He’d messed up their friendship, so he worked and he tried not to think about her.
He was currently on his fourth case for the day. The patient under his hands was an obese diabetic. All the signs said his triple bypass should be a nightmare, but every one of his vital signs was great. Every monitor showed normal.
The surgical team was chatting between themselves but they let him be. They knew Jake was normally silent. He had the reputation of being aloof.
That was the way he liked it-wasn’t it?
Only…it meant there was time to think, and right now thinking was the one thing Jake didn’t know how to handle.
She wasn’t quite sure when she started thinking it, but when she did she couldn’t get it out of her head.
It started with a vague sense of unease-a wondering about the sleepiness. Why was she so tired? And then she thought…
And then she tried not to think. Only she couldn’t.
It was only that she was thinking about Jake too much, she told herself, but it had her trying to remember.
Her files had been burned along with everything else. The important dates were gone and her memory had holes in it.
Many of the people from the ridge were suffering like this, she knew. Trauma had left gaps in their collective pasts. Post-traumatic stress disorder?
But giving a name to what was happening wasn’t helping. Not when something else might be happening. Or might have happened.
She could phone Susie, she thought, only that’d give voice to her fears.
‘Susie, when did I have my contraceptive implant put in? Am I overdue for renewal?’
She looked up the brand of her implant on the Web-cautiously-and found what she didn’t want to read.
Effective pregnancy prevention for three years. After that, marked decreasing efficacy. Replacement must be undertaken within the three-year window.
Decreasing efficacy…
Surely she can’t have been due to change. Surely she couldn’t be that dumb.
Could she?
She wasn’t ringing Susie, she decided. The problem with having a friend as her doctor was that her doctor was also her friend. She’d never be allowed to get away with a simple query. Like, when was…when am I due to change.
So wait.
She woke three weeks after Jake had left and nothing had happened-again. She showered and dressed and she felt too nauseous to face breakfast. She took Rusty and Itsy for a walk into town. She came home and she felt like a sleep again. Only first she’d just check out the package she’d brought from the local pharmacy.
She looked.
A thin blue line.
She stared at it for maybe ten minutes. It didn’t change.
She tried the second packet.
Another blue line.
Shock held her motionless. Strangely, though, she wasn’t devastated. She couldn’t be. Even though she was stunned, there was a tiny part of her that admitted…joy? Dumb or what, but there it was.
Maybe subconsciously she’d been expecting it. The lethargy that had enveloped her for the past few weeks almost seemed to have prepared her.
She went out onto the front porch of her shoebox and stared at the distant hills.
She was pregnant.
She was twenty-nine. She had a great career-slightly stalled at the moment but ready to resume any time she wanted. She had heaps of insurance money.
She could have a baby.
She was having a baby.
Like Micki.
Her sister’s face was suddenly before her, laughing, joyful. ‘Tori, feel. He’s kicking. My baby’s kicking.’
Her hand went to her tummy and pressed. My baby.
And with the thought came a surge of joy so great it threatened to make her head explode.
‘We’re having a baby,’ she told the dogs, trying the words out to see how they sounded.
After so much destruction… Life.
She was carrying Jake’s baby.
‘I’m going to have to tell him,’ she told the dogs.
To not tell him was unthinkable.
Would he be angry? She deserved his anger. She’d promised him she was safe.
‘It’s early days, though.’ She was talking out loud, thinking out loud. ‘Something could happen.’
No. Both hands were on her tummy now, as if somehow she could protect it.
Nothing would happen to this baby.
‘So tell him,’ she whispered. ‘Phone him tonight.’
She couldn’t. She wasn’t brave enough. He’d think she’d lied to him. He’d think…
‘I have to explain,’ she whispered, and then the phone rang.
‘Doc Nicholls? We heard you were at a bit of a loose end. How do you feel about a flying trip to the States?’
CHAPTER NINE
T HE last case had been complex and he’d welcomed it. Finally, here was medicine that held his full attention.
Jeff Holden was someone he’d worked with before. Jeff had needed surgery as a child and had recurring adhesions. Jake had recognised him as he’d come in.
Jeff had been allocated to one of his more junior anaesthetists, but almost to his surprise he’d found himself changing the list. Taking time to talk to him before he put him under.
‘Do you watch baseball?’
‘No.’
‘Do you watch football, then?’ he’d asked.
To his surprise Jeff did, and so did the nurse assisting, and instead of a tense few moments before theatre there’d been a heated discussion about Jeff’s team-and while he worked he figured he ought to learn more about a sport he only took a fleeting interest in.
Now the operation was over-successfully, he thought, though with adhesions you could never be sure-and he thought maybe he could hang around until Jeff was properly awake. This surgeon was known as being curt. Jake had watched the operation. He knew the outcome and maybe he could answer questions.
Thanks to Tori he was changing, he decided, as he reversed the anaesthetic and headed out into the recovery area. And as if the thought had conjured her…Tori was there.
For a moment he thought he was dreaming. He wasn’t. She was in full surgical garb-she must, to be allowed into this area. She had green gown, green cap, green bootees.
Green eyes.
Tori.
She was chatting to a patient at the end of the recovery queue-a woman wide-awake and ready for an orderly to take her back to the ward.
Both of them were smiling.
She looked up and saw him and she stopped smiling. She said something to the woman in the bed, and she turned to face him.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I believe you owe me three and a half minutes, Dr. Hunter. I’m here to collect.’
Shock held him immobile for all of three seconds. Now, though… He was across the room before he knew it, and he meant to take her hands, or he thought he meant to take her hands, but instead she was folded against him in a hold that felt good, felt right, felt wonderful. Her surgical cap was under his chin. He wanted to feel her curls, but they were in a hospital ward and she was gowned, almost a professional, and it seemed every one of his colleagues had suddenly found an excuse to be here.
How long had she been here? Had his colleagues known? Why hadn’t someone told him?
‘She wouldn’t let us.’ Brad, the oldest of the orderlies, answered his question before he asked. ‘She came to reception a couple of hours ago looking for you. Marie gowned her and brought her in here.’
‘I was just as happy in the waiting room,’ Tori said, tugging away so she was at arm’s length, and grinning happily up at him with that smile that had knocked him sideways a month ago and was still knocking him sideways now. ‘But Marie asked me where I was from and we got talking and next thing I was in here. It’s been lovely, watching everyone wake up, procedure over.’
‘She’s been talking to the Holloways,’ Brad said, his gaze on Tori openly speculative. ‘She’s calmed them right down.’
/>
The Holloways?
Jodi Holloway was seventeen with a diagnosis of kidney cancer. The parents had been close to hysterics since the diagnosis, but the surgery, performed by Central’s most skilled urologist, had gone well.
‘You know our Jim,’ Brad said ruefully, still seeming to sense what he was thinking. ‘If the great man says one more word than he must, it’ll kill him. He told the Holloways there’d been a complete excision and the recurrence rate was on the outer edge of the normal curve, and then he went off to find his dinner. Only of course we had Jodie looking like death after anaesthesia and Mr. Holloway staring after Jim like he’d never heard a word and Mrs Holloway threatening to have hysterics. And here’s your Tori, moving in like she’s our own personal counsellor only better, saying, No, it’s fantastic news, and drawing them a normal curve and explaining probability and saying, Wow, if Jodi’s outside normal limits for recurrence, then there’s only this tiny chance it’ll come back, it’s the best news. And by the time Jodie woke up she had both parents smiling. So if you don’t keep her we will,’ Brad said, grinning, and Jake realised everyone was grinning-practically the whole ward.
What was she doing here?
‘Two and a half minutes now,’ she said softly, for only them to hear. ‘We need to talk.’
‘I’m almost finished.’
‘So you should be,’ Brad said darkly. ‘You started at six this morning and it’s almost midnight. Take him home,’ he told Tori. ‘And he’s not supposed to be on call tomorrow so you can keep him ’ til Monday.’
‘I won’t keep him,’ Tori said, sounding suddenly strained. ‘I have a hotel,’ she said to Jake. ‘I don’t want to intrude.’
‘You’re not intruding,’ Jake said, feeling more and more as though his world had just lit up again. He didn’t know why she was here but he was pleased to see her on all sorts of levels. ‘Give me a minute to finish up here and we’ll go find somewhere to eat.’
‘At this hour?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Will anywhere be open?’
‘Hey, this isn’t Combadeen,’ he said, grinning. ‘I don’t know why you’ve come, but welcome to Manhattan.’
She felt as if she was here under false pretences. He was acting as though he was really pleased to see her. She should just blurt it out now, she thought, but she had to wait until he’d spoken to the family of the guy he’d just been working on, and he’d checked his patient was fully awake and could take in what he was saying. So she watched and waited, calm on the outside. She was anything but calm on the inside.
But finally he was finished. He filled in his paperwork, they both got rid of their gowns and, at last, he was ushering her out through the hospital entrance.
He’d taken her arm as if he was genuinely pleased to see her-as though she was a favourite friend dropping in unexpectedly.
‘You look great,’ he said, and she smiled, but absently. She’d put all sorts of effort into her appearance but now she was too nervous to think about it. How to tell him?
‘Why are you here?’ he asked, and at least that was easy.
‘After the wildfires we have lots of animals that can’t go back to the wild. Zoos are offering them homes. I was asked if I’d come with a consignment of two koalas and four wombats.’
‘To Manhattan?’
‘Close enough.’
‘Close enough to drop in for a visit,’ he said and tugged her closer. ‘So where are the dogs?’
‘At the lodge. Rob’s nursing a broken heart. He’s a great puppy sitter. But, Jake…I needed to talk to you. I was trying to phone you. But then they asked me to come with the animals. There’s something…’
They were in the crowded entrance to Emergency. People were bustling past them, intent, urgent. An ambulance was pulling up; people were spilling out. Life was happening all around them but Tori’s life was centred right here, on this moment, and it could wait no longer.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, loud enough for a guy pushing a wheelchair towards the entrance to grin and say, ‘Lovely news, dear. Come back in a few months and see how smooth I can push a gurney.’
Tori flushed from the toes up.
Jake stopped. They both stopped.
She knew what he’d say. She braced, waiting. No, she thought, wildly, she didn’t know what he’d say; for there were two alternatives.
He could say, ‘You told me you were safe.’
Or he could say, ‘Whose is it?’ Or, ‘How do I know it’s mine?’
She’d been trying to figure out answers to both, trying to force herself not to react. It was she who’d made the mistake. He was allowed to be angry.
But now… The silence was stretching out and she thought, Which, which…
‘Hey, it’s okay,’ he said finally, strongly, catching her hands in his. ‘Tori, don’t look like that. We can cope with this. But you will have to move here.’
She blinked. This was so much what she hadn’t expected. Simple acceptance.
You will have to move here… She could ignore that, she thought. That was an aside. What mattered most was that he knew. She’d told him.
‘I thought I was safe,’ she started.
‘So did I. I guess we were both wrong.’
‘No, but I told you… I thought…’
‘And I accepted your assurance because I wanted you,’he said, and his hands were firm and sure, imparting strength and reassurance. ‘Tori, I know you well enough to accept you’d never lie about something so important. But hey, we’re both medical. We both know the only true contraceptive is a brick wall. So where do we go from here?’
‘I don’t know,’ she managed, shocked almost beyond speech. She pulled away a little and stared up at him, searching for anger. She saw shock, she thought, but no anger at all. Not even revulsion. Just a man taking in important news and trying to deal with it as best he could. A man concerned for her. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, awed.
‘For making you pregnant?’ His mouth quirked at the corners and she thought, He’s laughing. The concept of laughter right now was so ludicrous it was…ludicrous.
Maybe she wouldn’t mind a bit more emotion, she thought. Was she reaching for the stars to want joy?
‘I meant, thank you for not yelling,’ she said, thinking it wasn’t enough.
‘Why would I yell?’
‘Because I made a mistake. And…and for not asking me who the father is.’
There was a pause at that. ‘I have too great a respect for self-preservation for that,’he said finally, grave again. ‘I don’t want to be kicked into the middle of next week.’
‘I don’t think I could kick you that far.’
‘You’d be entitled to. Come to dinner. It’s close.’
They didn’t talk again until he ushered her into a late-night diner, where a guy called Louis greeted him by name and ushered them into an alcove he obviously used a lot.
‘Burger and fries for me,’ Jake said. ‘Louis does the best. Would you like some, too?’
‘No!’
‘Dry toast?’ Jake tried, sympathetically, and Tori screwed up her nose again and so did Louis, his eyes alight with interest.
‘How about hot cakes with blueberries,’ Louis said encouragingly. ‘A nice short stack, guaranteed not to overwhelm a lady. And maybe a glass of wine?’
‘Maybe hotcakes and tea,’ Tori said gratefully, and Louis beamed and disappeared and Tori was left with Jake and his nice, sensible reaction.
She’d sweated over this moment for three weeks now. Tried to figure what to say. Now it had been said. She’d done what she’d come to do.
She didn’t even need to stop and have hotcakes, she thought suddenly. She could go home. Only she wasn’t going home. Not now. Not yet. She was sitting in a late-night diner with Jake, about to have hotcakes while he assimilated fatherhood into his life plan.
Sensibly.
Anger was rising again. Unreasonable? Maybe.
She wanted joy.
‘How…�
�� he ventured at last.
‘I had a contraceptive implant.’ She’d rehearsed this question. ‘They last for three years. Only then my life fell apart and I forgot it was due for replacement. The night…the night we…’
‘Made love,’ he said gently, and she stared at her hands and nodded.
‘Made love,’ she repeated softly. ‘It was love, wasn’t it. Of a sort. All I could think that night was that I needed-I wanted-you, and I thought, Yes, I’m protected. Even after-wards I didn’t worry. Only then, when I tried to figure it out, all my records were burned in the fire. As were Dr. Susie’s, so the letters that were supposed to go out reminding people of routine stuff were never sent. So there you are. Comedy of errors. Resulting in one baby.’
‘Our baby.’
‘If you want a say…’
‘You’re not considering termination?’
‘No!’
‘Why?’
‘Micki’s baby died. There’s been enough death. I want this baby.’
Louis arrived then, with their meals. The normally jovial host had sussed them out by now. He left, with only a sideways, speculative glance at Jake.
‘So you came to Manhattan just to tell me,’ Jake said.
‘I don’t want anything from you, if that’s what you mean.’ She concentrated on her hotcakes and left him to his thoughts.
There were a million sensations running through him right now-shock, disbelief that this could be happening, overwhelming responsibility…yeah, and a healthy dose of fear, too. But the one that suddenly hit the top was anger.
‘You’ll take my help,’ he snapped, before he could control the anger behind his words. ‘It’s my call, too, Tori. You have my baby, then I’m in the equation, like it or not. You’ll stay here.’
Her face stilled. She met his gaze steadily, but he thought he saw a flash of fear behind her eyes. What had she expected?
What was she expecting?
‘No,’ she said. ‘You know where my home is, and it’s not here.’
‘Your home’s burned. Your home could be anywhere.’
‘In your dreams.’
‘Eat your dinner, Tori,’ he said, forcing his tone to gentle, and almost to his surprise she did. She nodded and addressed herself again to her hotcakes.
Dating The Millionaire Doctor Page 12
