Miracle Baby for the Midwife

by Tina Beckett

  And so his proposal should have made her heart sing, should make her want to jump up and shout it from the rooftops, but it hadn’t.

  Because it had come from a place of duty. Of following in the path that his parents had paved.

  In the end she’d turned him down. Not because she wanted to. But because his offer of marriage had seemed to come for all the wrong reasons.

  But what if it hadn’t? What if his reasons hadn’t been wrong at all?

  Maybe she needed to sit down and think about what it all meant. To put some kind of brakes on a train that had been running away for far too long. And she knew exactly where she could start.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE’D TURNED HIM DOWN.

  Adem sat in his office at the clinic, two portable ultrasound machines at the ready. The tech was coming to demonstrate them this afternoon, and Carly wouldn’t be here for it. She was still at her mum’s house, would be for another couple of days. He’d decided not to call her, since he’d got the rundown on her condition from Raphael. As far as they knew the pregnancy was still viable, and since she hadn’t contacted him either, maybe it was true.

  Maybe the woman was just so horrified by what he’d asked that she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. After all, what was it that she’d said?

  I do not want to marry you. Not now. Not ever.

  She’d seen right through his request, and she’d been right to turn him down. So very right.

  The words had just appeared on his tongue out of nowhere and out they’d come. She’d once told him she wouldn’t settle for anything other than love. And he’d once told her he’d never felt that particular emotion, wasn’t sure if he even believed in it.

  So how was it that he was sitting here, wondering why he felt like he’d been run over by a truck and left for dead?

  Maybe because the one emotion he’d never believed in—never thought he was capable of feeling—had reached around and grabbed him by the throat. It couldn’t be real. It had to be something to do with the baby.

  Except he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how he could mix up the two. When Carly was in that accident he’d panicked when her voice had begun fading away, and it had had nothing to do with the baby. That worry had been all about Carly.

  Maybe that had been part of the tragedy of his parents. Maybe one of them had learned to love and one of them hadn’t. How torturous of a union would that be to love someone and never have it returned?

  It wouldn’t be fair to him and it definitely wouldn’t be fair to Carly. He was not condemning her to that kind of existence, even if she had agreed to his crazy proposition.

  So what did he do about it? How did they work together and not either come to resent being thrown together time and time again or fall back into the pattern of sleeping together, knowing it was going no further than that?

  Carly’s mom had asked him if he had her best interests at heart.

  His phone rang and he glanced to see it was his brother. Damn. He did not want to talk to Basir right now. But it might be important.

  Answering the call, he leaned back in his office chair, staring at the new machines. “Hello?”

  “Adem, what the hell is going on?”

  He’d never heard Basir raise his voice. Ever. But right now there was an anger in his tone that was impossible to mistake. “What are you talking about?”

  “Our midwife is leaving.”

  He sat forward in a rush. “She what?”

  “I just got off the phone with her. She said she’d decided to transfer out of the clinic to the Queen Victoria and that she was notifying her patients that she’d only be available to those who would be having their babies there.”

  Carly loved being a community midwife. She’d told him that time and time again, had told him how much good the Victoria Clinic was doing in the surrounding neighborhoods. So what on earth would possess her to...

  He had. He and his stupid proposal. Hadn’t he just been sitting here thinking about how hard it was going to be to keep working together?

  Evidently Carly had decided it wasn’t just hard...it was impossible.

  So she was quitting?

  “Honestly, Basir, this is the first I’ve heard about it. Carly was in an accident a few days ago and was pretty shaken up. I’ll talk to her and see—”

  “She also said she was pregnant and that our due dates were going to be a little over a month apart.”

  And it was time to confess. At least to his brother. “The baby is mine.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m the father of Carly’s baby.”

  “But—”

  “Exactly. We haven’t told anyone, and maybe that has something to do with all of this. I asked her to marry me, and she turned me down.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I wasn’t sure at the time. But I think I’m coming to understand her reasons.”

  “Wow, Adem. I had no idea.” There was a pause. “Do you love her?”

  At least there was one member of their family who understood what was truly important.

  No, make that two. Because his brother had just hit the nail on the head. He loved the woman.

  “Hell. I think I do. But I’m pretty sure I’ve screwed everything up.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I’ll talk to her, but I can’t make any promises.”

  “Then don’t. Just talk to her.” There was a pause. “Let’s make this generation of Keplers different from the last and learn to lead with our hearts.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Yes. You can. You just don’t know if you will.”

  With that, Basir hung up the phone, leaving Adem staring off into the distance.

  His brother was right. He could. But he wasn’t sure if he would. Or if he should. But what he could do was take away Carly’s reasons for leaving the clinic by doing something he’d mentioned to her right after she’d discovered she was pregnant. She’d been vehemently opposed at the time, but now she might find herself relieved. Hadn’t he said that no one person was irreplaceable?

  So he was faced with one of the hardest decisions he’d ever made. Do what was in Carly’s best interest. Or his own.

  The answer to that seemed pretty damned simple and yet so damned hard. But what choice did he have?

  None, if he wanted to do the right thing.

  Taking a deep breath, he picked up the phone and dialed her number.

  * * *

  Carly listened to the voice mail for the third time, unable to believe her ears. Adem was going to resign?

  Basir had to have told him about their phone conversation. She should have called Adem first, but she hadn’t wanted him to try to talk her out of transferring to the hospital.

  But to say he was going to quit so that she didn’t have to?

  God. She should have answered that call. But she’d been a mess. And now, unfortunately, he’d beaten her to the punch. She hadn’t yet turned her paperwork in for the transfer; she’d wanted to notify her patients first. Maybe she’d been putting off the inevitable for as long as possible. But if she did it now, then they might both wind up at the hospital, working together all over again, in a huge dose of irony.

  Her head was completely better, no residual headache, and her pregnancy was still going strong, thank God. Both were things to rejoice over. She hadn’t seen Adem, but after the way they’d left things, she wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t tried to call her. Until now.

  He’d probably felt as awkward as she did. But now that she was well enough to contemplate going into his office and setting things straight—to put them back the way they’d been before the accident—she found she might be too late.

  He said he was going to make it official at the next hospital board meeting, but that until then he would
do as much of his work as possible at his office at the hospital, so she wouldn’t have to see him.

  Wouldn’t have to see him?

  Why? Why? Why?

  The thought of him being gone forever pecked at her insides, turning them into a war zone, even though she’d been the one who’d originally planned on leaving.

  That last sentence of his voice mail had been a joke. Things at the clinic will continue just like usual.

  No. No, they wouldn’t.

  A thin stream of anger bubbled up inside of her. He was being ridiculous. Her thoughts whirled back to almost a month ago when she’d first told him about her pregnancy. He’d thought about resigning then, but she thought she’d talked him out of it. And now they were back where they started. All because he’d asked her to marry him.

  Love had to flow both ways to be viable.

  Hadn’t he said he would never get married, that he didn’t want to live like his parents did? He wasn’t even willing to pretend.

  He’d had a strange intensity in his voice after the accident when he’d talked about marriage. One that hadn’t been there in his earlier discussions.

  Her heart picked up the pace. After she’d told him she would never, ever marry him, he acted strangely. She remembered thinking that she would have to talk to him once she was better to figure out how to get them back to the place they were before. And then he’d left the room, saying he would check on her later. But he hadn’t. She actually hadn’t heard from him again, until that phone call, which she now found odd. More than odd.

  He’d been so worried about her when she was fading from consciousness in that car, and then again at the hospital.

  And then he’d asked her to marry him.

  Carly...we could be.

  The way he’d looked at her. The way he’d said it.

  Had he really meant it? As something more than what his parents had?

  He’d never said love, had never even hinted that that’s what was behind the proposal.

  But what if it was? What if it really did flow both ways?

  She mulled those words over in her mind. She knew he cared about her. Her mom told her that he’d used that exact wording when they’d spoken together in the waiting room.

  But what about love?

  Her head came up, the emotionless tones from Adem’s voice mail forgotten. Why had she been so fervent in her rejection of what he’d asked her.

  Because she didn’t want to marry if it wasn’t for love.

  But... What. If. It. Was?

  Adem had told her he’d never felt love. Didn’t even believe in the emotion. But what if that had changed?

  She loved him. But could he possibly...by some stretch of the imagination...?

  Her thoughts whirled back through a hundred different images. Herself with her hands against that glass window. In the park, telling him about the baby, and how his face had changed when he realized he was going to be a father. On the boat laughing over silly baby names. In the hospital as he stood over her, concern and...fear...on his face. The urgency behind his offer of marriage.

  That’s why his proposal had seemed so horrifying to her. And why she’d ultimately decided to leave the clinic. She’d wanted him to love her. Wanted that marriage proposal to come out of the right place.

  Maybe it had.

  Maybe that’s why he was suddenly so ready to leave the clinic so that she didn’t have to. Sacrificing himself for her, in the same way she’d been ready to do for him.

  She swallowed hard. Could it be that easy? And that impossibly hard?

  So what did she do? Just let things remain like they were? Let Adem leave the clinic for her?

  Hell, no.

  The man had made her fall in love with him, despite her best attempts at thwarting Cupid’s barrage of arrows. The least he could do was stand there and tell her what she meant to him. What they meant to him, because she and the baby were kind of a package deal at the moment.

  She just had to somehow confront him where he couldn’t get up and run away. Or resign. Where he would have to sit and tell her exactly what she did or didn’t mean to him.

  And she thought she knew the perfect place.

  All she had to do was get a little help from a certain brainy cellist, who’d already laid the perfect foundation for what Carly had in mind.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ADEM DIDN’T KNOW why he was here.

  Shepherd Hall was built to impress, with white marble columns and polished steps that led up to the huge venue. It was where countless concerts and musicals took place.

  Standing at the base of the stairs with people streaming around him, he hesitated, ticket in hand.

  Carly’s mom had called him and reissued her invitation—the one she’d given at the hospital—asking him to attend her orchestra’s first concert of the season. Had kept him on the phone until he promised to come.

  Maybe she didn’t know that he would soon be gone from the clinic, or that he and Carly hadn’t spoken since that last day at the hospital.

  He could have refused to attend. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say he had other plans, but something had made him accept the complimentary ticket. Maybe the faint hope that he would catch a glimpse of Carly somewhere in the crowded theater. She said she always attended her mother’s first concert of the season.

  Find her among all these people? Not likely.

  Damn. He loved her. And the baby. It seemed like that should have solved all of his problems. Instead, it seemed to have compounded them.

  Unless he tried again. Unless he sat down with Carly and had a long talk. They’d tried on the boat. And he’d tried at the hospital. But their connections just kept getting crossed.

  So why not try to uncross them. He hadn’t exactly bared his soul during his ridiculous proposal. Instead, he’d made it sound like something out of his father’s playbook instead of his own.

  Basir’s suggestion that this generation should get off to a fresh start made sense. And was part of the reason he’d agreed to come.

  And if Carly really was here somewhere? Well, he would never find her...unless...

  Moving out of the line of people surging up the steps, he pulled his phone out of the pocket of his tuxedo and found her in his contact list. Just as he started to dial the number a hand linked through his arm.

  He glanced to the side, ready with an apology, when green eyes met his.

  “Carly?”

  With her red hair piled on top of her head, and dark sultry liner beneath her lashes, she was almost unrecognizable. And that dress...

  Damn. It wasn’t the navy blue she’d been carrying all those weeks ago at the hospital. This was raven black and devastating to the senses, the gathered bodice hugging her form like a glove, before billowing out into a soft cloud of fabric. She was stunning. Sophisticated. The very picture of the woman he’d imagined didn’t exist, once upon a time. A woman who’d shown him just how much fun she could have, taking him on a ride to a distant land. Where things were different from how he’d believed them to be.

  “Hello, Adem. I see you have a ticket too.”

  Was this real? Or had he somehow conjured her up?

  “Yes. Compliments of your mother.”

  A passing thought slid through his head, and he grabbed it. “Do you think she’s playing matchmaker?”

  “Nope. My mom would never do that.” Her fingers tightened on his arm. “But I might.”

  She sounded like that siren who’d once caused him to abandon his dinner just to hold her in his arms. The siren who’d comforted him when he’d been in a pit of despair.

  The siren who now carried his child.

  And he hoped to God he understood what she was saying.

  “You’re playing matchmaker?”

  “I am. Interested?”

/>   He cupped her face in his hands and stared down at her. Yes, he saw the playful temptress in there, but he also saw hints of a vulnerable woman trying to find her way through this thing called life.

  That was okay. Because right now, he was a vulnerable man, trying to do the same.

  “I am interested. More than you can imagine actually. But I have one condition.”

  She frowned. “What’s that?”

  “That there are no more games, and that you tell me exactly how you feel about me.”

  Her frown disappeared, and a slow smile appeared. “That’s easy. Very easy. I love you.” She wrapped her arms around his waist. “I have a condition of my own.”

  “Okay...”

  “I want you to tear up whatever resignation letter you might be drafting.”

  “Done. How about if neither one of us leaves the clinic?”

  “But I don’t want to cause problems if people—”

  He silenced her with a kiss. “There are husband and wife doctor teams at hospitals everywhere. Why not a surgeon/midwife team. It seems we worked pretty well together once upon a time.” His thumbs stroked her jawline, glorying when he felt her shiver. “And before you say anything, that’s not why I asked you to marry me that day in your hospital room. I loved you then. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was desperate to get you to say yes. And so I spouted off a reason that seemed rational at the time, but in doing so, I left off the most important reason of all. The only one worth saying yes to: love.”

  He pressed his forehead to hers, wondering if Carly’s mum really had read his thoughts that day at the hospital. “Carolyn Eliston. Will you marry me? For love, this time?”

  Carly stood on her tiptoes, pressing her cheek to his. “Yes. Oh yes. But only for love.”

  The meeting of lips was long and luscious and full of all things good and honest and real. When he pulled back she was breathless and smiling. And damn if she didn’t glow.

  Well, that was okay, because he was walking on air.

  “Shall we go in and watch the orchestra?”