Surprise Baby for the Billionaire

by Charlotte Hawkes

His for ever.

  ‘On the contrary, this is entirely necessary.’ She cut across him. ‘This is me proving to you that I don’t need grand romantic gestures. I just need the little things that mean something.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It is.’

  * * *

  ‘And some grand, romantic gesture...?’ His mouth twitched, but the gleam in his eyes reassured her.

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ she said merrily. ‘Now, we’re already married, so I can’t propose. But I can organise a renewal of vows. A chance for us to recommit to each other when we both know exactly what we’re doing—and why. And a chance for us to do so in front of the two people we care about the most.’

  Malachi knew, even before Sol and Anouk stepped around the corner, that his brother was going to be there. The one person he would have wanted to see him make a commitment to the woman of his dreams. It was as if she knew.

  But maybe that was the point. Maybe Saskia really did know what he wanted and needed. She understood him, and she accepted him for what he was. And, after all, wasn’t that the true measure of love?

  ‘I think, Mrs Gunn,’ he managed hoarsely, reaching out to haul her into his arms, bump and all, ‘that I love you a little more every single day. And I want you in my life for the rest of time.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I can manage that,’ she whispered, even as his mouth covered hers.

  And her arms wrapped around him so tightly he hoped she would never let go.

  * * *

  Baby Gunn was born a mere week premature, with ten perfect toes and nine and a half perfect fingers. Her ankles still bore the scars of the amniotic bands, but Z-plasty would remedy that, just as a few months of night braces would correct the slight clubbing the bands had caused on her tiny chubby legs.

  But to Saskia and Malachi their daughter looked beautiful. Their perfect baby, who had truly made their family whole.

  * * *

  If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Charlotte Hawkes

  Unwrapping the Neurosurgeon’s Heart

  The Army Doc’s Baby Secret

  A Surgeon for the Single Mom

  Christmas with Her Bodyguard

  All available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Falling for Her Army Doc by Dianne Drake.

  WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK FROM

  Life and love in the world of modern medicine.

  Escape to the world where life and love play out against a high-pressured medical backdrop.

  6 NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE EVERY MONTH!

  Falling for Her Army Doc

  by Dianne Drake

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHE LOOKED BEAUTIFUL, standing outside in the garden, catching the morning light. He watched her every day about this time. She’d take her walk, sit for a few minutes on the stone retaining wall surrounding the sculpted flowers, then return to the building.

  Once, he’d wondered what weighed her down so heavily. She had that look—the one he remembered from many of his patients, and probably even more he didn’t remember. She—Lizzie, she’d told him her name was—always smiled and greeted him politely. But there was something behind that smile.

  Of course, who was he to analyze? It had taken a photo he’d found among his things to remind him that he’d been engaged. Funny how his memory of her prior to his accident was blurred. Nancy was a barely recognizable face in a world he didn’t remember much of. And, truthfully, he couldn’t even recall how or why he’d become engaged to her. She didn’t seem his type—too flighty, too intrusive. Too greedy.

  Yet Lizzie, out there in the garden, seemed perfect. Beautiful. Smart. In tune with everything around her.

  So what wasn’t he getting here? Had he changed so much that the type of woman who’d used to attract him didn’t now? And taking her place was someone...more like Lizzie?

  Dr. Mateo Sanchez watched from the hospital window until Lizzie left the garden, then he drew the blinds and went back to bed. He didn’t have a lot of options here, as a patient. Rest, watch the TV, rest some more. Go to therapy. Which somehow he never quite seemed to do.

  This was his fourth facility since he’d been shipped from the battlefield to Germany, and nothing was working. Not the therapy. Not his attitude. Not his life. What he wanted to know they wouldn’t tell him. And what he didn’t want to know just seemed to flood back in when he didn’t want it to.

  The docs were telling him to be patient, that some memory would return while some would not. But he wanted a timeline, a calendar on his wall where he could tick off the days until he was normal again.

  He reached up and felt the tiny scar on his head. Whatever normal was. Right now, he didn’t know. There was nothing for him to hold on to. No one there to ground him. Even Nancy hadn’t stayed around long after she’d discovered he didn’t really know her.

  In fact, his first thought had been that she was a nurse, tending him at his bedside. She’d been good when he’d asked for a drink of water, even when he’d asked for another pillow, and she’d taken his criticism when she’d told him she couldn’t give him a pain pill.

  This had gone on for a week before she’d finally confessed that she wasn’t his nurse, but his fiancée. And then, in another week, she’d been gone. She wasn’t the type to do nursing care in the long term, she’d said. And unfortunately, all she could see ahead of her was nursing care, a surgeon who could no longer operate, when what she’d wanted was a surgeon who could provide a big home, fancy cars, and everything else he’d promised he’d give her.

  So, he knew the what and the when of his accident. What he didn’t know was the annoying part. As a surgeon he needed to know all aspects of his patients’ conditions, even the things that didn’t seem to matter. It was called being thorough. But for him...

  “Giving you the answers to your life could imprint false memories,” his neurologist Randy always said, when he asked. And he was right, of course. That was something he did remember. Along with so many of his basic medical skills—the ones he’d learned early on in his career.

  The more specific skills, though... Some of them were still there. Probably most of them. But in pulling them out of his memory he hesitated sometimes. Thought he remembered but wasn’t sure of himself.

  Wait a minute. Let me consult a textbook before I remove your gall bladder.

  Yeah, right. Like that was going to work in surgery.

  He looked up and saw Lizzie standing in his doorway, simply observing him. Probably trying to figure out what to do with him.

  “Hello,” he said, not sure what to make of this.

  She was the house primary care physician—not his doctor, not even a neurologist. Meaning she had no real reason to be here unless he needed a vaccination or something.

  “I’ve seen you watch me out in the garden. I was wondering if you’d like to come out with me for a while later...breathe some fresh air, take a walk?”

  “Who’s prescribing that?” he asked suspiciously.

  “You are—if that’s what you want to do. You’re not a prisoner here, you know. And your doctor said it might be a good idea...that it could help your...” She paused.

  “Go ahead and say it. My disposition.”

  “I understand from morning staff meetings that you’re quite a handful.”

  “Nothing else to do around here,” he said. “So, I might as well improve upon my obnoxious level. It’s getting better. In fact, I think I’ll soon be counted amongst the masters.”

  “To what outcome?”

  He shrugged. “See, that’s the thing. For me, there are no outcomes.”

  “If that’s how you want it. But I’m not your doctor and you’re not my problem. So, take that walk with me or not.”

  “And tomorrow? What happens to me tomorrow?”

&nb
sp; “Honestly? I’m a one-day-at-a-time girl. Nothing’s ever guaranteed, Mateo. If I get through the day, tomorrow will take care of itself.”

  “Well, I like seeing ahead. And now, even behind.”

  “To each his own,” she said nonchalantly.

  “Which implies what?” he asked, feeling a smile slowly crossing his face. Lizzie was...fun. Straight to the point. And challenging.

  “You know exactly what it implies, Mateo. In your effort to see ‘behind,’ as you’re calling it, you’re driving the staff crazy. They’re afraid of you. Not sure what to do with you. And that false smile of yours is beginning to wear thin.”

  “Does it annoy you?” he asked.

  “It’s beginning to.”

  “Then my work here is done,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  He wanted clothes—real clothes. Not these blue and green things that were passed off as hospital gowns. Those were for sick people. He wasn’t sick. Just damaged. A blood clot on his brain, which had been removed, and a lingering pest called retrograde amnesia. That kind of damage deserved surfer shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, seeing as how he was in Hawaii now.

  “And my work has nothing to do with you. I was just trying to be friendly, but you’re too much of a challenge to deal with. And, unfortunately, what should have been a simple yes or no is now preventing me from seeing my patients.”

  She sure was pretty.

  It was something he’d thought over and over about Lizzie. Long, tarnished copper hair. Curly. Soft too, he imagined. Brown eyes that could be as mischievous as a kitten or shoot daggers, depending on the circumstance. And her smile... It didn’t happen too often, he’d noticed. And when it did, it didn’t light up the proverbial room. But it sure did light up his day.

  “And how would I be doing that? I’m here, wearing these lovely clothes, eating your gourmet green slime food, putting up with your hospital’s inane therapy.”

  “And by ‘putting up with,’ you mean not showing up for?” She took a few more steps into the room, then went to open the blinds.

  “In the scheme of my future life, what will it do for me?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

  “No vagaries here, Lizzie. Be as specific as I have to be every time I answer someone’s orientation questions. ‘Do you remember your name?’ ‘Where are you?’ ‘What’s the date?’ ‘Who’s the current President?’”

  “Standard protocol, Mateo. You know that.” She turned back to face him. “But you make everything more difficult than it has to be.”

  She brightened his day in a way he’d never expected. “So why me? You’re not my doctor, but you’ve obviously chosen me for some special attention.”

  “My dad was a military surgeon, like you were. Let’s just say I’m giving back a little.”

  “Did he see combat?”

  “Too many times.”

  “And it changed him,” Mateo said, suddenly serious.

  “It might have—but if it did it was something he never let me see. And he never talked about it.”

  “It’s a horrible thing to talk about. The injuries. The ones you can fix...the ones you can’t. In my unit they were rushed in and out so quickly I never really saw anything but whatever it was I had to fix. Maybe that was a blessing.”

  He shut his eyes to the endless parade of casualties who were now marching by him. This was a memory he didn’t want, but he was stuck with it. And it was so vivid.

  “Were you an only child?” he asked.

  Lizzie nodded. “My mom couldn’t stand the military life. She said it was too lonely. So, by the time I was five she was gone, and then it was just my dad and me.”

  “Couldn’t have been easy being a single parent under his circumstances. I know I wouldn’t have wanted to drag a kid around with me when I was active. Wouldn’t have been fair to the kid.”

  “He never complained. At least, not to me. And what I had...it seemed normal.”

  “I complain to everybody.”

  In Germany, after his first surgery, it hadn’t occurred to him that his memory loss might be permanent. He’d been too busy dealing with the actual surgery itself to get any more involved than that. That had happened after he’d been transferred to Boston for brain rehab. Then he’d got involved. Only it hadn’t really sunk in the way it should have. But once they’d got him to a facility in California, where the patients had every sort of war-related brain injury, that was when it had occurred to him that he was just another one of the bunch.

  How could that be? That was the question he kept asking himself over and over. He had become one of the poor unfortunates he usually treated. A surgeon without his memory. A man without his past.

  “You’re a survivor who uses what he has at his disposal to regain the bits and pieces of himself he’s lost. Or at least that’s what you could be if you weren’t such a quitter.”

  “A quitter?”

  Maybe he was, since going on was so difficult. But did Lizzie understand what it was like to reach for a memory you assumed would be there and come up with nothing? And he was one of the lucky ones. Physically, he was fine, and his surgery had gone well. He’d healed well, too. But he couldn’t get past that one thing that held him back...who was he, really?

  Suddenly Mateo was tired. It wasn’t even noon yet and he needed a nap. Or an escape.

  “That walk this evening...maybe. If you can get me some real clothes.”

  Lizzie chuckled. “I should say you’ll have to wear your hospital pajamas, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “No promises, Lizzie. I don’t make promises I can’t keep, and who knows what side of the pendulum my mood will be swinging on later.”

  “Whatever suits you,” she said, then left the room.

  Even though he hated to see her go, what he needed was to be left alone—something he’d told them over and over. He needed time to figure out just how big a failure he was, medically speaking. And what kind of disappointment he was to his mother, who’d worked long and hard to get him through medical school. The arthritis now crippling her hands showed that.

  There was probably a long list of other people he’d let down, too, but thankfully he couldn’t remember it. Except his own name—right there at the top. He was Dr. Mateo Sanchez—a doctor with retrograde amnesia. And right now that was all he cared to know. Everything else—it didn’t matter.

  * * *

  She was not getting involved. It didn’t usually work. Didn’t make you happy, either. Didn’t do a thing. At least in her case it never had.

  Lizzie’s mom had walked out when she was barely five, so no involvement there. And her dad... Well, he’d loved her. But her father had been a military surgeon, and that had taken up most of his time. While he’d always said he wanted to spend more time with her, it hadn’t happened. So no involvement with him, either, for a good part of her life.

  Then there had been her husband. Another doctor, but one who wouldn’t accept that she didn’t want to be a surgeon like him. He was a neurosurgeon and, to him, being a primary care physician meant being...lesser. He did surgeries while she did cuts and bruises, he’d always say. Brad had never failed to show his disappointment in her, so she’d failed there, too. Meaning, what was the point?

  None, that Lizzie could think of. But that was OK. She got along, designed her life the way she wanted it to be, and lived happily in the middle of it. Living in the middle was good, she decided. It didn’t take you far, but it didn’t let you down, either.

  She wondered about Mateo, though. She knew he watched her in the garden every morning. Knew he’d asked questions about her. But the look on his face...there was no confidence there. Something more like fear. Which was why she’d asked him out for a walk this evening. He needed more than the four walls of his hospital room, the same way her father had needed more.
/>
  But her father had been on a downward spiral with Alzheimer’s. Mateo was young, healthy, had a lot of years of life ahead of him—except he was getting into the habit of throwing away the days. It was hard seeing that, after watching the way her father had deteriorated.

  But to get involved...? They weren’t friends. Weren’t even doctor-patient. Weren’t anything. But she’d been watching the watcher for weeks now, and since she’d be going on holiday shortly what would it hurt to get involved for once? Or, in this case, to take a simple evening walk?

  Watching Mateo walk toward her now, she thought he struck her as a man who would have taken charge. His gait was strong, purposeful. And he was a large man—massive muscles on a well-defined body. He’d taken care of himself. You didn’t get that physique by chance. Yet now he was stalled, and that didn’t fit. To look at him was to think he had his life together—it was in the way he carried himself. But there was nothing together about him, not one little piece. And he was sabotaging himself by not trying.

  Many of the staff’s morning meetings lately had opened with: “What should we do about Mateo?”

  The majority wanted him out of there. Even his own doctor didn’t care. But Lizzie was his advocate because he deserved this chance. Like her dad had, all those times someone had tried to convince her to put him away. That was exactly what they wanted to do with Mateo, and while neurology wasn’t her specialty, she did know that some types of brain trauma took a long time to sort themselves out.

  But beds here were at a premium. The waiting list was long, and military veterans always went to the top of the list. There was no guarantee they’d stay there, though, especially if they acted the way Mateo did.

  He was never mean. Never outright rude, even though he was always on the edge of it. In fact, he smiled more than anybody she’d ever seen. But he refused to try, and that was ultimately going to get in the way, since there were other veterans who could have his bed and display more cooperation.