by Robin Gianna
Feeling cherished. Feeling loved. Feeling blessed.
He was right. All her physical scars were simply life scars that everyone had, both inside and out. Things that showed she’d been through some tough battles and prevailed as the warrior Conor said she was.
He’d helped her see that, and had helped her work through the internal scars, too—the insecurities, that she no longer felt. And she, in turn, had helped him with his internal scars—and wasn’t that what a close relationship was all about? She was grateful every day that they hadn’t lost the chance to do that for one another forever. The chance to feel truly whole for the first time in their lives.
Jillian took the elevator to the fourth floor and walked through the glass passageway that connected the HOAC building to Urgent Care Manhattan, now Conor had successfully merged the two companies. Business for both had grown, even with Conor working only on the board and not as president, which had been his original plan.
She turned the corner and smiled to see all the children playing in the daycare center HOAC now offered their employees. Running and laughing, climbing the small plastic jungle gym, crawling on the floor, playing with toys. And sitting on the floor with them was a handsome man with familiar thick blond hair, playing and laughing, too.
Her smile widened and she shoved open the door to the play area. “Isn’t Dr. McCarthy going to get his pants wrinkled, sitting on the floor like that?”
“I thought about leaving on my scrubs—but, since we’re going out to eat before we see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree being lit tonight, I figured I’d wear actual clothes and look presentable.” He smiled down at their daughter and rubbed his hand down her small back. “You excited about that, Alyssa?”
“Yes!” Beautiful blue eyes looked up at Jillian, and she reached to slip the toddler’s blonde hair out of her face. “Hi, Mama!”
“Hey, sweetie! What are you and Daddy doing?”
“We’re pwaying cars and twucks and doctors. My twuck just smashed into his car and now the doctor has to come and fix the daddy’s bwoken leg.” Looking very serious, she held up a little plastic doctor figure.
“I see.” Lowering herself to the floor wasn’t easy at eight months pregnant, but she managed to get there. “I’ll bet the doctor will do a very good job.”
“Yes, a vewy good job.”
Alyssa concentrated on the toy doctor and the car and the other small doll figures, and Jillian turned to Conor. “It’s so wonderful that you insisted on having this daycare center built here. Thanks for convincing all the board members it would ratchet up employee satisfaction scores by making their lives easier and better.”
“Well...” He leaned in to press his cheek to hers. “A certain person I’m crazy in love with showed me that having a work/life balance is important.”
“Yes, it is.” She wrapped her arm around his neck and tangled her fingers in his hair as she soaked in the warmth of his skin.
“Having daycare here benefits everyone—including me. I get to sneak over and visit my daughter for a minute if a patient doesn’t show, and neither of us is struggling through the city to drop her off and pick her up from an offsite daycare. What’s the point of owning a business if you can’t make everyone’s life better?”
“Making money would be one point...”
He moved his cheek until his lips slipped across hers. “That is an important one—making sure our family is financially secure. But my beautiful and wonderful wife has helped me see that it’s not quite as important as a few other things.”
They smiled at one another, their eyes meeting in a long connection, before he stood. “Let’s get going. I’m hungry and I bet Alyssa is, too—aren’t you, pumpkin? Then we’re going to see the tree lit! Are you excited about that?”
“Yes!” Alyssa tossed aside the toys and stood, a happy smile on her face. “Weady to go?”
Conor grasped Jillian’s hand to help her up off the floor and they both grinned. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes. More than ready.”
“Are we bwinging the dogs?” Alyssa asked.
“Not this time. But we’ll take them some other day. Maybe they can watch you learn to ice skate with me helping you? What do you think about that?”
“Ice skate? Yes!”
Conor got Alyssa’s coat and hat on, swung the child into his arms, and then the three of them headed into the city. After dinner at their favorite restaurant they walked the few blocks to Rockefeller Center. The place was jammed full of people, and Conor placed Alyssa on his shoulders so she could see everything.
A light snow began to fall and Jillian pulled Alyssa’s hat down a little farther, to keep her ears warm. Excitement was in the air, and the countdown finally began.
“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”
The rainbow of lights covering the giant Christmas tree blinked on, illuminating the night sky, and everyone cheered.
Little Alyssa clapped her hands and cheered along. “It’s so pwetty! I love it!”
“I love it, too.” Conor held on to the toddler’s leg as he wrapped his arm around Jillian and looked at her. “And I love you.”
“Love you, too. So much.”
They kissed, then kissed some more, until the music began and people started to dance.
Alyssa wanted to dance, too.
Conor lifted their little one from his shoulders and she danced around for a few minutes, before reaching for Jillian’s round belly and placing her hands on either side of it, her mouth pressed against it.
“You like the music, baby bwother? You like the lights? I love the lights!”
“He can’t see the lights yet, Alyssa, but I bet he can hear the music,” Conor said, looking down at their daughter with such adoration on his face it made Jill’s heart fill to bursting. They had this amazing life together. The life they’d both wanted but thought would never happen.
“I’ll bet he’s dancing inside Mama’s belly. What do you think?”
“Yes! He’s dancing! Just like me!”
She began to bob up and down and back and forth so vigorously that both Conor and Jillian laughed.
Conor placed one hand on Jill’s back and the other on her abdomen, leaning in for another kiss. “Does it feel like he’s dancing? If he is, I hope he’s not dancing quite as hard as she is.”
She chuckled. “At the moment he’s quiet but... Oh! Did you feel him kick?”
“Wow. I did.” His eyes lit, then he sobered. “My third miracle. Alyssa was the second...”
“And the first?”
“You, Jillian. You’re my forever miracle. You didn’t give up on me even when you should have.”
“And now you’ve given me everything I ever wanted.” She placed her palm against his cheek as their mouths met again. “You, our beautiful babies, and New York City and the Rockefeller Center at Christmastime. What else could anyone need?”
He swept the snowflakes from her nose and smiled before he kissed her again. “I can’t think of one single thing.”
* * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Robin Gianna
His Surgeon Under the Southern Lights
The Family They’ve Longed For
Tempted by the Brooding Surgeon
The Spanish Duke’s Holiday Proposal
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Doctors’ Christmas Reunion by Meredith Webber.
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The Doctors’ Christmas Reunion<
br />
by Meredith Webber
CHAPTER ONE
ELLIE FRASER STUDIED her husband across the breakfast table.
Rather stern profile, with a straight nose and high forehead—until he smiled, of course, when the crinkly lines fanning out from his eyes made you want to smile back at him.
Brown, those eyes were, and she knew them both warm and soft as a cuddly blanket and hard as stones.
Dark hair, cut stubble-short—a number one, but due for a cut, so nearly a number two at the moment. It would feel like the fuzz on her old teddy if she ran her hand across it, but it had been a while since that had happened.
And that funny little whorl of hair, just on the hairline above his left eyebrow. A whorl she’d touched so often, twirled around her fingers, back when his hair was longer...
Her heart ached, just from looking at him.
She’d loved Andy. She knew that with the deep certainty that had been with her from the day he’d asked her to marry him.
She loved him still—she knew that, too—but she had somehow lost him, and along with him the oneness of them as a couple that had seemed so normal for so long.
Ellie and Andy. Andy and Ellie. All through university; through the almost soul-destroying work schedules of their internship; through their volunteer work in Africa—where they’d seen the worst that human beings could do to each other—their oneness had remained. Their goals, dreams and futures had been inextricably entwined in a way she’d thought would never fray, let alone be pulled apart.
And yet right now they couldn’t have been further apart, for all that Andy had asked her up to his flat in the top section of the old house to discuss some idea he had about a soccer team that he was setting up, which seemed to be of far more interest to him than the split in their relationship.
Or was it a useful diversion from it?
She’d thrown herself into work, but still had far too much time to think of the past and what might have been...
Andy had even cooked her breakfast, though she could have done without the pain that the pretend intimacy of eating together brought with it.
‘So I thought I’d have a barbecue here on Saturday—about lunchtime, before the game. Until we get a proper clubroom there’s nowhere else. I’ll ask some of the older team members to organise the food—just sausages and onions and bread, or bread rolls.’ He looked up at her and grinned. ‘And, yes, I’ll make sure the boys do some of the shopping, not just send the girls.’
Heaven help me! We’ve barely spoken for months, apart from work stuff, and still that grin makes my stomach churn...
Ellie swallowed a sigh along with the last of her toast, left the dirty dishes on the table—after all he had invited her as a guest—and made her way downstairs to her own flat, with its well-set-up medical surgery, enclosed under the old timbered home.
Ellie and Andy had moved to Maytown six months ago—she pregnant at last and Andy excited to be back in his home town, doing the job he’d always dreamed of doing: providing medical care for people in the often harsh Outback.
Maytown, a small town in the mid-west, had been established when settlers had brought sheep to the area, although now it was mainly cattle country. A large coal mine, opened twenty kilometres north of the town, had brought in extra business in recent years, with some of the mining families settling in the town while other workers lived in the on-site camp, flying in and flying out from places on the coast, working shifts of two weeks on duty then one week off.
Ellie had become as keen as he was on the town, both from Andy’s talk of growing up there and her visits to his family, so they’d leapt on Andy’s parents’ suggestion they buy the old house and practice. Andy’s parents had both been doctors, his mother running the practice, his father working at the hospital. The senior Frasers had wanted to move closer to the coast, cutting back on their workloads as they prepared for retirement.
To Andy and Ellie, it had seemed a magical coincidence—a little bit of serendipity—because they’d both wanted to bring up their longed-for child in the country. And it had been an ideal situation, with Ellie working from the surgery downstairs, knowing when she had the baby she’d get help but would still always be on hand, while Andy took over his father’s post at the hospital.
They’d moved in late July, and Ellie had practically danced through the old house, imagining it festooned with Christmas decorations. With the baby due in November, their first Christmas in their new home would be spent celebrating his or her—they hadn’t wanted to know the sex—first Christmas, too.
Just the three of them this year, a family...
It should have been perfect.
Until, at twenty-three weeks, when they’d settled in, and everything seemed to be going so well, she’d lost the baby and somehow, in the ensuing pain and anguish, lost Andy, too.
They’d turned to each other for comfort and support in those first hard weeks, and had also discovered that they were part of a very caring community. The local people had helped them through their grief with comforting words and little acts of kindness, flowers left on the front steps, a picture drawn by a kindergarten child, and more food than they could ever eat.
And, slowly, they’d made their way back to a different kind of peace, each wrapped in their private sorrow, but together still.
Until, six weeks after the loss...
Ellie sighed again.
Had she been wrong?
Pushed too hard?
She didn’t know.
But when she’d talked to Andy about one last attempt at IVF—not immediately, of course, but when her body was ready—Andy’s response had staggered her.
He had been adamant—enraged, really. His answer had been an adamant no.
Their two—well, three now—failed IVF attempts had already cost them too much, both financially and emotionally, and no amount of arguing was going to change his mind. He was done.
Completely done.
And if she thought they needed a baby to make their marriage complete then it couldn’t be much of a marriage.
Stunned by his pronouncement, Ellie’s immediate reaction had been to pack her bags and head back to the city, but she’d grown far too fond of the town and its people to just walk out and leave them without a GP.
Early on, she and Andy had tried to talk—one or other of them calling a truce—but the talk had soon become a row and now too many bitter, hurtful words hung in the air between them. Although Ellie could concede in her head that they would never have a child, she found it so much harder to accept it in her heart.
Even harder to accept that Andy wouldn’t consider trying...
So she’d opted to stay, but had packed her bags, moving into the flat downstairs, built to house the locums his parents had hired to replace Andy’s mother during her own maternity leave.
Did the townspeople know?
Was there gossip?
Ellie assumed they did and that the gossip existed as it did in all country towns, but few attempted to discuss their situation, although she often felt the warmth of their compassion.
The separate living and work situation had turned out for the best, Ellie thought glumly as she made her way through to the surgery and nodded a good morning to Maureen, her receptionist-cum-nurse, who was busy hanging tinsel along the front of her desk.
Dismissing the idea that it could possibly be that close to Christmas when she herself felt so bleak, her thoughts tracked back to Andy... But how were they going to cope with Christmas?
Didn’t the very word conjure up togetherness?
Joy and laughter and sharing...
Happiness, and hope for the future...
Could they carry on with Christmas celebrations as if nothing had ever happened? Sit at one of their tables—just the two of them—with silly paper hats on their heads, reading even
sillier jokes?
The ache in Ellie’s heart deepened, but suddenly she knew.
She couldn’t do Christmas, not here, not with Andy—she couldn’t go on with things the way they were. If she advertised now, she might find a young doctor, fresh out of GP training, who’d like the challenge of working in the bush. Or a skilled, well-qualified migrant, happy to spend three years working in the country before applying for permanent citizenship.
She was sure there’d be someone.
She wouldn’t actually get a new appointee until January, when staff changes were generally made, but if she stayed until just before Christmas, then Andy could manage any emergencies for a week or two.
She’d go—
Where would she go?
Where the hell would she go?
Back to the city?
To what?
Ellie shook her head. That idea had zero appeal to her.
And she’d grown to love this town and its people so maybe she should go to another country town—one without Andy in it!
Ellie could feel her heart weeping at the thought, but she had to accept they couldn’t go on as they were.
‘What’s Andy up to with this soccer club idea of his?’
Maureen interrupted her gloomy thoughts as she pushed the final tack into place on the tinsel and fetched Ellie the mail.
Ellie shook her head, clearing Christmas—and leaving—from her mind.
Why had Andy started the soccer club? Had he told her while she was busy checking out all the familiar bits of the man she knew so well?
Loved, even?
‘I know he’s having a barbecue for them on Saturday; our side veranda seems to have become the unofficial clubhouse. And some of the kids I’ve seen coming and going are far from athletic types, so I guess he’s doing it to raise their fitness levels.’
‘My Josie’s joined,’ Maureen said, ‘and you know the worry I have with her weight. I would have thought she’d be the last person picked for any team, so maybe fitness is behind it.’