Praise for Meredith Webber:

‘Medical Romance™ favourite Meredith Webber has penned a spellbinding and moving tale set under the hot desert sun!’

—Cataromance on THE DESERT PRINCE’S CONVENIENT BRIDE

‘Medical Romance™ favourite Meredith Webber has written an outstanding romantic tale that I devoured in a single sitting—moving, engrossing, romantic and absolutely unputdownable! Ms Webber peppers her story with plenty of drama, emotion and passion, and she will keep her readers entranced until the final page.’ —Cataromance on A PREGNANT NURSE’S CHRISTMAS WISH

‘Meredith Webber does a beautiful job as she crafts one of the most unique romances I’ve read in a while. Reading a tale by Meredith Webber is always a pleasure, and THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE is no exception!’

—Book Illuminations

He took her hands, both hands—and even in her panicky state she felt a shiver of reaction. He turned them in his before looking into her eyes.

‘Look …’ he finally said. ‘I haven’t the faintest clue how to tell you this, but the clinic said they would contact you and as far as I can see that would be a disaster. Maybe it’s a disaster anyway, but at least now you’ll see exactly what’s happened. You deserve to know and I need to tell you.’

He wasn’t making any sense but he did seem genuinely concerned—which, together with his talk of the clinic, had the nerves in Joey’s tummy heading straight for riot mode.

‘Perhaps you could just blurt it out?’ she suggested as the tension in the air between them reached seismic proportions.

Just blurt it out? That’s rich! Max thought to himself. Here’s this stunning woman, ready to pop any minute, and a total stranger walks in …

‘The thing is,’ he said, as thoughts of the baby reminded him of his mission. And of the mess they were in!

‘The thing is …?’ she prompted—reasonably gently, considering his eruption into her life and the tension she must be feeling. To make matters worse, she then turned towards him and reached out to rest one hand on his.

‘Oh, the Devil take it all!’ he muttered, turning his hand so he could hold on to hers. ‘The thing is you’re having my baby!’

Dear Reader

In the early stages of writing this book I met a remarkable woman—Alison Ray. Alison isn’t a multi-millionaire philanthropist, or a corporation with money to give away, but on a trip to Africa she saw a need—and from a smallish town in central Queensland, on the edge of the Outback, she set out to do something about it.

When Alison spoke to me of Chainda, a settlement outside Lusaka in Zambia with 26,000 inhabitants, seven thousand of whom are orphans or other vulnerable children, I realised for the first time just how devastating the Aids epidemic was. Seven thousand orphans, or children whose grandparents or other carers are becoming too old or sick or frail to care for them … The number staggered me. So did Alison’s drive and tenacity.

She began small, raising money locally, then found a group of helpers willing to form a committee and from there registered a charity, calling it Our Rainbow House, because eventually what the group hopes to do is provide a safe haven for at least some of these children. Already the group has done a lot with their early programmes, and now has a teacher and a small school for forty-four of the children. But there is so much more left to do. You can read about the organisation, the settlement and the children on www.ourrainbowhouse.org.au and follow them on Facebook. I’m sure you’ll be as inspired as I was by this very special woman.

There is a programme underway to vaccinate healthy young men and women in an attempt to halt the spread of Aids in Africa, but this is happening in Uganda and Kenya, so in this book—right near the end—I sent Max off to Zambia to do it there. Writers are allowed to make things up!

All the best

Meredith

MEREDITH WEBBER says of herself, ‘Once I read an article which suggested that Mills & Boon® were looking for new Medical Romance™ authors. I had one of those “I can do that” moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession—though I do temper the “butt on seat” career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavours, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.’

The Accidental
Daddy
Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication

With many thanks to the incomparable Marion Lennox, without whose advice and encouragement this book would never have been finished.

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise for Meredith Webber:

Excerpt

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Endpages

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU MIGHT ALREADY be a father!’

Shock held Max Winthrop rooted to his chair, staring at his friend and fellow doctor in total disbelief.

Less than thirty minutes ago he’d stood outside the IVF clinic, trying to work out how he felt.

Uncertain?

Angsty?

Heaven help him, was there even such a word?

Get on with it, he’d told himself. You’ve made the decision, now walk in there and see Pete.

But there he’d stood, his mind flashing back seven years …

Seven years ago, filled with determination to beat a recently diagnosed cancer, he’d left something of himself here—a deposit for the future.

Back then it had been Step One of his ‘positive action’ programme, coming right before Step Two—Begin Aggressive Treatment.

Step Three had been Finish Treatment, followed closely by Step Four, Climb Mount Everest.

It hadn’t been a bad plan for a bloke in his mid-twenties who’d suddenly discovered he had an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and although his then fiancée had muttered a few doubts about Step Four on the plan, she’d agreed that he needed something special in the way of a goal.

He suspected Get Married had been her choice for ‘something special,’ although it had never been put into words.

Now, two fiancées and some serious life changes later, he’d decided the time had come to have his frozen sperm destroyed.

‘Why now?’ his friend Pete had asked when Max had finally made it in through the door.

Seven years ago Max had decided to use this particular facility because his friend Pete was working in the clinic.

Pete was now one of the co-owners, and a good part of the reason the clinic had become extremely successful in the competitive world of assisted pregnancies.

‘Why now?’ Pete asked again.

‘You should know that,’ Max finally answered. ‘You’re the one who told me it loses its motility the longer it’s kept frozen.’

‘So you’ve had a test and your little swimmers are okay?’ Pete probed.

‘Not exactly,’ he replied, ‘but if I do happen to find a woman who’ll have me, then I’ll tell her the risks and we’ll take our chances.’

‘Get tested first. I can do it here and now. Or get it done.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ Max said firmly. It made no difference now. Regardless, he wouldn’t be taking changes with long-frozen sperm. Besides, he’d spent the last few months debating this in his head, weighing up the pros and cons of future marriage, accepting, finally, that the women in his life were probably right. He wasn’t good marriage material.

Or family material.

Father material …

This last bit of the argument was the strongest, coming as it did from his own memories—the memory of the child he’d been when his adored father had left the family. It had been the final weight added to the ‘con’ side—the catalyst for this final decision. At times he still felt the pain of that time—and to inflict that on another child?

His child?

Maybe he wasn’t sure. Maybe that was why he’d rushed into preserving sperm before treatment all those years ago, but the years had made him even less certain he could cope with fatherhood. This final act was simply admitting it.

‘I’ve made the decision, Pete,’ Max added. ‘I want it destroyed.’

Pete shrugged, woken the laptop on his desk from its sleep and begun typing, sending a message to a printer somewhere in the bowels of the building.

He then used his phone to summon a lackey—a very attractive female lackey.

‘Jess, would you make sure someone in the cryo room gets the details on that printout I just sent through; then rustle up some coffee? Preferences, Max?’

Max gave his coffee order, then watched the delectable Jess leave the room.

‘Eyes off, old man,’ Pete said to him. ‘She’s engaged to one of our new staff members—a genius who’s going to make this company famous worldwide. Although …’

He paused, studying Max as if he were a newly inseminated egg.

‘Again, I have to ask, are you sure about this decision?’

Max had to laugh.

‘Just because I’ve decided marriage and children aren’t for me, it doesn’t mean I’ve become a monk. You’re a happily married man so you’ve no idea how many intelligent, attractive women there are out there who feel just as I do. They’ve decided, carefully and rationally, that marriage isn’t for them, but they’re happy to have no-strings relationships with men who feel the same.’

Pete nodded.

‘Not surprised at all,’ he said. ‘We’ve a couple of them working here. Women who love their work, enjoy their leisure time in all manner of ways and just don’t see marriage or kids as an imperative in their lives.’

Jess returned with the two coffees and a plate of wafer-thin almond biscotti. She put the tray on table by the window, assured Pete someone was working on his request and departed once again.

Max picked up his coffee, while Pete studied a message that had obviously come through on his mobile.

‘Drink your coffee, I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, as he headed out the door.

Watching him go, Max knew he’d made the right career decision. Not for him this office life, running a successful company but always being called in to solve this or check that. Working in a hospital was much the same, noisy pagers summoning him from one place to another. Private practice might be okay, but it had changed—less personal in so many ways.

So the lecturing he did, combined with research on the spread of infection in developing countries, plus hands-on work in the same area, was his career choice. It also gave him freedom to head off and climb the odd mountain when he needed to clear his head. He had no strings attached and it worked for him.

Another confirmation this was also the right decision.

Until Pete strode back into the room, obviously flustered, clutching a small metal container not unlike a miniature silver flask and a sheaf of paperwork.

And delivered the blow that had Max stuck in his chair.

‘Max … mate, I don’t know how to tell you this. This is unbelievable. Unbelievable that it’s happened, and that it’s happened to you. Max … I just need to say it. You might already be a father.’

Aware that he was probably doing a very good impression of a stunned mullet, Max could only stare at his friend.

Finally he got it out. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘There’s a mistake with the cross-match,’ Pete croaked.

‘You want to explain?’

Max heard his voice as if it came from someone else. Icy cold. Controlled. Not his.

‘The cross-match … Names matched to codes, verified every step of the way. But your name has the wrong code on it. They’ve checked and there’s a matching mistake. Your code with another name on it. But, hell, Max, yours has been used.’

‘My sperm has been used?’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to say. It might even be a mistake—it has to be a mistake—though how it happened, I have no idea. But it’s been used. There’s a pregnancy.’

Could a life change so completely so quickly?

He stared at his friend. Pete stared back in consternation, then stood and walked to the window. He barked into his phone, demanding more information.

Max stared at his back, then down to the folder on the desk. He flicked it open.

A name … details …

Pete turned, saw what he was looking at and snatched the file away.

They stared at each other.

Shock eased and words came. Demands. Anger

He rose to his feet, coffee forgotten as he tried to absorb this impossible news. Icy anger.

‘There’s b-been a m-mix-up,’ Pete stammered. ‘Honestly, Max, this never happens—the checks and balances … I’ll find out how and why, but right now—’

‘You’re saying someone’s having my baby! Who?’

‘I can’t tell you that—it’s bad enough it’s happened. I mean, we’ll have to tell the woman when we sort out just what’s happened. God, this could ruin us!’

‘Ruin you? Ruin the clinic? What about me?’

‘And the poor woman who thinks she’s having her dead husband’s baby …’

Anger had him pacing—back and forth in front of the desk. But … Dead husband. The two words that brought Max to a halt, to loom over the desk once again.

‘What do you mean, dead husband?’

Pete looked up at him, his face pale and haggard.

‘Her husband died shortly after he was here, and she finally decided to use the sperm—have his child.’

‘The fact remains she’s having my baby,’ Max growled. He raked his hair. ‘Hell. Do we …?’ He was struggling to get his head around it. ‘Do I need to know? Does she need to know?’

‘There’s no way we can do that,’ said Pete. ‘The DNA … it’s yours, not his. That has so many implications …’

It did. Implications were all he was seeing right now, and he didn’t like any of them.

‘I need to meet her,’ he said at last, trying to think logically. ‘I need to speak to her. How far gone is she? Is the pregnancy viable?’ So many questions …

Pete recovered enough to straighten in his seat, colour returning to his face.

‘Max, you need to leave this to us. We’ll sort it. Somehow. This business is all about confidentiality. I’ll see her, I’ll explain—keep you right out of it.’

‘Keep me right out of it when it’s my baby you’re talking about?’ He couldn’t get his head around the words. My baby.

This didn’t make sense. Why the surge of certainty? Why the instant knowledge that if this was his baby, he wanted to be involved?

Maybe the rational decision he’d walked in here with hadn’t been so rational after all.

And he’d seen the file.

‘It’s Joanne McMillan,’ he said, watching his friend’s face. ‘Dr Joanne McMillan.’

‘You can’t know.’ Pete clutched his file in horror, his colour fading even further. ‘You shouldn’t have seen. Forget it. We need to talk to her—explain. I need to see her, not you.’

‘Oh, no! There is no way some woman is going to have my baby without my at least meeting her—checking her out.’

‘But it won’t be your baby—don’t you see that?’ Pete held out his hands in a plea to his friend. ‘You’ve told me you don’t want children. You’ve made a rational and reasoned decision about it and come in to have your sperm destroyed. The best way to treat it is to consider you made an anonymous donation.’

‘No way!’ He hardly knew what he was saying; he only knew it was a basic, instinctive truth. ‘This is my baby—and while I might not want it, at least I need to see it’s going to a good home. I do have some responsibility. I should have some say in the matter. As she’ll want to know—want to check me out surely.’

Light-bulb moment!

‘You said you’d go and see her to explain. Why don’t you let me go? You can make an appointment for someone from the clinic who needs to see her and I’ll go.’

‘And do what?’ Pete demanded.

‘I’ll work that out when we meet. I imagine she’s going to be so shocked to learn what’s happened she’s not really going to care who the father is, not right away. And if she’s happy to go along with the anonymous donor thing and I decide she’ll do as a mother, then, okay, I won’t tell her.’ ‘Of course she’ll do as a mother—she’s a doctor, a paediatrician, in fact. She’ll make an excellent mother.’

‘You have got to be joking!’ Max muttered. His mind was heading off on all sorts of tangents. How could he feel protective of … his sperm? A stranger’s pregnancy? All he knew was that he was.

‘You and I both remember men and women from our university days who would make appalling parents,’ he told Pete. He was sounding a lot less flustered than Pete right now, more in control. ‘Medical training doesn’t include extensive courses on good parenting, and even if it did, it wouldn’t have got through to people like Mike Wills, whose eyes were on the dollar signs right from the start, or that daffy woman who was always forgetting her handbag or her lecture notes and kept losing her car in the car park. Can you imagine how she’d be with kids? “Now, did I have two or three of them when I left home?” she’ll be saying.’

He was talking drivel, but it was helping him back towards a semblance of normality. It was strengthening his determination to meet the woman who would be the mother of the child he hadn’t wanted to have.

‘How far along is the pregnancy?’ he demanded, and then, as Pete didn’t answer, he grabbed the file and flicked it open. And almost reeled. ‘That’s … It’s due in two weeks! Pete …’

‘You’re not supposed to know,’ Pete bleated, but he’d lost control and he knew it.

‘Make an appointment for me to see her today—you can spin some story to get me in there.’

‘Max—’

‘Now!’

‘But it’s all confidential.’ Protest getting weaker.

‘Until your clinic screwed up!’

‘I’ll get to the bottom of it,’ Pete promised, but Max had picked up the phone and handed it to him.

‘Getting to the bottom of it might protect your clinic in the future, but it’s not doing a damn thing for me or this woman. Phone her!’

Pete stared at him for a long, helpless moment—and then made the call.

‘Jess will give you the details,’ he said as he set down the receiver and slumped back down in his chair. ‘And leave Jess your information so I can keep in touch with you. That’s if I can’t find an unsealed window and take a leap from it.’

‘You’re on the second floor—you’d probably only break a leg.’

Slipping her feet back into the sandals she’d discarded under her desk, Joey heaved herself upright so she could walk out through the waiting room with her favourite patient. With her arm around the just-teenager’s shoulders, she opened the door into the waiting room.

‘Now, you behave yourself,’ she said to Jacqui. ‘Go to your own GP if your insulin levels are playing up and phone me if you’re worried about anything at all. You’ve got both my numbers.’

‘Thanks, Joey,’ Jacqui responded, turning to kiss the specialist on the cheek. ‘You take care yourself and have a rest before the baby arrives.’ She grinned, then added, ‘That’s if there is only one!’

Smiling at the girl’s remarks, Joey saw her out and was about to return to her office to check who was next on her patient list when she registered the man sitting in the corner of the waiting room.

A tense man, although, for all his tension, there was something about him.

Something disturbing.

Physically disturbing.

Special …

She continued into her office, hoping she hadn’t been caught in mid-step, gazing at him instead of ignoring his presence.

But she obviously hadn’t ignored his presence for it seemed as if every detail of his physical appearance had registered in her brain.

Even sitting, she’d been able to tell he was tall—a rangy man, with brownish-reddish hair. A swatch of it hung across a high forehead. Dark eyebrows above eyes that had seemed to be studying her, a fine, neat nose and lips—

Surely to God she hadn’t just noticed his lips—hadn’t noticed how well shaped they were …

Pregnancy brain!

She’d put it down to that—as she put all the silly things she was doing lately down to it.

Settling carefully behind her desk, she lifted her phone.

‘There’s a man in the waiting room,’ she muttered to Meryl, her receptionist and the mainstay in her life right now.

‘He’s from the fertility clinic—some kind of rep, I suppose. They phoned and made an appointment for the end of the day.’

‘End of the day? He’s going to sit there while I see another four patients?’

‘Apparently,’ Meryl said, sounding so completely unfazed by the man’s presence that Joey realised she’d have to pull herself together.

Difficult when every time she brought a patient in, or walked a family to the door, she’d see the man.

So?

She was beautiful!

He wasn’t sure why this should surprise him, but it did. Dark hair and pale, creamy skin—hugely pregnant and looking very tired, but still beautiful.

The receptionist had told him he couldn’t get an appointment until the end of the day and suggested he go off and get himself a coffee somewhere, but he’d felt he needed to stay—to see her—to hear the chat in the waiting room. It had all been positive. In fact, from all accounts she was an angel set down on earth, a miracle worker, and so kind, so caring, so …

He’d certainly got the picture her patients and their parents painted of her—seen her kindness as she’d shown the young teenager out, although offering her private phone number when she was about to have a baby?

Surely that was above and beyond the call of duty!

Pete had told him she was a paediatrician, so he wasn’t surprised to see the waiting room with its big cane basket full of brightly coloured toys and the prints from Alice in Wonderland on the walls. A welcoming, non-scary place for kids.

But it was the woman herself who drew his attention, appearing at the door to her rooms to summon in the next small patient, always greeting the child first, then the parent, ushering them in, speaking directly to the child or adolescent all the time.

Her dark hair was pulled ruthlessly back into a knot on the back of her head, but from the tendrils escaping to frame her face, or dangle enticingly down the back of her neck, he could tell it was curly.

He felt a pang of sympathy for her as she followed a little group through the door, for she’d put one hand behind her and was rubbing just above her left hip.

Thirty-eight weeks … Why was she still working?

Money worries?

A string of questions rattled in his head.

Surely he wouldn’t be expected to help out financially—it was all a mistake, and not his mistake.

But this was his child. If she needed financial help, how could he deny it?

His child?

What was he thinking?

But when she appeared again, he found himself staring, riveted by the bulging belly.

That was his baby in there.

The baby he’d decided he wasn’t ever going to have for a whole fleet of excellent reasons.

This woman was having his baby.

His gut churned, then she glanced his way, flashed a smile at him and other bits of him reacted as well.

From a smile?

He smiled back although it was probably such a poor effort she might not have recognised it. But here he was, the man who, not so many hours ago, had made the final, definite ‘no children in my future’ decision, getting twinges of attraction—well, more than twinges—towards a woman carrying his child.

She’d been doing okay until he’d smiled. Admittedly, she’d sneaked a glance at him every time she’d walked into the waiting room, but apart from registering that he was a very attractive man—and her body registering the same thing in a most inappropriate manner for someone eight-and-a half-months pregnant—she really hadn’t been taking that much notice.

The smile changed everything.

The smile made her think of things she’d long given up considering.

Like sex?

It had to be her hormones, all out of sync now she was getting so close to giving birth. The man was a total stranger—someone she’d never see again in her life. And so what if he was talking to Sam Wainwright, a hyperactive six-year-old, and actually calming him down …

But the smile had lightened the tension she’d read earlier on his face, and revealed strong white teeth, framed by those well-shaped lips—

Get out of here! Get your mind back on the job. Do not go out the door again—get Meryl to send the next patient in.

Disobeying the orders from the sensible part of her brain, Joey pushed herself to her feet and went to the door.

‘Your turn, Sam,’ she said, pretending to a professionalism she was far from feeling, her eyes drawn to the man who now was pulling coins from behind Sam’s ear.

‘Can Max come in with me and Mum?’ Sam asked, smiling up at the man, who, fortunately for Joey as she’d been struck dumb, smiled at the boy and explained it wasn’t his turn yet.

Of course his voice would be just that tad husky, just the kind of male voice that had always got her in.

Joey closed her eyes and prayed for sanity.

A little bit of sanity—surely not too much to ask for!

It came, in reaction to Sam seizing one of her legs and hugging hard, protesting that he didn’t want her to go away, even for a little while.

Sensing he was genuinely upset—and assuming she’d fall over if she tried to walk—Joey eased Sam off her leg and squatted, uncomfortably, so she could look into his freckled face.

‘But I have to go to hospital to have the baby, then stay home to look after it for a bit,’ she reminded him. ‘We talked about it, and you know Dr Austin, who’ll be seeing you while I’m away.’

She ran her hand over his hair, and in a moment of complete insanity added, ‘Maybe once I have the baby, you can come and visit me in hospital and meet it.’

She was about to struggle back to an upright position when a firm hand with long, strong fingers grasped her elbow and helped her up, the husky voice murmuring, ‘And think what havoc he could wreak in a maternity ward,’ in her ear, as he made sure she was balanced before releasing her arm.

But she wasn’t thinking of Sam, or the chaos he could cause. She was trying very hard to work out why the touch of a stranger had made the hair on the back of her neck stand up and a shiver travel down her spine.

The kind of shiver she hadn’t felt for seven years …

The kind of shiver David’s touch had given her …

Somehow she managed to get Sam and his long-suffering mother through the door and close it behind them, but the feel of the man’s fingers on her arm lingered, and something very like excitement skittered along her nerves.

He should leave right now, Max told himself. He’d seen the woman. Pete could contact her about the mistake. Even from the small interactions with her patients that he’d witnessed, he could tell she was competent and caring.

That was really all he needed to know. The baby was nothing to do with him.

So why were his eyes drawn to her belly whenever she entered the room?

Why did he feel the gut-wrench thing—the ‘that’s my baby in there’ reaction—whenever he looked at her?

Because she was attractive?

Because he was drawn to her in some in explicable way?

Because he was having an almost primeval reaction to the news that this was his baby?

All those reasons were dumb. He could go now, forget this had ever happened, and if Pete told her—when Pete told her—about the mix-up, he needn’t mention who the father was.

As for the woman—well, she was attractive, there was no denying that, but she wouldn’t want him interfering. A woman with a child deserved stability and certainty in her life. She was a widow. She was beautiful, desirable, ripe to meet someone who could make her happy again. And if he was on the scene …

He was way ahead of himself. Thinking, stupidly, of relationships? He didn’t need to go there. A man who’d already let down two women he’d loved, and who’d loved him, couldn’t be trusted not to hurt a third. And to hurt a woman with a child was unthinkable.

CHAPTER TWO

THE WAITING ROOM was suddenly empty.

He still had time to leave, but when the door opened, and the tired, very pregnant but still beautiful woman walked out, he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stare at her.

‘Joanne McMillan,’ she said, holding out her hand,

Suddenly aware of his own manners—bad ones that he’d stayed sitting—he surged to his feet and stepped towards her, tripping on a toy he hadn’t noticed on the floor, and all but crash-tackling the woman to the floor.

Great start!

She was far more with it than him—stepping to one side but putting out a hand to steady him as he regained his balance.

‘Sorry! Max Winthrop,’ he muttered, grasping her free hand—the other still holding his arm.

And for the second time in the morning he was dumbstruck.

Her eyes were blue—not pale and wishy-washy blue but a clear, almost violet blue.

Mesmerising.

‘You made an appointment?’

She’d dropped her hand from his arm, and it was probably just politeness that she hadn’t let go of the one he was clasping.

He had the weirdest sensation that something was passing between them, bearing a warmth he didn’t understand.

Of course, there was a good chance he’d completely lost his marbles. Shock could do that.

‘Meryl tells me you’re from the clinic. Is it just a polite visit to check if I’m okay?’

He looked into the blue eyes, drowned in the blueness, stepped back a little but somehow kept hold of her hand.

He couldn’t tell her, couldn’t destroy this woman’s happiness because that’s what still shone through the tiredness—happiness and a little excitement.

Was she really standing in her waiting room, holding the hand of a complete stranger?

Studying the complete stranger as if it was important to take in every detail of his features?

Now he was closer and she could see the fine lines fanning out from his eyes, the smile grooves bracketing his lips.

She probably should keep her eyes off the lips, and reclaim her hand …

She managed both, though how she wasn’t sure for the man seemed to have cast some kind of spell over her, so they’d stood in a time-proof bubble for who knew how long.

‘You’re from the clinic? Is this just a courtesy call?’

Somehow she’d managed the repeat the question she’d asked earlier, pretending to a normality she was far from feeling. But she’d no sooner spoken than the man turned pale, pain of some kind straining the features she’d found so mesmeric.

‘Yes! No!’

He’d stepped back a little, which was just as well because his close proximity had certainly added to the strange mix of sensations she’d been experiencing.

Although his confusion was now transmitting itself to her in definite twinges of anxiety.

‘Yes, or no, which is it?’ she asked, producing a smile to cover the anxiety.

‘Oh, hell, I’ve no idea. I should walk right out the door, right now—out the door and out of your life.’

Out of my life? ‘But you’re not actually in my life,’ Joey pointed out. ‘In my rooms, yes, but hardly in my life!’

Max Winthrop—she was almost certain that was the name he’d given—groaned, turning even paler.

‘Perhaps you should sit down,’ Joey told him, and placing her hand very carefully on his arm she guided him back to where he’d been sitting earlier.

Touching him was probably a mistake as all the sensations she’d experienced earlier returned a thousandfold.

This was insanity. The man was a stranger. Okay, so he was an attractive stranger, but in truth she’d met many better-looking men, knew a dozen of them and had dated quite a few.

With absolutely no physical reaction whatsoever …

Not since David!

She patted her stomach and tried to think.

The clinic!

And for the first time since Meryl had mentioned the clinic, the man and the attraction were forgotten, and she felt a surge of panic.

‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

She’d been looking down at him, but now he stood up and put his hand on her arm again.

‘Perhaps we should both sit down,’ he said, so softly, so gently, the surge turned into a roaring tsunami of fear, invading every cell of her body.

Both hands now protectively cradling her belly, she stared at the man.

‘Tell me,’ she demanded.

Had she lost colour that he almost forced her into the chair? Sat her down then settled beside her, his hand still grasping her arm.

It was comforting, that hand, but why should she need comforting?

‘Talk!’ she ordered, trying to read his face—a strong face, unused, she was sure, to uncertainty or confusion, although both emotions seemed to be in evidence right now.

He opened his mouth as if to respond then closed it again, but not before it had attracted her attention to the extent that she had to confirm it was a very nice mouth—and little lines she’d noticed earlier were evidence that he smiled a lot.

But he was not smiling now.

Was he so uncomfortable sitting beside her that he needed to move to squat, awkwardly, in front of her, the way she did when speaking to a small patient?

Or did he need to see her face while he said whatever he had to say?

Fear was creeping into the panic now and her heart was thudding in her chest.

‘Please,’ she whispered.

He took her hands, both hands—and even in her panicky state she felt a shiver of reaction. He turned them in his, before looking into her eyes.

‘Look,’ he finally said, ‘I haven’t the faintest clue how to tell you this, but the clinic said they would contact you, and as far as I could see, that would be a disaster. Maybe it’s a disaster anyway but at least now you’ll see exactly what’s happened. You deserve to know and I need to tell you.’

He wasn’t making any sense but he did seem genuinely concerned, which, together with the talk of the clinic, had the nerves in Joey’s tummy heading straight for riot mode.

‘Perhaps you could just blurt it out,’ she suggested as the tension in the air between them reached seismic proportions.

Just blurt it out, that’s rich! Max muttered to himself. Here’s this stunning woman, ready to pop any minute, and a total stranger walks in …

Aware the silence had already taken too long, he took an extra minute to study Joanne—Joey, her small patients had called her—McMillan.

And was drawn again to her eyes, wide apart so she seemed, even in her bewildered state, to be constantly surprised.

But it was the pale, creamy skin that made her lovely to look at—he hoped the baby got that …

What was he thinking? As if it mattered what kind of skin the baby had? It wasn’t as if it really was his baby!

Was it?

‘The thing is …’ he said, as thoughts of the baby reminded him of his mission. And of the mess they were in.

‘The thing is …’

He stopped, stood up before his knees gave out and slumped back into the chair beside her. Sitting beside her was bad enough as far as the attraction thing was concerned, but looking up into those eyes—no wonder he couldn’t think!

‘The thing is …’ she prompted, reasonably gently considering his eruption into her life and the tension she must be feeling.

To make matters worse, she then turned towards him and reached out to rest one hand on his.

‘The thing is, you’re having my baby. There, it’s said. Now all we have to do is work out where we go from here.’

She didn’t reply—hardly surprising!—but the slim fingers that he’d wrapped in his hand seemed to lose all warmth and he turned anxiously towards her.

‘You’re okay? You’re not going to faint or anything?’

‘Of course I’m not okay,’ she snapped. ‘What are you? Some kind of a madman who goes around scaring pregnant woman? Does it give you a kick to see someone in shock?’

She leaned forward as best she could, given her shape, but she didn’t retrieve her hand. In fact, her fingers were now clinging to his, as if to a lifeline. Fortunately the receptionist reappeared at that moment, and Max turned to her for help.

‘She’s had a shock—a hot drink, tea if she drinks it, and lots of sugar.’

‘No sugar!’

The change to the order reassured Max that Joey McMillan was recovering fast.

Which was good in one way, but it meant explanations were in order.

Not only explanations but also some kind of discussion over the future, although what that future could be was hard to envision.

Impossible really.

Although …

The thought was so unexpected he stopped breathing for a moment, and turned it this way and that in his head before giving it consideration. It remained the same—a conviction that, having had his own father walk out when he was five, he should have some involvement in his child’s upbringing.

Shouldn’t he?

It was nuts but his thoughts were racing at a million miles an hour.

His mother would be a grandmother.

The thought held him riveted. He shuddered as he considered what his mother and sisters would say if he didn’t accept the baby as his own. In fact, they’d be delighted something had happened to curtail what they saw as his irresponsibly nomadic, and often dangerous, lifestyle.

Sisters!

And that made him wonder if Joey knew the sex of the child. A boy would be fun but, then, little girls—

Was he really considering being a father to this child?

Well, shouldn’t he be?

He stifled a groan. He’d been so intent on getting to this woman and telling her the unfortunate truth in person that he hadn’t given a thought to the implications for himself.

His stomach clenched, but it was the confusion in his mind that really worried him. Confusion over the baby but, worse, confusion over his reactions to this woman …

Joey waited until Meryl brought the tea. Meryl headed back behind her desk and turned her attention to her computer. Her presence made things feel … almost normal. She straightened up, retrieved the hand she’d carelessly left lying in the man’s warm paw, took several sips of hot liquid and turned to face the stranger.

Max something, he had said?

‘If you’re not mad, then presumably you have some explanation for your bizarre statement,’ she said, hoping she sounded stronger than she felt, which, right now, was extremely shaky.

And totally confused.

And upset? Yes, she thought, unbelievably upset, so upset she didn’t dare go there. That this wasn’t David’s baby …

And still, crazy as it might be, she was drawn to this man in some inexplicable fashion.

‘I do have an explanation,’ he said. ‘But it’s long and involved and you’ve obviously just finished a full day at work and probably need a rest and food, so we don’t have to do this now.’

She stared at him in disbelief.

‘You think I could rest?’ she demanded, and hoped the words hadn’t come out too shrill. She hated sounding shrill.

‘Well, food and somewhere comfortable to sit,’ he suggested, and Joey realised he was right.

‘I was intending to go straight home, it’s not far,’ she said, immediately regretting it as she realised she was inviting a total stranger into her house.

‘You can’t go inviting total strangers into your house,’ the man scolded, right on cue.

Joey sighed. She was tired and her back ached and her feet hurt and all she wanted to do was go home and sit in a nice warm bath.

Maybe snooze in it until the water got cold … Forget about dramas like a stranger claiming to be the father to her child.

But she couldn’t forget. She pulled herself together—or as together as she was likely to get at the moment.

‘Just give Meryl all your details and show her some identification so she can tell the police about who murdered me if I don’t get in touch with her in the morning.’

The man looked surprised, then worried, then unhappy, but in the end Meryl saved the day.

‘I’ve already done an internet search on him,’ she piped up. ‘I know, it’s not my business but I’m nosey and he’s cute.’ She grinned. ‘He has nothing to do with the IVF clinic.’ She frowned at Max. ‘That’s false pretences when you made the appointment. But he’s still a doctor, but mainly he works for overseas aid organisations. He’s in the front line of infectious disease research in underdeveloped countries. The organisation he works for has his picture on their website so I know it’s him. Take a look if you like.’ She swung the monitor to face Joey. ‘Apparently he teaches as well as works hands on. There’s a profile of him on the page; he climbs mountains in between plagues. He looks like an adrenaline junkie. Maybe a bit mad but harmless.’

‘A bit mad?’ Joey echoed, staring at her receptionist in shock. ‘Did you hear any of his conversation? Do you know what he came to tell me?’

Meryl looked embarrassed.

‘Well, he did kind of explain a little of it when he came in. He asked me to stay in case you needed someone with you. I know it’s a shock, Joey, but I think he’s okay.’

Joey glared at her receptionist.

‘Well, thanks a lot. I’m going home now, so you can go too.’

She knew she shouldn’t be snapping at Meryl, but it was as if the pair had formed a conspiracy of some kind. The worst of it was, she knew, very, very deep down inside, that the bombshell he’d just dropped on her could be possible. Accidents could happen in any medical process or procedure—

But not this time! No way!

Maybe back in the beginning of IVF and sperm freezing, but not these days. Surely not.

‘Well, come on,’ she grumped at the bearer of bad tidings, ‘let’s go to my place so you can explain yourself.’

Politeness dictated he help her up but as Max stood and held out his hand, he felt as if he was poking it into the cave of a very hungry grizzly bear. This particular pregnant woman was certainly angry enough to bite.

He eased her to her feet, grasping her elbow to steady her once she was upright, feeling her softness, seeing the deep cleft between her engorged breasts, feeling a stirring that was way beyond inappropriate.

Half of him was unable to stop considering her belly, feeling quite possessive about a child he’d been determined not to have, while the other half of him yelled that this was madness—getting involved was madness. Hadn’t he already figured out that long-term relationships weren’t for him? And what was a child if it wasn’t very, very, very long-term?

He pushed his brain past the warring voices in his head, seeking a little scrap of sanity.

‘Do you drive to your place?’ he asked, worried about her wellbeing after the shock, and wishing he had a car himself so he could take her wherever she wanted to go.

Madness! The angry voice in his head declared.

She turned her head and smiled—well, almost smiled.

‘No, I walk. It’s my daily exercise, walking to and from work, climbing the stairs rather than taking the elevator.’

‘This suite’s on the fourteenth floor.’

The protest was automatic and this time she did smile, stirring things inside him once again.

‘Not here, but at home. You’ll see.’

And he did. Following her up flight after flight of stairs in an old building near the top of the city terrace that provided consulting suites for most of the city’s specialists.

‘I didn’t know these old buildings still had flats in them,’ he said when she stopped at the top of the final flight and pulled out an old-fashioned-looking brass key to unlock a heavy wooden door.

‘Not many of them do,’ she replied, and he realised, as no hint of breathlessness sounded in the words, that she must be supremely fit for someone almost at term.

Inside he looked around with wonder at the high ceilings, the spacious living/dining room, the wide hall with doors that must open into bedrooms off to one side.

And the view!

Drawn to the wide windows, he gazed down at the city spread out beneath, the muddy green-brown river meandering through it, and out to the suburbs, tree-lined streets and red roofs.

‘It’s amazing,’ he said, and this time the smile lit up her face.

‘It’s my family home,’ she admitted rather shyly. ‘Everyone tells me I’m mad to consider living here with a baby, what with the stairs and all, but my mother managed and my father’s mother before her so I don’t see why I can’t. Especially these days when I can do all my grocery shopping online and there’s an ancient dumb waiter the delivery man can use with his loads of foodstuffs.’

She’d walked into the living room and sunk down onto a comfortable-looking lounge, kicking off her sandals and lifting her legs to rest them along the seat.

‘Sit,’ she said, but the word was more a plea than a command. She sounded exhausted and he cursed himself for hitting her with this shock after she’d had a long day at work.

But better him than the clinic, surely?

He stayed standing, studying her, not knowing where to go next in this impossible conversation—not wanting to hurt this woman any more than he already had but knowing the conversation had to continue.

‘Can I get you something? Go out and get us a meal? Or get you a meal? You’re probably far too tired to be worrying about this other business right now.’

She looked better smiling than frowning, he decided as she said, ‘I thought we’d established that there’s no way I can rest or relax until we’ve sorted out what you so glibly call this “other business”! You’re talking about wrecking my entire life here, do you realise that?’

It was Max’s turn to sink down into a chair, where he sighed, then held his head in his hands for a few minutes, then sighed again before looking up at her.

‘I know, and I did consider not telling you at all. I know people have this obsession about truth, but a lot of truth just hurts.’

His face was shadowed but Joey read sorrow in it and wondered just how badly he’d been hurt by some truth in the past. And for some reason beyond her understanding, it hurt her that he’d been hurt.

She really was a mess!

‘I suppose, both morally and ethically, you need to know,’ he acknowledged. ‘But I thought I should come in person—explain in person.’

She couldn’t help the frown that must be causing permanent creases in her forehead.

‘I don’t understand any of this, but I’m assuming you somehow found out, or think you found out, that I was inseminated with your sperm instead of David’s. But the checks and balances at the IVF centre are so complex, it can’t happen.’

‘Exactly what I thought,’ Max told her gloomily, ‘and in case inside that calm exterior you’re raging about yelling and threatening to sue, I’ve already done enough of that for both of us. Problem is I can’t help feeling doctors get a bad enough press without patients suing them so I wouldn’t really like to go that far.’

He’d kind of run out of words, so he looked hopefully at Joey.

Nothing!

He ploughed on.

‘Can you tell me why you used frozen sperm? I know the name on the files when they were finally tracked down was McMillan. That was or is your husband?’

For a moment he didn’t think she’d answer. Her eyes were unfocussed and he guessed she was looking inwards—to a not very happy place if he read her expression correctly.

‘David had a headache. A bad headache.’ She spoke slowly, quietly, offering the words one by one as if each one still caused pain. ‘He was diagnosed with an aggressive, inoperable brain tumour and given six weeks to live. We’d been married a month. I didn’t want him to do the frozen sperm thing. If I couldn’t have him, I certainly didn’t want his baby. I was angry—at him for being sick, and at myself for handling it so badly. Angry at the whole world.’

She paused, looking around the room, probably remembering her beloved husband in it with her—probably regretting her anger …

‘Anyway he did it, saying that, in time, he fully expected me to find someone else to love and marry. That was what he really wanted for me, he said, but if that didn’t happen, then he’d like me to have the option of having his baby. I could have someone of his—some part of him—to give me the love I deserved. That was how he put it. And it’s been there, in the back of my mind, ever since. Then last year I thought I can’t keep the sperm forever. If I don’t do it now …’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I just did. I wanted to and I did. But now … what have I done? A baby that’s not David’s …’

She rested her head back on the arm of the couch and closed her eyes, as if telling this tragic story had stolen her last reserves of energy, leaving her too exhausted to wipe away the tears that leaked, slow and full, from beneath her eyelids.

CHAPTER THREE

HIS FINGERS ACHED to wipe those tears away, but she was a stranger—a stranger he’d just hurt beyond any understanding, which meant touching her was out of the question.

And particularly out of the question given how previous touches—casual, helpful touches—had affected him.

Be practical. Practical was good. He could do practical!

Food—she undoubtedly needed food.

Max stood up and went in search of the kitchen, not hard to find as it was right at the end of the hall. A tall, walkin pantry offered a packet of crackers and the refrigerator cheese, grapes and tiny tomatoes. He sliced some cheese, found a plate and set out his offerings. He took a bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator and poured a glass, added ice, and carried the plate and glass into the living room, setting it down on a small table beside the couch.

‘Eat!’ he ordered, and to his surprise she opened her eyes and smiled at him. It was a wan smile, but it was still a smile.

He definitely liked her smile.

‘Only if we share,’ she said, waving her hand towards the plate, so he took a cracker, and a chunk of cheese and a grape, but knew he wouldn’t eat them, his tension over the conversation that lay ahead making his body so uptight he doubted it would accept anything in the way of food.

‘So!’ she said, after she’d demolished half the plate of food while he’d surreptitiously wrapped his morsels in his handkerchief and poked it in his pocket. ‘Tell me what makes you think this is your baby.’

She patted her belly protectively but in a matter-of-fact way, and Max guessed if she spoke to the unborn child at all, it would be as an adult—in a normal conversation. A sensible, intelligent woman, as well as being beautiful.

But he had a tale to tell …

‘I went to the lab this morning—’

‘Brilliant Babies, or whatever silly name they’re calling themselves now?’ she queried.

‘Babies First,’ Max corrected. ‘Yes.’

He stalled again.

‘And you went because …?’

Joey asked the question and sighed inside. Was she going to have to drag every syllable of the story out of this man? She hoped not. She’d been tired before he’d dropped his unbelievable bombshell—now she was exhausted.

She ate another couple of grapes, hoping their sugar content might help.

‘I wanted to have my sperm destroyed,’ he said finally. ‘The frozen stuff. It’s been stored there now for seven years and they’d sent a bill recently or I’d have forgotten about it altogether. The quality of the frozen sperm probably deteriorates with time, but it wasn’t all that. I guess it was an acceptance that I wasn’t cut out to be a family man. It’s probably genetic. My father thought he could be, but my sisters tell me he was never happy when he was at home. But when he finally cut and ran, well, to me it was so hurtful that I realised I’d have been better off never having had a father.’

Joey knew she was frowning again. No wonder, considering he was telling her his life story, rather than explaining what had happened at the clinic.

‘But if that’s how you felt,’ she said, ‘why freeze your sperm in the first place? It can’t have been a donation because that clinic doesn’t take donations and, anyway, in places where they do, they’re stored separately. Did you think you were ill?’

She stopped, because it had suddenly struck her that she was having a conversation with a virtual stranger about his sperm.

Beyond weird!

‘Well?’ she demanded when he still didn’t answer.

‘I’d been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. And I had a fiancée at the time. I was young and optimistic enough to think I could make a go of marriage and family.’

He paused for a moment, then added, with more irony than bitterness, ‘I was still optimistic, or perhaps foolish, to think the same thing the second time I became engaged.’

The second time?

She had to ask!

‘I can perhaps understand losing one fiancée—particularly if she couldn’t handle your being ill—but two? Or were there more?’

He didn’t answer for a moment. Why should he when his love life really wasn’t any of her business? But he didn’t look stricken by pain at the loss of these women, but more thoughtful than anything else.

Until he frowned.

‘No, you’re wrong. My first fiancée did stick around—for quite a lot of my treatment. But I was treated very aggressively and being around someone who’s sick all the time isn’t much fun. Plus I was a terrible patient. We were both young. When she decided to move on, it was the right decision for both of us.’

Good for him, defending her, Joey thought, although she was well aware this conversation was nothing more than a delaying tactic.

A delay she needed right now …

‘And the second?’

‘She was a stunner,’ he said simply. ‘I was over illness, over everything and I fell hard. But maybe I’m not cut out for marriage. She was planning the wedding, planning babies, planning life and suddenly things started to close in. So I went to climb Everest,’ he said, startling Joey so much she had to straighten up from her comfy slump.

‘You went off to climb Everest? So Meryl’s right, you are a little mad!’

She shook her head, trying to clear the vision of a huge snow-capped mountain so she could concentrate on what really mattered in the conversation.

But mountains that big were hard to shift.

‘So did you?’

‘Yep. I managed to annoy my fiancée enough for her to call it off. I thought she’d understand because she knew climbing Everest had always been a dream, it was just that after—’

‘Forget the fiancée! Did you climb the mountain? Did you make it to the top?’

Even the idea of such a feat sent a thrill down her spine and she looked at the attractive stranger with new eyes. Not that she hadn’t been looking at him fairly closely since he’d first appeared …

Hormones—it had to be hormones …

He smiled, but the faraway look in his eyes told her he was back there again—back in those mighty mountains.

‘No, but I knew all along I wouldn’t be going to the top. I was support crew, and for me it was enough to be there—to be on the mountain right up to the last camp, before the final assault. It was magic.’

‘And hard and tough and dangerous as well?’

He smiled.

‘So’s beating cancer,’ he said. ‘But for me, right from the diagnosis, it was a goal to work towards. I had a friend planning a climb and that gave me the motivation not only to get through the treatment but after it to do the training and build myself up to peak physical fitness—the kind that was needed if I wanted to be included in the team.’

‘But the second fiancée?’

‘I’d thought I could settle down, build a general practice here. It almost happened.’

Joey studied the man who’d catapulted into her life while she tried to make sense of all he was telling her. There were loose ends everywhere and she wasn’t even up to the mistake part.

Although she wasn’t in that much of a hurry to get to the mistake part. She’d rather go on thinking the baby inside her was David’s—sweet, gentle David’s—for as long as possible.

‘But it didn’t happen?’ she asked, before she could get melancholy over David again.

Green eyes studied her in turn and she knew he was tossing up whether to tell the truth or offer a vague evasion.

‘Hmm,’ he finally said, ‘well …’

‘Spit it out,’ she ordered. ‘It can’t be any worse than the “you’re having my baby” line you used earlier.’

‘It was definitely my fault,’ he began, and she knew he’d decided on the truth. ‘I was due to be back in Australia a month before the wedding but, coming down, before we’d reached base camp where we were to fly out from, we had news of an avalanche on another part of the mountain—’

‘Involving other climbers?’

The man nodded.

‘We were closest, I’m a doctor, it was a fair climb to reach them. The snow and ice around them were so unstable we couldn’t risk a helicopter rescue so getting the survivors out was tricky. Once they were handed over to the professionals we went back.’

The look on his face told her why. There’d been fatalities and he and his fellow climbers had brought out the bodies as well.

‘Some people find it’s easier to accept if they can bury their loved ones.’

The quiet sentence confirmed her guess. But the wedding?

‘So just how long was it before you returned to your fiancée?’ Joey asked, as the meaning of this rambling excuse became clear.

‘I was in touch whenever I could be,’ he said defensively. ‘Emails, texts, phone calls, you know how easy it is these days.’

‘So what happened?’ she asked, deciding to get back on track, although she’d really have liked to ask more about the mountain—both climbing and mountain-rescue work.

Rescue work.

Meryl had mentioned that. It sounded … intriguing.

‘I was dumped by text,’ Max replied. ‘It was waiting when we brought the survivors down, only weeks after leaving the base of Everest, about the time I should have been home. She’d met someone who loved her more than mountains, someone who wasn’t the most selfish person ever put on earth.’

‘She put all that in a text?’

Her visitor grinned.

‘Not quite. That’s just what I took “Gt stfd am kpg ring” to mean. She’d told me the most selfish man on earth part many times and I’ve since heard her version of the story. Anyway, I went on another rescue mission to heal my broken heart—or maybe in the hope of breaking my neck because of my broken heart—and I’ve been … wandering since. Involving myself more and more with the problems of remote communities. Seeing how infectious diseases can decimate them. Trying to do something about it.’

‘And your lymphoma?’

His smile lit up the room.

‘All clear!’

Yes, non-Hodgkin lymphoma was like that—not like aggressive brain tumours, Joey thought sadly, remembering back. Remembering David insisting on freezing sperm in case she ever wanted it—telling her the best option would be her finding someone else to love, to make a family with. He’d been so sure she would …

Max watched the shadows chase across her face and knew she’d been thinking about her husband, who hadn’t left her for his own selfish reasons but had been snatched from her by death.

Why hadn’t she found someone else? he wondered. She was a lovely-looking woman, obviously intelligent and interested in things outside her own world—hadn’t she shown interest in the mountains?

But ‘Yes,’ was all he said, and let the silence settle between them.

She picked up a cracker and used it to push a piece of cheese around the plate, then poked at a grape, before looking up at him.

‘We’re down to the nitty-gritty now, aren’t we?’ There was so much sadness in her voice; he wanted to go and sit beside her, to put his arms around her and hold her tight—to assure her everything would be all right, although he knew full well nothing would ever be the same for her again.

Or him, if the strange stuff going on inside him was any indication …

He sighed. Holding her wasn’t an option, so he’d best get on with it.

‘Do you remember anything of the day your husband went to the clinic?’

She looked at him, a little frown forming between her eyebrows.

‘Not really. I would have been angry—I was always angry back then—although …’

He waited, seeing the frown deepen as she dug back in her memory to a time she’d rather forget.

‘Something happened. I do remember. It was at the clinic. Some kind of fuss?’

He waited and she shook her head.

‘I can’t remember details—I’ve blanked out as much as I can of that part of my life. But there was a fuss of some kind. I remember thinking—furiously—that I might have lost him five weeks earlier than I needed to have and all because of the stupid sperm.’

She gave her belly another pat as if to excuse her words, while Max recalled the events of the morning only too clearly.

‘There was a fuss,’ he told her, although the word ‘fuss’ hardly covered the magnitude of it. ‘A man came in with a gun. Apparently he and his wife had frozen four embryos some time earlier—there was some hereditary disease in one or other of their families and these had been tested and found free of whatever gene could cause the problem.’

‘And his wife had left him?’ Joey put in. ‘Of course! I remember David telling me the story.’

‘Exactly! Left him for another man, so the deserted husband wanted the embryos destroyed but apparently she was listed as the owner so the clinic couldn’t destroy them without her say-so. He pulled out a gun, grabbed one of the laboratory staff and demanded action.’

‘Just as you and David had done your thing in your discreetly curtained cubicles and come out clutching your little jars?’

She half smiled and all the attraction stuff started up in his body again. This was beyond bizarre. He had to concentrate on the story, then help this woman—who was the real victim of the clinic’s mistake—in any way he could.

‘Not quite, because we’d heard all the commotion and actually gone further into the lab to try to work out what we could do to help. We were in the janitor’s room, with the door open so we could hear what was going on.’

He paused, then added, ‘So, I met your David and, knowing now why he was there, I can understand why he thought the best option was to rush the man. I pointed out that he might shoot his hostage before he shot David, and in the end we decided on shock tactics. Not very brave or heroic, we just filled a bucket with hot water and threw it at him, hoping for the best. In retrospect it was probably a stupid thing to do but it worked. The man was so surprised he dropped the gun to wipe the water from his face, the lab assistant he was holding fell to the floor and a lot of people pounced.’

A proper smile this time.

‘I do remember now,’ she said. ‘I even remember David telling me about hiding in the cupboard with some bloke who wanted to live through his treatment so he could climb mountains.’

‘We were not hiding. We were planning,’ Max informed her, but he was glad to see that she was still smiling.

‘So?’ she asked, and he knew he’d got to the hard part.

He shifted in the very comfortable chair then faced the woman sitting opposite him, looking directly at her.

‘I’m only assuming this is what happened. The clinic is still trying to work it out. But when I went there today, someone in the cryo room brought out the straws frozen in my name, but when they checked—and they do check and cross-check—the numbers on the straws were your David’s. I can only assume that with all the fuss the day we were in there, someone had switched the jars—a-million-to-one chance of a mistake happening, but there it was.’

Joey could only stare at the stranger. The stranger whose baby she was, apparently, carrying.

Slowly and carefully, she went through it all in her mind and she understood that it could have happened.

But had it?

Shouldn’t she check?

Too late now to phone the clinic—

‘Shouldn’t they have got in touch with me as soon as they found out?’ she demanded, as the enormity of it flooded her body. ‘Didn’t I deserve to be told? To have some kind of apology, some support?’

Max stood up and came across to where she sat, sitting down beside her and tentatively resting a hand on her shoulder, wanting to comfort her and not knowing how.

Wanting to hold her and tell her everything would be all right—make promises he had no right to make and that she would probably reject anyway.

He’d insisted on being the person who told her—and all because he’d wanted to check out whether she’d make a good mother. Guilt was niggling in his gut.

That had been a really big mistake. But how was he to know he’d be instantly attracted to her? Love at first sight was nonsense. He knew that!

‘That’s my fault,’ he admitted, shoving the L word to the very darkest corner of his brain. ‘It was only this afternoon, and it seemed to me you deserved to be told in person. I offered to do it. In fact …’ he gave a rueful smile ‘… I insisted. The guy who runs the clinic went through med school with me. I didn’t give him much choice. Unethical, but there it is. Once I came down from the ceiling, I figured if you had to have some of the truth, you might as well have the lot. Including who your father’s baby really is.’

It was a reasonable explanation, he decided. She knew it all now. He could walk away.

But something was happening he didn’t understand. On top of the attraction thing, there was bit of him that had suddenly become illogically, irrationally possessive of the baby. Possessive and responsible …

Remember, he told himself, he’d decided no kids.

‘You offered to do it?’ Joey prompted, and he battled to get his thoughts in order so he could get back to the conversation.

‘I told them I was sure you’d be in touch with them, but I believed—I mean, the shock alone—I thought—’

‘I’d have fainted, or gone into labour or—Heaven only knows how I might have reacted—am reacting …’

Joey threw up her arms and leaned back into the soft cushions at the back of the lounge, edging just a little away from the man who was causing a great deal of uncertainty in her body as well as total confusion in her mind.

‘I’ve no idea what to think,’ she said, then she turned to Max. ‘Do you?’

He shrugged his broad shoulders by way of reply and she told herself it was the shock that made him seem so attractive. She’d had a shock and he was here to support her—of course he’d seem attractive.

‘Not really,’ he said, ‘although we obviously have to think about the baby. I mean, if you don’t want a baby that’s not David’s, his sperm is still there and you could try again. I could probably take the baby—my mother and sisters could possibly—’

‘Take the baby?’ Joey’s reaction was as instinctive as a bear protecting her cub. She was staring at him in horror. ‘You’d take the baby and I could just try again? This is my baby we’re talking about. Okay, so David—or presumably you, but I’m not accepting that until I’ve talked to the clinic—might have made a contribution, but this is my baby!’

‘The contribution is half and half,’ said her visitor, who’d shifted a little away from her in obvious discomfort.

‘And who’s been carrying it around for months, and not having a glass of wine, and eating good food, and walking up a million steps so it stays healthy? Not to mention morning sickness and indigestion and not being able to get comfortable enough to have a decent night’s sleep? Tell me that, then tell me it’s half and half.’

‘Well, not quite,’ Max admitted, ‘but it’s still my baby.’

So he was one of those stubborn men, Joey thought. And then thought, irrationally, I hope our baby hasn’t inherited that trait—although the green eyes would be nice …

Our baby. It was a weird thought.

‘Which leaves us where?’ she demanded, upset all over again now she had to worry about the baby being stubborn—and her reactions to this man.

She was mulling this over when Max replied.

‘I’m not trying to take it away from you.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘But I do want to help.’

‘I don’t need …’

And then he had another of those light-bulb moments. Crazy, irrational, but the thought was there. A solution that would let him wander but would still give him a say.

He’d nearly done it twice. Maybe he could …

‘Joey, I’m not much of a catch because I’m not around much,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m called away at inconvenient times. I live independently. But if we both were to be parents … If there’s no one else for you … I suppose … Maybe we could get married. You know, a marriage of convenience—so the baby had a father … I could contribute—’

But Joey was staring at him as if he was out of his mind. ‘Is that all marriage means to you?’ she managed. She rose, her face blank with incomprehension. ‘Marriage … This is nuts. No, it’s beyond nuts. You come here and tell me you’re my baby’s father, and then you calmly decide we can say a few vows but not really mean them, and you can head off, duty done, only you’ll have a child and a little wife back home? You’ve said you’ve broken off with two fiancées, and I can see their point. If marriage means so little …’ She gasped and put her hand to her back. ‘No. That’s none of my business. You are none of my business. I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you. Anything my baby and I do is up to us; we don’t want some phantom mountain-climbing husband and father wafting in and out of our lives when he feels like it.’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘No. You didn’t mean because you didn’t think. This has been as almost as much a shock to you as it is to me, but the answer, believe it or not, is not to take lifetime vows. Max, you need to go.’

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