The Princess and the Pediatrician

by Annie O'Neil

  You never knew if the paparazzi had managed to weasel their way in, or if a patient’s nanny had been paid to surreptitiously take snaps of the medical team that had just performed life-saving surgery on her employer. It was rare. But it happened.

  All she wanted to do was her job. Something she couldn’t do when she was fighting this extreme—suddenly the penny dropped—nausea!

  Twenty minutes later, with a test stick in her hand, Lia could barely hear for the buzzing in her ears. Pregnant? There was only one man who could be the father, but... Pregnant?

  Equal measures of hope, fear, panic and, most surprising of all, undiluted joy bounced around her chest as she tried to still her thoughts and wrap her brain around this new reality.

  She was pregnant with Oliver Bainbridge’s child.

  Energy charged through her, almost physically escorting her out to her car so she could drive over to his side of the island, climb up that wild treehouse of his and into his bed, and pop the news. Open it up to fizz and delight like the champagne they’d never ended up drinking.

  Then that energy crackled and crashed through her heart, surging up to her brain.

  What was she thinking? No. She shouldn’t tell him. She shouldn’t tell anyone. Not until she’d figured out a bulletproof plan to keep the palace’s controlling tendrils off her baby.

  The palace.

  An icy shudder swept down her spine.

  She glanced at her watch.

  The staff at her grandmother’s office would just be getting into the office about now.

  The temptation to bang her head repeatedly against a wall seized her.

  She should have put together this puzzle on her own—without the aid of a pregnancy test. Her period was late. Her breasts were...well, rather buxom these days. Her lower back hurt when it never had before. And, of course, the nausea.

  It was just...

  A child.

  She was going to have a child.

  Someone she could love without rules and regulations—

  Her hammering heart pulled up short, then froze in place.

  Princesses from Karolinska didn’t have children out of wedlock. They had very public weddings and magazine-friendly honeymoons, and did photo shoots a minimum of a year later with their grinning husbands by their side as they celebrated the birth of their children, had a few days off, then gave their lives over to supporting The Crown and snipping red ribbons at charity events—

  Her heart launched back into action.

  Husbands. She didn’t have a husband. Oliver had been more than happy to have their night together be a one-off, so it was more than likely he wouldn’t want to be a husband—let alone be her husband.

  She could try asking him...

  Her heart lodged in her throat, making even a practice run impossible.

  Marrying a man she’d met a sum total of once was right up there in the Very Bad Ideas department. It might even be the actual worst idea ever.

  Her parents had met and married in a matter of weeks, and look how well that had turned out. One wandered round the palace like a robot, dutifully carrying out his royal duties as assigned to him by his parents, the King and Queen. The other, a commoner had fallen so very much in love with a prince, and given him a baby daughter, but had been held in contempt by The Establishment, ultimately leading not only to her divorce, but to her walking away from her daughter as if she was too cruel a reminder of that chapter of her life.

  So, no. Marrying the stranger paediatrician who had made her tummy do funny things was not a good idea.

  Her heart, already battered from wrapping itself round the revelation, squeezed so tight she could hardly breathe.

  The palace would want to take over her life the instant they knew. Their meddling had been at the heart of her parents’ break-up and she didn’t even have a relationship to break up. How would they deal with that? Give her one? Pre-vetted?

  Too easily she pictured a dungeon down in the bowels of her grandparents’ castle...dark, dingy, and filled to the brim with prospective husbands for wayward princesses.

  Her heart slipped down her throat, then free fell to just above her baby, a sharp breath only catching it short of landing right on it.

  Interesting...

  She really wanted to protect it.

  She pictured Oliver down in that imaginary dungeon, those lovely hands that had spent the night caressing and pleasuring her now strained as they wrapped around the thick iron bars, his beautiful, male, lightly stubbled cheeks pressed between them, calling her name again and again.

  She scrunched her nose.

  Pure poppycock.

  She barely knew Oliver... Well... She knew that light kisses along his neckline tickled him. She knew that lowering herself onto him with the patience of a devotee made him groan with pleasure. She knew he smiled when he slept, that he smelt like the beach and pineapple and something else intangibly male.

  Up until she’d met him, it had seemed as though she’d only ever had sex with past boyfriends. With Oliver, it had felt like making love.

  Up until now, she’d thought of their night together as something precious. Unique. A rare moment held in a beautiful chrysalis of unspoken connection.

  Because, her pragmatic side reminded her, they’d had absolutely no commitment to one another. A beautiful night of the best sex she’d ever had and then, before the sun had had a chance to rise, she’d been blowing him a farewell kiss from the doorway. Sayonara, sunshine.

  Abruptly, painfully, as if an actual dagger was plunging into her heart, she felt the anguish of that day her mother had been escorted from the palace grounds lance through her.

  That was what really happened when you married a royal.

  Destruction.

  She forced her breathing to steady. Giving herself a panic attack and passing out in a locked women’s bathroom no one knew she was in wasn’t going to help anything.

  She splashed some cold water on her face, dragged a scratchy paper towel over the droplets, then stared herself in the eye.

  This would be fine. All of it would be fine.

  She dropped her gaze to her stomach and silently vowed to the teensy-tiny baby only just beginning its life in her belly that it would be fine, too. She’d do everything in her power to offer it the kind of childhood she’d never had. Be a mother who didn’t bow to the power of their forebears.

  Sure, people loved the tradition of the Karolinskan royal family, but it wasn’t as if it was a religion. Or law. They were figureheads. Little more than the icing on top of a very decorative democratic cake. They needed to look to the future, not bow to the restrictive measures of the past.

  Yes. She would look to a future in which her son or daughter would know the one thing she’d never had: freedom.

  Okay. Good.

  She gave her reflection a solid nod, as if she’d just come up with the perfect way to perform a difficult surgery. So that was settled. All she had to do was call the palace, tell them she was pregnant, then ring Oliver and let him know he was going to be a father but that he definitely didn’t have to worry about marrying her because she had it all in hand.

  She picked up her phone and thumbed through her contacts until she found her father’s number. Protocol dictated that the palace be informed before the father of her child. Hopefully her father would help buffer the much stronger reaction she knew King Frederik and Queen Margaretha would have.

  She forced herself to press the little green button on her phone. After two rings her father picked up.

  ‘Lia? What’s wrong?’

  She winced. Trust her father to think she’d only ring if she had bad news. A darker, more painful thought entered her heart. Perhaps hearing from her only made him think of all the bad things in his life. She, after all, was one of the main reasons his marriage had fallen apart.<
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  ‘Papa.’ The word felt as foreign upon her tongue as the two that were to follow. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Two hours of explaining later, the call that now included her grandparents had reached a crossroads.

  They wanted her to marry Oliver.

  She did not.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ she persisted, not really wanting to go into detail about how little she knew him.

  ‘We do,’ her grandmother said, as if that put an end to the matter.

  Lia rolled her eyes, thankful that this wasn’t a video call. She’d offered them a thousand options apart from the one they wanted: love, marriage, baby carriage. There was one card left to play. She hadn’t wanted things to go this far, but she didn’t need their money, their status or, more to the point, their boa-constrictor-like rules.

  ‘What if I give up my title?’

  There was a deafening silence on the end of the line, followed by a very curt, ‘I don’t think going in that direction would be wise, Amelia.’

  Grandmama. She always helmed the ship in moments like these.

  Unfortunately for Lia, her grandmother had a point. The fall-out of such a move would be brutal. The one thing she’d ached for her entire life was to feel as if she was part of a big, happy family. She’d got the ‘big’ part. Just not the ‘happy’.

  And walking away would mean the tenuous threads of connection she had to her father would be severed for ever. Her grandparents would pretend she’d never existed. Her beloved cousin Jonas would be told communicating with her was forbidden. Finding her mother at this juncture would be a) impossible and b) really stupid, because all she’d be proving was that history really did repeat itself.

  She broke the silence. ‘I’ll talk to Oliver.’

  ‘Perhaps you should leave that to us,’ her grandfather cut in.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head at the phone and involuntarily ground the word out a second time. ‘No. This is my...situation. I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘And tell him what, exactly?’ her grandmother asked, as if she’d just smelt something vile and was demanding to know its source.

  ‘The truth,’ Lia snapped back, fatigue fraying what little remained of her patience.

  ‘Which is...?’ her father asked. ‘What is the truth?’

  Lia stopped short. She’d been about to say that she was going to tell Oliver the palace was demanding they get married, and that if he was prepared for a life of being micro-managed he could go for it, but she wasn’t all that keen, so if he was all right with it she’d be looking to move to another island. Alone. Maybe not this nanosecond, because she really liked her job and would definitely need an income as the palace would for sure be cutting off her allowance. And, no, she didn’t want child support. She didn’t know what, if anything, she wanted from him...

  All of which reminded her that this was her father, asking her how she was going to treat the father of her child.

  It was the first genuine curiosity she’d heard from him in years, and unexpectedly it softened the shard of unspent anger she’d held on to at the fact he’d sent her away to boarding school so young.

  ‘I’m going to tell him I’m pregnant and that I want to keep the baby.’

  ‘That’s it?’ her grandmother asked, in a tone that made it distinctly clear she was turning puce with anger right now.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I’ll listen to what he has to say, and we’ll take it from there.’

  Lia looked at her phone and ended the call. She turned it off, just to ensure it wouldn’t ring again in five seconds, with her irate grandmother the Queen demanding she show more respect to The Crown.

  This was about her, Oliver and their baby, and no one else. They would decide what they wanted to do and then they would tell the palace.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘SHALL WE SHAKE on it?’ Oliver knelt down so that he was at eye-level with the five-year-old who had quite an impressive bump on his forehead.

  ‘But I like going on the slide with my friend,’ came the plaintive reply.

  Oliver laughed. ‘I know. Going on the slide with a friend is fun. But what if their head accidentally hits yours when you’ve already got a bump? Probably best to slide solo for the next couple of weeks.’

  The little boy shot a Do I have to? look at his mum, whose Yes, you do expression left little room for interpretation. He stuck out his hand and reluctantly shook Oliver’s.

  For a millisecond Oliver let himself wonder what it would feel like to hold his own child’s hand in his.

  If things had been different...

  If things had been different he probably wouldn’t be here, treating this lovely little chap.

  He held his grip on the small hand in his, honouring the trust that came with the gesture, then let go, gave the lad a smile and closed the moment with a high five.

  Wondering about things that hadn’t come to pass or, more to the point, might never happen wasn’t worth the airtime.

  He opened the door for the pair of them, reminding the boy’s mother to bring him in if he began to be sleepy at unusual times or exhibited any of the other signs of concussion outlined on the cheat sheet he’d written out for her.

  A glimpse of white-blonde hair caught his eye mid-sentence. His chest filled with a huge, hopeful inhalation, then froze in place when it disappeared. It couldn’t have been Lia. Not in this wing of the hospital anyway. Unless... Would she be looking for him?

  She’d not broken the ‘one night only’ decision they’d made, and he’d respected that. It hadn’t stopped him hoping their paths might cross again, though. What they’d shared—the electricity—hadn’t just been physical. It had run deeper. Their connection had been...visceral. As if they already knew one another. Two halves suddenly, finally, becoming whole. Which, of course, was insane. They were strangers. Strangers who had shared one extraordinary night.

  ‘Dr Bainbridge?’ the mum said, loudly enough to suggest she’d already said it once before.

  ‘Yes...sorry?’ He forced himself to refocus.

  ‘Should he not stay the night?’

  ‘No, honestly,’ Oliver assured her warmly. ‘I know a bump of that size can seem frightening—and, be warned, it will go some unusual colours—but he passed all the cognisance tests and seems right enough in himself. I think he’s walked away with a bruised ego, more than anything.’

  The mum laughed and said, ‘Boys. You can’t stop them from pushing things to the limit, can you?’

  Oliver laughed along, feeling the sliver of his heart that ached for children of his own taking up a fraction more room in his chest than it normally did. Was it meeting Lia that had made his hunger for a child, a family of his own, inch to the fore over these past few weeks?

  No, he thought, struggling to keep the anger at bay. It was having the option taken from him before he knew it even was an option.

  He shook his head, to clear it of thoughts of the defining moment that had played a role in bringing him here to St Victoria. Though it had been nearly six years ago now, it had left wounds that should’ve been healed by now—perhaps by a family of his own—but had somehow always festered. Staying single, focusing on his work—those things had kept the raw pain of his past at bay. But nothing yet had allowed him fully to heal.

  He looked down at the little boy who was beaming up at him.

  Moments like this helped.

  He thanked them, then waved off the mum and her son, his last patients of the day, and went back into his office to finish up his paperwork.

  ‘Oliver?’

  He turned, so startled by the sight of the woman standing in his doorway that words logjammed in his throat until he finally managed to croak, ‘Your Highness—’

  ‘Lia,’ she corrected him tightly. ‘Can
we talk? One of your colleagues...’ she pointed vaguely down the corridor ‘...said you were finished for the day.’ Her brows drew together. ‘Maybe somewhere outside the hospital?’

  For a nanosecond he thought she was going to suggest another swim, but she looked serious. Too serious.

  ‘Of course. Is this—? This isn’t about a patient, is it? A professional consult?’

  She gave her head a solitary shake in the negative. ‘It’s personal.’

  The way she bit out the word dropped a lead weight in his gut. This didn’t sound good. Had someone taken pictures of them swimming in the moonlight? It was exactly the sort of photo that could win a paparazzo a healthy pay cheque. Unless, of course, they were trying to blackmail her with it.

  This was just one of the reasons why he’d come here. To escape the prying eyes of the press. So far he’d been lucky. He’d never courted the society papers back in the day. Had only ever appeared in the Easter and Christmas photos his mother always insisted upon, trying to keep up with royalty. As if! They were in another league of aristocracy. One his parents kowtowed to every waking moment of their lives. More because it was ingrained in them than anything, but still...

  His anonymity here was a freedom Lia had never known. He felt for her. From what he’d seen, she only ever used her title for good, and if it was now being turned against her... Well... The world was a crueller place than he’d given it credit for.

  Stemming a few colourful words, he grabbed a light parka off the back of his chair, pulled his office door shut behind him and locked it. ‘I know a place.’

  Her features softened in gratitude. He fought the urge to pull her into his arms and comfort her. She seemed so vulnerable, so frightened...his heart ached for her. But if this was blackmail, or pictures destined for a gossip magazine, the last thing he wanted to do was add fuel to the flames.

  St Victoria Hospital was open to all—unlike the exclusive clinic where she worked—so the fact that she’d ventured out to find him, where paparazzi might easily be lurking, meant that whatever this was, it was screaming Important!