The Surgeon's One-Night Baby

by Charlotte Hawkes

  Whatever it was, something in him ached to be the one to take her pain away.

  Ridiculous.

  He was the last person to take anyone’s pain away. It was better to keep his distance.

  * * *

  She was going to be sick.

  Archie let her hand fall from the door for the third time in as many minutes, her legs threatening to collapse beneath her. Around six hours ago she’d still been somewhere across the Atlantic. And twelve hours before that she’d been to have a twenty-week ultrasound to determine that her baby was all right.

  Their baby.

  Hers and Kasper’s.

  She’d had months to get used to this but it had made little difference, it still felt utterly surreal to her. So how was it going to feel for Kaspar?

  Perhaps she should have thought this through better. Yesterday she’d only been grateful that her work and her life to date meant she had three years remaining on her visa which allowed her multiple visits to the States, for up to six months.

  Foolishly, she’d taken it as some kind of sign.

  The push she’d needed to go and find Kaspar. To tell him about their baby.

  Now Archie stopped, one hand reaching out to lean on the wall, the other hand running tenderly over the slight swelling in her abdomen. It was incredible. A miracle. At least to her. Nothing would ever make up for losing her first baby, Faith, at eighteen weeks gestation, and no baby could ever replace her, but in some ways this new tiny human growing inside her went some way to healing those still-raw wounds.

  She hovered outside the door, the small cabin bag and work laptop at her feet, trying to summon the courage to knock. It had to be the last thing he would want to hear. Might even prefer not to know. The Surgeon Prince of Persia a father? The press would have a field day.

  Nevertheless, deep down she knew she owed it to this baby, and to herself, to at least tell him. To let him make that decision for herself. Still, it was turning out to be a lot harder than she’d hoped it would be.

  The old Archie would probably have blurted it out, however awkwardly or untimely. The Archie of the last few years might have shamefully buried her head for as long as she could.

  But which Archie was she now? She was more confused than ever. Swinging wildly from the daredevil Archie of old, right over to the reticent woman of recent years, and then back again.

  The skydive, then that night with Kaspar when she’d stripped—stripped—to seduce him, emboldened in a way she hadn’t been for years. For weeks afterwards she’d strutted around feeling ten feet tall and even her friend, Katie, had been forced to admit Kaspar hadn’t been such a bad influence after all.

  When she’d discovered she was pregnant, it had been a moment of sheer joy and disbelief that her body had effortlessly achieved the one thing it had been struggling to do throughout her entire marriage to Joe. And then she’d been catapulted right back into the dark, cold prison of her mind.

  The fear of losing this baby the way she’d lost Faith overrode everything else. With it, the uncertainty, the confusion, the regression to the hesitant Archie of the previous five years. And so she’d spent the past few months bouncing between the two polar opposite versions of herself.

  It was how she’d had the confidence to fly halfway around the world to confront Kaspar, and yet now she was here she couldn’t bring herself to lift her arm and knock on that door. She could make that final move or she could turn around, head straight back to the airport and be on a plane, with him none the wiser. The most shocking part about it was that Archie had absolutely no idea which way she was going to jump.

  Who was she? Really?

  And then the decision was taken out of her hands. The door suddenly opened and he was striding out. Stopping dead the instant he saw her.

  ‘Archie.’

  ‘Kaspar.’

  There was a beat as his eyes seemed to take her in. Scanning her face, then dropping down. Another beat as they hovered around the evident swell of her belly.

  Her whole world pinpointed around him, her breath seeming to slow and then stop in her chest. Time had done little to diminish the impact he had on her. Maybe it had even amplified it. She had the oddest sensation of falling. Plummeting.

  The question was, How painful was the landing going to be?

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he managed at last. The unusually hoarse tone to his voice only made her nerves jangle all the more.

  Then he picked up her bags and was gone. Walking back into his office with as little surprise, as little emotion as if she’d been his next patient he’d been waiting to see.

  Still, it took her several long moments before she was able to follow him.

  She was barely through the door before he was speaking.

  ‘You’re pregnant.’

  His voice seemed palpably colder now. More forbidding. Or perhaps it was just her nerves. Behind her the door closed with a soft click. It might as well have been the clang of prison gates but somehow it offered her the strength she needed.

  ‘Clearly pregnant,’ he added.

  Had her hand wandered to the obvious swell of her abdomen before or after his observation? Lifting her head, Archie met his eyes, not allowing her voice to falter for a second. Though how she managed it, she would never know.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We used protection,’ he stated flatly.

  A statement but not a defence. As though he didn’t exactly disbelieve her. She was grateful for that much, at least. It allowed her to soften her voice somewhat.

  ‘Not that first time.’

  ‘So he or she really is mine?’

  It felt like a slap across her face, although she supposed it was a reasonable enough question. Still, she couldn’t seem to prise her jaws apart, answering him through gritted teeth.

  ‘Who else’s would it be, Kaspar? The invisible man’s? I’m not in the habit of picking up random men or sleeping around. Yes, it’s your baby. Our baby.’

  It was impossible to follow the flurry of emotions that passed across his face. But, then, he had always been the poster-boy for denial. Pretending that he was happy, that his family life was fine, to his friends, his school, the world, when her family had seen first-hand how broken he’d been inside. How he’d spent every school holiday with them, along with his nanny, Maggie, just to avoid being dragged into yet another of his parents’ twisted games against each other.

  ‘He or she,’ he bit out flatly.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Say he or say she. Don’t call the baby an it.’

  She frowned, confused.

  ‘I don’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl. I didn’t find out. I didn’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he growled, the unexpectedly menacing quality to his tone making her skin prickle. ‘This baby is not an it. Pick he or she, interchange them, or I’ll call her a she while you call him a he, for all I care. Just don’t ever use the term it again.’

  Fury swirled in his words, but it was the look of torment behind his eyes that really clutched at her, squeezing at her heart. A torment that made her wonder about the childhood she’d pieced together from things she remembered, things her father had said, things she’d read.

  ‘Okay.’ She dipped her head. ‘I’ll say he, you can say she.’

  He didn’t reply, but his lips curled in what she took to be a silent thank you.

  ‘So you’re...’

  ‘Twenty weeks,’ she cut in, barely able to help herself. Although he wouldn’t have any idea how significant that was to her.

  ‘You should have told me,’ Kaspar bit out, and she had to protect herself against the kick of emotion. The irrational fear that by talking about it she was somehow jinxing things.

  ‘Would you really have wanted to know?’

  ‘That has nothing to do wit
h it,’ he almost snarled. ‘You’ve had five months to tell me.’

  He hadn’t denied it. And even though she’d known the answer before she’d even asked the question, it still hurt.

  But she couldn’t let him see that. It took everything she had to keep her voice even.

  ‘I’m telling you now.’

  ‘That isn’t good enough.’

  ‘It will have to be.’ She jutted her chin out, trying not to let him intimidate her.

  He narrowed his eyes as if he could see straight through her. As if he knew there was something she was hiding.

  ‘Why not?’ he demanded abruptly.

  Archie flinched.

  ‘It’s...irrelevant.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a moment,’ Kaspar barked, folding his arms across his chest.

  She tried not to notice how it made his already wide shoulders seem all the bigger, his strong chest all the more unyielding. And she tried not to notice the long fingers that had done such...things to her. Over and over that night. That weekend.

  When they’d made a baby.

  What was she playing at? They were kids and this wasn’t a game. She owed him an explanation.

  ‘I didn’t tell you because I was scared. I was pregnant once before.’ She heard her voice crack but she pushed on, pretending it hadn’t. A part of her had known this subject would come up. That it was inevitable. She was ready for it. ‘Eighteen months ago. But I lost that baby at eighteen weeks.’

  She stopped abruptly, pain ripping through her. Lacerating her from the inside out. Dizzying and unforgiving.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.

  ‘Her name was Faith.’

  She didn’t even realise she’d spoken until she heard the words. The agony that had haunted her ever since with what ifs and if onlys. The self-recriminations. She’d thought she’d been mentally prepared. She’d been dealing with the pain every single day, and each day it had felt just that tiny, minuscule bit easier. But hearing the words aloud, for the first time since it had happened...nothing could have prepared her for that.

  She only realised he’d caught her from crumpling on the spot as she found herself in a seat she didn’t recall moving to, and Kaspar coming back into the room, a steaming plastic cup in hand.

  ‘Sweet tea.’ He thrust it at her. ‘Drink it. All of it.’

  She didn’t dare disobey.

  Bit by bit, she sipped at the cup until it was empty. And Kaspar just sat opposite her. Waiting. Wordlessly. While the minutes ticked by. As if he had nowhere else to be but right here. With her.

  Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them back. She shouldn’t read anything into that. It didn’t mean anything. She couldn’t afford to think it did.

  ‘I...needed to get past that point...the eighteen weeks. And then I thought that when I had my twenty-week scan, if it...’ What had they agreed, that she would call the baby he, and Kaspar would say she? ‘If he was okay, I would tell you. So...here I am.’

  She trailed off. Not quite sure how to articulate the storm that roiled around her entire body, constantly up-ending everything.

  His eyes never moved from her. Clear and unblinking.

  ‘So the scan was fine?’

  ‘Yes. But these things are always fine until...until they’re suddenly not.’

  It was all she could do to keep her voice even and sound calm. There was no point in letting the dark fear that lurked deep inside her take a hold. No point in imagining scenarios that might never happen. The doctors didn’t think there was anything they needed to worry about or do, so she had to trust them. They were the medical professionals. Not her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She frowned as Kaspar stalked around his desk, snatched up the phone and stabbed a couple of numbers on the pad.

  He didn’t answer her, too intent on the call.

  ‘Dr Jarvis, please, it’s Dr Athari.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Catherine? It’s Kaspar. I have a patient I need you to examine. It’s urgent. Archana Coates, twenty-nine-year-old, approximately twenty weeks pregnant.’

  Too shocked to speak, Archie listened as he described her in completely dispassionate terms. Like a third person. Like a patient.

  ‘She has a past history of spontaneous second-trimester abortion.’ Archie flinched. It was the same terminology the doctors had used around her and she’d never hated a medical term so much in her life. It sounded so wrong, as if she’d had any choice in the matter whatsoever. Kaspar continued, oblivious. ‘No, not a referral. It’s personal.’

  Within moments he had replaced the handset.

  ‘What...what are you doing?’

  ‘Catherine Jarvis is one of the best perinatologists in the world.’ He paused as Archie stared at him in confusion, then clarified. ‘Maternal-foetal specialist. She has a patient with her now but she’ll see you in half an hour.’

  ‘I don’t... No!’ Archie shook her head at the implications of what he was saying, the suggestion that the pregnancy wasn’t as low-risk as she’d believed hitting her altogether too hard. ‘I’ve had a scan. I’ve been checked. They know my history. If something was wrong, if it was going to happen again, they would have known.’

  ‘Shh,’ he soothed. ‘I’m not saying they’re wrong. I’m just... I want to be sure.’

  But the expression in his eyes didn’t exactly fit.

  ‘Is the loss of the baby...of Faith why your marriage fell apart?’

  She knew he was distracting her, but the very fact that he’d remembered her daughter’s name cut through everything else. It was more than Joe had done. He hadn’t even cared enough to want to name her.

  ‘Yes,’ she managed quietly. ‘And no.’

  ‘Meaning?’ There was a slight curl to his lip, as though he couldn’t help but sneer. As though he knew what kind a man Joe had been.

  But he didn’t know anything at all.

  ‘He got the job opportunity of a lifetime in Switzerland. I didn’t want to go with him.’

  ‘Why not? He was your husband.’

  ‘My life was in the UK, plus I’d just lost my baby, and I didn’t love him,’ she began hesitantly.

  ‘You married a man you didn’t love?’ His censure made her bristle.

  ‘I thought I loved him. I told him I loved him. But, with hindsight, I don’t know if I ever did or if I was more grateful to him. He was there after Dad died. I was falling apart and Joe looked after me. He was kind to me. He took care of me. He loved me. I thought I loved him, too.’

  ‘Enough to marry him?’ Kaspar didn’t even try to keep the scorn from his voice.

  ‘He was twelve years older than me. He was like a rock. Stable, emotionally secure, knew what he wanted, including a family. That all appealed to me. Now I know I was just trying to fill the void left by Dad’s death and Robbie going to Australia.’

  ‘It sounds like this bloke took advantage of you.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘At least, not like you’re thinking.’

  ‘He knew you were grieving and vulnerable and he seduced you into marriage by pretending to love you,’ Kaspar accused.

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

  Archie shifted on her seat, splaying her hands out as though that could somehow help her articulate the words that were in her head but which she couldn’t seem to get out.

  ‘I think it was. You were lost and grieving while he should have known better. I think when you finally see it for what it is, you’ll stop making excuses for him.’

  ‘I think the sooner you get your head out of your backside the sooner you’ll stop trying to tell me exactly what I do or don’t feel,’ Archie snapped suddenly, taking both herself and Kaspar by surprise. A welcome flash of the vibrant, no-nonsense side of herself.

  Still, she didn’t expect Kaspar to drop his head back and let out
a laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded coldly.

  ‘You are. Welcome back, Little Ant.’

  A small smile played on her lips, despite herself. He was right, and it felt good to see the re-emergence of her old feisty self.

  Every time she was around him, it seemed.

  Hastily, she bit her tongue before she could utter that particular nonsense aloud.

  ‘I’m sorry for judging. For criticising.’

  Kaspar’s tone was surprisingly tender. Even...nostalgic? It elicited another smile from her, albeit this time a wry one.

  ‘You and Robbie may have called me Little Ant, but Dad used to call me his Little Tardigrade.’

  The throaty laugh rippled through her, doing things to her it had no business doing. Rushing straight through her body and to her very core, where she was, shamefully, in danger of melting all over again.

  ‘I think I remember that. You always were little but hardy.’

  ‘Yet also, sometimes, more fragile than people thought,’ she heard herself replying, too late to clamp down on her words, to swallow them back.

  She’d never admitted that to anyone but her father before. Why on earth would she say it now? And to Kaspar, of all people.

  ‘I never realised.’ His face sharpened. Hard, angular lines that signified his disapproval. ‘I always thought you were such a tough little thing. So strong.’

  Archie took in his almost contemptuous expression. It left her feeling as though she’d let him down, let herself down, and she told herself that her heart wasn’t being squeezed, right there, in her splintering chest. She gritted her teeth.

  ‘Kaspar, I didn’t come here to talk about my ex-husband or my historical mistakes. I just felt I owed it to you to tell you I was expecting a baby, your baby, and I didn’t think it was something that I should do over the telephone.’

  ‘And then what? You expected me to fall on one knee and propose? To play happy families?’