Prognosis Baby Daddy: A hot medical romance

by Amy Andrews

  ‘That’s mine,’ he said, raising his voice to be heard over the engine as he pointed to an impressive white villa dominating the rock face.

  Katya stared at it. It was huge, sprawling along the cliff top, its clean white lines and arched windows elegant. Purple bougainvillea crept along the façade on one side, a colourful foil to the stark whiteness. It too had steps that led down the cliff to the sea below, with more bougainvillea creeping along the iron railings, blazing a trail of color down to the sea.

  ‘That’s where we’ll live,’ he said.

  She glanced at him quickly meeting his unflinching brown gaze. So, he was taking her up on her offer to cohabit? She turned back quickly, her heart beating a mad tattoo. What would it be like living in this beautiful white home? It looked like a palace sitting atop the cliffs in all its dazzling white glory and Katya found it difficult to digest. In a couple of short months her whole life had been turned upside down and she wasn’t sure about anything.

  She had a moment’s yearning for her previous life as the villa passed from her direct line of sight. At least she’d known who she was before she’d become pregnant. She’d been her own person. Now she was having a baby and was about to live in a palatial villa in Italy with a one-hundred-and-eighty degree view of the Mediterranean in the company of a devilishly good looking count.

  She knew how to be Katya Petrova, poor Russian nurse. She didn’t know how to be this Katya. Ben’s Katya.

  The scenery continued to dazzle her as the boat sped on. Positano appeared in the distance, nestled on the shoreline at the feet of the soaring mountains behind. As it grew bigger she could see the alternating orange and blue lines of the deckchairs adorning the front, a striking contrast to the black stones of the beach.

  Rows and rows of villas clung to the two main cliffs in a haphazard, colourful display, each one on top of the next, crammed in so the rock of the cliff wasn’t visible. Just buildings. Private homes sharing space with tourist hotels. The impressive Duomo nestled between, dominating the seafront.

  People, locals and tourists alike, cluttered the beach, swam in the sea or sunned themselves.

  Katya had a moment of complete disconnectedness. She was really here. In a beautiful Italian seaside resort village. An Italian count beside her. It seemed too incredible to be true. Never, even as child, had she dreamed this big.

  Ben cut the engine and dropped anchor a little way from the shore. Katya watched as he shaded his eyes from the sun and searched through the crowd of people. He spotted who he wanted on the short rickety wooden pier, then put his fingers in his mouth and let out a short sharp whistle. ‘Hey, Marco!’

  A man turned and Ben waved at him. The man dived into the sea and swam quickly to one of the many small boats that bobbed calmly nearby. He hauled himself in, pulled up the anchor and started the motor.

  ‘You ready?’ Ben asked, turning to Katya as Marco’s small boat with the outboard motor grew closer.

  She nodded and stood just as Marco reached The Mermaid and pulled up alongside.

  ‘Hey, Marco. Thanks for the lift,’ Ben said in Italian.

  ‘Anything for you, Count,’ Marco replied, grinning.

  ‘This is Katya.’ Ben introduced them in English and Marco held out his hand to help Katya into his boat.

  Marco said something in Italian to Ben and they both laughed. ‘Bella,’ he said to Katya and grinned. ‘Benedetto is a lucky man.’

  Ben roared with laughter and said something else in Italian and they both laughed again as Ben also stepped into the boat. Katya sat on one of the wooden cross seats and Ben plonked himself beside her and placed his hand on her knee and smiled down at her.

  It was such a dazzling smile, Katya forgot to breathe, and she certainly forgot to tell him to get his bloody hand off her. It seemed that Ben wanted to portray them as a young, in love couple and Katya gave him a small smile back. If he thought it was important to pretend to be something they weren’t then she could go along with that. As long as he remembered that their act had a definite end date.

  They reached the jetty a minute later and Marco helped her out.

  ‘Do you know everyone in Positano?’ she asked ten minutes later when they hadn’t even left the beach area, continually stopped by people greeting Ben.

  ‘Nearly.’ He grinned.

  He took Katya’s hand as he led her up the steep stone stairs that took them past the Duomo. Mario and Bianca had been married here with all the church trappings. He had been far away in Asia at the time but he had seen the pictures in a magazine somewhere. Mario with his arm around the woman who had been betrothed to him.

  He tightened his grip on Katya’s hand. ‘Mamma’s house is a bit of a climb from here, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Will you be okay to walk it?’

  Katya rolled her eyes. ‘I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”

  They made their way up the hill through the narrow twisting alleys haunted by throngs of tourists. T-shirts, shoes and other items of clothing were hung on walls and placed outside shopfronts on tables. Ceramic ware hung from every available surface. Artists displayed their paintings and local craftsmen hawked their jewellery in bougainvillea draped lanes.

  Bakeries and restaurants adjoined boutiques and gelaterias. Fruit and shoes and olive oil and wine and exclusive one-off dresses were sold amidst a vibrant clash of noise and colour. A multitude of languages and accents assaulted her ears.

  Lucia was waiting for them at the front door when they’d finally made their way up the hillside.

  ‘Somebody rang?’ He laughed as he kissed both the Contessa’s cheeks.

  ‘Three people,’ Lucia confirmed, with a twinkle in her eye.

  Ben’s mother turned to Katya and clasped her hand. ‘How lovely to see you again,’ she said, and embraced Katya in a tight hug.

  Katya closed her eyes and felt Lucia’s warmth and sincerity surround her.

  ‘Come,’ Lucia said, breaking away and taking a hand each. ‘Tell me why you have come to visit an old woman on such a beautiful day.’

  Ben laughed at his mother’s tired joke. ‘We came to let you know that you are going to be a grandmother.’

  Lucia gasped, dropped their hands and turned, looking from one to the other. She launched herself at Ben and let loose a string of rapid fire Italian as she kissed his cheeks repeatedly. When she was finished with Ben, she turned to Katya and rained more kisses on her, still speaking in Italian.

  ‘Enough, Mamma,’ Ben chuckled, looking at Katya’s slightly bewildered look.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Lucia said, finally pulling away, her cheeks damp with tears, and grabbing their hands again. ‘Come, we’ll celebrate on the terrace and we can discuss the wedding.’

  Katya’s step faltered and she looked over Lucia’s head at Ben. He chuckled and winked at her. Was she ready for this?

  CHAPTER SIX

  A MONTH passed. Katya felt like her life was now flying along out of her control. A rather unsettling feeling for someone who had been steadfastly in the driver’s seat from the age of eight. September became October, their work continued, her stomach remained stubbornly flat, but other things changed.

  News of her pregnancy slowly leaked out and then snowballed until everyone on the Amalfi coast seemed to know. Lucia, after her initial disapproval of their non-wedding plans, accepted their decision graciously and fussed round Katya like a broody hen. People regarded them as a couple. Her colleagues treated her differently. It was subtle but she definitely felt like the boss’s girlfriend around the clinic.

  And, the biggest change of all, she moved in with Ben. As she had promised. It was a surreal kind of life to be living, real and fake at the same time. But it was her one concession to legitimise the baby and Katya knew she would do whatever it took to instill into the collective consciousness that the baby she carried was Ben’s.

  They developed a routine. They would finish their theatre list for the day, spend time with their post-op cases and then Ben would take her out
to dinner. Ravello had many wonderful restaurants and she enjoyed exploring and getting to know the charming Italian village that would be her home for the next few months.

  Ben was an interesting and lively tour guide and she’d certainly never eaten so well in all her life! The locals got to know who she was very quickly and she couldn’t go out of the clinic without being recognised.

  After dinner they would return to the clinic and their room. And their bed. The bed that they shared because Ben had reasoned that two beds would cause gossip between the housekeeping staff and he didn’t want anyone to know that they weren’t in a bona fide relationship. She had queried the need for staff at all and he told her that removing them would trigger even more gossip.

  So, she dreaded the moment every night. Was even getting really good at stalling. Because climbing into bed next to a man that would tempt a nun and then having to platonically go to sleep was an impossible task. And when she did manage to grasp the elusive tendrils of slumber?

  She dreamed about him. About their night together.

  Was it just her stage of pregnancy? Was it just her hormones that made the images so erotic she’d wake up with a hum in her veins and a buzz deep down inside? Was it them that caused her heart to trip when she glanced at his sexy sleeping profile? Or dared her to reach out and touch him, run her finger down his cheek, so much so that her palm would tingle and she had to clamp it between her thighs to stop it from following through?

  And why did she have to dream in such agonising Technicolor detail? Why was her mind blowing it up into a scene of such amazing proportions? In reality, in the grand scheme of things, it probably hadn’t been that good. Really, what comparison did she have? In fact, it could have been fairly average.

  It probably was.

  She’d been a virgin after all, so what did she know?

  And then she’d wake in the morning, tired and irritable, only to find a heavy male arm slung across her belly or her head snuggled into his chest and his lazy morning smile grinning down at her.

  Yep, sharing a bed with Ben was a particularly exquisite form of torture.

  Katya lived for the weekends when they went to the villa far away from Ravello and had separate rooms. It was strange and lonely, the bed big and empty, but by the time Friday night came around she was usually too tired to give it more than a fleeting thought.

  Consequently, needing a major distraction, she threw herself into the Lucia Trust work. Every day they operated on a growing number of unfortunate patients as their work became better known. They were children mainly, some born with severe deformities, others having acquired them through horrific accidents. There were a lot of burns related cases and quite a few involving large, disfiguring but benign tumours.

  It was rewarding work, seeing kids with such a poor quality of life have their lot improved so dramatically. And the whole surgical team was proud of their work. Katya even started to take an interest in the behind-the-scenes work of the foundation.

  Ben introduced her to Carmella Rossi, the foundation’s field officer, who was infectiously exuberant about her work and explained to Katya all the ins and outs of working with myriad charities and government agencies to identify patients, and the intricacies and red tape involved with getting them to Italy.

  Katya soaked it up, asking questions, even going to the control room after surgery had finished for the day. Anything -anything - to take her mind off Ben and that bed.

  A week later Katya found herself standing next to Ben, gowned up ready to repair a severe bilateral cleft lip and palate. She yawned behind her mask as she daydreamed about Ben’s lips. The last few nights her imagination had started to embellish her dream. The Ben in her dream had told her he loved her and the Katya in the dream had confessed her love too and they’d gone on to make love again, this time even better than the first. The joining more intense, the passion even deeper.

  ‘Katya!’

  Ben’s impatient exclamation cut into her fantasy. She looked at him startled, her brain taking a few more seconds to shed the heavy cloak of the fantasy and focus on the present.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said are you ready to start?’

  Above his mask Katya could only see Ben’s eyes and for a moment, as he looked at her, they were the eyes from her dreams. Deep and dark and brown, and getting darker and stormier the more he kissed her. Those incredible drugging kisses that made her lose track of time and place.

  ‘Katya?’

  She saw his eyes widen fractionally and heard the slight husky tremor in his inquisitive voice. She blinked to dispel the images in her head. ‘Right, yes.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Okie dokie.’

  Ben chuckled at her use of slang. It seemed so strange coming in her accented English. But it was a distraction from the look he had seen in her eyes. The frank sexual hunger there was startling and he was pleased to have an operating table and a scrub top to hide his instantaneous reaction.

  Sleeping in the same bed every night, her warm body and cinnamon scent temptingly close, especially when he knew what delights her body held, was becoming increasingly difficult. Even more so when he kept catching brief glimpses of that look he’d seen again just now.

  Mostly she was polite and friendly but from time to time, he could see she wanted him. And, God help him, he wanted her, too. It had been months since they had made love, since she had given herself so freely and completely, and it had fuelled his every night-time fantasy since.

  Each night was an exercise in self-control. And Ben prided himself on it. She had made it clear that their cohabitation would not be sexual and he had given her assurances that he would respect her wishes. But he was just a man, just flesh and blood, and he was damned if he was going to keep his hands to himself if she kept looking at him like that.

  ‘Good, let’s start,’ he said even if that look had just completely shot his concentration. Something that didn’t bode well for this morning’s theatre list. ‘Scalpel.’

  The list was as frustrating as he’d thought it would be. Katya could barely meet his gaze. She seemed tired and distracted, yawning frequently. Consequently, their timing was off so things took longer, and he dropped an instrument, which he’d never done before, and they couldn’t get his CD to work, and the op turned out to be more involved than he’d bargained for which meant the list finished later than scheduled.

  By the time he closed the last patient he was in a foul mood, his staff were on edge and Katya was visibly annoyed at him. ‘I want to talk to you,’ Ben said as they left the theatre and stripped their gowns off.

  ‘Go to hell,’ she said, dumping her gown in the linen skip.

  One of the theatre nurses nearby gasped and Ben smiled, despite his mood. Only Katya would dare to tell Count Benedetto Medici, Director of the Lucia Clinic, to go to hell.

  ‘Lovers’ tiff,’ he said in Italian, and shrugged dramatically as he watched Katya stride away.

  He caught up with her a few minutes later as she grabbed a cup of coffee from the dining room. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ she said abruptly. Nothing that a spot of sex wouldn’t fix.

  Ben put a hand under her chin and noticed the dark circles under her eyes. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘That’s because I am tired,’ she said irritably, annoyed at the tingling of her skin where his fingers were resting.

  Ben castigated himself. ‘Why didn’t you say something, cara? You’re pregnant, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I’m pregnant Ben, not dying.’

  He took the cup from her hands and gave it back to the waitress.

  ‘Hey, I need that!’ She needed something to pep her up for the afternoon list.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Caffeine is no good for the baby. You need sleep, not something that’s going to keep you awake.’

  ‘Ben —’

  ‘Go to bed, Katya,’ he ordered, placing his hand on her shoulder and priding himself on how steady his voice sounded when his
mind was full of images of her going to bed.

  And him joining her.

  Kissing her neck, stroking her back. Caressing her hip.

  ‘We have an afternoon list,’ Katya said, her voice husky as he lightly massaged the muscle that sloped from her neck to her shoulder. It felt so heavenly, somewhere between asexual and erotic, and she could feel her eyes closing in response, her body swaying towards the source of pleasure.

  ‘It will be fine, cara,’ he murmured.

  She looked done in, out on her feet. Why the hell hadn’t he noticed how tired she looked until now? Spending hours behind a mask every day was no excuse.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and leading her to their quarters. ‘I don’t want to see you in Theatre again today,’ he told her as he unlocked their door and pushed her gently inside.

  ‘Thanks, Ben,’ Katya murmured.

  He nodded then shut the door and got the hell away before he was tempted to go back and join her.

  Katya had a quick shower, doubting whether she’d be able to sleep with her skin still tingling, her shoulder still burning from his touch. She stepped into a towelling robe that had come with the room — the Lucia Clinic thought of everything — and pulled on a pair of panties.

  She gave her hair a quick rub with a luxuriously fluffy towel. The beauty of her fine, feathery locks was that they only took thirty seconds to dry off.

  Katya eyed the bed as she wandered out of the bathroom. It was exactly as they had left it that morning. Neat and tidy, the duvet smoothed of any lines. A bit like their relationship —straight and orderly.

  Not messy and passionate.

  The thought of lying on it without Ben was strange and yet it beckoned to her, her tired brain hopeful that, without a sexy male dominating it, she might just be able to sleep. She sat on the edge and lowered herself back, turning on her side immediately and tucking her knees up.