The Doctors’ Baby

by Marion Lennox

  ‘I think you’d make a fine one.’

  ‘Yeah, here for thirty minutes of every day and that thirty minutes interchangeable depending on the demands of my patients.’ His incomprehension was making her angry. ‘Robby would be brought up by a nanny. Amy, maybe? Until she finds a better job? No! He’s much better off being adopted by someone who can love him to bits-who can be a real mother to him.’

  ‘But his aunt won’t hear of adoption.’

  ‘She will. Eventually she must.’

  ‘And meanwhile you keep tearing your heart out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be tearing my heart out if you hadn’t offered for us to look after him.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that, Em,’ he told her gently. ‘I hadn’t realised. But, then, if I hadn’t offered he’d be in Sydney and you’d still be aching for him.’

  ‘Yes, well…’ The gentleness in Jonas’s tone was almost her undoing. Em felt the moisture welling behind her eyes and gave a defiant sniff. ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘I do now.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be done.’

  ‘Except live with it,’ he said softly. ‘I guess you’re right. As we need to live with this whole damned arrangement. Me and you and our four kids.’

  ‘And walk away at the end of it?’ Her voice was hopeless.

  ‘Yes. With great memories, though.’ He caught her shoulders and he looked deep into his eyes. His hold was firm and strong-the hold of a man claiming his own.

  But, of course, he wasn’t.

  ‘Wonderful memories,’ he said softly. ‘Em, we both know this is transient-I have a world to go back to when I know Anna has recovered-but we can make it so good for now. We can give the kids a really good time. And…’

  ‘And?’ But she knew what he was about to say before he said it.

  He said it, just the same. ‘Em, I think you’re one special lady. Sure, I’m not a man who puts down roots-I never will be-but that doesn’t stop me forming relationships if the lady’s special enough. And I really would like to sleep with you.’

  She flinched. ‘I suppose I should feel flattered.’

  ‘No.’ He was watching her dispassionately. ‘Because you want the same thing. I can feel it.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Go on.’ His eyes mocked her. ‘Say you don’t want it.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘Liar.’ His hold tightened and suddenly there was a link between them that was growing stronger by the minute. It was the silence, she thought desperately. It was the warmth of the big, old house. The knowledge that there were four children sleeping in their care…

  It was a setting that felt so sweet it made Em want to weep, and the more she looked up at this man the more she found it impossible to pull away.

  ‘Em…’ His eyes were searching hers, seeking an answer which she didn’t have the strength to give.

  She should pull away. She should whisk herself back to her bedroom and lock the door behind her, leaving Jonas to watch her go.

  But she could no sooner do it than fly. The link between them was way, way too strong.

  He released her shoulders and his hands cupped her face. His fingers were tracing the paleness of her throat, pushing her face gently up to meet his.

  And then there was a long, long silence-a silence where things were built and not broken. Where things were said that could never be said aloud.

  Where things were joined that couldn’t lightly be put asunder.

  Their eyes stayed locked. There was confusion in both of them-uncertainty-a lack of knowledge of the future-but for now, right at this moment, there was only each other.

  And then he kissed her.

  Em had been kissed before.

  Of course she’d been kissed before. She was twenty-nine, she’d had a normal fun life as a medical student and even after she’d come back to Bay Beach there’d been men who’d fancied their chances with Dr Emily. They hadn’t wanted the baggage of the workload that went with her but, intermittently, they’d wanted her.

  So she’d been kissed.

  But not like this!

  This was a kiss that she hadn’t believed was possible. It was the joining of two halves of a whole, she thought desperately as the warmth from Jonas’s mouth flooded through her body, warming her from the tip of her toes to the top of her head.

  Warming her?

  It was the wrong description. This was like resuscitation, she thought dazedly. It was like bringing the dead back to life.

  Until this moment she’d never known she could feel like this, and the sensation was indescribable.

  His lips claimed hers. Their mouths held and locked. Jonas’s arms were around her, crushing her breasts to his chest, and she was melting into him like this was her natural home.

  Man and woman-meeting and merging. Becoming one.

  The sweetness was indescribable. It was threatening to overwhelm her. The feeling that here at last was her place in the sun. Her man…

  Only he wasn’t her man. He was Jonas Lunn, city surgeon, and in a few weeks he’d be away from here for good. He’d love her and leave her, and she’d have to get on with her dreary existence without him.

  Her hair would have to stay braided.

  So when his hand went to the base of her braid and she felt him twist the tie, wanting to free her mass of hair, the sensation made her pull away in instinctive self-defence.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and his gorgeous eyes mocked hers. ‘You want this, Emily Mainwaring. You know it. You want this as much as I do.’

  ‘Maybe I do,’ she said honestly, meeting his eyes with candour. ‘But maybe I have enough sense to see where it would lead.’

  ‘It would lead to two people taking comfort in each other-that’s all.’

  ‘And then you’d walk away?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said honestly. ‘Of course I would. And life would keep going, but it’d be the richer for our joining.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t, Jonas,’ she said, and her voice was tight with strain and bleakness. ‘It’d be dreadful. Like me losing Robby now. I’d break my heart.’

  ‘You don’t lose your heart by going to bed with someone.’

  ‘No?’ She glared at him. Men! Were they all this insensitive? ‘How else do you lose it?’

  ‘I guess you don’t lose it at all,’ he said uneasily. ‘At least, I don’t.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Em, this is hardly World War Three. Do you have to be so dramatic?’

  ‘I’m not being dramatic.’ She was really angry now. What had he said?

  ‘That doesn’t stop me forming relationships if the lady’s special enough…’

  How many special ladies had he walked away from?

  Well, one of them wasn’t going to be her, she decided, and it was her anger that finally pulled her through. It gave her strength. Heavens, she had enough on her plate, worrying about Robby and the medical needs of Bay Beach, without tying herself in knots over this man.

  ‘Go to bed, Jonas,’ she told him.

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Your bedroom door’s thataway. And my bedroom’s in the other direction. So take yourself off and leave me alone. I don’t want you.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I may be a liar but I’m lying for the best,’ she told him bluntly. ‘Whereas your way wreaks havoc for everyone. And I’m starting to see why Anna holds herself back from you. You’re detached and independent and you don’t give yourself at all.’

  ‘I give-’

  ‘You give your time, your money and your work. But not yourself, Jonas. And it’s not enough. You want to be needed, but you won’t need in return. It’s not enough for Anna, and it’s not enough for me. Goodnight!’

  She walked into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Hard.

  How could she sleep after that?

  She lay in the dark and listened to Robby’s gentle snuffling, and her heart cried out for what could n
ever be.

  A baby and a man. A man and a baby.

  Her two impossible loves.

  In the adjoining room, Jonas did the same. He lay in the dark and let the events of the last twenty-four hours unfold around him.

  Anna. Anna pushing him away. ‘I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone,’ she’d said as he’d offered to stay into the night.

  And Em…

  ‘You give your time, your money and your work. But not yourself…’

  What was a man to do?

  He was just trying to do what was right, he told himself bleakly. He’d come down here because Anna needed him, whether she knew she did or not. And Em… She needed him too, emotionally as well as for her precious medicine.

  So why couldn’t they just let him give what he was able to?

  Because he’d walk away.

  It was the truth. He knew it, and he’d acknowledged it openly. Anything else would be dishonest.

  He wouldn’t make love to Em under false pretences. He didn’t need her. He didn’t need anyone.

  But he wanted to make love to Emily so much that it hurt.

  Hell!

  The children were out of bed before he was, and his first waking thought was that a ten-ton weight had landed on his chest. But no. It was just three children.

  ‘Wake up, Uncle Jonas. Em’s making toast, even Bernard’s awake and we asked Em how Mum was but she said to ask you. So we came in to ask.’

  Three little faces peered at him with varying levels of anxiety, and he relented enough to gather as many arms and legs as he could into a together bear-hug. It felt strange-but good.

  These were his niece and nephews. He’d never been allowed close but they, it seemed, didn’t have the reservations their mother had.

  ‘Your mum came though the operation fine,’ he told them. ‘If everything goes well the ambulance will bring her back to the Bay Beach Hospital tomorrow, so you’ll be able to see her then for yourselves.’

  They’d arranged that already. They could have transferred her today, but Anna wanted to be away when the test results came through. She wanted time out without the children, to come to terms with everything that had happened to her.

  And to prepare herself for the worst, if the worst was likely.

  Please, let it not be, Jonas said silently, and told himself again that there was no reason to think that it should come to the worst.

  Cancer. What was the medical saying? That it was a word. Not a sentence…

  He forced his attention back on the kids. ‘Did you say Em’s making toast?’

  ‘Yep. She’s just got back. There was a farmer who got his foot crushed when a cow stood on him.’ That was Sam. ‘So when we woke up, one of the nurses was here and she told us to be very quiet until you woke up. But then Em came back and said you were a lazy-bones so we could come and wake you up all we liked.’

  ‘Isn’t Em wonderful?’ He grinned and threw back the covers, but a part of him felt guilty. She’d been out working while he’d slept. She’d organised a nurse to check the kids so he could sleep on.

  She had the phone beside her bed, he thought. Another was in the hall, but if she answered on the first ring he wouldn’t hear it.

  That’d have to be changed.

  But the kids were focusing on breakfast. ‘There’s three sorts of jam,’ Ruby told him earnestly. ‘Em’s got strawberry jam and raspberry jam and marmalade, and Bernard likes marmalade best, and Robby’s got strawberry jam all over his face.’

  ‘I bet he has.’

  ‘Come on, Uncle Jonas.’

  ‘Wait until I get dressed.’

  ‘The toast’s ready now!’ And, like it or not, his pyjama-clad figure was towed forth into the kitchen.

  Em was there, and the sight of her made him…well, it sort of set him back.

  It wasn’t a shock, exactly. She was looking the same as she had the day before. It was just that she was holding baby Robby in her arms and was chuckling at the mess he’d made, and Bernard, amazingly, was on his feet, whuffling around for more toast. Em was surrounded by domesticity and chaos.

  It was nothing he couldn’t recover from, he told himself harshly. Given time.

  And a bit of distance.

  It wasn’t to be. Robby was thrust into his arms like he was expected to take a dual parenting role. ‘I need a facecloth,’ Em told him. ‘Urgently. Take a kid while I find one.’ Then she looked him up and down. ‘By the way, I love your pyjamas.’

  They were silk. They also had very cute pandas all over them. A gift from a lady friend…

  Hell, he almost felt like blushing.

  The kids were giggling, too. ‘We didn’t think uncles would wear pandas on their pyjamas,’ Ruby said seriously, and Jonas swooped her up in his spare arm. So he had two kids in hand.

  ‘There’s nothing this uncle can’t do,’ he told her grandly.

  ‘Changing nappies?’ Em teased, and he winced.

  ‘It’s a learned skill,’ he told her. ‘As a surgeon, I’ve just learned to apply sticking plasters. It takes years and years of practice before I can graduate to nappies.’

  ‘Plus a bit of raw courage thrown in for good measure.’ She was laughing at him, and the sight unnerved him. She was so…

  Gorgeous.

  Em was gorgeous, he told himself as she attacked Robby with a facecloth. She was dressed for practicality, in jeans and T-shirt, her hair was drawn back into its customary severe braid, she wore not a touch of make-up-and she was gorgeous!

  He wanted her so badly…

  For now.

  And she wouldn’t let him near because he’d hurt her long-term.

  She had to be the judge of that, he told himself as he settled down to breakfast, surrounded by kids and chaos. No means no. The lady doesn’t want you, Jonas Lunn. You’ll complicate her life, and the last thing you want is to complicate anyone’s life.

  Isn’t it?

  Hmm.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ROSE’S test results came back late that day, and they were magnificent. Jonas drove back from Blairglen feeling like he’d been handed the world.

  He pulled in just as Em arrived back from afternoon surgery, and his mood lightened even further at the sight of her. He wanted to shout his good news at the top of his lungs-and who better to share it with than Emily?

  But there was someone else-a man-waiting in the shadows of the front porch. He had the look of someone who had waited a long time and was prepared to wait longer. And Jonas recognised him from the day before. It was Jim-the fire chief. The man who’d shared his vigil.

  He needed to share his good news with him as well as Em, he thought, but it was such fantastic news that he didn’t mind who he shared it with.

  As long as Em was included…

  She was walking toward him from the surgery side of the hospital and he felt like striding forward, sweeping her up into his arms and whirling her round and round until he was dizzy.

  But Jim was waiting, and the expression on his face was desperately anxious.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming,’ Jim said. The man was visibly sweating. ‘I’ve been phoning all day, but the hospital won’t tell me anything. Jonas…mate… I need to know.’

  This big, gentle man had sat all through yesterday without seeing Anna, Jonas thought, coming to terms with this new dimension in his sister’s life. They’d stayed in the waiting room together, but Jonas had been permitted to go in as Anna had emerged from the anaesthetic. Jim hadn’t even had that much comfort.

  Still Jim had waited. And today it didn’t take a genius to figure that he’d worried himself sick.

  Jonas looked sideways at Emily, whose face had softened in understanding.

  ‘You love Anna,’ she said gently on a note of discovery, and the man’s face grew even more strained.

  ‘She’s a great lady. Doc, I can’t bear it if anything happens to her.’

  ‘It won’t,’ Jonas said, and he could contain himself no longe
r. His voice was exultant. Damn, he wanted to spin someone! If he couldn’t spin Em, he was almost tempted to spin the fire chief!

  ‘The results are great,’ he told them. ‘The margins around the lump are clear. The nodes are all negative. It’s looking more and more like it’s been caught before it can do any damage. There’s more tests to be done to confirm things, but at this stage it’s looking fantastic.’

  Jim’s face went slack with relief.

  ‘Oh, that’s… Great news. The best.’ The fire chief backed away from them, as if it was suddenly necessary to get away-to take on the news by himself. ‘It…it…’

  His face crumpled and he fled.

  Which left Em and Jonas, and Jonas was grinning like a goofy schoolboy who’d just been made class monitor. He still had the urge to spin. But then Em was standing on tiptoe and giving him a tiny kiss, right on the lips-and suddenly he didn’t feel like a schoolboy any more.

  It wasn’t a huge kiss. Maybe it wasn’t even a kiss for noticing-but it was one he noticed all the same. He noticed very much!

  ‘I’ve already heard the news,’ she told him. ‘I came home as soon as I could. It is fantastic.’

  ‘How the heck do you know?’ He pulled back, puzzled, and she gave him a wry look.

  ‘Anna is my patient, clever-clogs. I had Pathology ring the results straight through to me as soon as they knew. If the results had been bad I would have driven up to Blairglen to see Anna, but I figured you and Patrick could explain these results to her all by yourselves. They’re wonderful.’

  Em would have come up…

  Of course she would. Because she cared.

  Jonas’s shoulders went slack from relief-or from exhaustion-or maybe from a mixture of emotions so great he could hardly fathom them.

  What was happening here? he asked himself. He normally kept so cool. So distant. He’d learned early to be dispassionate, but here he was, a grown man, and all he wanted to do was burst into tears.

  ‘They haven’t graded the tumour yet,’ Em was saying, watching him with a strange look on her face. ‘Or seen whether it’s hormone receptor positive or not. But Patrick seems to think it’s cause for celebration.’

  ‘He’s pretty sure it’s grade one.’