A Weekend with Her Fake Fiancé

by Traci Douglass

  “Wow. Okay, then...” She had to admit she was impressed. Zac was a take-charge kind of man. Another one of the things she loved most about him. “That’s great.”

  “Know what else is great?” he asked, inching closer to her.

  She shook her head, not trusting her voice as her pulse notched higher.

  “The fact that for the first time in over a decade I’m finally free. Free of the guilt and the secrets and the shadow of betrayal. I feel like a new man.”

  “Yeah?” she squeaked.

  There was only about an inch separating them now. Still, Carmen stood her ground, not willing to give up this time for anything in the world.

  “Yeah. And as a new man I’m looking to settle down with the right woman.”

  Swallowing hard, she could only nod up at him.

  “I want you to be that woman, Carmen, if you’ll have me. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me and grant me another chance.” He reached up slowly to take her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I promise that if you do I will spend the rest of my life treating you like the precious treasure you are. Can you forgive me, Carmen?”

  Mouth dry and head spinning, she gave him a trembling smile. “Yes, Zac. Yes!”

  Next thing she knew she was in his arms and he was kissing her deeply—and, man, oh, man, she hadn’t realized how badly she wanted this until she felt his firm lips on hers.

  When he pulled away at last, they were both breathless.

  “I love you, Carmen Sanchez,” he said, his forehead resting against hers.

  “I love you too, Zac Taylor,” she said. Then she pulled back to look up at him through her lashes and give him a mischievous grin. “Although I do have one condition.”

  “What’s that, darling?” He clasped his hands behind her lower back.

  “That you take me back to that resort of yours someday and treat me to all the amenities I missed out on the first time.”

  “Count on it, my queen.” He laughed and lifted her into his arms. “Your wish is my command.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  One year later...

  THE WEDDING DAY was gorgeous. Sunshine, blue skies and all their friends and family gathered in the gardens behind Anchorage Mercy Hospital. Considering it was where he and Carmen had first met, it seemed only right that it was where Zac and the woman he loved should start their life together as man and wife.

  After they’d made their vows and sealed it with a kiss, the entire party flew over to the Arctic Star Resort for the reception. Zac’s father had paid to have the whole gang flown there.

  Jake and Molly and their twins. Tom and Wendy and their new baby, and Tom’s daughter Sam. Carmen’s mother. Even Zac’s parents and Dustin. Priya was there too, with her adorable baby girl, Kaia. Lance had been his best man, of course, and Carmen’s sister Clara her maid of honor.

  The whole day couldn’t have gone any better, and now there wasn’t a dry eye in the house as Zac led his beautiful bride out onto the dance floor for their first dance. He nodded to the DJ and Michael Bublé crooned the lyrics to “The Way You Look Tonight,” the song they’d danced to that first night at the conference—the night they’d both started falling in love.

  “Happy, darling?” Zac whispered near Carmen’s ear as they swayed gently to the music.

  “So happy,” she said, beaming up at him. “Though I do have something to tell you.”

  His pulse stuttered a bit. After all the secrets and lies they’d overcome because of his past, he wasn’t sure how many more surprises he could take.

  “What? If it’s another horrible secret, I may jump off O’Malley’s Peak.”

  “No, silly.” She shook her head. “This is a good secret. Well, I hope it will be good.”

  Zac swallowed hard. “Just tell me.”

  “I’m pregnant,” she said, her green-gold eyes shining with happiness. “I know it’s earlier than we planned, but these things happen sometimes, and—”

  “You’re having a baby?” Zac said, cutting her off.

  He blinked down at her, trying to take it in. He’d always wanted a kid of his own, but had been scared he might not be a good father. A year ago he wouldn’t have been ready. But now, after putting the past to rest and forgiving his father and himself, he was beyond excited.

  “We’re having a baby?”

  She nodded, fresh tears sparkling in her eyes. “Are you happy?”

  “Yes! I’m going to be a father!”

  His grin grew by the second, and then carefully he picked Carmen up and spun her around in his arms while the crowd clapped.

  “We’re going to be parents!”

  “Yes, we are!” Carmen hugged him tight. “I love you so much, doux-doux.”

  “And I love you too, darling,” Zac said, kissing her sweetly.

  * * *

  If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Traci Douglass

  A Mistletoe Kiss for the Single Dad

  Finding Her Forever Family

  One Night with the Army Doc

  All available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Rescued by the Single Dad Doc by Marion Lennox.

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  Rescued by the Single Dad Doc

  by Marion Lennox

  CHAPTER ONE

  DR RACHEL TILDING enjoyed treating kids. If they couldn’t speak it was often up to Rachel to figure out what was wrong, but in general kids’ needs were uncomplicated. They didn’t intrude on her personal space. If all Rachel’s patients were kids—without parents—she might well be looking at a different career path.

  As it was, her aim was to be a radiologist, interpreting results from state-of-the-art equipment and having little to do with patients at all. But the terms of her scholarship specified she had to spend her first two years after internship as a family doctor in Shallow Bay. She’d geared herself to face it.

  What she hadn’t prepared herself for was living next to a house full of kids. Their noise was bad enough, plus the yips of excitement from their dog. Then, a mere two hours after she’d moved in, a ball smashed through her window, almost making her drop the carton of glassware she’d been unpacking. The ball landed in a spray of shattered glass in the kitchen sink.

  Count to ten, she told herself. These are kids. Don’t yell.

  She’d been telling herself that since she’d arrived. These were her new neighbours. It wasn’t their fault that she valued privacy above all else. Someone would call them in for dinner soon. They’d go to bed and she’d have the silence she craved.

  But kids as such close neighbours...

  Shallow Bay’s nurse-manager had sent her pictures of this little house, a pretty-as-a-picture cottage surrounded by bushland. A five-minute walk took her up to the Shallow Bay Hospital, and five minutes in the other direction took her down to the beach.

  What the pictures hadn’t shown, however, was that it was one of three cottages, huddled together in the dip before the bay. Hers was the smallest. The largest was the middle one and that seemed to be filled with boys.

  She wasn’t sure how many yet. The noise they were making could have denoted a small army. She’d been trying to figure how she could intervene without turning Shallow Bay’s new doctor into Dragon Lady.

  Now she had no choice. A cricket ball was sitting in her kitchen sink, surrounded by a spray of glass.

  But before she could react, a shock of curly red hair appeared a
t the shattered window. Underneath the hair were two huge green eyes, fear-filled. The window was high for a child, so he’d obviously hoisted himself up to see where his ball had landed.

  The head disappeared and a hand appeared in its place. And groped into the sink. Through shattered glass.

  ‘No!’ She’d been standing behind packing boxes on the far side of the table. She launched herself across the kitchen, but the groping hand reached the ball before she did.

  There was a yelp of pain and then hand and ball disappeared.

  She hauled the back door open, raced down the steps and cut the child off before he could back away. He’d lurched back from the window and was staggering.

  ‘Don’t move!’ Her order contained all the authority of a doctor who’d spent her two years of internship working in emergency medicine. The child froze, staring down at his hand in horror.

  Their little dog, a black and white terrier—a ball of pseudo-aggression—came tearing across the lawn and barked hysterically, as if it was Rachel who was the intruder on her own lawn.

  It had...three legs?

  ‘Tuffy! Tuffy, back. He won’t bite. Please... Kit’s just getting our ball.’ The voice from the far side of the hedge sounded terrified. The oldest child?

  They were all redheads. The two on the far side of the hedge looked about ten and six. The child under her window was maybe eight.

  They all had huge green eyes. Pale skin with freckles. They all looked rigid with fear.

  Maybe her voice had done that to them. Even the little dog was backing away.

  Was she so scary?

  Rachel had little to do with kids except as patients, but the middle child was now definitely a patient. He was still clutching the ball, but he was holding it out in front of him. A line of crimson was dripping onto the garden bed.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she said again, because the child was looking in panic across to his brothers—they had to be brothers—and she knew his instinct was to run. ‘I’m not angry.’ Okay, maybe she was, but this wasn’t the time to admit it. There’d be an adult somewhere, responsible for leaving this group unsupervised. They deserved a piece of her mind, not this child. One thing Rachel was very careful about—a lesson learned from the long years of an unjust childhood—was that fairness was everything.

  ‘You’ve cut your hand on the glass,’ she told the little boy as she reached him. She took his arm and raised it, applying pressure around the wrist. ‘You need to stay still.’

  The eyes that looked up at her were huge. He looked terrified. There’d be pain. With this much blood, it had to be deep. The blood wasn’t pumping—the radial artery must surely be intact—but the gash from multiple glass shards tentacled out from wrist to palm. In a child, this amount of bleeding could well lead to collapse.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ she told him, gentling her voice. ‘The glass has cut your hand, but we can fix it. Right now, though, it’s looking messy, so we need to stop it bleeding. You’ll feel better if you don’t look at it until we’ve cleaned it up. Look at your brothers, or look at the hole in my window. That’s quite a hole.’

  She was manoeuvring his hand upward, edging her body to block his gaze. The ball fell to the ground as she lifted his hand high, curling his palm in slightly so the hand created its own pressure on the pierced palm. There could well be shards of glass in there but now wasn’t the time to remove them. She needed a surgery, equipment, help.

  ‘Can you run inside and get your mum or dad?’ she called to the two boys on the far side of the hedge. ‘Ask them to bring out a towel. Run!

  ‘Tell me your name,’ she asked the little boy.

  She got a blank look in response. Fear.

  ‘He’s Christopher,’ the elder of the pair behind the hedge called. ‘But we call him Kit. Are you really a doctor?’

  ‘I am. Could you fetch your parents please? Now! Kit needs your help.’

  ‘We don’t have parents. Just a stepfather.’

  Just a stepfather.

  Why did that make her freeze?

  The wave of nausea that swept through her was as vicious as it was dumb. Her past was just that—past—and it had no place here, now. Somehow, she managed to fight back the bile rising in her throat, to haul herself together, to become the responsible person these boys needed.

  She needed a plan.

  She needed a responsible adult to help her.

  Her phone was inside. Where had she put it? Somewhere in the muddle of unpacked goods?

  She daren’t let Kit’s arm go to find it herself. He was too big for her to pick up and carry. He was also looking increasingly pale. Had these kids been left on their own?

  ‘Where’s your stepfather now?’ she asked, and stupidly she heard the echoes of her dumb, visceral response to the word in her voice.

  ‘At work,’ the eldest boy told her.

  ‘Is there anyone else here?’

  ‘Christine’s inside, watching telly.’

  ‘Then fetch her,’ she ordered. ‘Fast. Tell her Kit’s hurt his hand and he’s bleeding. Tell her I need a towel and a phone. Run.’

  ‘Can you just put a plaster on it?’ the older boy asked. ‘We don’t want to tell Christine. She’ll tell Tom.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Marcus. And this is Henry. Please don’t tell. If we misbehave, Tom’ll make us go back to our grandparents.’

  ‘You haven’t misbehaved. The ball broke my window, not you,’ she told him. She’d tell him anything he liked to get help right now. ‘Marcus, this cut is too big for a plaster. Kit needs Christine. I need Christine. Run.’

  * * *

  He shouldn’t have left the boys with Christine. Normally Tom Lavery used his next-door neighbour, Rose, as childminder. Rose was in her seventies, huge-hearted, reliable. The boys loved her, but this morning she’d fallen and hurt her hip. It was only bruised, thank heaven, but she needed rest.

  This weekend was also the annual field-day-cum-funfair at Ferndale, two hours’ drive across the mountains. For the isolated town of Shallow Bay, the Ferndale Show was huge. Practically the entire population took part, with cattle parades and judging, baking competitions, kids’ activities. As Shallow Bay emptied, Christine, Rose’s niece, had become his childminder of last resort.

  ‘Worrying?’ Roscoe, Shallow Bay’s hospital nurse administrator, was watching Tom from the far side of the nurses’ station. Tom was supposed to be filling in patient histories. Instead he’d turned to the window, looking down towards the cottage.

  ‘Go home and check,’ Roscoe said. For a big man—make that huge—Roscoe was remarkably perceptive. ‘You’ll be writing Bob up for antacids instead of antibiotics if you’re not careful.’

  ‘I’m careful.’ He hauled his attention back to his job. ‘Christine can cope.’

  ‘As long as there’s no ad for hair curlers on telly. You know she’s a dipstick,’ Roscoe said bluntly.

  Roscoe’s smile was half hidden by his beard, but it didn’t hide the sympathy. ‘Go home, doc,’ he told him again. ‘I’ll ring you if I need you, and I’ll drop these charts off for you to fill in after the boys go to sleep tonight. I wish you could be taking the boys across to Ferndale, but hey, you have another doctor here on Monday. All problems solved, no?’

  No, Tom thought as he snagged the next chart and started writing. It was all very well for Roscoe to say he could do these tonight, but if he fell behind in his paperwork he’d never catch up.

  Another hour...

  But he glanced at the window one last time. The boys were capable of anything.

  For what was maybe the four thousandth time over the last two years he thought, What have I let myself in for?

  How long’s for ever?

  And then his attention was diverted. There was a car speeding up the track from the bay. A scarlet roadster. A tw
o-seater.

  Tom’s cottage was one of only three down that road. Few people used it except for Tom, Rose and Rose’s occasional visitors.

  And the new doctor? He’d been told she’d collected the key from Reception a couple of hours back. Poppy, the junior nurse who’d given her the key, had been frustratingly vague when asked for a description. ‘Quite old, really,’ she’d said, which in Poppy’s twenty-two-year-old eyes meant anything over twenty-three. ‘And ordinary. Just, you know, dullsville when it comes to clothes. Didn’t say much, just took the key and said she’d be at work at nine on Monday. She drives a cool car, though.’

  If this was it, it certainly was cool, a streamlined beauty, the kind of car Tom used to love to drive—in another life.

  So this would be Rachel Tilding, the new doctor, the latest of the Lavery Scholarship recipients, here to pay her dues with two years’ service. He imagined she’d be heading to the shops to buy supplies or a takeaway meal for dinner. He should drop over tonight to say hi.

  But tonight he didn’t have his normal backup of Rose, who was always ready to slip over and mind the kids whenever he needed to go out. He could scarcely go over bearing wine and casserole and say, Welcome to Shallow Bay. Plus, he was dead tired. If he had the energy to make a casserole there’d be no way it’d leave his house.

  He sighed and started to turn back to the desk—but then he paused. The car had turned off the road and was heading down the hospital driveway.

  He could make the driver out now. The woman seemed slight, fair-skinned, with brown curly hair tumbling to her shoulders. Leaning against her was a child.

  A child with his arm raised, caught in some sort of sling. An arm which was bright crimson.

  Kit!

  Running in hospitals was forbidden. From training it was instilled into you. No matter the emergency, walking swiftly gets you there almost as fast, with far less likelihood of causing another emergency.