Prognosis Baby Daddy: A hot medical romance Read online

  ‘Please, don’t insult me. You couldn’t get water any flatter unless you were in the bathtub.’

  Katya watched as Ben straightened and started to pace and rattled off a number of things it could be.

  ‘I don’t think it’s appendicitis,’ he muttered. ‘There’s no rebound tenderness. No...you had the ham on your roll and I didn’t.’ He turned to face her. ‘Maybe it was off and you’ve contracted food poisoning.’

  Ben raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Oh, God! How many staff and patients have had that ham today? This sort of thing doesn’t happen at the Lucia Clinic. I’ll have to ring the chef.’

  He strode to the old-fashioned marble-handled telephone and started dialing the clinic number.

  Katya watched him in dismay. ‘Ben, it’s nothing.’

  He held his hand over the receiver. ‘Of course it is,’ he said impatiently. ‘People can’t come to our clinic and get food poisoning. As soon as I’m done here, we’ll head back to Amalfi and we’ll go to the hospital. You may need rehydration.’

  Katya couldn’t believe how this was escalating out of control. She could see it becoming an international incident before her eyes. ‘Ben, for God’s sake, put the phone down. I’m pregnant, that’s all.’

  She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. She had her speech all prepared. Had lain awake all last night, perfecting it. And, in a matter of seconds, she’d blown it out of the water. She watched his face as her words sank in.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked, as he slowly replaced the receiver.

  Katya sighed. She felt too wretched now to give him the whole spiel. She swung her legs around and sat up gingerly. At least with the boat now stopped, her stomach seemed to be more settled. ‘I’m having your baby,’ she said, her voice stronger now.

  Ben stared at her, not even really seeing her as her words slowly filtered through. Baby? Was she insane? ‘But...how?’

  Katya could see she’d really thrown him. She’d never seen him look pale — ever. But he did now. And he was clutching the phone like he was going to fall over if he let go. She understood his question was rhetorical so she didn’t bother answering it. She just sat and watched him, waiting for it to sink in further.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  Katya nodded patiently. It was a fair enough question. She’d spent a good week in total disbelief. ‘I’ve taken three tests and been throwing up every day for two months.’

  Ben blinked. This couldn’t be happening. Him? A father? He didn’t know how to be a father. He just couldn’t get his head around it. ‘Are you sure it’s mine?’

  Thinking about it, they hadn’t used any protection. It had been such a spontaneous act and he’d been so shaken that it hadn’t even occurred to him. He’d just needed to be close to her, to hold her, to blot out the awful events and years of stupid, futile anger.

  The question slammed into Katya with the force of a hurricane even though it was delivered with no malice or accusation. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

  No way did he get to question the paternity.

  ‘I’m one hundred per cent sure.’ She rose, her hands curling into fists by her side. ‘I was a virgin that night, Ben.’

  Ben took the second body blow just as hard. His thoughts reeled. ‘You were?’

  Christ. Why hadn’t he known? Had he been that caught up in his own grief and regret that he hadn’t been paying attention to her cues?

  ‘Da,’ she said shortly.

  ‘But...but I didn’t...I couldn’t...You seemed...’

  Ben’s brain was too discombobulated by all this information to be absorbing very much right now. He walked to the lounge chair opposite Katya’s and sank into the plush leather. ‘How do you get to twenty-seven and still be a virgin?’

  Katya snorted. Growing up in her house, it had been easy. She’d lived with a woman who used sex as a commodity. Sure, deep down Katya really believed that Olgah had truly just wanted to be loved, but Katya had seen too many men come and go and leave her mother broken-hearted to trust any man.

  She had picked up the pieces once too often. Held her mother, stroked her prematurely grey hair, while she had sobbed her heart out. As a child her mother’s ups and downs had been frightening.

  Bewildering.

  As an adult, her mother’s example had taught Katya that weaknesses destroyed you. Consequently, she’d never let her guard down enough to have a relationship let alone sexual intimacy.

  Ben had been a complete one-off for her. A totally out-of-character thing for her to do. But he’d been so shaken, so devastated that she hadn’t even questioned her actions. She’d just known that night, on some intuitive female level she hadn’t really understood, that Ben had needed comfort and she’d known exactly how to provide it.

  But the next morning, she had felt no better than her mother.

  ‘Upbringing,’ Katya said dismissively as she sat, wanting to rehash that night as little as possible. ‘Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is I’m pregnant. I’m sorry, I didn’t plan to tell you this way.’

  Ben shook his head to clear it. She was right. The point was, he was going to be a father. The thought was no less horrifying than it had been minutes ago. But something was clearer. ‘That’s why you’re here.’ He glanced at her. ‘You came to tell me you were pregnant?’

  ‘Da.’ Katya nodded.

  Ben could feel his thoughts coming back on line now. Things were starting to make sense. And yet they weren’t. ‘Why? You could have just rung me.’

  ‘Because I don’t want the baby.’

  Ben took a moment to absorb her answer. It seemed they were back to not making any sense. ‘So why didn’t you just have a termination?’

  When he thought about it, it was exactly the thing that practical, sensible, no-nonsense Katya would do. Why not, if she didn’t want the baby? Want his baby.

  The thought struck the centre of his chest – hard. She didn’t want his baby.

  Katya shook her head. ‘Tried. Couldn’t.’

  Ben’s brow puckered. He felt like he was running in quicksand and sinking. ‘What do you mean, couldn’t? You couldn’t get in to a clinic?’

  ‘I mean I made the appointment, I sat in the waiting room, they called my name and I just couldn’t go through with it.’

  Katya rubbed her stomach. She remembered the moment — the precise moment. The nurse calling her name again and again and knowing, just knowing that she couldn’t do it. For better or for worse she had given this baby life, and she couldn’t take it away.

  Ben heard the huskiness in her voice and noted her hand movements. The quicksand solidified a little. How many pregnant women had he seen repeat the same action? Katya’s stomach was still flat, no baby bump at all, yet she had the action down pat.

  She sounded surprised by the turn of events and he could imagine how her inability to see something she’d organised all the way through to the end would have turned her neat, practical world upside down.

  But nothing changed the fact that growing inside her was his baby. His flesh and blood. A strange sense of possession gripped his gut and he was profoundly thankful that Katya hadn’t been able to go through with the termination.

  ‘So where do we go from here?’ he asked.

  Katya took a deep breath, forgoing her speech for the

  direct route. ‘I want you to raise the baby.’

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  ‘Me?’ he said, trying to wrap his head around everything that had come out of her mouth in the last couple of minutes.

  ‘Well, you are the father,’ Katya said bluntly.

  The father. He was going to be a father. The enormity of that simple statement hit him. How could they have been so careless? He couldn’t be a father. He hadn’t even been a good brother. He’d ignored all Mario’s overtures, closed himself off to a relationship he’d invested in since birth.

  He’d closed himself off to any kind of love for so long now. Did
he even have the capacity for it anymore?

  ‘And how do you envision that will work?’ he asked, as his brain madly tried to keep up with the ever-changing plot.

  Now, this was a topic Katya could talk on. This was what she’d been planning for over a month. ‘I have a plan.’

  She did? ‘OK then.’ He rubbed his hands through his hair. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘I’ll stay here until the baby is born. After the birth, you can take over the baby’s care.’

  Ben watched as her face became animated. She’d obviously put a lot of thought into this. ‘And you?’

  Katya shrugged. ‘Back to MedSurg, of course.’

  Just like that? She could seriously just walk away from her own child? His reticence he could understand. But, Katya? She was the mother. Wasn’t that...innate? How could she reject their child?

  ‘Why don’t you want the baby?’

  Katya shook her head emphatically ‘Why doesn’t matter.’

  Ben had the feeling, watching her caress her stomach, that why mattered very much. ‘It does to me.’

  Katya wrestled with how much to tell him. He didn’t need to know all the gory details, just the basics. She sighed. ‘From the age of eight until I left home at twenty, I raised three sisters and a brother. I’m all mothered out.’

  Ben absorbed her stunning statement silently. He caught a brief glimpse of the eight-year-old Katya before her shutters came down. ‘Your mother?’ he asked.

  ‘Left it up to me.’

  Katya stared at the floor, not daring to elaborate. How could someone who had grown up with everything — emotionally and financially — ever understand the gritty reality of her childhood?

  Those five words spoke volumes to Ben. They were brief and clipped and he noted she couldn’t even meet his gaze. Suddenly the whole Katya persona was making much more sense. Her practicality, her harshness, her bluntness. She would have needed to be all those things to mother four children as a mere child herself.

  And her conversation with her mother on the phone yesterday was another piece in the crazy Katya puzzle that was becoming clearer. But looking at her as she cradled their baby with her protective pose, like a lioness protecting her young, he knew he was just scratching the surface. Obviously her childhood had left scars.

  ‘At least you know how,’ he said in a soft voice.

  Katya saw a flash of Sophia’s terror and pain and clamped down on the memory before it developed sound. ‘Trust me, Ben. I wouldn’t be any good for this baby.’

  ‘What makes you think I would be any better?’

  Sure, he could provide for it. But giving himself up completely to another human being, as babies demanded, was a terrifying thought. He’d done that once already and he too had been left with scars.

  ‘Because you have Lucia. You had a fantastic role model and an idyllic childhood — none of which I had. And I see that reflected in the way you’ve been with Lupi. I’ve watched you with, Ben. You’re good with her. And she adores you and so will this baby. And you can give it things I can’t.’

  ‘I can’t give it a mother’s love.’

  Katya gripped her abdomen more firmly his words penetrating like bullets, shredding her fortitude. As long as it had love, did it matter whether the source was from the mother or the father? ‘I meant material stuff.’

  ‘Like Ferraris and Learjets?’

  Katya shook her head, feeling her ire rise. He made her feel like a gold-digger. ‘You think I give a damn about expensive status symbols? You think I got pregnant to bleed you dry?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘That was uncalled for.’

  Ben massaged his forehead. He hadn’t meant his words to sound so judgmental. He just couldn’t believe his life was suddenly spinning out of control. He’d left Italy a decade ago to regain control and feeling that all slip away again was frustrating.

  And he’d be damned if he’d let it take over a second time.

  If Katya was having his baby and wanted him to raise it, then it had to be on his terms. He wasn’t going to let another woman turn his life upside down.

  He looked at her, her blue eyes still glowering at him, her hand still firmly in place on her stomach. She said she didn’t want their baby but her body language said differently. And despite his shock, Ben couldn’t suppress a tiny faint glow deep inside that already connected him to his child.

  Maybe they’d both been given a chance to overcome their pasts?

  ‘I think we should get married.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KATYA blinked. Her hand stilled on her stomach. ‘What did you say?’

  Ben couldn’t blame her for her shocked expression. He was kind of shocked himself. The whole morning had been one mind-bending revelation after the other. He certainly hadn’t come away this morning expecting to ask Katya to marry him. But his old-fashioned values, beliefs ingrained into him by his mother and his upbringing, overrode everything.

  They were having a baby — it deserved to be legitimate. Even though his faith in marriage and family had been destroyed a decade ago. Even though Katya wanted nothing to do with the baby. The baby hadn’t asked to exist and it deserved no less than any other child. It deserved the right beginning.

  ‘I said, we should get married.’

  Katya was lost for words. Had he gone completely mad? What the hell did marrying him have to do with the baby? The thought was as horrifying as it was tantalising.

  ‘You?’ she spluttered. ‘Bendetto Medici, the playboy count? Get married?’

  He shrugged. ‘You’re pregnant. The baby’s mine. It may be old-fashioned but it’s the right thing to do.’

  Katya blinked again. Old-fashioned? Try archaic! ‘In the Dark Ages, maybe.’

  ‘I’m a traditionalist.’ He shrugged again.

  Bitter laughter bubbled in Katya’s chest and it was out before she could check it. It sounded harsh in the confines of the cabin. ‘This from the man who famously spent one of his leave periods from MedSurg dating every swimwear model he could locate?’

  Ben could have been deaf and blind and still wouldn’t have missed her mocking tone. Her harsh judgment of him rankled. He was far removed from the man he used to be. ‘Dismissing me again, Katya?’

  She stood up and pushed herself away from the lounge, putting some distance between herself and the dark, dangerous glitter of his eyes. She paced over to the window and looked out. This was crazy. Crazy! The Med shimmered and stretched out before her and she turned back lest her now settled stomach decided to change its mind.

  ‘No.’

  She’d decided long ago, after witnessing her mother’s emotional destruction every time a relationship ended, that she’d be far better off without a man. She’d learned the hard way that true commitment and love were elusive and rare and she’d sworn to never settle for less.

  Never marry for less.

  Certainly not someone who felt it was his duty and responsibility. All or nothing. It had to be all or nothing. And she wouldn’t compromise, not even for the baby.

  Ben wasn’t surprised. But he wasn’t deterred either. ‘Yes.’

  Katya shook her head emphatically. He looked so sexy, pinning her to the deck with his brown-eyed stare. She shivered. She was pregnant and had just thrown up her entire stomach contents but when he looked at her, her toes curled. ‘No.’

  The more she resisted, the more determined he became. ‘So, let me see,’ he said quietly, observing her hand-on-tummy stance, ‘you expect to have our baby then leave it with me with no legally binding contract? Nothing to say that the baby is mine? Do you want our baby to have my name, Katya?’

  Katya let his words sink in. For all her planning, she hadn’t got that far. Did she? Did she want their baby to have its father’s name or hers? What was the point of Ben raising the baby, of her baby growing up in Italy with its father with all the financial security she could dream of, if the child had her name?

  Whether she like
d it or not, she was carrying a Medici in her belly. Wasn’t it this baby’s birthright to claim its father’s name?

  ‘We don’t have to marry to give this baby your name.’

  ‘No, but it makes everything a hell of a lot easier. It legitimises this baby’s birth better than any other legal process. Both in the eyes of the people and the law. I don’t want there to ever be any questions about this baby’s paternity. It has rights to my title and the Medici fortune. Everything has to be above board and a marriage is the simplest, easiest way to achieve this.’

  Ben finished, congratulating himself on such clear thinking. He wasn’t actually sure of the legalities concerning illegitimate children and the line of succession but, considering how rattled he was, he was surprised he’d been so comprehensive. Suddenly, though, every word he spoke was important.

  Part of him, the one percent that wasn’t horrified, the one percent traditionalist, was already completely committed to this baby. Katya Petrova was pregnant with his child.

  His child. The Medici heir.

  And whether it was the male in him or the Italian in him, that meant something. When he had been young and foolish and in love with Bianca he had imagined himself with many children. Had anticipated it, eagerly. Then life had happened and his dream had been destroyed but now, whether he liked it or not, his dream was becoming a belated reality. And he had to face his responsibilities.

  Katya blinked. She knew the words he had spoken were the truth. She wanted her child to be legitimate too. She didn’t want there to ever be any doubt or whispers. She thought about the whispers she had grown up with. The neighbours who had disapproved of her mother’s lifestyle. Five children with no fathers.

  The gossip. The judgmental stares.

  Marrying Ben would tidy up any nasty loose ends. But a marriage would be harder to walk away from. And she couldn’t stay. For the sake of her baby, she had to be far, far away.

  He had to know that her being involved with this baby was not going to happen. She raised her head and looked him straight in the eye. ‘A marriage would mean a divorce. I can’t stay after I’ve had the baby.’