Buch lesen: «Pregnant By The Playboy Surgeon»

CHAPTER ONE

ER PHYSICIAN DR. DANIELLE STEVENS crossed the parking lot toward the employees’ entrance of St. Mary’s hospital in downtown Vancouver with the sneaky feeling that her life had been cursed. If she didn’t know better she would swear it was Friday the thirteenth and the universe was having fun at her expense.

She’d woken to rain—not exactly an unusual occurrence in Vancouver—and then discovered her shower was on the fritz and the water pipes were making alarming noises. Of course that meant she’d have to forgo her showers until she got someone to check it out. If that hadn’t been bad enough, she’d been out of coffee because she’d forgotten to stop at the supermarket and stock up on the basics. Basics like coffee, peanut butter, cheese curls and hair conditioner. Which meant not only was she caffeine-deprived, she was also starving and having a hair day from hell.

Then she’d found an unwelcome gift—a half-chewed bird missing its head—courtesy of her neighbor Hilda Frauenbach’s cat Axel.

Yuck.

And, because her car was still in the workshop, she’d had to hotfoot it ten blocks in the pouring rain.

Good times.

Good times that were bound to continue rolling because although today might not be the thirteenth, it was Friday. And Friday nights in the ER could only be described as the second level of hell, because by the end of the work week any good sense people might have decreased in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol they consumed.

Trying to ignore the sneaky feeling that her life was unraveling, Dani felt her hip vibrate and paused to dig her phone out of her shoulder bag.

Thinking it was her mechanic, with yet another lame excuse as to why her car hadn’t been fixed, she swiped irritably at the screen only to discover a Facebook notification inviting her to check on what Richard Ashford-Hall the Turd—oops, the Third—was doing in Cabo Mexico.

She took great pleasure in deleting the notification with a decisive jab. “No,” she told the screen firmly, ignoring the sick, shaky feeling she usually got when Richard’s name was mentioned. “I do not want to see what that sick, cheating rat-fink bastard is up to now, thank you very much.”

And frankly, she had even less interest in seeing with whom he was doing it. She just hoped the woman knew what she was getting herself into.

She hadn’t but that chapter in her life was closed.

Thank God.

She just wished people would stop reminding her of how stupid, naïve and trusting she’d been—or how fabulous her life could have been if she’d been prepared to stay married to a serial liar, a habitual cheater and an all-round spoilt man-brat.

She shivered as memories of her marriage assailed her. She’d rather be living on a houseboat that was falling to pieces with questionable plumbing, eating peanut butter and cheese curls for the rest of eternity than be back in the vipers’ pit that was the Ashford-Hall family.

Heck, she’d rather be dealing with Axel’s unsuspecting gifts than having to deal with spoilt, entitled rich boys and their creepy friends.

Noticing there was a voice message from the mechanic, Dani accessed it, grimacing when, “Hey, Sweetness!” emerged loudly. She quickly turned down the volume before someone overheard. “Listen, it’s about your car. Are you sure you don’t want me to contact a friend who can give you a good deal on a trade-in for this wreck? I’m sure we could work out some kind of payment arrangement,” he said.

His voice was heavy with insinuation that made her skin crawl—double yuck—and reminded her of the men belonging to the super-elite club her ex had belonged to.

“Besides, there’s a whole bunch of frayed wires that I’m having a hard time identifying and there’s more rust here than an old tug boat. Call me. Anytime.”

Annoyed, she called the mechanic back and got the workshop’s answering machine because the work week had already ended. Damn.

“This is Danielle Stevens,” she said firmly. “Negative on the trade-in and the intro to your friend.”

She was pretty sure the guy had illegal contacts, and she had no intention of acquiring stolen property. She might want to do things as cheaply as possible but buying a hot car wasn’t one of them.

“Just fix my car!” she yelled. About to disconnect, she added a better late than never “please,” because her mom had taught her that people tended not to respond positively to rudeness.

Drawing in a lungful of air, she held it for a couple of seconds before slowly expelling it along with her irritation.

There. Look at her being all Zen and going with the flow.

Okay, so maybe she wasn’t going with the flow so much as dealing. Besides, it wasn’t like dealing was anything new. So she was going to be without her car again this weekend? No big deal. It just meant she’d be walking the gazillion blocks to the marina after her shift. She’d done that before and survived too. It had been in her student days but she was still young, right—if thirty could be called young—and she was pretty sure a six-hundred-mile walk was good for her.

Besides, hadn’t she noticed just yesterday that her jeans were getting a little tight? This way she could get that much-needed exercise she was always promising herself without having to give up peanut butter or cheese curls.

It would be good for her. Great, even. Unlike the two years she’d spent as Mrs. Ashford-Hall. Two years she could never get back. Two years—make that three—she would give anything to erase from her memory.

Muttering about the questionable heritage of the entire male race—car mechanics, landlords and ex-husbands especially—she stepped out from behind a line of parked cars just as an SUV roared past, hooting at her, the dumb woman not looking where she was going, and drenching her with a lovely mix of dirt, rainwater and God knew what else in the process.

She gave a gasping shriek and lurched backward, arms windmilling frantically as she stumbled over the uneven surface of the road. The next instant she collided with the bumper behind her and went down like a felled cypress.

Knocked from her hand, her phone went one way and her shoulder bag the other, spilling its contents across the asphalt.

Stunned, and spluttering with shock at finding herself sprawled in the road, Dani closed her eyes for a dozen rapid heartbeats, wondering what the hell she’d done to deserve this day. She felt movement in the air around her and opened her eyes to see a pair of concerned moss-green eyes looking down at her from about a foot away.

Whoa. Where did he come from?

Pretty sure she wasn’t dead, she blinked up into a face so ruggedly beautiful it might easily have graced the silver screen—or her most private fantasies if she hadn’t been taking a kind of permanent hiatus from the entire male race.

Even so... She couldn’t prevent her fascinated gaze from taking in a high, broad forehead surrounded by thick dark glossy hair, high cheekbones, strong nose, square jaw and a firm, masculine mouth perfectly framed by a couple-hours-past-five-o’clock shadow.

The stubble gave his square jaw a toughness that suggested he was Alpha to the bone and didn’t care who knew it. For a split second she had an overwhelming urge to reach out and trace his sculpted mouth, maybe feel that rough, obvious sign of masculinity...but that would just be the shock talking.

Her fingers tingled, as though she’d given in to the impulse to touch his jaw, and it took another couple of beats to realize he was talking.

“You okay?”

The rough tones slid across her senses like a mini-orgasm and she froze as unwelcome tingles spread to places deep inside her that had been dead for three long years. She looked down, expecting to see her clothes melted right off her body or maybe steam rising from the soaked fabric because he was hotness personified.

Panic immediately gripped her throat at the realization.

Oh, no, she instructed herself firmly. Absolutely no tingling for anything with a Y-chromosome. You’re done with the whole male race, remember?

Done. Finished. Finito.

“Ma’am, did you hit your head?”

Ma’am? Seriously? Since when was she a “ma’am” to a hot guy? She wasn’t that old and, looking at the fine laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, she was pretty sure she was a good bit younger than he was.

Realizing that she was staring up at him like an idiot, she opened her mouth to say I’m fine, because that was her mantra, and was mortified when a rasp emerged instead. It looked as if her breath had been knocked out along with her remaining brain cells.

Desperate to regain her dignity, she shoved dripping hair out of her eyes and sat up, biting her lip to prevent a moan from emerging when pain radiated out from her hip and elbow.

Before she could stand, he dropped a large warm hand on her shoulder—probably to stop her from throwing herself at him, because she could totally see that happening to him.

With other women, she amended hastily. Not her. Nope, she was made of much sterner stuff and she’d given up on his species.

“Stay there a moment,” he ordered but he needn’t have bothered.

She’d spent her entire marriage being ordered around and she was done taking orders from anyone not responsible for her salary. Besides, she was sitting in a cold puddle of rainwater that was soaking into her jeans and sweater, finding its way into some pretty uncomfortable places.

“Um...” Great—now she was speechless. “I don’t think so,” she muttered, scrambling to her feet and wincing as a host of places hurt. Chief among them her pride.

It was then she realized that he was holding her shoulder bag in one large tanned hand and gathering up its scattered contents. He should have looked ridiculous but the feminine accessory just made him appear more masculine, if that was possible.

Balanced effortlessly on the balls of his feet, he reached for an unopened box of tampons and had her groaning in embarrassment—although she had no idea why. She was a doctor, for heaven’s sake, and it wasn’t as if it had burst open, scattering tampons all over Vancouver.

Sunglasses followed, and when he picked up the latest Janet Evanovich novel that she’d bought a couple days ago instead of groceries, he paused, turning to the back so he could read the blurb.

She tried to grab it but he held it out of reach until he’d finished. “Two hot guys?” he queried curiously, as though she was the crazy fictional character hooked on a hot cop and an even hotter bounty hunter.

Rolling her eyes, she grabbed the book, her bag and began stuffing everything inside. What she didn’t see was her phone or her wallet, which made her panic because it held her last twenty dollars in change. Dani glanced around to find her rescuer holding the battered leather wallet and checking out her hospital ID badge—the one with the picture where she looked like a complete psycho—tilting his head as he studied the photo.

He looked amused, damn him.

With a sound that resembled a panicked squawk, she snatched it from him and stuffed it into the depths of her bag, ignoring the grin and the one arched brow that filled her with irritated envy because she’d have killed to have had that talent during her marriage. A talent that conveyed a whole host of emotions from disbelief and skepticism to outright condescension.

His was filled with a masculine amusement that threatened to derail her thought processes.

Out of the corner of her eye she finally spied her phone, and had to get down on all fours and really stretch to retrieve it from under a nearby car. With it finally in her hand she turned—in time to catch him staring at her backside.

She must have made a sound of protest—okay, more of a protesting squawk—because his teeth flashed as his green gaze slowly rose up the front of her dirty, soaked sweater to linger on her mouth before lifting to her eyes.

And, wow. Look at that, she thought with horror as her nipples tightened into painful little points of arousal. Seemed her body wasn’t dead after all.

“I’m taking a break from anything with a Y-chromosome,” she blurted out, and wanted to crawl back under the car when his low chuckle slid across her senses like rough velvet, sending goose bumps skittering across her skin.

Heat rose up her neck into her cheeks and she gave in to the urge to cover her face in the guise of shoving her hair off her face. Oh God. What the heck was wrong with her mouth today?

“Good to know,” he drawled. “Though it does explain the expiration date.”

Huh? Peeking through her fingers, she found him holding up a square foil package that looked suspiciously like...a condom? Her eyes widened and she backed away from it as though it might bite.

“Um... I...uh,” she stuttered, looking around frantically for an escape route while fighting a hysterical laugh—because she hadn’t needed one of those in so long she probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. “That’s not...” She shook her head desperately and backed away. “Nope. Definitely not m-mine.”

She scrubbed both hands down her face and moaned in embarrassment when he bent his knees to peer straight into her eyes. God. He was even hotter up close.

“You sure you’re okay? You took a pretty hard fall.”

She was absolutely not going to discuss her graceless tumble, her sore bottom or anything else. “I’m fine, really,” she said quickly, desperately wishing it was true, desperately wishing she could just disappear. Because it was bad enough that anyone had witnessed the embarrassing incident. That it was the hottest guy in the Northern hemisphere just proved her theory that the universe was out to get her.

“What about this?” he asked, holding up the unopened condom.

She nearly choked. “I...um...you keep it,” she finished in a breathless rush.

“Thanks,” he said wryly. “But what if you need it?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head frantically. “I won’t,” she assured him hurriedly. “I’m taking a break, remember?”

His mouth curled in a half-grin that was filled with wicked trouble as he reached out to tuck a wet curl behind her ear. “So you said.”

The move was so unexpected that she stilled, feeling the rough pads of his fingers brush the sensitive skin of her ear. Unexpected because it sent a bunch of pleasurable sensations skittering across her skin. And unexpected because...because she couldn’t remember the last time a man had touched her; the last time she’d actually wanted a man to touch her.

And she suddenly did. With frightening need.

Ack!

That it was happening now with a complete stranger was more than a little unnerving.

She licked her lips and shifted nervously.

“Just out of curiosity...” Hot Guy murmured.

He was clearly oblivious to the melting going on inside her head...and, fine, in her thighs too. Melting that left her dizzy and a little too turned on for comfort.

“Does that mean you’re currently into women, then?” He looked intrigued, as if he was picturing her kissing another woman when she’d been picturing kissing him.

“What?” Her mouth dropped open and the dizziness vanished. “No!” she practically yelped, knocking his hand aside and backing up a couple of steps. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that but no, I am not into... Sheesh!” Rolling her eyes, she blew out an exasperated breath. “You are such a...a guy!”

“Guilty,” he murmured, eyes wicked. “But I’m glad.”

“Glad?”

“That Sweet ‘n Sassy isn’t batting for the other team.”

Slapping a hand over her eyes, she blurted out, “Oh, my God!” She wished the ground would open up and swallow her. “Please, please, stop talking.” She gave a laughing groan and pointed a finger in his direction. “And forget you heard that. In fact, forget the last ten minutes altogether because... Oh, great,” she muttered, catching sight of a couple of co-workers at the entrance, gesturing at her to hurry up and pointing at their watches. “Gotta go.”

She was about to step into the road when she was brought up short against a warm, hard—extremely hard—chest as a car whooshed past. “Careful,” he murmured in her ear and for the second time in ten minutes Dani experienced that full-body shiver.

Yeah, Dani, she lectured herself silently as her knees wobbled. Great advice. She’d be wise to heed it.

Fortunately it gave her the impetus she needed to mutter an apology and limp across the road toward the employee entrance. Safely on the other side, she felt inexplicably drawn to look over her shoulder—only to find him watching her retreat, a small baffled smile curving that incredibly sexy mouth. As though he couldn’t believe what he’d just experienced.

“Thank you,” she called out, ignoring the niggling feeling in her gut that she was walking away from something good. Something exciting and...terrifying.

His mouth curved. “Any time.”

She paused again, unsure why she couldn’t seem to walk away, because she was pretty sure she should be running.

For long seconds they eyed each other across the wet road, until he finally gave a low laugh and asked in a rough, deep voice that slid into places she hadn’t known were lonely, “Are you sure you won’t reconsider your embargo?”

Was she?

“Nope,” she said firmly, shaking her head with jerky exaggerated movements that should convince him—or was that her? So for good measure she added; “I most definitely will not.”

Liar. You so would.

He was silent for a long beat, his gaze searching, before finally nodding. “My loss,” he said and dug his keys out of his pocket. “See you around, sweet thing.”

The sentiment that just fifteen minutes ago had made her want to gag filled her with a warm pleasure that no doubt came from hitting her head. Then her brain finally caught up and she gave herself a mental head-slap.

He hadn’t meant anything by that parting shot, she told herself as she reluctantly turned away. Men flirted all the time. It was a kind of pastime...like drinking beer, burping and cheating. Besides, she had enough problems without adding a tall, sexy stranger with a kind streak to her things to obsess about.

The most pressing thing, she decided as she hobbled up the ramp, being that she was late for her shift and looked as if she’d been moonlighting as a mud wrestler.

* * *

Dylan St. James found himself smiling as he headed toward his Jeep. There hadn’t been a whole lot to smile about lately but the hot little mess he’d just walked away from had done what no one else had in far too long. She’d taken him out of his head and made him smile—laugh, even—which was a miracle considering everything that had happened in the last two years.

He’d lost his grandfather after a long, protracted battle with esophageal cancer and a friend to a climbing accident—all in the space of two months. Reeling from the double whammy, he’d accepted a temporary commission on a West African Mercy Ship, thinking the change would help him deal.

He’d immersed himself in doing what he loved: helping people—kids especially—get to live relatively normal lives with his skill as an orthopedic reconstruction surgeon. Helping those who usually didn’t have access to modern medical care.

He’d met some great people and had fallen into a casual relationship with an on-board coordinator—a relationship that had been more about propinquity and convenience than any deeper feelings, on his part at least. It didn’t say much for him but he’d thought they were friends with on-again, off-again benefits—right up until Simone had dropped her bombshell...she was pregnant.

Yeah. Big shock that, considering that they’d lately been more off than on and he’d never had unprotected sex. Ever. Still, that hadn’t been the worst of it, because although he’d been willing to face up to his responsibility—without getting married to someone he didn’t have deep feelings for—she’d had other ideas.

Ideas that had emerged one night when he’d finished surgery earlier than expected and headed over to the mess hall for dinner, inadvertently overhearing Simone and an Australian nurse discussing him—or rather his family’s money. Simone had been bragging that she’d managed to catch herself a rich Canadian doctor—her sole reason for working in such God-forsaken countries on a boat that didn’t even have a swimming pool.

As if that was important on a hospital ship.

He’d been about to reveal himself when he’d heard something even more enlightening—that the baby she was trying to pass off as his belonged to a Mercy Ship colleague. A married colleague.

To say she’d been shocked when she’d looked up and seen him standing there was an understatement. There’d been tears, pleas, threats and hysterics but in the end he had been done. He’d finished his contract and come home.

She wasn’t the first woman who’d thrown herself at him after learning that his family owned the largest shipbuilding company in the Pacific Rim and she probably wouldn’t be the last. He’d just have to be more careful, that was all. Besides, he wasn’t interested in marrying someone he couldn’t see himself growing old with.

Not that he was against marriage. He wasn’t. But he hadn’t found a woman who wanted him rather than what his family’s money could do for her. Hadn’t found a woman with whom he could build the kind of relationship his parents and grandparents had.

He sometimes wondered if he ever would.

Arriving at his Jeep, he keyed open the door and slid inside. About to shove his key into the ignition, he realized he was still holding the condom. Tossing it into his console, he chuckled at the horrified embarrassment on the woman’s face and her insistence that it wasn’t hers.

Now, there was a feisty little bundle of contradictions, he thought, picturing her huge gray eyes as she’d blurted out that she was taking a break from anything with a Y-chromosome, stirring up all kinds of mixed emotions he hadn’t been ready to feel.

Shaking his head at himself, Dylan cranked up the engine. Reversing out of the parking bay, he drove toward the exit, feeling much more cheerful than when he’d landed a few hours ago. He had a few days to catch up with his family and then he’d be back in the saddle at St. Mary’s as a consultant.

And if the thought of seeing a certain hot little doctor again made him smile with anticipation he chalked it up to the long flight, three days without much sleep and eight months of celibacy.