Prognosis Baby Daddy: A hot medical romance

by Amy Andrews

  Stop this, Katya. Only the baby mattered now.

  ‘I’m not the fun type.’ Brushing the flaky crumbs of pastry from her hand, she swallowed her espresso in one hit and stood. ‘Shouldn’t we be going?’

  Ben chuckled, shrugging off the darkness she had aroused in him. She was right — no one who knew her would describe Katya as fun. Blunt. Efficient. Sharp-witted. Quick-tongued. A sense of humour that bordered on the sarcastic.

  But fun? No.

  ‘Come on, then. If we leave now, we should be in Ravello in plenty of time to show you around before the first case.’

  She followed him to the front door. ‘Shouldn’t we say goodbye to your mother?’

  ‘Mamma doesn’t rise before ten,’ he said, picking up Katya’s case.

  Katya stared after him, the denim of his jeans clinging to the contours of his ass perfectly. It could be fun, whispered insidiously through her head as she pulled the door closed behind her.

  Ben smiled to himself as he noticed Katya’s hands gripping the edge of her seat, her knuckles white. ‘Relax,’ he teased.

  ‘Easy for you to say.’

  ‘This is nothing,’ he said, changing gear as the traffic slowed a little on the outskirts of Amalfi. ‘Wait till we start to climb higher.’

  ‘Goody, goody gumdrops,’ Katya said, quoting a favoured expression of Dr Guillaume Remy, a colleague they had worked with at MedSurg.

  Ben laughed at the slang pronounced in sexily accented English. ‘How are Guillaume and Harriet?’ he asked. ‘Are they pregnant yet?’

  Katya nodded, feeling her spirits lift. ‘Their second cycle of IVF worked. Their baby is due in the New Year,’ she said, remembering how close Harriet and Gill had come to divorcing over the baby issue. And now here she was — also with a baby quandary.

  At least she’d be able to return to MedSurg after the baby. Her colleagues there were the closest thing she’d ever had to a real family and it would be good to get straight back into the all-consuming work.

  To forget that she’d left her baby with Ben.

  ‘That’s great,’ said Ben.

  He remembered how much he had enjoyed his time with the aid

  organisation and how good Gill had been with him. Performing surgery in the middle of a war zone had been a steep learning curve but he had flourished and learnt a lot.

  Leaving had been hard, especially with the tempting presence of one Katya Petrova, and had his hand not been forced by his brother’s death, Ben would still be working for them. But he’d returned home, despite his decade-old vow not to, to a job he despised and a life he hadn’t wanted.

  He could feel the familiar tension creep into his neck muscles and along his jaw and he tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  The road came back down to sea level and he glanced over to the harbour on his right and saw his gleaming white boat, The Mermaid, bobbing in the calm water. He looked at her clean sleek lines and the knots in his muscles loosened.

  ‘My boat,’ he said to Katya and pointed. ‘I’ll take you out in it this weekend.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ Her rejection was delivered with her usual bluntness. ‘I get seasick.’

  Ben found her determination to keep things strictly business amusing and laughed as he changed gear. He looked at her face, her cute button nose, her beautiful blue eyes, her soft mouth with its tempting full lips, high cheekbones and blonde pixie cut that feathered around her face. She was sassy and sexy and had the mouth of a shrew and, God help him, he wanted her!

  He remembered what else her mouth could do when it wasn’t busy putting him in his place. He remembered how she had kissed him with an intensity and reckless abandon that had stunned him and knew behind her no-nonsense façade lurked a very passionate woman.

  He thought back to past relationships. How easy they’d been. How meaningless. He’d filled his life with pretty women since Bianca’s betrayal, trying to exorcise his demons. Women who had been eager and willing. Who’d enjoyed the favours of a rich, generous playboy. But not one of them had got beneath his skin like this unimpressed, practical Russian nurse. What the hell would it take to impress her?

  And why the hell did it matter so much?

  Katya shut her eyes as the mountain road narrowed even further than the coast road. It seemed like nothing more than a goat track in places. But every time her lids closed all she saw was his damn boat. Big and white and expensive. The type of boat she saw in magazines where royalty lounged on sundecks. She had half expected to see a movie star emerging from one of the galleys of the rows and rows of luxurious vessels.

  She should be happy. Yet another confirmation that he could provide for their baby so much better than her. But strangely his wealth, which had always bothered her, seemed to bother her twice as much. His boat was a big flashy status symbol — an aquatic Ferrari. And he’d asked her to join him. How many other women had he had on that boat? How many women would he parade in front of their child?

  She’d grown up seeing a procession of partners through her mother’s life. And how screwed up was she today? Her mother had been seduced into neglecting her children and Katya had been wise in the ways of the world way before her time. Is that what Ben would do? Neglect their child in favour of his lifestyle?

  He was a thirty-five-year-old playboy bachelor. An Italian count. Aristocracy, for God’s sake. Was it even possible to give that lifestyle away?

  They made it to Ravello by quarter past eight and Ben drove the Alfa through an arch in a vine-covered wall. They entered a large cobblestoned courtyard dominated in the centre by a spectacular fountain. There was ample room for several cars and Ben angled his into a reserved space.

  ‘Welcome to the Lucia Clinic,’ he said. ‘Otherwise known as the palace for hedonistic rich people.’

  Katya turned and gave him a withering smile. ‘If you can’t stand the heat, Count, get out of the kitchen.’ And she opened the door and climbed out, his laughter following her.

  The building was impressive. It was a U-shaped structure built around the courtyard. The wall they had just driven through towered behind her as high as the other buildings and gave the courtyard and the clinic a private feel, protecting it from view. The rendered walls were painted a pale orange, their aged, weather-beaten appearance giving the clinic a timeless quality.

  Ben opened the boot and removed their bags. ‘The main wing, in front of you,’ he said, indicating the longest section of the clinic, ‘is the patient’s suites. We have twenty beds. Twelve suites and four twin share rooms. The west wing holds the operating theatres and X-ray facilities, the east wing is the kitchens and staff accommodation.’

  ‘You have a lot of staff that live on site?’ she asked following him as he moved towards the entrance.

  ‘There are twenty rooms, but only half are used permanently as most of our staff live locally and commute. The others are used casually. I bunk down here during the week and, of course, one of these rooms will be yours.’

  Katya could feel his gaze on her and refused to look at him. The mere thought of him sleeping nearby did funny things to her breathing. It had been the same during their time at MedSurg. Communal staff facilities had seen to it that too often he had been the last person she had seen before going to bed and the first one she’d seen on waking.

  ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you around. Everyone is very friendly here and most speak English.’

  Katya followed him through the magnificent arched entrance and almost gasped at the cool elegance of the reception area. It was luxurious. No expense had been spared, from the artwork on the walls to the marble on the floor to the stylish chandelier hanging above the sweeping stone staircase dominating the entrance hall.

  Ben showed her to her quarters first. Katya put her bag on the bed as Ben stood in the hallway. She looked around at cool decorative tiles underfoot and the mirror edged with pretty ceramic tiles inlaid into an arched recess in the wall. It was beautiful but she was more conscious of him brea
thing and his bulky presence against the doorjamb and what had happened last time he had stood in her doorway. She wondered where he slept and then halted her thoughts.

  His quarters were of no concern to her.

  ‘Come,’ Ben said, ‘meet some of the staff.’

  Katya didn’t have to be asked twice.

  Ben introduced her to so many people her head spun and she knew it would take her a few days to remember everyone. He gave her a tour of all the medical facilities, including the two operating rooms.

  ‘Is this the theatre list?’ she asked, looking at the typed list stuck to Theatre Two’s main door.

  He nodded. ‘For this theatre, yes.’

  Katya scanned the scheduled operations, thankful to find it was written in Italian and English. Abdominoplasty. Rhinoplasty. Augmentation mamoplasty. She felt her heart sink. Tummy tuck. Nose job. Boob job.

  She had known the Lucia Clinic was an exclusive plastic surgery clinic but seeing it in reality hammered it home. It was hard to believe that someone who had worked in war zones could ever consider pandering to such vanity worthwhile.

  Ben easily read the distaste on Katya’s face. He remembered his first day at the clinic, shaking his head in disbelief, too. ‘Would you like to see the gardens?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Katya said vaguely.

  They wandered back through the building, Katya dazed from the opulence all around her. No expense had been spared anywhere. From the fittings to the surgical equipment, everything was high quality, top notch, the best that money could buy.

  It was a little sickening, actually. How many people could MedSurg and aid organisations like it help if they had this sort of money at their disposal?

  Ben took her through one of the private suites that was empty and pushed open the doors onto a small balcony. Katya’s breath caught in her throat as the magnificence of the view hit her. The grounds below had been terraced down the side of the hill and beautiful gardens adorned the rocky slope. Fountains and water features and lush greenery punctuated by colourful blooms, dazzled the eye.

  And beyond the grounds was the endless blue of the Mediterranean. It sparkled in the mid-September sunshine like a beautiful priceless sapphire. The craggy cliffs dominating the coastline were breathtaking in their enormity, towering high into the sky and plunging in weathered splendour to the sea.

  Katya looked either side of her. Each suite had its own balcony and she was hard pressed to think of a more beautiful place to recover from surgery. It was a stark contrast to her MedSurg job where patients too often recovered in cramped, less than ideal conditions.

  ‘This villa is centuries old, as are many of the buildings around here,’ said Ben. ‘Ravello is famous for its villas and their beautiful gardens. Many Hollywood films were filmed here back in the early nineteen hundreds and there are regular chamber music concerts held throughout the village during the year.’

  ‘It’s amazing,’ she said, the sheer beauty holding her in awe, the decadence overwhelming.

  Ben heard a hesitant note in her voice. ‘You don’t sound so sure?’

  ‘No, it’s...it’s...wow.’

  ‘Sounds like there’s a but there.’ And he knew exactly what it was.

  Katya shrugged. Her poor-as-dirt background and some of the horrors she had seen working with MedSurg made it difficult to reconcile the indulgences of the affluent. ‘I was just thinking how different it is from some of the places I’ve been with MedSurg.’

  He nodded. ‘That it is.’

  Katya blinked at his understatement. It seemed so flippant when she knew, as did he, there were people out there who couldn’t get proper health care at all.

  ‘Don’t you think all this is a little obscene?’ She felt nauseated suddenly by it all and wondered if she could truly let her baby be brought up by someone who couldn’t see how indulgent it was.

  Sure, she wanted her baby to be provided for, to have the stuff she never had, but she also wanted it to have a sense of humanity. She had thought as Ben had worked for MedSurg that he had that kind of compassion, but if he could come back to this and not feel tainted by the excess then maybe she was wrong.

  Ben could feel his ire beginning to rise again. She was doing it again. Judging him. It hadn’t mattered so much at MedSurg, his wealth had irritated her and he had exploited that role to the hilt because she had looked so cute when she’d been mad. But things had changed since then and her assumptions annoyed him.

  ‘You don’t approve of vanity?’

  Katya schooled her features. Obviously she was letting her distaste show. ‘I think all the bad stuff happening in the world is more important than whether your nose is too big or your tummy too fat.’ She tried to keep the bluntness out of her voice but on this subject her passion ran deep.

  Ben couldn’t agree more. ‘And yet you rang and asked me for a job. You knew what we do here. Why did you come if it was going to offend your sensibilities?’

  His question caught her unawares. She wasn’t ready to open up yet. Oh, God, how could she say, Because I’m having your baby and I need to check out if you’re worthy of raising it because I’m certainly not.

  ‘I told you, I want to change direction.’

  ‘You? Leave MedSurg? I don’t believe it.’

  Neither did she! And as soon as this was all over, she was heading straight back to a workplace with some backbone. But for now, for the sake of her baby, she needed to suffer the whims of the wealthy.

  ‘If you didn’t want me to come you shouldn’t have offered me a job.’ Katya knew from long experience that the best defence was offence. ‘But, then, you weren’t really serious, were you? We both knew it was just a throw-away line the morning after.’

  Her accusation hit Ben square in the solar plexus. His guilt from that morning came flooding back. She was right. He had handled the whole thing very badly. He had known it back then but his apology had been stalled by her scathing reaction to his job offer.

  She was standing with her back to him, her hands gripping the railing. She reminded him of how she’d been that morning. Erect. Distant. He wanted to touch her but couldn’t bear to see her shrink from his touch like she had that day also. ‘About that morning...’

  Katya gripped the railing harder and held her breath. She had spent months trying to forget the incident, she didn’t want to rehash it now, especially not when their child was already a constant reminder.

  ‘Benedetto!’

  Both Ben and Katya startled at the unexpected interruption and turned to see Gabriella, one of the nurses she had met earlier, come bustling in, a child wearing a blue theatre cap on her hip.

  Gabriella smiled at Katya. ‘Lupi has been asking for you.’

  Ben smiled at the little girl, her bilateral cleft lip making it impossible for her to smile back, but he could see the happiness shining in her eyes. ‘Has she, now?’ he growled and reached out to take the child from Gabriella.

  ‘Well, now, little Lupi,’ he said kissing her jet-black hair, ‘you found me.’

  Katya watched as the girl bounced up and down excitedly in Ben’s arms. Katya guessed the child to be about three but she was obviously malnourished so she could well be older. But there was no mistaking the look of adoration in the girl’s eyes.

  Katya swallowed as Ben grinned down at her and Lupi snuggled her head into his chest. Where did Lupi fit in at the Lucia Clinic? Someone had been remiss in their care for her if her lip was only being repaired now. It didn’t seem like something someone with money, with choices, would do.

  ‘Katya, this is Lupi,’ Ben said. ‘Lupi, this is Katya. She’s going to help me with your operation today. We’re going to give you your smile back.’

  The little girl looked at her with solemn brown eyes and it took Katya a few moments to remember her manners. She smiled at the little girl. ‘Hello, Lupi.’

  ‘She doesn’t understand English,’ said Ben, rocking absently. ‘Or Italian for that matter.’

  ‘You
’re operating on her?’

  Ben nodded. ‘Lupi’s is one of four operations I’m doing in Theatre One today for the Lucia Trust.’

  Katya was still confused. ‘The Lucia Trust?’

  ‘A charitable organisation I founded on my return home. We perform operations on people, children mainly, with disfiguring conditions who don’t have access to proper surgical intervention because of their circumstances.’

  Katya found what he was saying hard to take in. But as the full implications sank in, she felt increasingly foolish. The things she had thought! The things she had said! And he hadn’t corrected her. Just let her go on thinking the worst.

  He chuckled. ‘What’s the matter, Katya? You’re looking a little uneasy.’

  His laugh was sexy as hell and it scraped along her nerves. He was rubbing his chin back and forth against Lupi’s hair in time with his rocking. He looked very male and her nipples peaked despite her annoyance at him.

  ‘You could have said something,’ she said, her voice low, the note of accusation easy to detect.

  He laughed again. ‘And spoil your condemnation of me? Your problem, sweet Katya -’ He tapped her nose. ‘Is that you are a reverse snob. You think everyone who has money isn’t worthy. Is frivolous. You judge me because I’m wealthy and dismiss me as a rich playboy.’

  A denial rose in her throat and died a quick death. It was true, she had. She did. But he had done nothing to dissuade her of her opinion. If anything he had nurtured it.

  He leaned in close to her and said in a slow deep voice, ‘Don’t dismiss me, Katya.’

  The words were like a caress and she swallowed hard. There was just something about his mouth, the way he stared at her from under half-closed lids, his eyelashes long and glorious. His slumberous gaze on her lips was like a physical caress and Katya swayed closer before he pulled back and turned on his heel and exited, chatting to Lupi as he went.

  She drew in a ragged breath and watched him walk away. She was too speechless to talk and too boneless to move so she stood and stared, trying to work out everything that had just transpired.