Midwife's Longed-for Baby & the Prince's Cinderella Bride & Bride for the Single Dad (9781488022142)
Page 17
Jeez. He pressed his hand to his mouth, holding in the hurt, the rage, the overwhelming disappointment. The betrayal. And then he heard her call him.
He didn’t want to answer. He’d promised they’d talk, promised they wouldn’t let this destroy them again. Kick it into the long grass, she’d said, but there it was again, just when he’d burned his boats and taken the job, and he didn’t know what to say to her because he didn’t know if it was all a lie.
His heart in his mouth, he stood up and walked out of the bedroom.
‘Where are you?’ he asked, and followed the sound of her voice to the little room they’d never quite dared to call the nursery.
She was sitting at her desk, the test wand in her hand, and as he went in she turned her head and looked up at him and her face was streaked with tears.
‘Why now?’ he asked quietly. ‘Just when everything was looking promising—why now, Liv? I thought we weren’t going to do this?’ he said, trying to keep a lid on his hurt, his anger. ‘Dammit, you promised me we wouldn’t do this!’
Her face froze, and she dropped the wand and stared at him. ‘Nick—’
‘No. I can’t cope with it any more. I told you that, I warned you—’
He turned on his heel and walked out, and he was halfway down the stairs when something hit him on the head.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she sobbed. ‘You can’t cope with it when I’m not pregnant, and now, for God’s sake, you can’t cope with it when I am! What kind of a person are you?’
He slowed to a halt and turned and looked up at her. His heart was climbing out of his chest, his mouth was dry, and…
‘I don’t understand,’ he said numbly. ‘You can’t be. I warned you my semen analysis was rubbish, we knew this wasn’t going to happen—’
‘No—no, Nick, you’re wrong,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Look at it! Look at the wand!’
He glanced down and saw it lying on the hall floor. His hand trembling, he bent and picked it up, and read the word in the little window.
Pregnant
He stared at it blindly, until the word blurred in front of his eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’
She came slowly down the stairs and sat just above him on the second step. ‘I’m pregnant—we’re having a baby, Nick. We’re having a baby—’
Her voice cracked, and he looked up from the wand and met her eyes. ‘How?’
She laughed then, the sound music to his ears. ‘If you don’t know that by now, Nick, you’re really in the wrong job.’
He sat down next to her, his heart still pounding, and put his arm round her. ‘But—why now and not then?’
She shrugged.
‘Think about it. I was too thin, your diet was appalling, you were possibly drinking too much, having tons of coffee, not exercising, I was running every chance I had, we only made love when the techie runes told us to—and now we’re healthy, we’re relaxed, and we’re making love every chance we have. It’s not rocket science.’
She was pregnant. He felt the smile first, and then his eyes prickled and her face blurred, so he shut them and pulled her into his arms and held her, pressing his cheek against her hair.
‘I thought you’d lied to me. I thought you didn’t love me, you just wanted me back so you could keep on trying. I never dreamt…’ He broke off to kiss her, then cupped her face in his hands and stared down into her eyes. ‘I love you,’ he said raggedly. ‘I love you so, so much, and I can’t believe it’s finally happened for us.’
Her hand came up and stroked his cheek, wiping away the tears. ‘Nor can I. Now if we could only hear about the job—’
‘I have.’
Her mouth opened and she looked up at him, her eyes hopeful and fearful at the same time. ‘And?’
‘I got it. I got the job,’ he told her, and she put her hand over her mouth and let out a sobbing laugh.
‘Really? You got it? We can stay here in Yoxburgh, in this house, near all our friends, take our baby to the park…?’
‘Yes. We can stay here. We sort of have to. I promised Ben we would.’
‘Oh, Nick, that’s amazing!’ She flung her arms around him and hugged him so hard his ribs crunched.
‘Ouch.’ He laughed, and eased her away. ‘I’m glad you’re pleased. We can celebrate that later. Right now I’m busy dealing with the fact that we’re going to have a baby.’
Her eyes were soft, almost luminous, and her smile lit him up from the inside out.
‘I know. I might have to share your study.’
‘You might—if you have time for that when you’re a mum. I still can’t quite believe it’s real.’
‘I can’t believe you’ve got the job, either. It’s like we’ve reset the clock on our lives and gone back to where it all went wrong and put it right, and this is our reward.’
‘Oh, Liv.’ He hugged her again, then scrubbed his hands over his face and sniffed hard. ‘I’m a mess.’
‘You’re a lovely mess. I was a very unlovely mess earlier, because I’d managed to convince myself that you hadn’t got the job, and there we were pregnant and with nowhere to go and no visible means of support. It wasn’t a good moment.’
‘I’ll bet. Poor you. How are you feeling now?’
‘All right. I’m fine so long as I eat chocolate in industrial quantities,’ she said, and he laughed again and hugged her.
‘I’ll add it to my regular internet shop,’ he said drily, and then got to his feet and pulled her up. ‘Come on, let’s go and tell Bert and Gwen. Their grandchildren live hundreds of miles away, and I reckon they’ll love having a baby next door.’
‘Can you bear it?’
‘What, them? They’re fine, Liv.’
‘Bert thinks you saved his life.’
‘Well, he might be right. We’ll let him think it. If he feels he came that close, he might let me take over the hedge cutting.’
She started to laugh, and once she’d started she couldn’t stop, so he turned her into his arms and they leant on each other and laughed until their sides ached.
‘Better now?’ he asked eventually, and she nodded.
‘Never better than this. The job, the baby, you back in my life for keeps—what more could a woman want?’
‘Diamonds?’
‘No. Cold, hard—and they don’t hug you. I wouldn’t swap your hugs for anything. Come on.’
She took his hand and stood up, only instead of heading out of the door towards Bert and Gwen, she turned towards the stairs.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked, and she just smiled.
‘Up here. We’ve got a nursery to plan…’
EPILOGUE
NICK CLOSED THE door behind the midwife and went back into the family room, where Liv was curled up on the sofa in her towelling robe with the baby asleep in her arms.
‘Cup of tea?’ he asked, but she shook her head.
‘I’m going to drown if I drink any more tea. Come and sit here and admire your daughter.’
She shifted her feet out of the way, then plonked them back on his lap as he sat down.
‘Happy?’ she asked him, and he gave a tired laugh.
‘Yes, my darling, I’m very happy. A teeny bit stressed, but I might have known you’d want to be different.’
‘I didn’t plan a home birth. She was just in a hurry.’
‘And I was in a clinic. I only got here by the skin of my teeth. I’m an obstetrician, for goodness sake, and I didn’t even realise you were going into labour.’
‘I’m a midwife. It’s all I deal with, and I didn’t recognise the signs. We’re both rubbish.’
‘No, we’re not. We’re amazing. Look at her. How could two rubbish people create anything as amazing as that?’
‘Want a cuddle?’
He reached over and took the baby from her, staring down into her dainty, screwed up little face with its tiny button nose and rosebud lips. ‘She’s so perfect—such a miracle.’ He looked up and met Liv’s eyes and tried to smile, but it was too hard so he gave up.
‘Have I told you lately how much I love you?’
‘Only a million or so times.’ She sat up with a little wince and put her arms around him and kissed him. ‘But don’t stop. I’ll never get tired of hearing it.’
‘I love you,’ he said softly, and then propped his feet up on the coffee table, right over the tiny mark that he’d wiped clean, and rested his head back against the sofa and smiled at her.
Life had never felt so good…
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781488020728
The Midwife’s Longed-For Baby
Copyright © 2017 by Caroline Anderson
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, M3B 3K9 Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Operation Marriage…
Prince Quinton Corlow’s life was turned upside down the day his divorce was filed and his military papers were executed. Seven years later, the embittered soldier returns, only to walk straight back into his ex-wife’s life!
But when Quinn discovers he’s still married to the one woman who could claim his heart, he realizes he must tackle the past for the future he wants…the future Anais wants, too. But can he convince his Cinderella bride to fight for their love?
“We are divorced.”
“Until I put my name on these documents, we’re still married.” Quinn dropped them onto the coffee table and turned to face Anais, ignoring the hitch in his chest that came from her words. “Marrying you wasn’t the wrong decision. Maybe I failed at being a husband in every regard, but marrying you wasn’t wrong. You feel it, too, or you and I would not have ended up on the floor together within seconds of being alone in a room. You still want me.”
“Chemistry. As I said. And you said that was a goodbye or did you forget that, too?”
“We have chemistry and a legally binding marriage. Unless you want to take it to court and let them decide.” He couldn’t focus on the goodbye bit. He’d said it at the time more from anger than because he’d thought it through.
“What could you possibly say in court to make people believe this is a real marriage?”
So quiet he could barely hear himself over his own pounding heart, Quinn answered, “I’d say I still love you.”
Dear Reader,
I am fascinated by the concept of royalty, even if it also kind of horrifies me (I’m American, sorry). I love the drama, the history, the pageantry…and kind of hate myself for it.
This probably has something to do with why my royalty stories always end up involving duty versus desire concepts. It’s my duty as an American to see the world as “everyone is created equal”—and I do—but I also desire the fairy tale. What can you do?
This book was probably one of the hardest I’ve written because I had to put it down in the middle to write a different book, then go back to this one…then pretty much rewrite it. A couple of times. But sometimes characters won’t let you go, and I couldn’t put Quinn and Anais away without finishing their story.
Actually, even after finishing, I’m having a hard time letting go. Quinn’s still talking to me louder than my new hero. And let me say, even though I know it makes me sound insane, I’m sort of hoping he moves out of my head and into the next reader’s head soon so Gabriel (my new hero) has a chance. If Quinn shows up on your mental doorstep, good luck! He’s house-trained, but a bit of a handful…
xo
Amalie
AmalieBerlin.com/Contact
Facebook.com/AuthorAmalie
THE PRINCE’S CINDERELLA BRIDE
Amalie Berlin
Books by Amalie Berlin
Harlequin Medical Romance
Hot Latin Docs
Dante’s Shock Proposal
Desert Prince Docs
Challenging the Doctor Sheikh
The Hollywood Hills Clinic
Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy
Return of Dr. Irresistible
Breaking Her No-Dating Rule
Surgeons, Rivals…Lovers
Falling for Her Reluctant Sheikh
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Hina Tabassum: Your enthusiasm for my books is something I return to on hard days. Thank you for that. And for your smart reviews. Always a good day when one pops up!
Laura McCallen: Thank you for two years of hard work, dedication and enthusiasm. You will be missed.
Praise for Amalie Berlin
“Amalie Berlin has proved she’s one of the best medical authors of today, and her stories will forever have a place on my reading shelf!”
—Contemporary Romance Reviews on Return of Dr. Irresistible
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
&nb
sp; EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS A strange sort of medical facility, but the changes made to Almsford Castle since ex-Princess Anais Corlow’s last visit made it seem almost like a new place. Or at least like an alternate version of reality that she could pretend she’d never been to, and never run away from…
Sometimes for several seconds at a time.
Dr. Anna Kincaid—as she was now known—checked her watch. Twenty minutes left in her lunch hour, right on schedule. She climbed onto the gym’s treadmill closest to the exit. She could run for fifteen minutes, shower like lightning, and be back in time for her first patient of the afternoon, same as yesterday.
As soon as she got the belt moving, she increased the speed until she had to push herself to keep up. Not a sensible way to exercise but, no matter how determined she was to remain in the new job that allowed her to stay in Corrachlean with her mother and the quiet life they’d built, every minute she was at Almsford she felt the need to run. It built over the day, faster when she wasn’t busy helping patients than when she sat alone in her office with just her memories.
Anais had more or less died the moment she’d left Prince Charming, Quinton Corlow, second son of Corrachlean. Without her husband, she’d had no title—something she’d never cared to have anyway—but she’d also lost her country, her home, for the last seven years.
Almsford Rehabilitation Center now belonged to Corrachlean’s soldiers, people who wanted her there. People who welcomed her, maybe in even greater proportion to how unwelcome she’d been the last time around. The people made it possible for her to set foot in the grounds. The physical changes to the building made it possible for her to stay, but running in one place kept her from running away.