The Brooding Surgeon's Baby Bombshell

by Susan Carlisle

Zoe woke again and blinked as the lights were so bright. Where was she?

  “Honey, stay still.”

  There was Gabe again. He sounded worried. Why? “Gabe?”

  “Right here.” His hand squeezed hers as his face came into view.

  “You’re here.” He was here.

  “I am, and I’m never leaving you again.” He kissed her forehead.

  All the pain of the last few weeks washed away. Gabe was next to her. Touching her. Calling her honey. What had happened? Why did he look so scared?

  A nurse moved around her bed, checking the IV lines and doing vitals. “Ms. Avery, we’re getting ready to move you to your room.”

  When the nurse left, Zoe searched Gabe’s face. “What happened?”

  “You were in a car accident.”

  The haze started to clear. She’d been driving home and had been hit from behind. The next thing she’d known, she was being slammed into the car in front of her. Tears filled her eyes. Zoe reached for her middle with her uninjured hand. “Will?”

  “Shh, honey. Our baby is just fine.” Gabe’s hand came to rest over hers.

  Zoe drifted off again.

  When she woke next, it was dark outside and she was in a hospital room. She looked around. Her eyes focused on Gabe, who was sitting in a chair facing her. His hand held hers as if it was a lifeline. “Gabe.”

  He straightened quickly. “Right here. Is something wrong? How are you feeling?”

  “I ache all over.”

  Gabe stood, but didn’t let go of her hand. “I’m not surprised. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse. I saw pictures of the accident.” His voice hitched with emotion. “I could have lost you both.”

  She squeezed his fingers. “We’re right here. My leg hurts.”

  Gabe’s doctor persona returned. “You have a broken arm and had a deep laceration on your thigh. Both were taken care of in surgery.”

  Zoe looked at her arm, which was in a cast. Tears threatened to spill over. “I won’t be able to take care of Will when he comes.”

  “With any luck, it’ll be off before then. Either way, I’ll be there to help.”

  “You will?” She watched him closely. Did he really mean it? But he’d never lied to her, only to himself.

  “I can’t wait any longer to say this. I’m sorry for how I treated you. You were right. I was just afraid. Still am. I know nothing more about being a husband or a father than I did before, but what I do know is that I can’t live without you. I promise to put you and our family above anything else in my life. If you’ll just have me. I love you, Zoe.”

  Gabe’s plea squeezed her heart. “Of course I will have you. I love you.”

  His lips found hers. The kiss was tender but held a promise of many to come.

  They were interrupted by a nurse entering the room. While she was seeing about Zoe, Gabe stepped out into the hallway. As soon as the nurse was finished, Gabe reentered the room.

  “Why’re you wearing a surgical gown?” Zoe asked.

  Gabe gave her a sheepish grin. “When they called me about you, I was in surgery. I left in the middle of the procedure and didn’t stop to change.”

  He had? “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Yes, I should. I’ll always be there whenever you need me somehow or some way. I won’t leave you again.”

  “Gabe, your work is important. It saves lives. I understand that.” Zoe could only imagine the drama he’d caused.

  “I left the patient in good hands. He’s doing fine. I just checked in.”

  “I love you,” Zoe mumbled.

  “I love you more,” she heard as she slipped off into sleep once more.

  She had no idea how much time had passed when she woke again, but Gabe was still there beside her. He was leaning back in the chair with his eyes closed. His long legs were stretched out in front of him and his ankles crossed. Zoe couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was such an amazing man with such a large capacity to love. And he’d chosen her. She was blessed.

  “You’re staring at me.” Gabe opened his eyes and smiled at her. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Pain meds are a good thing.”

  “Yes, they can be.” He stood.

  Zoe didn’t miss his professional habit of checking all the monitors and lines before his attention returned to her. “Gabe, you know you don’t have to stay here with me. You need to go home and get some rest.”

  “My home is right here. You are it.”

  Her heart melted. If he hadn’t already owned her heart, he would have after that statement.

  “What made you change your mind about us?” She had to know. Believe that it wasn’t just because of the accident.

  “Honey, I’ve been miserable without you. Nothing has been right. It was even starting to be noticed at work. No hospital needs a lovesick surgeon heading a transplant program. And I spoke to my mother. When I was a kid I overheard her say something about me not having a role model for fatherhood. She didn’t even remember saying it. That seed grew in my mind to the point I believed it.”

  “You have so many qualities that’ll make you a great father.”

  “I think with you at my side I can be.” He kissed her. “Zoe, I know this isn’t the best time to ask this but I need to know—will you marry me?”

  Gabe was everything she’d ever wanted in a husband but she didn’t need marriage to prove they loved each other. “You don’t want to get married. I understand that. Accept it.”

  “Yes, I do. I want people to know you belong to me. I want my son and any more children we have to carry my name. I love you.”

  “My mother had a lucid moment and we had a conversation about Daddy. It seems he never wanted a family, felt strangled by one. I don’t want you to ever feel that way. If not being married is what works for you, then I’ll be satisfied just to be in your life.”

  Gabe leaned over until his face was near hers. “I love you and want to marry you. Now, will you please answer my question? I’ll beg if I have to.”

  With effort and some discomfort, Zoe circled his neck with her good arm. “Yes, I will marry you. I love you.” Her lips found his.

  EPILOGUE

  GABE LEFT HIS mother in his kitchen, fussing with dinner, and went to find Zoe. He stopped in the nursery doorway and looked at the picture Zoe and their baby made as they slowly rocked in the sunshine. A glow that could only be love radiated from Zoe as she looked down at the perfect baby boy in her arms. His family.

  She must have heard him because she looked up with an angelic smile and met his gaze. The love he’d just seen for Will was now transferred to Gabe. It didn’t waver. What he’d done to earn it, he had no idea. The thing he did know was he would spend the rest of his life honoring it.

  “Hey, honey.” Zoe’s smile grew, just as it always did at his endearment.

  “Come in and join us. Your son would like to say hi.”

  Gabe walked to them and gently kissed Zoe on the forehead. “You did well, Mrs. Marks.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Marks. I think we both did well.” Gabe carefully took Will from her, cradling him against his chest. Zoe’s cast had only been removed a few days earlier.

  Gabe looked at the peachy chubby face and he worried his heart might burst from the amount of love filling it. “Hello, William Gabriel Marks.”

  Zoe rose to stand beside him.

  He looked at her, at the tears filling her eyes. His lips found hers. “I love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  “Just think, in my stupidity I almost missed out on this.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “But you didn’t and that’s what matters.”

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed this story, check out these other gread reads from Susan Carlisle

  Redeeming t
he Rebel Doc

  Christmas with the Best Man

  Stolen Kisses with Her Boss

  The Surgeon’s Cinderella

  All available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Back in Dr. Xenakis’ Arms by Amalie Berlin.

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  Back in Dr. Xenakis’ Arms

  by Amalie Berlin

  PROLOGUE

  Ten years ago...

  ARES’S TIRES SPUN gravel as he tore from the access road into the parking lot at Mythelios’s only airport, but they couldn’t compete with the churning of his stomach.

  At the edge of the tarmac, he slammed into Park and launched himself from the car.

  Please don’t let me be too late.

  His heart, still beating hard enough to bruise, hadn’t slowed for a single second since his best friend, Theo, had called him twenty minutes earlier in a blind panic—Theo’s parents were sending his little sister away. Today. Right now. Or maybe a few minutes ago if time wasn’t on his side.

  He’d thought he would have more time to spend with her before they took that step—the step he now couldn’t even imagine why he’d agreed to. Her father had said nothing about Erianthe leaving the next morning...

  He burst through the chain-link gate along the back of the hangar where all the partners of Mopaxeni Shipping kept their private planes. Gravel became tarmac as he pounded through the baking waves rising from black pavement. Even as fast as he could move, he might as well have been running through quicksand; every yard of effort seemed to return an inch of sluggish distance.

  The same threat had been lobbed at Erianthe by her parents when they’d reacted just to the myriad ways she had rebelled. The new millennium might be well underway, but they were still firmly rooted in the past—strict, traditional, image-obsessed Greek Orthodox billionaires, who’d decided that the best place to hide the shameful pregnancy of their teenage daughter was in a convent.

  Theo had never believed they’d actually send her away, but Ares had known for nearly eighteen hours. He’d just thought there would be more time before she left. She wasn’t even showing yet.

  It was something else Theo didn’t know about—like the yearlong secret relationship they’d carried out to protect the dynamic of their group, their real family—the neglected children of Mopaxeni. A fail-safe in case things went haywire between them.

  Theo didn’t know it was Ares’s fault his little sister was basically being exiled to another country, hidden away, with the adoption of her child forced on her by their “loving” parents. He thought his parents were sending Eri away to boarding school, so she would avoid distractions and concentrate on her studies.

  He rounded the hangar and saw the plane already pulled out, door open, stairs still attached. The long black sedan her father often drove sat between him and the plane, but the darkened windows on the car blocked him from seeing whether they were still inside or already onboard.

  How had Dimitri Nikolaides talked him into agreeing to give her up? To give up his child?

  It had seemed like the responsible decision when Ares had gone to her father, but now all he could feel was panic.

  He pushed harder, his lungs burning, unable to keep up with the demands he was putting on them in the already sweltering morning sunshine.

  “You’re both too young to be parents.”

  “You’ll hurt her worse if you’re married by the time you get bored with her.”

  “She’s only sixteen.”

  Now, seeing it all so rapidly come to pass, it couldn’t be clearer that he’d been wrong. So wrong...so many mistakes. He was losing her—he was losing them both. And then he’d lose the rest of them too.

  The door stood open—there was still time. He’d tell her father he wouldn’t give up his rights to his own child. And if that didn’t work, he’d knock Dimitri out and they’d run. They’d run away, just like she’d begged him to. There had to be somewhere they could go.

  Rounding the sedan, he’d reached out for the stair rails when a blur of movement in his peripheral vision caused him to slow down. Something impacted on him before he could turn to look back, and sent him sprawling onto the sizzling pavement. Weight and heat.

  The air blasted from his burning lungs. Large hands—more than one set—grabbed his upper arms and hauled him up before he could get enough air sucked in to say anything, to do anything. To shout for her.

  Guards. Dimitri had brought guards.

  Digging in his heels, Ares tried to twist free, but air was still an issue. They began dragging him roughly back around the car, away from her. She must be on the plane.

  So close. He was so close.

  The adrenaline that had kept him going could hold up for only so long. Eventually all he had left to keep fighting, to let the girl he loved know he was there, was his voice.

  “Erianthe!” he shouted, over and over, his eyes locked on the darkened portal into the private jet.

  They didn’t stop dragging him toward the rear of the car. They pulled, and he staggered backward still, toward the hangar.

  He shouted again. He screamed for her. His vision wobbled from the forced locomotion, but it always returned to the only place of hope he could fixate on.

  His heart stopped, then surged into the stratosphere as he finally saw her, there in the doorway. She’d heard him.

  Shrugging out of her father’s hands, she launched herself down the stairs and ran straight for him. The shining curtain of her dark hair flew out behind her, and as she got closer he could see how pale she was but for the redness around her midnight eyes.

  Closer.

  The men stopped dragging him.

  Closer.

  They let go.

  With newfound strength he lunged forward, running to meet her, arms outstretched. If he could just hold her...

  With all these people, even the hope he’d clung to couldn’t convince him now that there was any chance they could get away today.

  If he could apologize, he’d have that to hold in his heart until he could find a way to get to her.

  As he neared, ready to grab her, her face contorted. The tears he’d guessed would be there became rivers down her cheeks and she skidded to a stop, drawing her right arm back in a full swing.

  A sharp blast of pain radiated from his left cheek and his head snapped to the side, sending him back a step to maintain his balance.

  She’d hit him?

  It took a few seconds for the situation to make sense through the expanding hollow filling his chest.

&nb
sp; “Eri...” He said her name, the words he’d practiced in the car evaporating in the heat of her stare.

  “I trusted you!” She half sobbed, half screamed, smacking away his hand as he instinctively reached for her. “I thought you were different, but you’re just like him.”

  “No...” The word came out because it was the only one he could wrestle through his closing throat. He wasn’t like Dimitri Nikolaides, but he’d been tricked by him, his fears twisted, his weakness exposed. Made to doubt. “We can go—”

  Her short, broken laugh stopped his words dead and ripped at his insides.

  “I hate you.” The words, almost a whisper, hit him in the chest like a cannon blast.

  She hated him.

  Dimitri reached his daughter and began hauling her back toward the plane and onto the flight to a country Ares couldn’t name because they hadn’t told him. Somewhere far enough away that no one here would know about the baby—that was all he knew.

  No hands grabbed him this time, but his feet still stayed glued to the ground.

  “I will never forgive you for this!”

  He wanted to say he loved her, but how could he say that now? Why would she believe him?

  “I’m sorry.” He said the words, the only words he could find, and repeated them again and again.

  I will come for you.

  The words swam up—the words he meant to utter but couldn’t say to her. Not now, when the eyes that had always looked upon him with sweetness boiled over with such rage he could barely breathe.

  The men who had been dragging him away now joined their boss in wrestling a struggling Erianthe back up the stairs.

  The last words she screamed at him would still ring in his ears long after the plane departed. Because she was right.

  This was all his fault.

  Copyright © 2018 by Amalie Berlin

  ISBN-13: 9781488079825

  The Brooding Surgeon’s Baby Bombshell

  First North American Publication 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Susan Carlisle

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