Surprise Baby for the Heir

by Ellie Darkins

  ‘You’re a doctor?’ he said, after clearly searching through his memory banks for the bride’s profession.

  ‘A GP, yes. Well, a trainee, and hoping for a job when I finish.’

  ‘Why did you want to be a doctor?’

  Elspeth couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked her that. And she didn’t have a good answer. To her, it had never seemed like a choice. All she knew was that it had been a decision made long before she had chosen her exam subjects as a teenager. Probably around the time she had been sitting by her baby sister’s bedside, incapable of doing anything that could help her other than sit there.

  She’d trained as a doctor because she wanted to help people like Sarah. Be their advocate in the healthcare system and ensure that every single one of them got the best outcome that they could. Because she had seen the miracles the medical profession could perform. Keeping her sister alive, getting her home, giving her independence with an electric wheelchair and communication aids, among the million other ways it had helped her over the years.

  And now Elspeth had the skills and the knowledge she hadn’t had when Sarah was a baby, which meant she could be cared for by her family rather than by strangers. But her care responsibilities meant careful planning for the future, especially given that her mum had been in her forties when Sarah had been born, had arthritis herself, and wasn’t going to be mobile, or even around, for ever.

  But that was way more detail than anyone needed to know—especially dangerous-looking men in kilts brandishing bottles of champagne.

  ‘I liked science and I wanted to help people,’ Elspeth said, giving the standard medical school application answer.

  It wasn’t really much of an explanation, but it was all he would be getting. She had watched her relationship with Alex dissolve around her because he hadn’t been able to reconcile family and romance, but she had no desire to go into the details. Perhaps talking about this wasn’t the good idea she’d thought it might be.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, keen to change the topic of conversation and shift the attention away from her sorry tale. ‘That’s my story. What’s yours? Why are you here if it’s so tortuous?’

  Fraser shrugged as he leant his forearms against the railing, surveying the gardens in front of them. ‘Nothing so exciting—just family duty. The groom is my mum’s cousin. My mother insisted I be dragged into groomsman duty to make up the numbers even though I hardly know the guy.’

  ‘Ah, a mummy’s boy,’ Elspeth said with a smile, echoing Fraser’s knowing tone from earlier. ‘Interesting...’

  Fraser bumped her shoulder with his and Elspeth held her hands up.

  ‘Hey, if it sounds like a duck, looks like a duck, and does what Mama Duck says...’

  ‘Enough—drink your wine,’ he said with a laugh, topping up her glass again. ‘I did not lure you out here to talk about my mother.’

  ‘Now, that sounds interesting.’

  Elspeth looked up at him, pulling the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders, hyper-aware of the scratch of the fabric on her shoulders, the earthy smell of the wool, the barrier it put between her and Fraser.

  ‘I’m not sure I remember being lured, as such. But what were your motivations if you weren’t thinking about introducing me to your mother?’

  Oh, she was sure that asking that question was going to get her into trouble. But that twinkle in his eye, the way he challenged her with his stare, egging her on, had tweaked at something inside her. She wanted to play.

  He smiled back at that slight suggestion of innuendo, and she knew that she was right. She’d just got herself into trouble and she couldn’t bring herself to be sorry about it.

  ‘So you’re saying you’re not the kind of girl I want to take home to meet the parents, huh? Well, that’s good to know. I thought we were going to explore out here. Wasn’t that the plan?’

  Elspeth drained her glass and gestured towards the steps down from the decking. ‘Lead on. Where do you want to look first?’

  They wandered through the gardens, their shadows long over the lawns, until they came across a gathering of redwood trees: Californian giants, hundreds of feet tall. Beneath their shade, the light was lost completely, and Elspeth realised what a secluded spot they had found.

  She leant back against the trunk of one of the trees, feeling small, humbled by the scale of them. As Fraser approached, still swinging the bottle by his side, Elspeth held up her glass like a shield, suddenly aware of the intimacy of their surroundings, how her attraction to Fraser had been bubbling under the surface of their banter since he had first approached her, and how he was looking at her now, like the wolf in a fairy tale.

  But she was no innocent Red Riding Hood, and she had no plans to run or hide.

  ‘Do you think we’ve missed them cutting the cake?’ Elspeth asked, breaking the tension, wondering whether they’d come too far to take their conversation back to something inane and safe.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Fraser came closer, topping up her glass, then closer still, so she wouldn’t have been able to lift it to her lips if she’d wanted to. The glass was trapped against her chest, along with her hands and her resolve. ‘Do you care?’

  ‘Not really.’ The words escaped her before she could stop them, but she couldn’t regret them. Not when they lit a spark in Fraser’s eyes that made the night seem a little less dark.

  ‘You don’t want to go back?’

  Oh, there was so much more to that question, and she could see from the look in his eyes, lit only by the moon, that he knew it.

  Surely it was late enough by now that she wouldn’t be missed at the reception? In her plan for the day, that was meant to be her cue to leave. To get home to her mum and her sister. Not to slope off somewhere with a stranger she would probably never see again.

  Because if there was one thing she was sure about when it came to this connection she felt to Fraser, it was that it was never going to last more than a night. She had tried balancing a relationship, her work and family commitments before, and it hadn’t been possible. She’d got hurt. Alex had got hurt. And she knew her family had been hurt too, as they’d seen all their hopes for her unpicked and falling away.

  But one night with this man—well, that could be something interesting. More and more, it was feeling as if it could be something irresistible.

  ‘I don’t want to go back,’ she said, looking up to meet his eyes, making sure that he couldn’t mistake her meaning.

  She let the tree take her weight, surrendering herself to her decision, to her desire. The champagne glass slipped from her hand and she heard it hit the ground with a soft rustle. With her hands free, she brushed the front of Fraser’s jacket, taking a moment to really feel the fabric, the softness of well-worn wool on her fingertips. From his lapels she stroked upwards, inwards, and heavy fabric gave way to soft cotton.

  His eyes never left hers as she reached the studs of his shirt and hooked her fingers into the fabric, pulling him down to her.

  ‘What do you want?’ Fraser asked, breaking their look at last and glancing down at her hands.

  ‘I think you know.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got a pretty good idea. But I want to hear you say it.’

  ‘It’s going to be like that, is it?’ Elspeth asked with a shiver, hoping very much that it would be.

  He was still looking at her as if he wanted to consume her, and she was good with that. She had too much in her head. Too much in her life. She wanted to be devoured, to devour. To lose herself in her senses, in the present. To be so overwhelmed that she couldn’t think about anything beyond the next second.

  She slipped her foot out of her shoe and hooked it around Fraser’s calf, noticing the feel of every hair that slipped beneath the arch of her foot, the line of his calf muscle, taut and defined and bared to the elements.

  As she slipped her fo
ot higher, feeling the slide of his skin beneath hers, she couldn’t help imagining what she would find higher still. Wondering whether he was exposed to the elements, to her, beneath that kilt.

  With the fingers of one hand still hooked in his shirt, keeping him close, she lifted the other to the back of his neck, feeling the softness of the hair curling at his collar. Meeting his eyes again, she smiled.

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’ Fraser asked, with a smile just the right side of smug.

  ‘You know I am,’ she murmured, dropping her eyes to his mouth and finding herself unable to look away from it.

  She licked her lips, and watched as his mouth curved into a knowing, confident smile.

  ‘Good. Don’t stop.’

  She had absolutely no intention of stopping. Gripping the front of his shirt tighter, she twisted the fabric between her fingers as she pulled him down to her. She held her breath as she closed her eyes, stretching up on tiptoes until at last her lips brushed against his. Sensation exploded at the touch of his warm mouth and she let out a quiet moan, revelling in every physical sensation assaulting her body.

  In the press of hard wood and soft woollen blanket behind her, the creased cotton and tweed in front. The curling hair and soft skin beneath her hand. And the uninhibited mouth on hers. Tasting her, tempting her. Teasing her with its tongue and its lips.

  Fraser’s arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her away from the tree into his solid chest. Elspeth let her lips trace the line of his jaw until she was close enough to whisper in his ear.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  * * *

  Fraser woke to the sensation of silk sheets beneath his body and a warm summer breeze caressing his back. And soft, soft lips pressing against his.

  Elspeth.

  With his eyes still closed, he wound fingers into her hair, cupped his other hand around her cheek and kissed her lazily, slowly remembering the night before. He pulled her down on top of him, but she stiffened, drawing away until his body and his bed felt cold.

  ‘Bye, Fraser.’

  He lifted his head and blinked his eyes at the sound of high heels on deep carpet, heading towards the door, and it was only in the dawn light creeping round the edge of the curtains that he saw Elspeth’s face.

  ‘Bye.’

  He croaked out the word and then fell back on the pillow as the door closed behind her.

  He didn’t have her number.

  The thought occurred to him and then he was sitting up without realising he’d decided to, and he had a foot out of the bed before he’d thought about what he was doing. Before he stopped himself, as he always had before.

  No strings. They’d never actually said the words last night, but it had been clear enough in the way they had been with each other. Well, if he’d had any doubt she’d just proved it by walking out with barely a kiss goodbye.

  For a fraction of a second he wondered if he could catch her before the lift reached their floor, but that summer breeze brushed him again, colder this time, and he realised what he was thinking.

  He didn’t do relationships. He’d seen when he had still been barely more than a child the harm they could do. What happened to people and their lives when they followed their desires rather than making sensible, objective decisions.

  He’d sworn that he wouldn’t make the same mistakes. Just the fact that he was even thinking of acting on a whim now was all the proof he needed that it would be a bad idea. Of all the women he might have a second date with, the one who was making him question all his carefully set ground rules was not the one to try it with.

  He collapsed back, letting his arm fall over his eyes as he remembered falling into this same bed last night, with Elspeth pulling at his clothes and her body warm and supple beneath him.

  Last night wasn’t going to be easy to forget. She wasn’t going to be easy to forget.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ELSPETH THREW DOWN her work bag by the door and shouted out as she walked through the hallway. ‘Mum? Sarah?’

  ‘In here,’ her sister called back from the direction of the kitchen.

  Elspeth crossed the hallway and smiled at the sight of the pair of them at the kitchen table, the huge pan of chicken and pasta she’d left in the fridge the day before sitting between them. Thank God. She was starving. All she wanted to do was carb-load and fall straight into bed. Again. She’d not made it past nine o’clock a single night this week, and she wasn’t planning on breaking her streak tonight.

  Her patients had been back to back from eight o’clock that morning, and the only food she’d had all day was a sandwich at her desk while she caught up on notes and phone calls. She was used to the workload, to the stress and the non-stop appointments, but for some reason this week it had caught up with her. Her body felt heavy, weary in a way she’d not felt since she’d been caught in an endless cycle of night shifts, studying and revision in her first years as a junior doctor.

  She just had one last thing to do before she went to help Sarah with her evening routine of medication, personal hygiene and changing for bed.

  She had to pee on a stick.

  It was just a formality, really. Just to rule out the flashing light that her inner doctor wouldn’t allow her to ignore. She was a week or so late, but that wasn’t unusual. She’d never had a cycle she could set the clock by. And she’d never taken risks—she always used a condom. But if she’d had a patient sitting in front of her, complaining of the sort of fatigue she had been feeling, she would have ordered a pregnancy test, so it only made sense to rule it out.

  She smiled through dinner with her mother and Sarah, listening to stories of their day. Her mother’s at work, her sister’s at college. But in the back of her mind she couldn’t shake off the thought of that little test sitting at the bottom of her bag.

  As soon as her fork hit an empty plate she tidied the kitchen, thanked her mum for dinner, made her excuses and headed upstairs. Locking the bathroom door behind her, she thought for the thousandth time what a luxury it would be to be able to leave the door unlocked, free from the fear that her mum or Sarah could walk in on her.

  Living at home in her thirties wasn’t exactly ideal. But with her mum in her sixties, it wasn’t fair to expect her to take on the full responsibility of caring for her sister. They all worked hard to ensure that Sarah was living as independently as possible, but she still required extra support and Elspeth was determined that her mother wouldn’t have to take on all that herself. And she wanted to be able to buy a house. Somewhere for her and Sarah to live—a home that they could be certain would always be theirs—and that meant staying at home and saving for a deposit.

  Elspeth peed on the test and set it on the side of the bath as she glanced at her watch. Three minutes and she’d be able to dispel this nagging doubt and get her head on the pillow. Which meant she had three minutes during which she could legitimately let herself think about Fraser.

  Because for the past three weeks she’d not let herself do that. She’d pushed her memories of that incredible night out of her mind, knowing that with all the responsibilities in her life she couldn’t afford the luxury of a relationship. No matter how good the sex had been. And, oh, it had been good. Better than good. Better than sex, actually. Because for those few hours there had been a connection between them. They had laughed, joked, challenged each other.

  And when the sun had crept over the horizon in the morning she had crept out of his bed with a sigh of regret, wishing for a moment that her life could be different.

  But here, in the cold, stark light of the bathroom, she knew that it couldn’t be. She had responsibilities, and she and Alex had already done a fine job of proving that those responsibilities were not compatible with a romantic relationship.

  It was a sobering thought, she realised as she kept her eyes averted from the pregnancy test. Looking ahead to a life without romance. Wit
hout marriage. Without a family of her own.

  Elspeth loved her mum and her sister. She was devoted to them, and it was no sacrifice to set aside what she might want for herself for what was best for her family. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious. That she didn’t wonder what sort of life she might have had if her decisions had been her own to make. Maybe she would have been peeing on one of these sticks hoping for it to show a smiley pregnant face rather than dreading the result.

  She glanced at her watch. Three minutes. Well, there was no point putting it off any longer. All she had to do was check the test, put her daydreams and her sister to bed, and then climb in between the sheets herself.

  She turned the test over.

  Pregnant.

  For a second she wished she’d bought one of those cheap, old-fashioned tests. Where you had to scrutinise the stick and the leaflet to work out if there was a line. What the line meant.

  Seeing the truth just sitting there, so unvarnished, was a blow to her chest. She couldn’t pull in air and sat heavily on the side of the bath, staring at it, unable to tear her eyes away.

  She was pregnant. She did the maths in her head. Just a few weeks. Six weeks gestational age, at most. Barely a grouping of cells.

  She had options. She ran through them as she would for any patient who wanted them, and in her head she was halfway through the referral process to end her pregnancy before she realised that the thought of doing so made her feel sick. Sick in her stomach, sick in her bones.

  She realised that it wasn’t the right choice for her.

  And that was it, Elspeth thought, as she looked at herself in the mirror. Decision made. She was having a baby.

  As she walked out of the bathroom Elspeth could hear her sister typing in her bedroom, and she knocked on the door before pushing it open.

  ‘Hey, sis. Ready for bed?’

  Sarah smiled and turned her head, gesturing for Elspeth to sit. ‘What’s up, Els?’ she asked, frowning. ‘You’re completely white. You’re not going to throw up, are you? If you are, you can get off my bed.’