Their Meant-To-Be Baby

‘So, how are you? You look the picture of contentment.’

Annie smiled. ‘I feel it. It’s wonderful—and even better now I know James has found a locum who can actually do the job properly. Ed’s driving me slightly nuts, but the girls have been as good as gold, and if the babies would both stop kicking me to bits I could really relax! Feel them—it’s like a football team warming up. I can tell they’re boys.’

Kate laughed and laid her hand over Annie’s bump. ‘Good grief. They’re having a rare old shuffle, aren’t they?’

‘It gets a bit crowded in there with twins. It was the same with the girls, but I think these two are bigger. Is Ed bringing you a coffee?’

‘Yes—well, tea. I can’t drink coffee since I had the bug.’

‘That’s months ago! You’re not pregnant, are you?’ she teased.

She laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. How could I be pregnant? I’ve sworn off men—and anyway, I’m on the Pill and it’s only coffee I don’t like. I think I’ve just had too much of it.’

Annie laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘That hasn’t put you off chocolate!’

‘Or cake,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘No, it’s just the bug.’

But when Ed brought the tray out then and put it down right next to her, the smell of coffee drifting towards her on the warm spring air made her gag.

Could Annie possibly be right? How likely was it that she’d still be feeling ill two months later? Not at all...

But she couldn’t be pregnant. There was no way. It could only have been Sam, and anyway, she’d done a pregnancy test. Unless...

‘Cake?’ Ed asked, cutting into her thoughts. ‘My grandmother made it. It’s her trademark lemon drizzle and I know you’d prefer chocolate but I’ve never known you turn down cake of any denomination.’

‘Thanks. It sounds lovely,’ she said, not really paying him attention because her mind was tumbling.

Because she was on the Pill they’d thought it was OK when his condoms ran out, and it would have been, without the bug, but it had dragged on for days, too long for the morning-after pill to work, so she’d done a test and it had been negative. She hadn’t given it another thought at the time, but now...

The girls went back to their playhouse and Ed took the tray inside, but she hardly noticed until Annie shook her shoulder.

‘Kate? Are you OK? You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.’

Or realised that her worst nightmare might actually have come true...

Annie’s eyes widened as she stared at her, and she could see the moment her friend’s thoughts caught up with her own. ‘Oh, no. You’re not, are you?’

She started to shake her head in denial, and then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’d put it down to the bug, but it’s possible...’

‘Oh, Kate. Do you want to do a pregnancy test? I’ve got a spare one upstairs in our en suite.’

‘I’ve already done one, ages ago, and it was negative—and anyway, I can’t just go up there to your bedroom!’

‘It’s fine, I’ll take you up. I need to put the flowers in water and if Ed asks I’m showing you the nursery.’

So they went, dumping the flowers in a vase on the way, and she took the test Annie handed her, closed the bathroom door and bit her lip. Did she want to do this? Yes! Heavens, yes, she wanted to; she needed to know, and as fast as possible, just to put herself out of her misery.

And there it was, in black and white. Well, blue, really, she thought inconsequentially, staring at the wand as she dried her hands on autopilot.

Pregnant. It didn’t tell her how pregnant, and her mind tried to sort it out. It was the beginning of April, and she’d met Sam at the end of January. So...nearly nine weeks ago, which made her eleven weeks pregnant, maybe? Her other test must have been too soon...

‘Kate? Kate, are you OK?’

She opened the door, her hands shaking as she held out the wand to Annie. ‘You were right,’ she said, her voice sounding hollow and far away. ‘Oh, God, Annie, what on earth am I going to do?’

She felt arms come round her, the firm jut of Annie’s pregnant abdomen pressing against her. She could feel the babies kicking, and with a shock she realised that if she did nothing, then in a few more weeks this would be her, her body swollen by the child growing inside it.

And then what? How could she be a mother? She had no idea what a mother even was. Not a real mother.

Her teeth started to chatter, and Annie tutted and sat her down on the bed, putting her arm around her and rocking her. She could remember her foster mother doing that when she was sixteen, trying to soothe her when her world had been turned upside down and all feeling had drained away.

It felt the same now, the same numbness, the same emptiness and what now?-ness that she’d felt then.

‘I can’t do it, Annie. I can’t do it on my own—’

‘Do you know who the father is?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, of course I know. Hell, Annie, I’m not that reckless, but I can’t contact him. I don’t have his number any more, but he won’t want to know, it was just one night. Oh, God, I’ve been so stupid! Why...?’

‘Hush, hush,’ Annie crooned, rocking her gently. ‘It’ll be all right. You can do it. I did it on my own.’

‘No, you didn’t, you had your mum, and I don’t have a mum—’

‘But you have me. I’ll help you. You won’t be alone, Kate. And you can do this, if you decide you want to. You’ll be all right.’

And if she didn’t want to?

If Sam really was the locum, she’d have to tell him, and then he’d have an opinion, want a say. He might want her to go through with the pregnancy even if she decided that she couldn’t. And if the locum wasn’t Sam, she’d deleted all trace of him from her phone, so she wouldn’t be able to tell him, however much she might decide she wanted to.

Which meant if she kept it she would be all on her own to deal with it, bar a little help from Annie.

But that was fine. She’d been on her own most of her life, and she liked it like that. She’d had enough of being bullied and manipulated and lied to.

Not that Sam would necessarily do any of those things, but she wasn’t inclined to give him the chance.

Even assuming Sam was the locum.

* * *

He was.

She knew that the moment she walked into the department two days later, at seven on Monday morning. She heard his laugh over the background noise, heard James saying something and then another laugh, and it drew closer as she turned the corner.

She ground to a halt, too late to turn and walk away, too shocked to keep on moving past because she hadn’t really believed it would be him. And then he saw her and his eyes widened in surprise.

She searched his face, fell in love with it all over again and then remembered all the reasons she had to regret that she’d ever met him. One in particular...

‘Ah, Kate. Let me introduce you to Sam Ryder, our locum consultant. Sam, this is Kate Ashton, one of our best senior nurses.’

‘Hello, Kate,’ Sam said softly, but speech had deserted her and the ground refused to swallow her up. ‘Do you two know each other?’ James asked after an uncomfortable silence.

‘Yes—’

‘No!’

They spoke in unison, and James did a mild double-take and looked from her to Sam and back again. ‘Well, which is it?’

Sam just stood there, and after a second she found her voice. ‘We’ve met,’ she qualified. ‘Just once.’

Just long enough to make a baby...

A muscled clenched in his jaw, but otherwise Sam’s face didn’t move. No smile, no frown—nothing. Just those accusing eyes.

She felt sick. Nothing unusual. She was getting so used to it, it was the new normal.

The silence hung in the air between them, broken only by the sound of a pager bleeping. James pulled it out of his pocket and scanned the message.

‘Sorry, I need to go. Sam, why don’t I put you in Kate’s hands for now and let her show you round? She’s worked a lot with Annie so she’s the expert on her role, really. I’ll see you later. Come and find me when you’re done with HR.’

James clapped him on the shoulder and walked off, and Sam’s eyes tracked him down the corridor and then switched back to Kate. She’d forgotten how piercing they could be.

‘You didn’t tell me you were a nurse.’

‘You didn’t tell me you were a doctor.’

‘At least I didn’t lie.’

She felt colour tease her cheeks. ‘Only by omission. That’s no better.’

‘There are degrees. And I didn’t deny that I know you.’

‘I didn’t think our...’

‘Fling? Liaison? One-night stand? Random—’

‘Our private life was any of his business. And anyway, you don’t know me. Only in the biblical sense.’

Something flickered in those flat, ice-blue eyes, something wild and untamed and a little scary. And then he looked away.

‘Apparently so.’

She sucked in a breath and straightened her shoulders. At some point she’d have to tell him she was pregnant, but not here, not now, not like this, and if they were going to have this baby, at some point they would need to get to know each other. But, again, not now. Now she had a job to do, and she was going to have to put her feelings on the back burner and resist the urge to run away.

She pulled herself together with effort and straightened her shoulders. ‘So, shall we get on with your guided tour? What have you seen?’

‘His office. Nothing else, really.’

‘Right. Let’s start at Reception and work through the route the patients take, and then you can go up to HR. I’ll give you a map of the hospital.’

And with any luck her legs wouldn’t give way and dump her on the floor before they were done...

* * *

‘We need to talk.’

There was a lull in the chaos that had been the day so far, and they were alone at the desk, filling in paperwork on the last case. He paused, his pen hovering over the notes.

‘We do?’

He was still stinging a little from her rejection back in January, not to mention her denial to James that she knew him, and he’d spent the whole morning so far trying to quell his traitorous body, which seemed to be delighted at her sudden reappearance in his life. In fact she’d been at least half of the reason he’d taken this locum job, on the off-chance that he might run into her again, but now he had it seemed like a profoundly lousy idea, especially since they were going to be working together.

He made himself look at her, forced himself to meet her eyes instead of avoiding them as he had been.

‘I wouldn’t have thought we had anything to say.’

She flinched a little, but held her ground.

‘There’s a lot to say.’

‘Like why you didn’t answer my text?’

He saw her throat bob as she swallowed. ‘I didn’t get it—not until much later.’

‘That’s a lie. I saw it on your phone when I sent it so I know it arrived.’

‘But I didn’t see it on my phone. I didn’t have time to check until I got home—I was called in to work that morning.’

‘Sure you were.’

‘Why do you have to think the worst of me? I’m not lying, and it’s on record.’ She bit her lip, but her eyes looked troubled, and she gave a frustrated little sigh. ‘Look, Sam, I don’t want to do this here. Can we meet up later? Please?’

He propped himself against the desk, hands rammed in the pockets of his scrubs so he didn’t reach out to her, and studied her, trying and failing to read her expression. ‘OK,’ he conceded finally, massively against his better judgement—although where Kate was concerned he didn’t seem to have any judgement. ‘What time do you finish?’

‘Three. You?’

‘Technically five, but maybe later. We could go to a pub, I suppose,’ he offered grudgingly, but she shook her head.

‘No, not a pub. Where are you staying?’

‘With James and Connie, but there’s no way you’re going there.’

She frowned. ‘No, definitely not.’

‘Where, then?’

She bit her lip again and he felt almost sorry for it. ‘My flat?’ she offered, sounding as reluctant as him. ‘You could come round when you finish. Six o’clock-ish?’

He nodded, relieved that they were going somewhere private. ‘OK. Give me the address. Oh, and you’d better give me your phone number again in case I’m held up.’

She nodded, and he couldn’t help noticing that she looked wary. Almost—hunted?

‘Kate, I get that it was a one-night stand,’ he muttered, relenting a little. ‘I’m cool with that, and I didn’t want any more. I don’t,’ he added, feeling a twinge of guilt at the lie. ‘But you could have answered my text.’

‘And said what? Thanks for a great night, sorry I missed the chance to say goodbye when you sneaked out of the hotel room?’

‘I hardly sneaked—’

‘You could have woken me up. You could have just asked me—’ She broke off and gave another impatient little sigh and pulled the phone out of her pocket. ‘Tell me your number.’

She keyed it in, and his phone vibrated in his pocket. ‘OK, I’ve got it,’ he said, and put it into his contacts. ‘I’ll call you when I finish, give you a head’s up.’

‘I’ll text you my address. It’s the top-floor flat. Number three.’

She hesitated a moment, then turned away, leaving him puzzled and a tiny bit intrigued.

She probably wanted to set the ground rules for their relationship, he decided.

Well, that was easy. Hands off. He could do that.

He went back to work.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE STOOD AT the bedroom window and watched a car pull up outside the house right on the dot of six, and she ran downstairs and opened the front door.

‘You found me OK, then?’ she said, stating the obvious, but he just gave her a quizzical smile.

‘It’s hardly rocket science. I’ve got a satnav.’

Of course he had. Her stomach in knots, she turned away without another word and led him up the narrow, winding staircase that rose to the top floor of the big Victorian townhouse. Once upon a time it had been elegant. Now it had a run-down feel to it, as if it had been a long time since anyone had truly loved it, and she wondered what Sam with his privileged upbringing would think of it. Not that it mattered.

She’d left the door at the top standing open, and he followed her in, past the cramped kitchen into the sitting room that seemed suddenly much smaller with him in it. It was shabby without the chic, but thanks to the last two hours of frantic activity it was at least clean and tidy, apart from the shelves in the alcoves, which were overflowing with books.

‘Drink?’ she asked, stalling for time, and he nodded.

‘Yeah, thanks—I could murder a coffee.’

No chance. She waved at the sofa. ‘Make yourself at home. The kettle’s hot, I won’t be a moment.’

She closed the kitchen door, sucked in a deep breath and tried to steady herself, to slow the heart that was lodged in her throat.

‘You can do this,’ she whispered, but she didn’t know how, didn’t know if she would ever be ready to say the words that would change their lives for ever.

* * *

He looked around, trying to get a handle on her character, but there was nothing to give her away.

No ornaments or photos, the tired furniture showing evidence of a long, hard life, but at least it was clean.

He studied the books, but all they proved was that she had eclectic taste.

Biographies, travel guides, romance, crime, historical sagas, a collection of cookery books—and a small children’s book, dog-eared and tatty but presumably much loved.

What did she want to talk about?

He heard her come back in and turned, searching her face and finding no clues. She set the tray down and handed him a mug.

He glanced at it, then sniffed it experimentally. ‘Is this tea?’

‘Sorry, I ran out of coffee. Anyway, you’ve been drinking it all day and tea’s better for you.’

That made him blink. ‘Are you trying to mother me?’ he asked, mildly astonished because she hadn’t seemed like the sort of woman who’d hold back on anything if she wanted it, far less advise anyone else to, but he must have hit a sore spot because she sucked in her breath and looked away.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I do that?’

‘Search me. Kate, what did you want to talk about?’

She met his eyes, looked away briefly and seemed to brace herself before she spoke again.

‘OK. I do have coffee, but I can’t cope with the smell of it at the moment.’ Her eyes locked with his, defiant and yet fearful, and her next words took the wind right out of his sails.

‘I’m pregnant.’

* * *

There. She’d said it.

And from the look on his face, it was the last thing Sam had been expecting to hear.

He turned away, put the mug down on the mantelpiece and gripped the shelf so hard his knuckles turned white.

‘How?’

His voice was harsh, brittle, as if he was holding himself together by sheer willpower. She could understand that. She’d been doing it ever since she’d found out, and she felt as if she hadn’t breathed properly for days.

‘We ran out of condoms, remember? That last time.’ The time she’d assured him it was safe. The irony of it wasn’t lost on her.

She saw him frown in the mirror. ‘But you told me it was OK. You said you were on the Pill—or is that another lie?’

‘No! I am on it—or I was. But I went down with norovirus right after work and I couldn’t even keep water down for days.’

‘You’re sure? You’re not just...’

‘I’m quite sure. And trust me, I’m no more thrilled about it than you are.’

‘You know nothing about me or my feelings,’ he growled, lifting his head and meeting her eyes in the mirror. ‘Nothing.’

‘I know you don’t mind breaking rules so long as you don’t get caught.’

He held her eyes for a moment, then looked away. ‘Not that one. I never, ever break that one. I’m fanatical about contraception.’

‘Apparently not fanatical enough.’

She sighed and reached out a hand to him, then dropped it in defeat. ‘Sam, we can’t fight. This isn’t going to go away just because we don’t like it.’

He rammed a hand through his hair and turned to face her. ‘Are you absolutely sure it’s mine?’

She felt her skin blanch. ‘Of course I’m sure—’

‘Really? Because you fell into bed with me readily enough and you were already apparently on the Pill.’

‘Which makes me just as much of a slut as you. If I remember rightly, you had condoms in your wallet just in case.’

He winced, and she nodded. ‘There. Not nice, is it? But it’s the truth. Neither of us knew anything about the other, and everything we thought we knew was lies. But we’ve made a baby, Sam,’ she said, her voice starting to crack. ‘I’m eleven weeks pregnant and we have to make a decision—’

His head jerked back as if she’d slapped him, and she saw him swallow. ‘You want to get rid of it?’

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