come, that it would happen.

But it just did.

Diego witnessed it too.

He had seen many moments like this one, both in NICU and in the delivery room, and it was more something he ticked off his list than felt moved by—especially in NICU, where bonding was more difficult to achieve. Only it wasn’t a list with Izzy, because it did move him, so much so that he came over and smiled down as he watched.

It crossed so many lines, because he didn’t want to feel it, and also, as Gwen came over, Diego realised he had sent her own mother away.

Yet he was here.

‘She’s a Ross all over, isn’t she?’ Gwen said, and Diego saw Izzy’s jaw clench as her mother stamped her territory on her granddaughter and told her how it would be. ‘There’s nothing of him in her.’

Of course, Henry’s parents begged to differ when they came two days later to visit.

They had been in France, trying to have a break, after the most traumatic of months, and had cut their holiday short to come in and visit what was left of their son.

It was an agonising visit. Emotions frayed, Henry’s mother teary, his father trying to control things, telling Izzy their rights, blaming her at every turn till she could see clearly where Henry had got it from! And, that evening, as soon as they left, Izzy sat on the bed with her fingers pressed into her eyes, trying to hold it together, wondering if now tears would come.

‘Bad timing?’ Izzy jumped as heard footsteps and saw Josh, the new consultant, at her door. ‘I’ll come by another time.’

‘I’m fine.’ Izzy forced a smile. ‘Come in.’

‘You’re sure?’ he checked, and Izzy

nodded.

‘I’m sorry to mess up the roster.’

‘That’s the last thing you should be worrying about,’ Josh replied, just as any boss would in the circumstances, and it was going to be an awkward visit, Izzy knew that. A guy like Josh didn’t really belong in the maternity ward with teary women. ‘Ben’s on leave, but he rang and told me you’d be stressing about details like that, and could I come up and tell you that you’re not to worry about a thing and that if there’s anything we can do for you, you’re to ask.

‘Is there anything,’ Josh pushed, ‘that we can do for you now?’

‘I’m being very well looked after. I’m fine, really, it’s just been a difficult evening.’ She waited for a thin line from Josh about the baby blues, or something like that, but he just looked at her for a long time before he spoke.

‘I’m quite sure this is all very difficult for you,’ Josh said.

And he was just so disarmingly nice that Izzy found herself admitting a little more. ‘Henry’s parents just stopped by. They’ve gone to see the baby.’

‘Henry’s your late husband?’ Josh checked, and Izzy nodded.

‘I’m sure you’ve heard all the gossip.’

‘I don’t listen to gossip,’ Josh said, ‘though Ben did bring me up to date on what happened before you came back to work, just so that I would know to look out for you. You know Ben’s not into gossip either, but he felt I should know—not all of it, I’m sure, but he told me enough that I can see you’d be having a tough time of it.’

His directness surprised her. Instead of sitting stiffly in the chair and making painful small talk, he came over and sat on the bed, took her hand and gave it a squeeze and a bit of that Irish charm, and Izzy could see why he was such a wonderful doctor.

‘Henry’s parents blame me,’ Izzy admitted. ‘They thought our marriage was perfect, they think I’m making it all up.’

‘They probably want to believe that you’re making it all up,’ Josh said wisely.

‘They were in tears just before, saying what a wonderful father Henry would have been, how a baby would have changed things, would have saved our marriage, if only I hadn’t asked him to leave. They don’t know what went on behind closed doors.’

‘They need to believe that you’re lying,’ Josh said. ‘But you know the truth.’

‘A baby wouldn’t have changed things.’ With his gentle guidance Izzy’s voice was finally adamant. ‘Babies don’t fix a damaged marriage. That was why I had to leave. I can’t even begin to imagine us together as parents. A baby should come from love...’

‘Do you want me to call Diego for you?’ Josh said, but Izzy shook her head.

‘He’s already been to visit,’ Izzy said. ‘He’s on a night shift tonight. I can’t ring him for every little thing.’

‘Yes,’ a voice said from the doorway, ‘you can.’ There stood Diego, but only for a moment, and she dropped Josh’s hand as he walked over.

‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Josh smiled and stood up. ‘Now, remember, if there’s anything we can do, you just pick up that phone. Even if it’s just a decent coffee, you’ve got a whole team behind you twenty-four seven. Just let us know.’

Izzy thanked him, but she sat there blushing as he left and waited till the door was closed.

‘Nothing was happening.’ Izzy was awash with guilt. ‘I was just upset, so he held my hand—’

‘Izzy!’ Diego interrupted. ‘I’m glad Josh was here, I’m glad you had someone to hold your hand.’

Yet she still felt more explanation was needed. ‘Henry would have had a fit if he’d—’

‘Izzy! I’m not Henry—I don’t care how many times I have to say it—I’m nothing like him.’

And he wasn’t.

She leant on his broad chest and heard the regular beat of his heart, felt the safe wall of his chest and the wrap of his arms, and if she didn’t love her so, it would be so easy to resent her baby—because nine weeks of just them would have been so very nice.

‘I’d better go.’ Reluctantly he stood up. ‘I’ll drop by in the morning and let you know what sort of night she had.’

‘Tilia,’ Izzy said.

‘Tilia,’ Diego repeated, and a smile spread over his face. ‘I like it. What does it mean?’

‘It’s actually a tree...’ Izzy’s eyes never left his face, because somehow his reaction was important. ‘I’m only telling you this—my mum would freak and I can’t have a proper conversation with Henry’s parents. It’s a lime tree. Henry proposed under this gorgeous old lime tree...’ Still he just looked. ‘We were happy then.’

‘I think it’s wonderful,’ Diego said. ‘And one day, Izzy, you’ll be able to talk about him to Tilia, and tell her about those good times.’ He gave her a kiss and headed for work, and Izzy lay back on the pillow and even though he’d said everything right, she still couldn’t settle.

She looked at new photos of herself holding Tilia and she didn’t see the drips or tubes, she just saw her baby.

And there in one photo was a side view of Diego.

The three of them together, except he wasn’t kneeling down with his arms around her.

She couldn’t imagine these past weeks without him.

Yet she was too scared to indulge in a glimpse of a future with him.

She kept waiting for the axe to fall—sure, quite sure that something this good could never last.

A midwife took her drip down and turned off the lights but the room was still bright thanks to the full moon bathing St Piran’s, and while Izzy couldn’t get to sleep, Diego on the other hand would have loved to because between visiting Izzy and working he still hadn’t caught up from

Tilia’s rapid arrival.

It was a busy night that kept him at the nurses’ station rather than the shop floor, where Diego preferred to be.

And, worse, from the computer he could hear her crying.

He glanced up and Brianna was checking a drug with another nurse working at the next cot, and Diego could hear Tilia crying. Brianna must have asked the other nurse for an opinion on something, because they were reading through the obs sheet. It was normal for babies to cry—he barely even heard it, so why did he stand up and head over?

‘Brianna.’ He jerked his head to Tilia’s cot and he wished he hadn’t, knew he was doing something he never would have done previously. If a baby was crying it was breathing was the mantra when matters where pressing. But Brianna didn’t seem worried at his snap. Actually, she was more discreet than anyone he had ever met, but he could have sworn he saw her lips suppress a smile.

And as for Josh, well, as tired as he might be, bed was the last thing he wanted.

He’d visited Izzy when really he hadn’t had to. Ben had actually asked for him to drop in over the next couple of days, but Josh had convinced himself that it was his duty to go after his shift.

Then, having visited her, he had hung around till someone had made some joke about him not having a home to go to, so eventually he’d headed there, but had stopped at the garage first.

As he pulled up at the smart gated community and the gates opened, Josh checked his pager and knew in his heart of hearts he was hoping against hope for something urgent to call him in.

God, had it really come to this, sitting in his driveway, steeling himself to go inside?

Izzy’s words rang in his ears.

‘A baby wouldn’t have changed things... Babies don’t fix a damaged marriage... I can’t even begin to imagine us together as parents... A baby should come from love...’

There had been love between him and Rebecca.

A different sort of love, though, not the intense, dangerous love he had once briefly known. That had been a love so consuming that it had bulldozed everything in its path. He closed his eyes and leant back on the headrest and for the first time in years he fully let himself visit that time.

Felt the grief and the agony, but it was too painful to recall so instead he dwelt on the consequences of raw love—a love that ruined lives and could destroy plans, a love that had threatened his rapid ascent in his career.

His and Rebecca’s love had been different—safer certainly.

She wanted a successful doctor—that he could provide.

They had been good for each other, had wanted the same, at least for a while.

Josh could see her shadow behind the blinds, see her earrings, her jewellery, the skimpy outlines of her nightdress that left nothing to the imagination, and knew what Rebecca wanted from him tonight.

And he also knew that it wasn’t about him.

‘At least I’ll have something to show for four years of marriage...’ He recalled the harsh words of their latest row and then watched as she poured herself a drink from the decanter. He felt a stab of sympathy as he realised that Rebecca needed a bit of Dutch courage to go through with tonight.

Maybe he should get a vasectomy without her knowing, but what sort of coward, or husband, did that? Josh reeled at his own thought.

So he checked his pocket for his purchase from the garage, because he couldn’t face her tears from another rejection. They hadn’t slept together in weeks, not since...

Josh slammed that door in his mind closed, simply refused to go there, and tried very hard not to cloud the issue. In truth his and Rebecca’s marriage had been well into injury time long before they had come to St Piran.

He went to pocket the condoms, to have them conveniently to hand, because no doubt Rebecca would ensure they never made it up the stairs and he knew for a fact she’d stopped taking the Pill.

‘What the hell am I doing?’ he groaned.

Yes, it would be so much easier to go in and make love.

Easier in the short term perhaps to give her the baby Rebecca said she wanted.

But since when had Josh chosen the easy path?

He tossed the condoms back into the glove box, a guarantee of sorts that he wouldn’t give in and take the easy way out.

There was a conversation that needed to take place and, no matter how painful, it really was time.

They owed each other that at least.

Taking a breath, he walked up the neat path of his low-maintenance garden, waved to his neighbours, who were sipping wine on their little balcony and watching the world go by.

‘Beautiful night, Josh.’

‘It’s grand, isn’t it?’ Josh agreed, and turned the key and stepped inside.

To the world, to his neighbours, the dashing doctor was coming home after a hellishly long day to his wonderful smart home and into the loving arms of his beautiful trophy wife.

* * *

It was a beautiful night.

The moon was big and round and it just accentuated the chaos as Evelyn Harris surveyed the ruin of her kitchen, plates smashed and broken, her ribs bruised and tender, the taste of blood in her mouth. She heard her husband snoring upstairs in bed.

She picked up the phone and not for the first time wondered about calling Izzy—but would the doctor even remember her? Surely it was too late to ring at this hour, and her son had an exam in the morning and she had lunch with John’s boss’s wife to get through, so she put down the phone and chose to sleep on the plush leather sofa.

Izzy was right.

Nobody did know what went on behind closed doors.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘SHE’S a tough little one.’

Like her mother, Diego thought.

Tilia, though small for dates and premature, was also incredibly active and strong. She had only required a short time on CPAP and was doing well on oxygen.

It really was a case of better out than in—now she could gain weight and as was often the case with babies who had been deprived nutrition in utero, Tilia’s forehead often creased in concern as if she was constantly worried as to where her next meal was coming from.

‘She wants her mum.’ Brianna could not get Tilia to settle. ‘I might ring Maternity and see if Izzy’s still awake, she might get a nice cuddle. Then I’m going to have my coffee break. Could you watch mine for a moment while I call?’

They often rang Maternity, especially when babies were active and if there was a nurse who could bring the mother over—well, the middle of the night was a nice time to sit in rocking chair and bond a little. But when Diego had left Izzy she had been drained and exhausted and she could really use a full night’s sleep—not that he was going to say that to Brianna. The gossip was already flying around the hospital since their appearance at the ball—had a certain little lady not put in such an early appearance, they might have been old news now, but given the turn of events and that Diego had been in the labour ward and was up twice day visiting on Maternity, he felt as if all eyes were on them. The scrutiny was just too fierce and strong at such a fragile time.

He was actually more than glad to be on nights, away from Rita’s probing, and he had deliberately allocated Brianna to care for Tilia.

Brianna was one of the most private people Diego had met. She said nothing about her private life. She was there to work and work she did, loving and caring for her charges—gossip the last thing she was interested in.

‘They’ve given Izzy a sleeping tablet,’ Brianna said when she came back. ‘Never mind, little lady, I’ll give you a cuddle.’

‘You go and have your break,’ Diego said. ‘I’ll sort her.’

He didn’t want to be doing this.

Or had he engineered it?

Diego didn’t want to examine his feelings. Brianna was long overdue her coffee break, it was as simple as that. So he washed his hands in his usual thorough manner, put on a gown and then unclipped the sides of the incubator.

Often, so very often he did this—soothed a restless baby, or took over care while one of his team took their break.

And tonight it would be far safer to remember that.

He would sit and get this baby settled and perhaps chat with another nurse as he did so, or watch the ward from a chair.

He sat and expertly held Tilia, spoke as he always did to his charges—joking that he would teach her a little Spanish.

Which he did.

Then Chris, another of the nurses on duty that night, came over and asked him to run his eyes over a drug.

Which he did.

And then he felt something he hadn’t in more than a decade.

Something he had tried never to feel since Fernando.

He adored his babies, but they weren’t his to love.

He had loved Fernando, had held him three times in his little life, and it had never come close since.

But holding Tilia, it came close.

Dangerously close.

She wasn’t a patient and she wasn’t his new girlfriend’s baby.

She was Tilia.

Izzy’s baby.

But more than that.

He smelt that unmistakable baby smell that surrounded him each day but which he never noticed, he looked into huge eyes that were the same shape as her mother’s and she had the same shape mouth. Even her nostrils were the same.

And there, sitting with all the hissing and bleeping and noise that was a busy neonatal unit, Diego, felt a stab of dread.

That he might lose her too.

He looked over to where Toby’s mother had come in, restless and unable to sleep, for just one more check on her son, and he knew how she felt—how many times in the night at eighteen he had woken with a sudden shock of fright and rushed to check on Fernando, asking the nurses to check and check again, petrified that they had missed something, but it wasn’t that fear that gripped him as he held Tilia.

‘You’re going to be fine,’ Diego said to Tilia in Spanish. ‘You’re going to be clever and grow healthy and strong...’

Only would he be around to see it?

‘And your mother’s getting stronger each day too,’ Diego went on. ‘Just watch her grow too.’

He wanted that for Izzy. He vowed as he sat there, holding her baby while she could not, that he would help Izzy grow, would do everything to encourage her, even if that meant that she grew away from him.

How could he let himself fall in love with this little babe when who knew what her mother might want days, weeks or months from now? When who knew what he might want?

Diego ran a finger down her little cheek.

But how could he not?

* * *

Staying in the parents’ wing had been the right choice.

It was a precious time, one where she caught up on all she had missed out on, one where there was nothing to focus on other than her baby.

Always Diego was friendly, professional, calm, except for the visits before or after her shift, when he was friendly and calm but he dropped the professional for tender, but there was never any pressure, no demands for her time. Now, as Tilia hit four weeks, the world outside was starting to creep back in and for the first time since her daughter’s birth, Izzy truly assessed the situation, wondering, fearing that it was as she had suspected—that her daughter’s birth had changed everything for them, that his lack of demands meant a lack of passion.