Mistletoe Mother

‘Dammit, Ella, this isn’t going to work,’ he exclaimed, taking a hasty step out of her way as he raked a long-fingered hand through his hair. ‘I came up here expecting to spend the next two weeks in an isolated little cottage of some sort. I certainly didn’t expect to find you here and I want to know what’s going on.’

‘Going on?’ It had sounded almost like an accusation but what was she guilty of?

‘Well, obviously you got your sister to set me up, so what I want to know is what you’re hoping to get out of it? If it’s just another one-night stand you wanted, we certainly didn’t have to come all this way for it. If you’d let me know you were interested, perhaps we could have arranged for a two-week stay in a comfortable hotel somewhere.’

‘Seth!’ The unexpectedness of his attack had left her almost speechless, apart from the fact that it was totally unfair. She wasn’t the one who had—

‘Of course! Stupid me! You don’t go in for anything as long as two weeks. Just the one night after your sister’s wedding and then, when I came back, you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.’ He was so angry that his eyes were almost shooting sparks at her but that didn’t stop her from retaliating with all the fire of her redhead’s nature.

‘I wasn’t the one who disappeared after one night, or have you got a more convenient memory than I have?’ She gave a mirthless laugh as the memories of that fateful day began to scroll their disjointed way through her head. She’d been trying to block them out for month after miserable month and still hadn’t managed it.

‘In case you really have forgotten what happened, let me remind you of the salient facts,’ she snapped fiercely, holding one hand up to count them off, finger by finger.

‘One—we danced at my sister’s wedding. Two—we ended up in bed together. Three—you had disappeared by the time I woke up the next morning. Four—by the time I went back on duty it was announced that you had gone on some sort of hastily organised leave with no date given for your return. Now,’ she continued when she’d drawn in a hasty breath and planted her fists combatively on her hips, ‘correct me if I’ve missed anything out, but I’m almost certain that nowhere in that series of events was there any mention on your part that you’d even enjoyed the encounter in the first place, let alone that you were interested in repeating it.’

His lips had been pressed into a thin line and his hands had been balled into tight fists when she’d started, but by the time she finished his arms were hanging limp at his sides, his eyes riveted on the front of her baggy jumper.

She glanced down to see that she’d planted her hands on her hips as she’d harangued him, and the gesture had drawn her clothing against the burgeoning evidence of her heavily pregnant state.

‘My God! Ella, you’re pregnant!’ he breathed, clearly shocked.

‘Well, I’m glad to see that all those years of training weren’t wasted,’ she retorted acidly, just as the timer rang again.

It didn’t take more than a minute to turn the loaves round to ensure they baked evenly, but it was long enough for her to regret her rudeness.

There had been two of them in that hotel room that night and that meant it had been just as much her fault as his that they hadn’t taken any steps to prevent her getting pregnant.

She straightened up from her task, knowing that she had to apologise, but before she could speak he beat her to it.

‘So, who’s the father? I hadn’t heard you’d got married but, then, once you left the hospital you were outside the scope of the gossip grapevine.’ He stopped suddenly, as though struck by a sudden thought. ‘Is this place big enough to have guests to stay? Won’t your husband have something to say about your sister dumping an old colleague of yours on him?’

For a moment Ella didn’t know whether she was going to laugh or cry but ended up determined to do neither.

‘You stupid man!’ she exclaimed shrilly as all those months of wondering and hurting finally boiled over. ‘I’m not married. I have never been married and I have no intention of ever getting married. Furthermore, whether you believe it or not, you are the only man I’ve ever slept with, but to save you wasting your money on DNA testing I’ll tell you here and now that I won’t be asking you for a single penny to raise this child. At least you’ll go away from here secure in the knowledge that I have no intention of using the baby to destroy your marriage.’

The last words were still quivering in the bread-scented room when reaction began to set in.

This was not how she’d dreamed of telling Seth that he was going to be a father.

In her dreams his marriage didn’t exist and he’d come to her telling her that he’d missed her dreadfully and couldn’t bear to live without her.

In her dreams he’d told her that he loved her and the baby they’d made that magical night, and would take care of them for ever.

In her dreams he came to her and wrapped her in loving arms while he kissed her. He didn’t stand on the other side of the room like a statue carved out of granite with his eyes burning into her like hot coals.

For a moment she just stood there with her hands resting protectively over the prominent bulge of her pregnancy, wondering why everything had gone so wrong. When she’d first met him she’d thought he was something so special. How could she have been so mistaken?

They had been working together for several months before the fateful day of her sister’s wedding, time in which she’d believed they’d been getting to know each other. Only she hadn’t known him at all. Hadn’t known that he’d been hiding such a monstrous secret until it had been far too late to stop herself falling in love with him.

She was still glaring at him after her outburst, but the longer she looked the more she began to notice about his appearance.

He’d changed since she’d seen him last. There was a sprinkling of grey at his temples that hadn’t been there before and he looked thinner, almost as if he’d been ill.

There was a subtle difference in the expression in his eyes, too. A year ago their polished steel had had the intensity of lasers where now they seemed almost…almost defeated.

He doesn’t look happy, she thought with a strange ache around her heart.

Startled by the burgeoning emotion she’d vowed to dismiss for ever, she suddenly realised that in spite of everything she was as much in love with him as she’d ever been.

Then to her utter mortification she burst into tears.

CHAPTER TWO

FROM the first moment she saw him, Ella felt as though a light had been switched on inside her.

‘Seth Gifford,’ she whispered as she walked away after their first introduction, loving the feel of the words in her mouth.

Somehow she just knew that she had met the man who was going to be the most important part of her life, and she was filled with an almost giddy excitement.

It wasn’t enough that she’d just landed the job of her dreams. After waiting twenty-seven years and nearly giving up hope, she’d met the man of her dreams, too. What was more, she was almost certain she’d seen an answering spark of attraction in his eyes that had nothing to do with the fact that she was a well-qualified midwife.

‘Is there anything else you want to see?’ her guide asked as they continued on their way along the light and airy corridor towards the delivery suites.

A swift sideways glance at her new colleague reassured her that Carol didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss in her reaction to their obs and gyn consultant and she breathed a sigh of relief. That was not the way she wanted to start to build up a relationship in the department.

‘I’ll probably have dozens of questions,’ she answered with a laugh. ‘But you’ve told me so much in the last half-hour that I can’t tell what’s stuck yet.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Carol commiserated. ‘Every obs and gyn department does the same basic job but there are always differences in their routines when you move to another hospital.’ She paused to throw Ella a speculative look. ‘What do you think so far? Are you going to like us enough to stay?’

I’d stay just for the pleasure of seeing Seth Gifford every day, she heard a little voice say inside her head, and swiftly squashed it. ‘This is pretty much my ideal job,’ she admitted candidly, not seeing the point of beating around the bush. ‘I’ve always wanted to work somewhere that was at the forefront of all aspects of human fertility, and to come here, where there are so many inter-departmental links, is perfect.’

The understanding smile on Carol’s face encouraged her to continue enthusiastically.

‘I’ll be learning, too, because I’ll be able to see everything from perfectly straightforward deliveries of naturally achieved pregnancies to those that would never have happened without medical assistance. And then there’s the staff. I only met some of them when I came for my interview, but everyone’s been very welcoming, right up to the top man.’

‘Top man?’ Carol questioned. ‘Oh, you mean Mr Gifford. He’s not exactly the top man because we share Professor den Haag with St Augustine’s, and Mr Crossman, our other consultant, has about ten years’ seniority, but he is all our own.’

Ella suddenly found herself longing to ask Carol for details about Seth and that shook her. She’d never allowed anyone or anything to interfere with her job before, and she wasn’t going to let her hormones get in the way now. It might be the first time they’d really sat up and taken notice of anyone, but that was her own problem.

‘So, what is the atmosphere like in the department? Does everyone get on well?’ she asked as her guide finally took her into the comfortable atmosphere of the staff lounge to make them a coffee. Carol had warned, laughingly, that sitting down would probably be the signal for dozens of patients to turn up in complicated labour, but they’d deemed it worth the risk. Midwifery was definitely one of the less predictable specialties and they all learned early on in their training to grab the chance of a break with both hands.

‘Actually, we do all get on reasonably well,’ Carol confirmed thoughtfully. ‘You’ll always get those who don’t pull their weight quite as willingly as others but here they seem to be balanced by others who always do their share and more.’

‘Doesn’t that lead to friction?’

‘Oh, there’s the occasional flare-up to make the slackers pull their socks up, but it’s generally fairly good-natured.’

‘What about the bigwigs? What are they like to work with?’ She hadn’t been able to resist asking after all.

‘Professor den Haag is wonderful. He’s a big blond gorgeous teddy bear of a man who loves his work every bit as much as he loves his wife and family. They’ve got six children already. Three sets of twins!’

Ella blinked. She couldn’t imagine how any woman coped with one set, let alone three.

‘Wow! Gluttons for punishment!’ she exclaimed. ‘What about Mr Crossman? I met him briefly at my interview but he was called into theatre for an emergency Caesarean almost as soon as we shook hands.’

‘He’s a quiet man, not much older than the professor but seems much more middle-aged somehow. Steady and hardworking but doesn’t seem to have much rapport with his patients—the adult ones, that is. He adores babies, though. He’s just become a grandfather for the first time so he’ll probably trap you in a corner with the latest photos when he finds he’s got a new victim to show them to.’

‘I’ve been warned!’ Ella chuckled. ‘And what about Mr Gifford?’ Finally, she’d asked about the one person she really wanted to know about.

‘Well, what can I tell you?’ Carol said with a shrug and a roll of her eyes. ‘Obviously, he’s totally gorgeous. The archetypal tall, dark and handsome with those lovely velvety grey eyes, added to which he’s brilliant at his job and excellent with all his patients. But other than that, there isn’t much to tell. He hasn’t been here very long—probably nearly six months now. He seems to keep himself very much to himself outside his duty hours and that’s as much as we know so far.’

‘That’s quite amazing, knowing what hospital grapevines are like,’ Ella commented, unaccountably disappointed not to have learned anything of a more personal nature about the man who had jump-started her female hormones at last. ‘Usually everyone knows everything, including his inside leg length, within the first twenty-four hours of a good-looking man joining the staff.’

Carol was still laughing as she got up to answer the phone but her smile had faded by the time the call ended.

‘Damn!’ she muttered with a scowl and tipped the rest of her coffee down the sink.

‘Problem?’ Ella was already on her feet and giving her pale blue tunic top a tug to straighten the hem over her hips.

‘One of our assisted pregnancies has started bleeding. Her husband’s bringing her in now.’

‘Oh, dear. How far along is she? Enough for the baby to survive?’ Automatically Ella found herself following Carol out into the department, her own coffee unceremoniously dumped with barely a pang of regret.

‘No chance at all. She’s not even reached the end of the first trimester yet. And this time I really thought we’d cracked it for them.’ Carol sounded really upset for the couple.

‘You sound as if you know them well. I take it they’ve been coming for a while?’

‘Too long,’ she confirmed darkly. ‘I first met them when they were going through all the tests to find out why she wasn’t conceiving. She’d had problems with an IUD when they were first married but hadn’t realised that the infection had affected her Fallopian tubes. Both tubes were so badly scarred that finally it was decided that their only option was IVF. This is their third attempt.’

Ella had come across such cases at her last hospital and her heart went out to the couple. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to want to start a family only to discover that you would never achieve it without medical intervention. The fact that this was already their third attempt was witness to this couple’s determination to succeed.

Unfortunately, she mused while they waited for Mira to arrive, sometimes all the determination in the world was not enough to ensure success. Would they be one of the unlucky ones who were fated never to have a child of their own?

‘She’s one of Mr Gifford’s cases,’ Carol announced, scanning the top page of the case notes as she came back into the examination room where Ella had been checking the range of supplies to hand. ‘Could you page him for me? The numbers are listed on the wall phone for convenience. I’ve already contacted the ultrasound technician and checked the availability of a bed in case she needs to be admitted.’

Ella had barely put the phone back in its cradle after logging the page when it rang again.

‘Winston Ward,’ she said automatically, completely forgetting that this wasn’t her old hospital, then hastily corrected herself. ‘I’m sorry. That’s not right. It’s…what is the name of the obs and gyn department, Carol?’ she hissed over her shoulder, totally flustered by her mistake. If she hadn’t been thinking about Seth Gifford she’d have had her mind on her job.

‘I take it that’s Ella,’ said a dark brown velvet voice in her ear. ‘It’s Seth Gifford here. Somebody paged me.’

‘Yes. I—I did…or rather Carol asked me to,’ she stammered, completely thrown by the tremor of awareness that spiralled through her at the sound of his voice. She thought she could even hear amusement in his tone.

‘Mira Connolly is on her way in,’ she continued, hastily dragging her wayward thoughts back to the important matter in hand. ‘Apparently she’s bleeding.’

‘Damn!’ she heard him say forcefully. ‘I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. I expect Carol’s organised the ultrasound?’

‘Yes. And a bed in case she needs to be admitted.’

‘Well done.’

The sharp click in her ear told her that he’d cut the connection but it took her a second to relinquish her hold on the receiver.

‘How soon can he be here?’ Carol prompted.

‘He’s already on his way, by the sound of it. He doesn’t waste time on small talk, does he?’

‘You’d be surprised,’ she argued. ‘I’ve never seen him watching the clock when a patient needs reassurance.’

The sound of the lift arriving had both of them craning their necks around the doorjamb to see who was arriving. A wheelchair emerged at speed expertly wielded by a porter. The tearstained woman huddled in it was obviously their patient while the tall man following them, his thinning blond hair wildly dishevelled and devastation in his eyes, was equally obviously her husband.

‘This way, Mick,’ Carol called when the porter paused briefly to look both ways along the corridor. ‘We’re all ready in here.’

‘Is Mr Gifford here?’ the woman demanded tearfully as soon as she caught sight of the two of them. ‘I need to see Mr Gifford. He’ll be able to do something, I know he will. I can’t lose this baby. Not this time!’ She dissolved into racking sobs that continued right through her transfer onto the examining couch. Even Carol’s repeated assurances that the consultant was on his way couldn’t comfort her.

Ella wasn’t sure what she expected Seth to do when he arrived but it certainly wasn’t the way he walked straight across to sit on the edge of the couch and wrap a comforting arm around the patient’s shoulders.

‘Hush, Mira,’ he murmured. ‘Hush, now. You don’t even know whether there’s anything to cry about. You haven’t even given me a chance to check yet.’

‘But…but I’m b-bleeding again. I’ve l-lost the b-baby again. I know I have!’

‘Mira, listen to me,’ he demanded sternly, deliberately holding her gaze. ‘Have I ever lied to you?’

‘N-no.’ She shook her head miserably.

‘Well, I won’t start now. Obviously as you’re bleeding there is a chance that you’ve lost your baby. You’ve been through this often enough to know that. But, until I’ve checked you over, none of us can know for sure. Even women who aren’t on IVF sometimes have intermittent bleeding for one reason or another, and then go on to have perfectly normal healthy babies.’

She nodded, but Ella knew the poor woman didn’t really believe it.

‘Well, I hope you trust me enough to know that I’ll always tell you the truth, whatever it is,’ Seth said softly as he straightened up off the side of the examining couch, relinquishing his position with a gesture to her husband to take his place.

Ella was certain that the rest of them in the room had been trying to look as if they were busy with something else to give her the semblance of privacy, but she knew that she’d been riveted by Seth’s compassion while he’d been calming Mira down. She certainly hadn’t noticed the arrival of the ultrasound technician.

‘How long ago did you empty your bladder?’ the motherly woman asked quietly as she began to set up the equipment, switching on the computerised display and thoughtfully warming the probe.

‘Actually, I need to go now,’ Mira admitted, looking fearfully at the blank screen that would soon display the presence or absence of the baby in her womb. ‘Should I go before you start?’

‘It’s not necessary for you to go anywhere,’ she said soothingly. ‘It’s actually better if your bladder is full. We can get a better picture.’

Ella stepped forward to help rearrange Mira’s clothing to expose her abdomen, draping her with a towel so that the conductive jelly didn’t make a mess.

‘Lie very still now,’ the technician warned as she took the probe in a smooth sweep across the pale skin of her lower abdomen.

Ella couldn’t see the screen from her position so had to content herself with watching Seth’s expression.

He started off with his dark brows drawn together to form a deep furrow above his nose as he concentrated on the shadows and blurs that the screen would display. At one point he murmured something to the technician, his grey eyes piercingly intent as he pointed at something on the screen, and Ella found herself holding her breath.

In spite of the number of people in the room and the hum of the equipment, she was certain she could have heard the proverbial pin drop while they waited for the verdict. When he straightened up and turned to face Mira again the expression on his face had hardly changed but some sixth sense told her that the news was going to be good.

‘I don’t think you’ve ever seen one of these scans before, have you?’ he began conversationally, pulling the trolley full of electronic gadgetry over slightly so that his patient could see the picture on the screen more easily without having to move her position.

‘This is your uterus,’ he continued, tracing the outline on the screen. ‘And this dark tadpole, just here, is your baby. The head is smaller than the width of two of your fingers and from the top of the head to its little rump is less than the length of your little finger.’

They all heard Mira swallow before she could force herself to speak, her eyes glued to the tiny shadow on the screen.

‘Is it still alive?’ she whispered fearfully, clutching so tightly to her husband’s hand that his fingers were turning white. He seemed to be too engrossed in the screen to even notice.

‘See for yourself,’ Seth urged with a nod to the technician to run the scan again. ‘That was a still frame you were looking at, while this is what is happening inside you while we’re looking at it. Can you see that little fluttering movement?’

‘Yes,’ they agreed breathlessly, still without taking their eyes off the screen.

‘That’s your baby’s heart beating inside you, and the last time I checked an ultrasound, only live babies had hearts that beat that strongly.’

Mira burst into tears, but this time they were accompanied by a tremulous smile. Ella was hard put not to join her, concentrating on wiping up the jelly and righting Mira’s clothing while she regained her composure.

‘So why was she bleeding?’ Mira’s husband finally asked, obviously very close to tears himself.

‘We might never know,’ Seth admitted candidly. ‘Most people don’t realise that only one in six of normally conceived babies ever survive to birth, and the proportion is even lower for assisted pregnancies like yours. But if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that Mira just lost the twin.’

‘The twin?’ he echoed, obviously too befuddled to think clearly.

‘You remember that we put two embryos back in when we did the implantation?’ Seth prompted patiently. ‘It’s possible that both of them actually started to grow, but that one of them has just failed for some reason.’

‘What about the one that’s left? What are his chances?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not in the business of fortune-telling,’ he said as kindly as he could. ‘All we can do is wait and see.’ He glanced back at Mira who was now gazing at the print the technician had made for her of that little tadpole with the beating heart.

‘I’d like to keep her in overnight,’ he added softly for the husband’s ears. ‘I think she’ll probably be calmer knowing we’re close at hand, even if there’s really nothing we can do at this stage.’

It didn’t take long for the arrangements to be made and even though Ella had never met the woman before, she found herself crossing her fingers that this story would have a happy ending.

Seth had obviously been called to the department from some other task, but there was no sign that he was in a hurry to return to it. In spite of the fact that he had already done his part in explaining what was going on, he waited in the unit until Mira had been settled into bed.

‘Make sure you get a good night’s sleep, now,’ he warned when he stuck his head around the door. ‘Stress won’t do any of you any good and, with any luck, you’re going to need every bit of your strength when that little one arrives in another six months.’

He glanced at Ella and her pulse gave a silly skip at the intensity she saw in those clear grey eyes, especially when they lingered for an extra moment.