The Pregnancy Project

“Couldn’t you make room for just one more?”

“—the other patients have already been through my orientation to explain the process and procedures.” He finished his second point as if she hadn’t interrupted him.

“I’d be willing to go through it all without the orientation,” Ella said, hating how she’d been reduced to grasping at straws but still hoping that he wouldn’t be telling her any of this unless he was actually going to include her.

“I don’t practice in half measures,” he informed her.

He got points for being conscientious if not for being tactful. But still Ella didn’t know if he was rejecting or reluctantly accepting her.

Another silence dragged on, again with his intense eyes on her the whole while, making her worry more as each minute passed that he was going to turn her down.

“I want you to understand,” he said when he deemed to speak once more. “If I allow you into the group and this doesn’t work for you, I won’t treat you further. In other words, I will accept you as a patient only for this study and the in vitro procedures that will follow it. If you don’t conceive after a reasonable number of attempts, you have to agree that we will go our separate ways. Because, after looking at your history, I don’t see where there’s anything I can do for you that hasn’t already been done—repeatedly. For me to go beyond this particular study would be a waste of my time and your money.”

“Okay,” Ella said much too quickly, jumping at the chance he seemed to be giving her.

“Before you get on the bandwagon you should also know that because I have a full caseload and so does Dr. Schwartz—”

“Dr. Schwartz is the Chinese doctor?” Ella asked, feeling a bit giddy with the thought that Jacob Weber wasn’t turning her away cold.

“She’s married to a colleague of mine, Mark Schwartz, and she took his name.”

Ella couldn’t suppress a smile.

“As I was saying,” he continued, still without the slightest alteration in his somber demeanor. “Because of my caseload and Dr. Schwartz’s schedule, all procedures will be done in the evenings, here, after office hours.”

“That’s fine,” she assured hurriedly.

“Even with your full life?”

Oh, he was nasty! But Ella wasn’t going to let him get the best of her. “I told you I’m willing to do whatever is necessary,” she informed him.

“Well, it will be necessary for you to meet with me so I can outline what the study entails. And that will have to be after hours, too, because I don’t have any other time for it.”

He leaned forward and scanned a desk calendar. “Today is Thursday and I’m busy tonight, so that’s out. I have to be at a conference all day and evening Saturday and Sunday, and Monday evening is when the study is slated to begin,” he said, more as if he was thinking out loud than explaining his time constraints to her. “I can skip the conference’s opening ceremony and dinner tomorrow night, but I have a meeting after that that I’ll have to get to. So that has to be it. And since the hour I’m with you will be my single chance to eat, we’ll have to do it over a meal.”

Hardly a gracious invitation but she would take what she could get. “Just tell me where and when,” she said.

He did, without missing a beat or even inquiring if she minded going to the heart of Boston to the hotel where his conference was being held to make it convenient for him.

“I’ll be there,” she said after writing the time and location in her day planner and returning it to her purse.

“I’ll keep your file,” he informed her then, standing and taking it with him as he did. “Have Bev give you the paperwork you’ll need to fill out—everyone else has already done that.”

“Okay. And I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

His only answer was to raise an eyebrow at her just before he rounded the desk and walked out of the office as abruptly as he’d entered it, not so much as saying goodbye to her.

But despite his bad manners Ella felt relief on two fronts.

The renowned Dr. Jacob Weber was going to give her one last chance to have a baby.

And he didn’t seem to remember either her name or the scandal she’d been involved in in college.

Chapter Two

J acob Weber was awakened the next morning by warm, sloppy kisses.

“Ah, can’t you wait for the alarm just one morning?” he groused, keeping his eyes closed.

His only answer was more kisses. More kisses with even more enthusiasm. On his cheek, his nose, his ear, his brow…

“Okay, okay, I get the message,” he said, opening his eyes to the tiny black schnauzer puppy he’d been sharing his bed with for the past four weeks.

He couldn’t be angry, though. Not when he was looking into the furry face of the three-pound dog standing on his pillow with her head down, her shiny black nose an inch away from his, her butt up and her stubby tail wagging gaily in the air.

If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she was smiling at him.

He pretended to be more peeved than he actually was now that he was awake and said, “Have you forgotten that I’m the guy who found you abandoned on the street and kept you alive by feeding you with an eyedropper and then a baby bottle until you figured out how to lap up that special formula the vet charges me an arm and leg for? The least you could do is let me sleep until six-thirty.”

The schnauzer clearly had no sense of guilt. She merely barked a tiny, high-pitched yip to emphasize her point.

And her point, Jacob knew, was that she wanted to go outside. Not something he could deny her when, even though she still needed concentrated care, he was making headway in housebreaking her. But only tentative headway. Delays were not tolerated for long. Which the second yip warned him of.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m getting up,” he said, rolling out of bed and reaching for the sweatpants he’d learned in the past four weeks to keep at the ready.

As he pulled them on he couldn’t help chuckling at the sight of the puppy playing tug-of-war with the edge of his sheet, growling and shaking her head furiously in the battle.

“That’s it, Champ, give it hell. Live up to your name. You’re nothing if not feisty,” he said.

The mention of feistiness brought with it another thought, this one of the woman he’d met in his office the day before. The woman who had been coming much—much—too easily to mind since he’d met her. Ella Gardner.

Ella Gardner.

Feisty and determined. Like Champ.

Jacob couldn’t help smiling to himself when he recalled her I-don’t-need-a-man speech. What had she said about herself? That she was a capable, independent person who didn’t have time to wait for Mr. Right, the sequel….

“Mr. Right, the sequel,” he repeated out loud, chuckling again. “I liked that one,” he informed Champ as he scooped her up in one hand and took her downstairs and out the back door of his two story townhouse.

The tiny dog couldn’t make it up or down the three steps that dropped to the patch of lawn he was allotted, so he deposited Champ at the bottom of them and then sat on the top one, his mind continuing to wander back a day.

To Ella Gardner.

He wasn’t sure why she was sticking with him. She was pretty enough—beautiful actually. Glisteningly-bright, riotously curly blond hair. Big, sparkling silver-gray eyes with long, thick lashes. Skin like alabaster. A small, thin, pert nose. Lips that—even when she’d been telling him off—had only left him wondering if they felt as soft as they looked.

Of course that in itself—noting details of her face, wondering things like how soft her lips were—was an oddity. He’d treated beautiful women in the past. But after initially registering the woman’s appearance on some level, it became something he didn’t pay any more attention to than he paid to the appearance of his less-than-beautiful patients. They were all patients—ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent married patients. They were his cases. His work. Certainly they weren’t anything personal to him. He couldn’t do his job if they were. Not legally, ethically, morally or emotionally.

Yet this one was lingering in his head the way no one before her ever had.

Was it the feistiness? he asked himself as he watched Champ wrestle fearlessly with a rubber duck that was as big as she was, and again connected the pup’s dauntless spirit to Ella Gardner.

Maybe.

He liked a little spunk, he had to admit it. And Ella Gardner seemed to have that—even if she had obviously been keeping her temper in check.

But again, he had patients whose spirit he admired and not one of them had come home from the office in his head the way Ella Gardner had. Not one had been waiting for him behind his lids when he’d closed his eyes the night before. And here he was now, barely awake and thinking about her again. Her, not any of his other tenacious, strong-willed patients.

He just couldn’t figure it out. He knew people who attributed attraction to some kind of questionable science and called it chemistry. That theory just hadn’t ever held water for him. If it was science, it was the flimsiest kind. That’s what he’d argued even with an old medical school classmate who was doing top-dollar research on pheromones for a perfume company.

But for the first time he had to concede that maybe—even if it was flimsy—chemistry between two people did exist. Because he was just stumped when it came to finding any other explanation for why the image of Ella Gardner kept following him around.

For why he kept mentally replaying their brief, all-business meeting. Every minute of it, every nuance, every expression on her face and intonation of her voice.

He just couldn’t find any other explanation for why he continued to recall her sweet, clean scent greeting him when he’d walked into his office. And how much he’d liked it.

He certainly couldn’t find any explanation other than chemistry for the regret he’d been suffering over not having taken the hand she’d extended to him to shake, over missing an opportunity to touch her.

And what was it—if not chemistry—that had made him ignore that simple gesture from her in the first place? he asked himself. He would have shaken any other patient’s hand. But when it came to Ella Gardner there had been something about her from the instant he’d set eyes on her that had knocked him off-kilter and his instinctive response to that had been to keep his distance, to be even more formal, more remote and removed than usual.

He didn’t understand it. He hadn’t understood it when it had happened. And true to form, he’d retreated into that attitude that had gotten him through the earlier part of his life. That bad attitude from which he’d recently faced some old repercussions.

But a doctor just couldn’t have…

What exactly was it that he had for Ella Gardner? he asked himself. Stirrings? Attraction? Some kind of unaccountable infatuation?

He didn’t know what it was or what to call it.

But whatever it was that he’d had, a doctor just couldn’t have it for a patient.

And she was a patient.

Okay, yes, it could be argued that for now she wasn’t his patient. That during the course of treatment she would be Kim Schwartz’s patient, that he wouldn’t so much as examine her until after the alternative course was finished and he began the in vitro procedures. It could be argued that only then would Ella Gardner be his patient.

But he was splitting hairs and he knew it. Basically she was still a patient—or at least a patient-in-waiting. And he didn’t get personally involved with patients or with patients-in-waiting.

Hell, he didn’t get personally involved with anyone.

And that was how he liked it. How he liked his life. No personal involvements meant no complications. It meant no encumbrances. No expectations. No disappointments. Uninvolved and unattached—that was how he made sure to keep himself, focusing on his work and solely on his work. That was the way it had always been, and that was the way he wanted it to stay. The way he intended to make sure it stayed. Which was why he never let any woman get too close or stick around too long.

“So vacate the premises of my brain, Ella Gardner,” he muttered under his breath, through clenched teeth.

The sound of his voice was enough to distract Champ from the rubber duck, and she did her springy little run over to him and promptly began a tug-of-war with his big toe. Which she could barely open her mouth wide enough to accommodate.

Her pin-sharp teeth hurt some, but still her struggle made Jacob laugh. He leaned forward and picked up the pup again to take her inside.

“Patients and puppies—sometimes you’re both pains in my neck,” he told Champ.

But he still held the tiny dog to his face, rubbing his nose in the downy fur behind one of her ears.

And in spite of all his determination to put Ella Gardner firmly out of his mind, he also still found himself—entirely against his will—looking forward to having dinner with her tonight more than he should have.

And way, way more than he wanted to.

Chapter Three

“T his is Jacob Weber. I’ve had a patient emergency this afternoon and am running behind schedule. You’ll have to meet me at my office rather than at the hotel and wait for me to finish with my other appointments today. We may or may not be eating, depending on the time left before my meeting, but I’ll make sure to run you through the orientation, even if it’s on the fly. Unless, of course, you aren’t here when I finish for the day, and then I’ll assume you’ve had second thoughts about this course.”

Ella played the message a second time, shaking her head as she listened again. She was amazed by the doctor’s curt, verging-on-rude demeanor even on the telephone. Although she supposed she should give him points for making the phone call himself, for not merely having his receptionist do it.

On the other hand, as Ella played the message a third time, she thought that he might be better off having his receptionist relay his messages. At least Bev was nice.

But Ella reminded herself that Jacob Weber was the best there was when it came to infertility, so she would just have to overlook his rotten social skills to be treated by him.

It was a shame, though, she couldn’t help thinking. Because as the deep, rich tones of his voice wafted over the line for the fourth run-through of the message, the image of him spontaneously presented itself to her mind’s eye—the way it had about a million times since she’d met him. It was a shame that someone with the face of a Greek god, someone with broad shoulders and smoldering nearly purple eyes, someone who exuded a raw, steamy sexuality that he didn’t even seem aware of, had a gargoyle’s personality. Without that he would have been a powerhouse of a man, whom no woman could resist.

Then again, maybe for her own sake it was good that he was so unlikable. Because if she was playing his phone message four times just to hear his voice and thinking yet again how great looking and sexy he was, she’d better have something that tempered what otherwise might seem like an attraction to him.

But of course she wasn’t attracted to him. Continuing to think about how jaw-droppingly handsome he was was just like recalling an awesome winter sunset—it might be something to behold but only from the warm safety of a house where fierce winds blowing outside couldn’t get in.

No, there was no way she was attracted to Jacob Weber. She needed his professional services, his talents, skills and experience as a doctor and that was all. Being attracted to him amidst that—coupled with his contrary, irritable, arrogant temperament—would be very, very bad. It was the absolute last thing she needed. Or wanted.

Still, she played the message a fifth time, telling herself it was for its supercilious, overbearing tone, and the turnoff that provided. That it was not for the sound of the polished-mahogany voice that delivered it.

Then she made herself hang up the phone.

A woman would have to be crazy or masochistic to put up with a man like that in any kind of personal relationship, she asserted to herself. And she wasn’t crazy. Or masochistic. Or looking for a new relationship with any man, let alone one like Jacob Weber.

A single marriage that had demanded too long a period of suppressing her own needs and desires, a marriage in which she’d allowed herself to be controlled, was enough for her. She certainly didn’t need to top it off with someone like the unpleasant doctor.

“No, thanks,” she said out loud as she went into her bedroom to change out of her business suit.

“Just do your job and do it well, and I’ll be only too happy never to have to see you again.” She went on talking to the unseen Jacob Weber as she put on a pair of gray slacks and a white camp shirt for her second encounter with the prickly physician.

And hopefully it wouldn’t take too long to accomplish the feat of getting her pregnant, she added silently, fighting against the ever-present fear that it wouldn’t happen at all. Because the less time she had to spend with the man and tolerate his pomposity, the better.

“I’ll be glad when you’re nothing but a bad memory,” she proclaimed as she scrunched the curly explosion of her hair above the rubber band that held it at her crown and retraced her steps out of her bedroom and then out of her apartment.

And that’s all he’d be, too, she assured herself as she left the building and got into her car to drive to Jacob Weber’s office. “Nothing but a bad, bad memory,” she repeated forcefully.

Yet somewhere buried deep beneath that bravado lurked a tiny shadow of doubt.

A tiny shadow of doubt born of the fact that every time she thought about seeing the gargoyle in a Greek god’s body again she felt a twinge of excitement….

“He’s right behind me, I promise,” Marta said to Ella as the nurse came through the door from the inner office into the waiting room where Ella had been sitting for over an hour.

“Okay,” Ella answered, hoping the woman was right but unsure whether to believe it or not since Bev, the receptionist, had told her the doctor would be out after the last patient had left forty minutes ago and then repeated it when she’d left herself twenty minutes earlier.

Marta gave her a reassuring smile, said good-night, and went out.

The longer Ella sat there, the more difficult it was to avoid what she considered her pregnancy demons. The thoughts—the doubts—that crept into her mind when she wasn’t guarding against them or when she had too much time on her hands.

What if nothing worked and she never got pregnant? What if all the money, all the effort, all the pain came to naught? What if she spent her entire life childless?

The questions tortured her and, as if she’d outrun them, she stood and forced herself to focus only on the present. On the fact that Jacob Weber was keeping her waiting.

Clearly the office ran on his timetable, and he wouldn’t be rushed. For anyone. Certainly not for her.

Ella decided to take a stroll around the waiting room, pausing to look more closely at the framed prints on the walls, to straighten the magazines on the coffee table, to pluck a dead leaf from the fern and bury it in the soil around its roots. And all the while she wondered if Jacob Weber was making her cool her heels on purpose. Just to be contrary. Or as some kind of test.

Then, through the cut-out that connected the receptionist’s area with the waiting room she saw the light in the hallway that ran between the examining rooms turn off, and she felt encouraged.

At least she did until she caught sight of the man himself opening the door to what looked like a supply closet.

Without any acknowledgment of her, or any apparent awareness that she was even out there, he slipped inside the closet and closed the door behind him.

He probably put counting cotton balls ahead of meeting with her, she thought, feeling a little surly after all the time she’d been waiting.

He was only in the supply closet for a moment, though, before he emerged again. Yet he still offered her not even a glance or a word to let her know he really was on his way before he stopped at the area where the scale and other machinery were located—the area that was apparently the nurse’s work station.

Did he even know she was watching him? Ella wondered.

He didn’t seem to. Or care, if he did, because for what felt like an eternity his attention was on something.

The man really was a jerk, Ella thought, staring openly at him in hopes of at least drawing a glance.

It didn’t work. He went right on looking over some sort of paperwork, oblivious to her.

Jerk, jerk, jerk…

Good-looking jerk, though, she had to concede as she took in the sight of him in tan slacks and a tan sports coat over a darker brown dress shirt and tan tie that all seemed to set off his chestnut hair to perfect effect.

But again she reminded herself that he was a gargoyle in a Greek god’s body so as not to let that handsome appearance cloud the reality.

After another few minutes he seemed to finish what he was doing, because he tucked the paperwork into a file and brought it to the receptionist’s desk, finally gazing in Ella’s direction.

But that was as much as she got.

They were only a few feet apart, and he still didn’t bother to speak. He merely raised a cursory glance at her before lowering his eyes to the desk again to write something on a note he attached to the file.

Maybe he was just singularly dedicated, Ella told herself. But that didn’t keep his actions from seeming just plain rude.

He finally flipped off the rest of the lights in that portion of the office and—at last—headed for the door that would bring him into the waiting room.

You’d better be damn good at what you do, Ella thought as he joined her.

She had to look twice to believe what else she was seeing, however. Riding along in the side pocket of his sports coat was what appeared to be a tiny black puppy with two front paws and a soft furry head—no bigger than a plum—sticking out of the top.

The almost-too-small-to-be-real dog barked a squeaky-but-fearless bark at her that Jacob Weber ignored as, without greeting her, he said, “I’m going to have to make a stop at my place—luckily it’s just across the street. Then it looks like all we’ll have time for is a fast-food dinner before I need to make my meeting. There’s a hole-in-the-wall a few doors down that has Chicago-style hot dogs. We’ll probably have to stand and eat them at one of the counters along the wall, but that’s as good as it’s going to get.”

And all that without any reference whatsoever to the puppy in his pocket.

“Uh…okay,” Ella said. But she refused to be left in the dark about the dog and pointed to the side of the doctor’s coat. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

Jacob Weber looked down at the coal-black face peering with pint-size grandeur from his pocket and said, “This is Champ. Who is the cause of my need to stop at home, since I can’t take her to my meeting.”

“Champ is a girl?” Ella said, unable to suppress a smile at the tiny, wavy-haired terrier, or to hold out a finger to pet her.

“She is a female, yes,” Jacob Weber confirmed.

“Champ makes her sound like a boy.”

“She’s named Champ because that’s what she is—a little champ.” That was all the explanation he was offering because then he said, “Shall we go? We don’t have much time.”

Champ was more easily won over than her owner, because she was licking Ella’s hand and wiggling around in the coat pocket enough to let Ella know she was wagging her tail.

But Ella had no choice except to comply with the doctor’s insistent suggestion, retrieve her hand and follow him to the door.

He opened it, waited for her to step out into the hallway and then closed and locked the door behind them.

The elevator was directly across from his office, and the moment he pushed the down button the doors opened.