The Heart Surgeon's Baby Surprise

‘Yes, well…’

She pursed her lips—lush, full lips which, when pursed, looked extremely inviting and turned the tug into a more insistent feeling—and studied him in turn, then shook her head.

‘I’m sorry! I’ve been far too intrusive. My father was always telling me that, right from when I was a small girl, asking questions all the time and not differentiating between acceptable questions and personal ones. Although—’

She stopped, and Theo forgot he was trying to keep his distance and was intrigued enough to prompt her.

‘Although?’ he echoed, and she smiled and shook her head, the blue eyes looking…sad? Vulnerable?

Vulnerable? This super-confident woman?

Super-efficient, too, he suspected.

Vulnerable was the last word he’d use…

She’d gone too far. Again! Grace knew that, but somehow the switch that turned her off before she pushed that extra bit further had always been missing from her genetic programming. She should never have asked him about his marital state in the first place, then pushing when he didn’t answer…

Terrible!

But he’d be ideal. She’d known that from the moment she’d seen him, recalling his bio in the team info sheets she’d read. He was intelligent, well-built, good-looking—although she knew that shouldn’t be a prerequisite—and apparently available. Not that she needed available—she wasn’t intending to have an affair with him.

All she really wanted was his sperm…

She felt a blush stealing into her cheeks and was furious with herself. She might be blessed with a good metabolism so didn’t need to diet, but she’d have preferred a tendency to run to fat than this terrible blushing thing she had.

Had Theo seen the colour in her cheeks that he lifted the bottle of cold water off the table and offered to pour her a glass? How embarrassing!

Surely this was the time to ditch the Grand Plan—to forget all about it and just get on with her life. She’d lived with the ache for a long time—she could live with it a little longer…

She thanked him and watched his concentration as he poured the water, then noticed the back of his hand as he passed her the glass—long slim fingers and a slight scattering of dark hair at the wrist—and for some strange reason the heat of embarrassment left her, and a shiver travelled up her spine.

Looking at a man’s hand couldn’t make you shiver, so maybe she was sickening for something.

Not that she ever got sick…

‘Although?’ he said again, and it took her a couple of seconds to go back far enough to pick up the prompt.

She smiled. Father had told her when she was very young that she had a beautiful smile and that you could never go wrong with a smile.

‘I can’t tell you the “although”,’ she said, wondering if this was flirting. ‘But I am interested.’

Duh! Blushing again. Who would have thought it would be this hard?

‘In me?’ Theo asked, and she felt her blush deepen so she must be scarlet-cheeked by now.

‘In everyone on the team,’ she said.

‘Oh!’ His dark brown eyes lit up to match his delighted smile. ‘So you’ll ask all of them about their relationships? Actually, I can fill you in on some of them. Jasmine’s just got engaged, Phil and Alex and Aaron—with Aldo added we have a lot of As, don’t we? Anyway those three are all happily married—’

‘Stop! You’re making me more and more embarrassed. It is none of my business.’

Theo stopped, but only because she sounded genuinely distressed, although he was pretty sure Dr Grace Sutherland didn’t often do distressed. But it was there again, that note of uncertainty in a person who gave off such positive vibes, and he was interested in spite of himself.

In a purely professional way, of course.

‘I’m not in a relationship,’ he said, under the cover of the noise as meals were delivered to the table. ‘And I was married, but my wife and I split up seven years ago.’

Wrong thing to tell her. That interested look was back in her eyes.

‘Do you know the number of weeks, days and hours as well?’ she asked, spearing a shard of red-hot pain dead-centre into his heart.

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ he said, his voice as cold and as curt as he could make it. His meal was placed in front of him and he looked at it and shook his head, aware he’d never eat it, although, thinking now of Elena, he wouldn’t have eaten the pizza either.

He didn’t look at Grace again in case he was inveigled into thinking her vulnerable again. Vulnerable as a full-grown crocodile! So he cut his steak, and pretended to eat, shifting things around on his plate so it looked as if some of the food had disappeared.

‘I know that trick,’ his colleague said, leaning a little closer so she could speak quietly, a drift of a very feminine perfume—orange blossom?—assailing his nostrils. ‘I’ve done it myself many a time. I’m sorry if I upset you, asking about your wife. I didn’t mean to. It was just the way you said seven years—it sounded as if you’d been counting. That means it must have hurt.’

He’d been determined to ignore her, but from the very formal way she spoke he guessed apologising was rare for her, and one look into the crystalline blue eyes confirmed that she was upset.

And so was he, but for more dubious reasons! Those eyes held the same fascination as her pursed lips had earlier and he definitely didn’t do relationships with colleagues.

Although she was only here for six months—

No! He had to stop this!

Now!

‘We had a car accident, our daughter died, my wife blamed me, but it is my daughter’s death that’s imprinted on my mind, not my wife leaving me.’

Grace reared back in her seat, feeling as winded as if he’d struck her with his hand.

How did she get herself into these situations?

Because she had a one-track mind, that’s how!

Why couldn’t she do normal chit-chat, like other women?

Theo had pushed his plate away and was standing up, and much as she’d have liked to stand up with him, to follow him wherever he was going so she could apologise, she knew he’d revealed his pain to a virtual stranger for one reason and one reason only—to repel her.

She watched him, aware everyone at the table must be wondering what the South African woman had done to upset him.

‘Eat your pizza, act normal—that’s if you know how to!’ he muttered to her as he bent to push his chair back into place. Then he straightened and faced the rest of the gathering. ‘Sorry, folks, not feeling the best.’

He walked away, stopping to talk to the waitress who’d served them, money changing hands.

‘He must have been feeling a bit off all along,’ Jasmine said. ‘Ordering steak when he always orders the Creole pizza.’

Grace looked at the pizza growing colder on her plate and understood why he hadn’t ordered it. But he’d been right, she had to eat some of it because not eating it would look suspicious. She picked up a slice and bit into it, recognising that the mix of flavours was indeed delicious, although the food seemed to be turning to sawdust in her mouth.

A car accident—losing a daughter. The poor man! And for all he was so perfect, she’d have to cross him off the list.

Although…

She thought it through, looking at the idea from all angles, finally coming to the conclusion that maybe what she was offering was just what Theo needed.

In the back of her head she heard her father warning her that her solutions might not always be what was best for other people, but that had been when she’d been dealing with some of the poor families at home, ruthlessly reorganising their lives into some semblance of order.

This was different.

A child that was yet wasn’t his.

No responsibility.

No need to get emotionally involved.

With either her or the child…

Yes, it could work.

‘Does he live somewhere nearby?’ she heard herself ask Jasmine, then, in case the question was too obvious, she added, ‘Perhaps someone should call in and see if he’s OK.’

Jasmine looked at her, then smiled.

‘He’s OK and even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t want anyone fussing over him,’ she said. ‘He’s a very private man, our Theo. I’d better tell you that he never gets involved with colleagues. Believe me, many have tried but none have succeeded. It’s kind of like a golden rule with him.’ Well, really! Grace thought, annoyed with Jasmine for assuming—quite correctly—that she was intersted in Theo, and horrified with herself for being so 0bvious about it.

‘It’s a good rule,’ she managed, realising some response was necessary. ‘Relationships at work can get very messy.’

‘Or can work brilliantly,’ Jasmine said, nodding towards Maggie and Phil, who were laughing together at the far end of the table. ‘We had three couples fall in love within the unit only last year, so don’t think you’ll be immune to love while you’re here in Oz.’

She paused and studied Grace for a moment.

‘Unless, of course, there’s a very special man back home in South Africa?’ she teased.

Grace thought of the very special man back home and smiled.

‘Oh, yes, there is,’ she said, but she didn’t add that it was because of him—well, partly because of him—that she was interested in Theo. Someone like Jasmine, recently engaged to the man she loved, would never understand Grace’s plan or the means by which she hoped to implement it…

CHAPTER TWO

THEO watched as Grace attached the PVC tube from the bypass machine to the cannula inserted into the right side of little Adelaide Matthews’s heart. She worked quickly but carefully, her movements so precise and economical he had to admire them.

With the ingoing tube attached to the cannula already inserted into the aorta, she stepped back to let Phil get closer.

‘On pump,’ Phil said, the order crisp and quiet, and Theo started the machine, watching closely to see that the heparin given to thin the blood had been sufficient to prevent clotting, watching the pressure—Adelaide was three and needed more pressure than a baby but less than a five-year-old—watching for anything to go wrong.

‘Plege on.’ Now Phil fed the cardioplegia—a potassium poison—into the heart to stop it beating. When it worked, in a matter of minutes, he could begin.

The operation, to correct a problem with the coronary arteries which had been repositioned during an earlier operation for transposition of the great arteries, shouldn’t have been difficult, but scans had shown that one of the coronary arteries had grown through the wall of the heart, like a hose going in through the side of a bucket then back out again, and needed total repositioning.

Aware it could take some time, Theo was overly conscious of his patient’s status, checking the monitors constantly, noting the various pressures, the ECG, coagulation values, blood gases and electrolytes. But mainly it was controlling the pump that absorbed him. Too little blood flow and the patient could suffer oxygen deprivation to her brain, too much and it could blow her delicate little blood vessels apart.

Why did a surgeon turn to this job? Grace had asked, but the satisfaction he found in getting a patient through an often long and complex operation in as good a condition as possible, was a source of enormous satisfaction, and already some of his refinements to the bypass machine were being used worldwide.

Why not?

He looked across at Grace—well, at the hooded, gowned, bespectacled figure he knew was Grace—and was sorry he hadn’t answered that particular question.

Wouldn’t have an opportunity now, having spoken so abruptly to her the previous evening…

‘Theo?’

Knowing what Phil was asking, he recited all the information he had to hand, adding that Adelaide was doing very well.

‘So why change from surgery?’

Three operations later, he’d just emerged from the shower in the theatre changing rooms, a towel wrapped around his waist, when Grace, in bra and panties—her figure was superb—asked the question he’d decided she would never ask again.

He stared at her, debating whether to answer, but as everyone else was gone—he always stayed back to ensure personally that the machine was properly sterilised and sealed—there was really no reason why he shouldn’t tell her.

Particularly as she was pulling on a crisp white shirt, buttoning it up, drawing his attention to her breasts in a way that was totally out of order—he changed with women all the time and never looked at their breasts!

‘I injured my hands—for a while I couldn’t operate—but the world of paediatric cardiac surgery had been my focus as I trained, through basic surgery, then cardiac surgery. I’d finally made it as a registrar on the paeds cardiac team and I didn’t want to leave it. Probably out of pity, my old boss, the chief surgeon at the hospital, suggested I have a go at perfusion while my hands healed. I did a course, learned even more from the woman who had run the machine for our team, then began to see possibilities of improving the system, which was when I became hooked. To me, keeping a child as stable as possible while on pump—and even more importantly while on ECMO—has become my obsession.’

‘So much so you never considered going back to operating?’

He paused, looking at his hands.

‘My hands were burnt, the tendons damaged, and although they healed, it worried me that they had probably lost some sensitivity.’

He paused, remembering the pain of those years—so much pain, the least of it physical.

‘I wondered if I would still have the feel you need to put a stitch the size of a pinhead into a vein with the diameter of a hair. I decided I couldn’t take the risk.’

‘That’s an incredibly honest answer,’ she said, looking puzzled again.

‘Did you think I’d lie?’ he demanded angrily, his emotions already stirred up with memories. And on top of that, it was the puzzled look he caught on her face that gave the impression of vulnerability despite suspecting she was about as vulnerable as a slab of concrete.

Although more shapely…

She grinned at him, totally disarming him.

‘No, I suppose not, but it’s the kind of thing I might have said and I’m forever being told I should pretty things up more. Too blunt, too abrasive, too intrusive—I’m all those “toos”!’

‘You are too,’ he said, suddenly liking her, for all the intrusiveness and abrasion. Although she didn’t smile at his feeble joke and he wondered if he could really like someone with no sense of humour.

Grace knew she should have smiled, but it was a feeble attempt at a joke and she had just put him back onto her list of possibles again. In fact, it was hardly a list—his being the only name on it.

‘And being blunt and abrasive…’ she said, deciding it was better to get things out into the open as soon as possible. That way she’d know where she stood. ‘I wondered if I could ask you something.’

‘You didn’t ask if you could ask before asking me all kinds of personal questions yesterday,’ he reminded her, leaning back against the doorjamb in a way that made all the muscles of his chest stand out so all of a sudden he was an extremely sexy man as well as a colleague.

Sexy man? What was she thinking?

She forced her mind back to her problem.

‘Well, this is really very personal to me and very private so I have to believe that if I ask, you won’t repeat it.’

He didn’t answer, which she took for assent, but the words she needed were jammed in her throat.

Not easy words to say in any circumstances and she’d got off on the wrong foot with this man…

Make amends first?

‘Are you finished for the day? I feel after last night I owe you a meal. I ruined your dinner, firstly by ordering your favourite pizza, although you could still have ordered it, then by asking intrusive questions. Could we go there again—or somewhere else—and I’ll pay?’

What was with this woman? Theo watched her as she pulled on a skirt, tucking the shirt she’d put on earlier efficiently into the waistband. Even the way she dressed said a lot about her—neat, classy in an understated way, yet still…prim was the only word! But the questions she’d been asking didn’t go with that image any more than the classic but boring clothes could successfully hide her sexy body.

Although if he hadn’t seen her nearly naked, might he have been quite so aware of it?

And was it because of the sexy body or because of the inconsistencies he kept finding in her that he heard himself agreeing to have dinner with her?

‘An early dinner—I want to spend some time at the hospital later this evening.’

He wasn’t sure why he’d added the stipulation. True, he liked to spend time at the hospital but he often came late at night when the unit was quiet and most of the parents were sleeping as fitfully as their hopes and fears for their child would allow.

‘Now?’

He studied Grace. Of course he knew why he’d added the stipulation! He was suspicious of her—and doubly suspicious of her interest in him. Most women, even in these enlightened days, were happy to let the men make the running in a developing relationship—and most women were adept at reading the ‘not interested’ sign he hung around himself at work.

So what was with Grace? Was she so inexperienced—at thirty-five?—that she didn’t know the rules, couldn’t read the signs? Or did she have some agenda of her own?

Well, yes to the latter, she’d told him as much, but she wasn’t giving off ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ vibes, so what other agenda could it be?

‘Of course now, if that suits you,’ he said, wondering what he was getting into, suspecting his assumption of her inexperience might be true and intrigued in spite of himself. ‘I was always curious.’

She gave him a sharp, assessing look—no fool, this woman—then shrugged.

‘I don’t mind that,’ she assured him. ‘In fact, it might be a point in my favour.’

Not smiling so it wasn’t a joke—but a point in her favour? In favour of what?

‘Shall we continue this mysterious conversation all evening, or should we discuss something else—there’s always work—until we’ve eaten?’

Now she did smile, and although the expression held a degree of uncertainty it confirmed his initial reaction to her—she was beautiful.

But beautiful women usually radiated confidence, and although Grace gave the impression of being in control, and certainly seemed confident in her work, he kept getting the feeling that her personal confidence was something she’d manufactured, like a cloak, that she wrapped around herself to protect the person she really was.

Or was he being fanciful? Seeing something of his own self-protective instincts and habits in her?

They left the hospital and walked down the road, bypassing Scoozi by unspoken but mutual consent and wandering towards a little brasserie, far enough from the hospital to be less populated by medical people.

‘Is there pizza on the menu here?’ Grace asked, hesitating on the footpath beside the trellised outdoor garden.

‘I don’t only eat pizza and, in fact, this place does the best moussaka outside my aunt’s house in Melbourne.’

Grace glanced at him and he waited, expecting more questions, but none came and he realised that although she was looking at him, her mind was elsewhere.

On the question she wanted to ask?

It was looming larger and larger in his mind, so surely it was swooping around inside her head.

‘We’re going in?’ he asked, and she nodded, though she indicated the outdoor area with a wave of her slim, thin-fingered hand.

‘Could we sit outside?’

He was still thinking about her hands—he’d noticed them in Theatre, where, even gloved, they’d looked… aristocratic somehow.

‘Of course.’

The waitress seated them at a corner table, close by a rambling vine that drooped tiny purple flowers, dropping them when the wind rustled through the leaves so a vagrant few rested in Grace’s golden hair like tiny amethyst gemstones.

Theo opted not to tell her, sure she’d be annoyed by such frivolous beauty and brush them out.

‘I’ll have the lamb,’ Grace announced, one minute’s perusal of the menu enough for her to make up her mind. The decisiveness fitted what he knew of her. He ordered moussaka—wondering if she could tell as much about him from his order. A man of habit—that’s about all she’d gather.

‘So, the question?’ he prompted when the waitress had disappeared to the kitchen with their orders.

She seemed startled, then, to his surprise, she blushed.

‘It should be easy for a person as blunt and plainspoken as I am,’ she muttered, looking more embarrassed by the second, ‘but it’s not that kind of question.’

‘Oh?’

He wasn’t going to help her. He was already regretting agreeing to this dinner. Getting even mildly entangled with a particular member of the team wasn’t on his agenda. His private life was just that, private, and he wanted to keep it that way.

‘It’s personal—very personal—and you’ll think I’ve got a cheek, a terrible cheek. And presumptuous—very presumptuous.’

She stopped and tried a smile that failed dismally, although something about the pathetic attempt struck Theo as brave—valiant.

‘Perhaps if I explained, just a little about myself—no, that won’t work, it’s better just to ask. The thing is, you see, I badly want a child. I’m thirty-five and running out of time, and while I’m here in Sydney is the ideal time to get pregnant and I wondered, if you’d mind—if you had no objections and I know it’s a totally outrageous thing to ask, but you’re everything that would be fantastic—I wondered if I could use…’

The floundering stopped as suddenly as it had started and, scarlet-faced, she stared at the far corner of the courtyard, swallowing convulsively.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she managed a little later. ‘I’m an idiot! Let’s just forget all about it and eat.’

‘Except our meal hasn’t arrived,’ he told her, speaking quietly and gently for he could see she was genuinely upset. Somehow she’d convinced herself that whatever it was she wanted to ask was OK, yet when it came to saying it, she’d baulked.

What could have been so outrageous?

He tried to remember what she’d said, but the words, spoken so quickly in her crisp South African voice, had all run together and he’d been more interested in watching her face and seeing her mounting embarrassment to really listen.

‘Moussaka?’

‘Mine,’ he told the waitress, then watched as she placed the lamb dish in front of Grace.

‘Perhaps a bottle of wine, the Newnhams Shiraz,’ he suggested, more to the waitress than Grace. Neither of them would be involved in Theatre the following day, and the alcohol might help Grace relax.

Though why he was worrying about her, he didn’t know. She was a self-confident, thoroughly together woman—and very capable of getting her own way. His presence in this restaurant right now was evidence of that.

Had he ordered the wine to dull the impact of dinner with her? Grace wondered, thinking how idiotic she must have sounded, words somersaulting out of her mouth, tumbling over each other and making no sense at all. She couldn’t even remember how far she’d got, her embarrassment so acute her cheeks had been burning!

She tried to concentrate on her meal, which looked and smelled delicious, but she was afraid her hands would shake when she picked up her knife and fork.

‘Ah, wine. Try this. It’s not well known—in fact, the restaurant gets it from a small producer so you won’t find it in bottle shops. You do drink wine?’

Even if she’d been a lifelong and committed teetotaller she’d have agreed to try it. Anything to stop this man thinking she was a complete klutz!

She nodded and watched as he poured the ruby-coloured wine into her glass, then she picked the glass up and lifted it towards him, trying desperately to behave normally, although despair had taken over every cell in her body as she’d finally realised just how stupid her idea had been.