The Spanish Doctor's Convenient Bride

He was standing above her, his body throbbing, taunted by the languorous look in her eyes.

“You’d hardly want to,” she said, and although she spoke lightly, he guessed she, too, was trapped by a sudden shift in the atmosphere in the room. “I mean, look at me—your archetypal plain Jane! I’m jeans and T-shirt, not high fashion—short and dumpy, not slim and willowy.”

“You’re a woman, and I’m a man,” he said, determined to prove his point, although somewhere deep inside he was distressed she should make light of her appearance. “Sometimes that is all it takes.”

He took her hand and drew her to her feet, not forcing her, but allowing no resistance, and then made the kiss a reality, his lips claiming hers with an arrogance that took her breath away.

Dear Reader,

While I was writing A Father by Christmas—I love writing Christmas books!—I found myself more and more interested in an unborn baby who was a very minor player in the book. Before I realized what had happened, I knew I had to write another book so I could find out more about the baby. Imagine my delight when I realized that the father was a very sexy Spaniard—perfect hero material. But would such a gorgeous hunk ever fall in love with Marty, who wasn’t very beautiful, or very tall, but who had taken the baby into her heart and would obviously make the perfect mother for the little girl? I had my doubts, but love is a wondrous thing and when these two were thrown together, and forced to fight for the baby’s welfare, even fight for her life, magic happened and they turned into perfect partners, in life, in work and in love.

Wasn’t that convenient?

Meredith Webber

The Spanish Doctor’s Convenient Bride

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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MEDITERRANEAN DOCTORS

Let these exotic doctors sweep you off your feet….

Be tantalized by their smoldering good looks, romanced by their fiery passion and warmed by the emotional power of these strong and caring men….

MEDITERRANEAN DOCTORS

Passionate about life, love and medicine

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘MOZART would be good for all the babies in the NICU,’ Marty protested. ‘I’ve picked out melodies everyone knows so the parents would enjoy it too. Besides, Emmaline is used to it. It’s what I’ve played for her all along.’

Sophie Gibson touched her friend lightly on the shoulder.

‘She’s not your baby,’ she gently reminded Marty. ‘In fact, she’s not even called Emmaline.’

‘But you’ve got to admit she looks like an Emmaline, doesn’t she?’

Marty put her hand through the port of the humidicrib and touched the wild black hair poking up from beneath the stockingette cap on the head of the tiny baby. Emmaline’s cherub face was screwed up as if sleeping required the utmost concentration, her little fists tucked up against her chin, ready to take on anyone who bothered her.

Or who messed with her Mozart!

‘She looks like a baby,’ Sophie said, then turned, smiling, as she heard her husband’s voice.

‘Glad you’re both here,’ Alexander Gibson said quietly. ‘Sophie, Marty, I’d like you both to meet Dr Carlos Quintero. He’s the baby’s father.’

Gib’s eyes sought out Marty, and she hoped the sick despair that squeezed her stomach wasn’t written on her face.

Stupid to have grown attached to Emmaline—stupid, stupid, stupid!

‘Carlos, this is Sophie Gibson, second in charge of the neonatal intensive care unit, and Marty Cox, the obstetrician who took care of Natalie during the time she was in on life support in the intensive care unit.’

The dark-haired, deeply tanned stranger bowed his head towards the two women, but Marty sensed his eyes, hidden beneath hooded, jet-fringed lids, were on Emm—the baby.

Then he lifted his head and eyes as dark as his lashes—obsidian stones in his harsh-planed face—met Marty’s.

‘I will wish to speak further to you,’ he said, his deep, accented voice, though quiet, carrying easily around the room.

Presence, that’s what he has, Marty thought, although she doubted presence was the reason for a sudden fluttery feeling in her chest.

‘Of course,’ she agreed, as easily as possible given the fluttery stuff going on. ‘Any time. Well, not quite any time, but we can make a time.’

She was chattering, something she only did when she was nervous, and of course Emmaline’s father suddenly turning up would make her nervous.

Wouldn’t it?

‘Why not now?’ Sophie suggested. ‘You’ve just come off duty.’

Marty fired a ‘some friend you are’ glance towards the neonatologist, and wondered just how bad she, herself, looked. Flat hair from the cap she’d been wearing in the delivery room, a too-large scrub suit billowing around her slight frame.

And you’re worrying because? her inner voice demanded.

‘You’d probably prefer to spend time with the baby right now,’ she mumbled at the stranger, who cast a look towards the crib then turned back to Marty.

‘Not at all. Now would suit me if it is convenient for you.’

Marty looked helplessly towards Sophie, who had to hide the smile, while Gib made matters worse by suggesting they use his office, which had a super coffee-maker and comfortable armchairs in which they could sit.

‘You know how to work the coffee-machine,’ he reminded Marty as she dragged her reluctant body out of the NICU, far too aware of the tall dark stranger following behind her.

‘Talk about a cliché!’ she muttered to herself as this description of Carlos whoever flashed through her mind.

‘I am sorry?’

She turned and shrugged.

‘No, I’m sorry. Talking to myself. Bad habit.’

‘And one I also have,’ the polite doctor informed her. ‘Though, in my case, I am often the only person who understands me.’

‘You can say that again!’ Marty told him, turning to smile as she added, ‘Though there are times when even I don’t understand me.’

‘Ah!’ He returned her smile, brilliant white teeth flashing in his dark face, deep lines creasing the tanned cheeks and crinkling the skin at the corner of his eyes. ‘But that is more than a language problem, is it not?’

Still getting over the effect of the smile—which had stuck her feet to the floor and made her stomach swoop in a wild roller-coaster simulation—she had no idea what to say to this fairly acute observation.

She settled on a lame ‘Gib’s office is through here’ and led the way along the corridor and into the comfortable room. At least, while she busied herself at the coffee-machine she wouldn’t have to look at this Carlos—wouldn’t have to see the silver strands in his night-dark hair, or the smooth tanned skin stretched over hard muscle in his arms, or the way his fine-boned nose seemed to direct the eye towards sinfully shapely lips.

And how come she’d noticed that much? She who looked on men as necessary adjuncts to the continuation of the species and, at best, useful friends who could reach the highest shelves in the supermarket or lift things down from on top of cupboards?

She shook her head as the espresso machine delivered its final drops into the two small cups, took a deep breath and turned back to find the man studying the photos of some of Gib’s patients that adorned the walls of his office.

‘You call these before and after photos?’ he said, turning as she put the coffee cups on the low table. ‘I have never done much neonatology. It is amazing to think these small babies can grow into such sturdy children and healthy-looking teenagers.’

‘They get the best possible start in this NICU,’ Marty told him. ‘With Emmaline—I’m sorry, with your baby we weren’t sure how premature she was, but her birth weight was 1500 grams, which put her into low birth weight category. So she’d have gone there rather than the other nursery anyway. In the NICU she can be watched every minute of the day in case any of the things that beset premmie babies crops up.’

Had he noticed her slip?

He didn’t mention it, settling himself in a chair near the table and spooning sugar into his coffee.

‘Emmaline?’ Dark eyebrows rose as he said the word and Marty squirmed with embarrassment.

‘I know it’s silly, but I’ve kind of known her, you see, right from when Natalie was admitted. I was called to consult in A and E when she was brought in after the accident, and then when the decision was made to keep her on life support for the baby’s sake, I was the obstetrician in charge—but Gib’s already told you that part. The hospital couldn’t track down any relatives, which meant Natalie had no visitors so there was no one to talk to the baby. I used to visit, and talk to it, and play music—’

‘Mozart?’

So he had heard her conversation. She really should learn to argue more quietly. But playing Mozart had been little enough to do for the baby and the brain-dead woman who had been carrying her, so she tilted her chin and defended her actions.

‘Did you know a researcher once had a group of adolescents take a test, then played some Mozart for them, then had them take a parallel test and every one of them did better? I don’t know if it made any difference to the baby, or to Natalie, but it’s beautiful music. I love Bach—probably more than Mozart—but I thought he might be too complex for the baby, so stuck with a lot of the piano concertos—’

She stopped abruptly as embarrassment coiled and writhed like something alive inside her.

‘Of course, my musical tastes are nothing to do with what you want to know, which was—’

Marty had no idea where the conversation had begun, so she picked up her coffee and took a gulp. Quite dreadful—she’d forgotten to put sugar in, or was too muddled to have given it a thought.

‘Emmaline,’ he repeated, and she felt embarrassment heat her body as she remembered.

‘I didn’t name her right away. I called her “the baby” or just “baby” when I visited for the four weeks Natalie was in the ICU, but then, when I delivered her, she was a tiny scrap of humanity with this wealth of black hair.’ She smiled. ‘I’d had a doll with hair like that when I was young and she was Emmaline, so the name just sort of stuck.’

‘Emmaline Quintero!’ He spoke as if tasting the name on his tongue, and Marty, wondering if there was a word that would convey the ultimate in mortification—mortifiedest?—rushed into speech again.

‘You don’t have to call her Emmaline, of course you don’t. You’ll have your own name for her, a family name maybe—your mother’s name—a favourite, or you could call her after Natalie.’

Big mistake! The man’s face became a mask of nothingness, all expression wiped away—black eyes boring into Marty’s, lips thinned and tight as he said coldly, ‘I think not.’

Do not apologise, Marty’s inner voice ordered, but she was beyond help from within and had already rushed into a confused bout of ‘sorrys’.

‘The decision to keep Natalie on life support? That was yours?’

Thankfully, Carlos’s question cut across her stumbling apologies and Marty was able to grasp the lifeline of a purely medical question.

Although why was he questioning the decision?

Refusing to think about the implications of that one, Marty explained.

‘Actually, in the absence of any relative that we could contact, the hospital ethics committee made the decision. They went on the advice of the neonatologist—Sophie was the one consulted at the time—and my judgement of the stage of the pregnancy. It was deemed advisable, for the baby’s sake—’

‘What was that judgement?’

Marty was prepared to accept his interruption—after all, the man had stuff he wanted to know—but the cold, hard voice in which he interrupted—she didn’t like that one little bit.

‘My judgement of the stage of pregnancy?’ she queried, her voice as cold and hard as his—all compassion gone. Two could play this game. ‘I measured fundal height, and used ultrasound to estimate the length of the baby and head circumference. But although these measurements are fairly close in the first and second trimester, by the third, beginning at twenty-eight weeks—’

Too much information now—he’d know all this medical detail—but he didn’t interrupt so she kept going.

‘They can be out by as much as three weeks, and that’s plus or minus. The man who was in the car gave no help apart to say she was pregnant when she moved in with him so the closest we could get was twenty-eight to thirty-one weeks. Natalie was tall and slim so it was also possible the pregnancy could have been further along than that—a possibility that became a probability when Em—the baby—was delivered.’

‘Dios! Call the baby Emmaline if you wish. Anything is better than this stumbling every time she’s mentioned.’ He glared at Marty, as if defying her to disobey his order, then demanded, ‘So, if anything, Natalie was further into her pregnancy than your initial assessment—that is what you’re saying?’

Marty nodded, feeling sorry now for Emmaline who had this disagreeable man for a father.

‘And the man said she was pregnant when she returned to him?’

‘I don’t know about “returned”. He said she was already pregnant when she came and that’s all he’d say.’

‘Oh, she returned, for sure,’ Carlos told her, enough ice in his voice to make Marty shiver.

There was a long silence, then he added, ‘So this Emmaline, she is mine!’

He ground out the words with such evident regret—distaste almost—Marty let fly.

‘You make it sound as if she’s an albatross hung around your neck by some malign fate. She’s a baby—she’s not to blame for being born. You’re a doctor—you of all people know how conception happens. Actually, ten-year-old kids know how it happens these days. But it was up to you. If you didn’t want a child, you should have done something to prevent it.’

She was glaring directly at him so caught the flash of something that might be humour in his eyes, then he smiled as he said, ‘And do you always think of the possibility of conception when you make love with your partner? Or is the easing of the urgent need the priority of both mind and body?’

The smile, though as coolly cynical as the words, confused her to the extent she forgot to breathe, then, angry at her reaction, she snapped at him.

‘I don’t have a partner!’

Oh, hell! Mortification all over again because that wasn’t the issue—her personal life was none of Carlos Quintero’s business.

Fine, dark eyebrows rose again and the jet-black eyes seemed to penetrate her scrub suit to scan the body hidden beneath it.

Infuriated beyond reason, Marty stood up, grabbed the empty cups off the table and carried them across the room. This man wasn’t interested in his wife, or how she’d died. His only concern—hope?—had been that maybe the baby wasn’t his.

Callous, arrogant wretch, with his insinuating remarks and come-to-bed eyes scanning her body!

‘It is not for myself I regret Emmaline,’ he said, and Marty’s wrath, which had been building up nicely, dissipated instantly. He’d used her name! ‘It is she I am thinking of. The life I lead—it is no life for a baby, yet it is work to which I am committed. This is hard, you see, for me now to have a baby and to know what best to do with it.’

‘Her,’ Marty corrected automatically.

‘Her!’ he repeated obediently.

Carlos watched the woman’s shoulders slump and knew he’d won a reprieve. He, who hated above all things to be dependent on another person, needed help—help to understand what had happened, and where things stood—help to work out what to do next. And one thing was clear—this woman had the baby’s—Emmaline’s—interest at heart and for that reason, he guessed, she might be willing to help a stranger.

She returned to her chair, though he could read her reluctance in the way she moved and her distrust in the way she held her body. One of those women to whom their job is their life, he guessed, though her attachment to the baby was strange—professional detachment usually went hand in hand with such dedication.

‘Do you know any details of the accident?’ he asked, steering the conversation away from the baby in the hope she might relax a little.

‘Only that it was single vehicle—apparently the car careened off the road on a curve and struck a tree—and Natalie was breathing on her own when the ambulance arrived. She stopped breathing when she was moved and they revived her twice at the site then put her on life support to bring her to the hospital. Foetal heart rate was stable throughout the examinations, and tests at the hospital showed no damage to the amniotic sac or the placenta and, as far as we could tell, no damage to the foetus.’

‘And the man?’

He saw the woman’s quick glance—clear, almond-shaped, hazel eyes sweeping across his face—before she replied.

‘Multiple fractures to both legs, some contusions and concussion, I think a ruptured spleen but nothing life-threatening.’

A shame, Carlos thought, then dismissed the thought as petty and unworthy. It wasn’t Peter Richards’s fault Natalie had loved him. Although, if he’d not broken off their engagement, sending her scurrying to Europe to forget him, the beautiful blonde would never have crossed Carlos’s path and this entire, unsatisfactory mess could have been avoided.

Though he wouldn’t use the words ‘unsatisfactory mess’ to this fiery little obstetrician!

Marty—as strange a name as Emmaline!

‘So he was hospitalised here?’

Marty nodded, though the look on her face suggested she was no more fond of Peter Richards than he was.

‘You didn’t like him?’

‘I didn’t know him, but I do know, once he was mobile, he never visited her, to sit with her and talk to her. I know she’d been ruled brain-dead but no one knows if on some deep level such people might feel comfort or support. He should have done it for his own sake if nothing else—having survived the accident that killed her—but he didn’t even come to say his goodbyes. She lay there, all alone, and so beautiful it hurt to look at her.’

Carlos saw his companion’s lips tighten to a thin line as she described what she saw as Peter Richards’s shortcomings. But she was right, Natalie had been beautiful. So beautiful she’d bewitched him, and he’d pursued her with an ardour and determination he’d never felt before, though beautiful women hadn’t been lacking in his life.

Anger stirred briefly—directed not at Peter Richards for his behaviour, or at Natalie for not loving him, but at himself for his folly in wanting her anyway, then he dismissed it, for the matter at hand was the baby.

A tap on the door, then a nurse popped her head around the jamb.

‘Dr Quintero, I’m about to change the baby and feed her. Would you like to see her? Hold her?’

He could feel Marty’s eyes on him but refused to look her way.

‘Not this time,’ he said, then felt obliged to make an excuse. ‘I have flown halfway around the world through too many time zones and am tired enough to maybe drop her.’

The nurse disappeared and he was unable to avoid turning back to Marty, who watched him, one mobile eyebrow raised in his direction.

‘What can I do with a baby?’ he demanded, so irritated by her attitude he was practically growling.

‘Bring it up?’ she suggested, and now he did growl.

‘You know nothing of my life. You sit there, so prim and righteous, passing judgement on Peter Richards, passing judgement on me. I work in Sudan, among people who lose their babies every day, so wretched is their existence. Children die because I cannot save them, because they have had nothing but stones to eat, and their mothers are so malnourished they cannot feed them. They might walk as long as six days to seek treatment for themselves or their children, then leave our small, makeshift hospital and walk back home again. That is my life!’

Marty was sorry she’d prodded. Like most people, she was overwhelmed with helplessness when she considered the death and destruction in famine- or war-ravaged countries. But that didn’t alter the fact that Emmaline was this man’s child. His responsibility.

‘So this baby doesn’t count?’ she persisted, and he stood up and paced around the room, a tall, angry stranger with a face that might be carved from teak, so strongly were his bones delineated beneath his skin, so remote the expression on those graven features.

‘I will deal with the baby!’ he said, after several minutes of pacing. ‘I come because a message reaches me—my wife is injured, dying perhaps. Do you think she told me she was pregnant before she left me? Do you think I would have let her go, carrying my baby? The baby is news when I reach the hospital. What am I supposed to do—summon up a carer for a baby out of thin air? Make plans for what school she will attend?’

‘I’m sorry!’ This time Marty’s apology was heart-felt. ‘I didn’t realise you hadn’t known. It must have been terrible for you—to arrive and learn you had a child. Most people have nine months to get used to the idea—to make plans. But you don’t have to decide anything immediately. Sophie wants to keep Emmaline in for at least another fortnight. At best, she was a month premature and her birth weight was very low, so she’s vulnerable to all the complications of both premmie and low birth weight infants.’

‘But so far, has had none of them?’

‘She was jaundiced after two days but that’s common enough and phototherapy cleared it up. Gib told you she’s five days old?’

Carlos nodded.

‘I assume Natalie’s deteriorating condition made a Caesar necessary earlier, possibly, than you would have liked?’

‘Her organs were shutting down,’ Marty agreed. ‘Life-support machines can only do so much. For Emmaline’s sake, it was advisable to operate.’

‘So now we have a baby.’

Marty would have liked to correct him—to say he had a baby—but he’d spoken quietly, as if moving towards acceptance, and she didn’t want to antagonise him again. In the meantime, she was missing Emmaline’s feeding time and a subtle ache in her arms reminded her of how much she’d been enjoying her contact with the little girl—and how unprofessional her behaviour was to have allowed herself to grow so attached.

She’d chosen to specialise in O and G rather than paediatrics so this didn’t happen—so she wouldn’t be forever getting clucky over other people’s children. In O and G you took care of the woman, delivered the baby, and after one postnatal check the family was gone from your life, or at least until the next pregnancy.

But with Emmaline it hadn’t worked that way, and all the up-till-then successfully repressed maternal urges had come bursting forth and Marty, doomed to childlessness, had fallen in love with a tiny scrap of humanity with a scrunched-up face, a putty nose, let-me-at-them fists and jet-black hair.