‘It...he will have a home,’ she bit out, remembering at the last moment their agreement not to call the baby it. Surely there was no doubt that Kaspar’s current autocratic attitude stemmed as much from whatever horrors lay in his childhood as that it label had been?
‘His home is with me. The mother.’
‘And with me. The father,’ he said, narrowing his eyes at her. ‘I will not be an absent father. You can’t push me out of this, Archie.’
‘I’m not.’ Her voice was too loud, too fractured, but at least she now knew she was right about Kaspar’s past dictating his actions now. ‘You’re the father. I wanted you to know. I felt I owed it to you, to the baby, to give you the choice of being part of its life. But... I can’t give up my whole life just to stay in the States with you. I can’t even work out here, for one thing.’
‘I can take care of you.’
‘Out of what? A sense of duty?’ she challenged. ‘Not because you want me. Or our baby.’
‘What difference does it make?’ And it was only at that instant that she realised just how desperately she wished he could tell her otherwise. ‘I will take care of you. Both of you.’
‘I don’t want to be taken care of.’
‘Make your mind up, Archie.’ His barbed tone pierced its way through her, lodging inside her, twisting painfully. ‘An hour or so ago when I said you’d always been a strong kid, you were telling me how fragile you were. Now you’re telling me you can handle everything yourself?’
‘That isn’t what I said.’ Archie threw her hands up. He was distorting things, confusing her. Or was he right? Was she confusing things? She tried again. ‘I want to be...cared for. Not cosseted.’
‘And I will be a part of my child’s life.’
‘I’m not saying you can’t be...’
It was infuriating. And yet, somehow, it was also reassuring. The fact that he was planning for the baby’s—their baby’s—future. As though it had one. As though the fact that she might lose it the way she’d lost Faith wasn’t even a possibility for him. It was what she’d needed. He made her feel strong again. Just like he had a hundred—a thousand—times before. As a kid. Even if he didn’t remember it.
Suddenly she was tired of fighting. And scared. And it was making it harder and harder for her to think straight. Words began floating around her head. The risks she hadn’t even known about a few hours ago were now threatening to overwhelm her.
She really could lose this baby the way she’d lost Faith. Having her suspicions had been one thing, but to hear it so unequivocally was another.
She longed for him to fold his strong arms around her and pull her to his huge chest, comforting her and caring for her, as though he really wanted to. Not just out of some sense of moral decency. But he didn’t. They simply stood there, pretending they weren’t squaring off against each other.
‘I want you to be a part of our baby’s life, Kaspar,’ she said softly. ‘A big part. But I can’t stay here. Your life is here and that’s fine. But mine isn’t. And for what it’s worth, I don’t see you offering to give up your life and your work to follow me permanently to the UK, where you could also be with your child on a daily basis.’
Kaspar sighed. ‘We both know that your work is more relocatable than mine is. I have teams here that depend on me, patients that trust me to be there throughout their care.’
Archie scowled, though she knew he had a point. As much as she loved her job, it was fairly flexible, and unlike his it wasn’t a matter of life or death. ‘You just think your life is more important than mine,’ she finished petulantly, in spite of herself.
His dismissive shrug didn’t help.
* * *
‘There is no your life and my life. Not now. You’re carrying my baby so whatever our individual lives were like in the past, that’s all gone now. Like it or not, it’s our lives. I will not be apart from my child.’ Misery was etched into every line, every contour on his unfairly handsome face. ‘I won’t have her growing up the way I did, pulled between one parent and the other.’
His unexpectedly searing admission ate at her.
Archie began to speak, then hesitated. She had to choose her words very, very carefully. She reached out to touch his chest, steeling herself for the jolt of awareness that charged through her even before she made contact. Even prepared for it, even now, she couldn’t make herself immune to him.
That was another thing she was going to work on.
‘We’re not your parents. If we both want to be with this baby, we’ll find a solution. It...he...will know he’s wanted. We don’t have to be in the same country but we do have to work it out carefully and fairly.’
‘I want to be in my child’s life. Every day.’ He covered her hand with his, but didn’t even seem to notice what he was doing. Still, it stole her breath away.
‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ she began, but he cut her off.
‘You’ll move in with me, Archie. For all intents and purposes, this child will have a proper family.’
Without warning, her heart flip-flopped in her chest. It was worrying how much the notion appealed to her. How close she was to agreeing to such a ridiculous idea. But as much as she tried to back up both physically and mentally, she could no more remove her hand from the compelling heat of his body than she could refuse outright.
‘But we won’t be a proper family, will we?’ It was meant to be a demand, but her voice was far breathier than she would have liked. Sadness and regret still lined his face.
‘Of course not,’ he scoffed, oblivious to the fact that he found it so easy to slam all her pitiable dreams away with those three words. ‘But our child will at least have a mother and father around who don’t want to kill each other on a daily basis. And that’s more than I ever had.’
‘I don’t want to settle for that.’ She barely recognised her own shaky voice. ‘I want so much more. I want love. I want to be cherished. I want what my father always told me he and my mother had before she died, but which I was too young to remember.’
He shut her down, clearly not listening to her.
‘This subject isn’t up for discussion, Archana. You’re coming home with me and we’ll work out the rest from there.’
And before she could respond any further Kaspar was gone and she was alone. In the middle of an empty corridor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KASPAR’S HOME WAS everything she should have expected and so much...well, less.
It was stunning. Modern glass, sleek design and cool granite perched atop a slight hillside overlooking a private, tantalising beach. As if he was showing her all he could offer their child that she never could.
Archie stared up into the double-height ceiling space of the main living area. All gleaming white and black metal, framing enormous windows that offered breathtaking views across the sea and off into the horizon.
Gorgeous.
It was also completely and utterly soulless. As if no one lived here at all. The perfect show home. Which only proved to her that it wasn’t all about money. She cradled her belly protectively. It was about love, and stability, both of which she could provide.
Strong foundations. Dependable.
Could Kaspar?
She doubted it. Or perhaps that was just her own bias since everything he did left her wound too tightly to even think straight. It hadn’t escaped her that ever since he had walked out into that corridor when she’d been trying to pluck up the courage to knock on the door, her body had filled with a low, faint humming. Desire. Need.
One afternoon with the man was all it had taken to convince her that she wasn’t over anything. That a part of her still hankered for him. Even now. That realisation alone should have told her that she needed to stay as far away from Kaspar as possible. Certainly not spend even one night at his home.
But he
’d terrified her by taking her to see Dr Jarvis. Reinforcing every last fear she’d spent five months telling herself was simply in her head. That what had happened with Faith wouldn’t happen again.
For all her earlier arguing, the car journey home had given her time to calm down. Time to acknowledge that she would stay with Kaspar as long as she needed to if it meant her baby would be all right. In many ways she was more grateful to Kaspar than she could ever have anticipated. He didn’t have to help her, there’d been nothing compelling him to get her in to see his colleague. He’d always made it clear to the media that he didn’t have any intention of settling down or having a family. He could have thanked her for telling him and let her return to the UK.
But that wasn’t Kaspar.
It was reassuring to know she hadn’t misjudged him five months ago.
‘There’s a guest suite through those doors over there.’ Kaspar cut across her thoughts as he headed back down across the hallway to a different set of doors. ‘I’ll be through that way.’
She gripped the large, rather masculine-looking, leather wingback chair in front of her.
‘You’re going?’
‘I have to get showered and changed.’ He frowned. ‘I’ve got a charity dinner event tonight. I’m a guest speaker.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you need me to stay?’
A part of her wanted to say yes. A bigger part of her knew the time to herself would be welcome. She forced a bright smile.
‘No. I could do with the evening to myself. Besides, you can’t let people down.’
He nodded, unsmiling.
‘I would prefer not to. But if I wasn’t speaking, I wouldn’t go.’
‘Should I...? Do I...come with you?’
He looked entirely unimpressed. She tried not to let it get to her.
‘I hardly think that’s the best idea. Aside from the fact that you’re meant to be resting, tonight is a high-profile event and being photographed out with me—especially looking like...that...’ he gestured to her baby bump ‘...is the quickest way to get people nosing into every single facet of our lives. I can’t imagine you want to see yourself splashed across the entertainment news headlines tomorrow morning, do you?’
‘No, of course not.’ Archie blinked, attempting to command her faithless heart not to read so much into the way he’d said our lives.
As if it implied some form of...togetherness.
‘Good.’ He nodded, satisfied, although she thought he might have had the decency not to look quite so smug. ‘Then you’ll stay here, keeping a low profile.’
He was gone before she could answer, leaving Archie alone to explore her new surroundings at her apparent leisure. Instead, she could only stare at the closed door and wonder where they were supposed to go from here.
She needed a distraction. Something to take her fears off the idea of losing this baby, something to ground her and remind her of the strong woman she was in other arenas of her life.
Like in the workplace. Yes, that was it. She could work, she’d brought her laptop. She was lucky that the nature of her job meant she could work from any number of sites or offices—emails and video conferencing were practically de rigueur. Certainly at this stage of the project. And she was lucky that she’d worked with the commercial manager on so many projects before over the years that he knew how reliable and fastidious she’d always been. Still, hopping on a plane to different country wasn’t exactly usual practice. If she was going to keep her job then she would need to do some work for as long as she was out here.
And she would need a job to get back to once the baby was born. How else was she supposed to keep a roof over their heads? Because no matter what Kaspar had said back in the hospital, it wasn’t practical for them to live together and pretend to be some kind of family, even for the sake of their baby.
She booted up her laptop, the waiting emails a welcome diversion as she fired off a handful of easy responses before working on a couple of more carefully worded letters to contractors and the client. But after a few hours the words began to swim before her eyes, the grid patterns of the spreadsheets all merging into each other. And, instead, Kaspar’s face began to creep back into her head.
It couldn’t be a good thing that all she could think about was him. And their baby. He was insisting on taking control, the way he always had seemed to do, but what kind of a real father would he allow himself to be?
The realisation clung to her mind.
She’d never appreciated, growing up, just how badly his parents’ volatile relationship had damaged Kaspar. What if he couldn’t get past that? What if he carried it into any relationship with their own baby? With her?
It was as though in asking herself that first question, she’d opened the floodgates for a hundred more to rush into her brain.
She’d never realised just how deeply his parents had influenced him before. She’d known a bit, growing up, but her father had shielded her from a lot. Had she been completely naïve in clinging to her memory of the sweet, sensitive young boy she had once known, who had looked to her own father as more of a role model than anyone else?
She couldn’t bear the idea that, in time, Kaspar might come to resent her if she and the baby impacted too heavily on his life.
What if he dated other women?
Something spiked inside her, like the stinging slice of a razor-sharp blade, even as she told herself that it didn’t matter to her either way. She told herself that what he did in his personal life was no more her business now than it ever had been. It wouldn’t make any difference to her. She would have him to thank for the most precious gift he could ever have given her.
Archie slammed the laptop lid down without even thinking about what she was doing. She could tell herself she didn’t care all she liked. She didn’t buy a word of it. Not even for a second.
What Kaspar did mattered to her. It shouldn’t, but it did. And the longer she stayed in his company the more hurt she was going to wind up getting. It was inevitable. Inexorable.
And yet there was no way she could leave. Not to go to a hotel, and certainly not to return to the UK. Not after what she’d discovered today. The very life of her unborn baby now depended on Kaspar, and how he could help her, and she’d walk over coals searing enough to melt the soles of her feet if it meant not going through the agony of another hateful miscarriage.
She’d just have to find a way to seal her heart, her mind off from Kaspar. Think of him as a business deal. The father of her baby but, ultimately, nothing to do with her.
That couldn’t be too hard. Could it?
* * *
Kaspar dodged yet another nameless woman—he’d lost count of how many had tried to corner him this evening—and glowered at the auctioneer who was delighting the crowd as he chaired the charity auction.
It was a successful evening, even pleasant, but he couldn’t enjoy a moment of it. His thoughts were centred around Archie, their baby and the unwelcome news Catherine had delivered.
He wondered what Archie was doing now. Still working on her laptop, as she’d been when he’d left her? So focussed and wrapped up in her work that she hadn’t even noticed him leaving. It was ironic, the one thing he strived for in himself, admired in others, was the thing he was already beginning to resent in Archie.
Because he didn’t need her to tell him what that driven expression on her face meant. He recognised it. It told him she was determined to maintain her job, and therefore her life, back in the UK. That she intended to return with his baby as soon as she could, despite everything he’d said to her about not wanting to be an absent father.
He hadn’t even realised how strongly he’d felt when he’d first uttered those words. But the fact of it was that it was true. The idea of losing them was unimaginable. No. Kaspar pulled himself up short. It was unacceptable.
The temptation to go home and tell Archie exactly that was almost overwhelming. There was only one thing stopping him. He needed something more compelling than words. He needed to prove to her that he would do anything for this baby. He needed to prove to her that he wanted this baby.
No easy feat when, if anyone had asked him twelve hours ago how he felt about having a baby, he would have laughed in their face. He’d never wanted children, or a family, or a wife. He’d been content to play the genius surgeon, perennial bad boy, who would never inflict himself on anyone the way his parents had inflicted their distasteful, damaging vitriol on either their son or themselves.
For decades he’d told himself that the best thing he could ever do for any child was to ensure that he wasn’t their father. No child should ever have to endure the upbringing of his own youth. Pushed from one volatile parent to the other, a pawn in their explosive games. Unwanted and in the way, even when his mother had suddenly realised that it might help his father’s career, and hurt hers, if she didn’t drag her unhappy fifteen-year-old with her.
And then Archie had knocked on his door and his whole world had shifted on its axis.
He was going to be a father.
Possibly.
Without warning a terrible tightness coiled through him, as unfamiliar as it was uncomfortable. For a moment he couldn’t identify it at all, and then it dawned on him. It was fear. And powerlessness.
Everything that Catherine had said this afternoon had made sense to him medically. But now that the initial shock was wearing off, his brain was finally locking onto the fact that this wasn’t any baby they were discussing, this was his baby. His and Archie’s.
He wanted this baby to be safe and he wanted to provide the loving family he had never had.
The fact that Archie had made it abundantly clear that she would rather cross the Atlantic, swimming the entire way if she had to, than have him be a daily part of her baby’s life cut him deeper than he would prefer to acknowledge. It scraped at him like nothing else ever had.
The Surgeon's One-Night Baby Page 9