The Surgeon's One-Night Baby

by Charlotte Hawkes

  He had no idea how long he kept running, or how far he went. But when he finally lifted his head he was no longer on the beach, he wasn’t even anywhere near the ocean, and the morning sun was on the other side of the sky as people began to emerge for their early evening revelries.

  He’d been running all day. Around in circles. Just as his head was doing.

  Only then did Kaspar finally turn back and head for the house which would no longer ever be a home to him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  FOR THREE DAYS she had stayed cooped up in the hotel room, wallowing in her misery, which wasn’t easy as she wasn’t a person generally accustomed to self-pity. She hadn’t wallowed when her marriage to Joe had ended, or when she’d lost the baby, or even when her father had died. She’d tried to be strong, and stoic, and soldier on.

  And look where that had got her.

  She hadn’t actually pushed through all the grief and the heartache, at all. She’d simply been sucked even deeper down into it. The more she’d struggled to pretend she was fine, the faster she’d sunk, a little like trying to fight when the quicksand already had an unbreakable hold.

  So Archie had decided that maybe if she wallowed this time, gave in to the wealth of misery that swirled around her, she could exhaust all her sorrow and make it out the other side.

  It wasn’t working. Because the more she indulged her sadness, the more her brain started whirring again, wondering if she wasn’t perhaps missing something. Second-guessing herself.

  Her mobile phone rang for the umpteenth time. An unknown number every time. She’d learned not to answer it after the first few times, when the media’s questions had been fired at her before she’d even finished saying hello. But this number had a Swiss code in front of it.

  ‘Archana?’

  Archie stopped, any response lodged in her throat.

  ‘It’s me,’ he faltered uncertainly. ‘Joe?’

  ‘Yes.’ She bit back the additional, I know who you are.

  ‘I just thought I should...’ He cleared his throat and she could imagine him, rigid and upright.

  A neat shirt and tie under a round-necked wool jumper. She couldn’t imagine why he was calling. She couldn’t imagine it was to revel in her public humiliation. Of all her ex-husband’s flaws, taking delight in someone else’s misfortune had never been one of them.

  Archie sucked in a breath, waiting for him to continue. Not wanting to reveal her confusion.

  ‘I saw your photo in the paper. I...wanted to call and congratulate you.’

  ‘Sorry?’ The word escaped before she could stop it. A squeak of shock.

  ‘The baby. And that you look...happy,’ he continued awkwardly, clearly mistaking her response. ‘In love.’

  The words didn’t come easily to him. They never had. But she knew him well enough to know the sentiment was genuine.

  ‘No...’ she managed, her tongue struggling to wrap itself around any form of coherent response. ‘You’ve got it wrong.’

  ‘Archana.’ He silenced her quickly, and she could hear the rueful smile in his voice. ‘Please don’t do me the disservice of trying to spare my feelings, however well intentioned.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You love him. That’s plain to see from the photos. Had you once, ever, looked at me in that way...’ He tailed off, clearing his throat again. ‘Well, perhaps if I had treated you to the same...passion as Kaspar Athari does, maybe you would have looked at me in that way. It’s clear that he loves you in a way that I never did. Or could. The way you deserve to be loved.’

  Archie wasn’t sure what he said after that. She heard him speaking, as far from his usual reserved manner as she thought she’d probably ever heard him, but she was too busy hurrying across the suite to retrieve her laptop, to fire it up and find those images she’d refused to look at since that morning in Kaspar’s study.

  By the time Joe ended the short conversation, she was sinking down on the dining chair, staring at the truth, which had been there all along—only she’d been too caught up in the puppy-dog expression on her own face to see it.

  Only this time that wasn’t what she saw. It was as though all the scales had dropped from her eyes, taking with them all the preconceived notions she’d been carrying around. Suddenly, she could see what Joe could see. What he’d been trying, in his typically restrained way, to say. What the rest of the world could see.

  A couple so patently in love with each other that it shone out from the page.

  She didn’t look like a pathetic, lost puppy. She looked like a woman—an expectant mother—very much in control of her feelings. And it showed a man who, even as he dealt efficiently and necessarily with the unmistakeable threat to her well-being, never once let his hot, possessive gaze leave her. As though she was the only important thing in the room. In the entire world.

  How had she failed to see it before?

  It was time to go and claim her husband. The father of her unborn baby. She wanted a life with him, as a proper family. It was the reason why she’d jumped on that plane to the States those brief few months before, whether she’d realised it or not.

  Archie stood with more purpose than she’d felt in a long time, striding across the expansive space to snatch up the phone and call Reception.

  ‘It’s Archana Athari, from the Princess Suite,’ she began unnecessarily. ‘I would like a taxi, please. To take me to me...home.’

  It was done. In that instant she felt lighter, and more optimistic.

  She could call Kaspar’s driver, of course, but he might call Kaspar, and she didn’t want to alert her husband to her change of plans.

  He loved her. She knew that with a bone-deep certainty that she’d never realised existed in her before now. But she also knew that Kaspar was proud, and stubborn. He had pushed her away because he truly, incredibly, believed that her life was better without him in it. He couldn’t be more wrong, which was exactly what she intended to tell him. He wouldn’t want to hear it at first, but she didn’t care. She could convince him, however long it took. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to stack the deck in her favour as much as possible, and that included giving herself the element of surprise. If he knew she was at his house, he might suddenly decide he had more pressing matters and stay at the hospital, but if he got home to find her already there, he could hardly just walk out.

  She threw everything into her suitcases with lightning speed. It wasn’t really difficult since she hadn’t unpacked the bags Kaspar had sent over that first day. Possibly that should tell her everything she needed to know. And then she opened the door to the hallway ready for the bellhop.

  As Archie checked the room over for anything she might have forgotten, she wasn’t prepared for the first contraction that gripped her with almost no warning. Neither was she prepared for her husband to walk through the door as though she’d summoned him by her very thoughts.

  ‘Kaspar...?’ She gaped, her mind struggling to work.

  Thirty-five weeks? She still had a month to go. They had to be Braxton-Hicks, right?

  ‘There are probably a million ways I could do this that would make the moment romantic, and meaningful, and everything you could want,’ Kaspar plunged on, oblivious. ‘But right now I can’t think of a single one of them. So I’ll just say it as simply and as clearly as I can. I love you, Archie. Not as the mother of my child, but for you. I love, and I’m in love with, you.

  ‘I thought I was broken, and beyond repair, but you found a way to put me back together, and although I may not always show it in the right way, I promise you that I’m learning and if you give me another chance I’ll ensure you never regret it. Not for the rest of time.’

  The pain was spreading through her abdomen even as her heart felt as though it was sprouting wings ready to take flight. Whoever knew it was possible to feel so frightened and yet so elated all in the sam
e moment?

  ‘Archie...’

  ‘I love you too, you idiot,’ she managed. A combination of clenched teeth and a joyful sob. ‘But do you...do you think we could do this later? Only... I think the baby is on his way.’

  One day, she knew, she would remember the look of marvel on his face. She would remember this feeling that she was ready for anything, and she would remember this moment as the perfect start to the new chapter of her life.

  ‘Of course our baby is on its way.’ The smile was wide, his eyes gleaming, and a look of almost triumph was in his gaze, making her feel very powerful. ‘She clearly approves of the moment and can’t wait another few weeks to join us in our new future.’

  EPILOGUE

  SHUFFLING FORWARD ON her bottom, Archana Athari took the hook from the front of her harness and fitted her static line through the eye on the floor of the tiny light aircraft, pulling hard to ensure it was locked securely in place before Kaspar double-checked the line for her.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Kaspar called over the roar of the engines and the wind. ‘Remember, aside from our one tandem jump together four years ago, you haven’t jumped in a decade. And a three-year-old and a one-year-old make the most critical audiences ever.’

  ‘I know.’ She grinned at the thought of her son and daughter down on the ground, waiting for them both. ‘According to your eldest, those go-carts you made them last week are ruined because you put pictures of the wrong animated films on the side.’

  She had no idea whether Kasper heard her or not but it didn’t matter. He understood anyway, and his lazy, sexy grin of response sent a wave of adrenalin coursing through her, just like it always did.

  Sliding forward, still on her bottom, to the door of the plane, Archie stuck her feet out and leaned forward. The blur of the ground rushing by a few thousand feet below snatched her breath away. For a moment she froze.

  ‘Go!’ he bellowed.

  And then she offered Kaspar a cheeky wink, yelling against the rushing wind, ‘Race you to the bottom!’

  Grasping the doorframe with one hand and the metal spar with the other, Archie pulled herself out of the aircraft, twisted and let go. Gravity took over.

  Every single thought went from her head.

  Spread-eagled in the air, her back arched as she fought for stability, the plane seemed to disappear in seconds, its increasing height above her the only indication that she was falling. And then the jolt of the ripcord opened her chute and reminded her of where she was and what she was supposed to be doing.

  One-one-thousand.

  Two-one-thousand.

  Three-one-thousand.

  Archie looked up and her heart slammed into her chest. The canopy hadn’t fully deployed.

  I probably counted too quickly. I hope I counted too quickly. What did they say about cutting away? I don’t want to have to do that. I’ll count again and then I’ll act.

  Her mouth parched and her chest hammering, Archie reached up for the guides that would help her steer for landing. And when she looked again, even before she had chance to count a second time, the parachute opened fully with an ear-splitting crack!

  And then the complete, utter silence.

  She felt weightless. Perhaps not being in space weightlessness, but certainly as though she was just floating down, the sky going on for ever around her.

  She’d finally done it. Not just for her young son, and younger daughter—who were waiting down on the ground with a very pregnant Katie, and who had been going on about wanting to see her skydive ever since they’d seen the photo of that first tandem jump of their mummy and daddy—but also for herself and for her father.

  ‘Here’s to you, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘I finally got everything I ever dreamed of.’

  Peace flowed through her. Her life was so very different from the last time she’d tried this and it was all thanks to Kaspar, and Darius and baby Yasmin. She felt more complete than she had ever imagined possible.

  For what felt like an eternity she simply drank it in.

  Without warning, a figure dropped in front of her, arms and legs outstretched to slow their fall but, without an open chute, they were still dropping considerably faster than her. He might be too far away to impede her jump but she didn’t need to see his face to know who it was.

  Kaspar.

  And, by his thumbs-up gestures, he was clearly taking her challenge seriously. Her stomach knotted with a kind of anticipation, a thrill, then he was gone, his legs straightening back and his arms pinned to his sides as he tipped his body to dive lower.

  But he knew what he was doing and Archie knew he would be safe. The adrenalin junkie at his extreme was long gone. Replaced instead by a fun-loving, proud husband and father, although still—always—her Surgeon Prince of Persia.

  Archie laughed into the silence. A rich, happy sound. Then she let the wind carry her gently down to earth.

  She should have known that Kaspar would beat her. By the time she’d gathered up her parachute and made her way across the field, he was already heading back with a feverishly clapping three-year-old on his shoulders and a one-year-old glued to his chest.

  ‘Wow, Mummy.’ The awestruck voice carried easily with its childish lilt. ‘It was good? Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes, baby. It was very good. But being back here with you is even better.’

  And it was true. Her little family was perfect. Everything she could have ever dreamed of having.

  Her past, her present and her future, all rolled into one.

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Charlotte Hawkes

  A Bride to Redeem Him

  Tempted by Dr. Off-Limits

  Encounter with a Commanding Officer

  The Surgeon’s Baby Surprise

  All available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Nurse’s Pregnancy Miracle by Ann McIntosh.

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  The Nurse’s Pregnancy Miracle

  by Ann McIntosh

  CHAPTER ONE

  WALKING BRISKLY THROUGH the waiting area of the Lauderlakes Family Medical Center, Nychelle Cory scanned the room, once more noting the contrast between the opulent surroundings and the rather squalid interior of the inner-city clinic she’d worked at up until just a couple of years before.

  The marble flooring and the crystal chandelier, hung precisely beneath the domed skylight, wouldn’t be out of place in a grand home. Instead of the standard faux leather seating typical of medical clinics, comfortable
upholstered chairs and love seats were arranged in small clusters around antique side tables. Every inch of the place was designed to give the illusion of being a luxurious hotel lobby, perhaps in the hope of helping people forget they were waiting to see a doctor.

  Few people would understand but, oh, how she missed the hustle and near chaos of working at the low-cost clinic. So rewarding, helping those that others often forgot. But she’d known from the moment she took the job there that, financially, it wouldn’t be enough to advance The Plan.

  Funny to realize that was how she always thought of it—not as Plan A, or as a prospective life plan. Just The Plan, with caps and italics, the way she’d written it in her diary when she was just thirteen years old. Below that she’d listed what she wanted, and the list was pretty short.

  Children. Three or four.

  A job that lets me spend lots of time with them.

  A nice husband who wants to spend time with the kids too.

  Looking back on it, number three had been tacked on at the end, as if she’d already made up her mind that the husband wasn’t exactly a necessary part of the process.

  That thought made her suppress a little snort of laughter. The Plan definitely hadn’t come about the way she’d initially thought it would, but she wasn’t complaining. In fact she’d go so far as to claim she had the best of all worlds.

  Getting a plum job at Fort Lauderdale’s premier general care clinic was helping bring her dreams to fruition, yet money alone wouldn’t have lured her to Lauderlakes. Her need to help the less fortunate was strong, and luckily Dr. Hamatty, Lauderlakes’ founder, believed in giving back too, working with local charities to put on free clinics three times a year.

  Not the same as being in the trenches all the time, but it helped give her altruistic nature much-needed satisfaction.

  There were a handful of people scattered around the waiting area. Sitting close together on a love seat, phones in hand, were a young couple who looked as though they’d just stepped out from between the pages of a high-end travel magazine. In the play area, just visible behind a floor-to-ceiling, glass-paneled waterfall, a toddler laughed, the sound muted by the tinkle of water.