From Heartache to Forever

by Caroline Anderson

  Passion, pregnancy, heartbreak...

  Can they find their happy-ever-after?

  Fresh out of broken relationships, trauma specialist Ryan McKenna and nurse Beth Costello’s passion-fueled fling was a welcome escape. But the shock of an unexpected pregnancy and the heartache of losing the baby they never knew they wanted was too much to bear. Now, working together again in Yoxburgh, where they first made love, can they finally get to know each other...and discover they’re meant to be together?

  Ryan didn’t have a huge number of pictures, but there were a few Beth remembered, including one of a wild, rugged landscape that had hung over his bed, and it made her body tingle to look at it.

  How many times had they made love on the bed beneath it? Dozens, every one of them memorable. She put it to one side and sorted through the others, the less contentious ones. Or less evocative, at least, of their past, the pre-Grace period before he’d gone away for the first time, when their lovemaking was smoking hot and nothing else was taken seriously.

  He’d made her laugh, made her gasp with ecstasy and weep with frustration, but always, always, he’d set her on fire. It had been the perfect antidote to Rick’s cheating and lying ways, and just what she’d needed. Intensely passionate, and yet light and frivolous—or it would have been if things hadn’t turned out the way they had, but the heat, the passion, was still there smoldering under the surface, and it was getting harder to ignore.

  Dear Reader,

  Well, this is book 101. Easy, you’d think, after all that practice? Apparently not, because there are only so many ways you can skin a rabbit, and I’m struggling to find issues that I haven’t already covered, often more than once. I know every story is different, but even so...

  So I decided to tackle an issue I’ve largely avoided over the years, because it’s such a sensitive and emotive subject. It’s also, though, a very real issue, and one which affects a surprising number of couples—the loss of a stillborn child. It was hard to write, and I sincerely hope I’ve done it justice.

  Ryan and Beth hardly knew each other when she became pregnant, and the loss of their baby wounded them both deeply, but their grief isolated them from each other. Now back working in the ED after two years apart, their attraction still strong, they need to find a way forward. Enter Tatty, a scruffy stray dog who steals Ryan’s heart and helps them find the way. She may have stolen the show a teensy bit, but I hope you fall under her spell the way Beth and Ryan did.

  With love,

  Caroline x

  From Heartache to Forever

  Caroline Anderson

  Books by Caroline Anderson

  Harlequin Medical Romance

  Hope Children’s Hospital

  One Night, One Unexpected Miracle

  Yoxburgh Park Hospital

  From Christmas to Eternity

  The Secret in His Heart

  Risk of a Lifetime

  Their Meant-to-Be Baby

  The Midwife’s Longed-For Baby

  Bound by Their Babies

  Their Own Little Miracle

  A Single Dad to Heal Her Heart

  Harlequin Romance

  The Valtieri Baby

  Snowed in with the Billionaire

  Best Friend to Wife and Mother?

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  Praise for Caroline Anderson

  “Written with flair, sensitivity and heart, Their Meant-to-Be Baby is a wonderfully compulsive tale of second chances, redemption and the power of love that I found absolutely impossible to put down!”

  —Goodreads

  “A sweet, romantic story. Very enjoyable.”

  —Goodreads on Best Friend to Wife and Mother?

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM MELTING THE TRAUMA DOC'S HEART BY ALISON ROBERTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘AH, BETH, JUST the person. I’ve got a favour to ask you.’

  Her heart sank. Again?

  ‘How did I know that was coming, right at the end of my shift?’

  She turned towards James with a wry smile and then everything ground to a halt, because the man standing beside the ED’s clinical lead was painfully, gut-wrenchingly familiar.

  His strangely piercing ice blue eyes locked on hers, his mouth opening as if to speak, but James was still talking, oblivious to the tension running between them.

  ‘Beth, this is Ryan McKenna, our new locum consultant. Ryan, this is—’

  ‘Hello, Beth.’

  Her name was a gentle murmur, his eyes softening as he took a step forward and gathered her up against his chest in a hug so warm, so welcome that it brought tears to her eyes.

  ‘Oh, Ry—’

  He let her go long before she was ready, stared down into her eyes and feathered a kiss on her cheek.

  ‘OK. So I’m guessing you two know each other already, or this is love at first sight,’ James said drily, and Ryan laughed a little off kilter, taking a step back and giving her some much-needed space to drag herself together.

  ‘Yeah, we know each other,’ Ryan said, his voice oddly gruff. ‘We—er—we worked together, before I went abroad. Best scrub nurse I’ve ever had the privilege of working with.’

  There was a whole world left unsaid, but James just nodded, still unaware of the turmoil going on under his nose.

  ‘Well, it’s good to know you got on—we rely on teamwork. Beth, I was going to ask you if you could be a star and give Ryan the once-over of the department and then take him for a coffee? They really need me in Resus, and I’m sure you’d like to catch up?’

  ‘What, now?’ she asked, feeling a flicker of something that could have been panic.

  ‘If you can spare the time. I’d be really grateful and they do need me.’

  She met Ryan’s eyes, one eyebrow raised a fraction. ‘Are you OK with this?’ he murmured.

  As if James had left her with a choice...

  ‘It’s fine, Ry. I don’t have to be anywhere,’ she said quietly, surrendering to the inevitable, and she turned back to James. ‘Go. You’re right, they could really use you. Sam’s tearing his hair out and Livvy’s rushed off her feet. We’ll be fine.’

  He nodded, his face relieved. ‘Thanks, Beth. You’re a star. And while you’re at it, if you could convince him to apply for the permanent post, you’ll have my undying gratitude.’

  Her heart thudded, the flicker threatening to turn into a full-on panic attack.

  ‘I thought the application window was closed?’

  ‘It’s been extended. So—if you could twist his arm?’

  He was smiling, but his meaning was clear, and they were desperate for another consultant, but simply seeing Ryan again had sent her emotions into freefall and her hard-won status quo felt suddenly threatened. A locum post was one thing, but she didn’t know if she could cope with him here on a permanent basis, not when she was finally putting her life and her heart back together after the last two agonising years.

  Not that it, or she,
would ever be the same again...

  Anyway, it wasn’t relevant, because he was committed to Medicine For All, the aid organisation he’d been working with for the past two years, and she knew how strongly he felt about that. He’d walked away from Katie because she didn’t understand, so there was no way he’d be looking for a permanent job and he obviously hadn’t been clear enough with James.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ she said, which wasn’t a yes but it was the best she could do, because she was oddly torn between wanting to run away and wanting to talk to him, to find out how he was.

  Because something had changed him, she could see that at a glance. He was thinner, his face slightly drawn, shadows lurking in the back of his eyes. The same shadows that lurked in hers after all that had happened between them? Or other shadows, from the things he’d seen in those two years? Both, probably.

  ‘Sure?’ James asked, maybe finally picking up on the tension running between them, and she nodded.

  ‘I’m sure. Go. Leave it to me.’

  ‘Thank you. I know you’ll do your best. I’ll see you on Monday, Ryan. I’m really pleased you’ve agreed to join us.’

  ‘So am I. I’ll look forward to working with you.’

  They shook hands and she watched James go, then Ryan turned back to her with a wry smile that touched her heart.

  ‘Forget the guided tour. Is there somewhere quiet we can go and get a coffee?’

  She felt a wave of relief and nodded. ‘Yes. There’s a café that opens onto the park. We can sit outside.’

  The café was busy, but they found a little bistro table bathed in April sunshine and tucked out of the way so they could talk without being overheard, and he settled opposite her and met her eyes, his searching.

  ‘So, how are you?’

  Her heart thumped. ‘Oh—you know.’ She tried to smile. ‘Getting there, bit by bit. You?’

  That wry, sad smile again, flickering for an instant and then gone. ‘I’m OK.’

  She wasn’t sure she believed him, but there was something else...

  ‘So, how come you’re here, in Yoxburgh? Is that deliberate?’ she asked, needing to know if he’d sought her out or just stumbled on her by accident, but he nodded slowly.

  ‘Yoxburgh? Yes, sort of. I needed a job, there was one here, and I know it’s a lovely place. But I didn’t know you were here, if that’s what you’re asking, not until I saw you.’

  ‘Would you have applied if you’d known?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not without talking to you first to see if you were OK with it.’

  ‘Why? If you needed a job—’

  ‘There are plenty of jobs.’

  ‘But not here.’

  ‘No. Not here, and I wanted to be here, but now—well, that depends.’

  Her heart hiccupped. ‘On?’

  ‘You, of course. If you’re working in the ED, we’ll probably be working together. I’m OK with that, we worked well together before, but us—you and me—that’s different. Much more complicated, and the last thing I want is to make things difficult for you, so I need to know if you’re going to be OK with me being underfoot all the time.’

  Was she?

  ‘Just so long as you don’t expect to pick up where we left off. Well, not that, obviously, but—you know. Before...’

  He frowned, his eyes raw. ‘I don’t expect anything, Beth. The way we left things, I’ve got no right to expect anything. For all I know you might be back with Rick.’

  ‘Rick?’ It startled a laugh out of her because after everything that had happened Rick was so far off her radar it was almost funny. ‘No way. He was a lying cheat, why would I be back with him, any more than you’d be back with Katie?’

  He gave a startled laugh. ‘OK, I can see that, but—someone?’

  ‘No. It’s just me, and I’m happy that way. You?’

  He laughed again. ‘Me? I haven’t had time to breathe, never mind get involved with anyone. Anyway, people get expectations and then it all gets messy.’

  ‘Not everyone’s like Katie.’

  ‘No. They’re not.’ He studied her, his eyes stroking tenderly over her face. She could almost feel their touch, but then he closed them and shook his head with a little laugh. ‘I can’t believe you’re in the ED. What brought that on? I thought Theatre was your life.’

  ‘You can talk. I thought surgery was your life.’

  He shrugged. ‘People change. I was facing a lifetime of increasing specialisation, and I didn’t want to spend every day doing the same thing over and over again until I’d perfected it. I wanted a change, and MFA provided me with that, and over the course of my time with them I realised I like trauma work. I like the variety, the pace, but you...’

  ‘I wanted a change, too.’ Needed a change, because everywhere she’d looked there’d been reminders of what she’d lost, and she’d found working in Theatre with anyone but him just plain wrong. ‘So, when did you get back?’

  ‘Two weeks ago. I’ve been back a few times on leave, picked up a bit of locum work here and there to refill the coffers and keep my registration up to date, but this time it’s for good.’

  For good?

  She felt her eyes widen, and her heart thumped. ‘Really?’

  His smile was sad. ‘Yes, really. I’ve seen enough horror, lost some good friends, seen way too many dead chil—’

  She flinched, and he gave a quiet groan.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t...’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she lied. ‘And I can only begin to imagine what it must have been like. So, was it after you lost your friends you decided to come back?’

  He gave a wry laugh. ‘No. Oddly, that was when I decided to stay on longer, to carry on the work they were doing because it was so necessary, but there’ll always be others waiting to take my place and it was time to come home because I’m just as needed here in many ways. My grandparents are frail and my mother’s shouldering the whole burden on her own, and it just seemed like it was time. Time to move on with my life, to get back to the day job, as it were. Back to the future.’

  With her?

  He’d said it was time to move on with his life, but he was the one who didn’t do relationships. Not after Katie had tried to get pregnant to stop him going away.

  But what if he’d changed now, got MFA out of his system and was ready to settle down? It sounded like it, and maybe he wanted to try again with her? Maybe a bit more seriously this time—although it could hardly have been more serious than the way it had turned out. But if he did?

  She wasn’t sure she was ready for that, not yet. She was still working through life day by day, hour by hour, step by step. She stared down into her coffee, stirring the froth mindlessly.

  ‘So that’s me,’ he murmured. ‘How about you? Are you happy here, in Yoxburgh?’

  Happy? She could hardly remember what that felt like.

  ‘As happy as I can be anywhere,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s a lovely place, and that weekend we spent here—it was really special, the walks, the feel of the sea air—we said then what an amazing place it would be to live, and then a job came up here and I thought, why not? I was sick of working in an inner city, the noise and the dirt and the chaos, and I wanted to get away from all the reminders. I just needed peace.’

  Peace to heal, to reconcile herself, to learn to live again, and where better than here, where it all began—

  She sucked in a breath and looked up again. ‘So how come you applied for the locum job?’

  He shrugged. ‘Same reason, I guess. I loved it here, the peace, the tranquillity of the coast and the countryside, and I needed that, after all I’ve seen. And there were the memories. I know we were only here for a weekend, but it was hugely significant.’

  He looked away, his brow creased in a thoughtful frown, then he looked back and met her eyes. ‘If I
’d known you were pregnant, Beth, I wouldn’t have gone away—not then, at least. I would have found a way out of it, delayed it or something. Not that it would have changed anything, but at least I could have been there for you. And I did try when I knew, but you didn’t seem to want me there, and I couldn’t really do anything anyway, nothing constructive, so I left and I tried to airbrush you out of my life, out of my thoughts, but I couldn’t. I realised that, the moment I got back when all I could think about was seeing you again, making sure you were all right.’

  He’d tried to airbrush her out of his thoughts? And failed? Well, that made two of them. Even so...

  ‘Why didn’t you act on it? You’ve been back two weeks and you haven’t contacted me.’

  ‘You’ve changed your phone number.’

  She felt a twinge of guilt. ‘I know. I’m sorry, I suppose I should have told you. But you could have found me if you’d really wanted to. You know enough people.’

  He nodded. ‘You’re right, and I was going to as soon as I knew what I was doing, where I was going to be, but whatever, I’ve found you now, I’m here, I’m back for good, and at least I know you’re all right. Well, as all right as you can be, I guess.’

  Their eyes locked, his heavy with understanding, and she felt her heart quiver.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said, the admission wrung from her without her consent, and he smiled sadly.

  ‘I’ve missed you, too. I didn’t realise how much, until I saw you again. All that airbrushing just didn’t work.’

  Her eyes welled, and she blinked the tears away.

  ‘Ry, I’m not the person I was. I’ve changed.’

  ‘I’m sure you have. So have I. Don’t worry, I don’t expect anything, Beth, but it is good to see you again and I’m so sorry I let you down. I wish I could undo it.’

  She nodded, looking away from those all-seeing eyes, turning her attention back to the froth on her coffee. She poked the last bit of froth with the spoon, then looked up again.

  ‘So if you really are done with MFA, are you going for the permanent post? James was groaning the other day about the calibre of the applicants so they’ve obviously had to extend the closing date, and it sounds like he wants you to apply.’