The Baby Doctor

Thirty six year old obstetrician Morgan Jacobsen has had only two serious romances in her entire life, and they’d both ended years ago. She’s philosophical about her single state when she has time to think about it at all. She has a career that consumes her, a pregnant foster daughter, Tessa, whom she’s growing to love, a messy home of her own that she adores, and several challenged pets that she’s rescued from the SPCA. Life is good—until her estranged mother decides to move in with her.Obstetrician Luke Gilbert is also thirty-six, but age and occupation are the only similarities between him and Morgan. Luke is impeccably groomed, a widower and the father of a fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie. He’s polite, remote, unavailable, and a hopeless workaholic. He’s quiet, self-contained, unemotional: all the things Morgan emphatically isn’t. Morgan has never told a living soul that Luke starred in a series of highly erotic x-rated dreams that plagued her for months, but although the dreams have stopped she still prefers not to be around Doctor Gilbert—not easy when she has to work with him. He’s simply too perfect for comfort.But Luke’s perfection is a facade. His daughter is pregnant by his best friend’s son, and Luke’s relationship with Sophie is beyond stormy. When Sophie and Tessa become friends, he finds himself confiding in Morgan—and lusting after her as well. Lust soon becomes love, but love has an insurmountable number of obstacles to overcome. Can two baby doctors deliver a happy ending?Excerpt:Morgan had barely made it to the wedding.The organ music swelled into a rendition of the wedding march and she surged to her feet with the rest of the congregation, wishing for the millionth time that she was taller than five-one. She stood on her toes and craned her neck for a glimpse of the bridal pair.Suddenly, a sharp cry from the pew behind her made her look around. A single glance at Pam’s stricken face made Morgan struggle past the bodies blocking her from the aisle.“Excuse me, s’cuse me. Let me past, please.”At last she broke free. Pam’s husband, his face ashen, had half lifted his wife into the aisle. Bloodstained fluid was gushing down Pam’s legs, pooling on the oak flooring. The membranes had ruptured, and Pam was obviously having violent contractions.“There’s something hanging down.” Pam’s anguished whisper alerted Morgan, and oblivious to the craning heads and curious, shocked faces surrounding them, she squatted down and lifted the hem of Pam’s long, loose maternity dress.Holy toot. A bolt of panic went skittering through her. The umbilical cord, the baby’s life-line in the uterus, had prolapsed, slipping into the vaginal canal along with the rush of amniotic fluid. The baby’s life was in terrible danger, its vital supply of oxygen already cut off.Morgan reached up and deftly pulled Pam’s underwear down around her ankles, then grabbed her hands and urged her to her knees.“Down. Get down on your hands and knees, right now, head on your hands, bottom in the air. Frank, help her.”Morgan’s voice, deep-throated and urgent, rose above the organ music, and when Pam hesitated, Morgan took her upper arms and, with Frank’s help, bodily forced her to the floor.“Hold her there. Don’t let her move,” she commanded Pam’s horrified husband.He crouched with an arm across his wife’s body, stammering, “I don’t understand. What’s going on? Is the ba-baby coming right now?” His eyes were filled with terror.“Just keep her down. Keep her still.” There was no time for explanations. Morgan threw herself to her knees behind her patient, searching for the unborn baby’s shoulder and lifting it away from the compressed umbilical cord.Pam’s scream of agony rose above the organ music, and there were shocked and appalled exclamations from wedding guests who didn’t understand what was going on.“Someone call 911, get an ambulance here fast. This baby’s in a hurry to get born.” And it would be a miracle if it survived.