The Surgeon's One-Night Baby

‘And she’s staying with you?’

‘Yes.’

He ignored Archie as she glowered at him.

‘Good.’ Catherine nodded, holding out a form for Archie’s medical contact details.

Grimly he took it, coaxing the information out of Archie, line by line. And when it was finally done, he helped her up, sorted out her scant belongings, and led her out of his colleague’s office with a word of thanks.

She looked dazed, thrown. The exact way he felt. But he refused to give in to it. He couldn’t afford to. If it sucked him in, he’d be no use to Archie, and right now he knew she needed him more than ever.

* * *

‘I didn’t come here for your money,’ Archie muttered as she found herself being ushered out of the office. Her mind was grappling for some diversion, however banal, from the bone-gripping terror that she might lose this baby the way she’d lost Faith.

‘Or for you to house me,’ she added absently.

She had given Dr Jarvis the right name, hadn’t she? The right address for her doctor’s surgery?

‘What should I have said, Archie? That you jumped on a plane and came out here wholly unprepared?’

She pursed her lips, his tone exactly what she’d feared when she’d been halfway across the Atlantic. The accusation out before she could stop it.

‘You’d rather I hadn’t told you about the baby.’

‘That isn’t what I said.’ He blew out an angry breath and, for one moment, if she hadn’t known it to be impossible she would have thought he was as confused as she was.

‘I’ll stay in a hotel.’ It was hard to summon some semblance of pride when all she wanted to do was break down on his shoulder and howl.

Kaspar let out a scornful snort.

‘You’re pregnant. With my baby. You will remain with me. For the duration. It isn’t up for debate, Archana.’

‘There is no duration. What you and Catherine seem to be forgetting is that I don’t come from here, and besides I can’t afford medical care. I need to go back home and I need to speak to my own doctors.’

‘You can’t just run away,’ Kaspar snapped. ‘And as for medical costs, I will deal with that. You won’t be going back to the UK while you’re pregnant. In fact, you won’t be going back at all.’

‘Sorry? What?’ she asked. Very calmly. Very deliberately.

She couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly.

Did it make it better, or worse, that he looked equally stupefied?

‘You won’t be returning to the UK,’ he said slowly

, as if he wasn’t really sure of the words coming out of his own mouth.

It was disconcerting to see the famously focussed Kaspar Athari uncertain about anything.

‘I... I...’ Archie was aware that, for a moment, she opened and closed her mouth feeling much like the fish in the calming tank in the luxurious waiting area outside. Finally, her voice came back. ‘I can assure you that is exactly what I’ll be doing. It’s where my flat is, my career, my life.’

‘Except that now you’re carrying my baby.’

‘I had noticed.’ Her heart pounded so loudly she was afraid it was ready to slam its way right out of her chest. ‘But you told me we wouldn’t be playing happy families.’

‘That was before.’

The conversation was all too similar to the one she’d had when her ex-husband had told her about his job opportunity in Zurich. She’d known then that there was no way she wanted to leave the UK, that her life was there. This time she heard the words but she didn’t feel the same passion.