The Pregnancy Proposition

by Meredith Webber

  Mac nodded, but the worried look was back on his face, so now Amelia had to worry about what Mac might be worrying about, as well as her own confusion.

  But how could she guess what Mac was worrying about?

  Dismissing Mac’s worries, she focussed on her own.

  Was her jolting reaction to the kiss another sign she might actually be in love with Mac?

  Boy, was that a humungously frightening concept! How could anyone possibly be in love with Mac?

  And how would he handle it if she was?

  Forget him—how would she handle it?

  As best she could—that’s how.

  As long as she didn’t have to live with him…

  She returned to A and E where the slow pace of the morning had been replaced by something resembling Friday night chaos.

  ‘Gas leak in the city. I was about to page you. Mostly breathing difficulties, no serious casualties so far, but the ambulances brought this lot in anyway.’

  Sally waved her hand towards a scattering of people, sitting in the waiting room with oxygen masks held to their faces.

  ‘One asthmatic in cubicle three. Brian’s in there but he’s due on lunch, so if you want to take over?’

  Amelia took over, checked the patient and the file, then, as the young woman seemed comfortable, she glanced around, pleased to see the glove dispensers on the wall were positively bursting with gloves and the trolley was carefully and fully stocked.

  ‘Do I have to stay here?’ the young woman asked, and Amelia, thinking of Mac and his very different demands to escape the hospital environs, explained that she’d be released as soon as a doctor had been back to check on her.

  ‘As far as I can see, there’s no reason to keep you,’ she told the patient.

  Rick Stewart appeared as she spoke, and Amelia smiled to herself as the patient quickly removed the oxygen mask and patted down her hair. Rick was tall and blond with killer blue eyes and was considered one of the best-looking doctors on staff. Though, Amelia found herself thinking, she preferred a dark, craggy kind of good looks.

  Since when?

  Since you kissed him less than an hour ago?

  Similar arguments wrangled in her head throughout the rest of the day, so by four, when she signed off from one responsibility and went up to visit another, she was mentally exhausted.

  And physically?

  Confused, excited, apprehensive, jittery—a very dicey cocktail of emotions swirled in her body.

  But she was a professional—a nurse with a patient to tend. All she had to do was think of Mac that way and the rest should be easy.

  ‘Like skinning an elephant would be easy,’ she muttered to herself.

  Doug Blake caught her as she exited the lift, and guilt swamped her. She’d had no time to contact him about the obs.

  ‘I’ve just seen Mac and cut back his obs to two-hourly—it was that or be responsible for him causing bodily harm to a poor unfortunate nurse. I hear you’re taking him home in the morning.’ He rolled his eyes in mock disbelief and added, ‘You do realise what you’re tackling?’

  Amelia straightened up and looked the specialist right in the eye. ‘Mac might be a bit of a tyrant at work, but it’s how he gets things done, and underneath that gruff—’

  ‘And grouchy!’ Doug interjected.

  ‘And grouchy—’ Amelia accepted the word with gritted teeth ‘—exterior, there’s a kind and caring individual.’

  ‘Very individual!’ Doug said, but he smiled at her, and his gaze flipped down her figure. ‘I guess you’ve seen his finer points.’

  Amelia felt her cheeks burn but she refused to back down.

  ‘Have you any orders you want followed—any medical advice to give me before I take him home?’

  Doug stopped smiling, and shrugged as if he accepted that whatever advice he gave would be useless.

  ‘Try to keep him quiet. He shouldn’t read for long and definitely shouldn’t watch television for a week or two. Ideally, he should have stayed in hospital a couple more days, but he won’t and you’re the next best thing.’

  He put out his hand.

  ‘Good luck!’

  Amelia shook it, but she didn’t return the smile he offered. She was damned if she was going to smile at a man who made Mac sound like a monster.

  He was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, so still Amelia assumed he was asleep. She stopped just inside the door and looked at him, her heart tripping in its beat as she thought of what might have happened.

  But the trip in her heartbeat was nothing to the rapid acceleration that followed when she realised just what she was taking on. Not only would she have the responsibility of taking care of Mac while he recuperated, but she’d have him in her home, twenty-four hours a day, and she’d have the attraction she’d been at such odds to deny hammering at her for sixty seconds of every minute and sixty minutes of every one of those twenty-four hours.

  I must be mad! she thought, then wondered if she was talking to herself again when Mac opened his eyes.

  ‘You can come right in. I don’t bite.’

  That made Amelia smile.

  ‘No?’ she said. ‘Tell that to the troops downstairs. Or the nurses on this floor.’

  Mac sat up, slowly enough to tell Amelia he was still far from well.

  ‘Are you sure you should be going home?’ Anxiety for him prompted the question which she regretted the moment she saw the frown gather on his brow.

  ‘I’m not exactly going home, am I?’ he growled. ‘And it’s not until tomorrow anyway.’

  Amelia bit back an urge to tell him that she didn’t want him at her place any more than he wanted to be there. In fact, she’d have liked to have told him exactly where he could go, but she reminded herself he was a patient first and Mac second, and after all she’d offered to have him.

  He reached under the bed and pulled out a duffel bag, then fiddled in one of its pockets, finally producing a key. The frown was back as he flipped it lightly up and down in his hand, then looked at her.

  ‘Know anything about retrograde amnesia?’

  Apart from ‘Will you marry me?’, it was the last question Amelia had expected.

  ‘Retrograde amnesia?’

  Repeating the question didn’t help, and before she could think what to say, Mac was speaking again.

  ‘Not a lot—I thought not. I wondered if you’d mind going out to my place for a couple of medical books and some clothes. Mum brought in pyjamas but there’s no way I’m walking out of here in them, and I’ll need a couple of clean shirts and underdaks for the time I’m with you.’

  He gave her another doubtful look and added, ‘Unless I have enough at your place.’

  It didn’t take much to put retrograde amnesia and the remark about clothes together. Great jumping giants! He’d come out of the accident and remembered about her being pregnant, then must have assumed they’d had an ongoing relationship of some kind which he couldn’t remember.

  ‘Retrograde amnesia is a gap in memory of events in a particular part of the past,’ she told him. ‘Usually just before the accident. But you remembered about the baby, and leaving my place to drive home, so it’s unlikely you’ve got memory loss. Anyway, Doug Blake said you weren’t allowed to read so I’ll get the clothes but forget the books.’

  She reached out to take the key, but his fingers trapped hers, closing around her hand and holding it tightly.

  ‘What about anterograde amnesia—forgetting specific events or a specific time in the past?’

  Uncertainty leant the question an edge of desperation, and the fact that this was Mac being uncertain affected Amelia more than she could fully understand.

  She leaned closer and put her free arm around his shoulders, drawing his head towards her body and giving him a tight, comforting hug.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with your memory,’ she assured him, and was about to explain when he released her hand and pulled her even closer, his lips finding her breast be
fore teasing their way up her throat, along her jaw-line and finally, while Amelia still fought for control of the sensations he was causing, captured her lips.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAC’S surge of desire defeated his aching head, and his arms tightened around Peterson’s slight frame. His lips drank in her sweetness, while his body burned with a fierce pride that soon the slim, pliant figure would swell with the growth of his child.

  Their child!

  OK, so he might be a little hazy over the details of their relationship, like how long it had been going on and where it was conducted—it had to have been at her place as he certainly had no recollection of her ever having been at his—but he’d definitely made the right choice this time as far as a marriage partner was concerned.

  The thought of being married to Peterson was so intoxicating his kiss deepened, becoming more demanding, so it wasn’t until she pushed away, muttering somewhat breathlessly ‘This is not the time or place for this, Mac’, that he remembered where they were.

  ‘I could come home with you right now,’ he suggested.

  Her brown eyes scanned his face, and he read worry in their dark depths. He stroked his fingers along her chin and up to her temple where a vein throbbed beneath the fine skin.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Little Bug,’ he said, the nickname coming so easily off his lips he realised he’d often thought of her that way. ‘I said I’d stay overnight in this wretched hospital and I will.’

  He smoothed the satiny skin.

  ‘I don’t ever want you worrying over me—so if I ever do anything to upset you in any way, you just tell me, OK?’

  Amusement banished most of the worry in her eyes, and her lips tilted into a tantalising smile.

  ‘And you’ll immediately desist?’ she teased. ‘Now, why do I find that hard to imagine?’

  The teasing prompted him to kiss her again, but though she responded with a passion that left him both breathless and aching with desire, he remembered that remnant of worry and after she’d departed, muttering about dinner at her parents’ and already being late, he couldn’t help thinking about it.

  Amelia left the neurology ward but, late though she was, she didn’t go straight to her parents’ place. Instead, she went back down to A and E where she phoned home to say she was running late, then found a phone book to look up Mac’s address—praying he wasn’t paranoid enough about privacy to have an unlisted number.

  Relief surged through her as she not only found the address she needed but realised it was in a suburb not far from her family home. But the relief was short-lived when she remembered just why she was going home.

  There was no easy way to do it, she finally decided, pulling up outside the house where she’d grown up. She’d just have to march straight in there and tell them.

  Easier said than done, she realised as her mother greeted her with a kiss and a hug, then scolded her for not getting home more often, being too thin, not looking after herself properly then demanding to know if she was getting enough sleep.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum,’ Amelia said, moving out of the embrace and looking into her mother’s so-familiar face. ‘But I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘Whatever it is, darling, it can’t be bad enough to make you frown like that.’

  Amelia smiled at her mother’s assurance.

  ‘Or bad enough to drum me from the family?’ she joked, then remembered her excitement about the baby. ‘It’s actually not bad, just unexpected.’

  And was that an understatement when you considered the how and who of this situation!

  ‘I’m pregnant, Mum.’

  Her mother’s reaction was sheer delight. She opened up her arms and drew her daughter close.

  ‘Oh, darling, that’s so wonderful!’ Then she pushed Amelia away and looked at her again. ‘It is wonderful, isn’t it? You’re happy about it? You want this baby?’

  Amelia relished the warm-hearted acceptance then felt tears prick behind her eyelids.

  ‘Oh, Mum, I want it so much. All those years with Brad, when it didn’t happen, now it’s like a miracle.’

  Her mother hugged her again, then said, ‘Come on, we’ll tell your father. The boys all seem to be enjoying bachelorhood too much to marry and settle down, so Dad and I were beginning to think we’d never have a grandchild.’

  She hasn’t asked about the father, Amelia realised as she followed in her mother’s wake. Too tactful?

  Her father, though, went straight to the point.

  ‘And the father? Is he going to be involved? Is he happy about the baby or will he opt out and leave you to bring up the child on your own?’

  ‘We’ll help and always be there for you,’ her mother said quickly, as if to soften her husband’s words. ‘Your father can settle a trust fund on it, so you won’t have financial worries.’

  Amelia smiled, warmed by her mother’s quick assurances of support.

  But it was her father who wanted an answer.

  ‘Actually, he’s very happy about it,’ she said, ignoring the mental reminder that this hadn’t been unequivocally confirmed by the man in question. ‘It’s Mac, Fraser McDougal. I’ve spoken of him to you. He’s the doctor in charge of A and E.’

  ‘The ogre? The one who yells at you?’ Her mother’s disbelief was palpable.

  ‘He only yells at work,’ Amelia told her, though she knew this would probably prove untrue and Mac would yell just as much at home if she dared to disobey his directives, particularly in regard to the health and welfare of his unborn child.

  ‘Fraser McDougal.’ Her father repeated Mac’s name as if running a mental scan of his memory. ‘Wasn’t he in an accident just recently? I noticed it in the paper. Only picked up the name because I know his father. A fine man, Alec McDougal, and very proud of his son, the doctor. You’ve met him, too, Meg. Allied Insurance.’

  ‘He was in an accident? Is he all right?’ her mother demanded, ignoring the rest of her husband’s explanation.

  Amelia remembered the passionate kiss she and Mac had shared, and grinned.

  ‘He needs rest more than anything. He’s still in hospital but I’m taking him home to my place tomorrow.’

  Both parents nodded as if this was a perfectly natural thing to be doing, then her mother ushered them both into the kitchen, where Amelia’s sense of homecoming was always strongest. It was a huge room, dominated by the table in the middle where the family had always gathered for all but the most formal of meals. Here she’d talked and joked with her brothers, discussed everything from puberty to gun laws with her parents and siblings and learned to cherish the warmth and values of family life.

  To Amelia’s relief, though they talked a lot about the baby, neither of her parents raised the dicey issue of marriage.

  Though as she drove away, heading for Mac’s place, she knew for certain that what she wanted for this child was a family life like she had known herself—with the warmth and security of two loving parents, preferably united in marriage.

  Which would mean marrying Mac.

  Even if he doesn’t love you?

  The excitement that had risen at the thought of marriage to the man she suspected she loved plummeted again, and unlocking the door to his townhouse caused even more apprehension. It wasn’t as if she was breaking in, so why should she feel this way?

  Because it was Mac’s place, and entering it suggested an intimacy that didn’t exist between them.

  Ignoring the yammer of apprehension in her head, she felt for a light-switch, then stared in dismay at the bare, soulless living room the light revealed. A big leather armchair, a television set and bookcases jam-packed, untidily, with books and magazines.

  A dining table and four chairs stood at the far end of the room, with more medical and scientific magazines stacked on its surface. No pictures adorned the walls, no cushions softened the hard wooden chairs, no patterned tablecloth or plant or flowers decorated the table. Amelia thought of her brothers’ apartments—two of
them in her apartment complex—and though they were all obviously bachelor dens, they exuded an atmosphere that suggested they’d made them homes.

  Uncertain now about why this place should seem so bleak, she walked through the narrow room towards the kitchen. Here, the benches were so clean Amelia suspected his mother had cleaned up when she’d come to collect Mac’s pyjamas. But the cleanliness reinforced the bleakness of the place.

  Upstairs, a small bedroom at the front had been converted to an office—more magazines, books and papers—while the larger bedroom behind it was as soulless as his living room, with a bed and a dressing-table with no clutter marring its surface, though a framed photo lay face down on its surface. And a bedside table—only one—as if no one ever shared the bed.

  Unable to resist, she crossed to the dressing-table and lifted the photo, setting it upright then studying the image. A serenely beautiful woman looked back at her. Though it was a black and white portrait, Amelia could tell the woman’s hair was blonde, and her eyes were undoubtedly blue.

  Huh! Blue-eyed blonde—what a cliché! Unexpected jealousy soured Amelia’s stomach, but she couldn’t halt her thoughts. Considering Helene, maybe blondes were Mac’s preference.

  But who was this woman, and why hadn’t she put in an appearance at the hospital?

  And why hadn’t Mac taken her to dinner with him that fateful night at Capriccio’s?

  Involuntarily, a memory of the crumpled receipt from Capriccio’s returned to Amelia, but she thrust it aside, opening the built-in cupboards and searching through them for what might be considered appropriate ‘convalescing’ clothes. She selected four shirts, a couple of sweaters, two pairs of jeans and an assortment of underwear. Wishing she’d thought of borrowing a bag from home, she balanced the load in her arms and, after turning off the upstairs lights, started down the stairs.

  The clothes were clean, yet held a distinctly masculine odour, so it was almost as if she was holding Mac in her arms again.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ she murmured, pushing her face against one of the sweaters and breathing in the scent of him. ‘Surely it can’t be love.’