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Praise for Amy Andrews:
‘A spectacular set of stories by Ms Andrews, the ITALIAN SURGEON TO DAD! duet book features tales of Italian men who know how to leave a lasting impression in the imaginations of readers who love the romance genre.’
—Cataromance.com on ITALIAN SURGEON TO DAD! duet
‘Whether Amy Andrews is an auto-buy for you, or a new-to-you author, this book is definitely worth reading.’
—Pink Heart Society Book Reviews on A MOTHER FOR MATILDA
Amy also won a RB*Y
(Romantic Book of the Year) Award in 2010 for
A DOCTOR, A NURSE, A CHRISTMAS BABY!
This book is dedicated to all the loyal Medical Romance™ fans who always look for our books and love a good series!
Dear Reader
Ever since the Sydney Harbour Hospital series hit the shelves readers have been asking for Finn and Evie’s story. And I can’t blame them, because I have to admit to more than a passing fascination myself as I wrote their sub-plot in Mia and Luca’s story. But I just kept thinking: There’s no way Finn can be redeemed—it’ll never be done. I pity the one they ask to do that.
And then they asked me to do it … gulp!
But in all honesty I was ecstatic to be chosen, because I’d already written a prequel for Finn and Evie quite a few months prior—their very first meeting—so I’ve been invested in their HEA for a while and I do so like a challenge …
But how do you redeem a man who’s as emotionally shut down as Finn? Evie’s been trying for years to reach him with no success. Well, it wasn’t easy. I had to strip him right back and throw a huge curve ball at him, and then have the one person he’s always counted on subconsciously to be there, despite his perennial bad mood, walk away.
Yep, Finn was a tough one—but Evie was tougher. She refused to take his scraps, demanding all of Finn. Demanding the fairytale. Refusing anything less.
And she got it too.
I hope you enjoy their journey to Happy-Ever-After-land.
Amy
PROLOGUE
EVIE LOCKHEART BELTED hard on the door, uncaring if the whole building heard her. Loud rock music bled out from around the frame so she knew he wasn’t asleep. ‘Open up now, Finn Kennedy,’ she yelled, ‘or so help me I’m going to kick this fancy penthouse door right in!’
She glared at the stubbornly closed object. It had been two weeks since he’d been discharged from hospital after the less than stellar success of his second operation. Two weeks since he’d said, Get out. I don’t want you in my life. Two weeks of phoning and texting and having one-sided conversations through his door.
And it was enough.
She was sick of Finn shutting her out—shutting the world out.
And if she didn’t love him so much she’d just walk away and leave him to rot in the cloud of misery and denial he liked to call home.
But memories of the infection he’d picked up after his first operation and the state he’d got himself into as he’d tried to self-treat were never far from her mind and she was determined to check on him whether the stubborn fool wanted her to or not.
She was about to bash on the door again when the lift behind her dinged and Gladys stepped out. She’d never been happier to see Finn’s cleaner in her life.
‘Gladys, I need Finn’s key.’
The older woman’s brow crinkled in concern as she searched through her bag. ‘Is he all right? Is he sick again?’
‘No,’ Evie dismissed. Gladys had found Finn collapsed on the floor overwhelmed by his infection and still hadn’t quite got over the shock. ‘He’s probably fine but I’d like to see it with my own two eyes.’ Then I’m going to wring his neck.
Gladys stopped her frantic search. ‘He was fine yesterday,’ she hedged.
Evie had to stop herself from knocking the dear sweet little old lady, who also happened to clean her apartment along with many others at Kirribilli Views, to the ground and forcibly searching her bag.
‘He told you not to give me the key, didn’t he?’
Gladys looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Evie. But he was very firm about it.’
Evie suppressed a scream but she stood her ground and held out her hand. ‘Gladys, I’m begging you, one woman to another, I need to see him. I need the key.’
Gladys pursed her lips. ‘You love him?’
Evie wasn’t surprised that Gladys was in the gossip loop, given how long rumours about she and Finn had been floating around Sydney Harbour Hospital and how many of its staff lived at Kirribilli Views. She nodded, depending on the incurably romantic streak she knew beat inside the old cleaner’s chest.
‘Yes.’ Although God knew why. The man was impossible to love!
Gladys put her hand in her bag and pulled out a set of keys. ‘He needs someone to love him,’ she said, holding them out.
‘He needs a damn good spanking,’ Evie muttered, taking the keys.
Gladys grinned. ‘That too.’
‘Thanks,’ Evie said.
‘I’ll leave his apartment till last today,’ the elderly woman said, and turned back towards the lift.
Finn glared at her as the door opened and Evie felt the glacial chill from his ice-blue eyes all the way across the room, despite the darkened interior from the pulled-down blinds. ‘Remind me to sack Gladys,’ he said as he threw back the amber contents of a glass tumbler.
Evie moved towards where he was sitting on the couch, noticing how haggard he was looking. His usual leanness looked almost gaunt in the shadows. His regular stubbly appearance bordering on scruffy. His dark brown hair messy as if he’d been constantly worrying at it with agitated fingers. The light was too low to see the streaks of grey that gave him that distinguished arrogant air he wore so bloody well.
How could a man look like hell and still cause a pull low and deep inside her? And how, damn it all, could he stare at her with that morose belligerence he’d perfected and still not kill off her feelings for him?
Finn Kennedy was going to be the death of her. God knew, he’d already ground her pride into the dust.
The coffee table halted her progress and she was pleased for the barrier as the urge to shake him took hold. ‘You’re drunk.’
‘Nope.’ He poured himself another finger of Scotch from the bottle on the coffee table. ‘Not yet.’
‘It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.’
He raised his glass to her. ‘I appreciate this booty call, but if you don’t mind I have a date with my whisky glass.’
Evie watched him throw it back, despairing how she could get through to him. ‘Don’t do this to yourself, Finn. It’s early days yet.’ She looked down at his right arm, his lifeless hand placed awkwardly on his thigh. ‘You need to give it time. Wait for the swelling to subside. Rupert’s confident it’ll only be temporary. You’ll be back operating again before you know it’
Finn slammed his glass down on the table. ‘Go away, Evie,’ he snapped.
Evie jumped but refused to be cowed. He’d been practically yelling at her and telling her to go away for their entire relationship—such as it was. But there’d been other times—tender moments, passionate moments—and that was the real Finn she knew was hidden beneath all his grouchy, arrogant bluster.
She understood why he was pushing her away. Knew that he didn’t want to burden her with a man who would be forever less in his eyes because he might not ever again be the one thing that defined him—a surgeon.
But surely that was her choice?
‘No. I love you and I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I don’t want you to love me!’ he roared.
Evie came around to his side of the table until she was standing right in front of him. ‘Well, you don’t always get what you want in life Finn—not even you.’ She shoved her hands on her hips. ‘If you want me to leave then you’re going to have to get your butt off that lounge and make me.’
‘Oh, I see,’ he said, his lip curling. ‘This is a booty call.’
She endured a deliberately insulting look that raked over her body as if she was sitting in a window in Amsterdam.
‘What’s the matter, Princess Evie, feeling all horny and frisky with nowhere to put it? Been a while, has it? You really needn’t have dressed for the occasion. Us one-armed guys can’t afford to be choosy, or hadn’t you heard?’
Evie had just come from lunch with her sisters and as such was dressed in a pencil skirt that came to just above her knee and a satiny blouse that buttoned up the front and fell gently against her breasts. Her hair was loose and fell around her shoulders.
She ignored him. She would not let his deliberate insults deter her from her goal. ‘Let me help you, Finn. Please.’
His good hand snaked out and snagged her wrist. He yanked and she toppled forward, her skirt pulling tight around her thighs as she landed straddling his lap, grabbing at his shoulders for stability.
‘Is this what you wanted?’ he demanded. ‘You want to see how I do this with one hand?’ He groped a breast. ‘Or this?’ he persisted, letting his hand slide down to where her skirt had ridden up, pushing his hand up beneath the fabric, gliding it up her thigh, taking the fabric with him until it was rucked up around her hips and her legs were totally exposed, his hand coming to rest on the curve of one cheek.
Evie felt the drag of desire leaden in her belly as she fought against the seductive allure of her erect nipples and the quivering flesh in his palm. The heat in his gaze burnt into her with all the sear factor of a laser.
‘You want to help me feel like a man again?’ he sneered, his breath fanning her face. ‘You want to take a ride on the one thing I have that is fully functional? You want to screw, Evie?’
Evie steeled herself against his deliberately crude taunts. He was lashing out. But she wasn’t going to respond with the venom his remark deserved.
Because that’s what he wanted.
‘I just want to love you, Finn,’ she said quietly, refusing to break eye contact even though she knew he was trying to goad her into it. Her pulse roared in her ears and her breath sounded all husky and raw. ‘Let me love you.’
Evie watched as all the fight went out of him. His hand dropped from her bottom and then he looked away. ‘I can’t even touch you properly, Evie.’
She grabbed his face and forced him to look at her, his stubble almost soft now it was so long—more spiky than prickly. ‘You have this,’ she said, her thumb running over the contours of his mouth. ‘Which, when it isn’t being vicious and cruel, can melt me into a puddle.’
She grabbed his left hand with her right hand and brought it up to her breast. ‘And this,’ she said, her nipple beading instantly. ‘Which knows its way around a woman’s body as well as the other.’
Evie saw his pupils dilate as he dropped his gaze to look at his hand on her breast. He stroked his thumb across the aching tip and she shut her eyes briefly.
‘And,’ she said, dragging herself back from the completely wanton urge to arch her back, ‘this.’ She tucked her pelvis in snugly against his and rubbed herself against the hard ridge of his arousal.
‘And I can do the rest.’
She put her hands between them and her fingers felt for his button and fly and in that instant Finn stopped wrestling his demons. His mouth lunged for hers, latching on and greedily slaking his thirst as his good hand pulled at her blouse then yanked, popping the buttons.
He grunted in satisfaction, his mouth leaving hers, as her hand finally grasped his erection. His grunt became a groan as he blazed a trail down her neck, his whiskers spiky and erotic against the sensitive skin. He yanked her bra cup aside and closed his hot mouth over a nipple that was already peaked to an unbearable tightness.
Evie’s eyes practically rolled back into her head and there was no coherent thought as she mindlessly palmed the length of him and cried out at the delicious graze of his teeth against her nipple.
She wasn’t aware his hand had dropped, distracted as she was by the combined pleasure of savage suction and long hot swipes as his tongue continually flayed the hardened tip in his mouth. She wasn’t aware of him pushing her hand out the way, of him shoving her underwear aside, of him positioning his erection to her entrance, until it nudged against her thick and hard, and then her body recognised it, knew just what to do and took over, accepting the buck and thrust of him, greedily inflaming and agitating, meeting him one for one, adjusting the tilt of her pelvis to hit just the right spot.
It was no gentle coupling. No languid strokes, no soft caresses and murmured endearments, no long, slow build. It was quick and hasty. Just like their first time. Parted clothes. Desperate clawing at fabric, at skin. At backs and thighs and buttocks. Hitting warp speed instantly, feeling the pull and the burn from the first stroke.
Except this time when Finn cried out with his release, his face buried against her chest, he knew it was goodbye. That he had to get away. From Sydney. From the Sydney Harbour Hospital. From Evie.
From this screwed-up dynamic of theirs.
But for now he needed this. So he clutched her body to his and held on, thrusting and thrusting, prolonging the last vestiges of pleasure, finding a physical outlet for the vortex of grief and pain that swirled inside.
Holding on but saying goodbye.
CHAPTER ONE
Five months later
‘WHERE IS HE, Evie?’ Richard Lockheart demanded of his daughter. ‘Prince Khalid bin Aziz wants Finn Kennedy and only Finn Kennedy to do his quadruple bypass and he’s going to donate another million dollars to the hospital to show his appreciation. Sydney Harbour Hospital needs him, Evie. Where is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ Evie said staring out of her father’s office window at the boats sailing on the sparkling harbour, wishing she was riding out to sea on one and could leave all her troubles behind her.
‘Evie!’
She turned at the imperious command in his voice. ‘What makes you think that I know where he is?’ she snapped at her father.
‘I’m not stupid, Evie. Do you think hospital gossip doesn’t reach me all the way over here? I know you and he have a … had a … thing. A fling.’ He shrugged. ‘Whatever you want to call it. I’m assuming you’ve kept in touch.’
If Evie needed any other proof of how out of touch her father was with her life, or with life in the trenches generally, she’d just found it. If he knew Finn at all he’d know that Finn wasn’t the keeping-in-touch type.
In the aftermath of their frenzied passion five months ago she’d hoped there’d been some kind of breakthrough with him but then he’d disappeared.
Overnight. Literally.
Gladys had told her the next day that he’d gone and handed her a note with seven words.
Goodbye Evie. Don’t try and find me.
After all they’d been through—he’d reduced their relationship to seven words.
‘Evie!’ Richard demanded again, at his daughter’s continuing silence.
She glared at her father, who was regarding her as if she was two years old and deliberately defying him, instead of a grown woman. A competent, emergency room physician.
‘The state of play between Finn and I is none of your damn business.’
‘Au contraire,’ he said, his brows drawing together. ‘What happens at this hospital is my business.’
Richard Lockheart took the business of Sydney Harbour Hospital very seriously. As its major benefactor he worked tirelessly to ensure it remained the state-of-the-art facility it was, carrying on the legacy of his grandfather, who had founded the hospital. Sometimes she thought he loved the place more than he’d ever loved his wife and his three daughters.
Evie sighed, tired of the fight already. She was just so bloody tired these days. ‘Look,’ she said, reaching for patience, ‘I’m not being deliberately recalcitrant. I really don’t know where he is.’
She turned back to the view out the window. His brief impersonal note had been the final axe blow. She’d fought the good fight but there were only so many times a girl could take rejection. So she’d made a decision to forget him and she’d navigated through life these past five months by doing just that. By putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to think about him.
Or what he’d left behind.
But there’d only ever been a finite amount of time she could exist in her state of denial and the first flutterings this morning had brought an abrupt end to that. She couldn’t deny that she was carrying his baby any longer.
Or that he deserved to know.
She turned back to her father. ‘I think I know somebody who might.’
Evie had spent the last three afternoons pacing back and forth outside Marco D’Avello’s outpatients rooms, waiting for his last expectant mother to leave, summoning up the nerve to go in and see him then chickening out each time as the door opened to discharge a patient.
Today was no different. It was five o’clock, the waiting area was empty and his door opened and she sprang from the seat she’d not long plonked herself in for the hundredth time in half an hour and headed for the lift.
‘Evie?’
His rich, beautifully accented voice stopped her in her tracks. Evie had to admit that Emily, his wife and a midwife at the hospital, was an exceptionally lucky woman to wake up to that voice every morning. Not to mention the whole dark, sexy Italian stallion thing he had going on.
Just waking up with the person you loved sounded pretty good to her.
He walked towards her. ‘I have been watching you outside my door for three days now.’ His voice was soft. ‘Would you like to see me?’
Evie dithered. She wasn’t sure what she wanted. She didn’t know what an obstetrician could tell her that she didn’t already know. And yet here she was.
‘Come,’ he murmured, cupping his hand under her elbow.
Evie let herself be led. Why couldn’t she love someone like Marco? Someone who was gentle and supportive?
And capable of love.
She heard the door click behind her and sat in the chair he shepherded her towards. ‘You are pregnant. Yes?’ he said as he walked around to his side of the desk.
Evie startled gaze flew to his. ‘How did you …?’ she looked down at her belly, placing her hand over the bump that was obvious on her spare athletic frame if she was naked but not discernible yet in the baggy scrubs she wore at work.
Marco smiled. ‘It’s okay, you are not showing. I’m just a little more … perceptive to this sort of thing. I think it goes with the job.’
Evie nodded, her brain buzzing. She looked at him for long moments. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m here.’
He didn’t seemed perturbed by her strange statement. She was pregnant. He was an obstetrician. It was where she should be. Where she should have been a lot earlier than now.
He just seemed to accept it and waited for her to talk some more.
‘I haven’t told anyone. No one knows,’ she said, trying to clarify.
‘How many weeks?’
‘Eighteen.’
Marco frowned. ‘And you haven’t seen anyone yet?’
‘I’ve been … busy.’ Evie felt her defences rise, not that Marco seemed to be judging her. ‘It’s always crazy in the emergency department and … time gets away …’
She looked down at her hands still cradling her bump because what excuse was there really to have neglected herself, to have not sought proper antenatal care?
She was a doctor, for crying out loud.
‘You have been well?’
Evie nodded, dragging her gaze back to Marco. ‘Disgustingly. A few weeks of vague nausea in the beginning. Tired. I’ve been really tired. But that’s it.’
She’d expected the worse when she’d first discovered she was pregnant. She’d figured any child of Finn’s was bound to be as disagreeable as his father and make her life hell. But it had been a dream pregnancy to date as far as all that went.
Which had only made it easier for her to deny what was really happening to her body.
‘We should do some bloods,’ Marco said. ‘Why don’t you hop up on the couch for a moment and I’ll have a feel?’
Evie nodded. She made her way to the narrow examination table and lay staring at the ceiling as Marco palpated her uterus then measured the fundal height with a tape measure. ‘Measurements seem spot on for eighteen weeks,’ he murmured as he reached over and flipped on a small ultrasound machine.
‘No,’ Evie said, half sitting, pulling down her scrub top. ‘I don’t want to … I don’t want an ultrasound.’
She didn’t want to look at the baby. Not yet. She’d made a huge leap forward today, finally admitting the pregnancy to someone else. She wasn’t ready for a meet and greet.
And she knew that made her all kinds of screwed up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘That’s probably not the reaction you’re used to.’ She couldn’t explain why she didn’t want to see the baby—she just knew she didn’t. Not yet.
Marco turned off the machine and looked down at her and Evie could tell he was choosing his words carefully. ‘Evie … you have left it too late to … do something about the pregnancy.’
Evie struggled to sit up, gratefully taking Marco’s proffered hand as she sat cross-legged on the narrow couch. She had thought about termination but as with everything else pregnancy related she’d shoved it determinedly to one side.
She’d spent the past eighteen weeks not thinking about the baby—her body aiding and abetting her denial by being virtually symptom-free.
She looked at Marco. ‘I know. I don’t want to.’
She stopped. Where had that come from?
Termination had been an option and one, as a doctor and a woman, she firmly believed should be available, but suddenly she knew deep down in the same place that she’d known she loved Finn that she loved his baby too. And that nothing would come between them.
He may not have let her in, let her love him, but there would be no distance between Finn’s child and her.
She gave Marco a half-smile. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think I really accepted until the baby moved a few days ago that I was actually pregnant. I’m still trying to … process things.’
He smiled back. ‘It’s okay. How about we listen to the heartbeat instead and get some bloods done as a first step?’
Evie nodded and lay back and in seconds she was listening to the steady whop-whop-whop of a tiny beating heart. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘There really is a baby in there.’
Marco smiled at her gently and nodded. ‘Your baby.’
Evie shut her eyes. Finn’s baby.
Finn Kennedy eased his lean frame into the low squatter’s chair and looked out over the vista from the shaded serenity of the wide wraparound veranda. He liked it here in this rambling old house perched on a cliff top overlooking the mighty Pacific Ocean. He gazed over acres of deep blue sea to the horizon, the constant white noise of the surf pounding against the rocks far below a wild serenade.
He liked the tranquillity. For too long he’d been keeping himself busy to block out the pain, drinking to block out the pain, screwing around and pushing himself to the limit to block out the pain.
Who knew that stopping everything and standing still worked better than any of that?