Seduced by the Heart Surgeon

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘I’m good at what I do,’ Zack said. ‘I need to stick with it. In the same way you stuck with general practice when it was tempting to go to the city.’

  He was about to tell his dad his plans to come back, maybe at Christmas so that he and his mother could have a break, maybe take a holiday, but then Zack smiled to himself. If things worked out, and he hoped that they would, there was no way his parents would be heading off on a holiday the next time their son came home.

  Whatever happened between him and Freya there would, God willing, be a grandchild for them to get to know.

  Now he just had to sort things out with the person who thought she had it all sorted out—Miss Freya.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HE WAS OVER at Bright Hope the next day and made no effort to contact her. His lack of response to the issue drove Freya insane.

  And then, when he finally did rock up at The Hills, at ten the next day, he gave absolutely no indication as to his thoughts or feelings.

  He kept her on the boil all week and she made an excuse to have to be there on Saturday afternoon, just because she knew he was passing through.

  Zack had brought cake.

  A great big white chocolate cake piled with fresh raspberries and the staff all oohed and ahhed and Freya sat there in the staffroom, trying to fathom its meaning.

  For a clue.

  And she was still searching for the secret sign when he came down and sat opposite her, having cut a large slice. He crossed his long legs and gave her a smile.

  ‘How are you, Freya?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you.’

  ‘I don’t usually see you here at the weekends.’

  ‘I’ve got a consulting room for my future clients that I’m setting up,’ Freya said, which was true, but she was hardly grappling with an Allen key. This was The Hills after all. Her consulting room was gorgeous. It was attached to her office and Freya had chosen the artwork and rugs to ensure that it was an oasis of calm.

  ‘Did James mention that I might have a client for you?’ Zack checked, and Freya shook her head.

  ‘I haven’t seen James today.’

  ‘Her name’s Emily, she’s nineteen years old. I’m seeing her sister. Her mother mentioned some of the issues that she was having with her daughter. I gave her your card to give to Emily if the time was right.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Stephanie stood up. ‘Thanks for the cake, Zack, it was a lovely gesture.’

  ‘No problem.’

  She walked off and Freya sat there facing him.

  ‘Cake?’ Freya asked.

  ‘Do you want some?’ Zack pretended that he didn’t know what she meant.

  ‘No!’ She wanted to know what the hell he was thinking. The only change in him she could see was that he’d brought in a cake and was sitting there with almost a smile on his face.

  ‘Why cake?’

  ‘Because I was pretty off the other day, with Stephanie and a couple of others, when the baby died, and I thought I’d apologise to the staff.’ He stood. ‘It’s not all about you, Freya.’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘When I’m ready,’ Zack said. ‘Anyway, what’s the rush? You’ve already got it all worked out.’

  She closed her eyes in frustration.

  ‘And we’ve got months to sort things out,’ Zack reminded her, and Freya shushed him.

  ‘I want this sorted. I want to know what your plans are.’

  ‘When I’ve decided I’ll be sure to let you know.’

  ‘You’re the most annoying—’

  ‘Why?’ Zack said. ‘I only jump into bed, Freya, not to your tune, and my thoughts are measured.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Just that,’ Zack said. ‘No deeper meaning. Do you want to go out for dinner tonight?’

  She stared at him and she hated that, yes, she tried to search for a deeper meaning to his offer.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up at six.’

  ‘Six?’ Freya said. ‘Are we going to check out the children’s menu for future reference?’

  He resisted laughing. ‘I’m operating early tomorrow, I need to be in bed at a reasonable hour.’

  And he still had that smile and she was still, still searching for deeper meaning in every word he said.

  He set her on fire.

  Just that.

  She was squirming on the inside and wondering if it was dinner and bed together, or bed alone, if it was talking or what the hell went on in that beautiful head.

  He gave her no clue.

  Zack cut himself another slice of cake and walked out.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘HI...’

  Freya had just put the final touches to the consulting room and was about to dash home for a quick shower and change before her very early dinner with Zack when the phone in her office rang.

  She was about to let it go to the machine but at the last minute changed her mind and was very glad she had when she heard the nervous young voice.

  ‘My name’s Emily...’ the young woman said, and then she started to cry. ‘I’ve just done it again.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Freya said. Whatever Emily had done, it wasn’t the point right now, but that she’d called was so, so important that Freya wasn’t going to waste time questioning her for details. ‘It’s okay,’ Freya said, and gradually the sobbing stopped.

  Freya just listened as Emily told her that she’d had a massive binge and purge and her mother, who was already worried sick about her sister, had found her and was now upstairs, crying.

  ‘She doesn’t need this,’ Emily sobbed.

  And Freya thought of James, who had tried so hard to be a parent for her, and the anguish she had caused him, and how relieved he’d been when she had accepted help.

  ‘Are you going to tell her that you’ve called me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I think she’ll be very relieved to know that you’re talking to someone about it. So that might be something you can tell her when we’ve finished chatting.’ They spoke for a few moments until Emily had calmed down. ‘Why don’t you go to bed now?’ Freya said, knowing how drained Emily would be. ‘Tell your mom that you’re coming in to see me tomorrow at nine. Would that be okay?’

  ‘It’s a Sunday.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Freya said.

  They spoke a little more, but Emily really was exhausted and Freya was glad that her plan for her to tell her mom and meet tomorrow seemed to have given her some measure of relief.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Emily,’ Freya said, and then the oddest smile came to her lips as she realised Zack was right and she had her voice, as he called it, on. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting you,’ Freya said, more normally. ‘Go and speak to your mom and then get some rest.’

  Of course Freya did some major overthinking on the drive to her apartment, wondering if she should have seen Emily straight away, but there was no real point speaking at length with Emily tonight.

  And she wasn’t going to be available every time her clients had a binge.

  Emily needed to rest and recover and get some fluid into her...

  Tomorrow.

  They would start this journey tomorrow. She just hoped that Emily didn’t cancel, because that first reaching out was the hardest, Freya knew.

  She had fifteen minutes to get ready when she had hoped to have thirty and Freya quickly peeled off her clothes as she turned on the shower, and then everything stopped.

  There was a flash of blood in her knickers and when she saw it, Freya was convinced she was losing her baby.

  Everything in her world just stopped and the panic that hit had her frantic. She fe
lt like a cat with its tail on fire and yet she was crouched, kneeling on the bathroom floor, and, she was sure, losing her baby.

  ‘No...’

  And it was all her fault, for not eating, for running, for riding and for believing for a second that she could be a mother. She felt as if she was back to being seventeen and being told her bones would one day crumble and she’d never be able to have babies. Freya was sobbing so violently she couldn’t breathe.

  She could hear someone knocking at the door and then they started to knock louder.

  Realising that it must be Zack, Freya pulled a towel from the rail and, barely covered, wrenched open the door. Zack saw her red face and angry eyes and this time there were tears streaming down, and because she was scared she hit out with words.

  ‘Panic over!’

  She never cried, never, ever, but they were pouring out now. ‘I’ve lost it,’ she shouted to him, ‘so panic over.’

  ‘Freya...’ He was so calm that it angered her further. ‘I’m not panicking.’

  ‘Because you don’t care!’ she screamed. ‘You didn’t want it anyway.’

  ‘Tell me what’s happened.’ His voice was normal and it made hers sound all the more mad. ‘Are you bleeding?’

  She was holding up a towel and Zack looked down at her legs and there was no blood that he could see.

  ‘Yes, I’m bleeding!’

  ‘Come on.’ He led her to the bedroom.

  ‘I knew I’d never be able to have children, after all I’ve done to myself, I don’t deserve them, you don’t want them...’

  And he remembered her ‘I shot my ovaries’ comment and knew that all the loathing was aimed at herself.

  ‘How much are you bleeding?’

  He was still so completely calm, like a doctor, only he wasn’t the doctor, he was the father, and she hit out at him but he caught her wrist.

  ‘Freya.’

  She’d lost her towel on the way to the bedroom and Zack sat her on the bed. ‘How much bleeding is there?’

  He looked at her and she seemed fine and he heard the shower and went in and the relief that hit when he saw the tiny amount in her knickers was something he kept to himself.

  She was a mess.

  He looked out towards the bedroom where Freya was sobbing and curled up in a ball on the bed. Whatever he had intended to say over dinner would just have to wait now. He turned off the taps in the shower and went back into the bedroom.

  ‘Have you got any cramping?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Everything might well be fine...’

  She couldn’t believe it.

  He tried to unfold her tight body but she wouldn’t relax and he got onto the bed beside her and brought her cold body against his warm one. ‘Match my breathing,’ he said. It was like he was breathing for her, and she tried to get hers as slow and as deep, and then he spoke.

  ‘Freya, a lot of women get bleeding. You’re eight weeks pregnant—’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Eight,’ he corrected her, and smiled because sometimes he forgot she had studied brains, not bodies. ‘You add two weeks.’

  How was he smiling and talking, all calm and normally? It wasn’t because he didn’t care, she knew that because he was lying on the bed beside her and she was curled into him.

  ‘Did you lose anything in the shower?’

  ‘I didn’t get into the shower,’ Freya said. ‘I just saw the blood and I freaked...’

  ‘I know,’ Zack said. ‘Well, I don’t exactly.’

  How was she, Freya wondered, breathing and calming and starting to believe that it might be okay? And then she remembered how she had lashed out before. She had utterly lost it and it was something she had fought all her life not to do.

  ‘Turn over,’ Zack said.

  ‘I can’t,’ Freya admitted. She had screamed, she had hit at him, she had shown her worst self and all her fears, so how could she turn around?

  ‘We can go now and do an ultrasound,’ Zack said.

  ‘No.’ Freya shook her head. ‘I don’t want anyone at The Hills knowing.’

  ‘They won’t. I can—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you got an OB?’

  Freya nodded. ‘I’m seeing someone for fertility so I already had an appointment for next week.’

  ‘Do you want to call her and see if I can drive you in?’

  ‘On a Saturday night?’

  ‘Yes,’ Zack said, and then he realised she might be stalling. ‘Do you want to see someone?’

  ‘I don’t want to find out,’ Freya said. ‘I just want one more night where I might be pregnant. I don’t want to know yet if I’ve lost it. Zack, I’ve wanted a baby for years, I honestly thought I couldn’t have one. I wasn’t using you.’

  ‘I know that.’ Zack said. ‘Who told you that you couldn’t have children?’

  ‘In rehab,’ Freya said. ‘I had stopped menstruating and they said I was a shoe-in for infertility, osteoporosis...’

  ‘Whoever said what they did was trying to scare you into eating.’ He could only guess the damage of knowing for years that you’d blown your chances. ‘They were clearly talking rubbish.’

  She turned around in his arms and he gave her such a nice smile.

  ‘Do you really think that I might still be pregnant?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been anywhere near that field for many years but, yes, a little show, no cramping. I think it happens a lot.’

  And from hell she entered calmer waters.

  ‘I’m sorry you saw me like that.’

  ‘I’m very glad that I saw you like that,’ Zack said, and Freya closed her eyes.

  She knew she’d blown any chance for them now.

  They lay for a while, Freya becoming calmer, Zack thinking.

  ‘You’ve got surgery tomorrow,’ Freya said, remembering he’d said he needed an early night.

  ‘I do.’ Zack nodded. ‘I’ll go and make something to eat.’

  Zack got out of bed and went into the kitchen. He bypassed all the little measuring cups and returned to the room with two bowls of lovely creamy pasta.

  ‘We’ll go and get you checked tomorrow. I’ll call work and have them reschedule.’

  ‘No.’ Freya shook her head. It was his Sunday list and there were so many people relying on him. ‘Unless things get worse, you ought to go in. I’ve got to go in as well—I’ve got that young girl coming in. It would be awful for her if I cancelled.’

  ‘Okay.’

  His calm control seeped into her.

  They ate pasta and she found out he could cook and they lay in bed and watched a movie. Zack noticed something on the bedside table and asked what it was.

  ‘Cleo’s ashes.’

  ‘No way!’ Zack said, and he wasn’t Mr Nice now. He took them straight out to the lounge room. ‘I can’t sleep with them next to me.’

  ‘Are you staying?’

  ‘Freya?’ Zack checked. ‘You really think I’d leave you now?’

  ‘You want an early night.’

  ‘And you need one!’

  He got into bed.

  ‘You’re not keeping the ashes, are you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at him. ‘Are they freaking you?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘I didn’t think anything freaked you.’

  ‘I’m a mystery,’ Zack said.

  He turned out the light and he was back in her bed when she had never thought he would be.

  ‘I really am a mystery,’ Zack said. ‘It turns out that my mother thought I was gay.’

  Freya laughed and she told him about the hotel events coordinator checking him out when he’d checked in.

  It w
as nice to lie in the dark, talking and then falling quiet.

  ‘So, is this what parenthood looks like?’ Zack said when she was feeling a little calmer. ‘Knot in your chest and no sex?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He rolled over and put his hand on her stomach and then he said the nicest thing.

  ‘I want you to be pregnant,’ he said. ‘I want the baby.’

  And, because it was Zack, she knew he meant it.

  ‘So hang in there, little one.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ZACK WOKE TO the mechanical sound of a blender.

  Get used to it, Zack, he told himself, because he might well be waking to it for the rest of his life.

  And so, as Freya pulped broccoli and blueberries and did what she had to do to keep her place on this planet in order, she watched as a dishevelled, barely dressed, sexy Australian came out of the bedroom and walked out of her apartment.

  And there was no feeling of dread when he left this time.

  A few moments later he walked back in with a tin of coffee, which kept his part of the planet in better order, and they shared a smile.

  ‘Why do you have coffee in your car?’ Freya asked.

  ‘Because I like coffee in the morning and I know you don’t have any.’

  ‘Oh, so were you intending on staying last night.’

  ‘Yep,’ Zack said. ‘Well, I was hoping to.’

  And she opened a cupboard and showed him that she had indeed bought some coffee since he’d walked out.

  He wrapped his arms around her and Freya let herself be wrapped in them.

  ‘Any bleeding?’ he asked.

  ‘None.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Better,’ Freya said.

  She couldn’t give a completely honest answer—that the world felt safer just for the fact that he was next to her now. Freya knew she pushed too hard, pressed for too much, and so she held it back.

  Last night he had taken such precious care of her and she let herself be grateful for that.

  And so, getting into separate cars, they both waved to Red and then headed into work.

  Today would be a day that Freya found out how strong she was. Maybe pregnant, maybe not, and with her love life in shreds because Zack was probably thinking what hell was he going to have to co-parent with after her outburst last night.