The Surgeon's One-Night Baby

She gripped the large, rather masculine-looking, leather wingback chair in front of her.

‘You’re going?’

‘I have to get showered and changed.’ He frowned. ‘I’ve got a charity dinner event tonight. I’m a guest speaker.’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you need me to stay?’

A part of her wanted to say yes. A bigger part of her knew the time to herself would be welcome. She forced a bright smile.

‘No. I could do with the evening to myself. Besides, you can’t let people down.’

He nodded, unsmiling.

‘I would prefer not to. But if I wasn’t speaking, I wouldn’t go.’

‘Should I...? Do I...come with you?’

He looked entirely unimpressed. She tried not to let it get to her.

‘I hardly think that’s the best idea. Aside from the fact that you’re meant to be resting, tonight is a high-profile event and being photographed out with me—especially looking like...that...’ he gestured to her baby bump ‘...is the quickest way to get people nosing into every single facet of our lives. I can’t imagine you want to see yourself splashed across the entertainment news headlines tomorrow morning, do you?’

‘No, of course not.’ Archie blinked, attempting to command her faithless heart not to read so much into the way he’d said our lives.

As if it implied some form of...togetherness.

‘Good.’ He nodded, satisfied, although she thought he might have had the decency not to look quite so smug. ‘Then you’ll stay here, keeping a low profile.’

He was gone before she could answer, leaving Archie alone to explore her new surroundings at her apparent leisure. Instead, she could only stare at the closed door and wonder where they were supposed to go from here.

She needed a distraction. Something to take her fears off the idea of losing this baby, something to ground her and remind her of the strong woman she was in other arenas of her life.

Like in the workplace. Yes, that was it. She could work, she’d brought her laptop. She was lucky that the nature of her job meant she could work from any number of sites or offices—emails and video conferencing were practically de rigueur. Certainly at this stage of the project. And she was lucky that she’d worked with the commercial manager on so many projects before over the years that he knew how reliable and fastidious she’d always been. Still, hopping on a plane to different country wasn’t exactly usual practice. If she was going to keep her job then she would need to do some work for as long as she was out here.

And she would need a job to get back to once the baby was born. How else was she supposed to keep a roof over their heads? Because no matter what Kaspar had said back in the hospital, it wasn’t practical for them to live together and pretend to be some kind of family, even for the sake of their baby.

She booted up her laptop, the waiting emails a welcome diversion as she fired off a handful of easy responses before working on a couple of more carefully worded letters to contractors and the client. But after a few hours the words began to swim before her eyes, the grid patterns of the spreadsheets all merging into each other. And, instead, Kaspar’s face began to creep back into her head.

It couldn’t be a good thing that all she could think about was him. And their baby. He was insisting on taking control, the way he always had seemed to do, but what kind of a real father would he allow himself to be?

The realisation clung to her mind.

She’d never appreciated, growing up, just how badly his parents’ volatile relationship had damaged Kaspar. What if he couldn’t get past that? What if he carried it into any relationship with their own baby? With her?

It was as though in asking herself that first question, she’d opened the floodgates for a hundred more to rush into her brain.

She’d never realised just how deeply his parents had influenced him before. She’d known a bit, growing up, but her father had shielded her from a lot. Had she been completely naïve in clinging to her memory of the sweet, sensitive young boy she had once known, who had looked to her own father as more of a role model than anyone else?

She couldn’t bear the idea that, in time, Kaspar might come to resent her if she and the baby impacted too heavily on his life.

What if he dated other women?

Something spiked inside her, like the stinging slice of a razor-sharp blade, even as she told herself that it didn’t matter to her either way. She told herself that what he did in his personal life was no more her business now than it ever had been. It wouldn’t make any difference to her. She would have him to thank for the most precious gift he could ever have given her.

Archie slammed the laptop lid down without even thinking about what she was doing. She could tell herself she didn’t care all she liked. She didn’t buy a word of it. Not even for a second.

What Kaspar did mattered to her. It shouldn’t, but it did. And the longer she stayed in his company the more hurt she was going to wind up getting. It was inevitable. Inexorable.