Saving her babies...
In labor, trapped in an elevator, Claudia Monticello grips Patrick Spencer’s hand. Abandoned by her babies’ father, she must rely on this handsome stranger’s quick thinking and kindness to bring her twins safely into the world!
A former obstetrician, Patrick won’t let Claudia down. He might have vowed never to love again, but as he holds these adorable babies in his arms, Patrick finds he can’t just walk away from them—or their strong and beautiful mother...
The Monticello Baby Miracles
Double bundles of joy!
Twin sisters spontaneous Claudia and reserved Harriet might be chalk and cheese, but no matter the distance between them, they are each other’s best friend. And then they both get news that will change their lives forever!
For the Monticello sisters, it seems miracles will always come in twos...
Read Harriet’s story in
One Night, Twin Consequences
by Annie O’Neil
An invitation from the delectable Dr. Matteo Torres to work with orphans in Argentina is a dream come true for Harriet. It’s also right out of her comfort zone! And then one night of seduction leads to a very unexpected consequence and double the trouble!
and
Read Claudia’s story in
Twin Surprise for the Single Doc
by Susanne Hampton
Claudia Monticello must accept former obstetrician Patrick Spencer’s help when she goes into labor in a broken elevator! But after seeing her sons in gorgeous Patrick’s arms, Claudia finds herself hoping this handsome stranger might just be the daddy her little family needs!
Both available now!
Dear Reader,
Claudia Monticello has accepted that she’s more like her fiery, impulsive Italian father than her sweet and sensible Irish mother. The “sensible” genes have been lavishly bestowed upon her twin sister, Harriet. But she also knows that her impulsive decisions and her desire to take everyone at face value—particularly men—have to stop. Her need to live life to the fullest has led her to the other side of the world on not much more than a whim—and that’s the least serious of the repercussions!
Claudia has received life-changing news and she realizes she has no choice but to be responsible. And suddenly—and surprisingly—that doesn’t seem so hard. Her heart is already consumed with love for her unborn babies, and their needs will forevermore come first. The only men who have a future in her life are her two sons.
That is until she meets Dr. Patrick Spencer.
This former obstetrician has left his life in London to start a new life in Los Angeles. But the disappointment that has driven him five thousand miles from home seems to follow him and, despite a new career, he never feels fulfilled.
That is until he meets Claudia Monticello.
They have both left London for very different reasons, but when their worlds collide, they are forced to question their decisions never to love again.
I hope you enjoy Claudia and Patrick’s journey to happily-ever-after. It’s a bumpy ride, so you might need to hold on tight...just as tightly as my hero and heroine do from the moment they meet!
Warmest regards,
Susanne
TWIN SURPRISE FOR THE SINGLE DOC
Susanne Hampton
Books by Susanne Hampton
Harlequin Medical Romance
Midwives On-Call
Midwife’s Baby Bump
Unlocking the Doctor’s Heart
Back in Her Husband’s Arms
Falling for Dr. December
A Baby to Bind Them
A Mommy to Make Christmas
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
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To everyone who thought they had closed their hearts to love...only to be proved wrong by a love stronger than the heartache they had survived.
And to Alli and Gilda and all of my amazing friends who constantly provide inspiration for my books.
Praise for Susanne Hampton
“A stunning read about new beginnings that is guaranteed to melt any reader’s heart.”
—Goodreads on Falling for Dr. December
“Probably one of my top ten favorite reads this year. It was heartbreaking...kept me wanting to read to find out what happens next.”
—Goodreads on A Baby to Bind Them
“I truly enjoyed this book. It was such a stunning emotional rollercoaster of a read it tugged on all the right heartstrings to bring me tears of joy and sadness.”
—Contemporary Romance Reviews on Unlocking the Doctor’s Heart
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
‘CONGRATULATIONS, CLAUDIA. You’re having twins!’
Claudia Monticello’s deep brown eyes, inherited from her Italian father, widened like dollhouse-sized plates against her alabaster skin, a present from her Irish mother. In a rush of panic and disbelief, her gaze darted from the gel-covered bump of her stomach to the grainy black-and-white images on the screen, then to the pleased as punch radiologist’s face before finally looking up to the ceiling to where she imagined heaven might be. Not that she thought her parents would be smiling down at her after what she had done.
Suddenly the room became very hot and she struggled a little to breathe. The clammy fingers of one hand reached for the sides of the examination table to steady herself. Two babies. Her mouth had dropped open slightly, but her lips had not curved to anything close to a smile. In denial, she shook her head from side to side and nervously chewed on the nails of the other hand. There had to be a mistake. The radiologist, still smiling at the screen and apparently unaware of the panic blanketing her patient, gently moved the hand piece over Claudia’s stomach to capture additional images.
She must have zoomed in too quickly, Claudia mused.
Double imaged.
Misread the data.
Be new at her job.
But Claudia knew without doubt, as she slowly and purposefully focused on the screen, there was no mistake. There were two tiny babies with two distinct heartbeats. The radiologist was using her finger to point to them. Her excitement was palpable. A reaction juxtaposed to Claudia’s. At twenty-nine years of age, Claudia Monticello was anything but excited to be the single mother of twins. For many reasons... The first was her living five thousand miles from home...and the second was the fact her children would never meet their father.
* * *
Twenty weeks had passed since Claudia discovered she was to be the mother of two and, as she dropped her chin and looked down at her ample midsection while waiting for the elevator, she was pleased to see they were healthy-sized babies. Her waist was somewhere hidden underneath her forty-five-inch circumference and she hadn’t seen her ankles for weeks. Her mood was one of anticipation as she waited for the doors to open on her floor. Her final obst
etric visit was imminent and she was thinking about little else than her flight home to London the next day. It couldn’t come quickly enough for her. She couldn’t wait to farewell Los Angeles.
And turn her back on the disappointment and heartache the city had brought.
Or, more correctly, that she had invited into her life.
The day was warm and she was wearing a sleeveless floral maternity dress, one of three she’d picked up on the sale rack in Macy’s when she rapidly outgrew all her other clothes, flat white sandals and her oversized camel-coloured handbag that she took everywhere. Her deep chocolate curls were short and framed her pretty face, but her eyes were filled with sadness. She pictured her suitcases, packed and waiting just inside the door of her apartment. She was finally leaving the place she had called home for almost a year. The fully furnished apartment was in a prime high-rise gated community on Wilshire Boulevard and in demand. The home would have new tenants within days. It had only been temporary, like so much in that town, and she wondered who would be sleeping in the king-sized bed later that week and what the future held for them. She hoped for their sake they hadn’t rushed into something they would live to regret.
The way she had.
* * *
Patrick Spencer waited inside the elevator for the doors to open. It had only managed to travel down one floor and was already stopping. A sigh escaped from his lips. He prayed it wouldn’t stop on every floor on the way to street level. His patience was already tested. He was having another one of those days. A day when he felt frustrated with life and struggled with a cocktail of resentment mixed with equal parts of doubt and disappointment and a dash of boredom with his new reality. Not that his reality was devoid of life’s luxuries, but it was missing the passion he’d once felt. It was another day when he felt cheated out of what he had planned and wanted for his future, even though he was the one who’d walked away from everything. A day when he almost didn’t give a damn. And whenever he had those days he always put on his sunglasses and tried to block out the world in which he lived. He had been cornered into this new life. That was how he saw it.
If things had not gone so terribly wrong, he would be living in London instead of calling Los Angeles home.
* * *
With melancholy colouring her mood, Claudia paid little attention to the tall, darkly dressed figure when she stepped into the elevator. But she noticed the affected way he was wearing wraparound sunglasses with his suit. It was more of the same pretentious LA behaviour.
Sunglasses inside an elevator? In Claudia’s sadly tainted opinion, all men were hiding something; perhaps this one was nursing a hangover. She rolled her eyes, confident in the fact he couldn’t see anything from behind the dark lenses and even more sure he wouldn’t be looking in her direction anyway. Probably obsessed with his own thoughts and problems. Just like so many in this town. A town full of actors, many with an inflated sense of self-worth and a complete lack of morals. Perhaps this man filled that same bill, she surmised. She felt sick to her stomach even thinking about the man who had wooed her with lies and then walked out of her life as shamelessly as he had walked into it.
She patted her stomach protectively and, not caring a damn what he thought, she whispered, ‘You may have been a surprise, boys, but I love you both to the moon and back already.’ Then she silently added, And I will make sure you don’t run away from your responsibilities...or wear sunglasses in a lift!
‘They’re very lucky little boys.’ Patrick said it matter-of-factly. It surprised even him that he had made a comment but hearing the woman speak so genuinely to her unborn children in an accent once so familiar struck a chord with him. In a town so devoid of anything genuine, Patrick felt compelled to comment.
Claudia thought for a fleeting moment his words had been delivered with genuine sentiment. But her body stiffened as she reminded herself there was little or no sentiment in that town. Maternal hormones, she assumed, had temporarily dressed her vision with rose-coloured glasses. His English accent, for some reason, made her drop her guard just a little. Against her better judgement, she looked over to see the man remove his sunglasses. His lips were curved slightly. Not to a full smile, not even a half smile, but she could see his teeth just a little. They were almost perfect but not veneer flawless.
He was tall, six foot one or two, she guessed, as she was five foot nine in bare feet or the flat shoes she was wearing that day. He was broad-shouldered and, she imagined from the way his shirt fell, buff, but he wasn’t overly tanned. His hair was short and light brown in colour and it was matched with a light covering of stubble on his face. His grooming was impeccable but, aside from the stubble, quite conservative. While his looks, she conceded, were worthy of a billboard, his styling was more professional than the usual LA playboy slash actor type. Or, in his case, an English ex-pat playing the LA field.
‘I’m sorry?’ she finally said after her assessment. She was hoping he would shrug his shoulders, put his sunglasses back on and return to thoughts of himself or his most recent conquest.
But he didn’t.
‘I said that your babies are very fortunate that you care for them so much even before they enter the world. I hope they make you proud.’
Patrick had not said anything like that in twelve years. They were words he used to say every day as a matter of routine, but never so routine that they were not sincere. But something about this woman and the palpable love he could see in her eyes and hear in her voice made it impossible not to make comment. She appeared different from the women he knew.
And a very long way from the women he bedded. She was cute and beautiful, not unlike a china doll. His women were not fragile like that.
And her love for her unborn children was special. It was something Patrick very much appreciated.
Claudia felt her stance stiffen again and her expression become quite strained. His accent was cultured and, with her own English upbringing and resultant class-consciousness, she suspected he had more than likely experienced a privileged boarding school education. His clothes were high end designer. She knew he must have an ulterior motive. All men did. There were a handful of people she had met in the year since she’d left London to make Hollywood her home who had shown a level of genuine kindness but she doubted this man would join those ranks. In fact, she doubted that any man would ever again join that group. Her desired demeanour was defensive and with little effort she reached it. No man was going to get within a mile of her or, more particularly, her children with any line. She had told herself that she had finished with men and all of their agendas. And she decided to prove it to herself.
Her first step would be keeping this man, albeit a very attractive man, at arm’s length. Perhaps even offside.
‘You really should refrain from eavesdropping; it’s rude,’ she said before turning her attention back to the blank gunmetal doors. There—it was done! She had stood up for herself and it brought her a sense of empowerment.
It had been a long time coming and she conceded her ire was directed towards the wrong man but she had finally felt strong enough to say something. And it felt good. As if she was claiming her power back.
But the elevator didn’t feel good or seem to have any power. It seemed to be slowing and, for want of a better word in her head, since she didn’t particularly like confined spaces, it seemed to be struggling in its descent. She wished it would pick up speed and get her out of the awkward situation. Deep down inside, she knew her response had been overly dramatic and cutting but she was still proud she had found the strength to do it. There were only another fifteen floors and she hoped the elevator would reach the ground before he handed her a business card and she discovered the reason he’d struck up the conversation. Insurance, investment or even real estate. There had to be something behind the smile. Since she was so heavily pregnant, she felt very confident it was not going to segue into a
pick-up line.
With her chin lifted slightly, she felt the colour rising in her cheeks; she played with her small pearl earrings the way she always did when she was nervous.
Patrick considered her in silence for a moment as he watched her fidget with the small pearl studs. He had made an uncharacteristic effort to acknowledge her pregnancy and he was taken back at her disparaging remark. He hadn’t expected it as she had appeared at first glance to be very sweet. Her pretty face was framed with dark curls and he thought she had an innocence about her. He hadn’t foreseen her reaction and to his mind he definitely did not deserve the harsh retort. He wasn’t going to take it on the chin.
Without making eye contact as he stared at the same gunmetal door, he decided to answer her abrupt reply with one equally insensitive. ‘I think you’re the rude one here. You enter a lift, or should I say elevator, due to our location, with only one other person, that being me, and begin a conversation with your unborn children, for which I did not judge you to be mad, but in fact complimented you, and then you remark that I’m rude for making a comment.’
Claudia was surprised by his formal and acerbic rebuttal. His response had been articulate and he had not raised his voice but she wasn’t in the mood to eat humble pie. Men, or rather one man, had just let her down very badly and she wasn’t going to break her promise to herself. They were all the same if they were given the opportunity. And she had no intention of ever giving a man such an opportunity with her again.
With her eyes facing straight ahead at their shared focal point, she was about to reply when she was stopped by a twinge in her stomach. Her body stiffened with the pain and she hunched a little, almost protectively.
She knew it couldn’t be a contraction. It was too early. One hand instinctively reached for her babies and her stomach suddenly felt hard to her touch. She was grateful the stranger was looking away as she leant a little on the elevator wall. She told herself it must be the Braxton Hicks contractions that her obstetrician had mentioned but it seemed to be quite intense and more than a little painful.
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