The Army Doc's Baby Secret

by Charlotte Hawkes

  She hadn’t exactly been fair to Zeke when she’d reached out to her father—after several years of rebuffing his attempts at offering the proverbial olive branch to her—in order to make amends. Yet another complication of her own making that would, at some point, need resolving. But not today. Today there were more important concerns to address.

  Such as, if it hadn’t been her father who had contacted him, then Zeke wouldn’t know about Seth. Right?

  An image stole into her head and a wide smile leapt instantly to her lips. It was all she could do to stamp it out.

  Her precious Seth.

  The happy, funny, in-love-with-life four-year-old boy who really mattered in all this, and the one person she would give her life to protect.

  Seth—the little boy who had deserved not to be born into the tumultuous aftermath of Zeke’s black ops mission gone so harrowingly wrong, and her own part in what had happened that night.

  Seth, who deserved to know his father now that Zeke had finally managed to find some peace.

  But not yet. Not like this. Not dropping it on Zeke like some kind of bombshell. She had one chance to get this right. Her son deserved for her to get it right. Hell, even Zeke deserved for her to get it right. She would not blurt it out now like some kind of weapon against him. Hadn’t she done them both enough harm already?

  Her entire insides shook at the mere idea of it whilst his intense gaze, pinning her to the spot, seemed to confirm it.

  * * *

  Zeke stared at the ghost in front of him, not wanting to even blink in case she disappeared in that fleeting tenth of a second.

  It was incredible.

  How many times had he planned on tracking her down this past year? Now that he was finally on track. Now that he could be sure he wouldn’t be a burden for her. Now that he finally had something to offer her again.

  How Herculean it had been to resist that temptation. After all that had happened between them, and all that he’d said to her, he knew he had no right just to walk back into her life. He couldn’t expect to pick back up where they’d left off.

  But it hadn’t stopped him imagining that maybe, just maybe, there would have been no one else for her but him. The way that there had never been—never would be—anyone else for him but Tia. His Tia.

  He had no right to any of that. He’d lost that right five years ago when he’d sent her away, and then, when that hadn’t worked, had said all those things to her in order to get her to leave him. Harsh, cruel words chosen for maximum wounding, for devastating effect. Words that made him blanch when he thought back to them, even now.

  And yet a nonsensical part of him was still galled that she’d bought any of it. That she’d left.

  Those five years felt like a lifetime ago, now. So much had changed. He had changed. He had healed, mentally and physically, and he had moved on with his life. But he’d never moved on from Tia. He’d carried her with him this whole time, like his private talisman, even her memory enough to galvanise him into action, to try to walk, on days when he might otherwise have curled up in a ball and imagined dying on his black ops mission that fateful night.

  Just as two of his buddies had.

  Every time he’d wondered why he was still here when they weren’t, whether he deserved to still be here when they weren’t, he’d thought of Tia, and known he had to try.

  Which was why, when he’d finally turned his life around several years ago, he’d come back to Westlake, where they’d first met as kids. A foolish part of him hoping that somehow it would get back to her that he was here. A selfish part of him imagining that she might turn up, on whatever pretext she liked, just to see him.

  He’d never really expected it to happen, and yet now here she was. Looking as glorious, as tempting, as Tia, as ever.

  It was all he could do not to cross the space between them and haul her to him. To hold her and prove he wasn’t simply imagining it.

  ‘You look...well,’ she faltered and flushed, her eyes skimming straight down his legs. ‘Better than well.’

  Had he really been so simple-minded to think she would look at him again without seeing...that?

  He wasn’t prepared for the familiar pain that shattered through him. A pain he’d thought he had finally beaten into submission eighteen months ago, but which eighteen minutes in this one woman’s company seemed to have resurrected with brutal efficiency.

  It took all he had not to reach down the leg of his leather biker gear and feel for the lower limb that was no longer there.

  That hadn’t been there since Tia had cut it off five years and two months ago.

  ‘Are you saying that to make me feel better?’ he growled. ‘Or you?’

  ‘Zeke... I’m sorry,’ she choked out, taking a few stumbling steps towards him. ‘You have no idea how sorry.’

  ‘Stop.’ His hand flew up, halting both her advice and her words. And his own voice was harsh, razor-sharp even to his own ears. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  Not least because she wasn’t the one who should be doing any apologising. She shouldn’t be sorry for what had happened on that makeshift operating table; she’d carried out the only option left to her. And in doing so, she had saved his life.

  The fact that he’d accused her of ruining it meant that any apologies were his to make. He was the one who had pushed her away. She hadn’t simply walked out on him, or cast him off faster than a Special Forces wannabe dropped his fifty-pound rucksack after his first fifteen-mile tab. He’d pushed her away. Hard. And without any show of mercy.

  His only consolation had been the fact that it was the only way he could save her from feeling guilty or responsible every time she looked at him. The only way he could release her from being burdened with him.

  But that had been five years ago, and a lot had changed since then. He had changed. How many times had he imagined finding her? Explaining himself to her? But not here, not like this. He needed to do it properly. To show her how he’d turned his life around.

  This was the chance he’d been waiting for to get her back. And he wasn’t about to blow it.

  If only he could work his tongue loose to say a damned word.

  ‘I heard you’ve been awarded a medal for bravery,’ Tia blurted out, clearly unable to stand the silence any longer. ‘For saving three crewmen from a sinking ship in heavy seas.’

  ‘I was doing my job.’ He could feel himself scowling even as he tried to stop it.

  ‘The newspapers don’t seem to think so,’ she babbled on but, irrationally, he was more fascinated by the way her pulse was leaping erratically at her throat. ‘They’re calling you a hero.’

  He’d hated the publicity for that. The hero nonsense. The public had lauded him for that lifeboat rescue, yet all he could think was that they didn’t even know the names of the buddies he’d served with, who had died that night five years ago trying to protect their freedom.

  ‘I think they’re right,’ she concluded almost shyly, giving him an unexpected flashback to the day his chip-on-the-shoulder seventeen-year-old self had first met the blushing fifteen-year-old he’d had no idea would change his life so dramatically.

  He clenched his fists behind his back and fought the unnerving impulse to stride across the room and close that gap between them.

  And then what...kiss her? It made no sense. A confusion of questions crowded his brain, screaming for his attention. He fought against the ear-splitting ringing in his head. Strident. Throbbing.

  What had he been thinking, coming here? Leaping on his motorbike and hurtling up the stretch of coast from Westlake to Delburn Bay the moment he’d heard she was here?

  Like a lovesick teenager, worshipping at her altar. All these...emotions, jostling and tumbling inside him. And he had no idea what to do with them all. But then, he always had lost his head when it came to Tia, ever since he’d given into
temptation and kissed her on her sixteenth birthday.

  Even now he could still remember every detail as they’d stood on the beach, the moonlight glistening off the inky water whilst her party had been in full flow in the beach house a few hundred metres away. A party that he hadn’t been invited to because, let’s face it, no one nice ever invited his family anywhere, and who could blame them for not wanting any one of four boys dragged up by an alcoholic, aggressive, abusive father?

  But Tia had been different.

  She’d looked at him, rather than down on him. She’d told him he was nothing like them, that he was one of the best lifeguards she’d ever seen. And he’d basked in the novelty of her admiration.

  The night of her birthday she’d seen him on the beach, pretending not to stare in at everyone else having fun, and she’d come to demand her birthday gift from him. When he’d told her he didn’t have one, she’d simply shrugged her shoulders and told him, Of course you do.

  And then she’d stepped forward, pressing the entire length of her body against his, and she’d lifted her head and kissed him. In that instant she’d found a way past all his armour. Past every single one of the barriers that he’d been erecting for as long as he could remember.

  He’d vowed, right there and then, to never let her go. And he wouldn’t have...if it hadn’t been for that night.

  And now she was back. But was she here because she knew he was in Westlake, or had she just moved to be closer to her father?

  Or someone else?

  The unwanted thought slid through him. What if Tia had moved on? It made him answer more curtly than he had intended.

  ‘I don’t give a damn what the newspapers say.’

  She licked her lips.

  ‘No... I...don’t suppose you do. You never did care what anyone thought.’

  He had cared what she thought. His Tia. He cared that she was here. And he wanted her back in his life.

  But this wasn’t how he’d intended to do it. Any of it. He’d imagined that if Tia ever returned to his life, he would apologise to her. He would take her to the house he’d built on the plot of land by the Westlake lighthouse—just as their teenage selves had imagined one day doing together—and he would find a way to sit her down and explain what had happened five years ago. To finally find a way to open up to her.

  Maybe even to win her back. In time. If he took things slowly enough.

  Instead, he’d heard she was here and he’d simply reacted, jumping on his bike and racing up here. He had no idea what to say, or how to start. He could hardly expect her to just jump on the back of his bike, as she’d used to, and let him take her back to Westlake.

  He was handling this all wrong. But far from the smooth reunion of his fantasies, this reunion was unravelling faster than a ball of para cord dropped down a knife-edge mountainside.

  A fist of anger thrust its way back to the forefront of his brain. At himself more than at Tia. Yet still Zeke grabbed at it; he welcomed it. He could deal with that emotion far better than this unfamiliar blind panic that threatened to engulf him.

  ‘Anyway,’ she was still prattling on unhappily, ‘it was impressive, what you did that night. You—’

  ‘Why are you really here, Tia?’

  He interrupted her abruptly, his question deliberately curt and jagged, zipping through the air like the verbal equivalent of a Japanese throwing star. He needed to understand what had brought her back; only then could he formulate his best tactical approach.

  She blinked and fell silent for a moment.

  ‘My job,’ she offered shakily.

  ‘So I heard. Apparently, you’re back here as a medical officer for this lifeboat station. What about your career as an army doctor? Does that not appeal to you any longer?’

  ‘I left the army. I’m starting as a locum at the nearby hospital next month, about the same time I officially start volunteering here. I came back because...well, because... I had to.’

  She lifted her shoulders helplessly, but the action also caused her chest to rise and fall, the luscious curve of breasts with which he had once been so intimately acquainted snagged his gaze and, for a long moment, he couldn’t drag his gaze away.

  The hazy cloud of lust was infiltrating him all over. Slipping past his defences as though they were made of mere gauze.

  ‘So you aren’t an army doctor any longer. You quit?’

  ‘It’s...complicated.’

  ‘That’s pathetic.’ He snorted, hating the way she was guarded with him even as he understood exactly why she was. ‘Even you can do better than that, Tia.’

  She blinked as though she wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Then, abruptly, she straightened her back and tilted her chin into the air. So Tia-like.

  ‘I’m back because I love lifeboats. You seem to forget that I was volunteering down here ever since I was a young teenager. Long before your seventeen-year-old backside came bouncing into town to become a beach lifeguard. Becoming a volunteer medical officer is only following in my father’s footsteps. It’s how he met my mother—’

  She stopped abruptly and he had no idea how he resisted the impulse to go to her.

  He knew only too well how Tia’s parents had met. He hadn’t been around at that time but it was well documented in the lifeboat community, and he’d heard the story often enough. Though never from Tia herself.

  Her father had been a medical officer, her mother a coxswain. For twenty years they had volunteered alongside each other, right up until the fateful night when Celia Farringdale had been called out to a shout in heavy seas.

  A trawler had lost engines several miles out. Celia’s crew had attended, assisting the rescue helicopter to winch to safety all eight men from the stricken vessel, three of whom had been seriously injured. The helicopter had made three trips over several hours, with the lifeboat waiting, protecting, in case they had needed to abandon ship. Just as the last man had been pulled aboard the heli and it had turned for shore, the sea had swelled and crashed causing the lifeboat to roll unpredictably—just as the trawler had been lifted out of the water only to slam down onto the lifeboat’s bow. Instantaneous and fatal. None of the lifeboat crew had survived.

  Tia had been fourteen. The year before he’d met her for the first time. A kid who had tried so hard to be strong, and untouched by her past, and invincible.

  In many ways seeing her had been like holding a mirror up to his own soul.

  Was that why now, with emotions playing across her features however much she tried to fight them, Zeke felt like a heel? Enough to make his determination to take things slowly wane for a moment. Enough to let an altogether more welcome sensation invade his body.

  Desire.

  When refusing to acknowledge it didn’t work, he imagined crushing it under the unforgiving sole of his boots.

  ‘I know you have a tie to this place. Your family was part of this community since before you or I were even born,’ he offered by way of apology.

  She actually gritted her teeth at him.

  ‘I’m not trying to play who has the greater claim, Zeke. I’m just saying that...it’s understandable why I want to be here.’

  She was holding something back; he knew her well enough to be able to tell. But neither could he deny the point she was making. But whatever else either of them might say was curtailed by the sound of movement outside. Clearly an incident was going down.

  ‘So that’s why you’re back?’

  The hesitation was brief. Blink and you’d miss it.

  ‘Yes.’

  He couldn’t explain why it crept through him as it did.

  Was she back for someone else?

  But then there was the sound of footsteps and he knew that someone was coming down the corridor. Maybe for Tia.

  He’d waited five years for a conversation he’d never been sure would ever ta
ke place—and now it was about to be interrupted. Exactly as he’d feared.

  Frustration swamped him, making his words harsher, his voice edgier, than he’d intended them to be.

  ‘I don’t know, Tia. Maybe I thought you’d returned because you’d read about me in the papers and finally remembered that you were still my wife.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  TIA HURRIED DOWN the hallway, the emergency somehow grounding her.

  She’d never been so happy for an interruption as she had been when one of the lifeguards had knocked on the door to tell her that they were dragging a struggling dog walker out of the surf and she might be needed.

  Technically, she hadn’t started yet but, until they knew what it was or whether the emergency services would need to be called, she could certainly take a look.

  The confrontation with Zeke had been harder, so much harder, than she’d imagined it would be. He’d brought her to her knees with just a few curt words. So any further, awkward conversations with Zeke could—mercifully—wait.

  Turning the corner, Tia spotted one of the lifeguards guiding a disorientated-looking woman up the steps, a dog leaping around behind them. The woman was moving under her own steam but looked weak.

  ‘This is Marie,’ the lifeguard was saying as they approached. ‘About forty minutes ago she was walking her dog when it ran into the water a bit too far and got into difficulties. She went into the water to rescue it but got a bit stuck herself so we ran in. We brought her back here for a warm drink and change of clothes and then she seemed okay. Then about five minutes ago, she started to take a turn.’

  ‘So she wasn’t this disorientated when you pulled her out?’

  ‘No,’ the lifeguard replied. ‘She complained of feeling faint about ten minutes later but nothing more. This has got progressively worse since she’s been here.’

  Tia watched as Zeke moved quickly to the fainting woman’s other side, putting her arm around his shoulders.

  ‘She’s going to go, Billy,’ he warned. ‘Put your hand under her thigh and we’ll carry her through. Quickly.’